Latest articles
by Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers / October 21st, 2019
US Out of the Middle East, Los Angeles protest against bombing in Syria from ABC7.com.
Stop The Turkish Invasion Of Syria
The crisis in Syria has taken a new direction with the Turkish invasion into the Northeast ostensibly to push the Kurdish peoples out. The US has added to this crisis by its green light to Turkey to attack after using the Kurds as a proxy force in the battle against ISIS.
The US’ role in Syria and in the greater Middle East has been destructive throughout …
by Todd Smith / October 21st, 2019
Snippet of a possible conversation overheard: “So, who won the Game?”
“You know, I don’t know, but Democracy was losing pretty badly when I fell asleep…”
It almost goes without saying that this is no longer a Democracy, these United States. Never mind the “fake news” President, Donald Trump: America’s not been a Democracy for a very long time — if, indeed, it ever was a…democracy. This has been the case since at least 1945, 1917, or, quite possibly, even as far back as 1776.
Beyond the powdered wigs of our founding Patriarchs, ancient Athens has always been seen as the cradle of …
by Kim Petersen / October 21st, 2019
It is up to us whether we will lift the world to new heights or let it fall into a valley of disrepair.
— US president Donald Trump addressing the UN General Assembly on 19 September 2017
The U.S. Economy is the envy of the world, as Europe and Asia slide ever toward recession.
— Trump tweet from 19 September 2019
To be supreme is, by definition, to be the greatest, to be ultimate, to reach sublimity.
However, to believe yourself to be supreme or the greatest is to belie greatness. ((I speak of supremacism, greatness as a stable unvarying attribute by virtue of which …
by C.J. Hopkins / October 21st, 2019
So, it looks like that’s it for America, folks. Putin has gone and done it again. He and his conspiracy of Putin-Nazis have “hacked,” or “influenced,” or “meddled in” our democracy. Unless Admiral Bill McRaven and his special ops cronies can ginny up a last-minute military coup, it’s four more years of the Trumpian Reich, Russian soldiers patrolling the streets, martial law, concentration camps, gigantic banners with the faces of Trump and Putin hanging in the football stadiums, mandatory Sieg-heiling in the public schools, National Vodka-for-Breakfast Day, death’s heads, babushkas, the whole nine yards.
We probably should have seen this …
by Shawgi Tell / October 21st, 2019
Charter school promoters embraced irrationalism long ago. Their reckless antisocial agenda requires them to do so because what they are promoting has no legitimate basis; it is not consistent with modern requirements.
“Leaders” in the charter school sector have long spoken and acted like free market demagogues, desperate to treat every human responsibility as a commodity, and to make it seem like this is normal, healthy, and desirable.
While privately-operated-owned non-profit and for-profit charter schools have solved no problems over the past 28 years, they have transferred tens of billions of …
by David Penner / October 20th, 2019
Men’s evil manners live in brass; their virtues
We write in water.
— Henry VIII (IV.ii.)
The notion that American oligarchs amass great wealth due to their extraordinary intelligence has become a deeply engrained tenet of liberal fundamentalist dogma. For in order for neoliberalism to maintain popular support it is necessary that the media relentlessly extol the virtues of the new robber barons. This myth of the meritocracy is sustained with fawning from the presstitutes, but also from the dubious practice of philanthrocapitalism. And yet cracks have appeared in the meritocratic facade which even the mass media has not been able to conceal.
From …
The examples of Venezuela and Hong Kong
by John V. Walsh / October 20th, 2019
The summer of 2019 has seen a series of events in Hong Kong beginning with two massive demonstrations that called for the withdrawal of the Extradition Bill to Macao, Taiwan and Mainland China. The demonstrations were peaceful and the bill was quickly “suspended” and labeled “dead” by the Hong Kong government and then withdrawn by summer’s end, meeting the demand of the demonstrations.
