SCREENING OF THE COCA-COLA CASE THIS SUNDAY – FOR MORE INFO, CLICK HERE!   by Billy Wharton from Counterpunch “Sailing round the world in a dirty gondola,” Bob Dylan sang in 1971, “Oh, to be back in the land of Coca-Cola !” After forty years of corporate globalization, Dylan would be hard pressed to find a place that isn’t the land of Coca-Cola . Multinationals have torn up the... 

by Billy Wharton from Counterpunch and the SACSIF Eight and half hours is long time for any movie, much less a political documentary. However, Connie Field’s Have You Heard from Johannesburg has a serious ambition – to tell the complete story of the South African anti-apartheid movement from an international perspective. The result of this desire is a seven-segment documentary grouped into three... 

by Billy Wharton Americans desperately need healthcare. The need is so desperate that many are buying into a “something is better than nothing” philosophy to support a healthcare bill that actively works against their own interests. The bill that Barack Obama plans to sign into law is being dubbed a “reform,” but what it actually amounts to is a corporate restructuring that will solidify the... 

Socialist Party USA Left Forum Panel Where capitalism fails to meet the needs of people, spaces are created for activists to organize alternatives that fulfill needs by empowering individuals and communities. In New York City, activists have worked to create community centers, create community supported agriculture and have struggled to create a city that meets the needs of the poor and working class.... 

by Billy Wharton The librarians at the Pelham Bay Park branch of the New York Public Library are really trying hard. When the regular volunteer at toddler story time couldn’t show up today, a librarian jumped in. When the budget cuts went through and library hours were reduced, they accommodated an early start for the parents of toddlers. And, when dozens of people burst through the doors at the... 

by Billy Wharton To American immigrant rights activists faced with the harsh repression of ICE raids or the outright racism of public officials such as Sheriff Joe Arpaio, Europe may seem like a kinder, gentler place. Yet, as Kalle Larsson, representative of the Swedish Left Party, argued during a recent speech organized by the Socialist Party USA (NYC Local), Europe is developing its own forms of... 

by Billy Wharton This week, NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg came face-to-face with a thoroughly frightening notion. What if the numbers do not work? What if the reality that people in our city live in cannot be reduced to a neat series of computations? The crime stats from the Giuliani regime, it seems, may have been cooked. Several high-raking police officials now admit that they distorted crime statistics... 

by Billy Wharton About 450 people took part in anti-war protests in NYC tonight. The demos were scheduled the day after Barack Obama announced an escalation of the war in Afghanistan by committing 30,000 more American military troops. Three demos took place – two in Times Square and one that began at Union Square and is rumored to have ended at Rockefeller Plaza. The mood was somber yet determined... 

by Billy Wharton from Counter Currents Food insecurity has become a fact of life in America. A grinding economic recession coupled with sharp cutbacks in local and state government spending has resulted in a dramatic crisis in the most necessary of acts – eating. According to a Nov. 2009 report by the US Department of Agriculture, 50 million or 1 in 6 Americans, struggled to feed themselves and their... 

by Billy Wharton If a bill is passed on Capitol Hill, money is sure to have changed hands. There is not much “School House Rock” idealism left in Washington these days. Bills do not become laws through a democratic process of debate, compromise and ratification. Money greases the skids, shapes the end product and determines what is or isn’t debated from the floor. No surprise then that a large... 

by Billy Wharton A simple question for the tea baggers. Where is the socialism now? Frenetic right-wingers spent a good part of the summer shouting about the “government takeover of health care,” or the “stealth socialist health care plan.” Now that the “Affordable Healthcare for America Act” has been passed by a slim margin in the House of Representatives, there are few traces of anything... 

by Billy Wharton from Examiner.com Few punches are pulled in California Newsreels’ documentary adaptation of Maggie Mahar’s 2006 investigative book Money Driven Medicine. This physician-centered film exposes the infrequently examined ways in which a privately controlled health care system impinges on the relationship between doctor and patient. As Dr. Andrey Espinoza argues in the film, there... 

by Billy Wharton After an evening of pitched street battles between protesters and police, things are relatively calm in Pittsburgh on day two of the G20. A mass “People’s March” touched off without a hitch and thousands are now in the streets in opposition to the G20. A section of the Free Tibet movement, monks clad in their now familiar orange robes, lead the march. A stop downtown... 

by Billy Wharton published on the MRZine The frequently imbibing comedian W. C. Fields once proudly declared: “Everything I do is either illegal, immoral, or fattening.” The adjectives used by Fields perfectly characterize the role of the private health insurance industry in the debate about health care reform. As the debate intensifies more and more private health care profits are being...