RECONFIGURING A 21ST CENTURY LEFT IN THE UNITED STATES

By Harry Targ - 12.13.15

Barack Obama’s historic victory in 2008 sent spirits soaring. The first African-American President had been elected. Also he had been an early opponent of the war in Iraq, indicated he supported worker rights to organize unions, and would take on the Wall Street bankers who were behind the dramatic economic crisis that was destroying the economy. Liberal pundits saw Obama’s election as a prelude to the institutionalization of a new New Deal that would reconstitute a reformist state for years to come. And, these pundits argued, the Obama electoral coalition would make the 2008 election a transformative one: liberal Democrats would dominate the federal government and several pivotal states in the East, Midwest, West, Southwest, and in a few Southern states. The eight-year foreign and domestic policy disasters of the Bush years, of necessity, would lead to a new and brighter future.

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CORBYN, THE LEFT AND THE FUTURE OF LABOUR: Does his Survival matter?

By Michael Faulkner - 12.13.15

Jeremy Corbyn has been under sustained attack from most of the media, all the Tories, most Liberal Democrats and a significant number of Labour MPs, Labour Peers and Blairite and other former government ministers. Never has any party leader been subjected to such an unrelenting bombardment from virtually the whole of the Westminster political establishment and their loyal echoes in the media. Compared to this, the attempted character assassination of his predecessor, Ed Miliband, which was bad enough, was mild indeed. The fact that Corbyn was elected leader of the Labour party with an unprecedented majority of votes cast and that he enjoys the enthusiastic support of the great majority of the vastly increased membership the party has achieved since his election, is of no concern or interest to his critics and detractors.

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A Kingdom Stumbles: Saudi Arabia

By Conn Hallinan - Oct. 31, 2015

For the past eight decades Saudi Arabia has been careful.

Using its vast oil wealth, it has quietly spread its ultra-conservative brand of Islam throughout the Muslim world, secretly undermined secular regimes in its region and prudently kept to the shadows, while others did the fighting and dying. It was Saudi money that fueled the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan, underwrote Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Iran, and bankrolled Islamic movements and terrorist groups from the Caucuses to Hindu Kush.

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“The Modern Middle East Imperialist War III: What’s it All About”

By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH - 12.07.15

“Modern Middle East Imperialist (MMEI) War III,” you say?  How are you counting (?) might be the first question.  Of course Western Imperialist Wars have been waged on the region at least since Alexander the Great marched through it in the 4th Century, BCE.  But the modern (contemporary) set can be said to have begun when George H.W. Bush tricked Saddam Hussein into invading a Kuwait that, among other things, had been diagonal drilling across the Iraq/Kuwait boundary, stealing Iraqi oil.  Militarily that war ended quickly.  But through subsequent U.S. policy (e.g., the Bill Clinton “No Fly” zone) over the years it wreaked havoc on many tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians (especially children).  Then came Bush II’s infamous War on Iraq which, by all logic it seems to be, was waged in order to establish a state of Permanent War for the U.S., if not one or more other Western Powers, and perhaps to create the “Permanent Republican Majority” (or at least Presidency) in the U.S. that was the dream of Karl Rove’s Repubs. (and of course the nightmare for the rest of us).

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Conservatives ruining lives as usual, this time in Myanmar.

By Iris Vander Pluym on 12.13.15

As far away as Myanmar is from the US—and given the relative dearth of Buddhists here—see if any of this sounds oddly familiar to you.

Ma Ba Tha is a group of hardline, ultranationalist, racist Buddhist monks in Myanmar. The name Ma Ba Tha is an acronym for, roughly, “Association for the Protection of Race and Religion.” They are not the only Buddhist monks in overwhelmingly Buddhist Myanmar (also known as Burma), but they have seized an outsized amount of power and influence in the Southeast Asian country.

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WORKSITE WELLNESS SHOULD BE REORGANIZED TO PROMOTE A KEY FEATURE OF OPTIMAL WELL-BEING - GOOD THINKING SKILLS

By Donald Ardell - 12.13.15

The interest I have in believing a thing is not a proof of the existence of that thing.

~ Voltaire, in reference to Blaise Pascal's infamous wager advice regarding the existence of a god.

Scientific practices-observation and experiment; the development of falsifiable hypotheses; the relentless questioning of established views-have proven uniquely powerful in revealing the surprising, underlying structure of the world we live in, including subatomic particles, the role of germs in the spread of disease, and the neural basis of mental life.

 Religion has no equivalent record of discovering hidden truths.

~ Paul Bloom, Scientific Faith Is Different From Religious Faith, The Atlantic, November 24, 2015

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