Latest articles
by James Petras / October 4th, 2018
FTThe leading financial publications have misled their political and investor subscribers of emerging crises and military defeats which have precipitated catastrophic political and economic losses.
The most egregious example is the Financial Times (FT) a publication which is widely read by the business and financial elite.
In this essay we will proceed by outlining the larger political context that sets the …
by Andrey Fomine / October 4th, 2018
The Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade of Hungary Péter Szijjártó was added to the database of the Ukrainian doxing site “Mirotvorets” (Peacekeeper). This has come as a reaction from Kiev to the alleged attempts of the Hungarian top diplomat “[to undermine] Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity: direct threats of an armed attack on Ukraine”.
Shortly before the publication of his profile on the extremist website Mr. Szijjártó held a press conference in Budapest on September 23, 2018. Talking on the agenda of the upcoming bilateral meeting with his Ukrainian counterpart …
by John W. Whitehead / October 4th, 2018
If, as it seems, we are in the process of becoming a totalitarian society in which the state apparatus is all-powerful, the ethics most important for the survival of the true, free, human individual would be: cheat, lie, evade, fake it, be elsewhere, forge documents, build improved electronic gadgets in your garage that’ll outwit the gadgets used by the authorities.
— Philip K. Dick
It’s a given that Big Brother is always watching us.
Unfortunately, thanks to the government’s ongoing efforts to build massive databases using emerging surveillance, DNA and biometrics technologies, Big Brother (and his corporate partners in crime) is …
by Media Lens / October 4th, 2018
If there’s one thing we’ve learned in the 17 years since Media Lens began, it’s that media professionals generally hate being challenged, critiqued or criticised. This fierce antipathetical belligerence underlies the corporate media’s total refusal to mention, far less discuss, a recent damning report on how the corporate media have been misreporting Labour and its supposed ‘problem’ with antisemitism.
The report was published last week by the Media Reform Coalition (MRC), set up in 2011 in the wake of the News International phone hacking scandal, to promote debate about the media and democracy. The MRC coordinates effective action …
by Ramzy Baroud / October 4th, 2018
There is a rational explanation of why India and Brazil, two countries with vast populations and large and growing economies, are not permanent members of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC).
The Council – made up of 5 permanent and ten rotating members – was designed to reflect a world order that was birthed from the horrific violence of World War II. It was as simple as this: Those who emerged on the side of the victors were granted permanent membership and a ‘veto’ power that would allow a single country to defy the will of the entire international community.
This unfair …
by Ellen Brown / October 2nd, 2018
Wall Street owns the country. That was the opening line of a fiery speech that populist leader Mary Ellen Lease delivered around 1890. Franklin Roosevelt said it again in a letter to Colonel House in 1933, and Sen. Dick Durbin was still saying it in 2009. “The banks—hard to believe in a time when we’re facing a banking crisis that many of the banks created—are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill,” Durbin said in an interview. “And they frankly own the place.”
Wall Street banks triggered a credit crisis in 2008-09 that wiped out …
by Steve Church / October 2nd, 2018
Jeux!
Patrick Cockburn’s recent article is one example of why I read CounterPunch less often than I used to. Or, at the least, why I have become more critical of their editorial stance. With this article, I have the impression I’m reading a Bernie Sanders speech, of being Judas-goated into the camp of what I consider a kind of useless caviar Left. While maybe not as bad as The Guardian (I prefer OffGuardian), there are too many weasel words, phrases, and statements that reek of Establishment consensus. That if you’re going to refer to the head-chopping proxies, armed and …
by Binoy Kampmark / October 2nd, 2018
Relations between Russia and Israel have been those of an estranged couple punctuated by occasional breakouts of tense understanding. As with other such couples, a public row does not necessarily reflect the more placid, if stern, discussion that might happen behind closed doors.
