Latest articles
by Jonathan Cook / September 12th, 2019
If there is an upside to Brexit, it is this: it has made it increasingly hard to present Jeremy Corbyn, contrary to everything the corporate media has been telling us for the past four years, as anything but a political moderate. In truth, he is one of the few moderates left in British – or maybe that should be English – politics right now. The fact that still isn’t obvious to many in Britain is a sign of their – not his – extremism.
Brexit has brought into sharp focus, at least for those prepared to look, the fanatacism that dominates …
by Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers / September 12th, 2019
Leon Neal, Getty Images
Many who oppose the aggressive foreign policy of the United States under President Donald Trump, which has resulted in record numbers of bombs dropped, regime change operations against Venezuela, Nicaragua, Iran and Hong Kong, the abusive use of unilateral coercive measures (sanctions) and record military budgets, cheered when uber-hawk, John Bolton was removed as the National Security Advisor.
Bolton undermined Trump numerous times such as when Trump wanted to get out of Syria and sought negotiations with North Korea and Iran. Bolton led Trump into …
by Todd Smith / September 11th, 2019
Not all atrocities are created equal — except that all are equally atrocious. Auschwitz, Srebrenica, Rwanda, Tulsa, Oklahoma, Memorial Day weekend, 1921, and many other scenes of modern genocide besides, are easily seen as crimes against humanity of the worst magnitude. Yet, if you add Hiroshima and Nagasaki to the mass murderous mix in the presence of a card-carrying American exceptionalist, you are quite likely to trigger a savage burst of effluvia terribly tied to Pearl Harbor. I exaggerate, of course — but only mildly.
In this context, a recent Microsoft News poll (July 31 to August 5, 2019), canvassing over …
by Andre Vltchek / September 11th, 2019
Whenever Hong Kong protesters are destroying public property, there are no cameras of Western media outlets in sight. But when police decide to intervene, protecting their city, Western media crusaders emerge in full force.
On September 15, 2019, huge US flags were waving in the air. A massive demonstration, consisting of mainly young people, was moving up from the old British-built downtown area of the city towards the US Consulate General, often erroneously called the “embassy.”
The temperature was well over 30 degrees Celsius, but the number of ‘protesters’ kept growing. Many of the main arteries in Hong Kong were entirely blocked….
by Ramzy Baroud / September 11th, 2019
The death of Israa Ghrayeb has ignited furious reactions regarding the so-called ‘honor-killings’ in Palestine and throughout the Arab world.
It also wrought confusion with respect to the jurisprudential foundation of such crimes, which are often committed in the name of protecting the honor of the family.
Israa, a 21-year-old makeup artist from the town of Beit Sahour in the West Bank, was reportedly beaten to death by her own brother for ‘dishonoring’ the family. The tragic episode was ignited by a video posted on social media where Israa was seen spending time with her soon-to-be fiancé.
While Palestinians and other …
by Jeremy Kuzmarov / September 10th, 2019
On Saturday September 7, Russia and Ukraine agreed to a prisoner swap which has brought hope of improved relations between the two countries and an end to the 5-year long conflict in Eastern Ukraine.
A peace accord is being planned for later this month in Normandy involving Ukraine, Russia, France and Germany.
Ukraine’s newly elected comedian president Volodymyr Zelensky called the prisoner exchange a “first step” in ending the war in Eastern Ukraine, which has killed an estimated 13,000 civilians.
The Ukraine War remains largely unknown to the American public even though the United States has had a great stake in it.
The war …
by Yves Engler / September 10th, 2019
If the ancient storyteller Aesop was correct and “a man is known by the company he keeps” what can we learn about Irwin Cotler from his friends and associates?
As I’ve written, the former Liberal justice minister has been a leading anti-Palestinian activist for decades. More recently, he has sought to unseat Venezuela’s government and stoke confrontation with Iran and Russia. Since writing two stories about Cotler earlier this year I’ve come across more about his dubious human rights credentials and links to some questionable characters, including:
The MEK. Cotler has enabled the violent, cult like, Iranian Mujahedin-e …
by Gerald E. Scorse / September 10th, 2019
“I’ve been rich and I’ve been poor. Believe me, rich is better.” This famous quote has always been true, but never as true as today. After decades of dominance by the right, here’s the 2019 version:
“I’ve been rich and I’ve been poor. Believe me, rich is insanely better.”
