Latest articles
by Shawgi Tell / July 9th, 2019
Major problems in the charter school sector have been detailed by many researchers and writers over the years. In the last year or two, however, persistent charter school problems have been exposed with much greater depth, breadth, and regularity by more individuals and organizations.
It has become abundantly clear to more people that the charter school sector is riddled with too many serious difficulties to hide. The consequences of these problems are just too severe to deny.
In this context, some “leaders” in the fractured crisis-prone charter school sector have remained hidebound, arrogant, and dogmatic, nonchalantly ignoring endless valid criticisms and simply …
Jewish mayor calls on residents to raise Israeli flags and play Hebrew music as mother and son barred from playground
by Jonathan Cook / July 9th, 2019
The barring of a lawyer and her infant from a public park in the Galilee last week has triggered a legal battle over whether local authorities in Israel can segregate citizens on a racial basis.
Human rights groups have warned that the ban marks a growing trend by local authorities representing the Jewish majority towards explicit separation of public space in ways reminiscent of apartheid South Africa.
An Israeli court will have to decide whether it is reasonable for Afula, a city in the country’s north, to deny non-residents entrance to the main local park, which includes a playground, a small zoo, …
by Yves Engler / July 8th, 2019
Given his personal history perhaps it is no surprise that Justin Trudeau is fond of monarchies.
The United Arab Emirates is a repressive monarchy that pursues violent, anti-democratic, policies in its region. Despite this — or maybe because of it —Trudeau’s Liberal government has strengthened ties to the federation of seven Emirates. And unlike Canada’s claims to be promoting democracy in Venezuela or the Ukraine, there has been little mention of this in the media or scrutiny in Parliament.
The UAE has propped up the Transitional Military Council in Sudan that has faced massive protests calling for civilian rule. Two months ago …
by Ramzy Baroud / July 8th, 2019
Those who are still hoping that the new American agenda on Palestine and Israel is temporary, or reversible, should abandon this false hope. Washington’s complete adoption of Israel’s messianic, extremist policies regarding Occupied Palestine has been a long time in the making. And it is here to stay.
Despite the unmistakable clarity in the American political discourse regarding Palestine, the Palestinian Authority (PA) is still trapped in a 25-year long, ineffectual political paradigm. Unable to move past their disproportionate reliance on American validation, and lacking any real strategic vision of their own, PA President Mahmoud Abbas and his men are operating …
by Dan Lieberman / July 8th, 2019
United States (US) demands that Iran promise to halt pursuit of nuclear weapons and ballistic missile developments distract from the real intent of the US actions. Knowing that the Islamic Republic is not pursuing nuclear weapons and will react aggressively to sanctions, the US ploy deters other nations from establishing more friendly relations with Iran and from changing their perspectives on the causes of the Middle East crises.
Adherence by all nations to the The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) had potential to stimulate extensive political, economic, and social engagements of the international community with Iran, Investments leading to long lasting attachments, …
by Peter Koenig / July 8th, 2019
When reading the Bachelet Report on Human Rights, following HR High Commissioner’s 3 day visit to Venezuela, published on Venezuela’s National Holiday, 5 July, I saw that it makes hardly any reference to the deadly sanctions and blockades imposed by the United States. How is that possible? The High Commissioner for Human Right does not mention the crimes of all crimes committed vis-à-vis Venezuela?
