Latest articles
by Binoy Kampmark / May 12th, 2019
It has been an uninspiring election, punctuated by occasional moments of madness on the part of various candidates. Their sin was to be incautious in their previous use of social media, a form of communication that reveals everything and nothing about a person. In a political sense, the erring tweet and the injudicious remark on an online forum have laid waste to incipient political careers and ambitions.
This is a far cry from the supposedly mighty role the use of social media was meant to have in participatory politics. Now, the chickens have come home to roost in various unexpected ways. …
by Dan Lieberman / May 12th, 2019
During the Cold war, the major antagonists, United States and Soviet Union, faced one another at European borders. No military confrontations occurred between them. Their cooperation, in a war to end all wars, had a brief interlude, and succeeding years detected huge losses of lives in endless conflicts.
The Cold War atmosphere became a testing ground for two systems. The capitalist system gained economic and political victories, but at what cost? A fundamental question emerged from the rhetoric and saber rattling — which system, capitalist or socialist, was more likely to contain peace, or stated another way, more likely to wage …
by Alan Johnstone / May 12th, 2019
Further to previous articles, ((Here and here)) on the Marxist Impossibilist tradition it must sound rather bizarre to modern ears that there exist political parties that do not make demands upon the present capitalist system and its protector, the State. For many people it seems common-sense that a socialist party should advocate for something right now. Labor and left-wing parties have over the years issued manifestos listing their immediate demands, formulating platforms for various minimum programs and promoting their particular menus of transitional reforms. Amelioration of conditions by palliative changes has been the …
by Jacob Sweet / May 12th, 2019
As most of the world knows by now, the United States government intends to organize regime change in Venezuela.
Attempts to this effect have been made in the past – most notably in 2002, when its economy and standard of living was exemplary in the region – but not so brazenly as now. Today, the country wrestles with an economic crisis. At the same time, the U.S. Secretary of State openly threatens Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro with military action. The U.S. government provides material and political support to opposition forces. It also continues to tighten the sanctions that caused …
While people argue about which terms to use -- 'climate change' or 'climate chaos' or 'climate unpredictability' (it's global warming, man) -- communities have no way to tackle all that broken infrastructure
by Paul Haeder / May 11th, 2019
No Water. No Life. No Blue. No Green.
— Sylvia Earle
In the tradition of many of my posts, I end up looking at the local through a sometimes fine and other times coarse lens to extrapolate what this country, and most First World We Are the Only Ones Who Matter countries, is facing way beyond a world without polar and glacial ice.
The formula is simple — and you can replace “there” or “here” with whichever community or city or county or state or region you care to discuss. This is an earth where almost everywhere on the planet is supercharged …
by Eric Zuesse / May 10th, 2019
On Fox News Channel’s May 2nd edition of “The Story with Martha MacCallum” was alleged, by the program host (at 2:45 in this video), that one reason we must invade Venezuela (if we will) is that “People have lost 24 pounds” there. So (her point was), if we invade, that’s not evil, it’s no coup, but instead it’s humanitarian (presumably like it was in Iraq in 2003, when we invaded that country, which likewise had never invaded nor threatened to invade the United States — it was raw international aggression, by our country, against Iraq).
Individuals who fall …
by Yves Engler / May 10th, 2019
The effort Justin Trudeau is putting into overthrowing Venezuela’s government is remarkable.
During the past 12 days the prime minister has raised the issue separately with the leaders of the EU, Spain, Japan and Cuba. On Tuesday Trudeau had a phone conversation with European Council President Donald Tusk focused almost entirely on Venezuela, according to the communiqué. “Prime Minister Trudeau reiterated his support for Interim President Juan Guaidó”, it noted.
The next day Trudeau talked to Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez about ousting president Nicolás Maduro. Venezuela is the only subject mentioned in the official release about the call.
Venezuela was …
by Edward Curtin / May 10th, 2019
If you are really going to be free, you have to overcome the love of wealth and the fear of death.
