Latest articles
by Paul Haeder / October 13th, 2017
It’s as if a moral and cultural bomb has been detonated now that this guy tweets and says things not allowed in school. I have youth in my ‘behavior room’ saying stuff right from the president’s mouth. These words and statements we do not allow children to say in school. Racist and sexist and anti-disabilities things, we don’t tolerate but the president is spouting off these horrendous statements. I’ve already got my hands full with young people who have intellectual and developmental disabilities that put them in the behavioral and defiance categories. With Trump, my caseload of high school youth …
by Greg Palast / October 13th, 2017
Mobile home on tracks, Sun Valley CA, birthplace of the Vegas shooter. From the film The Best Democracy Money Can Buy.
Los Angeles — When we were at Francis Polytechnic High in Sun Valley, Steve Paddock and I were required to take electrical shop class. At Poly and our junior high, we were required to take metal shop so we could work the drill presses at the GM plant. We took drafting. Drafting like in “blueprint drawing.”
Paddock. Palast. We sat next to each other at those drafting tables with …
by Robert Hunziker / October 13th, 2017
The strange happenstance of record-breaking stock markets and record-breaking icebergs is something to behold and wonder, what the hell is going on in the world? Is there a relationship between high stock prices and crashing, splintering icebergs? Probably, yes.
In point of fact, as capitalism’s grand experiment of neoliberal tendencies (privatization/commoditization of everything in sight, let free markets reign supreme) progresses and registers enormous stock market profits, Antarctica splitters apart ever faster in lock step. In bizarre fashion, high stocks equate to faster loss of major ice icons, the Arctic-to-Patagonia-to-Antarctica, a worldwide phenomena. Is the linkage mere coincidence?
In short, does unfettered …
by William Boardman / October 13th, 2017
Dear NFL: We will not support millionaire ingrates who hate America and disrespect our Armed Forces and Veterans. Who wins a football game has ZERO impact on our lives. Who fights for and defends our nation has every impact on our lives. We stand with the Heroes, not a bunch of rich, entitled, arrogant, ungrateful, anti-American, degenerates. Signed, We the people.
This is an unsurprisingly nasty internet meme that was publicly shared by the director of the Michigan State Police on her Facebook page on Sunday, September 24. Director Col. Kriste Kibbey Etue apparently gave no thought to …
by Ellen Brown / October 13th, 2017
During his visit to hurricane-stricken Puerto Rico, President Donald Trump shocked the bond market when he told Geraldo Rivera of Fox News that he was going to wipe out the island’s bond debt. He said on October 3rd:
You know they owe a lot of money to your friends on Wall Street. We’re gonna have to wipe that out. That’s gonna have to be — you know, you can say goodbye to that. I don’t know if it’s Goldman Sachs but whoever it is, you can wave good-bye to that.
How did the president plan to pull this off? Pam Martens …
by Felicity Arbuthnot / October 13th, 2017
When US Ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, stated of North Korea (4th September 2017): “When a rogue regime has a nuclear weapon and an ICBM pointed at you, you do not take steps to lower your guard. No one would do that”, she unwittingly put her finger on why the DPRK has been conducting missile tests and stating that they have ever bigger, better and longer range capabilities. There is no certainty that either of the latter is the case, but the tiny country has been subject to nearly seventy years of vilification and ever more threatening behavior from …
by Yves Engler / October 12th, 2017
The “Ugly Canadian” is on the march but now with a much prettier face at the helm. Across the planet Canadian mining companies are in conflict with local communities and usually have the Trudeau government’s support.
A slew of disputes have arisen at Canadian run mines in recent weeks:
Last week in northern central Mexico, community members blockaded the main access road to Goldcorp’s Penasquito mine. They are protesting against the Vancouver-based company for using and contaminating their water without providing alternative sources.
In Northern Ireland two weeks ago, police forced activists out of a Cookstown hotel after they tried …
by John W. Whitehead / October 12th, 2017
All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible.
? Frank Herbert
Power corrupts.
Worse, as 19th-century historian Lord Acton concluded, absolute power corrupts absolutely.
It doesn’t matter whether you’re talking about a politician, an entertainment mogul, a corporate CEO or a police officer: give any one person (or government agency) too much power and allow him or her or it to believe that they are entitled, untouchable and will not be held accountable for their actions, and those powers will eventually be …
by Ramzy Baroud / October 12th, 2017
Egypt’s enthusiasm to arbitrate between feuding Palestinian factions, Hamas and Fatah, is not the outcome of a sudden awakening of conscience. Cairo has, in fact, played a destructive role in manipulating Palestinian division to its favor, while keeping the Rafah border crossing under lock and key.
