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by Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers / November 12th, 2017
WASHINGTON, DC – MARCH 10: Protesters march during a demonstration against the Dakota Access Pipeline on March 10, 2017 in Washington, DC. Thousands of protesters and members of Native nations marched in Washington DC to oppose the construction of the proposed 1,172 Dakota Access Pipeline that runs within a half-mile of the Standing Rock Sioux reservation in North Dakota. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
The climate crisis is upon us. It seems that every report on climate conditions has one thing in common: things are worse than …
by Michael K. Smith / November 12th, 2017
If love is blind, patriotism has lost all five senses.
— William Blum
Today is Veterans Day, which used to be called Armistice Day, and differs from Memorial Day who knows exactly how. All we are supposed to know is that military service makes one a national hero, not (as used to be the case) for having demonstrated courage on the battlefield, but merely for signing up. We are well into the era of grade inflation, and as public school officials like to say, “everyone is above average.”
Whatever respect is owed the martial virtues, it is not clear how much longer the …
by Binoy Kampmark / November 11th, 2017
The officials are called one by one to lay wreathes, a ceremony of mechanical efficiency. With each laying comes the sense of wonder at how this could happen. Political figures are the first to vote in parliaments and side with the executive when it comes to wars. The temptations of human drives to tempt, and then succumb to death, were there long before Sigmund Freud identified them.
In the Australian capital, there were many wreaths, so many uniformed, deodorised dignitaries distant from the cries of battle and the horror of engineered slaughter. There were the expected, the usual, the normal: the …
by Jonathan Cook / November 11th, 2017
A British government minister was apparently so dedicated to her work that she spent a “family holiday” in Israel conducting 12 undisclosed meetings with Israeli officials, including prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Those covert meetings brought about the downfall of Priti Patel on Wednesday night. She was forced to resign as international development secretary, responsible for Britain’s overseas aid budget, admitting her actions “fell below the standards of transparency and openness” expected of a minister.
Her position became untenable as further revelations this week showed she had held two additional unrecorded meetings with Israeli officials in London and New York in September, organised …
An Anti-Peace Trip
by Peter Koenig / November 11th, 2017
President Trump’s 5-country Asia tour has nothing to do with seeking peace anywhere. It has not even to do with diplomacy – it is entirely a warmongering business trip for the Military Industrial Complex. It is amazing that the world doesn’t catch on.
We know about Obama’s several years of pivoting to Asia. It resulted largely in the TPP, the Transpacific Partnership, a trade agreement between 12 countries including the US. The first thing Trump did when he came on board is canceling it, claiming that it would only harm the US. Canceling it, in fact, was a good thing, since …
by Robert Hunziker / November 10th, 2017
OMG! Congress held hearings recently on geo-engineering techniques to stop the evils of global warming. Whew! The irony is absolutely fantastically mind-boggling, a real knee-slapper.
Think about the paradox as Dr. James Hansen, the top climate scientist of NASA at the time warned Congress of the dangers of anthropogenic global warming way back in 1988, and it resulted in a major New York Times headline “Global Warming Has Begun, Expert Tells Senate.”
So, Congress has had 30 years to ruminate the global warming warning, never seriously addressing possible fixes, like conversion from fossil fuels to renewable energy as a nationwide program, kinda …
by Binoy Kampmark / November 10th, 2017
When confronted with the spectacle of the malnourished, the impoverished, the famine stricken, and the desperate, the Australian political instinct is simple: Why did these poor fools get themselves into this mix? With each wave of refugees arriving in the country’s young history, the cold shoulder has mixed with the lukewarm welcome.
At no points have refugees been welcomed so much as grudgingly accepted. Australia, after all, has a humanitarian intake, and boasts about it like a vulnerable child who feels her grades the best in class.
Like a necessary pantomime, Australia’s distant, estranging middle-class tediousness treats human rights as the necessary …
by Media Lens / November 10th, 2017
The truth of corporate journalism, and the great irony of its obsession with ‘fake news’, is that it is itself utterly fake. What could be more obviously fake than the idea that Truth can be sold by billionaire-owned media dependent on billionaire-owned advertisers for maximised profit?