On the public side of things, Russia’s decision to deploy the S-300 anti-aircraft missile system to Syria has made Israeli officials apoplectic. That said, Israel’s security establishment were privy to prospects of a possible Russian deployment of the modern, more discriminating air-defence system. The former head of the Israeli Defence Force’s Strategic Division, Brigadier General Assaf Orion at …
by David Penner / October 1st, 2018
The Russians have an expression: words are deeds. Indeed, words contain a mesmeric power, and while this power can be used for good, it can also be used to harness dark and pernicious forces. For as Orwell understood all too well, words can be hijacked by a corrupt ruling class and used to indoctrinate, manipulate, and deceive.
In order to understand how the liberal class has come to be so beguiled by the forces of reaction, one must take note of the unprecedented liberal hysteria over racism, sexism, and homophobia. Indeed, the more liberals remain transfixed with this unholy trinity, the …
by Peter Koenig / October 1st, 2018
The other day, checking in at a European airport for an international flight, within about an hour it took to deposit my luggage, going through airport security, the metal detectors, body screening machines, the automatic passport reading procedure, waiting at the gate and finally boarding, I have heard or read the words security and safety, honestly speaking, more than a hundred times. There are now countless primitive videos – in fact, insultingly primitive videos – that show you the precise procedures to follow to keep you safe and secure. All you have to do is follow them to keep your …
Part 2 of a 2-part series
by Leftist Critic / October 1st, 2018
In Part 2, I build upon what I talked about in Part 1, when I analyzed the candidacy of Julia Salazar, called Salazar in this article, what a “socialist” running on the “Democrat line” meant. In this article I focus on her life, not by telling it in minute detail but briefly looking at her background and pointing out inconsistencies. As Josh Varlin of the Trotskyist WSWS (World Socialist WebSite) even remarked very recently, “Salazar’s misrepresentation of her past is, however, politically significant” because “Salazar’s political evolution is far from run-of-the-mill” since she was “extremely active in right-wing politics …
by Edward Curtin / October 1st, 2018
It is not only information that they need – in this Age of Fact, information often dominates their attention and overwhelms their capacities to assimilate it…What they need, and what they feel they need, is a quality of mind that will help them to use information and to develop reason in order to achieve lucid summations of what is going on in the world and of what may be happening within themselves…what may be called the sociological imagination.
— C. Wright Mills, The Sociological Imagination, 1959
‘Our own death is indeed, unimaginable,’ Freud said in 1915, ‘and whenever we make the attempt to …
by Yves Engler / October 1st, 2018
Pro-Israel politics make for strange bedfellows.
B’nai Brith (BB) and the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) must be concerned about the furor over Doug Ford’s ties to fringe Toronto mayoral candidate Faith Goldy. Last month the prominent white supremacist participated in a BB support rally and the two pro-Israel groups smeared Dimitri Lascaris when he called on them to publicly reject Goldy. And in a twist highlighting the anti-Palestinianism in mainstream Canadian politics, the media’s favoured critic of Ford’s ties to Goldy, Bernie Farber, championed the CIJA/BB onslaught on Lascaris.
Last week Goldy was photographed with Ontario’s new premier …
(A report from Nahr al-Bared Palestinian Refugee Camp, Lebanon)
by Heather Stroud / October 1st, 2018
Situated on a coastal location on the outskirts of Tripoli, with golden sands and an expansive view of the Mediterranean Sea, the Palestinian Refugee Camp of Nahr al-Bared could be a beautiful environment in which to raise a child… It isn’t.
Nahr al-Bared Beach location
The sense of despair is as dark as I have known it during these past three years of visiting and listening to camp residents. The US Government, under the Trump administration, has cut all UNWRA funding to Palestinian Refugee Camps. …
by William A. Blunden / September 30th, 2018
If something cannot go on forever, it will stop
— Economist Herbert Stein
Those who live in the reaches of the Arctic Circle tend to convey the same humbling lesson: Mother Nature calls the shots and survival depends upon preparing for her mood swings. It’s an adage that will take on increasing relevance as history unfolds because disaster has been baked into our future. Decades ago a whole series of events was set into motion and it may be too late to break their momentum. Civilization will be tested as large swathes of the globe become uninhabitable. While it might be tempting …
by Jonathan Cook / September 30th, 2018
The moment long feared is fast approaching in Gaza, according to a new report by the World Bank. After a decade-long Israeli blockade and a series of large-scale military assaults, the economy of the tiny coastal enclave is in “freefall”.