But that was not the end of the matter. Over the summer and to this day smaller demonstrations, of hundreds or at most a few thousand, broke …
by Kathy Kelly / October 20th, 2019
My friend Marianne Goldscheider, who is 87, suffered a broken hip in July, 2018 and then, in June 2019, it happened again. When she broke her hip the first time, she was running, with her son, on a football field. After the second break, when she fell in her kitchen, she recalls her only desire as she was placed on a stretcher. “I just wanted ‘the right pill,’” she says. She wished she could end her life.
Marianne says her Catholic friends, who live nearby in the New York …
Review of The Management of Savagery
by Roger D. Harris / October 19th, 2019
Destination Afghanistan was known as the big easy back in the halcyon days of the late 1960s. Hippies from throughout the affluent West hitchhiked to the capital, Kabul, where crash pads and hashish were cheap, and the locals were tolerant. Life appeared to be mellow in the scenic shadow of the Hindu Kush Himalayans. That was then.
Now Afghanistan is engulfed in year 18 of the forever US war with no end in sight. The war has gotten so old – the longest in US history – that the Pentagon …
by Myles Hoenig / October 19th, 2019
There aren’t many politicians in America who deserve the praise that Elijah Cummings had earned over the years. He was respected by all in Congress, and by many of his Republican rivals. He was a fighter for civil right all his life, and represented the most economically exploited citizens of Baltimore, first as a member of the State House of Delegates and then in the US Congress. Yes, he did represent part of Baltimore City that is ‘rat-infested’, as President Trump liked to equate all of Baltimore (at least where black Americans lived) and by extension Mr. Cummings himself. Donald …
by Riva Enteen / October 19th, 2019
The Tsar was not the only tyrant in the world; Capitalism was worse.
— John Reed, Ten Days that Shook the World
Wheat
I just came home to California from a 50-person citizen diplomacy delegation to Russia to ponder my neighbor’s bumper sticker that says “Just pretend it’s all OK.” That’s the American state of mind, but it doesn’t extend to Russians, who are painfully aware of war and its death and destruction. The still pervasive images of wheat in the cities and towns reflect the necessity of feeding the …
by Ralph Nader / October 19th, 2019
The British political philosopher, John Stuart Mill, was a man of many pithy phrases. Possibly his most widely quoted assertion is that “Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.”
This quote fits the Trump age perfectly. Where are you, Barack Obama? Obama is still polling higher than any other politician, active or retired. Instead of speaking out, he is making movies, maybe writing another book, and otherwise really enjoying himself.
Where are you Condoleezza Rice? She encouraged Rex Tillerson to be Trump’s Secretary of State, but Tillerson was cast aside …
by Peter Koenig / October 19th, 2019
In Ecuador, the fight against IMF austerity measures is far from over. Just a few hours after my article was published on Sunday, 13 October, “Ecuador and the IMF’s Killing Spree,” President Lenin Moreno declared the infamous Decree 883 was canceled; i.e., the astronomical price increases for fuel were reversed, the (police) state of emergency and curfew were called off. He wanted to put an end to the 11 days of protests with police and military-induced violence.
The police, supported by the army, carried out repression during the protests, like they have not been seen in Ecuador’s recent history, claiming …
by T.P. Wilkinson / October 18th, 2019
I heard a rumor that the poles have melted on Mars. Could this be in anticipation of US plans to colonise the planet?
In an earlier contribution I observed that the person transported to the Rockefeller-sponsored/ donated headquarters of US faux multilateralism, aka as the United Nations, for a pubescent tirade performance was incredible — in the sense of incredulous and mendacious. Of course, I circulated these comments among my younger, less sceptical friends aware that my unrestrained criticism would not endear me. However, I am simply too old to worry about the “terms of endearment”. I recall just after …
by Survival International / October 18th, 2019
A new and devastating investigation by Buzzfeed News has revealed that WWF’s director & board had detailed evidence of “widespread” atrocities being committed by rangers it funds and equips, but kept the information secret.
It’s the latest finding from a Buzzfeed investigation that has brought to light a series of secret WWF reports, proving the organization has known for years that the rangers it funds in central Africa commit gross human rights abuses among the local population.
