Latest articles
by Binoy Kampmark / October 28th, 2018
The origins of the Invictus Games (“For our Wounded Warriors,” goes the slogan) lies in war. Wars that crippled and caused depression and despair. The games became a project of grand distraction and worth, a form of emotional bread for servicemen and women. Do not let wounds, mental or physical, deter you. Move to the spirit of William Ernest Henley, an amputee who, during convalescence, penned those lines which speak to a Victorian stubbornness before adversity: “I am the master of my fate;/I am the captain of my soul.”
Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, was supposedly inspired by a trip …
by John Andrews / October 28th, 2018
Almost forty years ago I invented direct democracy – or so I thought at the time. I had been raised in Rhodesia, a racist and mostly fascist country, and had just moved to England. Although England considered itself a fine example of democracy (and still does), I was puzzled how such a fine democracy could have an unelected head of state, and a parliament where more than half its members are unelected. There must be a better way, I thought, so I invented direct democracy and set about writing a political novel based on the idea of a southern African …
by Binoy Kampmark / October 27th, 2018
It reads like a swaying narrative of retreat. A man’s body is subjected to a gruesome anatomical fate, his parts separated by a specially appointed saw doctor – an expert in the rapid autopsy – overseen by a distinctly large number of individuals. Surveillance cameras had improbably failed that day. We are not sure where, along the line, the torturers began their devilish task: the diligent beating punctuated by questions, followed by the severing of fingers, or perhaps a skipping of any formalities. One Turkish investigator sniffing around the Saudi consulate in Istanbul saw such handiwork “like a …
by Edward Curtin / October 27th, 2018
It was balmy and breezy by the bench where I sat outside a public library east of Atlanta, Georgia, brooding about the state of the world. It seemed like the end times, and I had just attended a fire and brimstone sermon, not perused the mainstream and alternative press. I had just spent a few hours on the internet, noting so many articles that announced that the world as we know it was coming to an end, or maybe just the world. The American Empire was collapsing, the U.S.A. was a failed state, climate change would soon destroy the world …
Big Business Strikes Back
by James Petras / October 26th, 2018
Bankers, agro-business elites, commercial mega owners, manufacturing, real estate and insurance bosses and their financial advisers, elite members of the ‘ruling class’, have launched a full-scale attack on private and public wage and salary workers, and small and medium size entrepreneurs (the members of the ‘popular classes’). The attack has targeted income, pensions, medical plans, workplace conditions, job security, rents, mortgages, educational costs, taxation,undermining family and household cohesion.
Big business has weakened or abolished political and social organizations which challenge the distribution …
by Robert Hunziker / October 26th, 2018
The most hazardous global warming risk for society at large is widespread loss of grain production because of a synchronized worldwide drought. It would be a colossal killer. It’s happened before, known as The Great Drought 142 years ago.
Unmistakably, droughts feed off global warming and world temps are heading up, not down. Thus, droughts are intensified by temperature increases. If the same conditions as the drought of 1876 recurs, it would likely be a nightmarish scenario.
Fortuitously, ever since The Great Drought of 142 years ago, droughts have been regional; e.g., when Russia experienced wheat shortages in 2011 as a result …
by Michel Luc Bellemare / October 26th, 2018
Part 1
Because post-modernism does not go far enough, because post-modernism has not reached the zenith and apex of its critique and programme due to the fact it has been divorced from its motor force, anarchism, revolution/insurrection is unavoidable. In fact, post-modernism demands it. It demands the total realization of anarchism, that is, its own essence. Post-modernism demands the full-maturation of its inherent principles, radical equality, radical plurality and the total demolition of all meta-narratives. Its only recourse is post-modern anarchist revolution.
