Though #1 on the New York Times Bestseller list for 13 weeks in 1952, beloved of William Buckley and Ronald Reagan (“As long as humanity speaks of virtue and dreams of freedom, the life and writings of Whittaker Chambers will ennoble and inspire.”), despite being hailed as “one of the dozen or so indispensable books of the century” (George Will), Witness quickly disappeared from our collective consciousness. We remember its most famous victim, Alger Hiss, as a nice guy who was mercilessly hounded, the prelude …
When perceived authorities like President Trump designate immigrants “animals,” they authorize abuse of those officially disparaged people. Conscience-challenged people predictably seek to enhance their status by carrying out apparent or explicit wishes of adored “leaders.” Trump probably has not personally killed or rounded up anyone. Neither have many other authoritarian despots whose policies and rhetoric destroy others’ lives.
It is undeniably urgent and important to repair harm done to people of color under the white boot through the centuries and to ensure equal treatment now and in the future. But collectively we have known that for a very long time. Every …
Something is causing the world’s glaciers and mountain ice fields to melt. And, despite your first thought, it is not the ongoing climate catastrophe.
It does not matter where on Earth the glaciers and mountain ice fields are located, they are all melting. Moreover, the projected time frame for some of them to disappear altogether is ‘imminently’; that is, within years. And for the rest: a few decades (although that projection is being routinely revised downwards, depending on the glacier).
Why? Because the most recent research suggests that beneath the ocean surface glaciers may be melting ten to 100 times faster than …
Next month’s election is not a contest between the right and centre-left. It’s a battle between different nationalist camps
by Jonathan Cook / September 2nd, 2019
The real fight in Israel’s re-run election next month is not between the right wing and a so-called “centre-left” but between two rival camps within the nationalist right, according to analysts.
The outcome may prove a moment of truth for the shrinking secular right as it comes up once again against an ever-more powerful camp that fuses religion with ultra-nationalism.
Will the secular right emerge with enough political weight to act as a power-broker in the post-election negotiations, or can the religious right form a government without any support from the secular parties? That is what the election will determine.
Sending no warning to Russia or Turkey, the US bombed an array of targets within Idlib, Syria, killing numerous civilians and threatening the hard-earned truce across the province, the Russian Defense Ministry said.
The air raid led to “multiple casualties and destruction” around two villages in the Idlib province, where a fragile ceasefire between government forces and militants is still in place, the Russian Reconciliation Center said on Sunday. The airstrike, carried out on Saturday, “endangered the truce” and “violated all previous arrangements.”
Earlier, US Central Command (CENTCOM) said it targeted leaders of a group it calls al-Qaeda …
On Tuesday two RCMP agents came to my house. Two large men in suits asked for me and when my partner said I wasn’t there they asked who she was.
Why didn’t they email or call me to talk or set up a meeting? If they have my address, the RCMP certainly has my email, Facebook, Skype or phone number. My partner asked for their badges, took their photo and asked them to leave the hallway they had entered.
They returned the next day. Not wanting to interact, my partner ignored them. They rang the doorbell multiple times over many minutes. After …
by Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers / September 2nd, 2019
After years of declining power and stagnant wages, workers in the United States are awakening, striking and demanding more rights. A Bureau of Labor Statistics report shows the number of striking workers is the highest since 1986. In 2018, 485,000 people went on strike, a number not exceeded since the 533,000 people in 1986, and 2019 will be even larger. Workers should be in revolt, as the Economic Policy Institute found workers have had stagnant wages for three and a half decades even though productivity is increasing.
Misinformed “progressive” western “activists” and pundits are putting down their remote controls and organic smoothies just long enough to tweet out that Hong Kong protesters need to be supported as paragons of virtue and justice. Some have even blogged and bloviated about the importance of these protests as a struggle for freedom against “dictatorship.”
Most of these individuals never question why, out of the thousands of daily protests, or the 200-plus ongoing global independence movements, or the 50-plus ongoing violent conflicts, why this particular struggle has been curated to penetrate the thick fog of their ignorance and …
Even in the vast and mysterious reaches of the sea we are brought back to the fundamental truth that nothing lives to itself.
— Rachel Carson ((Silent Spring Introduction, 1962))
“I’ve never lived on the West Coast, but I really have absolutely fallen in love with the place.”
Dominique Kone and I are talking at the Hatfield Marine Science Center, covering a lot of ground in the 28-year-old’s narrative, from early years in small towns like Blue Hill and Bucksport, Maine, and then his undergraduate days in the big town (50,000) …
Cringe worthy, a touch molesting in sentiment: this was the celebratory occasion of the gathering of Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison with his East Timorese counterparts. During the course of its history, the state has been pillaged and bombed, its residents massacred and its politicians spied upon. The exposure of that seedy little matter of espionage came in December 2013, when it was revealed that an Australian intelligence officer known as Witness K had spilled the beans on how his masters were attempting to undercut the East Timorese in their 2004 negotiations for a maritime boundary. The Australian delegation had …
The G7 Summit is an obsolete, useless talking shop, as Finnian Cunningham so adroitly says. RT calls it The Unbearable Pointlessness of G7. Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, UK, and the United States constitute the G7 gang. It should strike any logical thinker as extremely odd that the world’s largest economy (by purchasing parity-based GDP), China, is not part of the club. Why is that? It’s clear. The club is for western turbo-capitalist ideologues only; the self-proclaimed world hegemons.
