As Americans sat down to Thanksgiving dinner, Iraqis were mourning 40 protesters killed by police and soldiers on Thursday in Baghdad, Najaf and Nasiriyah. Nearly 400 protesters have been killed since hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets at the beginning of October. Human rights groups have described the crisis in Iraq as a “bloodbath,” Prime Minister Abdul-Mahdi has announced he will resign, and Sweden has opened an investigation against Iraqi Defense Minister Najah Al-Shammari, who is a Swedish citizen, for crimes …
Despite the vehement objections of thousands of teachers, parents, college professors, public school advocates, state officials, and teachers’ unions, in late 2017 the State University of New York (SUNY) Board of Trustee’s charter school committee voted 4 to 1 to unilaterally and illegally lower training and preparation standards for teachers employed at privately-operated charter schools approved by SUNY (about 165 across the state). State officials called SUNY’s irresponsible decision to put more unqualified teachers in classrooms “an insult to the teaching profession.”
The anti-democratic SUNY decision meant that many privately-operated …
Imagine this rather typical SF scenario: alien invaders arrive on Earth. They are vastly superior in intelligence, technology, and most importantly, ethics. They quickly perceive that Earthlings are a dire mortal threat to the Earth’s biosphere. They reason that they must take decisive action soon, or else the Earth will meet its biological death. What are they to do?
First, they take up a consequentialist position and reason that eliminating a significant portion of the human population would immediately alleviate Earth’s acute environmental problems while saving countless numbers of species.
I set out at dawn. Her Majesty’s Prison Belmarsh is in the flat hinterland of south east London, a ribbon of walls and wire with no horizon. At what is called the visitors centre, I surrendered my passport, wallet, credit cards, medical cards, money, phone, keys, comb, pen, paper.
I need two pairs of glasses. I had to choose which pair stayed behind. I left my reading glasses. From here on, I couldn’t read, just as Julian couldn’t read for the first few weeks of his incarceration. His glasses were …
The personal is political for Donald Trump, even though he is certainly no feminist. The president, who was a young adult at the time this women’s liberation slogan was popular — to point out that what happens in a woman’s private life was part of a larger political problem of male supremacy — may have unintentionally absorbed the words, but never understood their meaning.
Ironically, while the slogan can express an important feminist truth, “the personal is political” also seems an apt characterization of a Republican 21st century, neoliberal, Ayn …
Chief rabbi Ephraim Mirvis has not only misrepresented the known facts about Labour and its supposed antisemitism crisis. He has not only interfered in an overtly, politically partisan manner in the December 12 election campaign by suggesting that Jeremy Corbyn – against all evidence – is an antisemite.
By speaking out as the voice of British Jews – a false claim he has allowed the UK media to promote – his unprecedented meddling in the election of Britain’s next leader has actually made the wider Jewish community in the UK much less safe. …
That the U.S. is a nation divided is a statement few knowledgeable individuals would challenge. These divisions have been exacerbated, to some degree, by the impending 2020 election wherein Americans will go to the polls to elect their next President and a cadre of senators, congressmen and a multitude of lesser known local politicians.
These divisions include race, ethnicity, religion, the distribution of wealth and the provision of medical services. The Latin motto that appears on American currency and elsewhere, “e plurubus unum” (out of many, one) is clearly no …
Every time we witness an injustice and do not act, we train ourselves to be passive in its presence.
— Julian Assange
In what Canadian news room is what’s happening to Wikileaks founder Julian Assange and to press freedom not worthy of the public’s right to know?
This week Swedish prosecutors dropped their sexual misconduct investigation of Assange for lack of evidence. On CBC’s The National, Ian Hanomansing took less than 10 seconds to update the nation on what is arguably the most important press freedom story of our time.
by Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers / November 29th, 2019
Clearing the FOG hosts Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese interviewed Alison Weir, journalist and founder of If Americans Knew, a website that provides factual information about the Israeli State and Palestine. Weir describes how she learned firsthand that US media provide a false and one-sided narrative about Occupied Palestine and why she has dedicated the past twenty years to counter that. She also explains some of the most common myths and what she learned as she did research for her book, Against Our Better Judgment. Weir is …
The Jewish community’s alienation from Labour has been years in the making – but it is Johnson’s Conservatives who have embraced hostility to minorities
by Jonathan Cook / November 28th, 2019
A supposed antisemitism crisis in Britain’s Labour party since Jeremy Corbyn became leader has erupted back into the headlines.
This time barely any effort has been made to conceal the fact that the accusations relate to the “danger” that Corbyn could soon win power, with Britain gearing up for a general election in less than a month.
This week Britain’s chief rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis, added his voice to argue in the Times newspaper that the opposition leader was “unfit for high office” – the first time a serving chief rabbi has ever sought to interfere in the outcome …
Why would an alternative media website that questions government and corporate policies about climate change and the environment have so much trouble understanding that the same sort of skepticism is necessary regarding Canadian foreign policy?
