Latest articles
by Gary Leupp / March 23rd, 2019
It’s a stretch to assume, the way all cable news anchors do, that a self-avowed socialist cannot become U.S. president, due to a supposedly inherent, gut-level American antipathy to socialism. The talking heads posit this in an attempt to convince the viewers that any hopes they have for fundamental change are hopeless if they challenge the omnipotent capitalist system. Don’t even think about it!
The fact is, Bernie Sanders was the most popular politician in the country in 2016; he would likely have won the Democratic nomination had the Democratic National Committee not skewed the primaries in Hillary’s favor. (Committee chair …
by Media Lens / March 23rd, 2019
In 2010, US Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning was given a 35-year prison sentence after she had leaked more than 700,000 confidential US State Department and Pentagon documents, videos and diplomatic cables about the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to WikiLeaks. Perhaps the most notorious of the releases was a US military video that WikiLeaks titled ‘Collateral Murder‘. It showed the indiscriminate slaying of up to eighteen people in Baghdad on 12 July, 2007. The footage, taken from an Apache helicopter gun-sight, showed the unprovoked slaying of a wounded Reuters journalist and his rescuers. A second …
by Frank Scott / March 23rd, 2019
Consciousness is… from the very beginning a social product.
— Karl Marx ((In The German Ideology, 1845.))
Given the degree of consciousness control suffered by people under the domain of privately owned political media and its stress on individual consumption, the very notion of social behavior, let alone socialism, can provoke outbursts of fear and loathing as the current idiocy over the term clearly shows. Fear that wealth will be taken away from people who don’t have any and given to some unworthies who have even less can reduce intellects and morality to a point at which president …
by John Steppling / March 22nd, 2019
In all times some must be rich, some poore, some highe and eminent in power and dignitie; others mean in subjeccion.
— John Winthrop, Governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony, A Model of Christian Charity, 1630
I think I can see the whole destiny of America contained in the first Puritan who landed on those shores.
— Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 1830
Today utopia is maligned because no one really wants to see its realization.
— Max Horkheimer, The Authoritarian State, 1940
I continue to see this repackaged antisemitism appearing everywhere, but perhaps most disturbingly on the left. And it seems tied into a growing …
by Christy Rodgers / March 22nd, 2019
I grew up with the idea that leaving Earth was inevitable. The Space Age had arrived and the sky was no limit. Per ardua ad astra was no longer a metaphor; it would happen, it was happening. Invisible radiation traveled through the air every afternoon to bring me indelible images of humans in space, benignly, bravely venturing out into the numinous beauty of the galaxy strung with stars, enticingly intercalated with exotic life. A chorus of ethereal voices accompanied their stalwart ship each time, as it boldly went where …
by Eric Walberg / March 22nd, 2019
What exactly is the religious rationale for Israel as a Jewish state? Who better to ask than an America Jewish secular journalist. We can assume that makes our investigative journalist a zionist (90% of Jews support Israel — DV Ed note: This is not a definition of a Zionist), but, as a journalist, and secular, our protagonist assures the reader he is interested in giving us as objective a version as can be expected.
David Plotz’s Good Book: The Bizarre, Hilarious, Disturbing, Marvelous, and Inspiring Things I …
by David Rovics / March 22nd, 2019
Another heavily-armed, sociopath fascist has carried out a carefully-planned, extremely cold-blooded, videotaped massacre. In terms of the particular form of mass murder that involves targeting people because of their race, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation or other such commonly-held characteristic, by far the most large-scale forms of ethnic cleansing have been carried out by governments. Examples include institutionalized forms of genocide such as the European Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, the Nazi gas chambers, the Japanese Empire’s Rape of Nanking, the smoke-filled caves of Turkey during the First World War, the total …
Ron Ridenour’s Russian Peace Threat: Pentagon on Alert
by Randy Shields / March 22nd, 2019
If Vladimir Putin really wanted to hurt the United States he’d send Russian bombers to drop copies of Ron Ridenour’s Russian Peace Threat: Pentagon on Alert on schools throughout America. Chronicling US crimes and obstructions against peace for over 100 years, this Tsar Bomba of a book ranges over the 1918 US invasion of Russia, US capitalism’s neverending collaborations with fascists and takfiris, the Cuban Missile Crisis, JFK’s assassination, Soviet involvement in Afghanistan and the momentous year 2001 when Vladimir Putin offered to align Russia’s …
by Andre Vltchek / March 22nd, 2019
Well, not exactly like that, but in a way, yes. Now, finally, ‘the gloves are off’. The U.S. is openly threatening the historically timid ICC (International Criminal Court) and its judges. And unexpectedly, the ICC is hitting back. It refuses to shut up, to kneel, and to beg for mercy.
