Latest articles
Portland's Smokey Haze, Canada's Fires -- A Clear Day May Never Be Coming in a Decade
by Paul Haeder / August 10th, 2017
You Consume Fear: Then You are What you Eat!
Endless ignorance, presaged by fear, hate, suspicion, paranoia, misanthropy, and then all galvanized to the constructions of neutering culture of consumerism.
Fear for the typical American — one paycheck short on the rent, fines, threats of eviction, on the streets or in the car. America! Fear of the mortgage floating into some variable interest rate hell. Fear of not having, not choosing, not getting. For Americans, possessing is the power they think they have wrested from the faulty system of governing and management. Anything, but especially a car/SUV/pick-up/boat/RV/motorcycle.
When a country is run by …
by Chris Wright / August 10th, 2017
We’re embarking on a revolutionary era, an era that promises to be more radical even than the 1930s. No society of overwhelming decadence and moral rot, luxuriantly productive of elite human fungi whose function is but to drain the vitality of the whole, is destined to last very long. No society that can throw up a bewigged slug as its leader has much of a future. As it parasitizes itself to death, new social forms are bound to sprout in abundance (through the energy of activists and organizers).
The core of the protracted revolution, of course, is to create …
by William Hawes / August 10th, 2017
Whoever is not prepared to talk about capitalism should also remain silent about fascism.
— Max Horkheimer, from the essay “The Jews and Europe”, December 1939
Aren’t we all tired of capitalism? Haven’t most of us gotten sick of the drudgery, the monotony, the exploitation, sucking up to our bosses and management who pretend to care about the average worker? The drive to consume more and more has degraded all art, values, and sense of community in the US.
Capitalists literally are holding the people of the Earth in bondage. As liberal democracy crumbles in the West, the risk of neo-fascism continues to …
(How does your preferred POTUS rank?)
by T.P. Wilkinson / August 10th, 2017
In 1869, the Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev published the first widely recognized periodic table of elements. The periodic table indicates the elements in order of atomic number (the number of protons).
It was the result of analysing and grouping properties of these chemical elements. In fact, it has been applied to predict properties of elements later discovered.
Tom Lehrer, among his other humorous achievements, composed a song of the periodic table to the melody of Arthur Sullivan’s aria “I am the very model of a modern major general” from Pirates of Penzance (original lyrics by W.S. Gilbert).
Recent remarks by …
by Manuel Garcia Jr. / August 9th, 2017
Because of recent media frenzy over nuclear explosives and ballistic missile tests by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK, a.k.a North Korea), and US President Donald Trump’s angry threats in response that imply nuclear retaliation, I thought it might be useful to remind you of why nuclear weapons are obsolete as military tools for the United States.
The Atomic Bomb was invented during World War II (1939-1945), the energy of explosion being generated by the runaway fission of a temporarily clumped, or imploded, mass of uranium 235 or plutonium 239. By 1952 the Thermonuclear Bomb had been developed; these types …
Part 2 of a 3 Part Series: The Currency Paradox
by James King / August 9th, 2017
The Fundamentals of Exchange
At their most basic level, economic systems are simply methods of exchange between parties. At the root of every exchange are the basic principles of the credit and the debit. In every exchange of value, one or more parties act as the creditor (the one supplying the products or services) and the debtor (the one procuring the products or services). In our current economic system, most exchanges at the personal level are resolved immediately to the satisfaction of both parties, so most people do not understand that debt is a part of every exchange. To illustrate:
If you …
by Ramzy Baroud / August 9th, 2017
There is something immoral in Washington D.C., and its consequences can be dire for many people, particularly for the health of US democracy.
The US government is declaring war on the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. The fight to defeat BDS has been ongoing for several years, but most notably since 2014.
Since then, 11 US states have passed and enacted legislation to criminalize the movement, backed by civil society, which aims to put pressure on Israel to end its occupation of Palestine.
Washington is now leading the fight, thus legitimizing the anti-democratic behavior of individual states. If the efforts …
by Kim Petersen / August 8th, 2017
What is the level of respect for the sanctity of human life?
