Alternative Radio star David Barsamian comes to Newport for Rise Up & Resist
by Paul Haeder / October 2nd, 2019
The lifeblood of alternative radio is sometimes the celebrity that they create among themselves. And on Monday, October 7, Lincoln County’s KYAQ radio station will welcome one of the biggest stars from the bottom of the dial as David Barsamian visits Newport, Oregon on his Rise Up and Resist tour.
Barsamian grew up in New York, the son of Armenian refugees who fled the genocide unleashed in Turkey by the Ottoman government from 1915 to 1917. More than 1.5 million people were murdered.
The 74 year old will be at Oregon Coast Community College talking to the …
Throughout our days we all notice many things that elicit questions that quickly pass through us as in a dream. Here are some questions that I caught on the fly before they melted from my mind, and when I asked myself what the answers were, only songs came to me, songs that didn’t exactly answer the questions but set me to dreaming. This is an invitation to dream along.
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Two women out walking do not stop talking. An elderly man and woman out dining do not start talking.
Who says the most?
“Rally around the Pentagon!” is a phrase you don’t hear every day. It doesn’t have quite the same ring as “Support the Troops!”, which has been the undeclared war cry of the United States Propaganda Services for nearly three decades now.
Still considered to be the World’s largest office building, the Pentagon very literally keeps a low profile at a mere 5 stories tall. Even if the Pentagon were one day surpassed as the biggest office building on the planet, then it surely would remain the squattiest in its class. Nevertheless, in that event, “Rally around the World’s Squattiest Office Building!” …
Likud, the Blue and White party and Yisrael Beiteinu are ideological bedfellows – but other fears have prompted a stalemate
by Jonathan Cook / September 30th, 2019
It would be a grave mistake to assume that the continuing political deadlock in Israel – with neither incumbent prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu nor his main rival Benny Gantz seemingly able to cobble together a coalition government – is evidence of a deep ideological divide.
In political terms, there is nothing divided about Israel. In this month’s general election, 90 per cent of Israeli Jews voted for parties that identify as being either on the militaristic, anti-Arab right or on the religious, anti-Arab far-right.
The two parties claiming to represent the centre-left – the rebranded versions of Labour and Meretz – won …
There are liars in the world and then there’s Donald Trump. A first rate unapologetic gaslighting manipulator of language who takes deception to the heights of hypocrisy. Bending and looping definitions at will where words themselves start to lack all meaning. It’s not surprising that the world is in its present state when a bucket of highly condensed lies is splashed onto the public by every sycophantic corporate media outlet and the rebuttals, like this one you’re reading now, are given little if any coverage. It’s a mouse squeak responding to a thunderous roar of media channel distribution.
Teatro Nacional de São João, Porto
In this year 45 since the overthrow of the ancien regime of Portugal, I went to the last performance of Nuno Cardoso’s staging of Georg Büchner’s Dantons Tod (A Morte de Danton). ((Georg Büchner, 1835, translated by Francisco Luís Perreira, 2019.)) Since I have heard that this play has been included in the season of other stages beyond our borders, a review of a revolutionary play performed in a country with relatively recent revolutionary experience seemed worth sharing. The operatic adaptation was …
Much ink has been spilled in textbooks describing situations where autocratic states can behave badly. They abuse rights; they ignore international law and they ride roughshod over conventions. Liberal democracies may boast that they follow matters to the letter of the law, and make sure that citizens are given their fair and just cause in putting forth their cases. The practice suggests all too glaringly that the opposite is true.
The English legal tradition, with its historically brutal punishments, adoration of the fetish known as the rule of law, and a particular tendency towards a miscarriage of justice, has found a …
Reality clashed with the BBC version of false consensus in a remarkable edition of HardTalk last month. Roger Hallam, co-founder of Extinction Rebellion, was starkly honest about humanity’s extreme predicament in the face of climate breakdown and refused to buckle under host Stephen Sackur’s incredulous questioning. Sackur’s inability to grasp that we are already in a climate emergency, and that massive changes are necessary now to avoid societal collapse, was clear for all to see. His line of questioning attempted to present Hallam to the BBC audience as a dangerous …
by Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers / September 30th, 2019
Anti-Imperialism protest in the Phillippines. Photo: Carlo Manalansan by Bulatlat
‘Ukrainegate’ has opened the floodgates of impeachment in Washington, DC. President Trump’s phone call with Ukrainian President Zelensky provided such an opportunity that Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, who resisted pressure for impeachment, is now on board along with a majority of the party. Democrats are moving quickly to make Trump the third president ever to be impeached.
Conviction is up to the Republican-controlled Senate, where a two-thirds vote is required, so that is very unlikely. Trump will probably …
China has made massive strides ahead in improving the lives of hundreds of millions of people in the countryside. That progress was at the forefront on Friday as officials held a press conference focusing on agriculture and rural affairs, as well as a major ongoing poverty reduction campaign.
Imagine being trapped in an endless nightmare where corporations are free to sell you products known to be deadly. You buy a blood thinner your doctor ordered that can cause you to hemorrhage to death because there is no antidote. The breast implant you just received has been known to cause cancer. Finally you are encouraged to buy e- cigarettes that are laced with known toxins that can destroy your lungs. Welcome to America Inc.