Suddenly, even the Western mass media outlets cannot conceal the aggressive mafia-style outbursts of the U.S. government officials. On March 15, Reuters reported:
The United States will withdraw or deny visas to any International Criminal Court personnel investigating possible war crimes by U.S. forces or allies in Afghanistan, Secretary of State Mike …
by Greg Maybury / March 22nd, 2019
This essay was in part, inspired by—and written in memory of—William Blum (1932-2018). Blum was a comrade-in-arms, and himself one of the great keyboard warriors of his time. We all had much to learn from this man about courage, integrity, tenacity, and resilience in the service of truth. His trenchant opposition to the ruthless and relentless exploitation of other countries and their people by his own country, the United States of America—at what was clearly at considerable personal cost—is possibly best exemplified by his book America’s Deadliest …
by Binoy Kampmark / March 22nd, 2019
A censorious and censoring attitude has engulfed responses to the mental airings of the Christchurch shooter. Material in connection with Brenton Tarrant, the alleged gunman behind the killing of 50 individuals at two mosques in New Zealand, is drying up; his manifesto, for one, is being disaggregated and spread through multiple forms, removed from their various parts with blunt razors. Doing so does a disservice to any arguments that might be mounted against him, but having a debate is not what this is generally about.
Arguments on banning the incendiary and dangerous are easily mounted against a range of publications. The …
CIIA cum CIC
by Yves Engler / March 22nd, 2019
Aside from government officials the dominant media is fond of quoting “experts” from foreign policy think tanks when discussing Canada’s role in the world. While presented as neutral specialists, these opinion shapers are generally entangled with powerful, wealthy, elites.
Take the case of Venezuela and Canada’s leading foreign policy ‘ideas organization’. Recently Canadian International Council President Ben Rowswell has been widely quoted promoting Ottawa’s regime change efforts in Venezuela. After 25 years in Canada’s diplomatic service, including stints as chargé d’affaires in Iraq and ambassador in Caracas, Rowswell joined the CIC in November. Rowswell’s move highlights the close …
by C.J. Hopkins / March 21st, 2019
If Nietzsche was right, and what doesn’t kill us only makes us stronger, we can thank the global capitalist ruling classes, the Democratic Party, and the corporate media for four more years of Donald Trump. The long-awaited Mueller report is due any day now, or so they keep telling us. Once it is delivered, and does not prove that Trump is a Russian intelligence asset, or that he personally conspired with Vladimir Putin to steal the presidency from Hillary Clinton, well, things are liable to get a bit awkward. Given the amount of goalpost-moving …
by Binoy Kampmark / March 20th, 2019
Children’s crusades do not necessarily end well. During the years of armed missions to the Holy Land, when Jerusalem meant something to the sacredly inclined in Europe, children were encouraged to take to the rough and dangerous road as it wound its way towards Palestine. In 1212, a boy of 12 is said to have begun preaching at Saint-Denis in France. God had supposedly taken some time to communicate a pressing wish: Christian children were to head to the Holy Land and liberate it from the Infidel. How they would do so was not clear.
They subsequently starved, suffered deprivation, were …
by Ramzy Baroud / March 20th, 2019
Political commentators sympathetic to the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the Fatah Movement, in particular, fanned out as soon as the news was announced of Mohammad Shtayyeh’s appointment as the new Palestinian Prime Minister.
It is no surprise to witness this gush of support and enthusiasm for Shtayyeh is a Fatah man, par excellence. Gone are the days of the factional uncertainty of Rami Hamdallah, an independent Prime Minister who served from 2014 until he was brushed aside earlier this year.
