Latest articles
by Ramzy Baroud / January 17th, 2018
Not a day passes without a prominent Israeli politician or intellectual making an outrageous statement against Palestinians. Many of these statements tend to garner little attention or evoke rightly deserved outrage.
Just recently, Israel’s Minister of Agriculture, Uri Ariel, called for more death and injuries on Palestinians in Gaza.
“What is this special weapon we have that we fire and see pillars of smoke and fire, but nobody gets hurt? It is time for there to be injuries and deaths as well,” he said.
Ariel’s calling for the killing of more Palestinians came on the heels of other repugnant statements …
Offering to talk while threatening military force hasn't worked in 30 years.
by Gareth Porter / January 16th, 2018
A North Korean soldier looks in through the window of the T2 building as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates tour the Demilitarized Zone in Korea on July 21, 2010.(U.S. Department of Defense photo.)
With his recent “my (nuclear) button is bigger than yours” taunt, Donald Trump’s rhetoric has fully descended into school yard braggadocio, with North Korea’s Kim Jong-un as a convenient foil. But his administration’s overwhelming reliance on military and economic pressure rather than on negotiations to influence North Korea’s …
by John W. Whitehead / January 16th, 2018
We have been silent witnesses of evil deeds: we have been drenched by many storms; we have learnt the arts of equivocation and pretence; experience has made us suspicious of others and kept us from being truthful and open; intolerable conflicts have worn us down and even made us cynical. Are we still of any use? What we shall need is not geniuses, or cynics, or misanthropes, or clever tacticians, but plain, honest, straightforward men. Will our inward power of resistance be strong enough, and our honesty with ourselves remorseless enough, for us to find our way back to …
by Robert J. Burrowes / January 16th, 2018
A long-standing French protectorate briefly occupied by Japan during World War II, Cambodia became independent in 1953 as the French finally withdrew from Indochina. Under the leadership of Prince Norodom Sihanouk, Cambodia remained officially neutral, including during the subsequent US war on Indochina. However, by the mid-1960s, parts of the eastern provinces of Cambodia were bases for North Vietnamese Army and National Liberation Front (NVA/NLF) forces operating against South Vietnam and this resulted in nearly a decade of bombing by the United States from 4 October 1965.
In 1970 Sihanouk was ousted in a US-supported coup led by General …
by Binoy Kampmark / January 16th, 2018
Britain is ill, and even as the opportunists and populists scramble before the hardened negotiators of the European Union over imminent exit, revising optimistic forecasts and notions of sovereign greatness has begun. Within Theresa May’s decaying state comes yet another economic disaster, and one that has prompted a revival of government assistance before the vicissitudes of the market. This, from a Tory government extolling the divine nature of free market enterprise.
Carillion, the UK’s second biggest construction company, is in a mammoth pickle, one to the tune of £1.5 billion. It has gone into liquidation after the weekend failure to reach …
by Mostafa Afzalzadeh / January 15th, 2018
Mostafa Afzalzadeh: Why do you think the western countries are trying to use people against Iran and not use military force? What is the difference?
Andre Vltchek: It is because Iran is ‘not alone’. If the West were to dare use military force against Iran, directly, there would be an immediate response from many countries on Earth. I believe that Iran’s allies, like Russia, several Latin American countries, but also most likely China, would not sit idle. I am not saying that they would immediately send their armies and begin fighting the U.S. and European forces, but I am certain that …
We are the enemy looking in the mirror ... no matter how many times we check out Twitter Trump
by Paul Haeder / January 15th, 2018
Our capitalist elites have used propaganda, money and the marginalizing of their critics to erase the first three of philosopher John Locke’s elements of the perfect state: liberty, equality and freedom. They exclusively empower the fourth, property. Liberty and freedom in the corporate state mean the liberty and freedom of corporations and the rich to exploit and pillage without government interference or regulatory oversight. And the single most important characteristic of government is its willingness to use force, at home and abroad, to protect the interests of the property classes.
— Chris Hedges, “Corpses of Souls”
Here’s a thought experiment for social workers …
by Jonathan Cook / January 15th, 2018
It is time for George Monbiot’s legion of supporters to call him out. Not only is he a hypocrite, but he is becoming an increasingly dangerous one.