A respect for the sanctity of all human life has seemingly not evolved among European and European-diasporic states. Consider the answer to the question: “How many September 11ths has the United States caused in other nations since WWII?” The answer proffered was “possibly 10,000” 9-11s. This is approximately 30,000,000 people. ((It is not an exhaustive list of nations since, for example, the US involvement in the fatalities of Chinese is not considered. For Chinese killed, see William Blum, Killing Hope: US Military & CIA Interventions since …
by Robert Hunziker / August 8th, 2017
In the next few decades we’ll be driving species to extinction a thousand times faster than we should be.
— Dr. Stuart Pimm, conservation ecologist, Duke University.
It is quite possible that the baby boomer generation is the most impactful generation that this planet has ever seen.
— Racing Extinction directed by Louie Psihoyos, Discovery Channel, 2015.)
The Great Suffocation
Imagine for a moment that phytoplankton, the foundation of the aquatic food web, startlingly dies off. All of a sudden gone! Phytoplankton feeds everything from microscopic zooplankton to multi-tonne Blue Whales (the largest animal on Earth). But first and foremost, every 2nd human …
by Yves Engler / August 8th, 2017
“Free trade” has become a euphemism for “whatever power wants”, no matter how tangentily tied to transfering goods across international borders. In an extreme example, Ottawa recently said its Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with Israel trumps Canada’s Food and Drugs Act since accurately labelling two wines might undermine a half-century long, illegal, military occupation.
Of little connection to international trade, the North American Free Trade Agreement – and subsequent FTAs – have granted foreign corporations the ability to bypass domestic courts and sue governments in secret tribunals for pursuing policies that interfere with their profit making. Over 75 cases have …
by Margaret Flowers / August 8th, 2017
On August 2, 2017, The Nation published an article by Joshua Holland, “Medicare for All isn’t the Solution for Universal Health Care,” chastising Improved Medicare for All supporters because, in his view, the single payer movement has “failed to grapple with the difficulties of transitioning to a single-payer system.” The article, which doesn’t quote anyone involved in the movement for Improved Medicare for All, begs a response because it shows what liberals opposed to single payer believe. Holland dredges up the same arguments used to keep single payer …
by Gerald E. Scorse / August 8th, 2017
A top policy expert isn’t buying reports of a private-sector retirement “crisis.” In an article, Andrew Biggs not only rejected the gloom but offered a striking counter-narrative. He cited figures showing that 401(k) defined contribution accounts, while regularly maligned, are doing better by workers than the defined benefit plans they swept aside.
His numbers speak to the power of magic money: savings built up in large part by stock market investments, compounded by decades of tax-sheltered capital gains and dividends. The most fortunate retirees are having their cake and eating it too. They’re taking annual …
From Hiroshima To Hamburg.
by John V. Walsh / August 8th, 2017
This week marks the 72nd anniversary of the criminal US bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And as is the case each year, there is much discussion and lamenting over this atrocity, as there well should be. For the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was not necessary for victory; Japan had already sued for peace. It was the opening salvo, a brutal one, in the first Cold War in which the world was nearly incinerated during the Cuban missile crisis.
This week is also the one month anniversary of the first in-person meeting of Presidents Trump and Putin at Hamburg on July …
by John Pilger / August 7th, 2017
The US submarine captain says: “We’ve all got to die one day, some sooner and some later. The trouble always has been that you’re never ready, because you don’t know when it’s coming. Well, now we do know and there’s nothing to be done about it.”
He says he will be dead by September. It will take about a week to die, though no one can be sure. Animals live the longest.
The war was over in a month. The United States, Russia and China were the protagonists. It is not …
by Tim Scott / August 7th, 2017
This article is part of a project that critically analyzes the historical and present day purposes of U.S. public education. Related articles focus on the history of Common Schools, the undemocratic nature of Local Control and the finacialization of education via Social Impact Bonds and Personalized Learning. The point of this project is to further expose the underlying social control function of U.S. public education and the interests it has consistently served over time, which cannot be extracted from the undemocratic nation-state it was designed – and continually redesigned – to preserve.
*****
Stoking nationalism with fears of “Another …
by Binoy Kampmark / August 7th, 2017
So fruitless in its results, so depressing in its direction was the 1917 offensive, that ‘Passchendaele’ has come to be synonym for military failure, a name black-bordered in the records of the British Army.