The ‘mainstream’ worldview is anything but – it is extreme, weird, a product of corporate conformity and deference to power. As Norman Mailer observed:
There is an odour to any Press Headquarters that is unmistakeable… The unavoidable smell of flesh burning quietly and slowly in the …
by Graham Peebles / November 10th, 2017
In an attempt to distract attention from unprecedented protests and widespread discontent, the Ethiopian Government has engineered a series of violent ethnic conflicts in the country. The regime blames regional parliaments and historic territorial grievances for the unrest, but Ethiopians at home and abroad lay the responsibility firmly at the door of the ruling party who, it’s claimed, is manipulating events.
Ancient ethnic disputes and long-forgotten wounds are being inflamed: since August hundreds of innocent people have been killed, thousands are displaced, and are now homeless and afraid. The perpetrators of the violence as well as the victims are puppets in …
by Susan Dirgham / November 10th, 2017
The book Dear World: A Syrian Girl’s Story of War and Plea for Peace was published in October 2017. It is purportedly written by a Syrian girl, Bana Alabed, with the help of her mother and an editor. The book is being prominently promoted in the US and UK and is anticipated to be a big seller this coming Holiday Season.
Background
Bana Alabed is an 8-year-old Syrian girl who rose to fame in 2016 when a Twitter account was set up in her name and she …
Part I of a 3 Part Series: The Canada Syndrome
by Eric Walberg / November 10th, 2017
There seems to be little common ground between Canadian natives and mainstream Canadian society. Canada’s uniqueness in world culture is thanks to its natives, who are regularly trotted out in ceremonies related to international events such as the Olympics, and now featured in the composition of the new Canadian ten dollar bill. But they remain at the bottom of the mainstream pecking order economically. Justice Thomas Berger wrote in 1966: “They began by taking the Indians’ land without any surrender and without their consent. Then they herded the Indian …
let the Californians flock to Oregon, let Intel, Nike and the rest send those billions to Bermuda!
by Paul Haeder / November 9th, 2017
Rapacious. “They got theirs, so I better get mine. Yes, things change, and, sure this sleepy town is about to boom but that’s the way of the world…. Might as well be part of the winning team – that money making side of things. That’s all you can do.”
I just finished talking to white guy in his late forties, gassing up excavators and huge dump trucks. We’re near the Estacada High School, and he tells me the scrapping is to make room for more ball fields. The school already has fields and a football stadium. This is a town with …
by Ramzy Baroud / November 9th, 2017
The postponing of an Israeli Knesset Bill that would have annexed major illegal Jewish settlements in the West Bank to the Jerusalem municipality is the result of behind-the-scenes US and, possibly, European pressure. But the story of the so-called ‘Greater Jerusalem law’ does not end there.
Israel wants to maintain an absolute demographic Jewish majority in Jerusalem, including in occupied, and illegally annexed, Palestinian East Jerusalem. There is enough support in the Knesset and among the public to ensure that coveted Jewish dominance. But the political balances, and possible drawbacks, are just too delicate and great for Israel to get exactly …
by Ron Forthofer / November 9th, 2017
For the past nine months, we have seen widespread attacks on the common good. The latest assault is the Republicans’ proposed tax reform, a huge transfer of wealth to the richest one-tenth of one percent. This legislation would also greatly increase the national debt, supposedly a major red line for Republicans. In addition, President Trump continues to: 1) slow action on climate change; 2) support fossil fuels; and 3) weaken the protections of clean air, water and soil. Trump and the Republicans have repeatedly tried to repeal the Affordable Care Act. The repeal would have eliminated coverage for millions while …
by Radmilo Bozinovic / November 9th, 2017
Navigating the current world of torrential actual news – never mind the copious “fake” stuff – is becoming increasingly difficult. With traditional common sense under constant attack by sensory overload, sidestepping the numerous trees placed before us in order to perceive the larger forest remains the big challenge.
