By John Reimann  “Competition in a global economy is… not an option…. Rich people can always take their wealth elsewhere.” That was how one columnist in the Wall St. Journal (Bret Stephens, WSJ, 4/24/12) denounced the French voters for in effect rejecting the austerity measures of Sarkozy in their recent (Sunday, April 22) elections, and this has been the theme of the corporate propagandists for decades now ...

By - John Reimann   The Fukushima-Dai-Ichi… (reactors) have generated some of the largest concentrations of radioactivity on the planet…85 times more Cesium-137 than Chernobyl. [Its release] would destroy the world environment and our civilization. This is not rocket science, nor does it connect to the pugilistic debate over nuclear power plants. This is an issue of human survival. So commented Japan’s ...

As an adult, Staff Sergeant Roger Bales – the accused butcher of 16 Afghan men, women and children – never was a very nice person. He only joined the US military after he was caught having bilked a retired couple out of their life savings. He has been accused of hit-and-run driving and assault on a former girl friend. But such acts of callous greed, selfishness and petty violence are commonplace – the menta ...

By John Reimann   Within 2 weeks of the first showing of Invisible Children’s Kony2012 video, some 80 million people had watched it and students in over 1200 schools across the US raised over $1 million for Invisible Children. Such icons as P Diddy, Angelina Jolie and Oprah pumped it and US Senator Jim Inhofe (R. OK) commented, “In order to combat terror and prevent further devastation caused by the ha ...

By - John Reimann The turmoil over whether (or when) Israel and/or the US will attack Iran is far more than a conflict between the regimes of these nations, as important as that conflict may be; it contains within it, and it affects all the tensions and conflicts wracking world capitalism. This includes the ongoing economic crisis, the reordering of world capitalist powers, the rising revolutionary wave thr ...

The “Occupy” movement that is sweeping the nation hit Oakland, California, on Monday. Well over 1000 people turned out in downtown Oakland on a rainy afternoon to kick things off. At the start, different people stood up and spoke about why they were here – the loss of jobs, the rich getting richer while everybody else gets poorer, etc.   Remember George Stinney! I was there for something that happened ...

As they did in the 1950s, once again, the winds of revolution are sweeping the former colonial world. This time, however, these winds are mixed with those of counter-revolution also, and this complication is partly a result of the failure of the previous period to resolve the problems in that part of the world. During the 10-15 years after World War II, tens of millions of people in the former colonial worl ...

September 11, 2011 marks the tenth anniversary of what could arguably be called the greatest and most important domestic crime in US legal history. This refers only to legal crimes, not such crimes against humanity as chattel slavery, genocide against American Indians, machine gunning of striking workers by National Guard troops, nor such crimes against nature such as the poisoning of the Gulf of Mexico due ...

It appears that the 42 year rule of Moammar Khadafy is coming to an end. Yet his rule and the events leading up to the present situation in Libya contain many of the most fundamental laws of history of capitalism. Colonial Revolution Khadafy came to power on the heels of the mass colonial revolt of the previous decades. This anti-colonial revolt was especially centered in Africa and the Middle East and tend ...

by John Reimann On the evening after US president Obama announced the killing of Osama bin Laden, the US TV channels were filled with scenes of (relatively small) crowds gathered at the White House and New York’s Times Square. They were waving American flags, chanting “USA! USA!” and singing the US national anthem. The newspapers carried banner headlines the next day and two days later San Francisco’s newsp ...