Survival International has been highlighting these abuses, among the Baka …
by Jonathan Cook / October 18th, 2019
There is something profoundly deceitful in the Democratic Party and corporate media’s framing of Donald Trump’s decision to pull troops out of Syria.
One does not need to like Trump or ignore the dangers posed to the Kurds, at least in the short term, by the sudden departure of US forces from northern Syria to understand that the coverage is being crafted in such a way as to entirely overlook the bigger picture.
The problem is neatly illustrated in this line from a report by the Guardian newspaper of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s meeting this week with Trump, who is described as …
by John Klyczek / October 18th, 2019
On both sides of the political aisle, workforce-training reforms are being touted as the be-all, end-all of America’s public education system. Right-wing “school choice” proponents, such as President Donald Trump and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, push corporate charter school programs with workforce-training curriculums. Left-wing “community schooling” advocates, such as Democratic Presidential candidates Joe Biden and Julián Castro, push “lifelong-learning” programs with school-to-work curriculums. Both “conservatives” and “liberals” concur: the purpose of public education is workforce development.
It’s nice to know that, in this divisive era of Trump outrage, America’s political representatives can still reach across the …
by Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin / October 18th, 2019
Introduction
Opera productions depend on much state support, which is in decline, as states themselves go further and further into debt. To try and overcome these problems there have been many attempts at changes in form and content and even transmission in recent years. But these changes do not solve cost or accessibility issues especially in an era where it is difficult to get people to go out to the much cheaper cinema house, let alone a phenomenally expensive opera production. Although nowadays one is more likely to experience opera as cinema than theatre. Can such an expensive medium become popular …
by Binoy Kampmark / October 18th, 2019
The Decent Protester, appropriately capitalised and revered, is, from the outset, one who does not protest. It is an important point: to protest in the visage of such a person is an urge best left to inner fantasy and feeling. You come late to the scene: the best work and revolt has been done; the people who made the change are either dead, in prison, or ostracised. Modest changes might be made to the legal system, if at all.
To actually protest, by which is meant screaming, hollering, and disrupting, with the occasional sign of public indignation, is something of a …
No way, only the defeat of turbo-Capitalism!
by Andre Vltchek / October 18th, 2019
It is very popular these days to talk and write about the “trade war” between the United States and China. But is there really one raging? Or is what we are witnessing simply a clash of political and ideological systems: one being extremely successful and optimistic, the other depressing, full of dark cynicism and nihilism?
In the past, the West used to produce almost everything. While colonizing the entire planet (one should just look at the map of the globe between the two world wars), Europe and later the United States, Canada and Australia kept plundering all the continents of natural …
by Colin Todhunter / October 18th, 2019
On the back of Brexit, there are fears in the UK that a trade deal will be struck with Washington which will effectively lower food and environmental standards to those of the US. At the same time, it seems that the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership is being resurrected and could have a similar impact in the EU. These types of secretive, corporate-driven trade deals ride roughshod over democratic procedures and the public interest.
India has not been immune to such deals. The US-India Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture (2005) is aimed at widening access to India’s agricultural and retail sectors for US …
by Vijay Prashad / October 17th, 2019
Quito’s streets tremble between aspiration and repression; the smell of tear gas and the shouts for freedom reverberating in equal measure from one part of the city to another. President Lenín Moreno’s State of Emergency (October 3) and Curfew (October 12) give the men with guns more authority, but – despite hundreds of injured protestors and at least five dead – the violence has not broken the enthusiasm on the streets. The protests continue. Moreno’s options will soon run out. The oligarchy and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) – with …
by Edward Curtin / October 17th, 2019
The intimate human experience of time standing still is universal, although rare. When we undergo it, we are stunned. Silence seems to enclose us. It is the correlative to the more common experience of time passing at different speeds, sometimes slowly, sometimes fast, despite clocks. These universal experiences do not accord with the teleology that underlies the modern world with its scientific principle that leads to entropic death triumphant. They are therefore, as John Berger, the English writer and art critic, writes, “dismissed as subjective, because time, according to the nineteenth-century view, is objective, incontestable and indifferent; to its indifference …
by Rick Sterling / October 17th, 2019
The foreign policy elite is in an uproar. They claim “we have abandoned our allies”. They question “how can America be trusted?” They say the decision to withdraw from northern Syria was a “gift” to Russia, Iran, and Assad, even ISIS. It is true that the policy of US/NATO interventionism is failing. But that has been true since the invasion of Iraq or earlier. After the disastrous invasions and attacks on Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, and the 8 year undeclared war on Syria, isn’t it time to question the foreign policy elite?
