Latest articles
by Max Parry / September 24th, 2019
Earlier this month, popular ‘progressive’ news website The Intercept published an article entitled “From El Paso to Sarajevo: How White Nationalists Are Inspired by the Bosnia Genocide”, written by journalist and staff writer Murtaza Hussain. The piece argued that many of the perpetrators behind mass shootings and domestic terrorism in the West — from the convicted far right extremist behind the 2011 Norway attacks to the suspect charged in the recent mosque shootings in Christchurch, New Zealand — were influenced by ethnic cleansing committed by Serbs against Bosnian Muslims during the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s.
Hussain uses a …
by Peter Koenig / September 23rd, 2019
On Saturday morning, September 14, 2019, a few drones – were they drones or long-range missiles? – hit the Saudis most important two oil fields, set them ablaze, apparently knocking out half of the Saudi crude production but measured in terms of world production it is a mere 5%. Could be made up in no time by other Gulf oil producers – or indeed, as the Saudis said, by the end of September 2019 their production is back to ‘normal’ – to pre-attack levels.
The financial reaction was immediate. Saudi stocks fell, the oil prices rose, then settled and later fell …
by Gary D. Barnett / September 23rd, 2019
It is tempting to say that war with Iran is inevitable, and that may certainly be so, but this terrible situation has become a political and media game. A deadly game to be sure, but a game nonetheless. The people who cling to the notion that they have “leaders” to protect them are little more than fools, and this fact alone may lead to a disastrous end to this game of war, as the fools are the ones that allow carnage in their name.
Who in their right mind could in the past have ever envisioned a president “tweeting” about blowing …
by Binoy Kampmark / September 23rd, 2019
They all do it: corporations, regimes, authorities. They all have the same reasons: efficiency, serviceability, profitability, all under the umbrella term of “security”. Call it surveillance, or call it monitoring the global citizenry; it all comes down to the same thing. You are being watched for your own good, and such instances should be regarded as a norm.
Given the weaknesses of international law and the general hiccupping that accompanies efforts to formulate a global right to privacy, few such restrictions, or problems, preoccupy those in surveillance. The entire business is burgeoning, a viral complex that does not risk any abatement.
The …
Israel’s Palestinian citizens are once again being discussed as a threat to their country’s democracy
by Jonathan Cook / September 23rd, 2019
Israel’s re-run election last week revealed the bitter struggles within the Israeli right for dominance, between a coalition of religious and settler parties led by Benjamin Netanyahu and their opponents in the secular Blue and White party of army generals.
The two sides pegged almost level, suggesting that Israel could face yet more deadlock after an earlier election in April failed to produce a clear winner. There is already talk of an unprecedented third election in the offing.
But the more Israeli Jewish society reaches stalemate, the more the country’s marginalised community of Palestinian citizens – a fifth of Israel’s population – …
Madras, Oregon, Man Heads Up County Project to Put an End to the Cycle of Poverty
by Paul Haeder / September 23rd, 2019
Juan Garcia helps the family’s youngest, Jacob, 9 months, as he fusses during a recent mass at St. Patrick’s Catholic Church in Central Oregon, Madras, where the ecosystem looks like parts of New Mexico, Arizona, Chihuahua.
He introduces me and my colleague, Susy S. — both of us from Family Independence Initiative, a national non-profit now working in both Lincoln County and Jefferson County to engage families in a large social capital project – to his family and parishioners.
For Juan, who is a former Michoacán resident, family is everything to him. He tells me recently at the Madras Latino Festival …
by Gilad Atzmon / September 23rd, 2019
It didn’t take long for the American Administration to crudely interfere with an open society’s most sacred ethos, that of academic freedom. We learned this weekend that the US Department of Education has ordered Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to remake their joint Middle East studies program after concluding that they were offering students “a biased curriculum that, among other complaints, did not present enough “positive” imagery of Judaism and Christianity in the region.”
