Latest articles
by Media Lens / February 2nd, 2018
Open a corporate media website on any given day and you will find someone, somewhere blaming social media for something. No claim is too absurd.
Last week, journalist Sean Williams, who writes for the New Yorker, New Republic and Wired, tweeted us in a state of high anxiety:
I just want you to know you’re ruining the national dialogue and pushing more people towards right wing populism. Really.
Quite a claim for a project that began in Southampton’s Giddy Bridge public house over a pint and a packet of cheese and onion. We replied:
Two guys …
by Margaret Flowers / February 2nd, 2018
State-level reforms for universal health care are laudable; they are not single payer
Two states with a long history of state-based healthcare reform efforts, California and New York, are hard at work organizing for state bills labeled as single payer healthcare plans. Other states are moving in that direction too. This raises questions by single payer advocates: Can states create single payer healthcare systems? Does state-level work help or hinder our goal of National Improved Medicare for All (NIMA)?
The movement for NIMA gained momentum throughout 2017, largely due to rising …
by Ajamu Baraka / February 2nd, 2018
The ongoing political circus in the capital of the world’s most powerful empire opens almost daily with a new act each day showcasing an even more bizarre and more revealing display of the internal rot of a culture and a political system in decline.
The day before Donald Trump’s first State of the Union address, the Russia-gate drama took an unexpected and dangerous turn with the vote by the House Intelligence Committee to release a now classified memo that alleges that senior members of the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) may have misled the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA court) …
by Norman Ball / February 1st, 2018
The teeth-rattling cognitive dissonance that awaits half the nation (and it’s still fair to ask which half) is going to send some folks into therapy for years. This essay, as you will see, is predisposed to one narrative. The human mind cannot entertain both.
In fact, the reset for many will arrive in begrudging half-measures. They will grumble that the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy finally prevailed on poor Hillary. Psychologically, that will be about the best they can do. Patience, not partisan recriminations, will be the most suitable response.
I have an 80-something year old mother who will not walk on grass …
by Jonathan Cook / January 31st, 2018
For the first time in its history, an interrogator from Israel’s secret police agency, the Shin Bet, is to face a criminal investigation over allegations of torture.
It will be the first probe of the Shin Bet since Israel’s supreme court issued a landmark ruling nearly two decades ago prohibiting, except in extraordinary circumstances, the use of what it termed “special methods” of interrogation.
Before the ruling, physical abuse of Palestinians had been routine and resulted in several deaths in custody.
According to human rights groups, however, the supreme court ban has had a limited impact. The Shin Bet, formally known as the …
by Binoy Kampmark / January 31st, 2018
In this age of reality television (or televised unreality), the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency was not going to miss out. Unlike other chief spies who operate in habitual darkness and moving shadows, Mike Pompeo was very keen to get his voice and opinion across on the British Broadcasting Service.
Pompeo specialises in seeing enemies everywhere, and to be fair, he is remunerated to do so. But he has taken his brief all too enthusiastically, seeing challenges to US hegemony at every corner, contenders for supreme power behind many an action. This, in one respect, is a re-enforcing phenomenon: …
by Gary Olson / January 31st, 2018
Radical: Derived from the Latin radix, which literally means the root or base. In political terms it means penetrating beyond conventional explanations and getting at the root cause of a problem.
In her book Regarding the Pain of Others, Susan Sontag puzzled over people who still express surprise about all the suffering in the world at human hands. She wrote, “No one after a certain age has the right to this kind of innocence, of superficiality, to this degree of ignorance, or amnesia.” I would amend Sontag’s indictment to include people who’ve been afforded the luxury of time, resources and access to …
by John W. Whitehead / January 31st, 2018
A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure, permanently, half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other.
— Abraham Lincoln, June 16, 1858, at Springfield, Illinois.
History has a funny way of circling back on itself.
The facts, figures, faces and technology may change from era to era, but the dangers remain the same.
This year is no different, whatever the politicians …
by Robert Hunziker / January 31st, 2018
Not since 1953, when the U.S. and the Soviets exploded thermonuclear bombs, has the world been such a powder keg!