In contrast, the meta-narrative of bourgeois-capitalism impedes post-modern growth and post-modern development at every turn. And, bourgeois-capitalism refuses to secede …
by Binoy Kampmark / October 26th, 2018
Richard Horton’s note in an October 2015 issue of The Lancet was cautiously optimistic. It described the launch of Doctors for Climate Change Action, led by the Royal Australasian College of Physicians (RACP) in the lead-up to the UN Climate Change Conference COP21. The initiative had arisen from a statement endorsed by a range of medical and international health organisations (some 69 in all), specifically emphasising that ancient obligation for a doctor to protect the health of patients and their communities. But, as if to add a more cautionary tale of improvement, the 2015 Lancet Commission also concluded that …
by Robert J. Burrowes / October 26th, 2018
I would like to tell you something about human depravity and illustrate just how widespread it is among those we often regard as ‘responsible’. I am going to use the Democratic Republic of the Congo as my example.
As I illustrate and explain what has happened to the Congo and its people during the past 500 years, I invite you to consider my essential point: Human depravity has no limit unless people like you (hopefully) and me take some responsibility for ending it. Depravity, barbarity and violent exploitation will not end otherwise because major international organizations (such as the UN), national …
by Yves Engler / October 25th, 2018
Canada’s paper of record pulled another layer off the rotting onion of propaganda obscuring the Rwandan tragedy. But, the Globe and Mail has so far remained unwilling to challenge prominent Canadians who’ve crafted the fairy tale serving Africa’s most ruthless dictator.
Two weeks ago a front-page Globe article added to an abundance of evidence suggesting Paul Kagame’s RPF shot down the plane carrying President Juve?nal Habyarimana, which sparked the mass killings of spring 1994. “New information supports claims Kagame forces were involved in assassination that sparked Rwandan genocide”, noted the headline. The Globe all but confirmed that the surface-to-air missiles …
by John Scales Avery / October 25th, 2018
Social critic Neil Postman contrasted the futures predicted in Nineteen Eighty-Four and Brave New World in the foreword of his 1985 book Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in an Age of Show Business (1985). He wrote:
What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egotism. …
Worse than 80 Years Ago
by Peter Koenig / October 24th, 2018
Jair Bolsonaro Fernando Haddad
One week before the second round of voting in Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, the extreme right-wing candidate from the Social Liberal Party (PSL), against Fernando Haddad from the Worker’s Party (PT), Lula’s Party, for Brazil’s Presidential run-off elections, Bolsonaro leads to polls by double digits, about 58 against 42. And the gap is growing, despite the fact that as recent as end of September 2018, Brazilian women campaigned massively against Bolsonaro with the hashtag #EleNao (Not Him). His …
by William Boardman / October 24th, 2018
… almost a quarter of a million previously registered voters who may want to vote in this election who will find their registrations cancelled based on an assumption that they had moved when they had not.
This is a travesty for the people of Georgia whose fundamental right to vote has been taken without any formal notice that their registrations have been cancelled.
— Federal Court complaint against Georgia secretary of state Brian Kemp
If Brian Kemp wins the 2018 election for governor of Georgia, it will be one more triumph for the massive corruption Republicans have brought to American voting for the …
by Binoy Kampmark / October 24th, 2018
President Donald J. Trump has made it his signature move to repudiate the signatures of others, and the latest, promised evacuation from the old US-Soviet pact otherwise known as the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty was merely another artefact to be abandoned.
When it came into force after 1987, it banned ground-launched short- and medium-range missiles within the range of 500 km and 5,500 km. Of primary concern to the US had been the deployment by the Soviets of the SS-20, the result of which was the deployment of Pershing and Cruise missiles in Europe.
According to the Arms Control …
by Alton C. Thompson / October 24th, 2018
Last night’s (October 23, 2013) Frontline program, on PBS—“The Pension Gamble”—featured David Sirota (author of the 2013 article, “The Plot Against Pensions”). ((Here’s a transcript of the program.)) The program focused on the bad shape that many pension programs for public employees specifically are in, with Kentucky’s case being the worst example. Toward the end of the program, Kentucky Governor Matthew Bevin was quoted thusly:
The next governor, regardless of who they are or what ideology they represent, it won’t matter what lie they give. Reality will come crashing home.
From what I had …
by Jason Holland / October 24th, 2018
The US midterm elections are almost upon us, but this is a needless bit of inconsequential trivia. It really doesn’t matter. All the Republicans can win or all the Democrats. Either way it means about as much as a fart in a category 5 hurricane. The net result of actions taken, legislature composed, or honesty with the populace will be inconsequential.