A short salutary omnibus of key news as reported in the last day or so might illustrate the point. One of the latest headlines crossing NPR feeds stated bluntly: “Massive Government Report Says Climate is Warming And Humans Are the Cause”. Ignoring for the moment intricate arcana of American “checks and balances”, it …
(The Artificial Fabrication of Arbitrary Value, Price, and Wage Across Post-Industrial, Post-Modern Capitalism)
by Michel Luc Bellemare / November 9th, 2017
According to Friedrich Engels, Anti-Duhring, “the only value known in economics is the value of commodities”. ((Friedrich Engels, Anti-Duhring, (Peking: Foreign Language Press, 1976) 306.)) Commodities are products produced, not for individual consumption by their producers, but products produced for general public consumption. The value of a commodity, according to Engels, is determined via comparison with other commodities, namely, “they can be…said to be equal or unequal [with other commodities], according to the quantity of [general human] labor embodied in each”. ((Ibid, p. 306.))
As a result, for Engels, “social conditions remaining the same, two equal private products, [that is, commodities] …
by E.R. Bills / November 8th, 2017
We have a gun lust. Guns make us (especially men) feel empowered, even when we are mostly weak. Guns make small men feel they are someone to be reckoned with — and I’m not referring to physical stature. Guns give impotent (sexually or existentially) men vitality and make them feel formidable.
Contemporary America makes legions of us feel inconsequential, insignificant and powerless; but we saw Dirty Harry, Lethal Weapon, Rambo, Die Hard, etc., back in the day. The big heroes with the big box office solved their problems and got the girl or righted the wrongs or avenged the injustices with …
by Phil Rockstroh / November 8th, 2017
Ha, ha! keep time: how sour sweet music is,
When time is broke and no proportion kept!
So is it in the music of men’s lives.
— Richard II’s lament from Act 5, Scene 5 of Shakespeare’s eponymous tragedy
Given the (great unspoken) fact, the wealth of Western civilisation’s ruling class was created by, and is maintained to this day by, genocidal conquer-lust and its attendant, imperialist aggression and plunder, the acts of mass murder being perpetrated by (mostly) White males in the US reflect a culture that deploys military and police state firepower to maintain its dominant status. As Malcolm X averred, the …
by Binoy Kampmark / November 8th, 2017
The massacre at the First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs was, to put it simply, effective and spectacular. It also had the resonances of the primeval, ignoring the sanctity of the church in favour of murder within it. The alleged assailant managed to do less God’s work than his own, slaughtering 26 and injuring 20 others.
The regularity of these mass killings is become less jaw dropping than wearisome. With each incident, the forensic eye is deployed and duly adjusted. A form of profiling is triggered. Was the person of colour? Possess a beard? Use a rental truck? In this case, …
by Andre Vltchek / November 7th, 2017
The world is in ruins. It is literally burning, covered by slums, by refugee camps, and its great majority is ‘controlled by markets’, as was the dream and design of individuals such as Milton Friedman, Friedrich von Hayek, Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. Führers like Kissinger and Brzezinski sacrificed tens of millions of human lives all over our planet, just to prevent nations from trying to fulfill their spontaneous socialist, and even, God forbid, Communist dreams and aspirations. Some of the tyrants were actually very ‘honest’: Henry Kissinger once observed, publicly, that he saw no reason why a certain country …
by Robert Hunziker / November 7th, 2017
The ecosystem is the quintessential essence of life on our planet, and this crucial life system is showing signs of breaking down. It is likely a more pressing problem than climate change. Time will tell but time is short.
The ecosystem consists of all living organisms that interact with nonliving components like air, water, and soil contained within the biosphere, which extends from the bottom of the oceans to the top of the mountains. Although unannounced by authorities or professional orgs, it is already becoming evident that the ecosystem is breaking down. Alas, it’s our only ecosystem.
The evidence is too prevalent …
by John Rachel / November 6th, 2017
You’ve been avoiding this for a long time.
You prefer to remember the times he took you to the park, that amazing camping vacation a few summers back, the funny things he often says at the dinner table, that beautiful dog he gave you on your 12th birthday.
But you can’t deny it any longer. The truth is painful. But . . .
Dad is an alcoholic and he beats mom.
Do you hate him? Do you reject him as your father?
No, but things have to drastically change and very soon.
This is not actually the story I wish to tell. I’m merely drawing a …
by Edward Curtin / November 6th, 2017
Search for nothing anymore, nothing except truth.
Be very still and try to get at the truth.
And the first question to ask yourself is:
How great a liar am I?
