One sentence summarizes the Zionist expansion from an incursion to ultimate takeover of Palestinian lands – the Zionists act aggressively and the world bodies re-react passively. Institutions that defend the world community and protect regional interests have failed to understand the Middle East crisis, failed to recognize the dangers posed by the Zionist expansion, and have subverted their constituencies. These failures prevent formulation of an acceptable plan and a concentrated effort to resolve the perilous situation. Those who argue that the Middle East crisis is beyond comprehension and resolution are deceiving the world; proper thought leads to basic actions that …
The other day I was in a shopping mall looking for an ATM to get some cash. There was no ATM. A week ago, there was still a branch office of a local bank – no more, gone. A Starbucks will replace the space left empty by the bank. I asked around – there will be no more cash automats in this mall – and this pattern is repeated over and over throughout Switzerland and throughout western Europe. Cash machines gradually but ever so faster disappear, not only from shopping malls, also from street corners. Will Switzerland become the first …
As we head into a pivotal mid-term election year, it is clear the Democratic Party establishment has not learned a key lesson from the 2016 election. That is, that many of the party’s former and current constituents reject the party’s establishment leadership and its lackluster program. These voters are looking for alternatives. In 2016, en masse they deserted the party for a new kind of politics they found in Bernie Sanders and some saw in Donald Trump.
Voters passed judgment on the leading figures of both parties. Distrust and discontent disrupted politics as usual. The opportunity to fill this void with …
The gloating over the forthcoming New Year celebrations has already commenced. The first big city to feature on the roundups in each news segment as the year is ushered in tends to be Sydney, self-proclaimed global city in the antipodes, ever keen to rub its vulgar confidence into the noses of rival Melbourne. And, for that matter, every other city since costly fireworks and light displays matter in the image table.
In the time zones where the new year festivities feature with clockwork regularity, Sydney is the first flash, the initiator of the world into another fairly meaningless measurement known as …
Resolution 2397, December 22, 2017: Security Council Inflicts Gestapo-Style Sanctions on DPRK, Despite Warnings They Will Annihilate the People of North Korea
by Carla Stea / December 28th, 2017
Ignoring the avalanche of evidence that prior sanctions on the DPRK are causing a devastating humanitarian crisis for the people of North Korea, especially the most vulnerable, on December 22, despite warnings of the catastrophic consequences to the people, the UN Security Council passed a new set of sanctions so draconian and inhumane that they must be compared to Hitler’s Nuremberg laws.
In quintessentially bad faith, many of these Security Council diplomats who voted “yes” professed ignorance of the human suffering their prior sanctions were inflicting, or are wantonly indifferent …
Higher education has been financialized, transformed from a public service into a lucrative cash cow for private investors.
The advantages of slavery by debt over “chattel” slavery – ownership of humans as a property right – were set out in an infamous document called the Hazard Circular, reportedly circulated by British banking interests among their American banking counterparts during the American Civil War. It read in part:
Slavery is likely to be abolished by the war power and chattel slavery destroyed. This, I and my European friends are glad of, for slavery is but the owning of labor and carries with it the care of the laborers, while the European plan, led by England, is that capital shall control labor …
I was happy, secure, and mostly unafraid until med school. I recall in vivid detail the first orientation day. Our anatomy professor stood before an auditorium filled with 125 eager, nervous, idealistic would-be healers and said these words: ‘If you decide to commit suicide, do it right so you do not become a burden to society.’ He then described in anatomical detail how to commit suicide.
— “Why Doctors Kill Themselves”, by Pamela Wible, KevinMD.com, March 23, 2016
The exploitation and bullying of medical students and residents is pervasive, and stories of the most egregious and diabolical hazing are not uncommon. So …
Just our luck that 2017 gave us more of the same bad news that we experienced the year before and the year before that: Endless wars. Toxic politics. Violence. Hunger. Police shootings. Mass shootings. Economic rollercoaster. Political circuses. Senseless tragedies. Loss. Heartache. Intolerance. Prejudice. Hatred. Apathy. Meanness. Cruelty. Poverty. Inhumanity. Greed.
Here’s just a small sampling of what we suffered through in 2017.
The new boss proved to be the same as the old boss. True to form, the new boss (Donald Trump) proved to be no better than his …
by Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers / December 28th, 2017
The year 2017 has been another active year for people fighting on a wide range of fronts. The Trump administration has brought many issues that have existed for years out into the open where they are more difficult to deny – racism, colonialism, imperialism, capitalism and patriarchy and the crises they create. More people are activated and greater connections between the fronts of struggle are creating a movement of movements. These are positive developments, bright spots in difficult times. They are the seeds of transformative change that we can nurture and grow if we act with intention.
2017 will be remembered as the year that the so-called ‘peace process’, at least in its American formulation, has ended. And with its demise, a political framework that has served as the foundation for US foreign policy in the Middle East has also collapsed.
The Palestinian leadership and its Arab and international allies will now embark on a new year with the difficult task of drumming up a whole new political formula that does not include the United States.