Only recently, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved the Doomsday Clock forward 30 seconds. It now registers two minutes to midnight. Verily, it’s lights out when the clock strikes 12:00 midnight. Ka-boom, it’s over!
What’s going on?
Hitherto, in the aftermath of the Cold War, the clock was set all the way back to 17 minutes to midnight. Thereafter, it wasn’t until 1998, when India and Pakistan staged back-to-back nuclear weapon testing, that the famous timepiece moved forward into single digits once …
by Ramzy Baroud / January 31st, 2018
Although the genocide of the Rohingya minority in Myanmar has gathered greater media attention in recent months, there is no indication that the international community is prepared to act in any meaningful way, thus leaving hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees stranded in border camps between Myanmar and Bangladesh.
While top United Nations officials are now using the term ‘genocide‘ to describe the massive abuses experienced by the Rohingya minority at the hands of the Myanmar army, security forces and Buddhist militias, no plan of action to stem the genocide has been put in place.
In less than six months, beginning …
by Edward Curtin / January 30th, 2018
And thus the U.S. left leadership sits in the left chamber of the hall of mirrors, complaining about conspiracy theories while closing its eyes to actual conspiracies crucial to contemporary imperialism.
— Graeme MacQueen, Beyond Their Wildest Dreams: September 11, 2001 and the American Left
It is well known that effective propaganda works through slow, imperceptible repetition. “The slow building up of reflexes and myths” is the way Jacques Ellul put it in his classic, Propaganda. This works through commission and omission.
I was reminded of this recently after I published a newspaper editorial on Martin Luther King Day stating the fact that …
by Kathy Kelly / January 29th, 2018
On January 23rd an overcrowded smuggling boat capsized off the coast of Aden in Southern Yemen. Smugglers packed 152 passengers from Somalia and Ethiopia in the boat and then, while at sea, reportedly pulled guns on the migrants to extort additional money from them. The boat capsized, according to The Guardian, after the shooting prompted panic. The death toll, currently 30, is expected to rise. Dozens of children were on board.
The passengers had already risked the perilous journey from African shores to Yemen, a dangerous crossing that leaves people vulnerable to false promises, predatory captors, arbitrary …
by Andre Vltchek / January 29th, 2018
It could be truly comical, if it were not to be so dangerous for millions of people living all over the world. The Empire, once mighty, ruthless and frightening is now jumping around like a dog infected with rabies; it is salivating, barking loudly, its tale is stiff between its legs.
It snaps left and right, and periodically it is even trying to bite a piece of Moon off. But the Moon is far, too far, even for the best armed and the most aggressive country on Earth.
Iran is much closer, and so are North Korea, Syria, Venezuela, Russia, China, Pakistan …
Very Complicated
by Gregory Barrett / January 29th, 2018
Pink Floyd always was, and still is, wildly popular and successful here in Germany. The legendary rock group’s former bass player and singer, Roger Waters, still has quite a following here too as a successful solo artist. That following does not, however, include the German government, nor does it include supporters of the current government of Israel, who last fall successfully petitioned the broadcasting honchos who run Germany’s public television network ARD to drop a planned live concert by Mr Waters from the programming schedule. The grounds: as a supporter of the BDS boycott movement and a passionate advocate of …
by John Steppling / January 29th, 2018
The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of.
— Edward Bernays, Propaganda, 1928
For the first time in human history, there is a concerted strategy to manipulate global perception. And the mass media are operating as its compliant assistants, failing both to resist it and to …
by Peter Koenig / January 29th, 2018
Transcript of Skype Interview with PressTV
Background by Michelle Nichols:
UNITED NATIONS, January 26 (Reuters): The United States will seek to boost its case for United Nations action against Iran when Security Council envoys visit Washington on Monday to view pieces of weapons that U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley says Tehran gave to Yemen’s Houthi group.
Haley and her 14 council colleagues will also lunch with President Donald Trump, the U.S. Mission to the United Nations, said Friday.