The insanity stems from tax policies. Marginal income tax rates plunged starting in the 1980s, hitting their modern-day lows under President George W. Bush. After rising modestly during the Obama Administration, they fell again under President Trump.
Rate cuts generate only part of the current bonanza. Tax breaks passed by …
by Shawgi Tell / September 10th, 2019
Across the country, thousands of charter schools have closed in under 30 years. Corruption and poor academic performance are two key reasons for the high failure rate in the charter school sector.
Between 1998 and 2019, 306 charter schools closed in Ohio. On average, that is more than one charter school closing per month for 20 years.
Ohio is often called the “Wild West” of charter schools because of the intense chaos, anarchy, and violence in the charter school sector in that state. Ohio’s charter school laws are notoriously antisocial and charter school–friendly. Accountability and transparency are essentially zero in Ohio’s charter …
The US has not taken kindly to Israel’s actions in Iraq, fearing that a local backlash could endanger the 5,000 troops it has stationed there
by Jonathan Cook / September 10th, 2019
Every Israeli prime minister – not least Benjamin Netanyahu – understands that a military entanglement with Hezbollah, Lebanon’s armed Shia movement on Israel’s northern border, is a dangerous wager, especially during an election campaign.
It was Shimon Peres who lost to Mr Netanyahu in 1996, weeks after the former prime minister had incensed Israel’s Palestinian minority – a fifth of the population – by savagely attacking Lebanon in a futile bid to improve his military, and electoral, standing.
Lebanon proved a quagmire for Ehud Olmert too, after he launched a war in 2006 that demonstrated how exposed Israel’s northern communities were to …
by Colin Todhunter / September 10th, 2019
The information below and the quotes were taken from the 12-page report that accompanied Rosemary Mason’s recent open letter to the Chief Medical Officer to England, Sally Davies. It can be accessed here.
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Campaigner and environmentalist Dr Rosemary Mason has written an open letter to the Chief Medical Officer of England, Sally Davies. In it, Mason states that none of the more than 400 pesticides that have been authorised in the UK have been tested for long-term actions on the brain: in the foetus, in children or in adults.
The UK Department of Health (DoH) has previously stated that …
A Review of Beaten Down, Worked Up, by Steven Greenhouse
by Chris Wright / September 9th, 2019
We live in a paradoxical time. On the one hand, workers and organized labor are in their worst state since the early 1930s. Only 6.4 percent of private-sector workers belong to unions; average hourly pay is below what it was in 1973; 40 percent of adults lack the savings to pay for a $400 emergency expense. On the other hand, there is more excitement and organizing potential on the left, and among many workers, than there has been in generations. The Fight for $15 has been remarkably successful; hundreds of thousands of teachers have gone on strike illegally and won; …
by Andre Vltchek / September 9th, 2019
There are rare moments in history, when even the most determined enemies can suddenly recognize the futility of battle. Sometimes, just for a moment or two. Sometimes, for longer. Such moments of sanity may save thousands, even millions human lives. And, such moments are not expressions of weakness or cowardice; on the contrary; they are embodiments of courage.
I want to believe that what happened at the Lebanese – Israeli border in August 2019, was precisely one of those such rare moments of sanity.
It changes nothing in terms of the big, geopolitical picture: Israel is a Western outpost in the Middle …
by Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers / September 8th, 2019
The People’s Mobilization to Stop the US War Machine and Save the Planet is two weeks away. The “People’s Mobe” will be held from September 20 to 23 in New York City during the United Nations General Assembly.
Members of the Venezuelan Embassy Protection Collective started organizing the People’s Mobe in May. Organizers sought to bring the issue of US violations of international law, such as when the State Department violated the Vienna Convention by raiding the Venezuelan Embassy on May 16, to the UN General Assembly and …
Guy Endore’s radical reimagining of Haiti and revolution
by Joseph G. Ramsey / September 8th, 2019
One hundred years ago this fall, on the morning of October 7, 1919, a group of two hundred to three hundred armed Haitian rebels launched an attack on U.S. occupation forces in Port-au-Prince. Wielding “swords, machetes, and pikes,” these cacos (as they were called) entered the city with hopes of national liberation, driven to violence by a brutal, racist U.S. occupation. ((Benjamin R. Beede, The War of 1898 and U.S. Interventions, 1898–1934: An Encyclopedia (New York: Routledge, 1994), 435.)) This occupation had subjected Haitians to the hated forced labor system of the corvée, seized control over Haitian finance, and rewritten the Haitian Constitution …
by Shawgi Tell / September 7th, 2019
Charter school advocates have always desperately sought to convince themselves and the public that privately-run nonprofit and for-profit charter schools that operate like businesses are actually public and similar in many ways to public schools.
