Latest articles
by Janet Contursi / September 5th, 2017
Let’s get something straight…the Deep State (aka: the capitalist class) is global and multiracial. It’s not “white,” or even just American.
U.S. businesses cannot survive without Saudi oil; the Saudi elite cannot maintain their wealth, wars and authoritarian state without U.S. weapons and military assistance; the Israeli elite cannot keep up their Occupation and thriving arms exporting business without U.S. tax dollars; Japanese billionaires depend on the U.S. as a major trade and investment partner; Latin American right-wing authoritarian regimes need U.S. investors as much as those investors need an outlet for their billions; African business and political elite are begging …
by Media Lens / September 5th, 2017
In J.G. Ballard’s classic novel, The Drowned World, people are struggling for survival on a post-apocalyptic, overheating planet. A ‘sudden instability in the Sun’ has unleashed increased solar radiation, melting the polar ice caps and causing global temperatures to rise by a few degrees each year. Once-temperate areas, such as Europe and North America, have become flooded tropical lands, ‘sweltering under continuous heat waves’. Life has become tolerable only within the former Arctic and Antarctic Circles.
The frailty of ‘civilisation’ and the attempts to cope with psychological changes in the human condition as a result of …
by Manuel Garcia Jr. / September 4th, 2017
Preface
1 September 2017 was the 78th anniversary of the beginning of World War II; I went to the movies to see Dunkirk. I have thought, read and written about war for many years, particularly nuclear war (I am against war). Also, I have thought about the existential problem faced by Palestine, and other oppressed societies disadvantaged by an imbalance of power. And, finally, I have also been thinking about the many recent internet postings about the “Antifa” (antifascist) confrontational protest groups and some of their forceful tactics. All this led me to a summary of general principles about war, which …
by Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers / September 3rd, 2017
Telephone Road in Houston, August 27, 2017, during Hurricane Harvey floods (Credit: Thomas B. Shea for AFP-Getty)
Climate breakdown, as George Monbiot calls it, is happening before our eyes at the same time the science on climate change grows stronger and has wider acceptance. Hurricane Harvey, which struck at the center of the petroleum industry – the heart of climate denialism – provided a glimpse of the new normal of climate crisis-induced events. In Asia, this week the climate message was even stronger where at least 1,200 people died …
Alexandra Kollontai as a model for socialist feminism
by Barbara MacLean / September 3rd, 2017
Where are the strong women socialists feminists of today?
Today, in the midst of the pink pussy hat women joining “The Resistance” by denouncing Trump while blaming those who didn’t vote for Hillary, I keep searching for strong women socialist feminists to follow and emulate. There are some, but they’re not very visible in the mainstream media. Kshama Sawant, the Seattle City Council member, is one. María de Jesús Patricio Martínez, a Nahua indigenous healer, The Zapatistas and National Indigenous Congress’ (CNI) selection of as their spokesperson and presidential candidate for the 2018 elections in Mexico, is another. Gloria La Riva, …
by Brian Littlefair / September 3rd, 2017
Yes, it’s just as you suspected, your constitution’s gone. You’re not getting it back. You’re trapped in a sadistic totalitarian state under Argus-eyed surveillance. Your democracy is fake. Your government has one branch, CIA. Sorry! That’s partly my fault.
It’s not entirely my fault, of course – it’s a big job, defiling all your rights and freedoms. It got parceled out in countless bits of piecework. I did not contribute much. I didn’t work that hard. And anyway, I was a dupe.