Imagine a self-declared progressive media outlet saying they don’t cover racism, patriarchy or the dispossession of First Nations because they don’t have the expertise. Most on the left would laugh or label that outlet racist, sexist and pro-colonial. But that seems to be the National Observer’s position regarding coverage of Canadian imperialism.
While they publish international affairs stories mimicking Ottawa’s view of the world from Canadian Press …
I’d like to note two articles by Professor Michel Chossudovsky published this November in Global Research: they help explain the current denigration of the Convention on Genocide. When we grow accustomed to our system’s atrocities we lessen our humanity.
In an article of November 13th, 2019 ((“Sleeping With The Third Reich: America’s Unspoken “Alliance” with Nazi Germany against the Soviet Union,” Prof. Michel Chossudovsky, November 13, 2019, Global Research.)) Chossudovsky outlines the history of George H.W. Bush’s father, Prescott Bush, supplying the Axis with oil through Standard Oil Company during WWII. This was allowed by the U.S. government. It is “news” …
According to a PressTV Report of 24 November, 2019, Iran and China are working on a trade or barter deal that would circumvent US sanctions. It would bypass US-dollar denominated transactions, exchanging Iranian oil for Chinese goods and services and investments. The head of the Tehran Chamber of Commerce, Industries, Mines and Agriculture (TCCIMA), Masoud Khansari told Teheran’s Tasnim news agency on 19 November 2019 that “The mechanism, aiming to increase economic exchanges between Iran and China, is in the process of being finalized and implemented.” He meant indeed, a barter deal between the two countries, avoiding a monetary exchange, …
Lately, in my ongoing exploration of the artistic movements of the American past, I’ve noticed that, in a mere half-decade (1960-65), creative achievements in the performing arts — music, drama, film — were so outstanding as to never to be equaled again (in my opinion). What are my criteria for such “greatness” in these art-forms? Basically, powerfully humanistic and vigorously executed creations, works that express — often subtly and with considerable nuance — ultimate human values. Both rational and emotional, such a work must exhibit coherent, unified structure, as well as an authenticity of insight which transcends stale platitudes and …
It is hardly shocking that the United States government has finally decreed that illegal Jewish settlements which have been built in defiance of international law, are, somehow, “consistent” with international law.
US foreign policy has been edging closer towards this conclusion for some time. Since his advent to the White House in January 2017, President Donald Trump has unleashed a total and complete reversal of his country’s foreign policy regarding Palestine and Israel.
Let us not have any illusion regarding the American approach to the so-called ‘Israeli-Palestinian conflict’ prior to Trump’s Presidency. The US has never, not even once, stood up …
The decision to indict Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on three separate criminal counts pushes the country’s already unprecedented electoral stalemate into the entirely uncharted territory of a constitutional crisis.
There is no legal precedent for a sitting prime minister facing a trial – in Netanyahu’s case, for bribery, fraud and breach of trust. Former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert was charged with corruption in 2009 but only after he had resigned from office.
Israeli commentators are already warning of the possibility of civil war if, as seems likely, Netanyahu decides to whip up his far-right supporters into a frenzy of outrage. …
After nearly 30 years of hype surrounding charter schools, a large number of charter schools across the country continue to perform poorly. This is especially disturbing given the fact that non-profit and for-profit charter schools routinely cherry-pick their students, have high teacher turnover rates, are run by unelected individuals, oppose unions, over-pay administrators, and siphon enormous sums of money from public schools. Further, while academic failure is one of the main reasons charter schools close regularly, financial malfeasance is the number one reason charter schools close. Fraud and corruption are rampant in the charter school sector.
Newspapers and other media in the United States and Britain have recently declared a passion for freedom of speech, especially the right to publish freely. They are worried by the “Assange effect”.
It is as if the struggle of truth-tellers like Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning is now a warning to them: that the thugs who dragged Assange out of the Ecuadorean embassy in April may one day come for them.
A common refrain was echoed by the Guardian last week. The extradition of Assange, said the paper, “is not a question of how wise Mr. Assange …
Review of Andrei Martyanov's The (Real) Revolution in Military Affairs
by Kim Petersen / November 26th, 2019
On 1 March, Russian president Vladimir Putin delivered the annual address to Russia’s Federal Assembly. The part of Putin’s address that drew the most notice was his revealing the development of new hypersonic weaponry unmatched elsewhere: the Mach 10+ capable Kinzhal and the Mach 9 capable Zircon.
Russian military and naval expert Andrei Martyanov examines this advancement in military technology in his new book The (Real) Revolution in Military Affairs (Clarity Press, 2019). He writes that Kinzhal and Zircon hypersonic missiles revamp
naval warfare completely on a scale comparable in its effect to to the introduction of steam-powered …
Legalienate editors Frank Scott and Michael Smith, who declared themselves co-president of the United States in February, today hailed the self-proclaimed presidency of Jeanine Añez in Bolivia as a harbinger of democratic self-determination throughout the world.
“Juan Guaidó in Venezuela was just the beginning,” exulted Smith. “On the eve of Thanksgiving, we are deeply grateful to have yet another self-proclaimed president, especially in Bolivia, which suffered the indignity of majority rule for 13 long years, and couldn’t have been expected to take it much longer.”
