My thoughts on the assassination attempt on former President Trump:
The assassination of Trump would not remove the yearning of tens of millions of people, many conditioned by the Christian right, for a cult leader. Most of the leaders of the Christian right have built cult followings of their own. These Christian fascists embraced magical thinking, attacked their enemies as agents of Satan and denounced reality-based science and journalism long before Trump did. Cults are a product of social decay and despair, and our decay and despair are expanding, soon to explode in another financial crisis.
The efforts by the Democratic Party and much of the press, including CNN and The New York Times, to discredit Trump, as if our problems are embodied in him, are futile. The smug, self-righteousness of this crusade against Trump only contributes to the national reality television show that has replaced journalism and politics. This crusade attempts to reduce a social, economic and political crisis to the personality of Trump. It is accompanied by a refusal to confront and name the corporate forces responsible for our failed democracy. This collusion with the forces of corporate oppression, which have impoverished the working class, fostered endless war, militarized our police, created the largest prison system in the world, licensed corporations to exploit the most vulnerable and transferred wealth upwards into the hands of a billionaire class, neuters the press, Trump's critics and the Democratic Party.
Our only hope is to organize the overthrow of the corporate state that vomited up Trump. Our democratic institutions, including the legislative bodies, the courts and the media, are hostage to corporate power. They are no longer democratic. We must, like resistance movements of the past, engage in acts of sustained mass civil disobedience, especially strikes, and non-cooperation. By turning our ire on the corporate state, rather than Trump, we name the true sources of power and abuse. We expose the absurdity of blaming our demise on demonized groups such as undocumented workers, Muslims, African-Americans, Latinos, liberals, feminists, gays and others. We give people an alternative to a bankrupt Democratic Party -- whose presidential candidate is in clear cognitive decline -- that is a full partner in corporate oppression and cannot be rehabilitated. We make possible the restoration of an open society. If we fail to embrace this militancy, which alone has the ability to destroy cult leaders, we will continue the march toward tyranny.
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Senior editors and contributors at @Truthdig announced a work stoppage to protest unfair labor conditions and the attempt by the publisher to remove the Editor-in-Chief and co-owner of the site Robert Scheer. popularresistance.org/truthdig-emplo…
The publisher is attempting to take control of Truthdig, thus effectively removing Mr. Scheer from the website he co-owns and co-founded. @NatCounterPunch wrote about the situation last December: counterpunch.org/2019/12/20/roa…
Further, "For years, @Truthdig staff has worked under conditions that it feels fall well short of the website’s progressive values. Those include, but are not limited to, employment conditions that very possibly flout California’s labor laws." More here: popularresistance.org/truthdig-emplo…
.@JulianAssange's life is in danger. In violation of his fundamental
human rights, the Ecuadoran government has transformed his asylum in its
London embassy into a form of brutal incarceration.
It has cut off his access to the Internet, thus depriving Julian of the ability to communicate with his supporters or even follow world events.
The transparent aim of this inhuman treatment is to force Julian to leave the Ecuadoran embassy, so that he can be seized by London police, thrown into a British jail, and endure deportation proceedings which will be rigged to ensure a predetermined outcome.
I am very distressed to hear that elements within the Green Party are seeking to remove the party's support for the Nordic model where the trafficking and purchasing of sex is criminalized while girls and women who are being prostituted are treated as victims not criminals...
The commodification of human beings defines neoliberal economics. The decriminalization of the prostitution industry, as we have seen in countries such as Germany, is one more step towards a neoliberal world order where everyone and every act has a price.
Legalizing the prostitution industry does not protect or empower girls and women. It expands and normalizes their exploitation.