— Martin Luther King, Jr. as quoted by Andrew Young in the documentary King in the Wilderness
Most people on this earth live on the edge of an abyss. Life is a daily struggle to stay alive, to acquire enough to eat and drink, rudimentary health care, housing, and protection from murderous government forces, their various death-squads, and their economic vultures. The gap between the rich and poor, while always great, has grown even more obscenely vast, and lies at the …
by Robert Hunziker / May 10th, 2019
America’s Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, speaking at the prestigious Arctic Council biannual meeting in Finland, christened the Arctic meltdown: “A wonderful economic opportunity for international trade.” In a nutshell, here’s a critique of the Secretary’s advice: An ice-free Arctic reduces travel time for shipping lanes between Asia and the West by three weeks, which qualifies as one of the biggest transport revolutions since cargo planes first crossed the Atlantic in the early 20th century.
Additionally, more goodies are at stake, as highlighted by the portly stout Secretary in his address to the biannual in Finland:
Arctic sea lanes could become the …
Obsolete Aim of Maximizing Profits as Fast As Possible Results in More Parasitism and Deeper Attacks on Public Schools and Public Interest
by Shawgi Tell / May 10th, 2019
Under the veil of high ideals, nonprofit and for-profit charter schools across the nation have long been violating the public interest in a variety of ways.
One of the most destructive ways is the non-stop siphoning of unthinkable sums of public funds from public schools—schools that are often chronically-underfunded, over-tested, constantly-shamed, and increasingly militarized and surveilled.
This legalized theft usually takes the form of a large or full portion of state and federal per-pupil funds “following” a student to a deregulated charter school governed by non-elected individuals with many business connections. Incidentally, these “per-pupil” funds, contrary to what charter school supporters dogmatically …
by David Swanson / May 9th, 2019
Like you, I’ve had countless experiences of pointing out a new fact to someone, and seeing them acknowledge it and incorporate it into their thinking and their talking from that point forward. I’ve even had this experience with public petitions pushed on powerful people. But, I’ve also had a different experience. There are some facts that some people just will not accept, and for some of them I have a very hard time understanding why. Can you help me understand?
For example, today I received an appeal from the March for Our Lives people upset and outraged that teachers were going …
by Media Lens / May 9th, 2019
The feeling is often there at night, of course, in the wee small hours. But it can arise at almost any time – looking at someone we care about, listening to birdsong on an unusually warm spring morning, shopping.
It is like being trapped on a sinking ship, with the captain and crew refusing to admit that anything is wrong. The passengers are mostly oblivious, planning their journeys and lives ahead. Everything seems ‘normal’, but we know that everything will soon be at the bottom of the sea. Everything seems ordinary, familiar, permanent, but will soon be gone. It feels as …
If genuine, the report published by an Israeli newspaper widely seen as Netanyahu’s mouthpiece offers a catastrophic vision of the Palestinians’ future
by Jonathan Cook / May 9th, 2019
A report published this week by the Israel Hayom newspaper apparently leaking details of Donald Trump’s “deal of the century” reads like the kind of peace plan that might be put together by an estate agent or car salesman.
But while the authenticity of the document is unproven and indeed contested, there are serious grounds for believing it paves the direction of any future declaration by the Trump administration.
Not least, it is a synthesis of most of the Israeli right’s ambitions for the creation of a Greater Israel, with a few sops to the Palestinians – most of them related to …
by Ralph Nader / May 9th, 2019
For all the rhetoric and all the charities regarding America’s children, the U.S. stands at the very bottom of western nations and some other countries as well, in terms of youth well-being. The U.S.’s exceptionalism is clearest in its cruelty to children. The U.S. has the highest infant mortality rate of comparable OECD countries. Not only that, but 2.5 million American children are homeless and 16.2 million children “lack the means to get enough nutritious food on a regular basis.”
The shamelessness continues as the youngsters increase in age. The Trump regime is …
by David Rovics / May 9th, 2019
Spotify is not single-handedly responsible for my relatively impoverished financial state as a working musician. But it is certainly one of the most prominent reasons for it.
