For the One Percent

The top 1 percent have the best houses, the best educations, the best doctors, and the best lifestyles, but there is one thing that money doesn’t seem to have bought: an understanding that their fate is bound up with how the other 99 percent live. Throughout history, this is something that the top 1 percent eventually do learn. Too late.

— Joseph Stiglitz, “Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%”

What in the fuck has Obama done so far?

Tariq Ali: Obama and Empire

Video of a lecture by Tariq Ali at the Marxism 2009 festival in London, “The American Empire in Crisis: Obama at Home and Abroad.” Filmed by Ady Cousins. The video can also be viewed at the Counterfire website.

 

Chto Delat Weekly Reader No. 7: The All-Obama Issue

This past week the whole world has been buzzing, celebrating, and puzzling over the election of Barack Obama to the US presidency. Will his presidency usher in a new era of peace, friendship, and social justice the world over? Or his advent just new window dressing on a bad game that is getting worse? This week’s reader is devoted to skeptical voices on the left who wonder whether we all haven’t been sold a bill of goods. Featuring: Simon Critchley, Judith Butler, Louis Proyect, Alexander Cockburn, Ralph Nader, Unión del Barrio, Richard Seymour, Howard Zinn, Mike Davis, and Tariq Ali.