However, the Egyptian leadership is clearly operating in coordination with Israel and the United States. While the language emanating from Tel Aviv and Washington is quite guarded regarding the ongoing talks between the two Palestinian parties, if read carefully, their political discourse is not entirely dismissive of the possibility of having Hamas join a unity …
by Media Lens / October 12th, 2017
A recent interview with 88-year-old Noam Chomsky once again demonstrates just how insightful he is in providing rational analysis of Western power and the suffering it generates. By contrast, anyone relying on BBC News receives a power-friendly view of the world, systematically distorted in a way that allows the state and private interests to pursue business as usual.
In what follows, we present examples of Chomsky’s clarity on several important topics and contrast them with the distortions and silences from BBC News. These examples are not intended to be fully comprehensive, with lots of detailed background. But …
by Rick Sterling / October 10th, 2017
On October 6 there was a presentation in Lafayette California featuring the Israeli-American Miko Peled. The event was sponsored by Mt Diablo Peace & Justice Center (MDPJC) with co-sponsorship by Jewish Voice for Peace and others.
What Miko Peled says is seldom heard by Americans.
Miko was born in Jerusalem and comes from a famous Israeli family. His grandfather was one of the signers of the Israeli founding documents. His father was a soldier in the war which led to the creation of Israel and later a senior Army general during the 1967 war. Adding to the power of his voice, one …
by Yves Engler / October 10th, 2017
Would a farmer ask a fox to help design a security system for her free-range chickens?
A group that stokes Islamophobia and defends an explicitly supremacist organization shouldn’t be part of a Public Consultation on Systemic Discrimination and Racism in Québec. The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) should be removed from the “list of selected organizations” for this important initiative.
While groups participating in the just launched consultation are supposed to “develop concrete proposals to combat systemic discrimination and racism”, last summer CIJA campaigned aggressively against a Green Party of Canada resolution calling on the Canada …
by Ramzy Baroud / October 10th, 2017
Some promises are made and kept; others disavowed. But the ‘promise’ made by Arthur James Balfour in what became known as the ‘Balfour Declaration’ to the leaders of the Zionist Jewish community in Britain one hundred years ago, was only honored in part: it established a state for the Jews and attempted to destroy the Palestinian nation.
In fact, Balfour, the foreign Secretary of Britain at the time his declaration of 84 words was pronounced on November 2, 1917, was, like many of his peers, anti-Semitic. He cared little about the fate of Jewish communities. His commitment to establishing a Jewish …
by Andre Vltchek / October 9th, 2017
From Jakarta and Yogyakarta — It was once again a hot, muggy day in Jakarta. The air was full of pollutants, epic traffic jams blocking entire center of the city. Biasa, as locals would say, or in a lax translation, ‘business as usual’.
It is September 29th, 2017, Friday, just one day before the most sinister anniversary in the entire Southeast Asia.
On September 30th, 1965, the Indonesian military, obeying orders from foreign powers (mainly the US and the UK), overthrew the progressive and anti-imperialist government of President Sukarno, murdering between 1 and 3 million men, women and children (including almost all …
by Binoy Kampmark / October 9th, 2017
Melbourne
“Be careful, you might get run over.” So squawks an administrator from the local RMIT University as she dashes towards Princess Park, Melbourne. The need for this jet propulsion enthusiasm is clear: a gathering is being organised in the park, amongst other venues, in a national day of action. The bogeyman? The Indian monster mining concern, Adani.
Across some 45 venues in Australia, protestors gathered, banners flown, speeches given. “I have a two-year old daughter,” exclaimed Bondi surf life saver Simon Fosterling at the Sydney end of the protest on Saturday, “and I don’t want to have a conversation with …
by Edward Curtin / October 9th, 2017
If you find yourself lost and confused in a dark wood, then perhaps following this network of knots strung on a long string of dates listed below will help you find your way back home, where the bread of truth awaits you on the kitchen table.