Somewhere on Spotify: My Own Industrial Collapse, Part 2. I could agree with myself on the heading for this one, but I’m having trouble with the subheading. This is the kind of thing writers, and editors, agonize over for some reason. Nobody else probably cares or notices, or at least that’s what they …
70th anniversary of NATO
by Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin / May 9th, 2019
This year marks the 70th anniversary of the founding of NATO with the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty on 4 April 1949. Established as a peacetime alliance between the United States and Europe to prevent expansion of the Soviet Union, NATO has grown in size and and changed from a defensive force to an aggressive force implementing Western policies of expansion and control.
NATO now has 29 members ranging geographically east to west from the United Kingdom to countries of the former Soviet Union and north to south from Norway to Greece. NATO’s intervention in the Bosnian war in 1994 …
Key Purpose behind "Regime Change"
by Peter Koenig / May 9th, 2019
After the new coup attempt – or propaganda coup – Venezuela lives in a state of foreign imposed insecurity. The failed coup was executed on 30 April by Juan Guaidó, the self-proclaimed and Washington-trained and endorsed “interim President”, and the opposition leader, Leopoldo López, who was hurriedly freed from house arrest by Guaidó with a couple of dozens of armed-to-the-teeth defecting military, who apparently didn’t quite know what they were up to. Because, when all was over after a few hours, most of them asked to be re-integrated into their military units – and, as far as I know, they …
by Aleksandar Sarovic / May 9th, 2019
If one searches “theory of alienation” in Google, predominately Marx’s theory comes out because other theories of alienation in a political and economic level do not exist. The question is why? What is so incredible in Marx’s statement that workers get alienated from the products of their labour, which alienates them from themselves? It just does not hold much water because everyone who produces for the market gets alienated from the product at the moment of purchase.
Marx strongly contributed to the scientific understanding of capitalism. He stated that capitalists profit from the production, while their workers only receive a fraction of the …
by Yves Engler / May 8th, 2019
Why would Anti-Racist Canada (ARC) promote a video by a FOX News filmmaker who compares the Left to the KKK and claimed Swedish police refuse to go into immigrant neighbourhoods? Is it because the ARC collective is an example of people who fight racism except if it is anti-Palestinian?
Recently, ARC retweeted long-time anti-Palestinian activist Bernie Farber noting: “If anyone wants to read how anti-Israel invective morphs into antisemitism, then read this frightening piece. This happened this week at Duke.” Farber linked to a Jewish Journal article about a University of North Carolina/Duke University conference on the “Conflict …
by Ramzy Baroud / May 8th, 2019
The International Conference on Palestine held in Istanbul between April 27-29 brought together many speakers and hundreds of academics, journalists, activists and students from Turkey and all over the world.
The Conference was a rare opportunity aimed at articulating a discourse of international solidarity that is both inclusive and forward thinking.
There was near consensus that the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement must be supported, that Donald Trump’s so-called ‘Deal of the Century’ must be defeated and that normalization must be shunned.
When it came to articulating the objectives of the Palestinian struggle, however, the narrative became indecisive and unclear. Although …
by Vern Loomis / May 8th, 2019
Does William Barr appear to be easily manipulated? Do you really think he lacks inner strength? James Comey thinks so (James Comey: How Trump Co-opts Leaders Like Bill Barr). How about Mike Pompeo and Stephen Miller? Does Donald Trump have them acting out of character? Do you think Lindsey Graham does his bidding out of fear? Is Mike Pence really cowed into submission, or does Steve Bannon stroke Trump’s ego because he lacks intestinal fortitude?
All of the above have forceful personalities. They didn’t arrive at their stations through lack of will or low self esteem. To suggest they’re being …
by Binoy Kampmark / May 8th, 2019
There are no protests on the streets and no effigies of university officials being burned by protesting students today. There are no protests outside the offices of the over-remunerated Vice Chancellors and their various hench persons. It is business and malpractice as usual after revelations by Australia’s national broadcaster that Australian universities have been adjusting admission requirements to boost student numbers. Standards have been cooked, if not waived altogether, on the issue of English proficiency. Student bodies are the university equivalent of lebensraum: the expansive steppes of the Asian student market, to be exploited and leeched.