2002—
· A deadly lung condition was reported in microwave popcorn plant workers in Missouri who had been inhaling the butter flavoring vapors while working. The potential …
Building on the momentum of millions of people taking part in worldwide strikes to demand action on fighting climate change, an environmental group, Stop Ecocide, has called upon the International Criminal Court (ICC) to recognize ecocide as a crime against humanity.
Activist Jojo Mehta of Stop Ecocide defined ecocide as “large scale and systematic damage and destruction to ecosystems.”
Mehta blames leaders of certain countries for contribution to, and inaction on, tackling climate change and proposes that the leaders of such countries be held criminally culpable by the ICC.
Yet, in so-called democracies, such as Canada, do not the …
Nearly 10 county school boards in Florida recently took collective action to pursue a case against privately-operated-owned charter schools in the Florida Supreme Court.
These public school systems that serve tens of thousands of students oppose the dreaded HB 7069 legislation, which the neoliberal governor of Florida, Rick Scott, signed into law in 2017.
The law does many things, including allowing the transfer of enormous sums of public money from public schools to privately-operated-owned charter schools, thereby leaving public schools in a worse position. Understandably, public school systems want to stop the flow of tens of millions of public dollars to privately-operated-owned …
The tributes have been dripping in heavy praise: former French president Jacques Chirac and mayor of Paris, the great statesman; the man who said no to the US-led war juggernaut into Iraq; the man loved for being loved. Many of these should have raised the odd eyebrow here and there. “We French have lost a statesman whom we loved as much as he loved us,” claimed current French president Emmanuel Macron.
When greatness is tossed around as a term in French commemorations, there is always a sense of merging the corporeal flesh with the non-corporeal state. The person thereby “embodies” France, …
President Trump wants negative interest rates, but they would be disastrous for the U.S. economy, and his objectives can be better achieved by other means.
The dollar strengthened against the euro in August, merely in anticipation of the European Central Bank slashing its key interest rate further into negative territory. Investors were fleeing into the dollar, prompting President Trump to tweet on August 30:
The Euro is dropping against the Dollar “like crazy,” giving them a big export and manufacturing advantage… And the Fed does NOTHING!
When the ECB cut its key rate as anticipated, from a negative 0.4% to a negative 0.5%, …
A prison, a protest, an art exhibit, a family farm, an antiwar conference, rent control, World War 1 and Hunter Biden
by David Rovics / September 29th, 2019
“Are you going to write something about this? If you do, I’ll share it.”
This wasn’t exactly a writing assignment, from one of the co-founders of the venerable anarchist newspaper from Detroit, Fifth Estate, but close enough to prompt a travelogue that I’d likely have written anyway… Peter Werbe and I were walking away from the Federal Correctional Institution in Danbury, Connecticut, after spending most of the afternoon visiting our mutual friend, Marius Mason — prisoner number 04672-061.
I …
The military-industrial-congressional complex (MIC) is the noxious alliance comprised of the Pentagon, the war industry, and Capitol Hill. U.S. Representative Tulsi Gabbard has spoken out against U.S. military interventions in such sovereign nations as Iraq, Syria, and Libya. While Gabbard’s public discussion of the costs of war rankles some within the MIC, she does not pose a threat to the status quo, even if she beats the odds and becomes President.
Gabbard spouts MIC pabulum (e.g. troops fight for freedom, and military deployments serve the country) and consistently votes for bloated military budgets. Gabbard says she is against regime change, …
The U.S. appears about to announce a peace agreement with the Taliban trading the withdrawal of U.S. forces for a Taliban commitment to exclude al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups from the country. (Presumably the Taliban themselves will be removed from the State Department’s terror list.) It has been under discussion for at least several years, attracting little journalistic attention.
It’s a deal that could in fact have been cut many years and many lives ago. The U.S. top brass concluded long ago that the war in Afghanistan was not militarily winnable (and indeed generating more “terrorism”). The Taliban whatever you think …
“Hell yes, we’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47!” With that unequivocal statement, Beto O’Rourke ignited right wing gun pundits who’ve kept some powder dry for just such a remark:
“Who is this “we” he speaks of? Democrats? Liberals? Bring it, fools. Come and try to take my legally purchased guns. I double-dog dare you to come to my house and attempt to violate my Constitutional rights. It’s won’t be nearly as easy as Beta O’Dork thinks. (Def-Con News)
“My AR is ready for you Robert Francis.” (Texas State Rep. Briscoe Cain)
“Why do you oppose federal licensing?” Because leading Democrats are threatening …
In addition to the unprecedented giveaway of the people’s assets to multi billionaires that is outlined in the green new deal, when can I expect regime change for climate, bombing for climate, imperialist words for climate compulsory sterilization for climate, etc.
— A 9.21.19 tweet from @cordeliers
I hesitated today in posting this rather “ungloved” tweet from Club des Cordeliers… because I can see how folks are all SO worked up and feeling some infusion of “hope” in the wake of all the Greta business, but post it I did anyway.
