Predatory Capitalism and the System's Denial in the Face of Truth - C.J. Polychroniou

Contemporary capitalism is characterized by a political economy which revolves around finance capital, is based on a savage form of free market fundamentalism, and thrives on a wave of globalizing processes and global financial networks that have produced global economic oligarchies with the capacity to influence the shaping of policymaking across nations. As a result, contemporary advanced capitalist societies are plagued by dangerous levels of income and wealth inequality, mass unemployment, rising poverty rates, social polarization, and collapsing social provisions. Furthermore, democracy and the social contract are under constant attack by the current system and there is an ongoing pressure by the corporate and financial elite to convert all public goods and services into private goods and services. The rising inequality in advanced capitalist countries is well documented. Most recently, Thomas Piketty’s publishing sensation Capital in the Twentieth-First Century, translated into English and published by Harvard University Press, provides massive data showing a widening gap between the rich and the poor, thus questioning not only the claim that the capitalist economy...

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Nigeria: A Highly Religious Nation in Crisis of Moral Decadence - Sam Aweda

PROBABLE CAUSES  (LAMENTATION: PART I) Nigerians generally are naturally enthusiastic religious people. The minarets blast five times a day simultaneously across the length and breadth of the country, calling the people of the Islamic faith to prayers. Wherever your location is, you cannot claim not to hear it except those living in any of the Government Reservation areas (GRA). A Muslim does not believe he has completed his personal house until a mosque is erected in the compound. Many in the Islamic faith endeavour to perform Umra in far away Mecca as many times as possible to make special prayers. Every street and corner of all our big cities, villages and hamlets, are full of Churches. The Sunday services are filled to full capacity, some running three or more sessions. In spite of all these, corruption, dishonesty, moral decadence, decay, injustice, cheating, bribery, extortion, stealing and looting of government treasuries are on the increase. Could it be people other than these faithful worshippers that are perpetrating these evils? But I once met a policeman who wore a tag on his uniform, with an inscription "Touch not my anointed-----"yet he was harassing and extorting...

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Prosperity Gospel and 419 in The Modern Church - C. K. Ekeke

Nigeria’s wealthiest pastor, Bishop David Oyedepo is always in the news – He was in the news in the  United Kingdom.  Sadly for him, Britain is not Nigeria, where the corrupt courts absolved him of all wrong doings, his abuses and violence against a young worshipper of his church at Winner Chapel – aka “Cananland”   It was the video of his satanic slap of a young girl, probably an uneducated parishioner, who didn't know how best to express her love and witness for Jesus, that exposed the abuse and muddled message that is being promulgated by the bishop to his gullible and biblical ignorant followers.   Since then, I have penned a couple of articles calling on the federal government intervention to enact laws and policies to checkmate  abuses - physical, sexual, emotional, mental, and moral abuses in places of worship in the nation in order to protect the vulnerable.  I'm not too concerned about the learned and intelligent parishioners that sit under such blasphemous teachings every week.  Hosea 4:6 says, “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.”  To earn a PhD or have a lucrative job or business...

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The Crimes of French Imperialism - Liz Walsh

"The home of freedom has been assaulted by terrorists determined to attack and suppress freedom." - Malcolm Turnbull on the Paris attacks. France should not be synonymous with the word "freedom". As with all colonial empires, its history is soaked with the blood of oppressed peoples across the globe. And its record of perpetrating violence continues. The size of the territory claimed by the French empire in the 19th and 20th centuries was second only to Britain. From North Africa to South-East Asia, the Middle East to the South Pacific, millions were subjugated, repressed and murdered as French rulers scrambled to secure resources and markets for manufactured goods and profitable investments. It was only in the face of heroic mass struggles by the colonised determined to win their independence that France was eventually forced to cede control in the 1950s and '60s. From the outset of French colonialism in Vietnam, any form of political dissent was met with repression. Books and newspapers deemed subversive were confiscated. Anti-colonial political activists were sentenced to death or imprisoned on island fortresses. The grotesque violence would only escalate. After...

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Causes of Poverty in Africa: Lost Continent or Land of Opportunities?

African Arise? Economic Growth Rates Across The Region Trends in Poverty in Africa: Decade after decade, politicians and international organizations have failed to reduce poverty. Nor have they been able to help Africa generate growth or build basic infrastructure. Worse, between 1975 and 2000 it was the only place on earth where poverty has intensified. It's only recently that the situation started to slowly improve. Excluding the African continent from the World: In fact, there has been some growth since 1995 but it's been mostly in the very new services sector so it created only a few jobs whereas manufacturing and agriculture could have done much better. As the British prime minister declared in 2001 African poverty is "a scar on the conscience of the world". In recent years, globalization and technological inflation have made it only worse. It only helped further excluding the continent and widening the gaps with the rest of the world. However development economists and experts from all boards are now approaching the problem from new angles to provide innovative ways to fight African poverty. Better yet, some African countries are now emerging as real economic...