Academic freedom is a relatively simple principle. It refers to …
by Paul Larudee / September 23rd, 2019
Dear Comrades,
We write to you as fellow trade unionists and comrades dedicated in the struggle for workers’ rights in support of Donald Lafleur and his visit to the GFTU trade union congress in Damascus. Brother Lafleur has been unjustly placed on administrative leave despite the fact that he attended the meeting as a private individual, on his own time and at his own expense. The Union Executive is continuing its deliberations and considering further actions against him. We demand that he be permitted to resume his full duties!
We are …
by The Real News Network (TRNN) / September 23rd, 2019
by Yves Engler / September 23rd, 2019
While France, Germany, Russia and China seek detente, Canada is increasingly part of the US-Saudi Arabia-Israeli axis stoking conflict with Iran.
Canada recently seized and sold $30 million worth of Iranian properties in Ottawa and Toronto to compensate individuals in the US who had family members killed in a 2002 Hamas bombing in Israel and others who were held hostage by Hezbollah in 1986 and 1991. The Supreme Court of Canada and federal government sanctioned the seizure under the 2012 Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act, which lifts immunity for countries labeled “state sponsors of terrorism” to allow individuals to …
by Binoy Kampmark / September 21st, 2019
The pigeon flapped in desperation, moving across Melbourne’s lavish Capitol Theatre in fits and starts. It was more alarmed than anything else at the address being given by former Australian football (soccer to some) player Craig Foster. Foster has been beating the drum on one particular message for some time now: that sports can change the dimension of human rights, becoming, as it were, a fertilising agent.
At the Capitol, he made the point with various reiterations, reminding his audience about the fortunate Hakeem al-Araibi, who became his inspired subject of humanity. Al-Araibi was not merely a Bahraini refugee who had …
by Kim Petersen / September 20th, 2019
Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you.
— Matthew 7: 1-2
Justin Trudeau in brownface.
Canada’s prime minister Justin Trudeau has found himself in the the center of a media tempest, and a countrywide tempest, because of having appeared at events in blackface/brownface in the past. Trudeau appeared before the media and apologized for what he acknowledged is racist, albeit he stated that he was unaware at …
by Todd Smith / September 20th, 2019
Since the events of 9/11, the Corporatist Sportsworld in general, and the National Football League in particular, have increasingly promoted the brand of American Militarism. For example, if you took a shot of whiskey every time an Armed Services recruitment ad aired during a typical NFL game telecast, you would probably be drunk by Halftime. Then there are those thrillingly gratuitous military jet overflights of fan-packed stadiums, which are not included in the high prices of the tickets; those are tax-dollars searing the air overhead. Or …
by Phil Rockstroh / September 20th, 2019
Will Trump go to war with the Iranians or the homeless? Or both?
Trump is a coward. The nation of Iran has the means and the will to fight. Do you recall the will displayed by Iranians when repelling foreign invaders when Iraq attempted to invade Iran as a de facto US proxy force? Conversely, the homeless do not possess any defence against assault by the agents of the US police state.
Regardless of his image among credulous true believers, Trump, character-wise, is the diametric opposite of the image he conveys as a titan of supreme self-confidence. The pose is ego-based compensation …
by Binoy Kampmark / September 20th, 2019
“I extend a special welcome to Australia’s former prime minister. It is in part due to his tough policy that we regard Australia as a model country. We especially respect it for the brave, direct and Anglo-Saxon consistency which it has shown on migration and defence of the Australian nation”.
These words of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán to Tony Abbott at the Third Budapest Demographic Summit uttered on September 5 would have made the former Australian premier gooey and weak at the knees. Abbott, it must be remembered, had been the proud architect of the “turn back the boats” …
by Robert J. Burrowes / September 20th, 2019
I have just read a superb book by Mark Isaacs, an Australian who has documented several years of effort by a group of incredibly committed young people in Afghanistan to build peace in that war-torn country the only way it can be built: by learning, living and sharing peace.
