The Kavangaugh Debacle Was a Shit Show All Around 1

by • Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Left and Right • Tags: ,

The best take on the Kavanaugh mess I’ve seen to date.

By Avens O’Brien

I haven’t commented much on the whole Kavanaugh issue. I have so many thoughts, and they aren’t perfectly organized or suitable for an article. I wrote this rant out last night while really exhausted, I made minor edits this afternoon and I’m just posting it, because it’s burning a hole in my mind and I’m actually like… angry/sad/disappointed, which isn’t very common for me. And yeah, I’m bothered by his confirmation, but more so about the entire process. About how we got here.

Here goes…

More…

Unraveling Political Theory – Progressivism 1

by • Left and Right • Tags:

In episode 10 of Unraveling Political Theory, Tim Bryant and Keith Preston will be discussing Progressivism. Coming to terms with different political movements and what they represent is at the core of what this podcast is all about. To understand the world of politics and change it for the better, it’s paramount that people begin to study political theory and the ways in which it has manifest throughout history up into the present day. By bringing light to the origins of political and philosophical thought, the present day becomes all the more explainable because one is now able to see the logical progression of such manifestations.

Kick the Puppy Episode 7 Reply

by • Kick the Puppy

PC2_go-12-512

Keith & R.J. cover the news of the week

Nearly a third of US voters expect civil war within 5 years, ignorance is a problem, red vs blue, the real issue with Kavanaugh, Bill Cosby sentenced to 3 to 10 years in prison, black people who criticize African American culture, Ahvaz military parade attack, English guy with a bionic penis, inner city delivery room security, Kanye West is a trip, Taylor Swift IRL, gay penguins kidnap baby penguin from straight penguins, rapist gets joint custody of the child, article about Voltairine de Cleyre appears in the New York Times, Voltairine’s fight, Trump talks about two-state solution to Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Trump is not his usual-asshole-self around Israel, Libyans miss life under Gaddafi, Gaddafi’s Green Book anarchist manifesto and middle eastern Michael Jacksonism, Florida guy gets 20 years for stealing $600 worth of cigarettes, warning shot in public, assault with a deadly weapon, Mexico’s drug cartels going into the gasoline industry, confessions of a fake news writer, drone hobbyists angered by Congress ending “aerial wild west,” double/triple/super illegal, psychogenic death, Nietzsche’s fight.

More…

National-Anarchism as anarchism Reply

by • Uncategorized

An interesting discussion of N-A on reddit. Not sure if others here have seen it. It’s interesting in places, along with a lot of the usual stuff. Read it here.

The key issue in these debate is should anarchist be limited to leftists only, or does anarchism transcend the usual left/right/center categorizations? I think everyone knows my position.  Some of the comments in that thread remind me of this skit from SNL:

Keith Preston Not Interesting? 4

by • Anarchism/Anti-State, Uncategorized

I recently gave an interview to a left-anarchist podcast. While they decided not to post it, there is a discussion of it on this podcast. The relevant part starts around 19:30 and the part about our interview starts around 26 minutes in.

Listen here.

Welcome to the Anews podcast. This is episode 77 for August 17, 2018. This podcast covers anarchist activity, ideas, and conversations from the previous week.

On anarchist economies Reply

by • Anarchism/Anti-State, Economics/Class Relations • Tags:

By Iain McKay

Freedom News

Anarchism is generally not associated with economics — and Iain McKay argues that perhaps it’s time the field got more attention.

There is no “anarchist” school of economics as there are “Marxist,” “Keynesian” and so on. This does not mean there are no anarchist texts on economics. Proudhon springs to mind here, with his numerous works on the subject — the three Memoirs on property (most famous being the first, What is Property?) and the two volumes of System of Economic Contradictions (of which, only the first has been translated) — as does Kropotkin, with his Fields, Factories and Workshops. However, in spite of various (important) works there is no well-established body of work.

There are various reasons for this. Partly, it is due to the typical isolation of the English-speaking movement: many works which could be used to create an anarchist economics have never been translated into English. Partly, it is due to an undeserved sense of inferiority: too many anarchists have followed Marxists by taking Marx’s The Poverty of Philosophy as an accurate account and honest critique of Proudhon’s ideas (it is neither, as I show in “The Poverty of (Marx’s) Philosophy,” Anarcho-Syndicalist Review 70).