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Capitalism Requires Government More; Free Market Economy is a Fraud and a LIE- Douglas J. Amy

"Americans need to realize that our economy has thrived not in spite of government, but in many ways because of government. Without a whole host of government rules, capitalism could not exist. Even regulations and social programs help sustain a market economy by fixing many of its serious social and economic problems.” One of the most common and misleading economic myths in the United States is the idea that the free market is “natural” – that it exists in some natural world, separate from government. In this view, government rules and regulations only “interfere” with the natural beneficial workings of the market. Even the term “free market” implies that it can exist free from government and that it prospers best when government leaves it alone. Nothing could be further from the truth. In reality, a market economy does not exist separate from government – it is very much a product of government rules and regulations. The dirty little secret of our “free” market system is that it would simply not exist as we know it without the presence of an active government that creates and maintains the rules and conditions that allow it to operate efficientl...

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Marx’s Revenge: How Class Struggle Is Shaping the World - Michael Schuman

With workers around the world burdened by joblessness and stagnant incomes, Marx’s critique that capitalism is inherently unjust and self-destructive cannot be so easily dismissed Karl Marx was supposed to be dead and buried. With the collapse of the Soviet Union and China’s Great Leap Forward into capitalism, communism faded into the quaint backdrop of James Bond movies or the deviant mantra of Kim Jong Un. The class conflict that Marx believed determined the course of history seemed to melt away in a prosperous era of free trade and free enterprise. The far-reaching power of globalization, linking the most remote corners of the planet in lucrative bonds of finance, outsourcing and “borderless”  manufacturing, offered everybody from Silicon Valley tech gurus to Chinese farm girls ample opportunities to get rich. Asia in the latter decades of the 20th century witnessed perhaps the most remarkable record of poverty alleviation in human history — all thanks to the very capitalist tools of trade, entrepreneurship and foreign investment....

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Global Capitalism: The Profit Motive Is The Root Of All Evil - Simon Wood

Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell –-Edward Abbey A collection of paper money and coinage from around the world mixed together. Money, and more specifically, the profit motive, have put human life dangerously out of balance, with rampant inequality and poverty. (Flickr / epsos.de) Capitalism can be defined as a system under which industries, trade and the means of production are largely or wholly privately owned and operated for profit. Following the end of feudalism, it dominated the Western world, and thanks to imperialism this domination extended to the global economic system by the end of the 19th century. Entering the 21st century, it continues to reign unchallenged as the world’s pre-eminent economic doctrine. The world’s richest person (Bill Gates) has a personal wealth of $78.7 billion. This is higher than the(nominal) GDP of 130 countries, including Uruguay (population 3.4m), Ecuador (population 15.9m), Bulgaria (population 7.2m) and Croatia (population 4.3m). The wealth of the top ten richest people combined is $544 billion — higher than the GDP of 172 of the 194 nations for which UN data is available, including Thailand...

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Economic Stagnation and the Global Bubble - David Stockman

You’d think with all the “stimulus” from Washington over the fifteen years since the dotcome bust, American capitalism would be booming. It’s not. On the measures which count when it comes to sustainable growth and real wealth creation, the trends are slipping backwards — not leaping higher. After a look at new jobs data in April, we find the number of breadwinner jobs in the US economy is still two million below where it was when Bill Clinton still had his hands on matters in the Oval Office. Since then we have had two presidents boasting about how many millions of jobs they have created and three Fed chairmen taking bows for deftly guiding the US economy toward the nirvana of “full employment.” When you look under the hood, it’s actually worse. These “breadwinner jobs” are important because they’re the only sector of the payroll employment report where jobs generate enough annual wage income — about $50k — to actually support a family without public assistance. Moreover, within the 70 million breadwinner jobs category, the highest paying jobs which add the most to national productivity and growth — goods production — have slipped backward even more dramatically....

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The Global Jobs Crisis, Inequality, & the ‘Ghost’ of Keynes - Jack Rasmus

While identifying the data indicating income inequality, economists have little to say so far as to its fundamental causes—and even less to say about the jobs crisis. Three global capitalist research institutes recently released reports documenting a growing ‘global jobs crisis’. The World Bank, the OECD, and the International Labor Organization (ILO) all came to the same conclusion.  The Group of 20 nations’ employment ministers thereafter meeting in Australia issued a joint statement on the three institutes’ conclusion that “the world’s largest economies are failing to create enough jobs and too many of those that are being produced are of a low quality to generate a meaningful boost to global growth” (The Financial Times,  September 10, 2014). As the World Bank’s senior director for jobs put it, “there is little doubt there is a global jobs crisis”. All three reports identify converging trends across all the advanced economies (AEs) of Europe, North America, and Japan.  Not only is total unemployment rising long term, but the percentage of youth employment and the chronically long-term jobless are also growing. So too are part time and temp jobs rising...