Since Australian universities first …
by J.B. Gerald / May 7th, 2019
With over a billion dollars pledged so far to rebuild Notre Dame de Paris, another monument to what Western civilization has accomplished enacts a daily tragedy before the forests and villagers trying to stay alive in Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.
Still ignored in the Euro-American press is a current Ebola epidemic, in particularly Kivu province ((“Ebola virus disease – Democratic Republic of the Congo: Disease outbreak news. Update,” WHO, May 2, 2019, World Health Organization.)) the second largest outbreak of Ebola on record and the first where medical care givers are being attacked.
…
by Edward J. Martin / May 7th, 2019
Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) – and its two predecessor organizations, the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee (DSOC) and the New American Movement (NAM) – had their origins in the early 1970s, at the beginning of a long-term rightward shift of United States and global politics. This shift to the right – from the 1980s of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher – to the 2016 Donald Trump charade – overshadowed the central role these organizations played in the movements of resistance to corporate domination, as well as in today’s ongoing project: organizing an ideological and organizational socialist presence among trade union, …
by Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers / May 7th, 2019
by Robert Hunziker / May 7th, 2019
Rachel Carson’s famous and brilliant book Silent Spring (1962), which single-handedly ignited the environmental movement, has never been more relevant than it is today.
A mimeo of Silent Spring is scheduled for publication by the UN, as the most comprehensive study of life on the planet ever undertaken, an 1,800-page study by the world’s leading scientists that spells out in detail the results of a massive study of the world’s ecosystems.
The conclusion: Nature is in “steep decline.”
According to Mike Barrett, WWF’s executive director of conservation and science: “All of our ecosystems are in trouble. This is the most comprehensive report on …
by Yves Engler / May 6th, 2019
To protect its culture Québec has decided veiled women shouldn’t be allowed to teach. But the crucifix adorning the National Assembly can stay, as well as a large cross atop the highest point in Montréal, not to mention the streets named after Catholic saints. The government has decided laïcité (secularism) should be pursued on the backs of the most marginalized immigrants.
Underlying support for this cultural chauvinism is a blindness to power relations that has long been part of Québec’s self-image and is especially evident in international affairs.
The week the governing party, Coalition Avenir Québec, announced it would prohibit public workers …
by Jonathan Cook / May 6th, 2019
We have been here many times before. However, on this occasion even the principal actors understand that the Palestinian Authority is not crying wolf as it warns of imminent collapse.
The crisis is entirely of Israel and Washington’s making. Keen to pander to hawkish public opinion in the run-up to last month’s election, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu struck a severe blow against Mahmoud Abbas and his government-in-permanent-waiting.
He announced that Israel would withhold a portion of the taxes it collects on behalf of the Palestinians, and which it is obligated under the Oslo accords to pass on to the PA, based …
by Roger D. Harris / May 6th, 2019
Gregory Barrett’s rant against childbearing in Dissident Voice repeats a similar admonition by the author a year before in the same publication. Barrett, who now regrets having his two daughters, finds 2019 to be just as bad as 2018 to have offspring.
Unsustainable production models and wasteful lifestyles
While Barrett’s article includes repeated references to his own thought, there is only one hyperlink to evidence purporting to support his view about “near-term human extinction” caused by the fertility of women. The cited report does not, in fact, support Barrett’s argument, but rather supports this response to his essay. The report …
What's Next?
by J. Michael Springmann and Edward C. Corrigan / May 5th, 2019
What?
On April 19, 2019 (the date of the original Patriots’ Day in New England), American tech giant Google disabled the accounts of Press TV, an Iranian news service, and its sister channel Hispan TV, an outlet in Spain. Google denied their access to all its services, including its popular video streaming platform YouTube and its E-mail service Gmail. The company’s move took place without prior notice or subsequent explanation.
The action’s date is particularly significant to Americans. That day marked the beginning of the American Revolution. It saw the first armed engagement between British soldiers and colonial militiamen at the Battles …