— Basil Liddell Hart, 1934
Rarely does one word trap an image with such nerve tingling fright and awe. But as an image of slaughter, of men needlessly butchered, lives surrendered over absentee stone hearted generals with an understanding of war lost in the amnesia of small arms fire, spears and straw dress, one suffices. Passchendaele became the code for blood needlessly spilt; for decisions that should have, in …
by Greg Maybury / August 7th, 2017
[For Australia] it is one thing to remain a good friend, but too close an embrace will lead Americans and others to resurrect the “deputy sheriff” tag. The Americans have always put their own interests first and will continue to do so; we should follow their good example. American interests will not always be the same as Australian and vice versa. The bottom line, however, is the domestic political one. Australians are afraid of the outside world and convinced of their inability to cope with it. Any Australian government which suggested that we do without a great and powerful friend …
Part 1 of a 3 Part Series
by James King / August 6th, 2017
How Do You Tackle a Big Idea?
It has long been believed that Capitalism is the last economic system. It has triumphed over its rivals, socialism and communism, and has now come to define modern society. Many believe that the religion of Adam Smith was the culmination of all of our economic experiments. To many, not only is Capitalism the best economic system that humanity has ever devised, it is the best that it will ever devise.
About five years ago, I decided to challenge that premise. An idea had occurred to me which ultimately germinated into a system. For two years, …
by T.P. Wilkinson / August 6th, 2017
The genesis of the world, the myth of creation speaks of seven days. ((Genesis, the first book of that grand forgery and “America’s favourite theatrical prop” (George Carlin), called the Bible)) Six days of divine labour whereon the seventh the lord of the universe rested. No one, not even the angelic general staff of the combined heavenly hosts, could fathom what led the Creator to engage in this feat. ((Mark Twain explains the “Creation” in a more sober manner in his Letters to the Earth (1909).)) But tradition has established that man — here the gendered reference is intended — …
by Adeyinka Makinde / August 5th, 2017
Fela Kuti was a revolutionary African musician, the inventor of a genre which he called ‘Afro-Beat’ and the scourge of successive military dictatorships and civilian governments whose misrule of Nigeria has blighted the development of Africa’s most populated country. Fela was an iconoclast who challenged the powerful in society, a rebel whose bohemian lifestyle traversed the boundaries of socially prescribed behaviour as well as a social commentator whose lyrics, often suffused with coruscating barbs and comical vignettes, laid bare the daily tragedy of the lives of the suffering African proletariat. His death twenty years ago was mourned by millions of …
by Michel Luc Bellemare / August 5th, 2017
Part 1
[Structural-anarchism-economics is founded on the same ground as Marxist economics, namely, upon the solid ground of labor-power, or more specifically and more broadly speaking, the solid ground of creative-power.]
First and foremost, for structural-anarchism, value is not created out of thin-air. It is created via a ruling ideational comprehensive framework, namely, when an idea and/or activity, emanating from conceptual-perception and/or physical exertion, is validated, by the ruling ideational comprehensive framework of a socio-economic formation, that is, as having value, specifically as having a specific number value, which is agreed upon by the governing representative-agents of the ruling ideational comprehensive framework, …
by John R. Hall / August 4th, 2017
Dawn. Another day amidst the crumbling walls of Empire. Mired in the middle of its Misinformation Machine. Sharing fouled air with mindless, misguided, huddled masses. Electronically hypnotized zombies, grossly overfed on dead flesh and chemicals, arteries clogged, welcome mats for every known disease. Bodies pierced in each available spot, covered head to toe with inky, ill-conceived epidermal etchings, bizarre, flowing rainbow locks, fluorescent-painted lips and nails, sewn-on eyebrows, glazed, hopeless, expressionless, but highly decorated young faces, facing meaningless futures.
Pawn shops, porn shops, gun shops. Temporary solace from creeping moral and financial decay. Big box stores and shopping malls, once prosperous, …
After al-Aqsa attack, Israeli PM backs controversial transfer plan of far-right defence minister, Avigdor Lieberman
by Jonathan Cook / August 4th, 2017
Israel’s crackdown on access to the al-Aqsa mosque compound after two Israeli policemen were killed there last month provoked an eruption of fury among Palestinians in occupied Jerusalem and rocked Israel’s relations with the Arab world.
