Latest articles
by Yves Engler / January 28th, 2019
Most Canadians think of their country as a force for good in the world, but recent efforts by Justin Trudeau’s government to overthrow Venezuela’s elected government have once again revealed the ugly truth about the Great White North. We are an important partner in imperialism, willing to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries, up to and including the use of military force, to benefit the perceived self-interest of our elites.
Over the past two years Canadian officials have campaigned aggressively against President Nicolás Maduro. Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland has repeatedly criticized Caracas’ democratic legitimacy and …
by Binoy Kampmark / January 28th, 2019
This could have been seen as audacious. Instead, it had the smell of a not so well concealed sponsorship, the backing of a meaty foreign hand. Venezuelan opposition leader and President of the National Assembly Juan Guaidó decided to take a quick step in the direction of the presidency. His own counterfeit theory is simple: he is not being a usurper, so much as a panacea for the usurpation by the current president, Nicolás Maduro. “I swear to assume all the powers of the presidency to secure and (sic) end to the usurpation.”
Such language is not that of a principled …
by David Penner / January 28th, 2019
It is the year 2019, and American health care is in a state of profound crisis. While oligarchic parasites from the pharmaceutical industry and health insurance companies make enormous profits, bankruptcy and the fear of being denied care hang over the American people like a sword of Damocles. This diabolical order, predicated on greed and placing profit-making over human life, has stripped doctors of their autonomy and given birth to an inhuman and deeply unjust multi-tier system.
Unless we are able to disenthrall ourselves from the tyranny of privatized health care, Americans will continue to die as a result of avaricious …
The former army chief may present a challenge to Benjamin Netanyahu, but his campaign’s exultation of destruction and oppression is chilling
by Jonathan Cook / January 28th, 2019
With April’s elections looming, sr Benjamin Netanyahu has good reason to fear Benny Gantz, his former army chief. Gantz has launched a new party, named Iaeli Resilience, just as the net of corruption indictments is closing around the prime minister.
Already, at this early stage of campaigning, some 31 per cent of the Israeli public prefer Gantz to head the next government over Netanyahu, who is only months away from becoming the longest-serving leader in Israel’s history.
Gantz is being feted as the new hope, a chance to change direction after a series of governments under Netanyahu’s leadership have over the past …
Analysts warn that breakup of faction risks Palestinian citizens of Israel staying home – bolstering the right in April’s ballot
by Jonathan Cook / January 26th, 2019
A political coalition representing Israel’s Palestinian minority – currently the third biggest faction in the Israeli parliament, the Knesset – has been plunged into crisis by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to call for a surprise general election for April.
Long-simmering ideological and personal tensions within the Joint List, comprising Israel’s four main Palestinian parties, have erupted into a split over who should dominate the faction.
Knesset member Ahmad Tibi announced this month that he would run on a separate ticket with his small Taal party, after polls showed he was more popular than the List’s current head, Ayman …
An interview with Brazilian Dominican Frei Betto: Part 2
by T.P. Wilkinson / January 26th, 2019
Frei Betto spoke with the author at the Dominican convent in São Paulo, Brazil.
In the wake of the Brazilian presidential election where reserve army captain Jair Bolsonaro was inaugurated in January to lead the largest country in South America back to the far right, returning it to the narrower US imperial orbit while strengthening ties to the global bullies in Washington and Tel Aviv.
Frei Betto (Carlos Alberto Libânio Christo) served for a short period as an advisor to the PT government. He resigned his office because he …
by Peter Koenig / January 26th, 2019
HAARP – the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program – was initiated as an ionospheric research program, established in 1993 in Gakona, Alaska and operated by the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. It was and is funded by the U.S. Air Force, the U.S. Navy, the University of Alaska Fairbanks and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Its alleged purpose “was to analyze the ionosphere and investigate the potential for developing ionospheric enhancement technology for radio communications and surveillance. HAARP is a high-power, high-frequency transmitter used for study of the ionosphere.”