None of the worker bees knew what the others were doing. None of them saw how the pieces might fit …
by Ricardo Vaz / September 3rd, 2017
The swearing in of the Constituent Assembly meant the return of the portraits of Bolívar and Chávez to the Legislative Palace (photo from Alba Ciudad)
While street violence in Venezuela virtually evaporated after chavismo’s strong showing on July 30 and the Constituent Assembly being sworn in, the war against Venezuela is far from over. After months of threats and targeted sanctions, the US, cheered on by the Venezuelan opposition, imposed financial sanctions targeting the Venezuelan government and the state oil company PDVSA. Another war front that has …
by Gary Leupp / September 3rd, 2017
In a secretly taped video CNN’s Van Jones referred to the Trump-Russia story as a “big nothingburger.” Interesting that one of the network’s senior news commentators would say that, although not publicly, but privately to someone in an elevator. The cable network’s news director has apparently urged anchors to refer to the story of Russian interference in the U.S. election as something confirmed by all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies (which is, in fact, not quite true). Hence it must be supported by any reasonable person as settled fact. When Trump supporters (or others) point out that the same agencies asserted …
The financial-scientific-cultural-intellectual-industrial elite wants you and me to vaporize on Planet Earth While They Slingshot to Mars
by Paul Haeder / September 2nd, 2017
As a tender of youth – 16 to 21 year olds, as my clients are in foster care, held by the state or some other guardian, or on their own, but still labeled as foster youth – I find the topics of our time more magnified by the presence of the ever-vaunting capitalist mindset about time, work, energy, technology, digital supremacy, patriotism, consumerism, punishment, surveillance, worthiness.
I also find that as a 60-year-old, many of my colleagues look to me sort of like a revolutionary looks at a Molotov or stick of dynamite, or, shoot, a pipe bomb. My anti-authority jostling …
by Stuart Jeanne Bramhall / September 2nd, 2017
In Goodbye Europe? Hello, Chaos? – Merkel’s Migrant Bomb, Michael Springmann analyzes evidence suggesting that US intelligence may be organizing the mass migration of millions of refugees as a form of asymmetric warfare. ((Asymmetric warfare is defined as war between belligerents whose relative military power differs significantly, or whose strategy or tactics differ significantly.)) As a former State Department diplomat, Springmann was exposed to a different form of asymmetric warfare when he was ordered to issue US visas to Saudi jihadists, allowing them to undergo training in the US. He writes about this in his 2015 book Visas …
by Jared O. Bell / September 2nd, 2017
The world vowed never again after the Holocaust, never again after Bosnia, never again after Rwanda and yet in Myanmar it seems that here we are again. Over the last week, violence and ethnic cleansing perpetrated by Myanmar’s army have forced nearly 40,000 Rohingya Muslims to flee the Rakhine State to neighboring Bangladesh, where around 400,000 Rohingyas already live in squalor.
Haunting images and videos of the army burning dozens of Rohingya villages in Rakhine have flooded social media, which has been accompanied by reports from global news outlets and human rights groups that dozens of civilians have been …
by Manuel Garcia Jr. / September 2nd, 2017
The reason our American Corporate Masters gave us a choice between corruption (Hillary Clinton) and bigotry (Donald Trump) in the 2016 national election is that either was acceptable to them, since both are intrinsic aspects of how business is being conducted.
In 2016, the Democratic (Party) National Committee saved corporate privilege from the threat of democratic accountability. American democracy did not die because of voter apathy, it was assassinated by the DNC in a conspiracy of pure betrayal of both the American people and democratic principles, with the coup de grâce being delivered on 26 July 2016. So, instead of America …
by Alton C. Thompson / September 2nd, 2017
Several days ago “I prefer not to” popped into my mind. That sentence is from Herman Melville’s Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-street (1856)—a short story that I had first encountered in an American Literature course, while an undergraduate. (Bartleby first speaks this sentence on p. 8 of the version to which a link is provided above.)
As I had no recollection of this story—except that I had somehow remembered the “I prefer not to” sentence—and hadn’t even thought of the sentence in question for years, I was puzzled as to why it entered my consciousness now. Not …
by Robert Hunziker / September 1st, 2017
Is Harvey a force of nature or something more?
Clearly, Harvey is a natural disaster of monstrous proportions. Its destructiveness is the hottest topic on TV coast-to-coast and around the world. Still, cynics of climate change say natural disasters, like hurricanes, are normal and nothing more than nature’s way. The evidence, however, points in another direction; climate change is no longer simply nature doing its thing. It’s lost purity of the force of nature, only nature.
Similar to the record setting massive meltdown of Arctic ice in a flash of geologic time, fierce storms and zany weather patterns are setting all-time records, …
by David Penner / September 1st, 2017
Dangerous conceits are in their natures poisons,
Which at the first are scarce found to distaste,
But, with a little, act upon the blood,
Burn like the mines of sulfur.
— Othello (3.3.324-326)
A remarkable irony of contemporary American life is that those who have been charged with the task of deciding who is of sound mind and who is mentally ill are not only utterly insane themselves, but are quite possibly the greatest psychopaths in all of human history.
