February 12, 2013 is the official first day of production under workers control in the factory of Viomichaniki Metalleutiki (Vio.Me) in Thessaloniki, Greece. This means production organized without bosses and hierarchy, and instead planned with directly democratic assemblies of the workers.
Soon after the joint US-British bombing campaign ‘Operation Desert Fox’ devastated parts of Iraq in Dec 1998, I was complaining to a friend in the lobby of the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad. I was disappointed with the fact that our busy schedule in Iraq – mostly visiting hospitals packed with injured or Depleted Uranium Victims - left me no time to purchase a few Arabic books for my little daughter back in the states.
Despite much saber-rattling by Israel and the US administration and hyped-up expectations by the Palestinian leadership, the recognition of Palestine as a non-member observer state late last year is on its way to becoming yet another footnote in protracted conflict that has endured for 65 years.
Source: In These Times
Well, isn’t that nice. A few weeks after a fabric-fueled inferno killed more than 100 locked-in garment workers at the Tazreen Fashion factory outside Dhaka, the 23rd Bangladesh Apparel and Textile Exposition gathered under a gold-colored “circular dome with dazzling lighting [like] a gala concert on a broad way [sic] theater,” the conference center’s website boasted. A minute of silence kicked off the proceedings, and then the reps and buyers turned to ensuring that Bangladesh, which has some of the world’s most poorly paid garment workers, wins the race to the bottom of low-wage countries. Last year clothing exports earned the country $19 billion, a whopping 78 percent of its total exports.
Source: CorpWatch
The medieval alchemists claimed they could turn ordinary metals into gold. Analysts at Standard & Poors (S&P), Wall Street’s top ratings agency, claimed that bad loans to poor people were wildly profitably. A U.S. government investigation alleges that S&P financial analysts are no different from the hucksters of yore.
On Monday, the U.S. Department of Justice sued S&P for $5 billion for misleading the Western Federal Corporate Credit Union, the first federally chartered credit union, which collapsed in 2008. Sixteen states have joined the lawsuit while the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission has also launched an investigation. S&P has offered to settle for $100 million instead without admitting any guilt.
Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman were arrogant, self-righteous kids who thought that their heroics could unlock the revolution and change the world. In other words: typical anarchists. And as typical anarchists, they were thoughtful, generous, creative idealists, whose devotion to their cause was only rivaled by their devotion to their friends.
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