The primary difference between the two parties, who are merely playing a game of good cop/bad cop, is only if you’d prefer to see a rapid more authoritarian style ecological collapse or if you’d prefer one with a soothing dulcet …
by Don Fitz / October 24th, 2018
Why does the Green Party elect so few people in the US while similar parties have elected representatives across the globe. Some have suggested it is the way Greens organize or problems with the leadership. While these may be contributing factors, they could hardly be a complete explanation since the Democrats and Republicans have elected thousands of incompetent, disorganized candidates.
A factor that may be far more important is the way the press defines non-corporate parties as unworthy of existence, even when they bring up the issues most on people’s minds. Would it be fair to say that there is a …
by Yves Engler / October 24th, 2018
Supporters of a private Toronto school that publicly promotes racism against Palestinians, flies an Israeli flag and then complains of “anti-Semitism” when pro-Palestinian graffiti is scrawled on its walls should give their heads a shake.
The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center and B’nai Brith labeled messages scrawled on Leo Baeck Day School “hateful” and “anti-Semitic”, but fair-minded individuals should be more concerned with the hatred taught inside the school.
Recently someone wrote “Free Palestine” and “Long Live Palestine” on the school’s sign and flagpole. On a picture of a rally with Israeli flags at or near Leo Baeck (reports differ) someone wrote “Long Life [sic] to …
by Rick Sterling / October 23rd, 2018
Introduction
The October 16 issue of NY Review of Books has an article by Janine di Giovani titled “Why Assad and Russia Target the White Helmets“. The article exemplifies how western media promotes the White Helmets uncritically and attacks those who challenge the myth.
Crude and Disingenuous Attack
Giovani’s article attacks several journalists by name. She singles out Vanessa Beeley and echoes the Guardian’s characterization of Beeley as the “high priestess of Syria propaganda”. She does this without challenging a single article or claim by the journalist. She might have acknowledged that Vanessa Beeley has some familiarity with the Middle East; she …
by Ramzy Baroud / October 23rd, 2018
Several Palestinian students, along with teachers and officials, were wounded in the Israeli army attack on a school south of Nablus in the West Bank on October 15. The students of Al- Sawiya Al-Lebban Mixed School were challenging an Israeli military order to shut down their school based on the ever-versatile accusation of the school being a “site of popular terror and rioting.”
“Popular terror,” is an Israeli army code for protests. The students, of course, have every right to protest, not just the Israeli military Occupation but also the encroaching colonization of the settlements of Alie and Ma’ale Levona. …
by Eric Zuesse / October 23rd, 2018
• Author’s Note: (Update about the Khashoggi case, posted at end.)
America’s international alliances are transforming in fundamental ways. The likelihood of World War III is increasing, and has been increasing ever since 2012 when the U.S. first slapped Russia with the Magnitsky Act sanctions. In fact, one matter driving these changing alliances now toward unprecedented realignments is that some nations’ leaders want to do whatever they can to prevent WW III.
On October 17th, America’s Military Times bannered “Why today’s troops fear a new war is coming soon” and reported:
About 46 percent of troops who responded to …
by Binoy Kampmark / October 23rd, 2018
A sign of desperation before the firing squad is jitteriness and the desperate sense that history needs revision. You were not the one responsible for the debacles and the cockups; everybody and everything else was. You knew who was guilty, and needed to tell everybody about it. You bluster, you boast and you stumble; you look more buffoon than statesman; more clown than king.
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, along with his deputy Josh Frydenberg, had just witnessed an event without modern parallel in Australian politics: a by-election swing against the sitting government without peer, the unlosable seat that slipped through …
by John Andrews / October 21st, 2018
Last Saturday at least half a million people marched through London demanding a second referendum on Brexit. I don’t blame most of the people who voted for Brexit, and therefore created this mess. For the most part they did not know what they were doing. Most had been lied to or deceived by ignorant or treacherous MPs, and horrendously misled by the mainstream media.
