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by Kathy Kelly / May 22nd, 2018
On May 10, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia informed the UN Security Council and UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres that Saudi Air Defenses intercepted two Houthi ballistic missiles launched from inside Yemeni territory targeting densely populated civilian areas in Riyadh, the Saudi capital. No one was killed, but an earlier attack, on March 26, 2018, killed one Egyptian worker in Riyadh and an April 28 attack killed a Saudi man.
Unlike the unnumbered victims of the Saudis’ own ongoing bombardment of Yemen, these two precious, irreplaceable lives are easy to document and count. Death tolls have become notoriously difficult …
"The European response clearly must be no."
by Gary Leupp / May 22nd, 2018
French economy minister Bruno Le Maire, in response to U.S. threats to apply secondary sanctions to European companies trading with Iran, asks: Est-ce que nous acceptons que les USA soient le gendarme économique de la planète ? La réponse européenne doit être clairement non.
“Do we need to accept the USA as the economic policeman of the planet? The European response clearly must be no.”
Mais bien sur. The U.S. stands in violation of an agreement not just confirmed by Iran, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany but by the United Nations Security Council. The U.S. is now the international outlaw, demanding …
by Patrick Bobilin / May 22nd, 2018
Image via Boston Globe by John Tlumacki
Every election year, Democratic candidates download the latest changes to the Democratic Party platform. They usually make sure to hit refresh on the Wikipedia page for feminism and check for new developments.
It’s a miracle, with an unapologetic sexual assaulter in the White House, that reproductive health and the gender pay gap are getting any airtime at all. For statisticians and pundits, support for these issues is the best way to make a back of the envelope calculation of odds.
If you follow …
by John Andrews / May 22nd, 2018
Nothing better illustrates the disaster of Britain leaving the EU than Donald Trump. Once we’re no longer able to enjoy the huge benefits of the European single market we will be compelled to try to arrange favourable independent trade deals with other countries, the largest of which will almost certainly be the USA. Having to rely on the US for our primary trading partner is the truly nightmare scenario of Brexit, and one example of why this is so was provided last week.
It was reported that the US will “use trade talks to force the NHS to pay more …
by Ricardo Vaz / May 22nd, 2018
“Feeding Popular Power” (“Alimenta el Poder Popular”) (Photo: Ricardo Vaz)
(Investig’Action/Ricardo Vaz in Caracas) – “Pueblo a Pueblo” is an initiative undertaken to fight back against the economic war that has hurt the Venezuelan people in their access to food. The idea is to organise the different links of the chain (production, distribution and consumption) in order to be rid of intermediaries. This way food is taken directly from the “pueblo” in the countryside to the “pueblo” in the city. ((We are deliberately keeping the word “pueblo” in Spanish, …
by Jonathan Cook / May 21st, 2018
Dear Frankie Boyle,
I’d prefer not to be writing this as an open letter, but you didn’t leave me much choice: I can no longer engage with you on Twitter because you blocked me (and many hundreds of others, it seems) for criticising the first episode of your New World Order TV show on Friday.
Since then, having purged your Twitter feed of critics, you have created a series of straw men. In the worst, you have suggested that those unhappy with the show are really closet racists for objecting to the fact that you spent half of your …
(Part 4 of 10 Part Series) Economic Sanity and Alternative Economic Systems
by Gary Brumback / May 21st, 2018
Fringe, adj. not part of the mainstream; unconventional, peripheral. When this definition is applied to the economy it becomes the title of a book, Short Changed: Life and Debt in the Fringe Economy, written by Howard Karger, who at the time was a professor of social policy. ((Brumback, GB. “Review of the book Short Changed: Life and Debt in the Fringe Economy by Howard Karger in the book review section of Personnel Psychology 60″, 2007, pp. 787-790.)) Part 4 is a review of that book.
Do you have any idea what the “historical neighborhood banker” is? I didn’t until I read …
by Kim Petersen / May 21st, 2018
Imagine that a group of bandits entered your house without permission and booted you and your family members out. Afterwards the bandits continue to occupy the house, but they graciously allow you and your family to stay in the cellar. Would you accept such a state of affairs? Would you not want your house back in its entirety? And would you not want the usurpers evicted?