Three weeks on, the metal detectors and security cameras have gone and – for now, at least – Jerusalem is calmer.
But the shock waves are still reverberating, and being felt most keenly far away in northern Israel, in the town of Umm al-Fahm. The three young men who carried out the shootings were from the town’s large Jabareen clan. They were killed on the spot …
by Graham Peebles / August 4th, 2017
The Paris Agreement on climate change, signed in November 2016, was the first time all the world’s nations (except Nicaragua and Syria) signed up to reduce emissions and cap man-made global warming.
Amongst a number of positive pledges made by governments a key agreement was the goal to limit the increase in the average global temperature to well below 2°C (above pre-industrial levels) and to aim for 1.5°C. The probability is that neither of these goals will be met; in fact, a recent study conducted by the University of Washington, estimates there is a mere 5% chance of meeting the …
The rhetoric surrounding North Korea's military deterrence
by Kim Petersen / August 3rd, 2017
The Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea is ramping up its nuclear deterrence, and this is causing consternation and wild proclamations from western officials and corporate media. What is particularly galling for the United States side is that North Korea appears to have achieved the capability of hitting the US mainland with ICBMs.
However, is the US not capable of hitting North Korea from wherever? So why does a rival created by the US ((At the end of World War II, the Korean People’s Republic arose and the first cabinet …
by Jonathan Cook / August 2nd, 2017
I cannot recommend the new documentary Shadow World highly enough. It packs an enormous punch in 90 mins, providing a devastating account of the arms industry and its success in capturing the US and UK political systems.
The military-industrial complex has created a global war machine that needs endless feeding. Wars are no longer there to be won, but to be drawn out indefinitely, enriching a tiny elite with gargantuan and ever-expanding profits.
Shadow World starts by examining the rise half a century ago of a new-breed of free-market politician, of the likes of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, who …
by Stuart Littlewood / August 2nd, 2017
A month ago, after reading a desperate cry for help from the National Coalition of Christian Organisations in Palestine (NCCOP) addressed to the World Council of Churches, I emailed eight churches in my locality asking whether that heart-rending appeal had trickled down to them at parish level.
If not, I hoped to find out where the break in communications occurred, as this wasn’t the first time churches in the Holy Land had sought support from Western Christendom. Previous appeals were largely ignored and left to civil society for action.
Now, say the Palestinians, the situation is “beyond urgent”. So had the NCCOP’s …
by Ramzy Baroud / August 2nd, 2017
Neither Fatah nor Hamas have been of much relevance to the mass protests staged around Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem. Neither have American pressure, half-hearted European ‘concern about the situation’ or cliché Arab declarations made one iota of difference. United Nations officials warned of the grim scenarios of escalation, but their statements were mere words.
The spontaneous mass movement in Jerusalem, which eventually defeated Israeli plans to change the status of Al-Aqsa was purely a people’s movement. Despite the hefty price of several dead and hundreds wounded, it challenged both the Israeli government and the quisling Palestinian leadership.
Israel shut …
by Yves Engler / August 2nd, 2017
Will the Canadian government continue to support Barrick Gold’s exploitation of mineral resources in Tanzania no matter what abuses the company commits?
Would the Trudeau government stop backing the Toronto-based firm if it bilked the impoverished nation out of $10 billion? Or, what if one thousand people were raped and seriously injured by Barrick security? Would Ottawa withdraw its support if one hundred Tanzanians were killed at its mines?
Barrick’s African subsidiary, Acacia Mining, is embroiled in a major political conflict in the east African nation. With growing evidence of its failure to pay royalties and tax, Acacia has been condemned …
Lies, Myths, and Legends
by Andre Vltchek / August 2nd, 2017
It often appears that “true Afghanistan” is not here in Kabul and not in Jalalabad or Heart either; not in the ancient villages, which anxiously cling to the steep mountainsides.
Many foreigners and even Afghans are now convinced that the “true” Afghanistan is only what is being shown on the television screens, depicted in magazines, or what is buried deep in the archives and libraries somewhere in London, New York or Paris.
It is tempting to think that the country could be only understood from a comfortable distance, from the safety of one’s living room or from those books and publications decorating …
