Republicans Envision an American ‘Downton Abbey’

By Loren Adams, 03.08.2015

Republicans picture themselves as lords over the country – the American Granthams of Downtown Abbey – living the good life on the floor above the submissive working class – maids, butlers, doormen, etc., which are beaten down by a life-long irreversible social stigma – while the upper crust, seemingly oblivious to anything beneath, is upstairs and insurmountably segregated from the worker bees that make the queen bee’s over-indulgent opulence possible. The workers are banished to the basement and lower quarters where the only “upward mobility” permitted is to fetch tea and extravagant meals for the sovereigns perched and pampered on the floor above.

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Europe: What Is To Be Done?

By Conn Hallinan Feb. 12, 2015

In the aftermath of last month’s Greek election that vaulted the left anti-austerity party Syriza into power, armies of supporters and detractors—from Barcelona to Berlin—are on the move. While Germany’s Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaueble was making it clear that Berlin would brook no change in the European Union’s (EU) debt strategy that has impoverished countries like Greece, Spain, Portugal, and Ireland, left organizations from all over Europe met in Barcelona to drew up a plan of battle.   

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THE TRAGEDY OF SELMA

By STEVEN JONAS MD, MPH - February 26, 2015

 The “Tragedy of Selma?” you might ask.  Wasn’t it a triumph for the civil rights movement?  Did it not lead to further advances in that struggle?  And if you are referring to the movie, is it not a triumph as well, getting a film that portrays one of the signal struggles of the Movement during the 60s with such searing honesty, no holds barred in dealing with the “Which side are you on?” question, applied to this event?  Well, yes, the Selma March was a triumph for the civil rights movement.  It played a very important role in getting/helping Lyndon Johnson to support what became the Voting Rights Act.

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With gods like these…

By Iris Vander Pluym on 03.08.15

The Republican governor of Wisconsin, a d00d named Scott Walker, has been all up in mah feedz for evading the subject of evolution during an interview with BBC Radio. When asked, “Are you comfortable with the idea of evolution, do you believe in it, do you accept it?” Walker replied, “For me, I’m going to punt on that one.”

Scott Walker is running for president of the US of A, and is presently leading this year’s bumper crop of GOP clowns in Iowa polling by likely Republican voters. To give you some idea of just how irredeemable some of these Republican Iowa voters actually are, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-idiculous) won the Ames straw poll among Iowa Republicans mere months before the 2012 Iowa caucuses.

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SHOULD WE MAKE MORE WAR? WHERE? HOW?

By Harry Targ - 03.08.15

Both unity and contradiction are reflected in the history of United States foreign policy from the industrial revolution to the present. The unity of policy in time and space is reflected in the drive to maximize the opportunities for U.S. capital to expand; to acquire more and more wealth, and to seize land, extract resources, and accumulate profits derived from cheaper and cheaper labor.

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THE HOLOCAUST AND THE COLD WAR: Reflections on some Marxist Perspectives

By Michael Faulkner - 03.08.15

The following article should be read as a sequel to The Holocaust in Historical Perspective which appeared in the February TPJ Magazine. That article did not succeed adequately in its intention to explore the way in which public understanding of the Holocaust, particularly in Britain and the United States, was influenced for at least three decades after 1945 by the political imperatives of the Cold War. What follows will attempt to go more substantially into this question. Another aspect needing further development concerns the historicising (or de-historicising) of the Holocaust. If it is claimed that it was unique, how is this ‘uniqueness’ to be understood? If it is said, as some historians have said, that Auschwitz is ‘unfathomable’ does this amount to an abdication of their responsibility as historians?

 

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