The Washington-based Center for Economic and Policy Research issued a few weeks ago a report co-authored by Jeffrey Sachs and Mark Weisbrot, concluding that more than 40,000 people have died in Venezuela since 2017 as a result …
by Godfree Roberts / July 8th, 2019
In chats about Hong Kong and the mainland, we always reached a consensus: if you want to develop you can go to the United States or back to the mainland, but there is no future in Hong Kong. In recent years, the decline has happened with shocking speed. At handover in 1997, per capita GDP was twice Macao’s. Hong Kong’s GDP was 18 percent of China’s then; in 2013 it was three percent. Now, Macau’s is three times Hong Kong’s. In 1997, neither Beijing, Shanghai nor Guangzhou had GDPs approaching Hong Kong’s; now all are higher, as are Shenzhen’s and …
by Jonathan Cook / July 8th, 2019
A deadly serious tweet at the weekend from Armando Iannucci, the comedy writer responsible for the hugely popular Westminster TV satire show The Thick of It, reveals something significant about the problem of resolving the so-called Labour anti-semitism “crisis”. In response to a tweet by a follower discussing my recent blog post entitled “The plot to keep Corbyn out of power”, Iannucci observed: “Fresh insight on the Labour antisemitism story. It’s all a lie stoked up by Jews.”
It is very unlikely that Iannucci had …
by Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers / July 8th, 2019
Protesters stand up to Trump’s attacks on immigrants in Los Angeles (Molly Adams|flickr).
Public awareness of the brutal repression against immigrants seeking entry to the United States, the reasons for their migration, and terrorism against immigrants living in the US are reaching levels that make them hard to ignore. The current immigration crisis is self-created and bi-partisan. Although the Trump administration’s rhetoric is extreme, it reflects policies that have developed over a long period of time.
Under Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a person has …
Book Review of Fully Automated Luxury Communism by Aaron Bastani
by Dan Corjescu / July 8th, 2019
Another world is possible and it is coherently presented in Aaron Bastani’s new book entitled Fully Automated Luxury Communism.
The revolution is here and its main protagonist is technology.
Bastani writes with almost messianic verve on how capital is about to transform itself into labor. It’s all about humanity accelerating the possible practices and uses of the information age which will/is revolutionizing everything from energy production to food consumption.
And he has a point. After all, humanity has been changing itself and its environment through technology for well …
by Shawgi Tell / July 7th, 2019
Irrationalism and disinformation manifest themselves in endless ways. While both have intensified greatly in the neoliberal period which began in the late 1970s, the public should brace for even more of both. The obsolete forces who have long benefitted from an outdated economic system that cannot provide for the needs of the people will surely sustain a massive onslaught of irrationalism and disinformation in an attempt to preserve their class power and privilege while keeping people disempowered and disoriented. They see no alternatives to anachronistic arrangements in society and its institutions.
In Opposing Charter Schools Without Really Opposing Them: Part …
by Binoy Kampmark / July 7th, 2019
The United States of Amnesia has occasionally found expression amongst those despairing at the state of historical consciousness in Freedom’s Land. Gore Vidal remains something of its high priest, his writings a pertinent scolding about what went wrong in the creation of a New Rome in the Americas. From Pilgrim’s Progress to the National Security State, the US became an empire with certain resemblances those of past: territorial acquisitiveness, a code of behaviour to observe and impose, a bore’s insistence on its exceptional qualities.
The word “empire” never really caught on, sealed fast from the cognitive capacities of the US academic …
Interview with Douglas Valentine
by Jeff J. Brown / July 7th, 2019
Douglas Valentine is the author of the five works of non-fiction: The CIA as Organized Crime (2017), The Strength of the Pack (2009), The Strength of the Wolf (2004), The Phoenix Program (1990), and The Hotel Tacloban (1984); the novel TDY (2000); and a book of poems, A Crow’s Dream (2011). Also editor of the poetry anthology With Our Eyes Wide Open: Poems of the New American Century (2012).
To sum up The CIA as Organized Crime (review), outside of anti-imperial and/or socialist countries, Earth’s peoples live in a plasticine simulacrum of fake …
by The Saker / July 7th, 2019
• Author’s Note: This analysis was written for the Unz Review
*****
This Spring saw a sudden increase in the volume of articles in the so-called “alternative media and blogosphere” about Putin “selling out” Syria or Iran to the Israelis and their US patrons, or both. What was particularly interesting about this campaign is that it was not triggered by any kind of event or statement by Putin or any other senior Russian decision-makers. True, Israeli politicians made numerous trips to Russia, but each time they walked away without anything tangible to show for their efforts. As for their …
The Criminal Negligence of American Medicine
by Nayvin Gordon / July 7th, 2019
As of 2017, more than half a million US children have lead poisoning. For over 2,000 years humanity has documented the poisonous effects of lead. It is a preventable environmental toxin that has no biological role in the human body. Lead causes irreversible brain damage especially in children. Presently the law does not require testing of all children for dangerous lead levels. Compare this to PKU (Phenylketonuria).