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The Capitalist’s Dilemma - Clayton M. Christensen & Derek van Bever

Like an old machine emitting a new and troubling sound that even the best mechanics can’t diagnose, the world economy continues its halting recovery from the 2008 recession. Look at what’s happening in the United States: Even today, 60 months after the scorekeepers declared the recession to be over, its economy is still grinding along, producing low growth and disappointing job numbers. One phenomenon we’ve observed is that, despite historically low interest rates, corporations are sitting on massive amounts of cash and failing to invest in innovations that might foster growth. That got us thinking: What is causing that behavior? Are great opportunities in short supply, or are executives failing to recognize them? And how is this behavior pattern linked to overall economic sluggishness? What is holding growth back? Most theories of growth are developed at the macroeconomic level—at 30,000 feet. That perspective is good for spotting correlations between innovation and growth....

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America's Military Empire of African Bases: With AFRICOM, Africans Must Be Afraid - Nick Turse

"AFRICOM’s New Math, the U.S. Military Base Bonanza, and "Scarier" Times ahead in Africa with Destructive US Military, Conflict & War Agenda" The U.S. Military’s Pivot to Africa, 2012-2013. (Image: TomDispatch/Google) In the shadows of what was once called the “dark continent," a scramble has come and gone. If you heard nothing about it, that was by design. But look hard enough and -- north to south, east to west -- you’ll find the fruits of that effort: a network of bases, compounds, and other sites whose sum total exceeds the number of nations on the continent. For a military that has stumbled from Iraq to Afghanistan and suffered setbacks from Libya to Syria, it’s a rare can-do triumph. In remote locales, behind fences and beyond the gaze of prying eyes, the U.S. military has built an extensive archipelago of African outposts, transforming the continent, experts say, into a laboratory for a new kind of war. So how many U.S. military bases are there in Africa?  It’s a simple question with a simple answer.  For years, U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) gave a stock response: one. Camp Lemonnier in the tiny, sun-bleached nation of Djibouti was America’s only acknowledged...

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Washington’s Big Lie of “Peace and Stability” in Asia - Peter Symonds

In the wake of last month’s provocative intrusion by the destroyer, the USS Lassen, into Chinese-claimed territory in the South China Sea, US Defence Secretary Ashton Carter toured Asia last week seeking to further consolidate Washington’s military alliances and strategic partnerships against China. As he deliberately stoked up tensions with China, Carter’s constant refrain was that the United States remained a force for peace and stability. Standing on the deck of the USS Theodore Roosevelt in the South China Sea, he declared the aircraft carrier was a symbol of the “stabilising influence that the United States has had in this region of the world for decades.” The US military build-up in Asia, or “rebalance,” was “intended to keep it going,” he insisted. No one should be taken in by this big lie. “Stability,” in Washington’s lexicon, is synonymous with American dominance, which it has always pursued in Asia and the world through ruthless and violent means....

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Only One in Four Workers Worldwide Has a Stable Job - Andre Damon

Only one quarter of the world’s working population holds a permanent and stable job, Even as the number of unemployed people worldwide remains significantly higher than before the 2008 crisis, the few jobs that have been created in recent years have been disproportionately part-time, contingent and low-wage. The ILO’s World Employment and Social Outlook—Trends 2015 report found that three-quarters of workers are “employed on temporary or short-term contracts, in informal jobs often without any contract, under own-account arrangements or in unpaid family jobs.” The report notes that worldwide more than 60 percent of workers do not have any sort of employment contract, with most of them working on family farms and businesses in developing countries. But even among those who earn wages or salaries, less than half—only 42 percent—are employed on a permanent basis. In what are categorized as high-income countries, the share of workers employed on a permanent basis has declined in recent years, from 74 percent in 2004 to 73.2 percent in 2012. For males this decline has been even sharper, with the share working on permanent contracts falling from 73.1 percent to...

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How Corruption Stymies Economic Growth and Sparks Unrest - Mark Goebel

Corruption, one of the primary impediments to economic growth, yet among the least systematically tackled, undermines the fragile political and economic progress being made by emerging democracies, including Mexico, Indonesia, and Nigeria.   Recent impressive growth notwithstanding, corruption also threatens to hold back India’s and Brazil’s drive to join the ranks of the world’s developed countries, and has brought Venezuela and Ukraine to the brink of political collapse.   Even China, this century’s economic star, is being handicapped in its long-term quest to overtake the U.S. economically by corruption, so much so that China’s new supreme leader, President Xi Jinpang, has made stamping it out one of the main priorities of his time in office.   According to Transparency International’s 2013 Corruption Perceptions Index, nearly two-thirds of the countries surveyed (including all of the aforementioned), were categorized as more corrupt than not.   The index scores countries from 0 (highly corrupt) to 100 (very clean).   Over half of the survey’s respondents, 55 percent, said that corruption has worsened over the past year.   Nearly all of the survey’s...

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