Turning a blind eye to his behaviour, or worse excusing it, as too often happens, has only encouraged him to intensify his attacks on dissident writers, those who – whether right or wrong on any specific issue – are slowly helping us all to develop more critical perspectives on western foreign policy goals than has ever been possible before.
I do not lightly use such strong language against Monbiot, someone I once admired. But his …
by Brian Terrell / January 15th, 2018
On Thursday, January 11, the sixteenth anniversary of the opening of the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba was marked by a coalition of 15 human rights organizations gathered in Lafayette Park, across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House in Washington, DC. An interfaith prayer service was followed by a rally featuring song and poetry and addresses by activists from the sponsoring organizations, including attorneys for some of those detained at Guantanamo, few of these charged with any crime and some cleared for release years ago. Despite his declaration that “In the dark halls of Abu Ghraib and …
by Ted Glick / January 15th, 2018
I woke up this morning thinking about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. And then I began thinking about Ella Baker, whose model of “group-centered leadership” I have recently been meditating on and writing about.
I heard Dr. King speak in person twice during the 60’s, once at Grinnell College in Iowa a few months before he was assassinated. When he was killed 50 years ago, on April 4th, 1968, I began what became 50 years of progressive activism by posting a petition to Congress on the wall of the student mail room that night. About half the students had signed it …
by Binoy Kampmark / January 15th, 2018
Since coming to power, Emmanuel Macron has given the impression of forging ahead with new agendas and ideas crafted from a novel perspective. This has been far from the case. True, the man’s novelty has shone through in doing what seemed to be the undoable: establish a power base against traditional power-brokers and carve out a good slice of the electoral pie, all the time claiming to pursue an agenda shaped on radical reform. But Macron remains a creature cut from the cloth of establishment thinking.
So, when he paraded before the Chinese leadership at the invitation of Chinese President Xi …
(Any Labor Theory of Value, Bourgeois or Marxist, is completely Obsolete and Outmoded in Explaining the Corporate-Capitalist Reaction to the Recent Minimum Wage Increase in Ontario, Canada)
by Michel Luc Bellemare / January 15th, 2018
Recently, the Ontario Liberal government raised the minimum wage for workers to 14 dollars, with a further increase set for next year to 15 dollars. The idea was that the increase in the minimum wage would alleviate the financial stress of the majority of the workforce and enable the workforce to pay-off debt and ease its financial burden of subsisting within contemporary bourgeois society. The raise was brought into effect January 1st, 2018. And right on cue, a litany of corporate-enterprises raised their commodity-prices, across the board, almost unanimously, on January 1st, 2018, arguing that all the price increases were …
by Gary Olson / January 15th, 2018
The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas; the class which is the ruling material force in society is at the same time the ruling intellectual force.
— Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
Setting aside the 3-4 percent of the U.S. population that can be classified as psychopaths (‘snakes in suits’ at the highest levels of government, business and the military) what can we say about an entire society that displays an anaesthetized conscience towards the suffering of others and towards the ecological commons itself?
We know that many hear the “cry of the people” but the moral …
by Kathy Kelly / January 14th, 2018
January 11, 2018 marked the 16th year that Guantanamo prison has exclusively imprisoned Muslim men, subjecting many of them to torture and arbitrary detention.
Witness Against Torture demonstrators marching to the White House (Credit: Justin Norman)
About thirty people gathered in Washington D.C., convened by Witness Against Torture, (WAT), for a week-long fast intended to close Guantanamo and abolish torture forever. Six days ago, Matt Daloisio arrived from New York City in a van carefully packed with twelve years’ worth of posters and banners, plus sleeping bags, winter …
Interview with Steve Hedley
by Ricardo Vaz / January 14th, 2018
RMT demonstration at King’s Cross Station in London (RMT Photo)
A broken-down consensus and a resurgence of socialist ideas – this is how Steve Hedley describes the current political landscape in the United Kingdom. Hedley is the Senior Assistant General Secretary of the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers, the RMT. In this interview he guides us through the aftermath of the Brexit vote, the turmoil in the ruling Conservative government and the leftward steer of the Labour Party under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn. …
by Daniel Borgström / January 14th, 2018
As an American of Norwegian descent, I deeply resent President Trump’s recent statement, calling Haiti a “shithole country” and then in the same breath saying he wants more immigrants from Norway. That is not a compliment to Norwegians; it’s just a disgusting way to talk.