It was soon followed by a comment from someone who I know …
On 2 October 2019, it will be the 150th anniversary of the birth of Mohandas K. Gandhi in Gujarat, India. I would like to reflect on the visionary leadership that Gandhi offered the world, briefly comparing it with some national leaders of today, and to invite you to emulate Gandhi’s leadership.
While Gandhi is best remembered for being the mastermind and leader of the decades-long nonviolent struggle to liberate colonial India from British occupation, his extraordinary political, economic, social, ecological, religious and moral leadership are virtually unknown, despite the enormous legacy he left subsequent generations who choose to learn from …
Ms. Bari Weiss, Op Ed columnist
The New York Times
Dear Ms. Weiss:
As I listened to you this morning on NPR, I heard a very poised and polished explanation of why you so ardently support the state of Israel and why you believe that you can be both anti-occupation and pro-Israel–both a Liberal and a Zionist. There was a time when I would have bought your argument. No more. I, and countless others, have studied the history of Israel/Palestine, have met and debated at length with highly intelligent people on both sides of the issue, and have come to the clear conclusion …
Donald Trump said he believes the Constitution lets him do “whatever I want as President.” In over two and a half years, Trump has been a serial violator of the Constitution, unmatched by any president in American history. Just about every day he is a constitutional outlaw.
Constitutional scholar Bruce Fein has documented twelve categories of major constitutional transgressions. Some are also statutory crimes. Many of these involve Trump overpowering the critical separation of powers that our founders rigorously established to assure that the president does not become a monarch like King George III.
A new documentary brings to light an episode almost completely erased from Israel’s official history – and one that reveals how Israel’s apartheid character was established from its birth.
The The Voice of Ahmad by directors Avshalom Katz, David Ofek, Ayelet Bechar, Shadi Habib Allah, Naom Kaplan, Mamdooh Afdile, and Iddo Soskolne is being screened in Israel this month. It centers on the extraordinary early life of Ahmad Masrawa back in the 1950s, as the recently established Jewish state was finding its feet.
Masrawa was one of many hundreds of Palestinian teenagers in Israel who were adopted by …
Recovering from a broken hip, peace activist Kathy Kelly reflects on her experiences with people disabled and traumatized by war.
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Its economy gutted by war, Afghanistan’s largest cash crop remains opium. Yet farmers there do grow other crops for export. Villagers in the Wazir Tangi area of Nangarhar province, for example, cultivate pine nuts. As a precaution, this year at harvest time, village elders notified the governor of the province that they would be bringing in migrant workers to help them collect the nuts. Hired laborers, including children, would camp out in the pine nut forests, they informed the …
In 2017 Dissident Voice ran my article, “Any White Cop Can Kill a Black Man at Any Time,” which told how St. Louis cop Jason Stockley killed a 24-year-old black man, Anthony Lamar Smith. Though Stockley claimed he had fired in self defense when Smith pulled a gun on him, evidence showed that he had planted the gun after the killing. When Stockley was found “not guilty” protests by thousands in St. Louis lasted for months, just as in 2014 when another white cop Darren Wilson killed Michael Brown in neighboring Ferguson.
Crises of cops indiscriminately killing black men keep …
After years of teaching school and university, observing with dismay — to put it mildly — the institutional promotion of illiteracy and communicative incompetence, under the pretext that the soft prisons which are maintained for the incarceration and indoctrination of children are there to promote their personalities and get them through examinations so that they can replace their automaton parents, it took enormous digestive discipline to withstand the barrage of the past few days.
Maybe at my age — which we need not discuss — I can relax about personal extinction. However, it is nauseating to witness in the midst of …
During August thousands of fires ravaged the Amazon rainforest in Brazil and Bolivia. Some are still burning. In the wet ecosystem of the rainforest fires are not a natural phenomenon, they are started by people, mostly well-organized criminal gangs that profit from illegal logging and land clearance.
Brazil’s right-wing President, Jain Bolsanaro, took office in January; since then deforestation in the country has doubled, there have been 87,000 fires in the Amazon, the highest number since 2010. Funding to Brazil’s Environmental Protection Agency, IBAMA, has been cut by 25%, including monies allocated for prevention and control of fires, which was slashed …
It delighted Labour supporters and party apparatchiks who had been falling over each other in murderous ceremony at the party conference in Brighton: Prime Minister Boris Johnson would come to the unwitting rescue with his own version of a grand cock-up. This involved a now defeated attempt to circumvent parliamentary scrutiny and interference ahead of the Brexit date of October 31 through a prorogation of parliament.
Johnson still felt he was in with a chance, and with good reason. The UK Constitution is a nebulous muddle of conventions, documents and interpretations, a body of constitutional law without a constitution. It …
Portrait Hisham Ahmed was born in Deheisheh refugee camp on the outskirts of Bethlehem, Palestine in 1963. Blind from birth, Hisham somehow surmounted all odds and ultimately earned a Ph.D from the University of California at Santa Barbara. He taught for many years at Birzeit University in Palestine, before coming to Saint Mary’s College of California in 2006. He died of cancer in July 2019, age 56. The following remembrance was given at his memorial service held on 25 September 2019 at St Mary’s College. …
