Latest articles
by John W. Whitehead / February 5th, 2019
As I look at America today, I am not afraid to say that I am afraid.
— Bertram Gross, Friendly Fascism: The New Face of Power in America
These are dangerous times.
Mind you, when I say that these are dangerous times, it is not because of violent crime, which remains at an all-time low, or because of terrorism, which is statistically rare, or because our borders are being invaded by armies, which data reports from the Department of Homeland Security refute.
No, the real danger that we face comes from none other than the U.S. government and the powers it …
Part 1 of a 2-Part Series
by Media Lens / February 5th, 2019
In our new book, we describe a ‘Propaganda Blitz’ as a fast-moving campaign to persuade the public of the need for ‘action’ or ‘intervention’ furthering elite interests. Affecting great moral outrage, corporate media line up to insist that a watershed moment has arrived – something must be done!
A classic propaganda blitz was triggered on January 23, when Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó declared himself ‘interim President’. This was presented as dramatic new evidence that the people of Venezuela had finally had enough of Nicolas Maduro’s ‘regime’.
In reporting this news the following day, the BBC website featured …
by Roger Harris and Alicia Jrapko / February 4th, 2019
Close to 700 conferees from 65 countries convened in Havana, Cuba from January 28-31, for peace and “world balance.” This, the fourth such conference, was dedicated to honoring the ideals of Cuban national hero José Martí who died in 1895 at the age of 42 fighting for independence from colonial Spain. The event was organized by the José Martí Project of International Solidarity, which is sponsored by UNESCO.
An overarching theme of the conference was the urgency for international solidarity with the democratically elected Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro who is under attack by the US and its minions. Another prominent issue …
by Leon Tressell / February 4th, 2019
The British political establishment is experiencing an unprecedented crisis over the issue of exiting the European Union. The Conservative government staggers from crisis to crisis over its Brexit deal while politicians of all colours bicker and argue as the UK lurches towards a potentially devastating No Deal scenario. This had lead to a huge distrust in the political class amongst the long suffering public.
As the clock ticks down towards the 29 March exit date it is worth while recalling how this crisis came about in the first place. Regardless of which Brexit option the UK takes over the next period …
by Ramzy Baroud and Romana Rubeo / February 4th, 2019
Hundreds of Palestinians took to the streets of besieged Gaza to show their support of the democratically-elected government of Venezuela and its legitimate leader, President Nicolas Maduro.
Venezuela is struggling to defeat a coup attempt that is supported by the United States, Israel and many Western governments.
The relationship between Venezuela and Palestine has been particularly strong under the presidencies of late Venezuelan leader, Hugo Chavez and current president Maduro. Neither leader has missed an opportunity to show their solidarity towards the Palestinian people, a fact that has always irked Tel Aviv and its western benefactors.
The Gaza rallies, however, were …
by Shawgi Tell / February 4th, 2019
Charter school supporters and promoters have long been severely obsessed with comparing charter school and public school students’ scores on expensive curriculum-narrowing high-stakes standardized tests produced by big corporations. They fetishize test scores and believe such scores are useful and meaningful in some way, despite what extensive evidence has shown for decades.
One reason charter school supporters and promoters dogmatically fixate on pedagogically meaningless test scores is because they do not want to draw any attention to the real underlying problem with charter schools, which is that they are privatized, marketized, corporatized, deregulated, deunionized, non-transparent, pro-competition, political-economic arrangements that siphon billions …
by Robert Hunziker / February 4th, 2019
“It’s a disturbing discovery,” according to Pietro Milillo, a radar scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab, who co-authored a recently published study: “Heterogeneous Retreat and Ice Melt of Thwaites Glacier, West Antarctica”, Science Advances, Vol. 5, No. 1, January 30, 2019.
It’s only within the past 10 years that NASA’s IceBridge Mission has served as the largest airborne survey of Earth’s polar ice, providing unprecedented three-dimensional views of Antarctica’s ice sheets, ice shelves and sea ice. Scientists are now able to peer into glaciers with remarkable accuracy to see what’s happening.
Indeed, scientists are getting an eyeful, and they are discovering the …
by John W. Whitehead / February 3rd, 2019
I can’t remember if I cried
When I read about his widowed bride
But something touched me deep inside
The day the music died.
