There are over 7 billion people on this planet; (1,2) * 3 billion are living below the poverty line (less than $2US a day) * 1 billion are starving * 1% of the population own 40% of global assets * The richest 10% of individuals account for 85% of the world’s total assets * An estimated 30,000 children die each day due to poverty. That’s one child every 3...
The "Islamic terrorism" that is an excuse for the enduring theft of Africa's vast store of minerals was all but invented by US, Pakistani and British intelligence agencies, which created the mujahedin of al-Qaeda and the Taliban. A full-scale invasion of Africa is under way. The United States is deploying troops in 35 African countries, beginning with Libya, Sudan...
Defenders of freed markets have good reason to identify their position as a species of “anti-capitalism.”[ 1 ] To explain why, I distinguish three potential meanings of “capitalism” before suggesting that people committed to freed markets should oppose capitalism in my second and third senses. Then, I offer some reasons for using “capitalism” as a label...
A couple years back when I was working toward a philosophy major in college, I wrote a rebuttal on the section of The Anarchist FAQ that covers anarcho-capitalism . I removed the rebuttal from the web because I didn't have the time or inclination to continue to maintain it or expand upon it. Three years later, I've come to find myself disagreeing with my old rebuttals and agreeing...
A fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work (Part 1) Last year in Lansing, Michigan, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) union leadership fought a pitched battle with the Lansing City Council to push capitalist real estate developers to use union labor. When discussing the fight, Joe Davis, the union representative, proclaimed, “It’s important to...
Information has been leaked about the Trans Pacific Partnership, which is being negotiated in secret by US Trade Representative Ron Kirk. Six hundred corporate “advisors” are in on the know, but not Congress or the media. Ron Wyden, chairman of the Senate trade subcommittee that has jurisdiction over the TPP, has not been permitted to see the text or to know the content. The TPP...
Community, faith and labor organizations mobilized this afternoon for a rally and civil disobedience action in support of thirty-eight workers on strike at a Walmart warehouse in Elwood, Illinois. They marched down to this distribution center, and, at least thirteen clergy and community leaders sat down and blocked an entrance to the center to prevent goods from arriving or leaving the...
Meet Gina Rinehart . Born Georgina Hope Hancock, Rinehart is heir to her father’s fortune built at Hancock Prospecting in Australia, where Rinehart remains as executive chair. Hancock Prospecting holds the rights to the world’s largest iron ore deposit and has made Rinehart the richest woman in the world, sitting on a fortune of almost $30 billion USD. Yesterday, Rinehart...
The Group of 8 Summit, a meeting of the governments of the world's eight largest economies, was supposed to convene in Chicago this May. For months, Occupy Chicago , international anti-war groups, Anonymous, and hundreds of allies have publicly planned to shut it down . Now, only two months before the meeting is scheduled to begin, U.S. President Barack Obama is moving the assembly of over...
Neoclassical economics has severe flaws. But since the field is captive to the monopolistic money and banking system, it is very difficult for economists who are aware of this to speak up. If they were to speak about the flaws, their careers would be severely limited. Only the most narrow economists who reinforce the status quo of the debt-based monetary system get rewarded. But they are...
One of the most profound changes that occurs when modern schooling is introduced into traditional societies around the world is a radical shift in the locus of power and control over learning from children, families, and communities to ever more centralized systems of authority. While all cultures are different, in many non-modernized societies children enjoy wide latitude to learn by free...
Last night, in what seems to be part of a coordinated crackdown on occupations across the country, Zuccotti Park was raided. Thousands of us who had subscribed to the text alert system, or who got emails or phone calls or panicked Twitter messages, went to Wall Street. But we could not get near the camp. Two blocks south of Liberty Plaza on Broadway, blocked by a police barricade that circled...
The following speech was given by Russell Means in July 1980, before several thousand people who had assembled from all over the world for the Black Hills International Survival Gathering, in the Black Hills of South Dakota. It is Russell Means's most famous speech. A member of the Oglala Lakota tribe, he was perhaps the most outsized personality in the American Indian Movement...
I have yet to see my nearest large occupation, Boston, or the precursor of all U.S. occupations, Wall Street. Instead, I have been on the road for the past six weeks in Thesselonika and Athens Greece; Istanbul and Diyarbikar Turkey; Lexington, Kentucky; London, England; Dublin, Ireland; and in Barcelona, Madrid, and Valencia Spain. In all these places, I talked with diverse individuals at...
Since last Saturday, a situation has escalated around the UK, with eruptions of long-repressed anger in most major cities. Whilst this anger may have certainly, at times, taken on forms that we disapprove of, we all know where this anger comes from. We are all suffering at the moment. Trying to make ends meet can be a living nightmare – benefits, jobs and healthcare going down the drain...
March 14, 2011 (1400 hrs) - Watching scenes of the devastation is emotionally taxing. Bodies continue to be found everywhere. The body count in Miyagi Prefecture alone is now over 10,000. Whole towns completely wiped off the map. Even if people escaped with their lives, those lives are now shattered. And now it looks as though the 20-year slow-motion collapse of Japan’s economy could be...
INTRODUCTION. Manorialism, commonly, is recognized to have been founded by robbery and usurpation; a ruling class established itself by force, and then compelled the peasantry to work for the profit of their lords. But no system of exploitation, including capitalism, has ever been created by the action of a free market. Capitalism was founded on an act of robbery as massive as feudalism. It...
Last week, in a move that pits American labor against China's green-technology industry, the Obama administration filed a complaint with the World Trade Organization over China's wind-power subsidies. The U.S. move challenges China's rapid growth in the renewable-energy market, and also throws the weight of the administration behind the unions, elevating concern about Chinese competition to...
T he Carnivalesque Rebellion is about to begin. From November 22nd to the 28th, culture jammers of all kinds – from artists to churchgoers, anarchists to carpenters – will disregard the illegitimate laws of consumer society. For seven nights, they will honor instead the dictates of their hearts and the demands of their conscience. Overwhelmed by a myriad of insurrections and...