Hamdallah, like his predecessor, Salam Fayyad, was meant to perform a most intricate balancing act: ‘independent’ enough to win the approval …
by Rick Sterling / March 20th, 2019
I’m running for president to be able to bring about this sea change in our foreign policy that is so necessary for us and for the world.
— Tulsi Gabbard
Introduction by Rick Sterling
Tulsi Gabbard visited the San Francisco Bay Area last weekend. The 3 term Congresswoman from Hawaii is 37 years old and ethnically diverse. Remarkably, she has 15 years military experience in the US Army and National Guard as well as substantial political experience. She was elected to the Hawaii State Assembly at age 21.
Tulsi Gabbard supports progressive domestic …
Interview with British photojournalist Alan Gignoux and Venezuelan journalist-filmmaker Carolina Graterol
by Paul Cochrane / March 19th, 2019
British photojournalist Alan Gignoux and Venezuelan journalist-filmmaker Carolina Graterol, both based in London, went to Venezuela for a month to shoot a documentary for a major global TV channel. They talked with journalist Paul Cochrane about the mainstream media’s portrayal of Venezuela compared to their experiences on the ground.
Paul Cochrane: What were you doing in Venezuela, how long were you there and where did you go?
Alan Gignoux: We went in August 2018 for a month to shoot a documentary; I can’t disclose what channels it will be on right now, but it should be on air soon. We visited the …
by Edward Curtin / March 19th, 2019
Our research has shown for the first time the role that conspiracy theories can play in determining an individual’s attitude to everyday crime. It demonstrates that people subscribing to the view that others have conspired might be more inclined toward unethical actions.
— Professor Karen Douglas, University of Kent press release for the research, entitled “Belief in Conspiracy Theories and Intentions to Engage in Everyday Crime,” in the British Journal of Social Psychology
Let me be perfectly clear from the outset.
I am not referring to the conspiracy theories of George W. Bush, Colin Powell, Barack Obama, Hilary Clinton, Donald Trump and other …
by Yves Engler / March 18th, 2019
“First we take Caracas then we take Havana.”
That’s the thinking driving the Donald Trump administration’s policy towards Venezuela, according to a Wall Street Journal story titled “U.S. Push to Oust Venezuela’s Maduro Marks First Shot in Plan to Reshape Latin America.” Adding credence to this thesis, last Monday US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told reporters that “Cuba is the true imperialist power in Venezuela.”
Despite Washington’s hope that toppling President Nicolás Maduro could hasten the fall of Cuba’s government, the Justin Trudeau government, which is supposed to have good relations with Havana, has played a central role in …
by Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers / March 18th, 2019
We are completing what became more than a week-long peace delegation to Venezuela organized by the US Peace Council and the Committee for International Solidarity in Venezuela (COSI). The trip was complicated by American Airlines cancelling all flights in and out of the country, leaving us scrambling for ways to get there and get home. We also arrived in the midst of the attack on Venezuela’s electrical system, which caused further complications.
Our delegation met with community groups, political parties and members of the government, including a private meeting with …
by Peter F. Crowley / March 17th, 2019
Just outside of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi swore herself in as president. With right hand on the bible, she vowed to defend and protect the U.S. Constitution.
Watching the breaking story on Fox News, Trump unleased a Twitter storm like none other. If his previous contentious tweets were tsunamis, this was a deluge. Throughout U.S. media outlets, Republicans denounced Pelosi’s act as unconstitutional. Sean Hannity squinted, as though looking into the audience’s eyes, and asked why other nations don’t respect U.S. sovereignty. In a Rush Limbaugh interview, John Bolton asserted that the world doesn’t honor the political will of …
by Andre Vltchek / March 16th, 2019
Does it pay ‘to be good’? Is it still possible to play by the rules in this mad world, governed by brigands?
What if the rules are defined and ratified by all countries of the world, but a small group of the strongest (militarily) nations totally ignores them, while using its professional propagandists to reinterpret them in the most bizarre ways?
Describing the world, I often feel that I am back in my primary school.
When I was a child, I had the misfortune of growing up in a racist Czechoslovakia. Being born in the Soviet Union, and having an half Russian and …
by Paul Haeder / March 16th, 2019
Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself.