At a meeting of international donors in New York on Thursday, coinciding with the annual meeting of the United Nations General Assembly, the World Bank painted an alarming picture of Gaza’s crisis. Unemployment now stands at close to 70 per cent and the economy is contracting at an ever faster rate.
While the West Bank’s plight is not yet as severe, …
by Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers / September 30th, 2018
Demonstrators protest outside of Supreme Court after Judge Brett Kavanaugh was chosen by President Trump as his nominee for the high court. From FOX 45 DC twitter.
The Kavanaugh confirmation process has been a missed opportunity for the United States to face up to many urgent issues on which the bi-partisans in Washington, DC are united and wrong.
Kavanaugh’s career as a Republican legal operative and judge supporting the power of corporations, the security state and abusive foreign policy should have been put on trial. The …
(The Legitimate Basis Of Demolitionism)
by Michel Luc Bellemare / September 29th, 2018
If anarchism and post-modernism are synonymous, then, the primary reason the post-modern age has not fully come to pass as of yet is because post-modernism has been divorced from its motor force, anarchism. Therefore, post-modernism has been sabotaged; it has been detached from its locomotive centrifuge, deep within its theoretical apparatus and critical techniques, namely, anarchism. Consequently, post-modernism has remained bourgeois; i.e., mildly critical of the meta-narrative of bourgeois-capitalism, while simultaneously championing maximum plurality, equality and heterogeneity via its practices. Post-modernism has fallen under the mystifying spell of bourgeois-capitalism. As a result, it has not pushed on. Post-modernism no longer …
by William Kaufman / September 28th, 2018
In the latest episode of the lurid reality TV series/peep show that passes for politics in this country, the news-channel chyrons and 24/7 talking-head panel are buzzing with yet another belated allegation of sexual harassment/assault against would-be Justice of the Supreme Court Brett Kavanaugh. This new one harks back to his freshman year at Yale—so it’s been moldering for a mere 35 years, not the ancient 36 years of the first accusation. In this latest revelation, first reported in The New Yorker, he is alleged to have dangled his unsheathed manhood in the face of a woman at a …
by Yves Engler / September 28th, 2018
Who exactly is the NDP making friends with in Israel?
In 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) the party leadership cites the need for “dialogue”. But, when Jagmeet Singh, Hélène Laverdière, Murray Rankin and others call for “dialogue” they don’t specify who they are talking to.
A quick Google search of CIIG’s Israeli partner — the Israel-Canada Inter-Parliamentary Friendship Group — shows that all 13 of its members have expressed views or proposed laws that most NDP members would consider odious. Below …
by Binoy Kampmark / September 28th, 2018
The pulse of negotiations, a flurry of communications, and the person central to this is one who threatens to go nowhere – for the moment. But go somewhere these parties would wish Julian Assange to do. For six years, cramped within a space in London a stone’s throw away from Harrods, one he has made his tenuous home, a citadel of sporadic publishing and exposes; for six years, an unruly, disobedient tenant whose celebrity shine has lost its gloss for certain followers and those who did, at one point, tolerate him.
The landlords have lost patience, and Lenín Moreno is willing …
Review of Guy Lane's book What Comes Next: Climate Change, the Future and You.
by Robert Hunziker / September 28th, 2018
There are no hidden secrets about anthropogenic global warming. It’s everywhere, wherever one looks! After all, the People’s Climate March (311,000) in 2014 organized by 350.org (Bill McKibben) was one of the biggest rallies ever held in NYC.
Also, worldwide exposure was ubiquitously on display at the Paris Agreement/2015 assemblage to tackle climate change, involving all of the nations of the world, in full living color.
Name another event that garners more worldwide attention than “climate change” and its kissing cousin “global warming.” They’ve become the equivalent of “brand names” all …
by Binoy Kampmark / September 28th, 2018
Eventually you’ll have the implant, where if you think about a fact, it will just tell you an answer.
— Larry Page, co-founder of Google
The Verge starts with a statement that has become commonplace, the compulsory nod to power one has come to expect when engaged with that whole mammoth enterprise known as Google. “No technology company is arguably more responsible for shaping the modern internet, the modern life, than Google.”
