Latest articles
by Roger D. Harris / August 25th, 2018
After four months of violence, peace may be breaking out in Nicaragua, which has gotten those North American partisans opposed to Nicaraguan President Ortega worried. But they have one last hope.
The latest in a series of anti-Ortega articles in The Nation is entitled “An eternal night of persecution and death.” We are told: “Despite mass killings and newly authoritarian laws, a diverse opposition says the movement to oust Ortega is far from over.”
Although some analysts understand the relative calm that has befallen Nicaragua is mainly due to the failure of the opposition to sustain public support, this …
by Rick Sterling / August 25th, 2018
Western media has described the unrest and violence in Nicaragua as a “campaign of terror” by government police and paramilitary. This has also been asserted by large non governmental organizations (NGOs). In May, for example, Amnesty International issued a report titled “Shoot to Kill: Nicaragua’s Strategy to Repress Protest”.
A Miami Herald op-ed summarized, “It’s not like there’s any confusion over who’s to blame for the recent killings amid Nicaragua’s political violence. Virtually all human rights groups agree that Ortega’s police-backed paramilitary goons are the culprits.”
Much less publicized, other analysts have challenged these assertions. They claim the situation is …
by John Steppling / August 25th, 2018
Raids by U.S. commandos in Afghanistan. (I could be talking about 2001 or 2018.)
A U.S. drone strike in Yemen. (I could be talking about 2002 or 2018.)
Missions by Green Berets in Iraq. (I could be talking about 2003 or 2018.)
— Nick Turse, Chronicles Magazine, July 2018
The spectacle is not a collection of images, but a social relation among people, mediated by images.
— Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle, 1967
The U.S. is now a endless machine for war profiteering and endless war itself. Simultaneously a hyper Imperialist machine directed toward global hegemony. Domestically it is a McCarthyesque empire of propaganda …
by Colin Todhunter / August 24th, 2018
Despite five high-level reports (listed here) in India advising against the adoption of genetically modified (GM) crops, the drive to get GM mustard commercialised (which would be India’s first officially-approved GM food crop) has been relentless. Although the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC) has given it the nod, GM mustard remains held up in the Supreme Court mainly due to a public interest litigation by environmentalist Aruna Rodrigues.
Rodrigues argues that GM mustard is being undemocratically forced through with flawed tests (or no testing) and a lack of public scrutiny and that unremitting scientific fraud and outright regulatory delinquency has taken place. She is seeking …
by Binoy Kampmark / August 24th, 2018
You can sense Australian politicians – or at least a good number of them – fuming at being cobbled together with the counterparts of other states deemed less worthy of the tag of “stable”. Take, for instance, entertaining Italy, tenaciously temporary about its leaders. “We said,” reflected a rueful Senator Derryn Hinch of the Justice Party, “‘how often they change their governments, how often they changed their leaders, what a stupid country and how irresponsible.”
The Italy of the antipodes (without the colour); a state so obsessed with leadership change that it requires a session of bloodletting every two years or …
by Binoy Kampmark / August 23rd, 2018
It was long overdue, but Pope Francis’s letter of condemnation and apology regarding the abuse of children by Catholic priests did sent a few ripples of comfort and reckoning. He conceded that the Church “showed no care for the little ones; we abandoned them”. He acknowledged the “heart-wrenching pain” of the victims who had been assaulted by the clerical class, and the cries “long ignored, kept quiet or silenced”.
“With shame and repentance,” went the Pope’s grave words, “we acknowledge as an ecclesial community that we were not where we should have been, that we did not act in a …
by Ellen Brown / August 23rd, 2018
Giant Chinese tech companies have bypassed credit cards and banks to create their own low-cost digital payment systems.
The US credit card system siphons off excessive amounts of money from merchants, who must raise their prices to cover this charge. In a typical $100 credit card purchase, only $97.25 goes to the seller. The rest goes to banks and processors. But who can compete with Visa and MasterCard?
It seems China’s new mobile payment ecosystems can. According to a May 2018 article in Bloomberg titled “Why China’s Payment Apps Give U.S. Bankers Nightmares”:
The future of consumer payments may not be designed …
by Brian Littlefair / August 23rd, 2018
We can do it the easy way or we can do it the hard way. Romania did it the hard way. Moarte criminalului, death to criminals: armed revolution, then a series of epic Mineriads, with a mild-mannered IMF gent on hand to suck them dry. I was there after the revolution, in the long hiatus between the fourth and fifth Mineriads, and I was starving until someone told us where the soccer stars dine out.