Now imagine that the usurpers had some dubious code of honor whereby if they made any alterations to the stolen abode that they must …
by James O'Neill / May 20th, 2018
Writing in The Australian newspaper under the headline “Red Threats to Render White Paper just about Passé” (18 May 2018) ANU emeritus professor Paul Dibb offers a commentary that exemplifies much of what is wrong with Australian strategic thinking. The problem is all the more acute because Dibb is regularly quoted in the mainstream media and his views are considered influential. In this latest article he calls for a re-evaluation of the premises underlying the Foreign Policy White Paper released only six months ago.
That White Paper was certainly flawed, although not in the manner that Dibb suggests in underestimating what …
by Norman Ball / May 20th, 2018
Lucifer is the ultimate parodist. His projects are conducted always with One Eye trained on the heavens, head cocked, the better to render imitatio Dei. As above, so below.
Similarly the Quran’s Dajjal can only ever commit one eye to the Earth’s field of play. The other, forever inward, is mimetically trained on his own every move. Such is the monocular fate of a self-studying pretender. The spirit of imitation lacks seminal force. Spontaneity is a stranger to parody.
The ubiquitous atmosphere of surveillance presently being erected above our heads by the Prince of This World is making an (ultimately) doomed bid …
(Part 3 of 10 Part Series) Economic Sanity and Alternative Economic Systems
by Gary Brumback / May 20th, 2018
Notice the “notes” in the title. Part 3 is no textbook. Part 3 is a miniscule “Cliff Notes.” Notice, too, that the title reads “classical” thinking, not “early” thinking. There’s a difference. Since I regard human transactions as the bedrock of any economy and economic system, were I to choose the latter over the former qualifier I would have a lot of ground to cover, namely, that of early humans and their thinking as deduced from artifacts. An impossible task for me.
It’s not at all impossible for me, however, to skim the thinking of three classicists, Aristotle (384-322 BC), Adam …
by Binoy Kampmark / May 20th, 2018
The inevitable stop, start and stuttering of the Korean peace process was bound to manifest itself soon after the hugs, expansive smiles and sympathetic back rubs. Dates have been set – the Kim-Trump summit is slated to take place in Singapore on June 12, though there is much time for disruptive mischief to take place.
One field of possible disruption lies in air exercises between the US and South Korea known as Max Thunder. Such manoeuvres have been of particular interest to the DPRK, given their scale and possible use as leverage in talks.
The latest irritation was occasioned by claims in …
by Gary Olson / May 20th, 2018
Rev. William Barber is the closet thing to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. that we have in our midst.
— Prof. Cornell West on the PPC’s Co-Founder
The Poor People’s Campaign, modeled on MLK’s original movement from fifty years ago, held its first rallies and direct actions this past Monday at 37 state capitals across the country. I was privileged to be arrested for blocking the roadway during the civil disobedience portion of our rally at the capitol building in Harrisburg, PA. These actions will continue every Monday for 40 days and culminate in a national mobilization at the nation’s capital …
by Peter Koenig / May 19th, 2018
On 14 of May 1948 Israel declared unilaterally her independence in a foreign land called Palestine, supported by a UN Resolution sponsored by the UK (the United Nations “Partition Plan of Palestine” at the end of the British Mandate (euphemism for British ‘colony’), was adopted by the UN General Assembly on 29 November 1947 as Resolution 181 II). 1948 was also the year of the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This year, 2018, the UN declared Human Rights are, like Israel, celebrating their 70th Birthday (United Nations General Assembly, Paris, 10 December 1948, General Assembly Resolution 217 A). During …
by Yves Engler / May 19th, 2018
Is it appropriate for NDP Members of Parliament to be working for “greater friendship” with a country that is killing and maiming thousands of non-violent protestors?
Would it have been appropriate for any elected member of the party to be a “friend” with South Africa’s government during the apartheid era?