Yes, the G7 are, no doubt, a useless talking shop – and much worse. These seven self-nominated leaders of the world are …
More than ten years ago, in Nadi, Fiji, during a UN conference, I was approached by the Minister of Education of Papua New Guinea (PNG).
He was deeply shaken, troubled, his eyes full of tears: “Please help our children,” he kept repeating:
Indonesian army, TNI, is kidnapping our little girls in the villages, raping them, and then… in the most sadistic way cutting off their nipples and clitorises. And if they speak, entire villages get burned down in retribution. Many already have been. Some children managed to escape; to cross the border, from West Papua to PNG. Now they are staying in …
Neoliberalism is more than an epithet. It’s more than an economic program, or another name for globalization. It may be all of these, but most importantly, it’s a political practice. The dominant political practice of our overlords.
The problem, however, is that neoliberalism as politics rarely has a bright light shown on its shadowy manipulations. Recently 48hills, a SF Bay area news website, published an exposé on precisely that. It reveals Silicon Valley billionaires, real estate developers, academics, non-profit leaders, local politicians and, of course, ill-informed journalists all conniving to further an agenda hidden from public scrutiny. The smell of …
As my regular readers and listeners are aware, I tend to go jaggedly back and forth in these missives between discussions of geopolitics and world history, and explorations of the minutiae of the daily life of the working musician. This one belongs in the latter category.
It’s been years since I’ve had much time for watching movies — there was a brief period between children when there was a bit of time for that sort of thing, but not much. When I’m on long plane flights is when I …
We are again reaching the point in the business cycle known as “peak debt,” when debts have compounded to the point that their cumulative total cannot be paid. Student debt, credit card debt, auto loans, business debt and sovereign debt are all higher than they have ever been. As economist Michael Hudson writes in his provocative 2018 book, “…and forgive them their debts,” debts that can’t be paid won’t be paid. The question, he says, is how they won’t be paid.
Mainstream economic models leave this problem to “the invisible hand of the market,” assuming trends will self-correct over time. But …
This episode covers the US government’s and law enforcement’s active role in global drug trafficking.
Doug Valentine is the author of The Strength of the Wolf and The Strength of the Pack. These are two of the most important books ever written on the drug trade. Doug’s research comes mostly from first hand accounts of FBN, DEA and CIA officers who tell a tale never before heard by the world.
Donald Trump is “dumb as a rock” (to use his phrase) when it comes to the programs and the policies of the federal government agencies over which he is allegedly presiding. However, when it comes to defending and expanding his own political power, Trump is shameless and profoundly cunning.
Trump turns accurate appraisals of himself into accusations that he levies at others. Earlier this month, he questioned whether Joe Biden “is mentally fit to be president.” (Read more here) Trump regularly turns appraisals of himself into accusations against others.
?It is an age-old question as to the extent art reflects the world we live in. Bertolt Brecht allegedly said to the contrary that art was “not a mirror held up to reality but a hammer with which to shape it.” The Marxist German playwright devised theatrical methods designed to distance the audience from the staged drama while drawing self-reflexive attention to the contrived nature of the spectacle itself. The idea was that by estranging the spectator and encouraging critical examination, they would come to view society’s manmade injustices as similarly unnatural and be given agency to transform them in …
The Brexit no deal prospect is engendering an element of lunacy fast seeping into every pore of the British political establishment. As with all steeped in such thinking, some of it made sense. Prime Minister Boris Johnson had been inspired by a mild dictatorial urge, seeking to suspend the UK parliament five weeks out from October 31. This has been described as nothing short of a coup, or, if you are the speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow, a “constitutional outrage”.
Legal expertise was called upon to answer the question whether Johnson’s proroguing of parliament was, in fact, constitutional. …
How do we make people question the lies they have been told? How do we make our voices heard? Direct action democracy is required.
In order to show politicians, the media and even many progressives that some of us are hostile to Canadian foreign policy we need to raise our voices and be disruptive in the cause of international solidarity.
Last Sunday Haitian Canadian activist Jennie-Laure Sully interrupted Justin Trudeau at a press conference to ask why Canada is supporting a corrupt, repressive and illegitimate president in Haiti. As the prime minister began to address a room full of political leaders …
Tehran and Washington have been locked in a dispute since last year when the US unilaterally pulled out of the nuclear agreement and re-imposed crippling sanctions on Iran. On Monday, President Donald Trump said he is ready to meet his Iranian counterpart, Hassan Rouhani within weeks after a G-7 leaders’ summit. The idea was proposed by French President Emmanuel Macron who was hosting the summit. But Rouhani said Washington must first lift sanctions imposed since its withdrawal from the nuclear deal.