But let’s look at what he said. By “shithole” I assume he means that Haiti is economically poor, and that’s certainly true. Nevertheless, Haitians have an inspiring tradition of fighting for liberty, one that we can all envy. In 1804 they held history’s only successful slave rebellion, freeing themselves from the French plantation owners. Unfortunately, it’s …
by Gary Brumback / January 14th, 2018
Browsing the Internet, one can find a deluge of entries on social justice and peace activists, but very little about their own introspections on how they see and feel themselves as activists.
Seeking to fill at least partially that void I aim to explore in this article what it is like to be an activist in America for social justice and peace. I will do this in four ways.
First, since this journal is read by activists with varying levels and types of activity I will ask them about their activism. How would you answer the following questions?
Your Activist Self Checklist
a) Type …
by Jonathan Cook / January 14th, 2018
One can be resolutely in favour of equal pay for men and women and still view the current debate about discriminatory salaries among senior BBC journalists as missing a much bigger point. That is neatly illustrated by the furore over comments by John Humphrys, who presents the BBC’s early morning current affairs programme Today on Radio 4.
In a leaked transcript of off-air comments, Humphrys tries to help out an old friend Jon Sopel, the BBC’s North America editor – and one of those benefiting from the BBC’s higher-pay-for-men policy. In a pre-interview chat, he seeks to agree with Sopel how …
by Julian Vigo / January 14th, 2018
In the East, it could be the COLDEST New Year’s Eve on record. Perhaps we could use a little bit of that good old Global Warming that our Country, but not other countries, was going to pay TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS to protect against. Bundle up!
— Donald J. Trump
Reading tweets like this from President Trump incites a mixture of humour and sadness in me. I can’t even tell which sentiment is stronger at this point. Since his exiting the US from the Paris Agreement last year it is difficult to take this person seriously about any utterance he makes on the …
by Paul Craig Roberts / January 13th, 2018
We need a political intervention to make this situation end. He (Assange) is the only political prisoner in Western Europe.
— Juan Branco
The persecution of Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, is now seven years old. Ecuador has protected Assange for the past half decade from being turned over to Washington by the corrupt Swedish and British for torture and prosecution as a spy by giving Assange political asylum inside the Ecuadoran Embassy in London. Ecuador has now given citizenship to Assange and attempted to provide his safe transit out of England by giving him diplomatic status, but the British …
by Ajamu Baraka / January 12th, 2018
One of the most ingenious propaganda weapons ever developed is that the powerful nations of the West—led by the United States—have a moral responsibility to use military force to protect the rights of people being repressed by their governments. This “responsibility to protect” (R2P) always had a dubious legal standing, but its moral justification also required a psychological and historical disengagement from the bloody reality of the 500-hundred-year history of U.S. and European colonialism, slavery, genocide and torture that created the “West.”
This violent, lawless Pan-European colonial/capitalist project continues today under the hegemony of the U.S. empire. This then begs the …
by Binoy Kampmark / January 12th, 2018
Michael Wolff is laughing, if not gloating, all his way to the bank. Money bags are singing; bank accounts are being filled. Doubts about the free publicity his work on the Trump White House would receive would have abated with the tweeting complex that is the current and singular US president, one Donald J. Trump. Call something fake, and it’s bound to sell. “Wolff’s brand of journalism might be ugly,” observes Nausicaa Renner and Pete Vernon, “prioritizing access over accountability – but it’s the perfect match for the Trump era.”
It began with an excerpt in the New York …
by Robert Hunziker / January 12th, 2018
It’s January, yet methane hydrates in the Arctic are growling like an incensed monster on a scorching hot mid-summer day. But, it is January; it’s winter, not July!
On January 1st Arctic methane at 2,764 ppb spiked upwards into the atmosphere, which, according to Arctic News: “Was likely caused by methane hydrate destabilization in the sediments on the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean.” ((“Unfolding Arctic Catastrophe”, Arctic News, January 2, 2018.)) Once again, with emphasis, it’s January; it’s winter, and there’s little or no sunshine above the Arctic Circle. So, what gives? Why are alarming levels of methane spewing into the …
Victims blame themselves
by Andre Vltchek / January 12th, 2018
Her name is Cinta, which in Bahasa Indonesia means simply Love.
