No Picture

How Donald Trump emboldens bigots across the world

Source: The Guardian Unlimited

The fact that a Hindu nationalist group is praying for Trump seems strange until you realize that far-right factions across the world gain strength from his success

If there were a United Nations of the global far right, Donald Trump would be its undisputed leader. His message does not just resonate in the forlorn rust-belt towns of rural America: it travels far beyond the country’s shores. It is bigotry without borders.

Consider the incredible prayer session organized for him in New Delhi by a nationalist Hindu group last week. Amid prayer bells, incense and chanting, good wishes fluttered from the Indian capital all the way to the US. A poster made for the occasion declared Trump to be the “hope for humanity”. read more

No Picture

The grand heist: A perspective from the South on the Panama Papers

Source: Pambazuka News

In South Africa, over $60 million was lost through a well-orchestrated fraud from the mineworkers’ death benefits pool. 46,000 widows and orphans lost their benefits in this fraud revealed in the Panama Papers. Can you I imagine the pain of a widow  going to claim her husband’s death benefits only to find it all gone? Imagine that this widow has four children and no real source of income. We must resist!

The world woke up to news of the Panama Papers a few weeks ago. The release of the Panama Papers – an information trove comprising about 11.5 million documents leaked from Panamanian law-firm Mossack Fonseca – by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists helped shed light on the shadowy world that is international capital, and cast global attention on underhand financial dealings at international level. These papers have shown us how corporations, governments and individuals in the highest echelons of governments have colluded with their agents who include lawyers, bankers and accountants to create a parallel universe of offshore companies which they use to conceal wealth, evade taxes, perpetuate fraud and hide proceeds of bribery. read more

No Picture

Brazil’s Democracy to Suffer Grievous Blow as Unelectable, Corrupt Neoliberal Is Installed

Originally published on May 11, 2016

Source: The Intercept

In 2002, Brazil’s left-of-center Workers’ Party (PT) ascended to the presidency when Lula da Silva won in a landslide over the candidate of the center-right PSDB party (throughout 2002, “markets” were indignant at the mere prospect of PT’s victory). The PT remained in power when Lula, in 2006, was re-elected in another landslide against a different PSDB candidate. PT’s enemies thought they had their chance to get rid of PT in 2010, when Lula was barred by term limits from running again, but their hopes were crushed when Lula’s handpicked successor, the previously unknown Dilma Rousseff, won by 12 points over the same PSDB candidate who lost to Lula in 2002. In 2014, PT’s enemies poured huge amounts of money and resources into defeating her, believing that she was vulnerable and they had finally found a star PSDB candidate, but they lost again, this time narrowly, as Dilma was re-elected with 54 million votes. read more