— Don McLean, American Pie (1971)
The snow was heavy on that night 60 years ago.
The only alternative to riding all night long in a dirty, unheated bus to the next concert gig was a tiny airplane.
Shortly after takeoff, however, the plane carrying Buddy Holly, along with Ritchie Valens and J.P. Richardson, disappeared into a snowy cloud.
Holly’s torn, mangled body was found a few hours later in a frozen Iowa cornfield a little past midnight on February 3, 1959.
I was a …
by Jim Prues / February 3rd, 2019
The Empire doesn’t understand yet what has happened. Legalizing hemp farming and hemp industries will have a profound impact on our local communities, our soil, our ecosystems and our culture at large. They don’t understand that legalizing hemp, part of the new Farm Bill enacted in December, is a tremendous catalyst for change. But we do.
Hemp was the first plant under human cultivation, some 10,000 years ago. Hemp farming and production was a staple of Europe and much of the world 1,000 years ago. Without hemp Europeans could not have colonized so much of the world, as hemp sails are durable and don’t rot. So we …
To the People of Venezuela
by Robert J. Burrowes / February 3rd, 2019
Yet again, the United States elite has decided to attempt to impose its will on the people of another nation, in this case, and not for the first time either, your country Venezuela.
On 23 January 2019, following careful secret planning in the preceding weeks and a late night telephone call the previous day from US Vice President Mike Pence – see ‘Pence Pledged U.S. Backing Before Venezuela Opposition Leader’s Move’ and ‘Venezuela – Trump’s Coup Plan Has Big Flaws’ – the US initiated a coup against your President, Nicolás Maduro, and his Government, whom you democratically re-elected to …
by Yves Engler / February 2nd, 2019
What should the leader of Canada’s left wing party say about what’s happening in Venezuela? Here are a few suggestions: “Canada should respect international law in its dealings with Venezuela.” Or, “Canada shouldn’t select the president of Venezuela.” How about, “The US has a long history of overthrowing governments in Latin America and Canada should never take part.”
Any (or all) of these statements would be clear, reasonable positions for a social democratic party that claims to be in favour of international law and to represent the interests of ordinary people, rather than billionaires, to express. Instead, NDP leader Jagmeet Singh …
by John Steppling / February 2nd, 2019
Utilizing the power of celebrity (an unprecedented phenomenon for the expansion of capital in the west), today’s global influencers such as Thunberg, are fully utilized to create a sense of urgency in regard to the climate crisis. The unspoken reality is, they are the very marketing strategy to save capitalism. This is a very “inconvenient truth”.
— Cory Morningstar and Forest Palmer
And we will move forward to our work, not howling out regrets like slaves whipped to their burdens, but with gratitude for a task worthy of our strength, and thanksgiving to Almighty God that He has marked us as …
by Julian Vigo / February 1st, 2019
Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation which was implemented last summer has far-reaching privacy rules. Commonly referred as the , this is now the standard which has forced most tech companies to rethink not only data collection practices but also how data is collected or they risk high fines. Where the US lacks a similar regulation to protect privacy of Internet users, many characterize Europe’s GDPR as hurting privacy instead of protecting it while others accuse the EU of policing across its own borders.
The Washington Post announced last week that France has fined Google almost $57 million for the …
by Robert Hunziker / February 1st, 2019
Around the world, atypical climate change grows increasingly threatening to all life on the planet, principally because of excessive CO2 emissions. Paradoxically, this is happening on the heels of the Paris 2015 climate accord among nations of the world.
But, didn’t almost all of the countries of the world pledge to cut back greenhouse gas emissions?
Oh yes, they did, but CO2 emissions set new records year after year after year. Ever since Paris 2015 nothing positive has happened to halt global warming, almost nothing!
Granted, it’s true that renewable installations, especially in China, are hot items but so is fossil fuel usage, …
Contemporary penal institutions are not often the penitentiaries themselves,
but, are immersed within communities, manifesting in social welfare programming
by Paul Haeder / February 1st, 2019
Drawing a Picture on the Shreds of American Greenbacks
It is solely by risking life that freedom is obtained; . . . the individual who has not staked his or her life may, no doubt, be recognized as a Person; but he or she has not attained the truth of this recognition as an independent self-consciousness.