Cinta in pink shirt
She lives in a tiny village near Sukadana town, in Indonesian West Kalimantan, otherwise known as Borneo – the biggest island in Asia, the second biggest in the world – now totally destroyed by unbridled logging, palm oil plantations and mining, perpetrated by countless, and due to corruption and savage capitalism, unregulated local and multi-national companies.
Nearby Sukadana there is a national park, Gunung Palung. It is vast and by Indonesian standards, well guarded, although …
by Graham Peebles / January 11th, 2018
Since November 2015 unprecedented protests have been taking place in Ethiopia: angry and frustrated at the widespread abuse of human rights and the centralization of power in the hands of the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) tens of thousands have taken to the streets. The ruling party’s response to this democratic outpouring has been consistently violent; hundreds have been killed and beaten by security forces, tens of thousands arrested and imprisoned.
In an attempt to gag the people, a highly repressive State of Emergency was imposed in August 2016. It failed, the protests continued, the movement strengthened. The regime then tried …
by Phil Rockstroh / January 11th, 2018
I remember my first impression of the Reality Television program American Idol. I cringed at the thought, what if, a young Bob Dylan, Patti Smith, or the members of The Clash had been forced to have their talents appraised by the sort of shallow celebrities, supercilious moderators, and gallery of lowest common denominator-giddy cretins attendant to the hype-driven fare.
Yet now, there is serious talk among abjectly unserious people that the next presidential election might pit a billionaire, Reality Television grifter versus a billionaire, Reality Television grifter. All hail, The President of the United States Of Reality Television.
Oprah Winfrey is, …
by John V. Walsh / January 11th, 2018
Should progressives support the efforts of Trump and Putin to bring about rapprochement between Russia and the U.S.? Or to use Trump’s terminology, should progressives support the effort to “get along with Russia”?
This might seem like a no-brainer. After all Russia and the U.S. are the world’s major nuclear powers. A war or a mistake resulting in a nuclear exchange would reduce much of the planet to radioactive rubble, ending civilization as we know it, and perhaps even putting the continued existence of the human race at risk. And yet there are virtually no voices in the progressive community calling …
by Stansfield Smith / January 11th, 2018
Evo Morales will soon have been the president of Bolivia for 12 years, heralding the ascent of the indigenous social movements to governmental power. This ended the apartheid system against the indigenous that existed for 500 years in Bolivia. Morales won in 2005 with 53.7% of the vote, followed by re-elections in 2009 with 64.2% and 2014 with 61.3%.
The country has made great strides in economic development, national sovereignty, women’s and Original Peoples’ rights, respect for Mother Earth, raising the people’s standard of living, level of education, and health care.
His presidency, which has brought an era of relative social peace …
by Brett Redmayne-Titley / January 11th, 2018
So. The US economy is just fine. The post-recession 2010 Dodd-Frank legislation has cured all. Banks have lots of cash. Congress is your friend and that certain-to-pass Tax Cut and Jobs bill will finally allow you, your family and America to… MAGA.
Really?!
“I’m sorry, Sir. We are unable to cash this check,” were the ominous words delivered to me by a fresh-faced, none-too-friendly, Wells Fargo Bank manager. He had just kept me waiting ten minutes while in consultation about my requested transaction. Returning to his cubicle he sat down quickly, now looking at me intently through narrowed eyes.
Three feet away, between …
by Philip A. Farruggio / January 11th, 2018
Please go and watch the 2001 film Focus, directed by Neal Slavin and starring William H. Macy and Laura Dern. It is based on the great playwright Arthur Miller‘s novel of the same name.
The film takes place in the waning months of WW2 when a man and his new wife are mistakenly identified as Jews by their anti-Semitic Brooklyn, N.Y.C neighbors. They soon become victims of religious and racial persecution. Many of us may not realize just how bad things were for Jews and Blacks during the WW2 years.
We have this illusion that ‘All for one and one for all’ was the …