The Trump administration has for months been lobbying for Iran to be held accountable at the United Nations, while at the same time threatening to quit a …
by Graham Peebles / January 29th, 2018
Pollution has become an everyday affair; a murderous way of life which, according to a report published in The Lancet, is responsible for the deaths of at least nine million people every year. The air we breathe is poisoned, the streams, rivers, lakes and oceans are filthy, — some more, some less — the land littered with waste, the soil toxic. Neglect, complacency and exploitation characterize the attitude of governments, corporations and far too many individuals towards the life of the planet, and its rich interwoven ecological systems.
The Lancet Commission on Pollution and Health, which is yet another cry …
by Robert J. Burrowes / January 29th, 2018
As our world spirals deeper into an abyss from which it is becoming increasingly difficult to extricate ourselves, some very prominent activists have lamented the lack of human solidarity in the face of the ongoing genocide of the Rohingya.
While I share the genuine concern of the Yemeni Nobel peace laureate Tawakkol Karman and Burmese dissident and scholar Dr Maung Zarni, and have offered my own way forward for responding powerfully to the ongoing genocide of the Rohingya, in my view the lack of solidarity they mention is utterly pervasive and readily evident in our lacklustre official and …
by John V. Walsh / January 28th, 2018
The original front page top headline on Friday’s New York Times (January 26) was: “Trump Did Not Fire Mueller in June.” The subheading was: “Also Trump did not fire Mueller in July, August, September, October, November, December or even January.”
You may be mystified by this, dear reader, since the headline you read, which was not the original but an altered version, was: “Trump Ordered Mueller Fired, but Backed Off When White House Counsel Threatened to Quit.” Now clearly that first part is not true, for if Trump had ordered Mueller fired, he would not be there now. But Mueller is …
by Binoy Kampmark / January 28th, 2018
I won’t even start with the old rule that when there’s a contract killing, it’s usually the killer who first offers their condolences.
— Nenad ?anak, Radio Free Europe, January 22, 2018
The highest form of scandalous patriotism is real estate, often blood soaked, and almost always fortified. What one controls is often less important as who is doing so. In the case of Kosovo, attempts at control, overt and covert, have been exerted for years. Officially, Serbia lacks de facto effectiveness, a state of affairs in place since the aftermath of the 1999 bombings by NATO. Neither does Albania, which also …
(Hint: It's that perennially false panacea, Money)
by Norman Ball / January 28th, 2018
The Republicans are up to their usual shenanigans. There they are again, sitting on the Right. Don’t like it, Democrats? At least we (and they) know who they are. Posing the question as Pete Townshend did years ago, we must ask of the Blue Team: “Who are you? Who, who, who, who?”
Prior to the election and on these very ‘pages’, I argued how neither American party can reasonably be called Moderate Right, never mind Centrist or Left. I even suggested (with perhaps a dash of tongue-in-cheek) that a Trump-Sanders anti-TPP, labor-management ticket would provide the …
by Andre Vltchek / January 27th, 2018
Afghanistan is now facing mortal danger. It has to survive, but it is not clear how it can manage.
Hotel Intercontinental in Kabul, which was attacked by gunmen last Saturday, used to fit like a glove, like a grandmother’s couch. Outside, the war has been raging. Millions of Afghan lives were aimlessly broken, hundreds of thousands lost. The price of more than 16 years of NATO occupation has exceeded $1 trillion, but instead of bringing peace and prosperity, it has reduced Afghanistan to rubble.
My room in hotel
All …
Like a viper coming at me: age, obsolescence and drudgery
by Paul Haeder / January 27th, 2018
The autumn of the patriarch, man, thinking hard about Marquez’s book, thinking back in lamentation bursts, going back in time when I met him at the University of Texas at Austin, and how he spoke to me as a young person, hopeful that I would be something as unique as he was, using what I told him was my West Texas/Chihuahua “magic realism,” founded on what I learned from his One Hundred Years of Solitude.