That is the official version. HAARP was supposed to be …
by Chris Wright / January 26th, 2019
The fact that we live in a world in which the distribution of information is largely under the control of private corporations (and of governments overwhelmingly influenced by corporations) is itself a sufficient indictment of our civilization. Even if, impossibly, no other crimes ever occurred anywhere and systems of power were by and large benevolent, private control and distribution of information would justify attempts to reconstruct society on a new foundation. Such control is simply too contrary to the principles of free expression and free access to information to be tolerated by a people who value democracy, truth, and rational, …
by Graham Peebles / January 26th, 2019
Ask any reasonably well-informed person what the cause of climate change is and the chances are they will say greenhouse gas emissions (GGE’s), but they would only be partially correct. While it is true that man-made GGE’s are clogging Earth’s lower atmosphere, trapping heat and resulting in widespread climate change, the underlying 21st century cause, in contrast to the 19th and early 20th century when information was scarce, is something much more personal and lethal: complacency. Widespread complacency among politicians, big business and to a lesser degree, the general public, is the reason why, despite the various cries for restraint, …
by Sheila Velazquez / January 25th, 2019
Furloughed federal workers who are finding life tough because of the partial government shutdown are sacrificing and taking extreme measures to make ends meet and pay their bills. They are visiting pawn shops, asking for loan extensions, applying for SNAP (food stamps), using food pantries and visiting soup kitchens. They are taking any part-time temporary work they can find at whatever pay rate. They go to bed each night wondering how they will get through the next day, week, month. Sort of like a huge chunk of U.S. workers.
When the strike is over, they will get back pay, great benefits …
by Robert Hunziker / January 25th, 2019
It is time we consider the implications of it being too late to avert a global environmental catastrophe in the lifetimes of people alive today.
— Jem Bendell, “Deep Adaptation: A Map for Navigating Climate Tragedy”, July 27th, 2018
In other words, the world is coming to an end.
Of course it is… but when?
Professor Jem Bendell’s brilliant seminal work, “Deep Adaptation: A Map for Navigating Climate Tragedy” d/d July 27th 2018, claims the time is now, within a decade, not sometime in the distant future. Not only that, he suggests embracing this transcendental experience that’s colloquially known as “End Times.”
Along those lines, …
Part 4 of 6: The Digressions of Jordan Peterson
by Kim Petersen / January 25th, 2019
For anyone who has read or listened to Jordan Peterson, it is obvious that he has an intense dislike of communism. On this subject his reasoning appears very shallow.
Thus the author asserts in his 12 Rules for Life: “Solzhenitsyn’s writing utterly and finally demolished the intellectual credibility of communism, as ideology or society.”
First, Peterson’s claim that Solzhenitsyn’s writing demolished “the intellectual credibility of communism” is a non-sequitur for one fundamental reason: there is no dialectical validity …
by Andre Vltchek / January 25th, 2019
It is new and it is not new, but it is tremendously wicked and deadly – the latest type of coup the US invented and is now applying against Venezuela.
Of course, coups and attempted coups are what could be described as the ‘West’s specialties’, and have been utilized by the U.S., U.K. and other imperialist countries against innumerable unfortunate nations on all continents. In Latin America, basically each and every country has suffered from them, from the Dominican Republic to Chile and Argentina; in Asia, from Indonesia to Thailand, and in the Middle East from Iran to Egypt and Syria. …
by Peter Koenig / January 25th, 2019
On 23 January 2018, the United States has initiated a coup against President Nicolás Maduro and his Government, by encouraging and fully supporting the “self-proclaimed” opposition leader, Juan Guaido, as interim President. Already days ago he had received the full support of President Trump, and today, in a special televised speech, US Vice-president Mike Pence declared that Venezuela’s Freedom begins with the new interim president, Juan Guaído.
RT reports that “the Venezuelan military will not accept a president imposed by ‘dark interests’, Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino said after Washington and a number of its allies recognized a lawmaker [Juan Guaído] …
by Binoy Kampmark / January 25th, 2019
It is a political idiosyncrasy that most political systems avoid: the state, as if suffering a stroke, operating at only partial capacity, incapable of paying certain employees and incapable of fronting certain services. And so it is in the United States, which is facing the longest shut down in its history after the record set under the Clinton Presidency – 21 days in 1995 – was passed.
