Latest articles
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 …
by Gary Brumback / September 17th, 2019
“911!” is the title of my new book. ((Brumback, GB. “911!” Independent Publishing, KDP Amazon, 2019.)) You immediately recognize the title as the nationwide telephone number to call for help or rescue. My choice of this title was deliberate. America and the world need to be rescued from the wrongdoing and evildoing by the power elite of America’s corpocracy, or the Devil’s marriage between Corporate America and Government America, with the latter the lackey of the former, who are ruining America and the rest of the world. ((Brumback, GB. The Devil’s Marriage: Break Up the Corpocracy or Leave Democracy in …
by William Hawes / September 16th, 2019
The fundamental problem of political philosophy is still precisely the one that Spinoza saw so clearly (and that Wilhelm Reich rediscovered): Why do men fight for their servitude as stubbornly as though it were their salvation?
— Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Ant-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, 1972
There is a fairly typical and recurrent notion among many Americans that Donald Trump and his administration is some sort of aberration. As if his brutal, venal, racist, and bullying nature is something new, or different from previous leaders. For those not inclined to look at the historical record; one only has to look beyond …
by Ron Ridenour / September 16th, 2019
September 2, the day that Yankee President Donald Trump should have been in Denmark, between 1200 and 1500 demonstrated against US-Denmark wars to tell both states: “Yankee Go Home” and “Take Back Denmark’s Sovereignty.” This was the largest anti-war gathering in a long time. Some people came out just to protest vulgar Trump, or to oppose planet pollution, and other issues.
Trump cancelled the trip because the Kingdom of Denmark, as the Queen and her politicians call Denmark, would not sell the real estate capitalist its colony island of Greenland [As much as many danes might like to believe such is …
by Robert Hunziker / September 16th, 2019
Tokyo Electric Power’s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, which experienced three massive meltdowns in 2011, is running out of room to store radioactive water. No surprise! But now, what to do about phosphorescent water?
Addressing the issue, Japan’s environmental minister Yoshiaki Harada held a news conference (September 2019). Unfortunately, he proffered the following advice: “The only option will be to drain it into the sea and dilute it.” ((Justin McCurry in Tokyo, “Fukushima: Japan Will Have to Dump Radioactive Water Into Pacific, Minister Says”, The Guardian, September 10, 2019.))
“The only …
by Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers / September 16th, 2019
In the past, we have written about the 2020s as a decade when the United States Empire will end. This is based on Alfred McCoy’s predictions (listen to our interview with him on Clearing the FOG). Sociologist and peace scholar John Galtung believes US Empire will fall much faster, losing world dominance by 2020. Much of what he predicted when he said this in 2016 is happening now. In particular, there is a rise in “reactionary fascism” or a desire to go back to the “good …
by Peter Koenig / September 15th, 2019
The IMF, has been instrumental in helping destroying the economy of a myriad of countries, notably, and to start with, the new Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union, Greece, Ukraine and lately Argentina, to mention just a few. Madame Christine Lagarde, as chief of the IMF had a heavy hand in the annihilation of at least the last three mentioned. She is now taking over the Presidency of the European Central Bank (ECB). There, she expects to complete the job that Mario Draghi had started but was not quite able to finish: Further bleeding the economy of Europe, …
by Press TV / September 15th, 2019
PressTV Interview with Peter Koenig
15 September 2019
Enhanced and partial transcript of a PressTV Interview
Background
Saudi Arabia says the recent drone attacks on the state-run oil company Aramco led to a temporary closure of its facilities and disrupted the kingdom’s oil production and exports.
[Saudi] Energy Minister, Abdulaziz bin Salman said the attacks led to the interruption in production of an estimated five-point-seven million barrels of crude per day. The amount is equivalent to five percent of the daily global supply of crude oil. Meanwhile, Crown Prince, Mohammad bin Salman, said his country is willing and able to deal with Saturday’s drone strikes. …
Searching for Agostinho Neto (17 September 1922 – 10 September 1979)
by T.P. Wilkinson / September 14th, 2019
Agostinho Neto declaring independence of Angola 11 November 1975
What I want to do here is something very simple. I want to explain how I began to search for Agostinho Neto. I also want to explain the perspective that shapes this search. ((Monty Python’s Meaning of Life (1983) includes an episode set in South Africa as a parody of the film Zulu (1964). The upshot is that an army medical officer suggests that a tiger could have bitten off the leg of a fellow officer in the night. …
by Shawgi Tell / September 13th, 2019
Yet another academic study shows what many have documented for years: the teacher turnover rate in charter schools remains much higher than the teacher turnover rate in public schools. ((Gulosino, C., Ni, Y., & Rorrer, A. K. (2019, August). Newly hired teacher mobility in charter schools and traditional public schools: An application of segmented labor market theory. American Journal of Education, 125(4), 547-592.)) High teacher turnover rates has been a longstanding problem for privately-operated nonprofit and for-profit charter schools across the country. Here is a typical example:
Average [teacher] attrition across the charter school sector in …
by Yves Engler / September 13th, 2019
Last week I interrupted Jagmeet Singh at a public event to criticize the NDP’s suppression of Palestine solidarity activism.