***** PressTV: Could you comment on Mr. Rouhani’s conditions for talks with President …
by Voices for Creative Nonviolence / August 29th, 2019
Dear Friends,
Thank you for supporting the Kings Bay Plowshares 7. Yesterday, 509 days after their arrest, a federal judge denied all the pre-trial motions by our friends. Today, the judge set their trial date: Monday, October 21, 2019 with jury selection beginning at 9 a.m.
The Plowshares had urged U.S. District Judge Lisa Godbey Wood to dismiss their charges for numerous legal reasons as well as the fact that the hundreds of first strike nuclear weapons on the submarines based at Kings Bay Naval Base are illegal and immoral.
We celebrate Labor Day by honoring workers — especially the forgotten workers. Stay-at-home mothers who home school their children are often forgotten. Others who are forgotten are those who work in school cafeterias, those who empty bedpans in nursing homes, and ordinary local guys, like my plumber. He is smart, honest and he never overcharges. These are just ordinary people. Most have no degrees — no fancy pieces of paper to frame and hang on their walls. These are the “good guys”. They keep our country and homes running. They are the real backbone of the economy.
Decades ago, Edward Said remarked that contemporary life is characterized by a “generalized condition of homelessness.” Decades earlier, Martin Heidegger had written that “Homelessness is coming to be the destiny of the world.” Around the same time, fascists were invoking the themes of blood and soil, nation, race, community, as intoxicating antidotes to the mass anonymity and depersonalization of modern life. Twenty or thirty years later, the New Left, in its Port Huron Statement, lamented the corruption and degradation of such values as love, freedom, creativity, and community:
Loneliness, estrangement, isolation describe the vast distance between man and man …
The story of Jeffrey Epstein has lost its mystery as more and more commentators allow themselves to express the thought that it is a strong possibility that Epstein was connected to a crime syndicate affiliated with a Zionist political organisation or Israel and/or at least a few compromised intelligence agencies. Whitney Web and others have produced superb studies of possible scenarios, I would instead like to attack the topic from a cultural perspective. Epstein wasn’t the first Jewish sex trafficker. This seems like a good time to …
Brick by Brick, Our Prison Walls Get More Oppressive by the Day
by John W. Whitehead / August 29th, 2019
The exile of prisoners to a distant place, where they can ‘pay their debt to society,’ make themselves useful, and not contaminate others with their ideas or their criminal acts, is a practice as old as civilization itself. The rulers of ancient Rome and Greece sent their dissidents off to distant colonies. Socrates chose death over the torment of exile from Athens. The poet Ovid was exiled to a fetid port on the Black Sea.”
— Anne Applebaum, Gulag: A History, 2003
This is how freedom dies.
This is how you condition a populace to life as prisoners in a police state: by …
Israel is right here behind this wall
After the recent Israeli attacks against Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq, the Middle East has found itself in the midst of undeclared war.
Almost everyone in Lebanon appears to agree. “This time Israel went too far. In just two days, it bombed three countries,” I am told by a local UN staffer based in Beirut.
The same day, my local barber was talking like he saw it all, his voice full of sarcasm and determination:
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is facing tough elections at …
One of the brothers Koch, David, has shuffled off this mortal coil, and the pious few looking at his passing may well think he is making it tough for camels passing through needles. As part of the Brothers Koch, he presided over a corporate empire that did its pinching best to wrest control from the purses of public accountability in the US republic. At his death, he was the eleventh richest person on the planet, on par with his dominant brother, Charles.
David K, however, went beyond the narrower spending interests of brother Charles, the one with the sharpest of eyes …
Russia has always fascinated me–the mystical orthodox faith brought to Kievan Rus in the ninth century, the stern heroes who defended Muscovy against the Golden Horde in the 13–15th centuries, the vast spaces, the remarkable literature of Pushkin and Tolstoy, the Bolshevik Revolution against imperialism … The West has always been a bit jealous of its proud race of genius.
I fell in love with Russia as a teen when I discovered Sergei Prokofiev and insisted–rebelling against my teacher–on playing his fiendishly difficult Toccata in D minor for my Conservatory …
Israel’s decision to bar two United States Democratic Representatives, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, from entering Israel and visiting Palestine has further exposed the belligerent, racist nature of the Israeli government.
But our understanding of the Israeli decision, and the massive controversy and discussion it generated, should not stop there. Palestinians, who have been at the receiving end of racist Israeli laws, will continue to endure separation, isolation and travel restrictions long after the two Congresswomen’s story dies down.
A news feature published by the British Guardian newspaper last June told the story of Palestinian children from Gaza who …