If one believes in restoring international law and the UN Charter, it …
by Firas Samuri / October 17th, 2019
On October 7, 2019, the U.S. President Donald Trump announced the withdrawal of American troops from northeast Syria, where the contingent alongside Kurdish militias controlled the vast territories. Trump clarified that the decision is connected with the intention of Turkey to attack the Kurdish units, posing a threat to Ankara.
It’s incredible that the Turkish military operation against Kurds – indeed the territorial integrity of Syria has resulted in the escape of the U.S., Great Britain, and France. These states essentially are key destabilizing components of the Syrian crisis. …
by Ajamu Baraka / October 17th, 2019
Despite so many self-defined radicals’ reading and claims to understand Gramsci’s corrective to Marxism-Leninism’s mechanistic understanding of the relationship between the base and the ideological superstructure, the ease by which some radicals are manipulated by the crude ideological machinations of the ruling class is truly astonishing. It is quite understandable that liberals would be manipulated by fairly innovative ideological gimmicks like the notion of “humanitarian intervention” and the “responsibility to protect,” which relied on the assumption, proving correct, that the liberal consciousness would react favorably to appeals to oppose “authoritarians” and authoritarian systems. However, I suspect that state propagandists didn’t …
by Robert Hunziker / October 17th, 2019
Extinction Rebellion, XR est. October 31, 2018, has become a powerful force across the globe, almost overnight!!!
It is the fastest-growing environmental movement ever. As such, it is only too obvious that “people get it” when it comes to climate change/global warming because they’re jumping aboard like swarms of locusts. In fact, XR’s truthful exposure of the climate crisis/global warming is single-handedly turning average citizens of the world into fighting mad radicalized eco warriors. People who ordinarily do not get involved in politics or advocacy of any kind are suddenly …
Tens of thousands are to be driven out of their homes because their numbers pose a major demographic threat to a Jewish state
by Jonathan Cook / October 16th, 2019
The decades-long struggle by tens of thousands of Israelis against being uprooted from their homes – some for the second or third time – should be proof enough that Israel is not the western-style liberal democracy it claims to be.
Last week 36,000 Bedouin – all of them Israeli citizens – discovered that their state is about to make them refugees in their own country, driving them into holding camps. These Israelis, it seems, are the wrong kind.
Their treatment has painful echoes of the past. In 1948, 750,000 Palestinians were …
by Ramzy Baroud / October 16th, 2019
The call by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas for elections in the Occupied Territories is a political ploy. There will be no true, democratic elections under Abbas’ leadership. The real question is: why did he make the call in the first place?
On September 26, Abbas took on the world’s most important political platform, the United Nations General Assembly, to call for “general elections in Palestine – in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip”.
The Palestinian leader prefaced his announcement with a lofty emphasis on the centrality of democracy in his thinking. “From the outset, we have …
by M.K. Bhadrakumar / October 16th, 2019
The scenario agreed on behind the curtains through months of confidential exchanges, often one-on-one, between the Russian and Turkish leaders regarding north-eastern Syria is entering a critical phase of implementation on the ground with the agreement between the Kurds and the Assad regime.
We have a complex scenario where on the one hand the Turkish army and the Syrian opposition units loyal to Ankara are relentlessly continuing their southward offensive expanding control over Syria’s border regions populated by the Kurds. According to Turkish President Recep Erdogan, 1000 sq.kms. of territory previously under Kurdish control have been “liberated.”
On …