More…

American Dissident: Noam Chomsky on the State of the Empire Reply

by • Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy

Chomsky is interviewed by Jeremy Scahill. This is a good takedown of the liberal class. A good discussion of Trump’s foreign policy as well.

The Intercept

The world laughed at U.S. President Donald Trump at the United Nations, but the imperial declarations he issued are no laughing matter. Trump may come off as a buffoon, but his global agenda is consistent with the bipartisan empire machine that runs the United States. This week on Intercepted: Famed dissident Noam Chomsky breaks down the Trump presidency; the defeat of the U.S. in Afghanistan; what he believes is a just position on Syria’s civil war; and the agenda of Vladimir Putin and Russia. He also discusses the impact of big social media companies and explains why a life of resisting and fighting is worth it. Jeremy Scahill analyzes Trump’s U.N. speech and gives context to the seldom-discussed bipartisan support for much of Trump’s global agenda. Dallas hip-hop artist Bobby Sessions talks about police killings and this political moment. We also hear music from his new EP, “RVLTN (Chapter 1): The Divided States of AmeriKKKa.”

READ MORE/LISTEN TO THE INTERVIEW

In clear U-turn, Israel says ready to reopen Golan crossing with Syria 1

by • Uncategorized • Tags: , , ,

Press TV. Listen here.

In a surprising change of tone, Israel has expressed readiness to reopen the Quneitra border crossing with Syria in the Golan Heights, now that the Arab country’s armed forces have purged militant groups from there.

“We are ready to open the crossing as it was before, and now the ball is in the Syrian court,” Israeli minister for military affairs Avigdor Lieberman told reporters as he toured the border area on Thursday.

Lieberman, who has a long history of hurling threats of doom and destruction against Syria and President Bashar al-Assad, added that Israel never wanted conflict with Syria and was ready to ensure a 1974 armistice agreement between the two sides is strictly observed.

“We said from the beginning that we have no interest in meddling in the … war within Syria and we have never intervened. What interests us is ensuring the security” of Israelis, Lieberman said.

The Golan Heights is a Syrian territory, which Tel Aviv has been occupying since 1967 and claims as its own territory despite international criticism.

In August, the United Nations Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) returned to the border between Syria and the occupied territories, four years after it was shuttered due to militant attacks.

More…

Keith Preston: Saudi, UAE, US behind Recent Terrorist Attack in Iran Reply

by • Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy, Uncategorized • Tags: , , ,

TEHRAN (Tasnim) – An American political analyst said the triangle of Saudi Arabia, the UAE and the US was behind the recent terrorist attack in Iran’s southwestern city of Ahvaz, adding that Saudi Arabia has been consistently involved in providing support for terrorist activities across the region.

Saudi, UAE, US behind Recent Terrorist Attack in Iran: US Analyst

“It is quite likely that the perpetrators of the attack have received support from Saudi Arabia. This would certainly be in keeping with Saudi Arabia’s past history in the region,” Keith Preston, the chief editor and director of attackthesystem.com, told Tasnim in an interview.

He added, “A likely strategy that Saudi Arabia and the UAE are pursuing is to increase the hostilities toward Iran to the point that the United States will engage in military intervention against Iran, and on behalf of the (Persian) Gulf states.”

The following is the full text of the interview.

More…

The National Endowment For Democracy Reply

by • Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy, Uncategorized • Tags:

By Keith Durant

Brief History

The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) was founded in 1983 after being conceived by President Reagan and ex-CIA Director and then Vice-President Bush. It was created to take the place of the CIA after it’s fall from grace and worldwide condemnation for attempted of accomplished coups in many countries on 4 continents.

It was decided that a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) would keep America’s hands clean and could still accomplish all of the same goals.

In a White House memo it’s goals were stated quite plainly. “We need to examine how law and Executive Order can be made more liberal to permit covert action on a broader scale, as well as what we can do through substantially increased overt political action.”[1]

At the March 1990 NED board meeting, President Carl Gershman called the “victory of the democratic opposition in Nicaragua… a tremendous victory for the Endowment as well.” The board minutes continued:

More…

Kick the Puppy Episode 6 Reply

by • Kick the Puppy

PC2_go-12-512

Keith & R.J. cover the news of the week

Cody Wilson catches teen sex assault case, the State loves sexual assault, why US radicalism failed, Florida neighbors horrified by nudist family doing yard work, Florida deputies say woman stole marijuana that washed up on the beach, Ernie and Bert are not gay, college students struggle to vote because they don’t know where to buy stamps, Maine restaurant gets lobsters high on pot before killing them, a parrot returns to British owners speaking Spanish 4 years after disappearing, Inside Edition crew robbed while reporting on Bay Area crime, Senate approves $674 billion defense budget, Democrats control elite colleges, Judge Napolitano says Kavanaugh is an enemy of the 4th Amendment, Christian zealot beheads girlfriend because she refused to repent, being stabbed in the back, 2018’s “Happiest States” in America.

