Author Archives: Clint
Insurgent Math
‘Insurgent Math’ is an arithmetic championed by Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who was the commander of U.S.-led coalition forces in Afghanistan before Obama impressed him into the American army of the unemployed.
‘Insurgent Math’ holds that, “for every innocent person you kill, you create 10 new enemies.” It is a foundational concept in the counter-insurgency doctrine that [...]
Capital Contradictions
A brilliant animation set to a brief lecture by Professor David Harvey on the roots of the global economic crisis. Animation provided by RSA Animate. Theoretical foundations provided by Karl Marx.
The Coming American Austerity
The G20 Summit in Toronto concluded with a declaration that the “advanced economies have committed to fiscal plans that will at least halve deficits by 2013 and stabilize or reduce government debt-to-GDP ratios by 2016.” The non-binding agreement follows shortly after the Greek debt crisis, which in turn has sparked a crisis of confidence regarding [...]
The Pragmatist’s Ideology
The Obama Administration and its loyalists dismiss ideology as passé. They portray idealists – on both Left and Right - as rigid partisans unmoored from political reality. This criticism is neatly-distilled in Obama’s book, The Audacity of Hope, where he says: “Values are faithfully applied to the facts before us, while ideology overrides whatever facts [...]
Spiritual Health Reform
Sunday marked the 42nd anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. While best known as a leader of the African-American Rights movement in the 1960s, King also fought for the “reconstruction of [American] society,” which he said was being poisoned by poverty, militarism and materialism.
Exactly one year before his death, Reverend King delivered [...]
The Degeneracy Thesis
In the second half of the 18th century, prominent European intellectuals supported a theory claiming that “due chiefly to atmospheric conditions, in particular excessive humidity, all living things in the Americas were not only inferior to those found in Europe, but also in a condition of decline.”
This was known as the Degeneracy Thesis, and its [...]
Imbalance
In America, political power resides predominately in the business sector, whose economic interests are first and foremost on the minds of both major parties. The Democrats have less naked loyalty to corporations, but their offices are funded, lobbied and coerced nonstop by businesses that hold stake in government affairs.
For a demonstration of this power relationship, [...]
Palin’s Palm Reading
Last night, the Tea Party circus act had its grand finale. The night was capped with a keynote speech by ringmaster Sarah Palin, who reportedly received upwards of $100,000 for her address. The speech itself was unremarkable. It featured constant swipes at Obama, contrasted with mindless worship of tax cuts, military operations abroad and, of [...]
Tea Party with Tom Tancredo
By the time the Tea Party convention began on Thursday, its credibility had already been hobbled by reports of tickets costing $549 and by criticism from other tea partiers who accused its organizers of engaging in “profiteering and exploitation of the grass-roots movement.”
All that was before the first speaker even took the stage. Then Tom [...]
Massachusetts
In one sense, the defeat of the Democrats in Massachusetts has little impact on the strength of Barack Obama’s administration, whose party still easily controls the U.S. Senate, owning 59 of the 100 seats.
But, in another, it’s a shocking vote of no confidence, delivered only one year after millions flooded D.C. to celebrate this president’s [...]