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Series | Socialism: Theory & Practice, Part 3

Mon, 04/22/2013 - 15:07 — Dave Culver
  • Capitalism is a "dog-eat-dog" system based upon the exploitation of working people. Socialism is a cooperative alternative to capitalism. The corporate media distorts socialism just as it lies about almost everything else in order to keep working people confused and disoriented. Solving our problems requires understanding socialism. Socialists understand the key to creating a better world is through: Education, Organization, Unity, & Action
  • Part 3: The Question of Socialism (and Beyond!) Is About to Open Up in These United States

Socialism: Theory and Practice

 

(Photo: Shira Golding Evergreen / Flickr) 

 

Friday, 12 April 2013 | Little noticed by most Americans, Merriam Webster, one of the world's most important dictionaries, announced a few months ago that the two most looked-up words in 2012 were "socialism" and "capitalism."

 

Traffic for the pair on the company's website roughly doubled from the year before. The choice was a "kind of no-brainer," observed editor at large, Peter Sokolowski. "They're words that sort of encapsulate the zeitgeist."

 

Full story…

 

Related:

 

Part 2: Sidney J. Gluck, An Open Letter to President Barack Obama, Socialism Theory and Practice

I don't know whether you agree with my point of view or not; but I am functioning out of the feeling that the negative aspects of capitalism are becoming obvious to people all around the world regardless of class positions, that understanding its avaricious nature brings them closer to Marx's analysis of the system which all of you can read his seminal word on "Capital." Chapter 26 which deals with the law of capitalist accumulation will give you the prototype of which the USA's capitalism is the arch example of its worst (together with the British who started out but are following along with the USA).

 

 

Part 1: Albert Einstein, Why Socialism? Albert Einstein, Socialism Theory and Practice

Is it advisable for one who is not an expert on economic and social issues to express views on the subject of socialism? I believe for a number of reasons that it is.

 

 
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The 'Undo-Everything' Congress: What the Press Doesn't See

Sun, 04/21/2013 - 19:12 — Dave Culver

  • The hard-right wing exerts an oversized influence on our gridlocked Congress, thanks in part to a Beltway media enamored of them.
  • More BS About 'Both Sides'

Eric Alterman and Reed Richardson, The Nation 

This article is made possible with the generous contributions of all reader supported Evergreene Digest readers like you. Thank you!

April 5, 2013 | There is a frustrating tendency within the Washington press corps to misattribute individual behaviors to things or groups that are not, strictly speaking, a single person. Of course, everyone who covers politics, including yours truly, takes some liberties in using broad generalizations like “Republicans act like X” or “liberals think like Y.” When done judiciously, these rhetorical shortcuts can serve as a handy synopsis of the stakes of an issue. But this practice can easily become a lazy, intellectual crutch, one that misleads and misinforms.

Perhaps nowhere is this convention more abused by the media than when covering Capitol Hill. (A common example of this: Pollsters’ annoying habit of only testing the approval rating of “Congress” without asking the public their views on the respective parties therein, which can elicit noticeably different results.) By treating the many disparate parts and motives of 535 Congressional members as one amorphous (and highly unpopular) entity, then the press can completely muddy the picture of what the public does or doesn't like. This ambiguity shouldn’t be tolerated even if our federal legislature was working well, but when it has effectively ground to a halt, as it has right now, media misdiagnosis only serves to exacerbate the crisis. 

Full story…

Related:

More BS About 'Both Sides' Eric Alterman, The Nation

  • Alas, to judge by the willingness of so many in the mainstream media to parrot the nonsensical arguments of Tea Party Republicans, not even science is "science" anymore. And therein lies our problem.
  • Truth Is Offensive

 

 
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The New American Confederacy

Sat, 04/20/2013 - 08:58 — Dave Culver

Most disappointing of all to the youth, though, is Obama's betrayal of their values. Particularly, his extensions of Bush policies and war-mongering. Obama's "dumb war" theory (i.e. that some wars are just and some are just "dumb") is, to us, a complete abomination of the concept of peace. By evoking the Reverend Doctor King in his Nobel acceptance speech while in the same breath dismissing nonviolence, Obama has bastardized the concept of peace and alienated us, antiwar youth permanently from his politics."