PKU is a genetic disorder that causes irreversible brain damage. It can be found in 1 in 10,000 White newborns …
by Mohsen Abdelmoumen / July 6th, 2019
Mohsen Abdelmoumen: You wrote Worker Cooperatives and Revolution where you talk about workers’ cooperatives. In this fascinating book, we note your optimism about the coming of a new era where the human is at the center. You give the example of the cooperative New Era Windows, in Chicago. In your opinion, are we in a new era where the union of workers in the form of a cooperative will shape the future of the world?
Dr. Chris Wright: I think I may have been a little too optimistic in that book about …
Living among the concentration camps of America.
by David Rovics / July 6th, 2019
Concentration camps in the United States are nothing new. As has been widely reported, one of the many new, austere, prison camps for dividing up and indefinitely detaining families for the crime of being refugees that has recently opened up is one in Oklahoma that was previously used for the same purposes during the Second World War to imprison Japanese American families and to kidnap and abuse Native American children. Concentration camps in America go back to the days when white people could supplement their …
by Edward Curtin / July 6th, 2019
It amazes me that alternative journalists would spend even a minute writing about the ongoing Democratic Party debates. They are meaningless and they are not debates. How many times do we have to go through this ridiculous charade before this can be accepted once and for all? The “debates” are farces, total theater, as are the Presidential elections. They don’t matter. The political quiz show of duopoly is fixed. Discussing who has won is the height of absurdity. It legitimizes the system of oppressive duopoly. It is political “jeopardy,” and only the fixers win when they suck us into watching …
by Bill Willers / July 6th, 2019
I had Doctor Daniel Brown from Harvard spend 70 hours with Sirhan over almost three years [and] he comes away with this staggering, staggering evaluation. He says Sirhan was hypnoprogrammed ….. a technique of using chemicals as well as hypnosis ….. The program on him makes him forget everything within a certain time frame ….. He remembers when he gets a pinch on the neck [that] what he sees is not Senator Kennedy. It’s a paper target of a human being.
— William Pepper, 2013, speaking at Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Two issues made explicit in the U.S Constitution had …
American Exceptionalism and American Innocence: A Book Review
by David William Pear / July 6th, 2019
by Chris Wright / July 5th, 2019
On June 28, the New York Times published an article by Bari Weiss that wasn’t moronic.
Titled “San Francisco Will Spend $600,000 to Erase History,” it was about the school board’s unanimous decision to destroy a New Deal-era mural by the famous Communist painter Victor Arnautoff that’s painted on the walls of a local high school. Called “Life of Washington,” the mural depicts Washington’s slaves picking cotton at Mount Vernon as a group of colonizers walks past a dead Native American. The painting is clearly meant to oppose the sanitized versions of American history that are taught in most schools.
So …
Report from the Left Forum
by Roger D. Harris / July 5th, 2019
“Venezuela,” Daniela Rodríguez explained, “is building socialism in the midst of a war.” According to Rodríguez, “the U.S. is using new tools of warfare trying to subjugate, dominate, and push back socialism not only in Venezuela but in any part of the world.” Nevertheless, she added, “we are learning new ways to defend humanity.”
A youth member of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela, Rodríguez was only nine years old when Hugo Chávez was elected president of Venezuela in 1998 and initiated the Bolivarian Revolution. Based on her activism, this millennial explained to a mostly seasoned audience at the Left Forum …
by Alison McDowell / July 5th, 2019
One of the biggest things we’re up against, and something few people are talking about, is social impact investing and pay for success finance. Within the hollowed out shell of the welfare state, which admittedly was always inadequate and used for purposes of racialized social control, global finance has built a new machine that will use predictive analytics, artificial intelligence, and wearable and screen-based technologies to monitor the global poor and profit from their misery.