“Their long national nightmare is over,” added Scott, who observed that Morales’s “insane socialism” had sent the …
by Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers / November 25th, 2019
Stop killings by police protest (Credit: William Widmer of the NY Times)
The entire system of policing in the United States is in crisis. Police murdering civilians has become a too common nightmare across the United States. The police murders of Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO, Eric Garner in New York City, Walter Scott in Charleston, SC, Tamar Rice in Cleveland OH, Freddie Gray in Baltimore, MD, Laquan McDonald in Chicago, IL and so many more have spurred a movement to transform policing.
The Vatican comes with its ills, contradictions and blatant hypocrisies in the field of moral theology and human existence, but on the issue of atomic and nuclear weapons, the position has been fairly consistent, if marked by gradual evolution. On February 8, 1948, Pope Pius XII held an audience with members of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. “What misfortunes,” he asked, “should humanity expect from a future conflict, if it should prove impossible to arrest or curb the use of ever newer and more surprising scientific inventions?”
The Second Vatican Council through its 1965 document Gaudium et spesdeemed the …
As the deadlock over forming a government continues, charges against the caretaker prime minister have tipped the country into an uncharted constitutional crisis
by Jonathan Cook / November 25th, 2019
The decision to indict Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on three separate criminal counts pushes the country’s already unprecedented electoral stalemate into the entirely uncharted territory of a constitutional crisis.
There is no legal precedent for a sitting prime minister facing a trial – in Netanyahu’s case, for bribery, fraud and breach of trust. Former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert was charged with corruption in 2009 but only after he had resigned from office.
Israeli commentators are already warning of the possibility of civil war if, as seems likely, Netanyahu decides to whip up his far-right supporters into a frenzy of outrage. …
Building solidarity for social emancipation from the state, capitalism, patriarchy, and theological intolerance across the geographic and ethnic divisions of the MIddle East.
Here in the US, Rojava is known for decentralization of state and patriarchal power. The adoption of community direct democracy, regional confederation, and the organized women’s movement actively dismantling systems of male domination are perceived as models for social transformation. Dr. Zozan Sami Mistefa is a Kurdish physician in Kobani, Rojava, located in northeastern Syria near the border with Turkey. The Turkish military began the …
The world already produces enough food to feed 10 billion people but over two billion are experiencing micronutrient deficiencies (of which 821 million were classed as chronically undernourished in 2018). However, supporters of genetic engineering (GE) crops continually push the narrative that GE technology is required if we are to feed the world and properly support farmers.
First of all, it must be stressed that there is already sufficient evidence to question the efficacy of GE crops; however, despite this, conventional options and innovations that outperform GE crops are in danger of being sidelined in a rush by powerful, publicly …
“I have found that, to make a contented slave, it is necessary to make a thoughtless one. It is necessary to darken his moral and mental vision, and, as far as possible, to annihilate the power of reason.”
— Fredrick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave (1845): 99.
Douglas was probably speaking of the house Negroes of slavery days who lived far better materially than the field Negroes, but his definition fits present members of comfortable class minority humans of the “house” and …
The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), also called the New Silk Road, is based on a 2,100-year-old trade route between the Middle East and Eastern Asia, called the Silk Road. It wound its way across the huge landmass Eurasia to the most eastern parts of China. It favored trading, based on the Taoist philosophy of harmony and peaceful coexistence – trading in the original sense of the term, an exchange with “win-win” outcomes, both partners benefitting equally.
Today, in the western world we have lost this concept. The terms of …
Last month, the U.S. House of Representatives voted in an overwhelming bipartisan majority to officially recognize the Armenian genocide more than a century after the atrocities were committed. The motion was a departure from decades of U.S. government refusal because of its realpolitik considerations of regional ally and fellow NATO member, the Republic of Turkey. The Ottoman Empire’s successor state and the Turkic state of Azerbaijan remain the sole nations in the world that explicitly deny the mass extermination and expulsion of 1.5 million Ottoman Armenians constitutes “genocide.” While the U.S. had previously acknowledged that war crimes were committed beginning …
The last of a series of gigs I’ve been doing over the past six weeks on the road was last night. I don’t always manage to collect my thoughts on the experience into a blog post, but I will this time.
For a very long time now I have usually been doing two tours of this length or longer, every spring and every autumn. Sometimes my lack of a blog post at the end is because I have no particularly new or trenchant observations to make about the places I’ve just been — at least not ones that are so distinct …
China has by far the largest lithium market. China produces already today the most electric cars, about 1 million in 2018, and will at least triplicate their production by 2025, and in the following decade or two, demand is expected to increase exponentially.
Bolivia has the world’s largest by far known lithium reserves. A long-term win-win contract between China and Bolivia was under preparation since early 2019 and being negotiated as a 51% Bolivia – 49% China share-arrangement, with manufacturing of batteries and other lithium-related products foreseen in Bolivia – added value, job creation in Bolivia with an initial investment of …