Democracy is a wonderful thing, but it’s wholly dependent on people receiving good information. Although very little good information was available prior to the referendum itself this was not the main problem. The main problem was the …
by Shawgi Tell / October 21st, 2018
One of the main criticisms of charter schools is that they are terrible because right wingers are behind them.
Many right wingers are indeed behind charter schools. U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos is a textbook example of right-wing support for charter schools. The billionaire Koch brothers are another example of right-wing support for charter schools. Many others could be cited.
But this does not tell the full story of charter schools and who else strongly supports and promotes them.
In reality, charter schools started out nearly 30 years ago with heavy support from democrats, and were, in fact, initiated and organized specifically …
by William Boardman / October 20th, 2018
This whole two-week effort has been a calculated and orchestrated political hit, fueled with apparent pent-up anger about President Trump and the 2016 election, fear that has been unfairly stoked about my judicial record, revenge on behalf of the Clintons and millions of dollars in money from outside left-wing opposition groups.
— Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s Senate testimony, September 27, 2018
The integrity of the US judicial system is actively, albeit quietly, in play. A sitting federal judge, or more likely a panel of sitting federal judges, will be required in the near future to render an assessment of the honesty, integrity, …
by Muhammad Othman / October 19th, 2018
There’s even something -sub-human -something not quite to the stage of humanity yet! Yes, something – ape-like about him, like one of those pictures I’ve seen in – anthropological studies! Thousands and thousands of years have passed him right by, and there he is – Stanley Kowalski – survivor of the Stone Age!
— Blanche Dubois from Streetcar Named Desire [The author highly recommends reading what the link leads to… to be able to fully appreciate his conclusion.]
President Trump — who folks ought to stop calling president, as it confers too much respect — has chosen to (once again, as …
by Binoy Kampmark / October 19th, 2018
The establishment of a republic… means insurrectionary war, it means the desolation of a thousand households. When the question shall arise, it will be determined… by balls from cannon and from musket, by grape and shrapnel, by bayonet and by the sword.
— Sir Alfred Stephen, NSW Legislative Council, June 16, 1887
The republic has tended to be a dormant idea in Australian politics for decades. The People’s Advocate, a Sydney-based publication, was unduly optimistic in its June 17, 1854 note which spoke of, “The independence of the Australian colonies” being more than an “abstract idea. It is certainly approaching as …
by Robert Hunziker / October 19th, 2018
Overnight, like a flash of light, the far right took another big step forward on the world stage. Brazil’s latest voting results as of October 7th are testimony to the grinding power and overwhelming influence of the irrepressible far-right, a worldwide phenomenon that brings in its wake the death knell of liberal democracy, aka the establishment, aka neoliberal globalism pick one the same as another.
Like a powerful grinding machine that never lets up, far-right-wingers are gaining ground in key political battlegrounds across the globe. And, guess what? They’re popular, very popular. People like them and vote for them. It’s why …
by Andre Vltchek / October 19th, 2018
The insanity and vileness of Western anti-Chinese propaganda used to make some of my Chinese friends cry late at night. But things are changing. The lunacy of what is said and written about China (and Russia, of course), in the US and Europe, is now clearly reflecting frustration and the bad manners of sore losers. One could almost be inclined to pity the Western empire, if only it wasn’t so violently murderous.
The Empire’s propagandists are pitying nobody – they are now shooting like maniacs, but without any coherent plan.
Various Western ‘experts’ and journalists cannot really agree on the basics: ‘what …
by Stuart Littlewood / October 19th, 2018
Many readers will know of Kairos from their Palestine Document of 2009. This was a bold statement by a group of Christian Palestinians which told the truth about the tragic situation in their country under Israeli occupation…. “a cry of hope in the absence of all hope”.
Kairos is Greek meaning ‘a critical moment in time’. The document was called ‘A Moment of Truth; A word of faith, hope and love from the heart of Palestinian suffering’. And it was published after the murderous onslaught by Israel against Gaza over Christmas and New Year 2008/9.
The Kairos people said they had “reached …