Prior to the 1970s, the administration of the day could generally expend moneys without prior congressional approval. Then came a shifting of power from the executive to Congress in a 1974 law, reorganising the …
by Gary Olson / January 24th, 2019
There is an escalating mainstream media campaign, including The Washington Post and The New York Times, to depict President Trump as Russia’s puppet in the White House. One need not be a Trump enthusiast to call out these preposterous, fact-free allegations as reminiscent of McCarthyism. Efforts to portray Trump as a Manchurian Candidate — from a classic Cold War book and film where a U.S.soldier is brainwashed into doing the Kremlin’s bidding — endanger whatever remnants remain of American democracy. It’s also disconcerting that Russia-baiting is on the increase, even some being directed at progressives from other progressives. I will …
by Ajamu Baraka / January 24th, 2019
Arresting PressTV’s Marzieh Hashemi on no criminal charges demonstrates by any objective measure the United States operates as a rogue state in its utter contempt for accepted international human-rights law and standards.
Hashemi, an African American mother and grandmother converted to Islam, moved to Iran more than 25 years ago. She has become an internationally recognized journalist as a result of her press and media work in Iran, but specifically with her work on PressTV, an outlet that—like the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) in the United Kingdom—receives most of its support from the Iranian government.
Hashemi flew to the United States to …
by Media Lens / January 24th, 2019
What will it take for governments to take real action on climate? When will they declare an emergency and do what needs to be done? How much concerted, peaceful public action will be required to disrupt the current economic and political system that is driving humanity to the brink of extinction?
Meanwhile, climate records continue to tumble. 2018 was the hottest for the world’s oceans since records began in the 1950s, continuing a deeply worrying trend. Moreover, the last five years were the five hottest. The consequences are likely …
Liberated of Western-backed Terrorism
by Max Parry / January 23rd, 2019
In a surprise turn of events, last month U.S. President Donald J. Trump made the abrupt unilateral announcement that American troops would begin to withdraw from Syria. The unexpected decision provoked the wrath of the foreign policy establishment and bipartisan ‘war party’ in Washington who immediately denounced it as a premature, reckless move that would lead to a resurgence of ISIS. As anticipated, the Beltway blob also claimed it was another sign of Trump’s perceived untold allegiance to Russian President Vladimir Putin. None of the warmongers in Washington would dare admit that the real gains made against ISIS were by …
by Paul Haeder / January 23rd, 2019
There is no greater failure than the failure to respond to this ecological crisis. We need a wartime-speed mobilization and a just transition to race to zero greenhouse gas emission and to take carbon out of the atmosphere in order to restore a safe climate. We are called to heroism in this hour of grave consequences. We still have an opportunity to fight for all humanity and all life on Earth to avert the worst of the disaster as it is still technically and economically possible.
— Bill Kucha, founder of 350 Oregon Central Coast
Sometimes being a journalist and fiction …
by John Scales Avery / January 23rd, 2019
The UN Security Council alone has the power to impose sanctions.
According to the Charter of the United Nations, only the UN Security Council has a mandate by the international community to apply sanctions (Article 41) that must be complied with by all UN member states (Article 2,2). Therefore sanctions on Iran, unilatterally imposed by the United States government, are illegal. They are a violation of the United Nations Charter. With amazing hubris and arrogance, the US government has imposed sanctions on various countries, including Iran. In the case of Iran, these sanctions have caused the suffering of millions of innocent …
Part 3 of 6: The Utility of Jordan Peterson's Digressions
by Kim Petersen / January 23rd, 2019
When one reads Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life, the rules in isolation come across as eminently sensible; however, many of the digressions in Peterson’s book strike one as bombastic. It does not require special consideration to recognize the bombast.
Religion vs Science
Take, for instance, what Peterson states about religion and science: “Religion concerns itself with domain of value, ultimate value. That is not the scientific domain.” (loc 2046)
What is meant by value? There are …
by Gary Brumback / January 23rd, 2019
America’s power elite are a tiny but very mighty fraction of America’s total population. The power elite belongs to America’s corpocracy, the “Devil’s” marriage between corporate America and government America, with the former firmly in the driver’s seat. ((Brumback, GB. The Devil’s Marriage: Break Up the Corpocracy or Leave Democracy in the Lurch. Author House, 2011.))