The Palestinian Authority entered 2017 with the slight hope that the US was in the process of moving away, however slightly, from its …
It has been all very ugly, aggressive and often distinctly vulgar: the way the British Foreign Secretary has behaved before and during his official visit to Moscow.
Mr. Johnson described Russia as “closed, nasty, militaristic and anti-democratic” concluding that it could not be “business as usual”.
He did not define what the UK has become, and the Russian hosts were too polite to explain.
The “business as usual” it was not.
During the last few weeks, the behavior patterns of both the UK and US have began increasingly to resemble those of the badly brought up leadership of the provincial Italian mafia: “You do …
In what has been a nightmare at Christmas, the plight of refugees relocated to other sites on Manus Island after the closure of the facility at Lombrum Naval Base has worsened. The latest scenes at East Lorengau Transit Centre, where 300 men have been since December 19, have been ugly and pitiable. In the broader scheme of things, they have been far from surprising, expected with the dread that has become all too natural.
Local landowners have been none too pleased at the political machinations of the Papua New Guinea government and officials in Canberra. They were the ones frozen out …
The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) is being choked into submission if not starvation by the UN Security Council, by a vote of 15-0; i.e. unanimously. None of the 15 UNSC states, let alone the five permanent members, have had the guts to say no to a killer Resolution, drafted and proposed by the United States of America, a name that increasingly stands for international rogue and crime nation.
The New York Times reports on 22 December 2017: “President Trump has used just about every lever you can use, short of starving the people of North Korea to death, to …
Thank you, President Donald Trump and US UN Ambassador Nikki Haley for helping end the Trudeau government’s ‘Israel no matter what’ voting pattern.
On Thursday Canada actually abstained on a UN General Assembly resolution, which “affirms that any decisions and actions which purport to have altered, the character, status or demographic composition of the Holy City of Jerusalem have no legal effect, are null and void and must be rescinded in compliance with relevant resolutions of the Security Council, and in this regard, calls upon all States to refrain from the establishment of diplomatic missions in the Holy City of …
Hierarchy appears to be an inescapable feature of animal, including human, societies. There are dominants and subordinates, bosses and employees, rulers and subjects, and an individual’s position in the social hierarchy to a large degree determines fundamental aspects of his or her life, including one’s health, access to resources, and influence in society. From the individual’s point of view, the hierarchy provides security, but also reduces one’s freedom. What determines how oppressive society is toward the individual? Would more freedom be better for society? How bad does societal inequality have to become before things start getting better? Are there any …
Amrullah has a small frame and a soft voice. He used to have a reputation as a fighter and would fight with the rich kids. He’d get angry because they had nicer clothes. By fighting, he wanted to show his power. But now, at age 11, he believes that fighting is bad. When he sees those same boys, he says he no longer cares to fight.
“They have their way,” he says. “I have my way, and my way is nonviolent.”
The other boys asked Amrullah why he stopped fighting, but when he explained his new way of thinking, they couldn’t understand.
The world is experiencing a massive loss of insects. In turn, this threatens ecosystems with utter total collapse, and, by way of direct association, loss of human civilization. Zap, it’s over! Insectageddon!
Insect populations around the world are under massive attack and dropping like… well… like flies. The negative implications run very deep, indeed, especially for the foundation of ecosystems, and thus for the survival of all life. Ironically, insect death equivalence becomes human extermination as ecosystems crumble. It’s already happening, and the evidence is compelling, in fact, overwhelming. What can be done has no ready answers, although begrudged solutions are …
It’s the season to be jolly, and the Trump administration has been busy doling out gifts. Sanctions seem to be top of the pile, derived from that trove of options outlined in the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act. The law, initially introduced in 2012, targets the bank assets of those unfortunate enough to make it to the US Treasurer’s list.
“Today,” went the US Treasury press release, “the Trump administration launched a new sanctions regime targeting human rights abusers and corrupt actors around the world.” As is the nature of Trumpist language, every executive order to expand existing legislation …
How Soldiers with Newly Attuned Consciences Almost Stopped a War
by Gary G. Kohls / December 24th, 2017
…and the ones who call the shots won’t be among the dead and lame;
And on each end of the rifle we’re the same”
— John McCutcheon, “Christmas in the Trenches”
103 years ago this Christmas something happened near the beginning of the “War to End All Wars” that put a tiny little blip of hope in the historical timeline of the organized mass slaughter that is war.
The event was regarded by the professional military officer class to be so profound and so important (and so disturbing) that strategies were immediately put in place that would ensure that such an event could …
Today, December 19, 2017, the US Congress voted for A Trillion dollars in tax cuts for corporations and the rich, but no money for train safety.
Yesterday, six people were killed, scores injured as a train jumps tracks and crashes in Washington state, December 18th, 2017. The train had no positive train control system.
Remember the Metro-North Railroad Hudson Line passengers’ train derailed December1, 2013- killing 115 passengers, and injuring another 61. It was caused by a Lack of safety controls.