It turned out the way it was bound to, with all the world-standard requisites of responsible sovereignty: The International Bill of Human Rights, the …
Crypto Romanticism and Its New Left Inheritors
by Bruce Lerro / August 23rd, 2018
Image from Maria Online
White popular musicians rebelling against appearances
Recently I attended two music concerts in one of our local parks that were billed as a combination of soul, rhythm and blues and blues. The musicians were all white.
I am not going to argue that white people playing this kind of music is “cultural appropriation” and that they should not play it. There are wonderful white musicians historically and contemporarily who have played in all these musical forms. What I am more interested in is the appearance of …
by John Andrews / August 23rd, 2018
It was recently reported that in just three years’ time many of those who voted for Britain to quit the EU will no longer be alive. This relates to the fact that most people who voted for Brexit were much older than those who voted to remain, and won’t have to live with the consequences of their decision. So, not for the first time, young people will have to pay for the errors of the old.
Although some old people, like me, voted Remain, many more didn’t. I believe the disastrous Brexit referendum was the direct consequence of the treacherous …
by Paul Craig Roberts / August 23rd, 2018
Russiagate is an orchestration. It is the response of the military/security complex to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign statement that he intended to normalize relations with Russia.
Trump recognized that the extreme Russiaphobia, which the hegemonic neoconservatives had whipped up since Vladimir Putin’s statement at the Munich Security Conference in 2007 that Russia was a sovereign country and intended to act like one, was a threat to life on earth. The neoconservatives, who have controlled US foreign policy since the Clinton regime, are unwilling to accept limitations by any other country on Washington’s ability to act unilaterally.
When Putin blocked the Obama regime’s …
by David Macaray / August 22nd, 2018
In the long, confounding history of inappropriate or unwarranted awards and prizes, U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger being named the joint winner of the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize has to rank at the top of any such list.
Clearly, it ranks higher than Roberto Benigni beating out Ian McKellen for the Best Actor Oscar, in 1998, and way higher than the Chevrolet Vega being named Motor Trend magazine’s 1971 “Car of the Year.”
Kissinger’s fellow co-winner in 1973 was the Vietnamese revolutionary and politician Le Duc Tho. So the almost saintly Mahatma Gandhi gets nominated for the Peace Prize five times …
by Binoy Kampmark / August 22nd, 2018
No one is in charge in Australia. Monday’s leadership challenge by Home Affairs minister, the potato-headed former police officer Peter Dutton, was cutting enough to leave Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull a wounded animal. The 48 to 35 margin of victory demonstrated the sheer degree of disaffection for the leadership within party ranks, and risks keeping that unenviable record of no Australian prime minister lasting out a full term of office since John Howard’s 2004 election victory.
Resignations have duly followed (some ten frontbenches outed themselves as Dutton supporters in offering their notices, though many have not been accepted by Turnbull). Dutton …
by Robert Hunziker / August 22nd, 2018
It’s entirely possible that capitalism and climate change are not compatible. They just cannot seem to live together, kinda like a marriage on the rocks. Assuming the planet is headed for a 2C climate event in the not so distant future, some kind of separation is probably necessary to avoid planetary dystopia and chaos.
A solution of sorts is often whispered in the hallowed halls of academia, and it is scribbled in obscure blogs, suggesting the abolishment of capitalism as the best way to help rid the planet of an existential threat of RGW (runaway global warming). But, that is kinda …
Without understanding what happened to the Herero and Nama people, it is impossible to understand what occurred right before and during World War II
by Andre Vltchek / August 22nd, 2018
In 2014, after I published my report about Namibia, exposing the German ‘semi-denial’ that it had committed a Holocaust in its former Southwest African colony, a renowned German university sent me a letter. I paraphrase here, but the essence of the letter is kept intact:
Dear Professor Vltchek, we are impressed by your research and your conclusions, and we would like to translate and publish your groundbreaking analyses in German language. Unfortunately, we cannot afford any payment…
It was one of the major universities in the country, with tremendous budgets and an international reputation.
