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Discussion Forum: Understanding the Middle East and conflict resolution in the 21st Century

2pm, Saturday, November 22nd, 2008

Chungjongro Station, Lines 2& 5 Exit 1

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Venceremos recommended reading: The Good fight by Ralph Nader

In The Good Fight, written in 2004, Ralph Nader invites us to join him on his justice-fighting campaign by outlining why we should, and how we can, get involved.  For anyone who has thought that their government was not working for them; that the current system is leading to a spiraling decline of our community, environment, and justice system; that the priorities of our elected leaders have been outrageously misguided; that they somehow would like to get more involved and didnt know where or how to begin, I encourage you to give The Good Fight, a very readable 275 pages, a solid look. (Read more.)


Margaret Thatcher, Lee Myung bak & Me

As a child born in the United Kingdom in the early 1980s, my life has been shaped by the legacy of the U.Ks fist ever female Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, the woman more commonly known as ‘The Iron Lady.’

I use the word ‘legacy’ because what is even more significant than the intense misery she inflicted on the British working class during the twelve years she was in power, is the social consequences of her policies we are now witnessing more than eighteen years later.

As Korea confronts it's own Margaret Thatcher figure, Lee Myung bak, they should listen to the testimony of a person who has seen this path walked before and lived with the ugly consequences.(Read more.)

 


Obama & Socialism? Thoughts About Obama’s Tax Plan

The other day, I was reading a debate on a political discussion board among some people I know in America. They were going back and forth passionately, one fighting for Obama, the other for McCain, as if their lives depended on a victory for their candidate. No real issues are discussed aside from who has the better tax plan, which has been on everyone’s minds since Joe “the plumber” came into our lives. Even then, it wasn’t really about the numbers. The main issue of concern was whether or not Obama was a Socialist. Not only is he a black man. Not only is his middle name Hussein. Now he is something far worse, a Marxist who’s interested in, dare I say? Spreading the wealth! (Read more.)


An era of change connecting the era of change in Latin America

Latin America is experiencing a profound era of change. Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa summed it up when he proclaimed that the geo-political titanium plates are shifting and that what Latin America is experiencing isn’t merely an era of change but also a change of eras.
 

It would be wrong to just lump all of the different governments together as some media commentators do when they refer to the “pink tide” – when there are roughly three categories of government: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly. The good being the “Good Left” or the social democratic left that uses progressive rhetoric but doesn’t challenge the system but merely attempts to provide it with a human face. The bad being the “Bad Left” or revolutionary governments that are taking on their domestic oligarchy and the US imperialism and attempting to alter the institutional framework of struggle which gives it an anti-capitalist dynamic. The ugly being the governments that have made no attempt to break with the past in enforcing neo-liberalism, poverty, exclusion and the loss of national sovereignty with brute force. Despite these differences, there is, nevertheless, a certain unity in pushing forward the integration and independence of the continent. (Read more)


An Oxymoronic Nation: Korea's inability to mix the old with the new and the problems this will cause

I live in a country that produces some of the world’s most cutting edge technology.  The students who live on this modest peninsula, which is inconspicuously wedged between Japan and China, are among the world’s most academically apt. The country’s literacy rate flirts with 100 percent, and the education system here quietly churns out some of the world’s best standardized test scores.  The city in which I dwell is a growing hub of economic and political activity and culture in East Asia and around the globe.  One can walk the streets here to find delightful museums and art galleries, or to eat at top class restaurants.  Over 80 percent of residences here have broadband internet and South Korea was the first country in the world to provide high-speed internet access from every primary, junior, and high school.  The list goes on to explain scores of other reasons why a modern traveler might want to visit, or even live in South Korea.
 

All this being said, there is one glaring problem that needs to be addressed here.  Without question, this society is on the right track as far as becoming a global leader in many aspects.  The social characteristics of Korea, however, remain medieval in numerous ways.  Today, I’d like to inform you about some of the ways in which the past and the present are mixing together to create a highly toxic situation in this small country in East Asia.  Further, I’ll evaluate the measures being taken to stifle this situation, and explain what the final outcome could look like for the Korean people in the future.  (Read more.)