— Georg Hegel, The Phenomenology of Mind (New York, 1967), p. 233
What does it mean to be a wounded warrior? What does it mean to have spent time in the US military, even for a short stint? What does it mean to be on the streets …
by Jason Hirthler / January 30th, 2019
There’s a scene in George Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia where he describes how the communists propagandized the fascists during the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s. Orwell was with a scruffy, makeshift band of fighters high in the Spanish Alps. Both the communists and fascists were dug into their trenches and a general stalemate had ensued. During the frigid mountain days, certain soldiers were tasked with communicating to the enemy. They would first position themselves in a safe place. Then using a megaphone would recite a prefabricated monologue about how the fascist soldiers were little more than pawns in …
by Kathy Kelly / January 30th, 2019
PPM members meet Afghan Peace Volunteers outside UK Embassy in Kabul (Photo: Dr. Hakim)
On January 27th, 2019, the Taliban and the U.S. government each publicly stated acceptance, in principle, of a draft framework for ongoing negotiations that could culminate in a peace deal to end a two-decade war in Afghanistan.
As we learn more about the negotiations, it’s important to remember others working toward dialogue and negotiation in Afghanistan. Troublingly, women’s rights leaders have not, thus far, been invited to the negotiating table. But several have braved potential …
by Ellen Brown / January 30th, 2019
The Green New Deal endorsed by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and more than 40 other US Representatives has been criticized as imposing a too-heavy burden on the rich and upper-middle-class taxpayers who will have to pay for it, but taxing the rich is not what the Green New Deal resolution proposes. It says funding will come primarily from certain public agencies, including the Federal Reserve and “a new public bank or system of regional and specialized public banks.”
Funding through the Federal Reserve may be controversial, but establishing a national public infrastructure and development bank should be a no-brainer. The real …
by C.J. Hopkins / January 30th, 2019
Say what you will about the current zeitgeist, at least it’s often entertaining … albeit in a psychotic Charlie Manson kind of way. Last week, for example, when Russian Hitler ordered Russian-intelligence-asset Hitler to support a coup against Venezuelan Hitler (i.e., Russian Hitler’s South American ally) to distract attention from Smirkboy Hitler and his acne-faced army of MAGA hat-wearing Catholic high-school Hitler Youth. That was entertaining … or something.
This Russian Hitler-backed American Hitler against Russian Hitler-backed Venezuelan Hitler attempted non-military military coup was one of the silliest attempted coups in the history of silly attempted coups. Basically, what …
by John Andrews / January 30th, 2019
Nick Boles, an MP previously loyal to Britain’s Tory party, recently made himself very unpopular with his own constituency activists. Why? Because he dared to state that he would not support any move that might result in Britain quitting the European Union without a deal. In a recent column in his local newspaper he listed several points that explain his position concerning the disastrous Brexit fiasco. One of those points stated his adamant rejection of any support for holding a second referendum because, he says, it would “Increase cynicism about the honesty and competency of politicians”.
Well, what can you say? …
by Ramzy Baroud / January 30th, 2019
Forget the hype. Israel’s ‘security technology’ has nothing to do with why some African countries are eager to normalize relations with Israel.
What is it that Israel is able to offer in the technology sector to Chad, Mali and others that the United States, the European Union, China, Russia, India, Brazil, South Africa and others cannot?
The answer is ‘nil’, and the moment we accept such a truth is the moment we start to truly understand why Chad, a Muslim-majority country, has just renewed its diplomatic ties with Israel. And, by extension, the same logic applies to Mali, another Muslim-majority country that …
by Binoy Kampmark / January 30th, 2019
It is all a rather sorry tale. Molly Russell, another teenager gorged on social media content, sharing and darkly revelling, took her own life in 2017 supposedly after viewing what the BBC described as “disturbing content about suicide on social media.” Causation is presumed, and the platform hosting the content is saddled with blame.
