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by Bob Fitrakis
The Columbus Free Press (February 28 2010)
The American people voted out the policies of George W Bush’s
administration. Voters turned their back on W’s war policies and torture;
repudiated his Orwellian anti-environmentalism and demanded green jobs;
and rejected his bailout of the big investment bankers that destroyed our
economy.
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Economists routinely ignore its hidden costs to the environment and the
community
by Herman E Daly
Scientific American (November 1993)
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by Herve Kempf

Le Monde (October 31 2009)

Capitalist ideology – according to which the market can resolve all
problems – has, in these last few days, reached the apex of the
absurd. [click to continue...]

http://www.avnery-news.co.il/english/index.html

Spot the Difference
12/12/09
A SHORT historical quiz: Which state:
(1) Arose after a holocaust in which a third of its people were destroyed?

(2) Drew from that holocaust the conclusion that only superior military forces could ensure its survival?

(3) Accorded the army a central role in its life, making it “an army that had a state, rather than a state that had an army”?

(4) Began by buying the land it took, and continued to expand by conquest and annexation?

(5) Endeavored by all possible means to attract new immigrants?

(6) Conducted a systematic policy of settlement in the occupied territories?

(7) Strove to push out the national minority by creeping ethnic cleansing?

For anyone who has not yet found the answer: it’s the state of Prussia.

But if some readers were tempted to believe that it all applies to the State of Israel – well, they are right, too. This description fits our state. The similarity between the two states is remarkable. True, the countries are geographically very different, and so are the historical periods, but the points of similarity can hardly be denied.

http://www.avnery-news.co.il/english/index.html

Volume 56, Number 20 · December 17, 2009
What Is Living and What Is Dead in Social Democracy?
By Tony Judt
The following is adapted from a lecture given at New York University on October 19, 2009.

Americans would like things to be better. According to public opinion surveys in recent years, everyone would like their child to have improved life chances at birth. They would prefer it if their wife or daughter had the same odds of surviving maternity as women in other advanced countries. They would appreciate full medical coverage at lower cost, longer life expectancy, better public services, and less crime.

When told that these things are available in Austria, Scandinavia, or the Netherlands, but that they come with higher taxes and an “interventionary” state, many of those same Americans respond: “But that is socialism! We do not want the state interfering in our affairs. And above all, we do not wish to pay more taxes.”

This curious cognitive dissonance is an old story. A century ago, the German sociologist Werner Sombart famously asked: Why is there no socialism in America? There are many answers to this question. Some have to do with the sheer size of the country: shared purposes are difficult to organize and sustain on an imperial scale. There are also, of course, cultural factors, including the distinctively American suspicion of central government.

And indeed, it is not by chance that social democracy and welfare states have worked best in small, homogeneous countries, where issues of mistrust and mutual suspicion do not arise so acutely. A willingness to pay for other people’s services and benefits rests upon the understanding that they in turn will do likewise for you and your children: because they are like you and see the world as you do.

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Conversely, where immigration and visible minorities have altered the demography of a country, we typically find increased suspicion of others and a loss of enthusiasm for the institutions of the welfare state. Finally, it is incontrovertible that social democracy and the welfare states face serious practical challenges today. Their survival is not in question, but they are no longer as self-confident as they once appeared.

But my concern tonight is the following: Why is it that here in the United States we have such difficulty even imagining a different sort of society from the one whose dysfunctions and inequalities trouble us so? We appear to have lost the capacity to question the present, much less offer alternatives to it. Why is it so beyond us to conceive of a different set of arrangements to our common advantage?

Our shortcoming—forgive the academic jargon—is discursive. We simply do not know how to talk about these things. To understand why this should be the case, some history is in order: as Keynes once observed, “A study of the history of opinion is a necessary preliminary to the emancipation of the mind.” For the purposes of mental emancipation this evening, I propose that we take a minute to study the history of a prejudice: the universal contemporary resort to “economism,” the invocation of economics in all discussions of public affairs.

Mad about English: The age-old language struggle
The Lexicographer’s Dilemma
Jack Lynch
Friday, December 4, 2009
THE LEXICOGRAPHER’S DILEMMA
The Evolution of “Proper” English from Shakespeare to “South Park”

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/12/10-7

Published on Thursday, December 10, 2009 by CommonDreams.org
Making an American ‘Impenetrable Underground Wall’ the Laughing Stock of
the World
by Ann Wright
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What Would Jane Do?
How a 19th-century spinster serves as a moral compass in today’s world

http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/265.php#continue

When the Climate Change Center
Cannot Hold Patrick Bond
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