We do not learn from experience… we learn from reflecting on experience.
Failure is instructive. The person who really thinks learns quite as much from his failures as from his successes.
Give the pupils something to do, not something to learn; and the doing is of such a nature as to demand thinking; learning naturally results.
We only think when confronted with a problem.
? John Dewey, 1938, Experience and Education (Vol. no. 10). New York: The Macmillan Company & 1933, How We Think. Boston, MA: D. C. Heath and Co
…
by Rosemarie Jackowski / March 16th, 2019
This is wonderful news… maybe the best news of the decade. Finally the truth about college admission scams has been exposed. This is only the tip of the iceberg. Corruption extends from K – 12 through Graduate School.
I have waited since 1942 for this. In 1942 I was five years old living with my parents in Philadelphia. My Father was employed by Bendix Aviation. Every night at the supper table my Dad would talk about how he had been called on to train and instruct the graduate engineers. The engineers were paid much more than my Dad. They had degrees but were sometimes …
by Dr. Hakim / March 16th, 2019
“Salam (peace)!” is how Afghans greet one another, some of them simultaneously placing a hand over their hearts.
But, while everyone including Afghans wants peace, the Afghan Peace Volunteers and I have observed that the human species appears to be stuck on violent peace. We think that this is because most of us are reared as armed doves, like the one drawn by Wifred Hildonen for Cartoon Stock below.
There is a new Peacemaker in town!
Using Wilfred’s cartoon analogy, the Afghan Peace Volunteers and I are differentiating violent …
by Binoy Kampmark / March 15th, 2019
Five weapons were said to have been used, all inscribed with symbols, numbers and insignia. The individual charged with the shootings at two Christchurch mosques that left 49 dead was an Australian with, it is alleged, a simple purpose: inflict death, and on specific communities in worship. Even as the carnage became clear, Christchurch was already the epicentre of twenty-four hour news television, supplying a ghoulish spectacle. Saturation coverage followed, and continues to do so, a point that will warm the attacker’s blood (his entire effort was streamed on live video on Facebook).
The alleged perpetrator, one Brenton Harrison Tarrant, …
Israel, Neoconservatism and the Military Industrial Complex
by David Spero / March 15th, 2019
The conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence of the Military-Industrial Complex (MIC) is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government.
— President Dwight Eisenhower’s farewell address, January 17, 1961
Why exactly does the US government go to war with so many of Israel’s enemies, starting with Iraq? The costs have been enormous, the results horrible, the rewards imperceptible. The Iraq war was the second in a long series of US invasions, bombings and destructions of majority-Muslim states. Despite …
by Robert J. Burrowes / March 15th, 2019
Recently I wrote an article explaining how you could defeat, using nonviolent strategy, the US coup attempt that is taking place in your country.
I would like to complement that article by now briefly explaining how you can also defeat a military invasion by the United States and any collaborating invaders by using a strategy of nonviolent defense as well.
In making this suggestion, I acknowledge the extraordinary difficulties inflicted on Venezuela by the US sanctions imposed over many years as part of its ‘undeclared war against Venezuela’ (partly designed to destroy its progressive social banking model), explained straightforwardly by Ellen …
by Paul Haeder / March 15th, 2019
Hold those things that tell your history and protect them… The ability to have somebody to tell your story is so important. It says: ‘I was here’.
— Maya Angelou
One of those splattering days — called to teach special education at one of the high schools in Lincoln City. Wonderful students, wonderful para-educators, wonderful teachers.
But not according to the powers that be in the world! How many students are thrown to the floor/ground and handcuffed by armed cops? How many schools are like prisons, with armed …
1989-2017, Part 2 of 2 Part Series
by Bruce Lerro / March 14th, 2019
Adjuncts of the world unite!
Between the worlds
Throughout all my formal studies, I continued to be an artist model and it wasn’t until I began teaching in college that the paths of teaching and modelling crossed in irreconcilable ways. My first teaching gig was at New College of California in 1988, teaching Soviet Personality Theory, a course that I made up. About the second week I was teaching there the booking secretary of the Model’s Guild offered me a modelling job in the New College Art Department. The …
