Social Justice

Council tenants: defending ‘secure tenancies’ and opposing means tested Council housing

Although Housing Benefit is means tested, Council Housing, as such, has never been. The coalition government is treating it like it is charity, giving Councils the right to evict tenants who have done nothing wrong. But Council housing was built on a mass scale because private builders were not interested in building homes for poor working people. Today’s housing crisis will not be tackled unless there is a return to building Council housing on a sufficiently large scale such that the numbers of households on the waiting list, 1.8 million, begins to decline rather than continuing to rise.

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The Party Game is Over. Stand and Fight

The BA workers, the firefighters, the council workers, the post office workers, the NHS workers, the London Underground staff, the teachers, the lecturers, the students can more than match the French if they are resolute and imaginative, forging, with the wider social justice movement, potentially the greatest popular resistance ever. Look at the web; listen to the public’s support at fire stations. There is no other way now. Direct action. Civil disobedience. Unerring. Read Shelley and do it.

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This Continual Hounding of the Unemployed Reveals that Britain Is Governed by a Gang of Rich Sociopaths

The economic logic behind austerity remains as flawed now as it was when first announced by the coalition. Rather than understand the deficit as a consequence of a global recession decimating demand in the economy, with a sharp fall in tax revenues due to a sharp rise in unemployment, the government is intent on deepening the same cycle by introducing drastic cuts in spending in the forlorn hope that the private sector will invest and create new jobs to replace those lost. But with a lack of demand for goods and services, the private sector is still refusing to invest, despite sitting on a huge cash surplus. The most obvious example of this is the banking sector’s continuing refusal to lend, despite repeated pleas by the government, and despite being bailed out by the UK taxpayer to the tune of tens of billions of pounds over the past four years.

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American Workers: Hanging on by the Skin of Their Teeth

After five years of Obama’s economic recovery, the American people are as gloomy as ever. According to a Bloomberg National Poll that was released this week, fewer people “are optimistic about the job market” or “the housing market” or “anticipate improvement in the economy’s strength over the next year.”

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John Perkins: Confessions of an Economic Hitman

As an Economic Hitman (EHM), John Perkins helped further American imperial interests in countries such as Ecuador, Panama, Indonesia and Saudi Arabia. As Chief Economist for the international consulting firm Chas. T. Main, he convinced underdeveloped countries to accept massive loans for infrastructure development and ensured that the projects were contracted to multinational corporations. The countries acquired enormous debt, and the US and international aid agencies were able to control their economies.

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The Corporate Media’s Mass Hypnosis

Delivery systems and platforms for information may proliferate at blinding speed, but most Americans have no access to anything resembling the truth. They may know the names of the dead – like Trayvon Martin – but have no clue why they died. “Lies and nonsense are the standard fare for the most read and watched news sources in this country.”

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No Innocence Left to Kill: Racism, Injustice and Explaining America to My Daughter

Those who deny the racial angle to the killing of Trayvon Martin can only do so by a willful ignorance, a carefully cultivated denial of every logical, obvious piece of evidence before them, and by erasing from their minds — if indeed they ever had anything in there to erase — the entire history of American criminal justice, the criminal suspicion regularly attached to black men, and the inevitable results whenever black men pay for these suspicions with their lives.

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Only 1 Percent of “Terrorists” Caught By the FBI are Real

“The Terror Factory” author Trevor Aaronson exposes the Bureau’s undercover sting operations for the farce they are by Joshua Holland In the dozen years since the 9/11 attacks, we’ve watched as a classified new legal regime for government surveillance has been hashed out, local police forces have become heavily armed military-type units and a whole new layer of bureaucracy has […]

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White Supremacy Acquits George Zimmerman

A jury has found George Zimmerman not guilty of all charges in connection to death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin. But while the verdict came as a surprise to some people, it makes perfect sense to others. This verdict is a crystal-clear illustration of the way white supremacy operates in America.

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Open Season on Black Boys After a Verdict Like This

Let it be noted that on this day, Saturday 13 July 2013, it was still deemed legal in the US to chase and then shoot dead an unarmed young black man on his way home from the store because you didn’t like the look of him.

The killing of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin last year was tragic. But in the age of Obama the acquittal of George Zimmerman offers at least that clarity. For the salient facts in this case were not in dispute. On 26 February 2012 Martin was on his way home, minding his own business armed only with a can of iced tea and a bag of Skittles. Zimmerman pursued him, armed with a 9mm handgun, believing him to be a criminal. Martin resisted. They fought. Zimmerman shot him dead.

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Homelessness tops 5-year high in UK

A new report says homelessness in northern England has witnessed a 42 percent increase in just one year, with the homeless choosing to live in a network of disused sandstone caves near the town centre of Stockport, Greater Manchester

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Mandela’s Greatness May Be Assured — But Not His Legacy

The liberation government, Mandela had promised, would take over the apartheid economy, including the banks – and “a change or modification of our views in this regard is inconceivable”. Once in power, the party’s official policy to end the impoverishment of most South Africans, the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP), was abandoned, with one of his ministers boasting that the ANC’s politics were Thatcherite.

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