The story of Google is all minted Silicon Valley: the modest research project birthed in computer lingo and networking, the serendipitous meeting of graduate students, and the finding of auspicious …
by Douglas Valentine / September 27th, 2018
Army of the Republic of Vietnam soldiers and an American advisor in Vietnam taken sometime between 1967 and 1975. Photo credit: US Army / Wikimedia
Introduction by Kim Petersen
Philip Agee was a former CIA case officer who wrote a book in 1975, Inside the Company: CIA Diary, that shed light on the CIA’s machinations in Latin American countries. In 2005, John Perkins wrote of a time in his life when he, like general Smedley Butler, was a gangster for capitalism. The book was titled Confessions …
by Ramzy Baroud / September 27th, 2018
The US government’s decision to slash funds provided to the United Nations agency that cares for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, is part of a new American-Israeli strategy aimed at redefining the rules of the game altogether.
As a result, UNRWA is experiencing its worst financial crisis. The gap in its budget is estimated at around $217 million, and is rapidly increasing. Aside from future catastrophic events that would result in discontinuing services and urgent humanitarian aid to five million refugees registered with UNRWA, the impact of the US callous decision is already reverberating in many refugee camps across the …
by Julian Vigo / September 27th, 2018
Two weeks ago the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) gave a landmark ruling against the UK government’s mass surveillance program, stating that it violated human rights and offered “no real safeguards” to the public. This surveillance programme, according to the Strasbourg court, allowed the British intelligence agencies’ to violate the right to a private and family life with “insufficient oversight” over which communications were chosen for examination. Of equal importance the ECHR found that the Investigatory Powers Act (IPA), also known as the Snoopers’ Charter, did not give enough protection to journalistic sources which would violate the rights to freedom of …
Part 1 of a 2-part series
by Leftist Critic / September 26th, 2018
On September 13, Julia Carmel Salazar won the Democratic primary against Martin Dilan, becoming the State Senate candidate for North Brooklyn’s District 18 (shaped like a praying mantis). Apart from the many dark times in her life, especially her right-wing period between 2008 and 2014, covered in Part 2 of this article, there are many other factors revolving around her role as a “socialist” of the NYC-DSA running in a Democratic primary. This article aims to talk about those factors and the significance of her candidacy, with her almost-assured victory in November, beyond Ben Beckett’s hot takes …
by Shawgi Tell / September 26th, 2018
People who call themselves “democrats,” “lefties,” “progressives,” or “social justice advocates” are becoming increasingly critical of and rejecting charter schools. This is a positive development.
But quite a few “democrats,” “lefties,” “progressives, and “social justice advocates” remain victims of several harmful myths about charter schools.
Perhaps the main charter school myth perpetuated by “democrats,” “lefties,” “progressives,” and “social justice advocates” goes something like this: “charter schools are terrible for 50 reasons, but they had progressive, noble, democratic origins and were never meant to become the terrible arrangements that they have become.” In other words, charter schools started out as a positive grass-roots …
by John W. Whitehead / September 26th, 2018
Back in the heyday of the old Soviet Union, a phrase evolved to describe gullible western intellectuals who came to visit Russia and failed to notice the human and other costs of building a communist utopia. The phrase was “useful idiots” and it applied to a good many people who should have known better. I now propose a new, analogous term more appropriate for the age in which we live: useful hypocrites. That’s you and me, folks, and it’s how the masters of the digital universe see us. And they have pretty good reasons for seeing us that way. …
by Robert Hunziker / September 26th, 2018
East Antarctica is a big-time global warming player. Nothing is comparable. It is the world heavyweight, and nothing can impact the world with so much calamitous clout. As such, it would be a huge mistake to discount its capability to turn mean-spirited, striking all of a sudden, catching scientists and humanity unawares. In fact, it’s already turning heads, and it alone is equivalent to 170 feet of water.
Disturbingly, early signals of destabilization have been detected at Totten Glacier/ East Antarctica, where, according to accepted science for years and years, we are not supposed to worry until the next century. Scientists …