Home to the illiterate, the mindless, and the mentally disturbed, the Church of Psychobabble (COP) is a peculiar religion, rooted in vitriolic anti-intellectualism and a love …
by Binoy Kampmark / September 1st, 2017
It has been two decades, and a stocktake of the conspiracy theories over the circumstances of Princess Diana’s death in the Pont de l’Alma road Tunnel will reveal the same inventory as were spawned in the immediate aftermath of her demise. No response short of fanciful will do; no planned horror, however improbable, can be dismissed. Importantly, there must be some schema, a nefarious design intended to snatch away this figure’s life.
The nature of myth has its own powers, its own resilience. Making the late princess into a myth served the ambitions of New Labour and the Blairite program, which …
by Sophie Mangal / September 1st, 2017
According to the statements of local authorities, Zabadani resort town in Damascus province, which is located 25 kilometers from the Syrian capital, is now fully liberated after fierce clashes between the Syrian Army and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham militants (ex. Al-Nusra front). Residents who left the city more than five years ago began to return to their homes and manage their further life.
It is worth noting that prior to the outbreak of hostilities Zabadani was regarded as one of the flagship resorts in Syria. The town was popular due to its favorable location near the Barada River (not far from the …
by David Macaray / August 31st, 2017
With Labor Day almost upon us, it’s appropriate we discuss anything germane to what was once referred quaintly and respectfully (if not affectionately) as the “working class.” Strikes, protests, street violence, the incremental passage of labor laws: All part of the American Labor Movement’s dramatic history.
Let us begin with a look back at what many labor activists regard as the precise moment when America’s unions began their dreadful and inexorable decline, and what labor expert Joseph McCartin once called, “one of the most important events in late twentieth century U.S. labor history.” We’re referring to the 1981 PATCO (Professional Air …
by Frank Scott / August 30th, 2017
Extreme fringes of the American electorate, hardly indicative of mainstream thinking if such exists, have occupied headlines in major media since the Charlottesville events. That relatively small demonstration by conservative-right sources ranging from nationalists to separatists to Nazis and alienated people without labels was countered by an outpouring of relatively liberal-left numbers of a more generally popular though as alienated from actual roots among the electorate group. Counter demonstrations which include violence have become more popular since the election of Trump, though it was evident during his campaign when attenders of some of his rallies encountered mobs of righteous and …
by Yves Engler / August 30th, 2017
Many monuments, memorials and names of institutions across Canada celebrate our colonial and racist past. Calls for renaming buildings or pulling down statues are symbolic ways of reinterpreting that history, acknowledging mistakes and small steps towards reconciling with the victims of this country’s policies.
At its heart this process is about searching for the truth, a guiding principle that should be shared by both journalists and historians.
In an article headlined “Everything is offensive: Here are Canada’s other politically incorrect place names” Tristin Hopper concludes that “Lester Pearson’s record still holds up pretty well” unlike a dozen other historical figures he …
by Margaret Flowers / August 30th, 2017
At the start of the August congressional recess, Senator Bernie Sanders announced that he will introduce a senate bill this September “to expand Medicare to cover all Americans.” Since the election, the movement for improved Medicare for all, has been urging Sanders to introduce a companion to John Conyers’ HR 676: The Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act, which currently has a record 117 co-sponsors in the House and is considered the gold standard by the movement.
Recent reports are that Sanders’ bill falls far short of HR 676 in fundamental ways. …
by Shawgi Tell / August 30th, 2017
It is refreshing to finally see so many national organizations (e.g., National Education Association, Network for Public Education, National Alliance for the Advancement of Colored People, and Black Lives Matter) finally speak out more publicly and vocally against charter schools and the endless problems surrounding them. It is also uplifting to see the demands being made by these same organizations for improved education for all youth.
While one or more of these national organizations have called for an end to for-profit charter schools, no organization has yet issued the simple demand to shut down all charter schools—for-profit and nonprofit, “good” and …
American Shame: Colin Kaepernick is jobless for thought crime
by William Boardman / August 29th, 2017
To watch America’s structural racism at work, one need look no further than the National Football League (NFL) and its treatment of nonviolent unorthodoxy as expressed by Colin Kaepernick going to one knee during the national anthem in support of the unacceptable thought that black lives should matter as much as anyone else’s. Of course, that’s still a relatively new idea in the United States, dating from 1863 in law and still not fully accepted in much of the country.