Nothing could be farther from the truth. Charter schools are not public schools.
In reality, privately-operated nonprofit and for-profit charter schools differ in many profound ways from public schools that have been educating 90 percent of America’s youth for more than a century.
Below is an abbreviated list of the many ways in which privately-operated nonprofit and for-profit charter schools differ significantly from public schools.
Charter …
by Binoy Kampmark / September 7th, 2019
Robert Mugabe is the sort of figure that always caused discomfort. He was a permanent revolutionary, becoming, in time, the despotic ruler who frittered away revolutionary gain. He played multiple roles in international political consciousness. As Zimbabwe’s strongman, he was demonised and lionised in equal measure for a good deal of his time in power. His role from the 1990s – Mugabe, the West’s all-too-convenient bogeyman and hobgoblin – tended to outweigh other considerations. In the end, even his supporters had to concede that he had outstayed his welcome, another African leader gone to seed.
In 2008, Mahmood Mamdani noted …
by Edward Curtin / September 6th, 2019
Back in the 1960s, the CIA official Cord Meyer said the agency needed to “court the compatible left.” He knew that drawing liberals and leftists into the CIA’s orbit was the key to efficient propaganda. Right-wing and left-wing collaborators were needed to create a powerful propaganda apparatus that would be capable of hypnotizing audiences into believing the myth of American exceptionalism and its divine right to rule the world. The CIA therefore secretly worked to influence American and world opinion through the literary and intellectual elites.
Frances Stonor Saunders comprehensively covers this in her 1999 book, The Cultural Cold War: The …
Dismantling the Myth of Bt Cotton Success in India
by Colin Todhunter / September 6th, 2019
Political posturing aligned with commercial interests means that truth is becoming a casualty in the debate about genetically modified (GM) crops in India. The industry narrative surrounding Bt cotton is that it has been a great success. The current Modi-led administration is parroting this claim and argues its success must be replicated by adopting a range of GM food crops, amounting to what would be a full-scale entry of GM technology into Indian agriculture. Currently, Bt cotton is India’s only officially approved commercially cultivated GM crop.
With the aim of putting the record straight, a media event took place on Friday, …
What is it?
by Robert Hunziker / September 6th, 2019
The climate crisis is turning average law-abiding people into raging law-breaking eco rebels, by boatloads. Extinction Rebellion (ER) is at the forefront, demanding that governments declare climate emergencies and take urgent action.
In that regard, ER, which started in the UK, says government must reduce carbon emissions to Net Zero by 2025, or else! Social chaos will spring loose from within the darkened shadows of a raging climate, bringing civilized society to its knees and within current lifetimes. For proof, read the science, which says it all. We’re doomed without …
by John Stanton / September 5th, 2019
The Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan required major shifts in national resources from civilian to military purposes and contributed to the growth of the budget deficit and public debt. Through FY 2018, the direct costs of the wars will have totaled more than $1.9 trillion, according to US Government figures. Pollution is a serious issue. The United States (US) is a “large emitter of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels; deals with water pollution from runoff of pesticides and fertilizers; has limited natural freshwater resources in much of the western part of the country that require careful management. …
by Binoy Kampmark / September 5th, 2019
It took gallons and flagons of blood, but it eventuated, a squeeze of history into a parchment of possibility: the Taliban eventually pushed the sole superpower on this expiring earth to a deal of some consequence. (The stress is on the some – the consequence is almost always unknown.) “In principle, on paper, yes we have reached an agreement,” claimed the US envoy Zalmay Khalilzad on the Afghan channel ToloNews. “But it is not final until the president of the United States also agrees to it.”