Those were the days, man — Kurt Vonnegut and Denis Levertov, Annie Dillard and Tim O’Brien, Robert Bly and …
When it comes to Palestinians, liberal Israelis sound little different from Netanyahu’s supporters. Both are concerned about maintaining Israel as a fortress Jewish state
by Jonathan Cook / January 27th, 2018
Human rights abuses by their government have so outraged prominent liberal Israelis that, in an unprecedented move, they have launched a campaign of civil disobedience.
Many hundreds have responded to a call by rabbis, pledging to hide victims in their own homes to protect them from Israel’s security services.
With the mood rapidly turning sour, academics and professionals, including doctors, pilots, school principals and lawyers have refused to collude in Israel’s policy of oppression.
This month a raft of respected literary figures, including Amos Oz and David Grossman, reminded Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that it was imperative to “act morally, …
by Nozomi Hayase / January 27th, 2018
Bitcoin’s price explosion made news headlines this last year. Topics of digital assets entered onto dinner tables and friendly chats at work places. Fever of the digital gold rush that has swept mainstream finance became contagious. Institutional funds are now entering into cryptos, seemingly hedging their bets with their “sugar high” bubble economy. Jamie Dimon, the JPMorgan CEO who previously slammed Bitcoin as a fraud is said to be regretting his claim. He now praises the blockchain, the underlying technology of Bitcoin. Goldman Sachs recently acknowledged Bitcoin as money, comparable to gold. The firm is already …
by Nayvin Gordon / January 27th, 2018
For thousands of years physicians took oaths to always act in the patient’s best interest when providing care. At the heart of medical ethics, this moral code was passed down through the centuries and reaffirmed by The World Medical Association (WMA) in 1949 and again in 2006. Additionally the WMA specified: “A physician shall not allow his/her judgment to be influenced by personal profit or unfair discrimination,” and “shall not receive any financial benefits or other incentives solely for referring patients or prescribing specific products”.
Medical ethics ran head long into The HMO (Health Maintenance Organization) Act of 1973. The passage of …
by Othello / January 27th, 2018
Recently, a Tesla on autopilot slammed into a parked fire engine at 65 mph. It turns out that there was no malfunction. According to Tesla’s manual:
Traffic-Aware Cruise Control cannot detect all objects and may not brake/decelerate for stationary vehicles, especially in situations when you are driving over 50 mph (80 km/h) and a vehicle you are following moves out of your driving path and a stationary vehicle or object is in front of you instead.
So whereas any half way decent human driver would have braked and/or swerved to avoid the collision, Tesla’s “smart” car proceeded full-speed ahead.
Even if you …
by Daniel Borgström / January 26th, 2018
The Pacifica Radio Network nearly went into bankruptcy this month. The immediate cause was a court order to pay the Empire State Building $1,800,000, more cash than Pacifica had. As bad as that may be, it’s really a symptom of deeper problems in the network. It goes back a long way.
I attended a KPFA ((KPFA 94.1 FM is one of five stations of the Pacifica radio network which are located in major cities across the country. The other stations are WBAI 99.5 in New York, WPFW 89.3 in Washington DC, KPFT 90.1 in Houston, and KPFK 90.7 in Los Angeles. …
by Brett Redmayne-Titley / January 26th, 2018
We have seen war… too much war. We desire peace. To have peace we must live together as one people. The new government says so. We support our government.
— Taxi driver on the streets of Beirut
Author’s Note: This is Part Two in a multi-part series direct and on-scene from the Mid-East. For background information not repeated here, please see Part One.
*****
Indeed the people of Lebanon have seen too much war. Though their military has not in its history set foot on foreign soil, remaining in the minds of the Lebanese are one bloody civil war and three …
by Ellen Brown / January 25th, 2018
In a blatant example of “do as I say, not as I do,” the US government is profiting handsomely by accepting marijuana cash in the payment of taxes while imposing huge penalties on banks for accepting it as deposits. Onerous reporting requirements are driving small local banks to sell out to Wall Street. Congress needs to harmonize federal with state law.
Thirty states and the District of Columbia currently have laws broadly legalizing marijuana in some form. The herb has been shown to have significant therapeutic value for a wide range of medical conditions, including cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, …