Holding a placard with the words “Jagmeet, Palestinian Lives Matter”, I demanded the NDP leader apologize for overturning the vote of members who elected Rana Zaman to represent the Dartmouth-Cole Harbour ridding because she defended Palestinians mowed down by Israeli snipers. I also asked him to apologize for suppressing debate at last year’s convention on the modest “Palestine Resolution: renewing the NDP’s commitment to peace and justice”, which which was unanimously endorsed by the NDP youth convention, many affiliated groups …
by Graham Peebles / September 13th, 2019
Alongside the flag-waving surge of right wing and extreme right wing groups, political parties concerned with environmental issues are on the rise.
Public awareness of climate change and associated issues is growing; a recent poll in Britain found that 85% of people are concerned about climate change, 52% ‘very concerned’. As a result of this increased concern we are witnessing a major turning point for green parties, particularly in Europe, and it’s young people that are driving it.
In the May EU elections green parties achieved unprecedented levels of success in northwest Europe, a third of under 30 year olds voting …
by Binoy Kampmark / September 13th, 2019
There was something richly amusing in the move: three judges, sitting in Scotland’s highest court of appeal, had little time for the notion that Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s suspension, or proroguing, of parliament till October 14, had been lawful. Some 78 parliamentarians had taken issue with the Conservative leader’s limitation on Parliamentary activity, designed to prevent any hiccups prior to October 31, the day Britain is slated to leave the European Union.
It did take two efforts. The initial action in Edinburgh’s Outer House of the Court of Session was unsuccessful for the petitioners. Conventional wisdom then was that such issues …
by Press TV / September 13th, 2019
PressTV Interview – transcript
Background links:
https://ifpnews.com/iranian-mps-propose-formation-of-club-of-sanctioned-countries
https://www.newsweek.com/russia-china-iran-fight-sanctions-1458096
Excerpts:
An Iranian parliamentary faction has come up with the idea of establishing a club of sanctioned countries for concerted action against the US economic terrorism.
The chairman of the Parliament’s faction on countering sanctions, Poormokhtar, gave a report on the formation of the faction and its activities, as well as the ongoing efforts to establish the club of sanctioned countries. Iran’s FM, Zaraf, said this would be enhancing the already existing alliance of Russia, China, Syria, Iran, Cuba, Venezuela against US economic terrorism.
PressTV: Russia, China, Iran, Syria, Cuba, and Venezuela are among the nations that …
Amidst political posturing, aerial terrorism and street bombings, Afghan citizens pursue their daily work toward peace.
by Kathy Kelly / September 13th, 2019
On a very warm September morning in Kabul, several dozen men, women, and children sit on the carpeted floor of a room at the Afghan Peace Volunteers’ Borderfree Center. The women cluster together. All wear burqas, but because of the heat they push the steel blue veils back, revealing their faces. Most of the men wear traditional tunics and pakol hats.
Parents and children alike listen intently to Masoma, a young Afghan woman who coordinates the Center’s “Street Kids School.” She explains the importance of steady attendance, and parents nod in agreement. Most of the 100 students come on …
by Don Fitz / September 12th, 2019
The fiftieth anniversary of the first Earth Day of 1970 will be in 2020. As environmentalism has gone mainstream during that half a century, it has forgotten its early focus and shifted toward green capitalism. Nowhere is this more apparent than abandonment of the slogan popular during the early Earth Days: “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.”
The unspoken phrase of today’s Earth Day is “Recycle, Occasionally Reuse, and Never Utter the Word ‘Reduce.’” A quasi taboo on saying “reduce” permeates the lexicon of twenty-first century environmentalism. Confronting the planned obsolescence of everyday products rarely, if ever, appears as an ecological goal. The concept …
by Ralph Nader / September 12th, 2019
For avalanche-level lying, deceiving, and misleading, mega-mimic Donald Trump need look no further than the history of the corporate advertising industry and the firms that pay them.
Dissembling is so deeply ingrained in commercial culture that the Federal Trade Commission and the courts don’t challenge exaggerated general claims that they call “puffery.”
Serious corporate deception is a common sales technique. At times it cost consumers more than dollars. It has led to major illness and loss of life.
Take the tobacco industry which used to sell its products in the context of health and facilitating mental concentration. Healthy movie stars and athletes were …
by Jeff Blankfort / September 12th, 2019
I know what America is. America is a thing you can move very easily, move it in the right direction.
— Benjamin Netayahu, 2001, quoted in Ha’aretz, July 15, 2010
It is not uncommon, of course, to be labeled “anti-Semitic” for calling attention to the inordinate power of the Israel Lobby over our political processes or suggesting that the Iraq War was launched on Israel’s behalf. The last place that I would expect to find such an allegation, however, was on the CounterPunch website to which I have contributed a number of articles on the subject over the …
Heroes come from communities, live through struggle, take life and action up a notch
by Paul Haeder / September 12th, 2019
It’s a modest apartment in Newport where I sit with Susan Swift to go over “quite the life” as any listener might say about this feisty, spiritual and articulate, world-traveling woman.
The hitching post Susan and I tie our respective philosophical steeds on is “philosophy” and “fate,” although we could have brought in a whole team of other steeds to pull the conversation toward all spiritual directions.
“I know what is mine to do,” the 73-year-old Swift states early on in our talk. Since her life here on the coast — Five Rivers first — not only started in 1972 as a …
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 …