Victoria area MPs Randall Garrison and Murray Rankin are members of the Canada Israel Interparliamentary Group (previously named Canada-Israel Friendship Group). Garrison is vice-chair of a group designed to promote “greater friendship” and “cooperation” between the two countries’ parliaments. The chair of the group is York Centre MP Michael …
by Paul Craig Roberts / May 19th, 2018
How did a person who should be in the criminal dock both in the US and in the International Criminal Court for running a torture prison get appointed the Director of the US Central Intelligence Agency? What is all the Washington talk about defending human rights when a torturer is put in charge of covert operations?
Slobodan Miloševi?, the Serbia leader who tried to defend his country from Washington’s aggression, was sent by Washington to the war crimes tribunal or some such place that only tries victims of Washington’s aggression. He died in prison, some say he was murdered by …
by Ricardo Vaz / May 19th, 2018
Closing rally of the Maduro campaign (Photo: Presidential Press)
May 17 marked the end of the political campaign for the upcoming presidential and legislative council elections that will take place on Sunday May 20. In Caracas, in the traditional rally-holding place in Avenida Bolívar, Nicolás Maduro gave his closing campaign speech, surrounded by a large crowd that had mobilised in the early hours of the morning and converged from multiple locations in Caracas.
In his speech, Maduro reiterated some of the main tenets of his campaign: the promise to …
by Gary Leupp / May 18th, 2018
EU president and Polish politician Donald Tusk says the U.S. acts with “capricious assertiveness.” With friends like this who needs enemies?” he asked the other day, adding, “If you need a helping hand you will find one at the end of your arm.”
EU vice-president Federica Mogherini met with European and Iranian representatives after the U.S. decision to leave the Iran nuclear agreement. She committed Europe to the following:
Maintaining and deepening economic relations with Iran;
The continued sale of Iran’s oil and gas condensate petroleum products and petrochemicals and related transfers;
Effective banking transactions with Iran;
Continued sea, land, air …
by Edward Curtin / May 18th, 2018
Being in Rome, Italy and thinking of Gina Haspel, the CIA nominee and admitted torturer who says her “moral conscience” has changed after the fact, seems most fitting. Wherever you go in central Rome, you can hear the screams and smell the blood of those tortured and killed by the Roman Empire and those who ably followed in their stead. And you can see the crumbled stones and the pathetic architectural remains of those who thought they had triumphed. Their triumph turned to dust, and their belated mea culpas, if and when they ever came, always rang as hollow as …
by Gareth Porter / May 18th, 2018
Now that the Trump administration has derailed the Iran nuclear deal, the old issue of regime change in Iran is back again. National Security Adviser John Bolton is obviously the chief regime-change advocate in the administration, and there is every reason to believe he has begun to push that policy with Donald Trump in his first month in the White House.
Bolton was part of the powerful neoconservative faction of national security officials in the George W Bush administration that had a plan for supporting regime change in Iran, not much different from the one Bolton is …
(Part 2 of 10-Part Series) Economic Sanity and Alternative Economic Systems
by Gary Brumback / May 18th, 2018
Capitalism as it is practiced is economically insane, and it is devouring the American dream. So says the author of one of the books I have reviewed. ((Terry, R. Economic Insanity: How Growth-Driven Capitalism is Devouring the American Dream, 1995.)) Part 2 of this series adapts and adds to that review.
Roger Terry wrote a book in 1995 on “economic insanity” (no, it isn’t a “mis”fortune telling of the insane economic meltdown of 2008 thirteen years later). He’s certainly not a mainstream economist nor do I think even a maverick one. Rather, I assume business management is his professional field …
by Andre Vltchek / May 18th, 2018
BA Looks Great — From the Outside
First of all, the British Airways is not in the league of airlines such as Singapore Airlines or Cathay Pacific. Many of its intercontinental planes are old and unkempt; monitors are only bit bigger than a pack of cigarettes, and the selection of films thoroughly pathetic for a ‘global carrier’ – just a mainstream diet of Hollywood and British blockbusters.
While almost all first-rate airlines like Qatar Airways, Emirates, Thai, Singapore, Qantas, Cathay Pacific, but even KLM, Air France and Lufthansa, are …
by Don Fitz / May 17th, 2018
With the escalating doom of climate change hovering over us, it is tempting to push nuclear horror to the back of our minds. To those of us who grew up in the 1950s, it was omnipresent. Nuclear war could not exist without nuclear power and on April 26, 1986 the world experienced a form of nuclear horror it will never forget.
