Latest articles
by Ramzy Baroud / August 21st, 2019
Israeli Jewish settlers are on a rampage in the occupied Palestinian West Bank. While settler violence is part of everyday routine in Palestine, the violence of recent weeks is directly linked to the general elections in Israel, scheduled to be held on September 17.
The previous elections, on April 9, failed to bring about political stability. Although Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu is now the longest-serving prime minister in the 71-year history of the country, he was still unable …
by Dan Corjescu / August 21st, 2019
We feel that even if all possible scientific questions be answered, the problems of life have still not been touched at all.
— Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus, 1922
Recently I received an angry note about the persistence of religion in the modern world as proof of the world’s ongoing irrationality in response to some of my comments in my lately published article “The Metaphysics of Revolution.”
I found the response interesting on many levels.
Firstly, the level of anger.
The emotional quality of some atheists’ responses to religion remind me of the worst characteristics of religious fanatics: intolerance, hatred, invective, and a …
by Ron Forthofer / August 20th, 2019
Some corporations and governments have used the US public as guinea pigs in uncontrolled experiments conducted without the public’s approval. They were often gambling with our well being when they introduced new products or conducted risky tests. In contrast, there were usually few risks for the CEOs or government officials in charge of these unacknowledged experiments.
If serious harm occurred, it was often very difficult to link the harm to the product or action due to: 1) the long lag time for the development of many diseases; and 2) other possible causes. Moreover, any damages awarded to the injured parties were …
by Rick Sterling / August 20th, 2019
Asma al-Assad, First Lady of Syria (from released Syrian Presidency Facebook page)
It may be a new low in propaganda. National Public Radio (NPR) used the news that Syrian First Lady Asma al-Assad had overcome breast cancer to mock her and continue the information war against Syria. They interviewed a Human Rights Watch staffer named Lama Fakih who is an American from Michigan now based in Beirut.
Do you believe Ms. Fakih in Beirut or do you believe people who live in Syria who say we are being …
by C.J. Hopkins / August 20th, 2019
If the neoliberal ruling classes expect to keep the American masses worked up into a white-eyed hysteria over “fascism” until November 2020, they’re going to need to get some better Nazis. The current Nazis are just not going to cut it. They are neither scary nor Nazi enough. OK, the militia ones look kind of scary, and that “Based Spartan” guy looks kind of … uh, weird, but most of them just look like regular old rednecks. How hard would it be to get them some brown shirts, or those khaki pants like they wore in Charlottesville, or some other …
by Yves Engler / August 20th, 2019
Inviting Chrystia Freeland to address this week’s Unifor convention undermines the union’s claims of international solidarity. As Foreign Affairs Minister, Freeland has pursued staunchly pro-corporate and pro-US policies. She has been bad for workers and their families around the world. Let us count a few of the ways:
Freeland’s department continues to offer diplomatic and other forms of support to mining companies responsible for major abuses abroad. The Liberals broke their promise to establish a genuine ombudsperson to supervise Canadian mining companies’ international operations.
Freeland has campaigned aggressively to overthrow Venezuela’s government. She played a central role in establishing …
by Dan Corjescu / August 19th, 2019
Socrates was the first revolutionary. He opened up with a legendary oracular search of the inner space from which the individual, as we understand him today, would eventually emerge. His “daemon” was that which spoke the necessary freedom and autonomy to become what we are. His was the first lesson.
His student, Plato, brought on the second movement. He postulated the availability of an ideal world accessible and open to a properly trained, disciplined mind. Truth was intelligible and its sighting in a flash of insight or through life-long questioning could and should change both the individual and his society. There …
Masters of Manipulating Public Opinion
by Peter Koenig / August 19th, 2019
Brexit deadline is 31 October 2019. On 23 June 2016, the British people voted 52% against 48% to leave the European Union. In England alone, the margin was somewhat higher, 53.4% for leaving the EU, against 46.6% for staying. In the meantime we know that this result was influenced by Cambridge Analytica, the same as the Trump Presidency was apparently helped by CA, and according to CA’s own account, more than 200 elections or referenda worldwide during the last 5 years or so were decided by CA.