Molly’s father was not so much seeking answers as attributing culpability. Instagram, claimed Ian Russell, “helped kill my daughter”. He was also spoiling to challenge other platforms: “Pininterest has a huge amount to answer for.” These platforms do, but not in quite the same way suggested …
by Edward Curtin / January 30th, 2019
And as the flames climbed high into the night
To light the sacrificial rite
I saw Satan laughing with delight
The day the music died
Don McLean, “American Pie”, 1971
The Nazis had a name for their propaganda and mind-control operations: weltanschauungskrieg – “world view warfare.” As good students, they had learned many tricks of the trade from their American teachers, including Sigmund Freud’s nephew, Edward Bernays, who had honed his propagandistic skills for the United States during World War I and had subsequently started the public relations industry in New York City, an industry whose raison d’?tre from the start was to serve …
by Wayne Nealis / January 29th, 2019
If 2016 election taught us anything, it is that the U.S. working class is searching for alternatives to the two major parties, both of which they find unresponsive to their grievances and needs. By 2016, the working class, as well as young people, had become thoroughly dissatisfied by those representing the two establishment parties. This sentiment paved the way for Donald Trump to take over the GOP and for Bernie Sanders to come close to defeating the center-right, neo-liberal wing of the Democratic Party, symbolized by Hillary Clinton. What’s the road ahead?
In Desmond Greaves’ biography of Irish socialist leader James …
by Frank Scott / January 29th, 2019
The gap between the earth’s wardens of wealth and the nearly eight billion humans under their control has grown wider and more dangerous, but is beginning to be understood by some as a systemic problem and not simply a matter of evil leaders and villainous followers. When people see and feel their futures ranging from problematic at best to non-existent at worst, we get the resultant turmoil and changes taking place in nations moving in many directions at once but all of them against established power over things as they are.
Whether votes are cast in elections labeled democratic though still …
by Jonathan Cook / January 29th, 2019
A group of 30 respected intellectuals, writers and historians has published a manifesto bewailing the imminent collapse of Europe and its supposed Enlightenment values of liberalism and rationalism. The idea of Europe, they warn, “is falling apart before our eyes”, as Britain prepares for Brexit and “populist and nationalist” parties look poised to make sweeping gains in elections across the continent.
The short manifesto has been published in the liberal elite’s European house journals, newspapers such as the Guardian. “We must now fight for the idea of Europe or see it perish beneath the waves of populism,” their …
by Michael K. Smith / January 29th, 2019
A “democratic” U.S. government legally elected by a minority of the vote is now calling for democracy in Venezuela by attempting to overthrow its government, which was recently elected by a more than two-thirds vote after a highly-fragmented political opposition abstained from participation (on U.S. instructions) because it lacked popular support and felt that it was unlikely to win. The point man for the regime change operation is Elliott Abrams, whose biography tells us everything we need to know to evaluate the alleged democratic intentions of the Trump administration.
A fire-breathing fanatic for imperial Israel who championed the invasion and destruction …
Part 5 of 6: The Utility of Jordan Peterson's Digressions
by Kim Petersen / January 28th, 2019
In a book which seemingly offers simple, but clever, rules to help people gain control over their lives, psychologist Jordan Peterson curiously pours a lot of vitriol on Marxism/communism and the nation states that practice(d) communism.
Peterson writes that Marx discombobulated history and culture:
Marx attempted to reduce history and society to economics, considering culture the oppression of the poor by the rich. When Marxism was put into practice in the Soviet Union, China, Vietnam, …
by Andre Vltchek / January 28th, 2019
Come to Southeast Asia and enjoy beaches, cheap sex and raunchy massage parlors. Hang around this part of the world in whichever way you like; wearing flip-flops, shorts and t-shirts. You were told that ‘everything is easy here, that things are cheap and people are friendly and happy’. Do what you want, as almost everything is allowed, especially if you are from the West, and have plenty of cash and some credit cards in your pockets.
That’s what your simplified perception of Southeast Asia is supposed to be. This stereotype has been created, refined and fine-tuned, then finally hammered into the …
by Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers / January 28th, 2019
Photo: John Zangas, DC Media Group.
Two things stand out about the US coup in Venezuela. First, it is unusually open. Typically, the US tries to hide its coups. Second, the coup is built on a series of obvious falsehoods, yet the bi-partisans in Washington, with a few exceptions, keep repeating them.
First, we will correct the falsehoods so readers are all working from the same facts. Second, we will describe how this coup is being defeated. It will be another major embarrassment for the Trump administration and US foreign …
