Commentary

Big Pharma: pushing harmful drugs

June 12, 2013
By Stefan

Last year I wrote about the rebellious teenagers ‘diagnosed’ with the newly invented Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD) and the highly profitable industry that has grown up to ‘treat’ – that is, abuse – them (MW, January 2012). The American Psychiatric Association has included ODD in the latest edition of its authoritative handbook, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), together with Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder, for people who get angry too often, and Hoarding Disorder, for people who don’t like to throw things away. The biomedical model In early May the Division of Clinical Psychology of the...

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What we are up against

May 20, 2013
By Joe Hopkins

The most vicious enemies of the working class in the United States are bourgeois pseudo-democracy and the combined power of congress and the courts. Just prior to each election cycle a hidden primary is held by the corporate elite behind the voters’ backs. It is through this informal primary that the funders of the election campaigns determine which potential candidate to fund and in effect purchase. Unless the potential candidate is a self funding millionaire or billionaire (who represents corporate interests ipso facto), the one selected through the hidden primary becomes bought property. Many times, especially since the Citizens United...

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PROFIT HOTEL
 (dirty gossip about the capitalist mode of production!)

April 24, 2013
By ROEL

The dismal art? After the socialist revolution, will economics be demoted to an art form? Is economics even “soft science”? There is one small problem … A recent article in Science News notes: Annual forecasts of currency values from December 2001 to December 2010, which guided banks’ investment decisions, missed the mark nine out of 10 times, says psychologist Gerd Gigerenzer of the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin. Banks incorrectly foretold the fates of the dollar and the euro in the years leading up to, during and after the recent financial crisis. [Bruce Bower, “Banks confuse...

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North Korea: Is the Crisis Real?

April 13, 2013
By Stefan

It is hard to tell what is real in the ongoing Korean ‘crisis’ and what is contrived. Up to a point – after all, it is in no one’s interest to frighten the markets too badly – it suits both sides to foster a sense of crisis. For Kim Jong-un and his generals a crisis atmosphere is a way to exert pressure for full admission to the nuclear club. For the American rulers and their allies it is also a way to exert pressure – and push North Korea firmly out of the club. Of course, a good external...

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Argh! The Movie

March 16, 2013
By ROEL
argo3

Well, I just had to do it: go see this movie everyone was talking about. Let’s just say that Argo has more in common with Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream than with Jason and the Argonauts searching for the golden fleece. The film features a fake movie (“Argo”) “produced” by the Central Intelligence Agency to rescue six U.S. nationals from the Canadian embassy in Teheran when the overthrown Shah of Iran, himself devilishly imposed on the Iranians by the U.S., was granted asylum in the United States. Hollywood producers were enlisted in an effort to make the pseudo-film “look...

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Venezuela: Hugo Chavez and ’21st century socialism’

March 14, 2013
By Stefan
Chavez official portrait

The formula ‘socialism of the 21st century’ encapsulates the hopes that many leftists throughout the world placed in President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and his so-called ‘Bolivarian Revolution’ or ‘Bolivarian Process’. (‘Bolivarian’ refers to Simon Bolivar, commander of the army that defeated the Spaniards in 1821 and won independence for Venezuela and other Spanish colonies in the northwestern part of South America.) The term ‘21st century socialism’ was coined by Mexican sociologist Heinz Dieterich Steffan, who served as an adviser to Chavez for several years but fell out with him in 2011. It conveys the idea that Venezuela is...

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Here’s your White Christmas!

December 25, 2012
By ROEL

this is not a rant about commercialization 
it is not a plan for improving the nation 
it is not a plea to end the desecration 
 it’s not a call to renounce our aberration just to remind you 
in case we don’t find you 
that there’s someone behind you 
and they’re waiting to grind you if that’s what you call working 
the rich are still smirking 
 the devil’s still lurking 
and you ain’t got the do-re-mi or the turkey outside of this box there’s a world of enjoyment 
you can make it happen if you abolish employment 
instead...

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Reflections on Hurricane Sandy

November 11, 2012
By Stefan

It’s now a week since Hurricane Sandy hit large coastal areas of the northeastern United States. At least a million homes were still without heat and power when a snowstorm followed a few days later. Relief has yet to reach some of the areas affected, such as the Far Rockaways, where survivors are fending for themselves as best they can. Workers held captive True, some manage to fend much better than others. Holed up for the duration in a first-class hotel on the island of Manhattan, the business and cultural centre of New York City, David Rohde in The...

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The Ozymandian candidate (with apologies to P.B. Shelley and Horace Smith)

September 24, 2012
By ROEL

Humans, alone among the mammals and other life-forms on the planet Earth, invented “no.” The power of negation lies at the root of conceptual thought, and hence of abstract thinking. And with it comes the power of deception. Deception applied to oneself is basically illusion. Error and deception make very good allies. Politicians are considered notorious liars. But are they deceiving themselves as well? Apart from questions of moral turpitude, what most politicians have to lie about is economics. They are forever making promises that they either know cannot be kept or that amount to so much pie in...

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The insanity of coal mining

September 20, 2012
By Joe Hopkins

Destroying miners’ health National Public Radio (NPR) and the Center for Public Integrity (CPI) teamed up to produce a special investigative report on the increased incidence of black lung disease in coal miners. The results of their combined investigations were released on the NPR’s radio stations on July 9–10, 2012 and broadcast on Public Broadcasting Systems (PBS) television on July 9, 2012. The investigation found that black lung disease in miners had quadrupled since the 1980s and doubled since June–July 2002. This doubling coincides with an increase of 600 hours in the work year of the average miner since...

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