Max Eternity, Truthout

Submitted by Evergreene Digest Contributing Editor Lydia Howell

President Barack Obama delivers remarks during an Easter prayer breakfast in the East Room of the White House in Washington, April 5, 2013. (Photo: Drew Angerer / New York Times)

16 April 2013 | Truth often shows up at the most inopportune times, especially for politicians.

"You have to hand it to Barack Obama when it comes to having it both ways" writes the publisher of Harpers Magazine, John MacArthur, in a recent article, entitled "Obama's Real Political Program."  For "[n]ever has a leading American Democrat" done so little, MacArthur says, "in support of less-privileged people while getting so much undeserved credit for 'trying' to help them."

Truly, what a strange and bitter pill to swallow.

An article I wrote 2 years ago, titled "Obama's Right Wing Success: Silencing Black America and the Left," then quoted a young, progressive veteran named Evan Knappenberger, who wrote poignantly about this painfully odd dilemma in an editorial, entitled "Obama's Betrayal of Generation Hope." 

Full story…

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Rob Tornoe | Boston Bombing Media Fail / media.cagle.com

Fri, 04/19/2013 - 14:20 — Dave Culver

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Books & Liturature

The Boston Marathon Bombing, Drones and the Meaning of Cowardice

Fri, 04/19/2013 - 14:11 — Dave Culver
  • Few Americans seem to care about U.N. rapporteurs (one who is designated to give a report). It’s only when Americans are potential targets for those drones, that Congress and the media get stirred up.
  • America the blind

Barry Lando, Counterpunch

Submitted by Evergreene Digest Contributing Editor Lydia Howell

If you like reading this article, consider contributing a cafe latte to all reader-supported Evergreene Digest--using the donation button above—so we can bring you more just like it.

April 18, 2013 | As I write this, we still don’t know who was responsible for the horrific bombing attack in Boston. Perhaps it will turn out to be the work of home grown rightwing nuts; perhaps it’s the act of foreign terrorists. But, whatever the source, what strikes me is the number of times the barbaric assault is being denounced as “cowardly.” As in Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis’s warning that “This cowardly act will not be taken in stride.”

Indeed, “Cowardly” is the epithet being used by political figures across the United States; it was used by an editorial writer in Kansas City Star and a spokesman for the United Maryland Muslim Council in Baltimore. “Cowardly” is the term being used in messages of support from abroad, from the Prime Minister of India to the Prime Minister of Italy.

Full story…

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Sweatshops on Wheels

Mon, 04/15/2013 - 15:20 — Dave Culver

The assault on public transportation, which has devastating consequences for the poor who cannot get to work or the doctor's office without it, is not new. 

Chris Hedges, Truthdig

This article is made possible with the generous contributions of all reader supported Evergreene Digest readers like you. Thank you!

Illustration by Mr. Fish 
 

The deterioration of the nation's public transportation, like the deterioration of health care, education, social services, public utilities, bridges and roads, is part of the relentless seizing and harvesting of public resources and programs by corporations. These corporations are steadily stripping the American infrastructure. Public-sector unions are being broken. Wages and benefits are being slashed. Workers are forced to put in longer hours in unsafe workplaces, often jeopardizing public safety. The communities that need public services most are losing them, and where public service is continued it is reduced or substandard and costlier. Only the security and surveillance network and the military are permitted to function with efficiency in their role as the guardians of corporate power. We now resemble the developing world: We have small pockets of obscene wealth, ailing infrastructure and public service, huge swaths of grinding poverty, and militarized police and internal security.

The assault on public transportation, which has devastating consequences for the poor who cannot get to work or the doctor's office without it, is not new. General Motors, Standard Oil, Firestone Tire and Rubber, B.F. Phillips Petroleum and Mack Manufacturing set up companies in the 1930s -- first United Cities Motor Transit and later National City Lines -- in order to rip up city trolley tracks and replace them with bus and car routes. These corporations, joined by companies such as Greyhound, pushed through the national highway grid. City bus companies, as riders turned to cars, began to go bankrupt. 

