The Digger

by Nick Reid -  Uniting the Fringe Against the Center Watching the news lately, you get the impression that the world is being ripped in two by the scourge of the far-right and the far-left. Populism they call it. Warring tribes in a binary war for the soul of the free world. In the US, Our dear orange Pericles is scheming mightily to manipulate the already unconstitutional powers of executive privilege to follow through with his promise to militarize the commons at the boarder. Meanwhile, the Democratic Party is in virtual upheaval over how to contain a 5-foot-2 congresswoman for making the “antisemitic” observation that perhaps Israel has too much influence over Washington while the rest of the party keep McCarthyism alive with their own Russophobic “tropes”. Across Europe and many other parts of the world, you here a similar tale of the populist left and/or the populist right going too far in one direction or the other, many times both simultaneously in an act of sociopo...

15 March 2019 A new disturbing report released by the  Daily Beast  has revealed an epidemic of 911 calls due to Amazon employees who were driven to the brink of suicide on the job. In the five-year period from October 2013 to 2018, 189 calls were made from 46 Amazon sites. The nature of the calls ranged from employees with suicidal ideations, suicide attempts, and other stress-related mental-health episodes. The sheer geographic scale of the epidemic is staggering on its own. The 46 warehouses comprised an area of 17 states—one-fourth of Amazon’s sorting and fulfillment centers in the US. There are likely many incidents that have gone unreported as many Amazon warehouses either claimed to not keep logs concerning suicide reports or openly refused information requests from the  Daily Beast . Text transcripts of 911 calls obtained by the news source described grisly scenes such as an individual who had “cut himself three or four times” with Amazon warehouse issue bo...

This is a very interesting piece; I approved of it highly for the first two-thirds or so and found the last third problematic in parts. There's lots that could be discussed, argued, and hashed out, so have a go. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Mr MAGA and the end of Western Civilization 2777 Views March 15, 2019   21 Comments [This column was written  for the Unz Review ] Folks in the West are taught that their civilization has its roots in ancient Rome and/or ancient Greece. This is more a case of self-aggrandizement than serious historical research.  While it is true that the city of Rome was sacked in 410AD, the Christian Roman civilization continued in the East for another 1000 years until 1453. The real roots of what we nowadays call the western civilization are to be traced back to the following time periods: Most ancient (theoretical) roots: the early Frankish Merovingian Kingdom (481–751) and Carolingian empire (751–843). Formative roots: the so-calle...

" One hundred years removed from the  Russian Revolution , we’re in a moment unlike any in decades. With both neoliberalism and social democracy’s traditional parties in disrepute, new opportunities are finally emerging for the radical left. Every crisis finds a resolution of some kind, and this one will too. Where we end up depends in large measure on how the Left responds. If we play our cards right, the opening could be the occasion for starting a new cycle of organizing — revitalizing left parties where possible, and starting new ones if they prove to be immune to reform. But rather than just looking forward, this is also an occasion to look back at the lessons of the past. The Russian Revolution remains the most ambitious experiment in socialist politics, and its successes and failures have to be part of any discussion of how to revitalize the Left. But it isn’t just the Russian experience. We have to place the Bolshevik experiment in the broader story of socialist...

It's really interesting that Marco Rubio knew the problem in Venezuela's power outage before anyone in Venezuela did.  A   September 2010 memo   by a U.S.-funded soft power organization that helped train Venezuelan coup leader Juan Guaidó and his allies identifies the potential collapse of the country’s electrical sector as “a watershed event” that “would likely have the impact of galvanizing public unrest in a way that no opposition group could ever hope to generate.” The memo has special relevance today as Guaidó moves to exploit nationwide blackouts caused by a major failure at the Simon Bolivar Hydroelectric Plant at Guri dam – a crisis that Venezuela’s government blames on U.S. sabotage. Srdja Popovic.  (CANVAS) It was authored by  Srdja Popovic  of the Center for Applied Non-Violent Action and Strategies (CANVAS), a Belgrade-based “democracy promotion” organization funded by the U.S. that has trained thousands of U.S.-aligned youth ac...