Colin Rand Kaepernick, who turns 30 in November, is a proven professional football quarterback who chose to …
by Ramzy Baroud / August 29th, 2017
Iraq’s second largest city, Mosul, has been reduced to rubble. It has been finally conquered, snatched back from the notorious group, Daesh, after months of merciless bombardment by the US-led war coalition, and a massive ground war.
But ‘victory’ can hardly be the term assigned to this moment. Mosul, once Iraq’s cultural jewel and model of co-existence, is now a ‘city of corpses’, as described by a foreign journalist who walked through the ruins, while shielding his nose from a foul smell.
“You’ve probably heard of thousands killed, the civilian suffering,” Murad Gazdiev said. “What you likely haven’t heard of is …
by Paul Craig Roberts / August 29th, 2017
Craig Roberts (yes, there are two of us) is a former US Marine and a 27-year veteran of the Tulsa, Oklahoma, police force. He is a capable and committed person. Since 1989 he has written 13 books. His latest, just published, Medusa File II, consists essentially of his volumnious files of the investigation of the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City on April 19th, 1995, known as “the Oklahoma City Bombing.”
The FBI, appreciative of Roberts’ capabilities, requested his service in the investigation. As officially part of the investigation, he took the investigation seriously. The …
A Review of David Ray Griffin’s Bush And Cheney: How They Ruined America And The World
by Edward Curtin / August 29th, 2017
America’s fate was sealed when the public and the anti-war movement bought the government’s 9/11 conspiracy theory. The government’s account of 9/11 is contradicted by much evidence. Nevertheless, this defining event of our time, which has launched the US on interminable wars of aggression and a domestic police state, is a taboo subject for investigation in the media. It is pointless to complain of war and a police state when one accepts the premise upon which they are based.”
— Paul Craig Roberts, How America Was Lost
David Ray Griffin is an international treasure and truth teller, who, while being ignored by …
by Andre Vltchek / August 29th, 2017
Whatever the West may think, and no matter what the Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri may say publicly, the Lebanese army, in clear coordination with Hezbollah (which is outlawed in many Western countries) as well as with the Syrian army, is now pounding the positions of deadly ISIS/Daesh, right at the border region.
The army began the operation on August 19, 2017, at 5 in the morning, by firing at the terrorists’ positions in Jaroud, Raas Ba’albak and al-Qaa’ using rockets and heavy artillery. It all has an emotional twist: the army commanders declared that the operation was launched in honor …
by Binoy Kampmark / August 29th, 2017
What a colourful run this outfit has had. Branded in 2013 by Judge Alex Kozinski of the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit as pirates, the Sea Shepherd crew will be hanging up their hooks while rethinking their whale protection strategy. Their long designated enemy, the Japanese whaling fleet, will be given some respite this hunting season.
A crucial point here is evolution. The environmental battle, spearheaded by the Southern Ocean Whale Defence campaign, had become more troublingly sophisticated. “Military” tactics, claimed founder Captain Paul Watson, were being used by Japan. An already slippery adversary had raised the bar.
But …
by Anna Jaunger / August 28th, 2017
As the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) progresses towards Deir Ezzor, the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), mostly made up of Syrian Kurds, began to prepare for a military offensive to the Syrian city in order to prevent the government forces from re-establishing military control over the oil rich-territory.
Despite all promises about the U.S. not intending to extend its presence in Syria after defeating ISIS, Washington continues to increase the number of American military and set up new bases in Syria.
Yesterday, Gulf News reported that the U.S.-led Coalition had dropped off an elite squad in the eastern part of the province of …
by John Andrews / August 28th, 2017
There are very few inventions which are perfect at the moment of their creation, or which cannot be improved over time. The League of Nations was a new invention when it was first created after the First World War. It was the first attempt to form a global organisation whose main purpose was to prevent war through achieving disarmament and settling disputes through negotiation and arbitration. Like most new inventions, it wasn’t perfect. It failed, and World War Two followed.
However, the League did have some partial success. It established for the first time the concept of international law, the idea …
