As the failures of charter schools across the country multiply, and as more people become aware of these failures, the rich and their media have intensified their relentless disinformation campaign about charter schools. They are deeply dismayed that exposure of charter school problems and criticism of charter schools is becoming more mainstream and common place. Fewer people seem to be buying the charter school hype.
On September 6, 2017 New York Magazine chimed into the news fray with a short article on charter schools with the confused title: “Charter Schools Are Losing the Narrative But Winning the Data.” New York Magazine …
To a certain extent, Aung San Suu Kyi is a false prophet. Glorified by the west for many years, she was made a ‘democracy icon’ because she opposed the same forces in her country, Burma, at the time that the US-led western coalition isolated Rangoon for its alliance with China.
Aung San Suu Kyi played her role as expected, winning the approval of the Right and the admiration of the Left. And for that, she won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1991; she joined the elevated group of ‘The Elders’ and was promoted by many in the media and various …
The spectacle is the nightmare of imprisoned modern society which ultimately expresses nothing more than its desire to sleep. The spectacle is the guardian of sleep.
— Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle
It is generally accepted that sports, especially spectator sports, serve many social purposes, good and bad, and that they function to distract people from the cares and worries of everyday life, or the “real world.” No doubt this is true. The etymology of the word sport, derived as it is from the word “disport” – divert, amuse, carry away – tells us that. But often a distraction can …
Then Rockefeller-to-Friedman-to-Clinton-to-Obama-to-Trump Had Always Pegged Us Disposable!
by Paul Haeder / September 12th, 2017
They – those Clintonistas-Kissingeristas-Friedmanistas-Obamaistas-Romneyistas-Adelsonistas-Sorosistas-Trumpistas-Zbigniew Brzezinskistas — are the deplorables. Really, for 60 years on this planet, in this precarious walkabout, I have trudged through the sooty rain of capitalism plaguing the land, as the rich and the generals call to duty the soldiers of pain, yearning to be enforcers, witnesses to the dystopia of their dreams. Money changers, bureaucrats, oh they are Eichmann’s. Israeli Jews, many Little Eichmann’s all encapsulated in post-pre-future chrysalis of genocide. The leeches and the lechers, USA-EU-Canada-Japan-Australia, fat-cats in bankers’ suits, their armor forced arbitration clauses, decapitating mortgages, foreclosures on both physical minds and the civic …
Alessandro Bianchi: The geographic location of Afghanistan has always occupied a central role. The April peace talks between Afghanistan, India, Pakistan, Russia and China seemed to have put an end to the persistent and dominant American presence in the country. What’s your opinion?
Andre Vltchek: What you have mentioned is extremely important, but I’m not ready to celebrate, yet. This could be, at least in theory, the first step towards the end of one of the most destructive and brutal occupations in NATO’s history, or in what the US mainstream press likes to describe as “the longest American war.”
Kim Jong-un is not mad. Quite the contrary. He has pulled off a wholly rational feat. By producing nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles capable of delivering them to U.S. territory, Pyongyang has obtained near-assurance that the U.S. will not attack it, in (yet another) attempt at regime change.
Wait, you’ll say. He already had that insurance. Every talking head on cable news says a U.S. strike would inevitably mean an attack on Seoul, which would kill tens of thousands immediately. South Koreans would blame the invasion on the U.S. So it’s just not tenable. Even if limited to conventional forces, the …
They say 9-11 changed everything. Although the U.S. Government has, from the very beginning, done everything within its power to stifle and quarantine free speech, the Bush era really kicked the practice into high gear. It’s been nearly fifteen years ago that I first heard the phrase “Free Speech Zone”. At the time, I co-habitated Jackson, Wyoming with Empire’s most successful war criminal and profiteer, Vice President Dick Cheney. The wet dream of worldwide military domination he shared with his criminal organization known as The Project for a New American Century (PNAC), was about to get a giant kick …
For the first time in well over 70 years, the words “capitalism” and “socialism” can be circulated among the general public in the United States. However, what I am going to claim in this article is that the only way 21st century socialism is going to get any traction or respect from the working class is if socialists collectively develop blueprints for socialism: five years, ten years, fifty years down the road. By way of qualification, my ideas about …
Review of Kiriti Sengupta latest volume of poems Solitary Stillness
by Amita Ray / September 11th, 2017
The juxtaposition of two words ‘solitary’ and ‘stillness’ can be intrinsically evocative and nudge one to the mutating landscape of imagination touching upon various subjects. Kiriti Sengupta in his latest volume of poems Solitary Stillnessweaves a tapestry of fleeting thoughts, images and themes which are an admixture of the subtle and the deep, contemporary and eternal. The book consists of twenty poems where stillness is rhapsodized, explored in manifold perspectives of the apparent and the real. Rightly does the poet reflect, “A poem should speak for itself and deserves to be interpreted in several ways.”
Residents of the South Korean province of Gyeongsangbuk-do have taken to the streets objecting to the local installation of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system. Hundreds of protesters confronted police, the Yonhap news agency reports.
Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife are both facing potential charges, raising questions about the prime minister’s future
by Jonathan Cook / September 11th, 2017
The threat of criminal indictment that has hung for months over Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, loomed much larger this weekend as it was announced that his wife, Sara, faced potential criminal charges.
Israel’s attorney general, Avichai Mandelblit, said on Friday that he intended to indict Sara Netanyahu with fraudulently diverting some $100,000 from public funds. The charges carry a maximum sentence of five years in jail.
The case, one of a number of corruption investigations the couple face either jointly or separately, concerns allegations that the prime minister’s wife billed the state for excessive sums in running his …
The myth can have a greater effect than an untruth, and those who are in the business of manufacturing and building them never go out of business. France’s President Emmanuel Macron has, for months, busily promoted a new myth: that of being European saviour, the man with healing visions and supportive panaceas, a counter weight to the toxicity of Trumpland.
Things, however, have been rocky. The sheen is coming off, as it was bound to. He is slumming at approval ratings similar to the man he replaced, François Hollande, at around the same time of his tenure. (That is hardly surprising, …
The events that took place in the United States on September 11, 2001 were real and they were extremely violent. As David Griffin has recently shown in detail, they also had catastrophic real-life consequences for both the United States and the world. ((Bush and Cheney: How They Ruined America and the World (Northampton, MA: Olive Branch Press, 2017).))
But these events were also deeply filmic (like a film) and they were presented to us through a narrative we now know to be fictional. This “9/11 movie” reveals itself to careful investigators as scripted, directed and produced by the U.S. national security …
Tuesday, September 11, 2001, was a non-teaching day for me. I was home when the phone rang at 9 A.M. It was my daughter, who was on a week’s vacation with her future husband. “Turn on the TV,” she said. “Why?” I asked. “Haven’t you heard? A plane hit the World Trade Tower.”
I turned the TV on and watched a plane crash into the Tower. I said, “They just showed a replay.” She quickly corrected me, “No, that’s another plane.” And we talked as we watched in horror, learning that it was the South Tower this time. Sitting next to …
The United States shows the world such a ridiculous face that the world laughs at us.
The latest spin on “Russia stole the election” is that Russia used Facebook to influence the election. The NPR women yesterday were breathless about it.
We have been subjected to ten months of propaganda about Trump/Putin election interference and still not a scrap of evidence. It is past time to ask an unasked question: If there were evidence, what is the big deal? All sorts of interest groups try to influence election outcomes including foreign governments. Why is it OK for Israel to influence US elections …
Lately I’ve been running into liberal Democrats and progressive Bernie supporters who are defending the ultra-left’s tactics of shutting down right-wing speakers and marches “by any means necessary.” Since many liberals and progressives belong to peace organizations that have a “nonviolence” clause in their mission statements, their support of “by any means necessary” — including violent means — presents a serious contradiction that will likely lead to just the opposite of what peace groups are trying to achieve.
The Politics of Fear
The corrupt U.S. political system requires a support base grounded in fear, which is why political leaders and the media …
Billions More for Crony Capitalist Insurance or Improved Medicare for All
This week we attended a hearing of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) committee where there was broad bi-partisan support for giving billions more to the insurance industry to “stabilize the market.” The government already gives for-profit insurance $300 billion annually and their stock values have risen dramatically since passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), so the rush to give them more was disheartening.
That was contrasted with a meeting with the staff of Senator Bernie Sanders …
Doctors’ aggressive opposition to a more equitable tax code reflects a capitalist ethos that’s often been at odds with public health.
The Canadian Medical Association, Coalition of Ontario Doctors, Ontario Association of Radiologists, Canadian Association of Radiologists and Ontario Medical Association all joined the newly formed Coalition for Small Business Tax Fairness. The Canadian Chamber of Commerce, Canadian Taxpayers Federation and Canadian Federation of Independent Business are also part of this large coalition established to scuttle a government initiative to lessen tax advantages for wealthy small business owners and remove loopholes that incentivize incorporation for high paid professionals (two …
Scratch the skin of a saint, claimed George Orwell, and you are bound to find a sinner with an extensive resume. Such resumes are evaluated in these modern times by accolades, awards, and summits. The Noble Peace Prize tends to be crowning affirmation that somewhere along the line, you sufficiently fouled up to merit it.
The calls, some even shrill, to have the Nobel Prize taken off Aung San Suu Kyi, are distressed lamentations of misplaced loyalties, even love. The de facto leader of Myanmar is showing what others have in the past: partiality, a harsh streak, and a cold blooded …
Climate change denial by government is murder by weather
By now everyone everywhere knows that climate change is a reality, especially the deniers who are simply lying to cover up their real intent, which is to continue with their capitalist schemes of self-aggrandisement even to the point of knowingly letting people die as a consequence.
During the last two weeks, Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Jose, in succession, have formed in the tropical Atlantic Ocean to sweep northwest through the Caribbean toward the southern coasts of North America. Harvey has flooded hundreds of thousands of dwellings in the Gulf Coast area of Texas …
As distressed and downright feeble as organized labor appears at the moment (and no one is going to pretend that 11% density across the board isn’t alarming), there are some things that can be done to re-energize and revitalize the Movement. We shall list them in order of ascending difficulty, beginning with the easiest.