I replied, asking why, with all those scholars and …
by Ralph Nader / August 22nd, 2018
About 80 days separate the people from the November 6th Congressional elections. Judging by the past midterm turnout, at least 125 million age-eligible voters will stay home. Too many people say: “Can’t be bothered;” “politicians don’t care about me;” “all politicians lie so why should I be part of that game;” “I’m not into politics;” “Nobody I like.”
Whoever finds the way to bring ten million or so of these non-voters to the polls in swing Congressional Districts will solidly control the Congress. Control of the House of Representatives by the Democratic Party stops most of Trumpism in its tracks, assuming …
by Jonathan Cook / August 22nd, 2018
Here’s a riddle: when is a campaign for equality not really about equality? When it’s in Israel, it seems.
Earlier this month, tens of thousands of Palestinian citizens of Israel – those belonging to the small Druze religious sect – staged a protest in Rabin Square in central Tel Aviv. They were joined by large numbers of Israeli Jews, including former senior security officers and the two largest centre-left parties in the parliamentary opposition, Zionist Union and Yesh Atid.
All expressed outrage at the country’s new Nation-State Basic Law, which gives constitutional backing to the principle …
by Max Parry / August 22nd, 2018
Since taking office a year-and-a-half ago, the allegations of ‘collusion’ between U.S. President Donald Trump’s election campaign and the Russian government have buried nearly all other substantive issues in regards to his administration. This hasn’t been limited to marginalizing reportage of destructive domestic legislation or the escalation of endless war abroad. It has successfully diverted attention away from other foreign governments shaping U.S. policy and elections. The media has even downplayed Trump’s sycophantic behavior towards other heads of state in favor of their pathological obsession with his perceived obsequiousness toward Russian President Vladimir Putin. This is largely because “Russiagate” is …
by Gary Leupp / August 22nd, 2018
TV news anchors typically describe Donald Trump’s poll numbers as low. But a 40 percent support figure in August of the second year is actually not so unusual. (Obama’s job approval rate was 44 at this point his first term; Bill Clinton was at 41; Ronald Reagan 42; Jimmy Carter at 41.) It’s not abnormal for a president to have this level of support at this point; the amazing thing is that Trump has been able to maintain it, given his degree of repulsiveness, from his election.
This shows the world something quite horrifying: that either this 40% actually agrees with …
by Ramzy Baroud / August 22nd, 2018
On Sunday August 12, news from Gaza was distressing: The Ministry of Health announced that it would no longer be able to treat cancer patients in the Israel-besieged Strip.
“Colon and lung cancer, as well as lymphoma patients cannot be provided with the necessary therapy now,” said Dr. Mohammed Abu Silmiya, director of Abdulaziz Al-Rantisi Hospital for Children.
Israel is ultimately responsible for the Gaza siege which has extended for more than 11 years. With direct US backing, Israel has launched three major wars on Gaza in the name of fighting terrorism, destroying much of the tiny region’s infrastructure. A hermetic …
Party members and officials seem to like having their rulebook rewritten by the meddlesome Israel lobby and are happily using it to crush their colleagues. What's the answer?
by Stuart Littlewood / August 22nd, 2018
The ‘anti-Semitism’ rumpus engulfing Jeremy Corbyn and tearing the Labour Party apart comes at the very moment when the country needs an alert and dynamic Opposition to Theresa May’s shambolic administration. The campaign, so obviously orchestrated by powerful pro-Israel interest groups to bring down Corbyn, threatens to derail all prospect of worthwhile change at the next election, which could be called anytime given the chaos over Brexit. This would be a calamity not just for Labour but the whole country.
The distraction is such a blot on the political landscape and so disruptive that Corbyn must neutralise it without giving ground. …
by Binoy Kampmark / August 21st, 2018
What is it with Australia’s law enforcement authorities? Their uncontrollable appetite for encrypted data – primarily the data of private users – is so voracious it has become a parody of itself. There seems to be little that will restrain such politicians as Cybersecurity minister Angus Taylor, who insists that the technology giants cough up data with ease and cooperative generosity.