Hyundai, State Violence, and Peasant Resistance in Colombia

In the Latin American country Colombia, peasants and activists are regularly threatened, arrested, and killed by the Colombian army and pro-government “paramilitaries”.  It has been revealed that South Korean corporation Hyundai has contributed to this oppression.
Andres Gil and Miguel Gonzalez, of the Peasant-Farmer Association of the Cimitarra River Valley (ACVC), are two of the most recent victims of the Colombian government’s repression. The ACVC is a grassroots organization that organizes cooperatives and community-based development projects, defends human rights, and fights for the right of peasants to stay on their land. (Read more)


Exceptions to the War on Terror: The Cuban Five

Gerardo Hernandez, Ramon Labanino, Antonio Guerrero, Fernando Gonzalez, and Rene Gonzalez are The Cuban Five. This nickname was given to these Cuban patriots who were unjustly imprisoned, in 1998, by the United States government for investigating terrorist organizations in South Florida. The acts of violence The Five were trying to gather information on were conducted by anti-Cuban terrorist and terror organizations residing in the U.S. Atrocities committed by Luis Posada Carriles, Orlando Bosch, Alpha 66, Comandos F4, Brothers to the Rescue, Omega 77, Movimiento Democratico, CORU, Accion Cubana, Brigade 2506, the Cuban American National Foundation, and more have led to the deaths of over 3,000 Cubans, including many foreign tourists vacationing in Cuba throughout the past 40-plus years. Because these terrorists were organizing and operating with complete impunity from the U.S. justice system, the Cuban government needed to do something in order to protect its citizens from being murdered. (Read more.)


The War on Terror: McCarthyism for the 21st Century?

George Orwell’s masterpiece Nineteen Eighty-Four envisioned a world constantly at war. This concept of total war as Orwell envisioned it served several functions within his dystopian society. Crucially though, it served to pacify a potentially rebellious population by keeping them in a state of constant fear of an intangible, but very real enemy, unifying the people behind ‘Big Brother’ in the process.

Consider the major ‘enemies’ of the West since George Orwell’s death in 1950. Having already crushed the ascendancy of nationalist based fascism with the downfall of Mussolini and Hitler in World War II, the Western world faced a new and slightly less tangible ‘evil’: communism. The icy specter of the Cold War hung over the world for decades with massive repercussions both on the political landscape domestically and across the globe before the eventual terminal decline of the U.S.S.R and its communist empire. Yet just as the end of the 20th century saw the sun setting on the Soviet Union, the 21st century gave birth to the next ideological evil: Islam. (Read more.)


Thoughts about Our World – Part I:
Religion, Capitalism, and Commodities

Most, if not all, religions are present and instilled within individuals starting at birth. Starting at a very early age, populations are taught the ideas of their respective religion, to accept it as truth, and ostracized if they do not. As people grow older within their societies, they learn that not only is this belief predominant within their own family, but also the common belief of the majority of their society. The fill-in-the-blank religion is really just a question of region combined with history. This strength in numbers, this status quo, leads people to feel uncomfortable with, and often disgusted by, the presence of another inferior system of beliefs.

Further, (the diversity of) religion has been the leading cause of death and suffering throughout history. People have been laughed at, judged, banished, ridiculed, persecuted, enslaved, and even burned at the stake (or other murder le jour)… time and again… in the name of… religion. (Read more.)


Has Obama lost his audacity?

In 2004, at the Democratic Convention, Barack Obama titled his keynote address, The Audacity to Hope, after a phrase taken from a sermon by his good friend and pastor, Jeremiah Wright.  In this sermon, Rev. Wright stresses the audacity, the nerve, to continue to hope when living in a world of greed and famine, of apartheid and apathy; essentially a quiet hell.  Obama so loved this phrase that he titled his 2006 campaign-igniting book by the same phrase.  At the time, this was an inspiring idea and an inspiring man to rally around.

Yet audacity to hope is a campaign slogan with an all too familiar bottom line and far too much empty rhetoric.  He talks of America, both past and present, as if it were a beautiful beacon of participatory democracy that just needs a change in leadership, and the dream would be revived from its nightmare. (Read more)


Middle Eastern exchange rates: Why Israel is winning the PR war

The recently finalised prisoner/ body exchange between Israel and its Lebanese and Palestinian neighbours is as good a case study as I can remember of the mainstream media's tainted portrayal of the strife ridden conflict zone.


It underlines why Israel is winning the 'public relations war', why it continues to garner so much international support in spite of its frequent disregard for human rights and international law. (Read more)


Mass movement halts the neo-liberal bulldozer

The newly elected neo-conservative regime of President Lee Myungbak has been humbled by the spontaneous emergence of a mass movement, which was sparked by female middle school and high school students, but which has seen the largest and longest sustained demonstrations since the fall of the military dictatorship. The mass protests are primarily against the imposed resumption of the importation of US beef but have, in the course of their development, tapped into latent anger of the Korean population against the implementation of the governments neo-liberal agenda. (Read more)

Europe's angry men, the plucky Irish and the future of the European Union

Debates on the future of Europe are all too often stripped down to the black and white terms Europhile or Eurosceptic, suggesting that you are either with or against Europe. Speaking as someone who falls into the ludicrously simplified pigeon hole of pro-European, I would say the debate is no longer about whether you are pro or anti-Europe, rather it is about what kind of Europe you want. (Read more.)


 

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Episode #1

We profile socially conscious hip hop music and discuss the concept of socialism in the 21st century