Halo Halo / Tiny tips
Halo, halo
What is amongst the top ten American capitalist ‘opportunities’ (read scams) for becoming rich in the USA? One in particular is also popular in other parts of the world. Become a preacher. Grow a congregation. Rook them for as much money as you can.
At a Pentecostal Assemblies of the World Convention a preacher said it had cost him $2,000 to renew his ordination and license. Can y’all contribute toward that? Yahoo reported that he ordered the doors locked on the one thousand people there and demanded that they each give twenty dollars. And the same from the online audience. Nice work if you can get it, Rev. He’s quoted in the piece as justifying the action on the following grounds: ‘The truth is, when finances are being received in any worship gathering, it is one of the most vulnerable and exposed times for both the finance and security teams. Movement during this sacred exchange can be distracting and, at times, even risky. My directive was not about control it was about creating a safe, focused, and reverent environment for those choosing to give, and for those handling the resources’.
Chutzpah on a grand scale. Wonder if he had the American equivalent of Securicor waiting outside to safely carry off all the loot? Credit where it’s due, he’s merely following all those who recognised early on that religion offered power over the masses and oodles of boodle.
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The Socialist Party is wholly in favour of free speech, even when religious nonsense is being propagated. That’s because we have a long history of refuting such hokum with empirical evidence. In the USA the First Amendment guarantees freedom of expression, and free exercise of religion except where it doesn’t.
In Kansas, according to AlterNet, the ‘Satanic Grotto, a group of Kansas religious anarchists’ wanted to hold a ‘black mass’ inside the Statehouse.
In a fine display of sensitivity, the SG noted that ‘The event would not be the full “black mass” the group normally observes because that would involve nudity, drinking and other activities discouraged at the Statehouse. There also wouldn’t be fire or anything used in the ceremony that might pose a physical risk to the public’.
The American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family, and Property organised an online petition. It’s described in the piece as a ‘traditionalist Catholic advocacy group’. Private property, eh?
Surprisingly not, the Kansas Governor responded with ‘computer says no’.
The article author points out that encouraging deference to religion can lead to ‘true believers’ resorting to violence to end perceived blasphemy. His example is the attack on Salman Rushdie in 2022, who was left blind in one eye.
Jonathon Turley, a US First Amendment lawyer, said: ‘Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner has announced that the government will be further cracking down on hate speech with a new working group tasked with defining “Islamophobia”’. The effort to crack down on “Islamophobia” could create a type of blasphemy standard if it encompasses criticism of the faith or its practices’.
DC
The top 1 percent in the U.S … had a combined net worth of $49.2 trillion by the end of 2024. The combined value of almost 100 million U.S. homes during the same time was $49.7 trillion (Newsweek, tinyurl.com/r4wz58uk).
‘Woke’ is not a precise, scientific term. But it typically refers to the attempt to combat forms of oppression – like racism and sexism – on the basis of identity politics, through means like quotas, changes to language, and raising awareness … ‘woke’ policies seek to ‘fight’ oppression on an individualistic basis, whilst completely jettisoning any idea of class struggle, or seeing oppression as being rooted in capitalist society (The Communist, tinyurl.com/3y3e8hp2).
Trucks carrying commercial goods, which are later sold in Gaza, are charged at least $20,000…while aid trucks are also subject to extortion before crossing to the enclave. Organi is a Sinai businessman, politician and tribal leader allied with President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. Organi’s name has become synonymous with unofficial profits made out of the suffocating Gaza blockade, particularly from desperate Palestinians attempting to flee the fighting. MEE last year revealed that Organi made at least $2m daily from Palestinians who left the Gaza Strip via the border crossing point with Egypt… (MEE, tinyurl.com/4uc2drtu).
While his crackdowns provoked outrage around the globe, Duterte and his brand of politics remained popular at home even after he left office. His daughter… riding on her family name, was elected Vice President in 2022 in a landslide victory alongside President Marcos Jr, himself the son of a former dictator who ruled the Philippines from 1965 to 1986 (Time, tinyurl.com/2bs4rku9).
A ceasefire in Ukraine is not about peace. It’s about money, just as the earlier war was. As all wars are, ultimately. An acceptable ceasefire for Trump, as well as for Putin, will involve a carve-up of Ukraine’s goodies. Rare earth minerals, land, agricultural production will be the real currency driving the agreement (MEE, tinyurl.com/3as72rek).
Tren de Aragua’s growth surged as a result of mass incarceration policies that began under Venezuela’s former President Hugo Chávez and expanded under current President Nicolás Maduro. Incarceration rates began to increase in 2009 and were exacerbated by police raids deployed in 2010 in marginalized neighborhoods across the country. Venezuela’s prisons became filled with young, poor men (The Conversation, tinyurl.com/3uuhmj5f).
The preconditions for a communist or socialist society are (1) the development of a productive potential sufficient to support the reasonable needs of the population and (2) a clear majority who want such a society and understand what it entails. The SPGB’s position is that precondition (1) has been met a long time ago, but we are a long way off from meeting precondition (2). If and when we do have a class-consciousness socialist majority, there is nothing to prevent us from immediately implementing the new society. There is absolutely no reason whatsoever to linger on with one or another form of capitalism a moment longer (Letter in Weekly Worker, tinyurl.com/4e2texk8).
(These links are provided for information and don’t necessarily represent our point of view).
Next article: Material World – Has capitalism become financialised? ➤