“We need legislation in place,” claims Taylor in justification, “whereby companies can work with government to ensure that we can get access to the data we need to prosecute and investigate serious crimes.” And there you have it: the …
A hothouse planet, chronic disease, terminal war, humaneness on the decline, perpetual fire while fiddling with Facebook
by Paul Haeder / August 21st, 2018
The white race – and I mean Israeli, Iberian, Slovak, Anglo-Saxon, Caucasian, and the lot of us – is crazy. We do not need Susan Sontag to declare the white race as cancer on the world to ramify the point, since it’s been more than 50 years since she declared:
If America is the culmination of Western white civilization, as everyone from the Left to the Right declares, then there must be something terribly wrong with Western white civilization. This is a painful truth; few of us want to go that far. … The truth is that Mozart, Pascal, Boolean …
by Jason Holland / August 21st, 2018
Do not be misled by what you see around you, or be influenced by what you see. You live in a world which is a playground of illusion, full of false paths, false values and false ideals. But you are not part of that world.
— Sai Baba
The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance – it is the illusion of knowledge.
— Daniel Boorstin
You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.
— Buckminster Fuller
Do not try to bend the spoon, that is impossible. Instead try to understand the truth…There is no …
by Binoy Kampmark / August 20th, 2018
Being the head of a creature essentially without spine, and, even more to the point, with vague form, must be something of a challenge. Part of the failing of the United Nations probably lies in its disparate existence, a scattered composition of bureaucratic entities that, when they come together, supply a perfect picture of inertia. (Perhaps for the best: a more active UN could well lead to a deeper muddying of waters.) Such an arrangement invariably leads to one conclusion: The organisation tends to mimic the power order of the day, compliant to the great states, malleable to their capriciousness. …
by Dr. Hakim / August 20th, 2018
It’s frustrating that whereas all human beings wish to live meaningful lives, we seem helpless in the face of a few individuals waging wars and exploiting our world.
But we can each do something about this insensible status quo, as ordinary folk of the People’s Peace Movement ( PPM) show us by taking one barefoot-step at a time, traveling to the Northern areas of Afghanistan to persuade fellow Afghans, whether they’re with ‘insurgent groups’ or with the U.S./NATO/Afghan forces, to stop fighting.
The People’s Peace Movement (PPM) walking …
PressTV Interview Transcript
by Peter Koenig / August 20th, 2018
Introduction
The US Chamber of Commerce warns against the consequences of new tariffs on Chinese imports proposed by the administration of President Donald Trump.
The top business lobbying group said the tariffs dramatically expand the harm to American consumers, workers, businesses, and the US economy. It said the Trump administration lacks a coherent strategy to address QUOTE China’s theft of intellectual property and other harmful trade practices. The chamber also demanded that Washington hold serious discussions with Beijing. Trump has threatened 25 percent tariffs on 200 billion dollars of Chinese imports. He says this is in response to China’s retaliatory tariffs on …
by Yves Engler / August 20th, 2018
Randall Garrison is refusing to heed a call from 200 well-known musicians, academics, trade unionists and NDP members to withdraw from the Canada-Israel Interparliamentary Group (CIIG). To justify his pro-Israel campaigning the Victoria MP has cited that country’s relatively gay friendly policies even as he promotes a bastion of Canadian homophobia.
Garrison is vice-chair of a group that promotes “greater friendship” and “cooperation” between the Canadian and Israeli parliaments. As I detailed here, CIIG has organized events with other pro-Israel lobby organizations and the co-chairs of its Israeli counterpart — the Israel-Canada Inter-Parliamentary Friendship Group — are stridently …
by Binoy Kampmark / August 20th, 2018
The opinion poll prime ministership is a modern Australian disease. Not only does it suggest an ailing in the Westminster system, but a profound contempt for the democratic sensibility on the part of party representatives, hacks and the industry that supports them. Prime Ministers are merely the icing, to be whipped off and replaced on going stale. Little wonder that the Australian politician can never be permitted to be an authentic representative, ever hostage to sentiment and the astrological deceptions of polling.
This conditioning is so total it has even bewitched the journalistic classes, who have also done their best to …
by Jonathan Cook / August 20th, 2018
Uri Avnery, a self-confessed former “Jewish terrorist” who went on to become Israel’s best-known peace activist, died in Tel Aviv on Monday, following a stroke. He was 94.
As one of Israel’s founding generation, Avnery was able to gain the ear of prime ministers, even while he spent decades editing an anti-establishment magazine that was a thorn in their side.
He came to wider attention in 1982 as the first Israeli to meet Yasser Arafat, head of the Palestine Liberation Organisation. At the time, Arafat and the PLO were reviled in Israel and much of the west as terrorists.
Famously, Avnery smuggled himself …