— D. H. Lawrence, Search For Truth
Like existential freedom, honesty and truth-seeking demand a perpetually renewed commitment. No one ever fully arrives, and all of us are blown off course on the journey. Even when we think we have reached our destination, we are often startled by the enigma of arrival, and must set sail again. We are all in the same boat. The search for truth is a process, an experiment, an …
by John W. Whitehead / November 6th, 2017
This country has been having a nationwide nervous breakdown since 9/11. A nation of people suddenly broke, the market economy goes to shit, and they’re threatened on every side by an unknown, sinister enemy. But I don’t think fear is a very effective way of dealing with things—of responding to reality. Fear is just another word for ignorance.”
— Hunter S. Thompson, gonzo journalist
Another shooting, another day in America.
Or so it seems.
With alarming regularity, the nation is being subjected to a spate of violence that terrorizes the public, destabilizes the country’s fragile ecosystem, and gives the …
by Nayvin Gordon / November 6th, 2017
Since the year 2000 at least 22 pharmaceutical companies have settled criminal and civil suits for over $10 billion in fines. Companies have been found guilty of fraud, kickbacks, false claims, and off label promotion. For example, In May 2007 Perdue Pharmaceuticals, makers of the opioid Oxycontin, was found guilty of “off label promotion” and paid over $600 million in fines, one of the largest in history. This occurred during the acceleration of the opioid epidemic according to the Center for Disease Control.
During one of the largest opioid epidemics in history, between 2014 and 2016, the pharmaceutical industry spent more …
by Barbara MacLean / November 6th, 2017
Rats fleeing a sinking ship – the ship of white male privilege
The floodgates have opened. All the disgusting, depraved details are surfacing. Now the “public” is learning what the majority of us already knew – that men of power have been sexually abusing and harassing women for generations. It was simply the norm. Most women have experienced it in one form or another. Every morning we get up to see another report from victims of powerful men in publishing, media, government and finance. Even U.S. presidents, Supreme Court Justices, Amazon executives and celebrity chefs have been outed. A USA …
by Robert Jensen / November 6th, 2017
I am not as abusive as Harvey Weinstein, nor as narcissistic as Bill O’Reilly. I’m more respectful to women than Donald Trump, and not as sleazy as Anthony Weiner.
Judged by the standards set by these public reprobates, most of the rest of us men appear almost saintly, and therein lies a danger. The public disclosure of these men’s behavior—from the routinely offensive to the occasionally criminal—is a good thing, and all those who have been harassed and raped should continue to speak out.
But we should not let the most egregious cases derail the analysis of how a wide range of …
by Paul Cochrane / November 6th, 2017
Five months after the diplomatic spat between the so-called Anti-Terror Quartet and Qatar kicked-off, the ante is being upped. Bahrain, one of the quartet alongside Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Egypt, has called for Qatar to be frozen out of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). As the council starts to unravel, what will this mean for Qatar and the wider Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region?
The Bahraini proposal, which would have been coordinated with Riyadh and Abu Dhabi, to lock Qatar out of the GCC is a logical move in the nearly six-month long siege, …
by Binoy Kampmark / November 6th, 2017
It took some time of muzzling and concealment before the horror, but various Democrats have finally come clean about the Hillary Clinton machine: things were, it seems, rigged, stacked, and doctored. This was the language of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump from opposite sides of the political spectrum, the code of anti-establishment anger, the message for disruptive change.
Such anti-establishment creatures were ultimately reviled by orthodox party priests as futile hopes, misguided and bound to lose. In the great tradition of US presidential politics, they had to be neutralised.
As each less credible than the last figure fell before the Trump juggernaut, …
by Rick Sterling / November 6th, 2017
Introduction
In early 2003 it was claimed that Iraq was a threat to other countries. Despite ten years of crushing economic sanctions plus intrusive inspections, supposedly Iraq had acquired enough “weapons of mass destruction” to threaten the West. It was ridiculous on its face but few people in power said so. Establishment politicians and media across the U.S. promoted the idea. In the Senate, Joe Biden chaired the committee looking into the allegations but excluded knowledgeable critics such as Scott Ritter. This led to the invasion of Iraq.
Today we have something similarly ridiculous and dangerous. Supposedly the Syrian government decided to …
