End of Capitalism

One of the best documentary series ever produced, Eyes on the Prize is a 14-part study of the Civil Rights Movement in the United States. This series is so important because it shows how ordinary people, when organized, can affect dramatic social change. The Civil Rights Movement remains the most inspiring example of successful social movements [...]

Are we living through the twilight of democracy, or the dawn of a new day? That is up to us. The Chambersburg Declaration is a brief but promising political document coming out of Pennsylvania, specifically the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund. Explanation follows. [alex] THE CHAMBERSBURG DECLARATION BY THE UNDERSIGNED IN CHAMBERSBURG, PENNSYLVANIA, ON SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 20TH, 2010 We declare: - [...]

“When you take the time to research and analyze the wealth that has gone to the economic top one percent, you begin to realize just how much we have been robbed.” Despite the economic crisis, the ultra-rich seem to be making off quite well, even increasing their incomes while the rest of us worry about unemployment, [...]

Last week President Obama announced an $8.3 billion loan of taxpayer dollars for the construction of two new nuclear reactors at the Vogtle site in Georgia. He has also proposed tripling the loans for new nuclear reactors to $54 billion in his 2011 budget. In his announcement he argued, “To meet our growing energy needs and [...]

Review also posted on The Rag Blog. Review of Men’s Work: How to Stop the Violence That Tears Our Lives Apart by Paul Kivel Ballantine Books, 1992 Paul Kivel, cofounder of the Oakland Men’s Project, has given all men (and those concerned about them) a tremendous gift in the form of this inspirational book. This Valentine’s Day, let us [...]

Short video that avoids the word capitalism but nevertheless sheds some light on the system. Too bad it doesn’t get deeper into the impoverishing of humanity or the destruction of the planet, which are so glaring, but so hidden. We need to understand the ways the system is killing life if we’re to have any [...]

Yesterday, President Obama announced his new $3.8 Trillion budget proposal, including about a trillion dollars for war and military, including increasing expenditure on Nuclear Weapons by $7 billion!  Nuclear weapons? Really? That’s the change we can believe in? [update 2/5: I should also mention the completely misguided funding of nuclear power plants as well, see Obama's [...]

This essay strikes me as deeply explanatory for the absurd political events that have been taking place in the US in the past year – from trillion-dollar bank bailouts, to the inability to create any meaningful health care reform, to the absolute mocking of the world’s attempts to deal with the catastrophe of climate change [...]

On Thursday, The Supreme Court of the United States decided that corporations could now spend unlimited amounts of money on political candidates, opening the door for billions of dollars from Exxon, Pfizer, Blackwater, Lockheed Martin and others to further buy off our representatives in state and national office.  The decision affirms the legal notion that [...]

A nice short essay about for-profit education in the age of the end of capitalism. Schools are scrambling to turn themselves into little corporations just in time for the entire paradigm of profit to unravel. The question is, as the country bankrupts itself and the markets dry up, how will schools proceed? Not just universities, [...]

This a review of the newish movie ‘Collapse’, review written by a woman of color named Erinn, which I saw on the Bring the Ruckus website. ‘Collapse’ apparently features Michael Ruppert talking about his apocalyptic visions for the world, filmed from his hideout bunker underground somewhere.  Ruppert maintains a horrific blog and used to edit [...]

One year into Barack Obama’s presidency, and the U.S. wars and killing of civilians have continued unabated, in direct contradiction to his campaign pledges to put a stop to these. Today, two great videos explore this contradiction, including a Democracy Now! interview with veteran activist Allan Nairn, who explains in the simplest terms how the [...]

This is one of the most timely and insightful articles I’ve read in a long time – the editorial from the new issue of Turbulence magazine. They discuss the economic crisis within the frame of the collapse of the neoliberal order that has been the standard-bearer of global capitalism for the last 30-35 years, [...]

In November, community members in Spokane Washington articulated these Community Bill of Rights, to give neighbors the ability to control their neighborhoods and their futures. It was defeated by massive opposition of corporate and political elites, but the model of communities organizing at the grassroots level for basic economic, social and ecological rights is something [...]

This is an incredibly simple, but useful way to gauge how systematically our pop culture is dominated by men. Women are often only represented as either objects or auxiliaries whose lives revolve around men. Take a look at this short video from Anita Sarkeesian. [alex] Reposted from Feminist Frequency, Dec. 7, 2009 The Bechdel Test is a [...]

A civil war has been raging in the Democratic Republic of the Congo since.. well.. pretty much since the Belgians conquered the area, committed genocide, and called it a colony, as told in the excellent book King Leopold’s Ghost. But in the past 13 years, warfare has escalated and killed over 6 million Congolese, while [...]

Wonderful essay by Stephanie Guilloud on the shifting sands of movement strategy in the wake of the high-tide of the Global Justice Movement, which in Seattle articulated a world beyond capitalism that was not controlled by corporate giants and corrupt governments, but built by democratic cooperation of communities all around the world. The Seattle direct [...]

http://www.democracynow.org/2009/12/17/bolivian_president_evo_morales_on_climate AMY GOODMAN: Just before we went to air today, I interviewed Evo Morales, Bolivia’s first indigenous president. He was re-elected in a landslide victory earlier this month. On Wednesday, Evo Morales called on world leaders to hold temperature increases over the next century to just one degree Celsius, the most ambitious proposal so [...]

Thom Hartmann provides a great short history lesson of the US over the last 30 years, to show why politics are changing today and why the American public won’t be falling into another coma to let the “Banksters” and “Gangsters” run the show like they have been. The Health Care “Reform” bill that is currently being [...]

This is a great, short video that shows why “Cap and Trade” schemes to reduce carbon emissions, like what world leaders are discussing at the Copenhagen Summit, are fundamentally flawed. Turns out that selling our atmosphere to corporations might actually be a bad way to stop climate change. It’s just another attempt to bail out [...]