According to a 2008 report from the Parliamentary Budget Officer, spending for the war in Afghanistan will reach the sum of $18.1 billion in 2011. This represents over $200 million per month, or $1,500 per household. Among all these expenses, the military component accounts for 71% to 77%.

The history of the crisis of the western world that we all experience more or less consciously or unconsciously (or partly ignore) is a history of boundless lobbyism, political corruption, market fetishism and unbroken faith in growth.. Economic theories were and are children of their time. Neoliberals do not admit their own grandios failure.

If we can produce enough for all in superfluity with essentially less work than in the past-and we are already technically in this position-why must the whole enormous social wealth be squeezed through the needle of buying and selling, money, profit and growth? Let us be realists and demand the impossible. We all deserve something better than capitalist crisis economy.

“La France n’est pas menacée”, selon la ministre de l’Economie, Christine Lagarde. “La France n’est pas dans la même catégorie que l’Irlande ou le Portugal”, affirme l’Elysée...

Je parcours les photos que, depuis quelques semaines, j’emmagasine dans la mémoire de mon ordinateur. Grèce, Italie, Royaume-Uni, France, Espagne...Elles semblent se faire écho : la même révolte, la même violence, les mêmes slogans, les mêmes cibles. Mais une analogie me frappe en tout premier lieu : deux visages, dont les traits sont marqués par un mélange de stupeur et de terreur. Ces visages sont ceux de Camilla, femme du prince de Galles, et de Costis Hatzidakis, ancien ministre grec des transports.

A successful ‘socialism conference’ was held in Manila from November 27 to 28. The conference was organized by the socialist Partido Lakas ng Masa or Party of the Labouring Masses (PLM) and the socialist-feminist regional network Transform Asia. The conference was attended by 100 delegates, leaders of the PLM from Metro Manila, and other leading socialists of the Philippine left, as well as 13 international guests.

Depuis la crise du système financier en 2008, plus rien ne semble pouvoir camoufler la profondeur de la crise historique que traverse le capitalisme. Alors que les attaques contre la classe ouvrière pleuvent, que la misère se répand, les tensions impérialistes s'aiguisent, la faim continue de frapper plusieurs centaines de millions de personnes, les catastrophes naturelles se font toujours plus meurtrières. La bourgeoisie elle-même ne peut nier l'ampleur des difficultés ni dessiner l'horizon chimérique d'un avenir meilleur sous sa domination. C’est ainsi que, jusque dans ses organes de propagande, elle concède que la crise actuelle est la plus grave qu’ait connu le capitalisme depuis celle des années 1930, que le développement de la misère est un mal avec lequel il nous faudra «apprendre à vivre». Mais la bourgeoisie est une classe disposant de nombreuses capacités d'adaptation : s'il lui faut admettre, un peu contrainte par l'évidence de la situation, beaucoup par calcul politique, que les choses vont mal et qu’elles ne sont pas prêtes de s’améliorer, elle sait, dans le même temps, présenter les problèmes de manière suffisamment fallacieuse pour épargner le système capitaliste comme un tout.

Austerity is not the only way to make up for massive government debt and lack of revenue following self-induced disasters in private finance. There are fairer ways to balance the books.

Nos façons de vivre ne sont pas négociables ...

Bio : Ray McGovern is a retired CIA officer. McGovern was employed under seven US presidents for over 27 years, presenting the morning intelligence briefings at the White House under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.

It's a canard. And I'm an intelligence officer, or I used to be, okay? I was for 27 years. Sometimes we take painstaking efforts to get something right. And to my great relief, somebody did that in 2007, and he came to the conclusion that Iran stopped working on a nuclear weapon in the fall of 2003. [...]

[...] I'm sorry, but I don't do faith-based intelligence. I do evidentiary intelligence. [...] more than 16 US intelligence agencies who unanimously decided, as they put it, "with great confidence," in quotes, that Iran had stopped working on a nuclear weapon at the end of 2003 and had not resumed work. Now, that was three years ago, okay? The story proceeds here. Who didn't like that? Well, President Bush really didn't like that; and Netanyahu and the Israelis, Olmert at the time, they were really very furious. [...]

Now, what was all this about? Well, Cheney and Bush were about to do that in the following spring. Cheney admits it. He says, you know, I was not in the majority here, and I was overruled finally, but, yeah, we were going to go after Iran, okay? So he's proud of that. So is it different now? No, it's not different now. That's really what gets my back up. The New York Times can put full pages on the Iranian part of the WikiLeaks thing, and it means nothing [...]