CA is said to have disappeared; however, the knowledge on how to manipulate voters’ …
by Sean Stinson / August 19th, 2019
This morning on my way to work I had the car radio tuned to the local classic FM station. It’s a safety precaution more than anything. Keeps me (relatively) calm in the traffic and safe from the media commentary of the day, mostly. On this morning’s playlist was Sibelius’ Karelia Music Overture, apparently rich in nationalistic imagery, a recurring theme in Sibelius’ music at a time when the Russians were busy hacking the Finnish elections, or annexing Scandinavia, or doing whatever it is that Russians do. You see, even …
The Struggle against Colonialism and Imperialism in Kalaallit Nunaat: Part 4
by Kim Petersen / August 19th, 2019
Outside of melting glaciers and global warming discussions, Kalaallit Nunaat does not often find itself in the spotlight, and when it does, it is usually referred to as Greenland. United States president Donald Trump’s real-estate aspirations have given Kalaallit Nunaat/Greenland prominence in recent news. It seems Trump is serious about the US purchasing Greenland. Judging by history, if Trump could swing such a purchase, he would certainly garner severe gravitas as a big-time deal-maker. And there is a precedent to such a real estate transaction between the US and …
Updated
by Gary Leupp / August 19th, 2019
Greenland was given its name by Erik the Red, the Norwegian who, after settling in the Viking colony of Iceland in the 960s, sailed west and in 982 discovered the huge island.
(There were people there already — Inuits, a people of Siberian origin scattered across northern North America. But it took a while before the Scandinavians and the indigenous met. This was not an early instance of European imperialism and the colonization of indigenous subjects so much as a quest for arable land and expression of medieval Nordic wanderlust.)
(The real Scandinavian colonization of the island only began in 1721; the …
by David Penner / August 19th, 2019
To poach and rely on highly skilled foreign workers from poor countries in the public sector is akin to the crime of theft.
— “Migration of Health Workers: An Unmanaged Crisis,” The Lancet, May 28, 2005
What is striking about the tyranny of the medical industrial complex is not only its unconscionable oppression of the American working class, but also its assault on the health care systems of other countries. These acts of barbarity and pillage allow the Anglo-American elites to keep the countries of the global south in a state of backwardness and dependency, and one of the ways this is done …
by Eric Walberg / August 19th, 2019
How do you explain the fact that the John Birch Society used 1984 as its main office telephone number in the 1960s? Or that both Animal Farm and 1984, are force-fed to virtually the entire western world in people’s formative years in their teens, even as Big Brother jacks up repression and surveillance, and pursues ever more cruel and senseless wars?
A look at Orwell’s weaknesses reveals how Big Brother turn the tables on him, getting the last laugh.
Both Animal Farm (1945) and 1984 (1949) are listed on the Random …
by Binoy Kampmark / August 19th, 2019
It was predictably ugly: in tone, in regret, and, in some ways, disgust. Australia emerged from the Pacific Islands Forum Leaders Meeting isolated, the true spoiler of the party which saw 17 states facing the obstinacy of one. It had taken place on Tuvalu, some two hours flight north of Fiji. The capital Funafuti is located on vanishing land; the island state is facing coastal erosion, the pressing issue of salinity, the very crisis of its existence.
Pacific Island leaders were already wise to the accounting cosmetics of Canberra’s accountants prior to the Forum. It reeked, for instance, of a gesture …
by Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers / August 18th, 2019
Hong Kong is one of the most extreme examples of big finance, neoliberal capitalism in the world. As a result, many people in Hong Kong are suffering from great economic insecurity in a city with 93 billionaires, second-most of any city.