This effort is being carried out in partnership with the non-profit sector, higher education, think tanks, and global foundations. Many involved identify as liberal, even progressive. …
by Dr. Hakim and the Afghan Peace Volunteers / July 5th, 2019
Dear fellow human beings,
Some of us have wondered, “Are people today too disconnected and frantic to calm down, in order to solve global challenges together? Are we so polarized and self-absorbed that we cannot stop judging one another or insisting on our partisan ways?”
In Kabul, our thoughts and feelings are diverse, complicated and flawed, so we center our three dreams on relationships.
We have felt much joy in creating this video-letter. We dedicate it to planet earth and to everyone in the human family.
We hope that each of us can take tiny actions to free ourselves from the ravages of …
by Yves Engler / July 5th, 2019
Is Justin Trudeau a racist? He and his government certainly accept and promote anti-Palestinianism. Two recent moves reaffirm his government’s pattern of blaming Palestinians for their dispossession and subjugation.
Last week the government released its updated terrorist list. An eighth Palestinian organization was added and the International Relief Fund for the Afflicted and Needy (IRFAN) was re-designated. The first ever Canadian-based group designated a terrorist organization, IRFAN was listed by the Stephen Harper government for engaging in the ghastly act of supporting orphans and a hospital in the Gaza Strip through official (Hamas controlled) channels.
Recently, the Liberals also …
by Media Lens / July 5th, 2019
On June 26, the Labour Party lifted the suspension of pro-Corbyn MP Chris Williamson, triggering a maximum effort propaganda blitz designed to reverse the decision.
Williamson had been suspended on February 27, after footage emerged of him responding to claims of institutionalised anti-semitism in the Labour Party. This is what Williamson said:
The party that’s done more to stand up to racism is now being demonised as a racist, bigoted party. I’ve got to say I think our party’s response has been partly responsible for that …
by Gary D. Barnett / July 4th, 2019
Once upon a time, some of the people of this country had independence from rule and they had freedom. That state of liberty began to deteriorate almost immediately after it began, and has all but disappeared over this country’s history. Today, even Orwell would have great difficulty in identifying the scope of the inconceivable tyranny that exists.
The date the Declaration of Independence surfaced was July 4th, 1776. It actually was cause for celebration, because it was the impetus to eliminate the ruling government of England by seceding from it. In other words, casting out the King and all his armies …
What's much ado about this wild-eyed belief this Un-United States is superior to all others?
by Paul Haeder / July 4th, 2019
What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July?
I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass-fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy-a thin …
by Jay Janson / July 4th, 2019
Many Americans think of July 4th as some sort of very special flag day, but for those Americans bitterly ashamed of USA’s continuous criminal world wide violence and bloodletting, the sight of the flag is almost unbearably uncomfortable.
Americans who flinch at the sight of their nation’s flag, never forgot the rage in the voice of former President Obama’s pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, during TV news bites of him shouting, his finger pointing to heaven, “God bless America? No, no! God damn America for her crimes against humanity,” and never forgot the snide smiles and head shaking of the criminal media …
Toxic Agriculture Is the Problem Not the Solution
by Colin Todhunter / July 4th, 2019
Why did the European Food Safety Authority claim that glyphosate was not ecotoxic? This is the question environmentalist Dr Rosemary Mason poses in her new 23-page report which can be accessed in full here. In places, the report reads like a compilation of peer-reviewed studies and official reports that have documented the adverse impacts of chemicals used in modern agriculture.
Only a brief outline of Mason’s report is possible here. Readers are urged to consult the document to grasp more detailed insight into the issues she discusses as well as the evidence cited in support of her arguments and claims.
Mason …