More…

Looking Left to Panarchy 2

By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit

Exile in Happy Valley

I haven’t always been an anarchist but I’ve always been a radical. After being raised in the pro-life movement I discovered the Communist Manifesto as a 14 year old lapsed malcontent. I didn’t understand every word of it but the inflammatory anti-clerical rhetoric lit a fire in me that never went out. After spending several years as a teenage anarchist, influenced in equal measure by Subcomandante Marcos and Johnny Rotten, I turned to state socialism, inspired by the bold anti-imperialist antics of Hugo Chavez and the Bolivarian Revolution. It was also around this time that I became enamored by tales of the Bolsheviks, Che Guevara, and those dastardly Castro brothers. Marxist-Leninism and Democratic Centralism made sense to a twenty-something closeted agoraphobic. Like my life it felt preserved in formaldehyde. It felt safe.

But there’s nothing radical about safe and when I came out of the closet to take my life back from mental illness and gender tyranny, I was ready to dream dangerously again. The suspiciously early demise of Hugo Chavez followed shortly by the cataclysmic failure of his signature revolution was the final straw. Chavez did everything right but when he dropped dead the revolution dropped dead with him. For me, that was the last nail in the coffin for state socialism or state anything for that matter. I was drawn back to anarchism by the unexpected triumph of the Rojava Revolution in Northern Syria and the prison writings of the man who inspired it, another post-Marxist anti-statist named Abdullah Ocalan. But I’ve remained both conscious and unapologetic of my tangled radical roots and my objectives have always remained the same, the creation of a classless post-capitalist society.

More…

What’s Going On With Venezuela? 4

by • Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy, Economics/Class Relations, Uncategorized

A reader writes:

“I have a news item that might interest you. It is a 47 page report (with references) from the Human Rights Commission by one of their independent experts sent to investigate Venezuela. In the report he names the US, Canada, EU and Columbia and specifically Barack Obama and Donald Trump as needing to be charged with crimes against humanity. He documents how the media, IMF, World Bank, Standard&Poors, Moody and Fitch, as well as internal named opposition, NGO’s, international monetary exchange criminals colluded. He references work by Abby Martin and the Real News in some of his sources. Here is one of his recommendations:
The Independent Expert recommends that, until the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court address the lethal outcomes of economic wars and sanctions regimes, the Permanent Peoples Tribunal, the Russell Tribunal and the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission undertake the task so as to facilitate future judicial pronouncements.”
https://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/G1823931.pdf

Trump’s Foreign Policy Within The Bigger Picture of Globalism Reply

by • Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy, Uncategorized • Tags:

In episode 9 of Unraveling Political Theory, welcoming back Tim and Keith from a temporary absence, they will be discussing Trump’s foreign policy and the idea of globalism. They discuss Zionism and Israeli influence on US policy, China and the ongoing geopolitical battle with the US, and the many political dynamics at play within the Trump administration. Coming to terms with different political movements and what they represent is at the core of what this podcast is all about.

More…

Taiwanese authorities arrest Cody Wilson, intend to deport him Reply

by • Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Uncategorized • Tags:

A friend writes concerning the Cody Wilson case.

“I’m sure feminists and left libertarians are now focused on the character flaw of his paying for sex. Christians have no interest in defending his vice. Southern Nationalists and the alt right suddenly checked out because “LOL, another damn libertarian”. The NRA isn’t likely to even discuss the issue. It’s like someone knows the chatter of all of these groups and picked an option most likely to sever his base of support.”

This is why radicals fail. Solidarity against the common enemy, whether you prefer to call it globalism, capitalism, imperialism, Wall Street, banksters, NWO, ZOG, the Illuminati or the lizard people, is completely absent among most radicals.

More…