Hong Kong is suffering the effects of being colonized by Britain for more than 150 years following the Opium Wars. The British put in place a capitalist economic system and Hong Kong has had no history of self-rule. When Britain left, it negotiated an agreement that prevents China from changing Hong Kong’s political and economic systems for 50 years …
Offering Choice but Delivering Tyranny
by Colin Todhunter / August 18th, 2019
Many lobbyists talk a lot about critics of genetic engineering technology denying choice to farmers. They say that farmers should have access to a range of tools and technologies to maximise choice and options. At the same time, somewhat ironically, they decry organic agriculture and proven agroecological approaches, presumably because these practices have no need for the proprietary inputs of the global agrochemical/agritech corporations they are in bed with. And presumably because agroecology represents liberation from the tyranny of these profiteering, environment-damaging global conglomerates.
It is fine to talk about ‘choice’ but we do not want to end up offering …
by Binoy Kampmark / August 17th, 2019
The din struck by videos of the gaming variety; its forced causal link (always alleged, never proved) to altering conduct, continues its relentless march across the discussion forums in the United States and beyond. The almost casual butcheries – actual, not as opposed to digital – have gone on unabated, the next extremist taking a murderous shot at his role in history – and everybody else. Now it is the white supremacists who are sharing top billing with previous jihadi enthusiasts, a concession on the part of law enforcement authorities that there might be something to say about using the …
by Alex Anfruns / August 17th, 2019
On the 31st July 2019 a group of incarcerated people at Scotland Correctional, North Carolina, started a hunger strike in order to protest against the use of torture in the correctional facility. In the United States, there are more than 2 million people incarcerated. To know more about the hunger strikers’ conditions, Alex Anfruns has interviewed a member of the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee.
*****
Alex Anfruns: How many incarcerated people are taking this action?
Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee: To my knowledge, the hunger strike began with an estimated 6 people on July 31st. The razor wire plantation masters, aka authorities, …
by Mark Petrakis / August 17th, 2019
It would appear that the Jeffrey Epstein case has pushed its bony elbows through the gauzy fabric of our “reality” narrative and bumped us all closer to a long overdue CRISIS of confidence with both our government and the mainstream media.
Even people, who just a week ago were still accepting whatever the capital “M” Media was throwing their way, have begun voicing doubts, while those who for YEARS have diligently volunteered themselves as staunch defenders of “approved” taunts against supposed crackpots and conspiracy theorists, are backing off on the intensity of their attacks.
Too many years with too many incongruities, perhaps …
by Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin / August 16th, 2019
Swift has sailed into his rest;
Savage indignation there
Cannot lacerate his breast.
Imitate him if you dare,
World-besotted traveller; he
Served human liberty.
— W. B. Yeats translation of Jonathan Swift’s Latin epitaph.
Introduction
In this continuing series on the effects of Romantic and Enlightenment ideas on modern culture, I have looked at the negative aspects of Romanticism on fine art, music, cinema and politics. In this article I will examine Romantic and Enlightenment ideas on literature from the eighteenth to the 21st century showing how from the earliest days literature has been a battleground for the future of culture itself. Enlightenment influences on literature led to …
by Bill Willers / August 16th, 2019
[W]hy do so many assume that a ‘Green New Deal’ won’t just empower those same forces that have run havoc upon the world for the past half century and just cause more death and starvation than has already been suffered under Globalization?
— Matthew Ehret, 2019
Sustainable development, the concept, was advanced in 1987 by the United Nations in “Our Common Future,” aka The Bruntland Report, in which it was defined as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the …
by Shawgi Tell / August 15th, 2019
While privately-operated nonprofit and for-profit charter schools have long engaged in a broad range of fraudulent student enrollment practices, yet another avalanche of news reports on such dishonest practices has recently appeared.
There seems to be no end to astonishing news in the unregulated and segregated charter school sector. Controversy, scandal, and charter schools have been fellow-travelers for more than 25 years.
Virtual charter schools, perhaps the most unsuccessful and unethical of all types of charter schools, have a long-standing tradition of enrolling “ghost students” (students that do not exist) in order to embezzle millions of public dollars. This, of course, is …
by Edward Curtin / August 15th, 2019
When phrases such as “the deep state” and “conspiracy theory” become staples of both the corporate mainstream media and the alternative press, we know the realities behind these phrases have outlasted their usefulness for the ruling elites that control the United States and for their critics, each of whom uses them refutably or corrobatively. These phrases are bandied about so often that they have become hackneyed and inane.