Full story…

 

 

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Mitch McConnell & Big Oil

Sat, 04/13/2013 - 15:27 — Dave Culver

 

Addicting Info

 

Submitted by Evergreene Digest Associate Editor Jeanette Eastman

 

 

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Government & Politics

Tom Tomorrow | Ten Years After / thismodernworld.com

Fri, 04/12/2013 - 15:17 — Dave Culver

 

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The Beltway Media's Best-Kept Budget Secret

Fri, 04/12/2013 - 13:53 — Dave Culver

Eric Alterman, The Nation

April 11, 2013 | Below is a copy of a letter I sent to The Forward regarding the newspaper’s coverage of the hiring of Josh Block to run The Israel Project. The sections in bold are the ones they chose not to run. (It was edited without my participation and The Forward does not appear to have updated the “letters” section of its website since December.)

1 April 2013

To the Editor:

I was disappointed to read The Forward’s coverage of The Israel Project’s hiring of ex-AIPAC flack Josh Block to be its new head. According to your coverage, “Block entered a highly publicized quarrel with the Center for American Progress, a progressive Democratic think tank whose views on Israel, according to Block, were biased and at times ’borderline anti-Semitic.’”

Actually, Block did not accuse the entire center with this term. He referred specifically to yours truly. I thought it rather funny at the time, given that I was also a columnist for The Forward, which rarely offers regular columns to anti-Semites, “borderline” or otherwise. Moreover, the quote of mine to which he specifically referred as allegedly anti-Semitic merely called attention to AIPAC’s desire to see the United States attack Iran. This is hardly a controversial view regarding AIPAC’s aims, even among its supporters. As it happens, I felt forced to resign my Forward column over the enforced delay I experienced in responding to Block’s McCarthyite attack on CAP and myself in the Forward’s pages. So that was one victory for Mr. Block. He has won yet another with the Forward’s coverage of his appointment. Here, again, Block’s false charge against the Center for American Progress (where I was, and remain, a senior fellow) was repeated, albeit inaccurately, without any response from the accused, nor any context for readers unfamiliar with Mr. Block’s nefarious tactics. (It was a rather big deal at the time, and was covered in The Forward’s news and editorial pages). 

Full story…

Related:

10 ‘Chained CPI’ Facts the White House Doesn’t Want You to Know, Richard (RJ) Eskow, Campaign for America's Future 

  • The chained CPI is the wrong answer to the wrong problem at the wrong time and it’s time for the White House to recognize that, cut its losses and ditch this turkey of an idea.
  • Top 5 Myths About Chained-CPI, Debunked

More BS About 'Both Sides', Eric Alterman, The Nation

  • Alas, to judge by the willingness of so many in the mainstream media to parrot the nonsensical arguments of Tea Party Republicans, not even science is "science" anymore. And therein lies our problem.
  • Truth Is Offensive

 

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Books & Liturature
Media

Women Leaders in the Great Turning

Fri, 04/12/2013 - 13:26 — Dave Culver

This week we celebrate women who are leaders because we see the rise of women as a positive sign and we celebrate the growing culture of resistance which includes all people who seek peace, justice and sustainability.

Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers, Occupy Washington, DC

This article is made possible with the generous contributions of all reader supported Evergreene Digest readers like you. Thank you!

April 12, 2013 | As is true each week when we report on resistance movements, there is a lot going on, too much to report in one summary.  One common denominator we noted this week that we highlight here is the prevalence of female leadership on many fronts.

We point this out, because we see leadership by women as an essential element in the creation of a society that is capable of sustaining a peaceful and just existence. As Riane Eisler documents in The Chalice and the Blade, the most repressive and violent periods of human history correspond with times when women were dominated and traditional feminine values of caring and empowering were viewed as weak.

Full story…

 

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