The agreement entails the withdrawal (the public relations feature of the exercise teasingly calls …
by Ramzy Baroud / September 5th, 2019
On September 1, the Lebanese group Hezbollah, struck an Israeli military base near the border town of Avivim. The Lebanese attack came as an inevitable response to a series of Israeli strikes that targeted four different Arab countries in the matter of two days.
The Lebanese response, accompanied by jubilation throughout Lebanon, shows that Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, may have overplayed his cards. However, for Netanyahu it was a worthy gamble, as the Israeli leader is desperate for any new political capital that could shield him against increasingly emboldened contenders in the country’s September 17 general elections.
A fundamental …
Where are the self-styled anti-war activists - like Democracy Now?
by John V. Walsh / September 4th, 2019
South China Morning PostThrough the summer the world has watched as protests shook Hong Kong. As early as April they began as peaceful demonstrations which peaked in early June, with hundreds of thousands, in protest of an extradition bill. That bill would have allowed Hong Kong, a Special Administrative Region of China, to return criminals to Taiwan, mainland China or Macau for crimes committed there – after approval by multiple layers of the Hong Kong judiciary. In the wake of those enormous nonviolent demonstrations, Carrie Lam, …
by Robert Hunziker / September 4th, 2019
The oceans are “crying for mercy,” a fact that is starkly revealed in a telling 900-page draft of a forthcoming UN report due for release September 25th. The draft report obtained by Agence France-Presse (AFP) assesses the status of the oceans and cyrosphere. It’s a landmark UN report, and it’s not a pretty picture.
In the final analysis, the report amounts to self-destruction that’s largely ignored by most of the leading countries throughout the world. It’s all about greenhouse gassing as a result of human interference in the climate system, thus, evidence that humans are heat machines!
The opening statement in AFP’s …
by Andre Vltchek / September 3rd, 2019
Many have already noticed: The U.S. really, really doesn’t feel like the world leader, or even as a ‘first world country’. Of course, I write that sarcastically, as I detest expressions like ‘first world’, and the ‘third world’. But readers know what I mean.
Bridges, subways, inner cities, everything is crumbling, falling apart. When I used to live in New York City, more than two decades ago, returning from Japan was shocking: the US felt like a poor, deprived country, full of problems, misery, of confused and depressed people, homeless individuals; in short – desperados. Now, I feel the same when …
by Shawgi Tell / September 3rd, 2019
It has taken some time, but finally, even though they have been pillaged for decades by privately-operated unaccountable charter schools, more public school districts across the country are fighting back with greater vigor against nonprofit and for-profit charter schools. Gone are the days of silent toleration and looking the other way while charter schools wreak havoc on public education.
It is affirming and refreshing to see more public school districts filing lawsuits, passing resolutions, producing exposés, and taking other actions against privately-operated charter schools to stop the “legal” theft of public funds and property by these non-transparent contract schools that typically …
On the first nuclear disaster of the 21st Century
by Paul Haeder / September 3rd, 2019
Sometimes a poet can grasp the human significance of a technological failure better than a scientist. We are fortunate to have these poetic voices from Japan collected here. May we hear them and, more importantly,may we heed them.
— John Pearson, MD, Oregon Physicians for Social Responsibility
I’m thinking hard about ecosocialism and retrenchment and revolution against the capitalist state — this old neofascism for/by/because of the state, governments, and their paymasters, oligarchs and unfettered robber barons, of old and new.
How the realities shaping humanity are not humanity’s realities, and the power of …
by C.J. Hopkins / September 3rd, 2019
If you want a vision of the future, don’t imagine “a boot stamping on a human face — for ever,” as Orwell suggested in 1984. Instead, imagine that human face staring mesmerized into the screen of some kind of nifty futuristic device on which every word, sound, and image has been algorithmically approved for consumption by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (“DARPA”) and its “innovation ecosystem” of “academic, corporate, and governmental partners.”
The screen of this futuristic device will offer a virtually unlimited range of “non-divisive” and “hate-free” content, none of which will falsify or …
by Howie Hawkins / September 3rd, 2019
As someone who has been a union member since I was a Marine with the American Servicemen’s Union until I retired last year as a Teamster as well as a member of the Industrial Workers of the World, I have lived the reality of mistreatment of workers in the United States.
It is good to see labor rising with teacher and other strikes increasing across the country and with the US public showing its highest support for unions in decades. The next president should harness the energy of working people and build political power for a transformation agenda for …
