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 Venceremos recommended reading: The Good fight by Ralph Nader
Margaret Thatcher, Lee Myung bak & Me
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
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
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
Exceptions to the War on Terror: The Cuban Five
The War on Terror: McCarthyism for the 21st Century?
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:
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.
Mass movement halts the neo-liberal bulldozer
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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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.’
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!
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.
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.
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. 
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. 
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.
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 government