The book, titled The Kabul Peace House: How a Group of Young Afghans are Daring to Dream in a Land of War, records in considerable detail the struggle, both internal and external, to generate a peaceful future in Afghanistan. …
International Conference in Syria on Sanctions and Its Blowback
by Roger D. Harris / September 20th, 2019
“Welcome to your second country” was the greeting our Syrian hosts gave us when we arrived for the International Trade Union Forum for “solidarity with the workers and people of Syria against the economic blockade, imperialist interventions, and terrorism.”
Throughout my short one-week stay, Syrians, on seeing I was a foreigner, would muster their best English to ask where I was from. Invariably upon hearing that I was from the US, the questioner would shake my hand, touch hand to heart, and say “welcome.” Ironically, these victims of the US-backed war of regime change and economic sanctions went out of their …
by Hiroyuki Hamada / September 20th, 2019
Good investigative journalism doesn’t only reveal hidden mechanisms of our time; it also exposes those who refuse to confront the mechanisms. Remember when the late Bruce Dixon courageously and cogently called Bernie Sanders “a sheep dog candidate”? Remember when Eva Bertlett, Vanessa Beeley and others truly stood with Syrian people in opposing the western intervention? I do. Those who could not face the reality came up with all sorts of profanities and ill conceived theories to demonize the messengers.
Cory Morningstar has been a dedicated environmental activist with a sound track record, who has closely worked with various NGOs. She is …
by Shawgi Tell / September 20th, 2019
Steadily mounting opposition to privately-operated nonprofit and for-profit charter schools is inevitable and becoming a bigger thorn in the side of nervous neoliberals, privatizers, and corporate school reformers.
Terrified of discussion, investigation, and analysis, and hell-bent on privatizing schools, no matter the cost to society, on September 11, 2019, “Chiefs for Change” issued a letter righteously and arrogantly demanding that everyone blindly submit to the destructive neoliberal agenda of privatizing schools to further enrich major owners of capital.
“Chiefs for Change” has been around since January 2015 and is comprised …
by John Steppling / September 19th, 2019
Not only are we not going to have wars between major powers in this era of fascist upsurge (of course, as will be discussed, we shall have other wars), but, by the same token, this fascist upsurge will not burn out through any cataclysmic war. What we are likely to see is a lingering fascism of less murderous intensity, which, when in power, does not necessarily do away with all the forms of bourgeois democracy, does not necessarily physically annihilate the opposition, and may even allow itself to get voted out of power occasionally. But since its successor government, as …
by K. J. Noh, Kevin Zeese, and Margaret Flowers / September 19th, 2019
Note: Congress is currently considering the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act of 2019. If this bill becomes law it will increase conflict between the US and China and increase US meddling in Hong Kong. It will become an excuse for unilateral coercive measures (sanctions) against China and Hong Kong. In the Open Letter below we explain in detail why this letter should be opposed. We urge you to share it with your representatives in Washington and urge them to oppose the Act.
You can download the letter as a pdf here.
hong-kong-bill-critique-noh-zeese-flowers
Thanks for taking action. KZ
HR 3289, the …
by Gilad Atzmon / September 18th, 2019
The results from Tuesday’s Israeli elections have confirmed what many of us have known for a long while. The Jewish state is an ultra nationalist right wing swamp. Israel is more hawkish than more hawkish than ever. There is not a single Jewish Israeli Left wing party. The Democratic Party is led and mentored by a war criminal. What is left of Israel’s Labour Party has very little to do with peace, harmony and reconciliation. In fact, that Party is also led by a person …
by Ralph Nader / September 18th, 2019
Dear America:
Costly complexity is baked into Obamacare, and although it has improved access to healthcare for some, tens of millions of Americans still cannot afford basic medical care for their family. No healthcare system is without problems but Canadian-style single-payer — full Medicare for all — is simple, affordable, comprehensive and universal for all basic and emergency medical and hospital services.
In the mid-1960s, President Lyndon Johnson enrolled 20 million elderly Americans into Medicare in six months. There were no websites. They did it with index cards!