Why did Unit 4 of the Chernobyl nuclear plant explode on that day? Did operator error cause it? Was design flaw the reason? Should we look deeper into the Soviet system for the cause? Or should we look deeper still …
by Yves Engler / May 17th, 2018
Fake news, propaganda, public relations, advertising — it goes by many names, but at the core of all these terms is the idea that powerful institutions, primarily governments and corporations, strive to manipulate our understanding of world affairs. The most effective such shaping of opinion is invisible and therefore unquestioned.
Left criticism of French imperialism in Africa provides a stark example. Incredibly, the primary contemporary criticism North American leftists make of French imperialism on that continent concerns a country it never colonized. What’s more, Paris is condemned for siding with a government led by the lower caste majority.
To the extent that …
(Part 1 of 10 Part Series) Introduction to the Series
by Gary Brumback / May 17th, 2018
This piece introduces my 10-part series on economic sanity and alternative economic systems. Never mind that I am not an economist. Instead, please appreciate that I am not an economist.
Neither is Daniel Kahneman an economist, and he won the Nobel Prize for economics. He is a psychologist like me, but a very different psychologist in at least two respects. Firstly, his specialty is cognitive psychology, mine is organizational psychology. Secondly, I will never win a Nobel Prize.
Neither was Aristotle, an ancient Greek philosopher who ruminated on the matter of economics. Neither was Adam Smith, the putative father of capitalism. He …
by Media Lens / May 17th, 2018
The gaping chasm between reality and unreality is exemplified by recent contrasting statements about journalism from two veteran reporters. On the one side we have Jeremy Bowen, the BBC’s Middle East editor, who enjoys a public image of principled honesty and a supposedly fierce commitment to news balance and impartiality. But, when he was challenged recently on Twitter about the blatant bias in BBC News reporting, he responded just as one would expect of a well-rewarded, high-profile employee of the national broadcaster:
We are the best source of decent, impartial reportage anywhere in the world.
As Noam Chomsky …
by Jason Holland / May 17th, 2018
May 14th was quite a day for the empire, the shit show on full display exhibiting lots of swagger in its death throes. The people on the inside are the last to know. They don’t see it but everyone else does. The rest of the world can see the toxic death culture, they see the rationalizations for idiocy and how silly they seem. The US empire has no clothes but wears only a paper thin emotional veneer resembling a child who attempts to lie for the first time after murdering the family …
by Felicity Arbuthnot / May 16th, 2018
It was NBC’s Cal Parry who summed up the obscenity of Donald Trump’s ignorant and igniting decision to move the US Embassy to West Jerusalem, then to celebrate the inauguration on Monday, 14th May: “Well dressed American and Israeli officials on one side of the screen: desperation, death and fires on the other.”
In 1948, 700,000 Palestinians began their flight from the city and the region trying to escape the massacres by Jewish militias on that date, seventy years ago. Commemorated ever since as the day of “Nakba” — disaster, catastrophe, cataclysm — following them to this day as land is …
by Chris Wright / May 16th, 2018
In a world defined by social atomization, bureaucratization, and ant-like regimentation along institutionally sanctioned channels that exist but to uphold hierarchies of power, it is practically a moral obligation for anyone who wants to be fully human to break out of his bubble and, if possible, experience the world as “the other” does. In particular, as those without a voice do. If such experience isn’t always literally possible, we ought at least to imaginatively inhabit other perspectives, say by reading primary sources or watching documentaries, or …
by Ajamu Baraka / May 16th, 2018
One of the essential features of European colonialism were the boundaries drawn between Europeans and so-called Western civilization and everyone else. Even during the European enlightenment, the accepted philosophical justifications for human inequality in Western liberal thought meant that women, the colonized, the enslaved and non-property holders occupied different rungs on the ladder of humanity and were excluded from demanding same inherent rights as the White, male bourgeoisie.
The “othering” of human beings on the basis of race, gender, religion, class and later nationality was embedded in the collective consciousness of Europe. But in the colonial context, the process of othering …