But before we start, let’s be clear that our discussion will be non-ideological, which is to say, it won’t include Marx’s thoughts on a proletarian revolution. Indeed, it won’t touch upon anything remotely resembling the wonderful phantasm that more or less set everything in motion. Unfortunately, Marxian …
SUMMARY: Societies of social animals, including humans, are dominance hierarchies. Civil rights are codified in law to protect mechanisms of essential counter measures against excessive exploitation of the hierarchy by elite classes, which destabilizes the entire society. Systemic pathology arises when elite classes can change the regulatory codes themselves, including civil rights protections, with impunity. Laws that quash civil rights are pathological in that they impede the system-repair mechanisms that are: free expression, free association, class opposition, and negotiated structural adjustments (otherwise known as democracy). Present anti-speech laws are extreme examples of pathological laws, the application of which is a …
In human society, there is no such thing as a purely “natural” disaster. While storms, flooding, landslides and other emergencies are in some sense “acts of nature,” we cannot fully separate the natural event itself from the social context in which it occurs. In the United States, the capitalist system worsens and profits off of disasters, whereas in socialist China, a robust response system based on human need lessens the impact of disasters. This can be seen clearly by comparing relief efforts in the U.S. and China, as well as other socialist countries.
Hurricane Harvey is currently devastating hundreds of thousands …
“At bedtime, I am afraid to turn the lights off. I am not a coward, it is just that I worry that this bulb hanging from the ceiling is the last light that remains (shining) in my life.”
Soon after he penned these words, Moath Alhaj, a young artist from a Gaza refugee camp, passed away in his sleep. After disappearing for two days, Moath’s friends broke down the door of his house, and found him huddled with his blanket in a place in which he lived alone for 11 years.
B’nai B’rith are a cynical bunch, claiming to speak for Jews in general, but in reality defending Israel no matter what that country does.
The group’s recent attack against NDP leadership candidate Niki Ashton was a brazen attempt to use the decimation of European Jewry to protect Israel from criticism and follows a formula used so often most now see its hypocrisy.
Last May the self-declared ‘human rights’ organization slammed the NDP leadership contender for “Standing in ‘Solidarity’ with Terrorists” because Ashton attended a rally for Palestinian prisoners on a hunger strike where someone had a photo of an individual B’nai B’rith …
For decades billionaire Foundations and conservative politicians have been spreading the big lie that Social Security is broke. Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels wrote: “When one lies, one should lie big, and stick to it”. The fact is that the US Government has borrowed some $3 Trillion from the Social Security Trust Fund—money now owed by Uncle Sam to millions of working Americans. Social Security is only broke if Uncle Sam defaults on its debts to us!! The debt to Social Security is less than 20% of the total US Government’s debt. Most of the debt, …
Only by restoring the broken connections can we be healed.
— Wendell Berry, The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry, Counterpoint Press, 2002.
We are a well-fed species. In general. I won’t gloss over the fact that there are too many of us who are undernourished, even starving, but overall we feed ourselves—particularly in the industrialized countries–quite lavishly. So much so that a worldwide increase in excess weight and obesity are creating epidemics of associated disease, straining healthcare systems and shortening life spans for the first time in many generations.
There are numerous factors fueling this increase in our …
Run to the trees
Trees will be burning
Run to the sea
Sea will boiling
All on that day
So, summer, the frivolous season of our supposed repose, now brings dread, east and west, north and south. As summer peaks in the west, everything dries and dies, and as the suffocating heat grows inland and the dry grass whispers we start watching the skies fearfully for lightning, and we wait for the news that actually it wasn’t lightning; it was a tossed cigarette, a forgotten campfire, some guys shooting rifles, a firebug with a can of gasoline. And then the sight of the firestorm on …
The American Police State Finally Hits White People
by Herb Dyer / September 5th, 2017
Normally, I do not chide political opponents with the derisive, “I told you so” charge – even when they suffer harm after repeated warnings of predictable danger ahead. Normally, that is. But in the following three cases…sorry, I simply cannot resist. Schadenfreude, anyone?
The Nurse and the Cop
The viral video of a white, middle-class University of Utah Hospital Head Nurse, one Alex Wubbels, being manhandled and thrown into the back of a police car because she refused to comply with a Salt Lake City Utah cop’s unlawful order is only the latest confirmation of black peoples’ centuries-long complaints of police …
(1) Historical factors have combined to produce a fiercely nationalistic population on both sides of the DMZ.
Multiple kingdoms existed on the Korean Peninsula from the first century. (So one might say Korea is five times as old as the United States.) From 936 to 1910, Korea constituted a single state, embracing the whole peninsula, populated by a relatively homogeneous people. The division of the last 82 years is anomalous. Koreans feel a deep sense of national historical victimization—especially by Japan and the U.S.—but have suffered many invasions in their long past. The Jurchens (from 10th century), Mongols (1231), Japanese (1592-98), …