The primary aims of the power elite are to monopolize the world’s dwindling resources by whatever means necessary, usually by force, and to control all peoples’ and nations’ way of life and their conditions of life. That’s a tall order for America’s power elite, but …
by Gerald E. Scorse / January 22nd, 2019
The humorist Mark Twain once called reports of his death “an exaggeration.” The same goes for the endless fearmongering and scare stories about America’s most popular government program, Social Security.
On the contrary, the nation’s safety net for seniors is in remarkably good shape. The trust fund holds government securities worth nearly $2.9 trillion, just under its all-time high. In 2092, at the end of the latest 75-year projection, the inflow from payroll taxes would still be covering roughly three-quarters of scheduled worker benefits—without increasing the tax rate or raising the retirement age or making …
by Binoy Kampmark / January 22nd, 2019
Not so much hunting season as declaratory season in US politics. The US presidential candidates from the Democratic side are making promises spiced with forced excitement in anticipation of the 2020 elections. This early morning of the public holiday of Martin Luther King, Jr., US voters were given a spray of enthusiastic promises by yet another potential candidate for the White House: Senator Kamala Harris.
The Democratic field is wide, expansive and not necessarily satisfactory in coping with the Trump phenomenon. The orange hell beast still has them in a tangle, the anti-thesis yet manifestation of so much that is US …
by Ramzy Baroud / January 22nd, 2019
The ‘State of Palestine’ has officially been handed the Chairmanship of the G-77, the United Nations’ largest block. This is particularly significant considering the relentless Israeli-American plotting to torpedo the Palestinian push for greater international recognition and legitimacy.
It is now conclusive that the main mission for former United States Ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, was an unmitigated failure.
When Haley gave her infamous speech before the pro-Israel lobby, AIPAC, in March 2017 – declaring herself the ‘new sheriff in town’ on behalf of Israel – the US-Israeli designs were becoming clearer: never again will the US shy away …
by William Hawes / January 22nd, 2019
Last October, Philip Hammond, the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer, in the annual federal budget speech to the UK Parliament, said this: “Austerity is coming to an end, but discipline will remain.”
Talk about Orwellian doublespeak. The truth about austerity is that it is a means of social control, or as Hammond put it, discipline. Hammond’s recent comment is completely illogical. Austerity is economic discipline. Really, it’s just a way of making the poor suffer more, while continuing to bail out the rich every time they implode the economy.
It’s rare that the titans of finance slip up so well, and so …
by Yves Engler / January 22nd, 2019
Anti-blackness is a significant problem in the Canadian Forces. For decades it was explicit and the institution evidently remains structurally racist.
Last month it was revealed that a white reservist who repeatedly called black soldiers “n…ers” would not face any disciplinary measures. The stated reason was that the individual, whose father is a senior reserve soldier, was “under a lot of pressure” during training. Incredibly, during the investigation Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan inquired about the treatment of the accused — not the victims — after the mother of the soldier who made the slurs complained to his office.
This recent case …
by C.J. Hopkins / January 22nd, 2019
So the corporate media have gone and done it again. As they have, repeatedly, for the last two and half years, they shook the earth with a “bombshell” story proving beyond any reasonable doubt that Donald Trump colluded with the Russians to steal the presidency from Hillary Clinton, or at least committed an impeachable felony in connection with something to do with the Russians, or Ukrainians, or other Slavic persons … which story turned out to be inaccurate, or not entirely accurate, or a bunch of horseshit.
This time it was BuzzFeed’s Jason Leopold, “…
by Andre Vltchek / January 22nd, 2019
Lately, I have been asked this question on several occasions. “Can our humanity really survive?” “Am I an optimist or a pessimist?”
My replies vary, as I don’t think there can ever be one single answer to this most urgent, the most important query.
Sometimes my answer gets influenced by location: where I am at that moment, or where I have been recently? In a Taliban-controlled village in Afghanistan, on a rooftop of a whorehouse in Okinawa while filming deadly US air force bases, or perhaps in an elegant café after visiting an opera performance with my mom, in Stuttgart or in …