Everything is shallow now, in our faces, and by being in our faces the truth is taking place behind our backs. The obvious can’t be true since it’s so obvious, so let us …
by Gary Leupp / August 15th, 2019
We are asked to believe the following basic “facts” about the pedophile [Strictly speaking, pedophilia is sex with prepubescent children, generally before age 13 — DV Editor] philanthropist’s death, some more credible than others:
1. On August 23, Jeffrey Epstein attempted suicide in the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan. (But it was reported at the time that Epstein may have been attacked by a fellow inmate in jail, and the matter was not well covered in the press.) The coroner handling Epstein’s autopsy notes that this attempt has “never been definitively explained.”
2. Epstein was consequently placed on …
by Voices for Creative Nonviolence / August 15th, 2019
BRUNSWICK, GA — The Kings Bay Plowshares 7 in federal court today made oral arguments concerning the denial of the pre-trial motions to dismiss the charges against them. Appearing for the first time before Judge Lisa Godbey Wood, who will be the trial judge, four of the pro-se defendants and two of the lawyers spoke about why they felt Magistrate Benjamin Cheesbro had improperly ruled against them after two days of hearings last November. The main focus of today’s hearing was the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), which is …
Canadian Monopoly Media AWOL
by Yves Engler / August 15th, 2019
Media coverage of Canadian foreign policy is uniquely one-sided and biased. It’s so bad that few readers, listeners or viewers will have ever seen or heard an honest analysis of this country’s past, let alone current role around the world.
A recent Maclean’s story titled “The long history of ‘go back to where you came from’ in Canada” illustrates how uniquely bad foreign policy coverage is. The story demonstrates that it is permissible to detail the history of racist immigration policy, but can one imagine Maclean’s publishing a story …
by William Hawes / August 15th, 2019
This essay is in regard to a crime that too often goes unmentioned when the conversations turn towards political analysis, the contemporary journalistic scene, and broader social critique: the crime of being extremely online.
What does it mean to be extremely online? It mostly is as straightforward as it sounds. Generally, activities such as spending too much time on the web, scrolling through social media feeds out of habit, checking email or notifications dozens of times a day, all are symptoms of the extremely online person. Particularly, too much smartphone use is a devastating problem.
There is also a more specific version, …
by Binoy Kampmark / August 15th, 2019
Ethics can be a slippery matter and Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has taken, rather decidedly, the option of adding more grease. His understanding over the ethics, for instance, of interfering in the decision-making process involving an Attorney-General has led to a little bit of history: Trudeau finds himself the first Canadian prime minister to be in breach of federal ethics rules.
In recent months, Trudeau’s crown has lost much of its lustre. The SNC-Lavalin affair has been a primary contributor, a millstone gathering weight around his now very bruised neck. The company had found itself in a spot of deep …
by Ramzy Baroud / August 14th, 2019
Writing under the title of “If the El Paso shooter had been Muslim”, Moustafa Bayoumi stated the obvious.
“If the El Paso shooter had been a Muslim,” Bayoumi wrote in the British Guardian newspaper on August 6, US President Donald Trump “would be lobbing accusations such as ‘Islam hates us’ in the direction of Muslims and not lecturing the public about video games.”
Bayoumi was referring to the double standards that define much of western official and media discourses regarding violence. When the alleged perpetrator of violence is a Muslim, then the case becomes a matter of national security and is …
by Kim Petersen / August 14th, 2019
In the central interior of the Canadian province of British Columbia is the unceded territory of the Wet’suwet’en First Nation. A corporate entity, Coastal GasLink (CGL), abetted by colonial-government structures, is preparing to lay a pipeline in this territory. The Dinï ze’ and Ts’akë ze’ (hereditary chiefs) did not grant consent for this; in fact, the proposal from CGL was unanimously rejected.
On 22 July, the Gidimt’en (Wolf and Bear) Clan of the Wet’suwet’en filed a lawsuit against CGL in the BC Supreme Court connected to the enforcement on 7 January when 14 people were arrested resisting a BC Supreme …