Remember the Amtrak Northeast Regional train that derailed in Philadelphia May12, 2015- killing 8 and injury over 200, 11 injured critically. It …
Seoul — Atrocity tourism and what might be termed the tourism of divisive obstacles (fences, barbed wire, mine fields) can be great money earners. Former concentration and extermination camps in Europe bring in currency even as visitors shake with stunned grief and moral disturbance – tears and foreboding as valuable currency.
In South Korea, the money earner is the Demilitarised Zone, shortened to the seemingly innocuous DMZ. Euphemised in such a manner, and one can forget the tens of thousands of helmeted men who gaze at each other at border points, or the thousands of artillery pieces in concealed spaces waiting …
"Outlaws trying to dictate the law" used gutter tactics to threaten UN member states that dared "disrespect" America's crazed foreign policy
by Stuart Littlewood / December 23rd, 2017
As if Trump’s crass announcement moving the US embassy to Jerusalem wasn’t enough, his minions on Monday vetoed a UN Security Council draft resolution calling on the President to withdraw US recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
Even his hand-in-hand friend Theresa May, another pimp for Israel, is against him in this. “On Jerusalem, I made it clear that we disagree with the United States’ decision to move its embassy and recognise Jerusalem as the Israeli capital before a final status agreement,” she declared. “Like our EU partners, we will not be following suit, but it is vital that we continue …
This is our anti-poaching/animal slaughter anthem. It’s almost Christmas 2017 and nearly every iconic animal on Earth is in dire straights. To their survival we give this gift, please get involved, donate $1.00 to World Wildlife Fund and tell them we sent you.
On May 2, 2017, before becoming Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman, as Minister of Defense, spoke about the Saudi-led coalition’s war in Yemen, a war he orchestrated since March of 2015. “A long war is in our interest,” he said, explaining that the Houthi rebels would eventually run out of cash, lack external supplies and break apart. Conversely, the Saudis could count on a steady flow of cash and weapons. “Time is on our side,” he concluded.
Powerful people in the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Sudan, Bahrain, Kuwait, Morocco, Senegal and Jordan have colluded with Saudi Arabia’s Crown …
I think there must be something wrong with me, Linus. Christmas is coming, but I’m not happy. I don’t feel the way I’m supposed to feel.
? Charlie Brown, A Charlie Brown Christmas
I keep waiting to encounter the “kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant” Christmas-time environment that Charles Dickens describes in A Christmas Carol: “when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys.”
Instead, every time I read a news headline or flip …
A change in Quantity also entails a change in Quality.
? Friedrich Engels
No one can define or measure justice, democracy, security, freedom, truth, or love. No one can define or measure any value. But if no one speaks up for them, if systems aren’t designed to produce them, if we don’t speak about them and point toward their presence or absence, they will cease to exist.
? Donella H. Meadows, Thinking in Systems: A Primer
If it seems self-serving and pedestrian to chronicle my own slice of heaven called Working as a Precariat USA, then so be it. I have …
The effects of humankind-created Climate Chaos are proving to be more devastating than even the most grim predictions. Wealth inequity is worse than in the Gilded Age. The US empire wages perpetual war, hot and cold, overt and covert, including military brinksmanship with the nuclear power, The Russian Federation.
Speaking of the latter, the US media retails a storyline that would be considered risible if it was not so dangerously inflammatory; i.e., L’affaire du Russia-gate, wherein, according to the lurid tale, the sinister Vladimir Putin, applying techniques from the Russian handbook for international intrigue, Rasputin Mind Control For Dummies, has wrested …
‘Drain the swamp’ was a popular Donald Trump campaign slogan that referred to reducing the influence of Washington lobbyists. While the three words reflect an extreme lack of ecological consciousness — wetlands need to be protected and recreated, not destroyed — the image of politicians slogging their way through lobbyist infected, tangled, dense vegetation and deep oozing mud is a useful one.
Like the US capital, much of Ottawa was also built on mosquitoes’ favourite habitat and both cities today have an ongoing pest problem: blood sucking influence peddlers swarming the countries’ decision makers. That image helps explain why there is …
America was born in the womb of war, has never stopped warring, and her fate will most likely be to die in the arms of war. Her warring addiction has been passed down from one generation to the next as her very few power elite have instigated war for self-serving purposes.
Would it be an exaggeration to say that precisely because of America’s corpocracy and its unbroken history of power elites (i.e., captains of industry and Wall Street, influential politicians, and influential members of the military and the deep state) that America is the most evil and destructive nation in the …
(Image credit Banksy) The holiday period provides us with a unique opportunity to express the new awareness that must inform a less commercialised and more sharing-oriented world. Rather than spending all our time partaking in conspicuous consumption, why don’t we commemorate Christmas by organising massive gatherings for helping the poor and healing the environment?
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At this time of year, our overconsuming lifestyles in the affluent Western world are impossible to ignore. Brightly-lit shops are bursting with festive foods and expensive indulgences, while seasonal songs play in the …