Below please find 25 ways the Canadian health care system — and the resulting quality of life …
by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies / September 18th, 2019
On Saturday, September 14th, two oil refineries and other oil infrastructure in Saudi Arabia were hit and set ablaze by 18 drones and 7 cruise missiles, dramatically slashing Saudi Arabia’s oil production by half, from about ten million to five million barrels per day. On September 18, the Trump administration, blaming Iran, announced it was imposing more sanctions on Iran and voices close to Donald Trump are calling for military action. But this attack should lead to …
by Ramzy Baroud / September 18th, 2019
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is moving quickly to alter the political reality in Palestine, and facing little or no resistance.
On September 10, Netanyahu declared his intentions to annex swathes of Palestinian land adjacent to the Jordan River, an area that covers 2,400 square kilometers, or nearly a third of the Occupied West Bank. That region, which extends from Bisan in the north to Jericho in the south, is considered to be Palestine’s food basket, as it accounts for an estimated 60 percent of vegetables that are produced in the West Bank.
While Israel has already colonized …
by Yves Engler / September 18th, 2019
It seems strange to even ask this question, but some who call themselves socialists do, so it is good to revisit the query every so often. Is Canada best described as a colony or imperialist power?
Recent issues of the Economist and Northern Miner highlight the weakness of the dominant “staples trap” political economy perspective. Regardless of its popularity in left nationalist intellectual circles, Canada is not a victim of international capitalism. Instead it has long had a privileged place in an extremely hierarchical global economy.
In “How a Canadian firm has taken on Wall Street’s private-equity titans” The Economist …
by Ellen Brown / September 18th, 2019
Conceding that their grip on the economy is slipping, central bankers are proposing a radical economic reset that would shift yet more power from government to themselves.
Central bankers are acknowledging that they are out of ammunition. Mark Carney, the soon-to-be-retiring head of the Bank of England, said in a speech at the annual meeting of central bankers in August in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, “In the longer-term, we need to change the game.” The same point was made by Philipp Hildebrand, former head of the Swiss National Bank, in an August 2019 interview with Bloomberg. “Really there is little …
There looms the possibility of weeks of horse-trading and the Joint List of Arab legislators becoming the official opposition
by Jonathan Cook / September 18th, 2019
For most Israelis, the general election on Tuesday was about one thing and one thing only. Not the economy, nor the occupation, nor even corruption scandals. It was about Benjamin Netanyahu. Should he head yet another far-right government, or should his 10-year divisive rule come to an end?
Barring a last-minute upset as the final ballot papers are counted, Israelis have made their verdict clear: Netanyahu’s time is up.
In April’s inconclusive election, which led to this re-run, Netanyahu’s Likud party tied with its main opponent in the Blue and White party, led by retired general Benny Gantz. This time Gantz appears …
by Media Lens / September 18th, 2019
Nothing happened on September 2 in central London. Roger Waters, co-founder of Pink Floyd, did not initiate a protest outside the Home Office. He did not sing and play the Floyd classic ‘Wish You Were Here’, or say:
Julian Assange, we are with you. Free Julian Assange!
The renowned journalist and film-maker John Pilger did not say:
The behaviour of the British government towards Julian Assange is a disgrace – a profanity on the very notion of human rights.
It’s no exaggeration to say that the persecution of Julian Assange is the way dictatorships …
A Review of On Fire: The (Burning) Case for a Green New Deal
by Robert Jensen / September 18th, 2019
Naomi Klein’s new book, On Fire: The (Burning) Case for a Green New Deal, has one crippling flaw—it’s inspiring. At this moment in history, inspiring talk about solutions to multiple, cascading ecological crises is dangerous.
At the conclusion of these 18 essays that bluntly outline the crises and explain a Green New Deal response, Klein bolsters readers searching for hope: “[W]hen the future of life is at stake, there is nothing we cannot achieve.” It is tempting to embrace that claim, especially after nearly 300 pages …