As we know, children love to trace, to connect the dots, to make connections, but often the connections they make frighten adults who try to ignore their points or offer some ridiculous circumlocutions. Maybe we adults are much like children in our desires to make connections, but the thought of it frightens us, even when …
by William Hawes / October 9th, 2017
Revolution in society must begin with the inner, psychological revolution of the individual. Most of us want to see a radical transformation of the social structure…however radical that social revolution may be its nature is static if there is no inward revolution, no psychological transformation…However much and however wisely legislation may be promulgated, society is always in the process of decay because revolution must take place within, not merely outwardly.
— Jiddu Krishnamurti, The First and Last Freedom
The revolution will only come as a result of inner, mental transformation, as Krishnamurti foretold. Political movements may urge people towards an outward revolution of …
by Ike Nahem / October 9th, 2017
(Author’s note: This is an updated, re-edited essay, based on a 2007 written for a Celebration of Ernesto Che Guevara’s life held in October 2007 in New York City in commemoration of the 40th anniversary of his execution, attended by 300 people.)
*****
Che died defending no other interest, no other cause than the cause of the exploited and the oppressed of this continent. Che died defending no other cause than the cause of the poor and the humble of this earth.
— Fidel Castro, October 18, 1967
Che Lives!
On October …
by Phil Rockstroh / October 9th, 2017
The bad news is, we have been deluged with bad, even mortifying, news, and for such an extended period of time, the mind reels in bafflement as the spirit sinks. Despair seems an apt response to events one cannot reconcile, of circumstances of which one cannot gain perspective nor control.
The only sadnesses that are dangerous and unhealthy are the ones that we carry around in public in order to drown them out with the noise; like diseases that are treated superficially and foolishly, they just withdraw and after a short interval break out again all the …
by Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers / October 9th, 2017
Last weekend, tens of thousands of people marched in Washington, DC in the combined March for Racial Justice and March for Black Women. Native Americans joined black and brown people to lead the march.
At the march, Rev. Graylan Hagler said:
White Supremacy has been given aid and comfort by a so-called president and so-called administration, and so-called leaders of that ideology are comforted and feel that they are back as a centerpiece of American political life.
From coast to coast, it is true that white supremacists are active and are …
by Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin / October 9th, 2017
The 6 ‘secret’ tactics of empire are strategies of change used by governments, usually covertly, to attain political or military ends through means not normally acceptable to the populace as a whole. The strategies are as follows:
1. False Flag Attacks
2. Coercive Engineered Migration
3. Colour Revolutions
4. Humanitarian Intervention
5. Proxy Armies
6. Fake News
The relationship of the state or a political force to the various strategies depends on the political aim. Sometimes there is a direct and openly admitted relationship to the strategy and sometimes it is fervently denied. The outcome of any such strategy is never guaranteed and, indeed, may even have …
by Sophie Mangal / October 8th, 2017
PART ONE
The ancient mud brick walls circling Raqqa’s deserted old city are almost the only structure still intact. Inside, shops and homes spill crumbling concrete onto either side of the narrow roads, block after block.
Fighting between U.S.-backed militias and Islamic State in the jihadist group’s former Syria stronghold has peppered mosques and minarets with machine-gun fire while air strikes flattened houses. No building is untouched. Senior council member Omar Alloush estimated at least half the city has been already completely destroyed.
“The old clock tower could be heard …
by John Pilger / October 8th, 2017
As the Tories plot to get rid of Prime Minister Theresa May, John Pilger analyses the alternative Labour Party, specifically its foreign policy, which may not be what it seems.
*****
Delegates to the recent Labour Party conference in the English seaside town of Brighton seemed not to notice a video playing in the main entrance. The world’s third biggest arms manufacturer, BAe Systems, supplier to Saudi Arabia, was promoting its guns, bombs, missiles, naval ships and fighter aircraft.
It seemed a perfidious symbol of a party in which millions of Britons now invest their political hopes. Once the preserve of …
by Binoy Kampmark / October 7th, 2017
There are no right hands for the wrong weapons.
— Beatrice Fihn, ICAN Executive Director, October 6, 2017
Few times in history show the remarkable gulf between international civic action and international political constipation. The will of approaching a world without nuclear weapons has been matched every step of the way with the desire and wish to acquire or keep them.
The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons hardly sounds like the paragon of coherence, even if its purpose is crystal and unmistakable. It flies in the face of the Machiavellian world order; it speaks of an aspiration that seems, in a world …
by John R. Hall / October 7th, 2017
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.
? Dwight D. Eisenhower
Stephen Paddock’s brother called him “just a guy”, and …
by William O. Beeman / October 7th, 2017
President Trump is about to take action that will withdraw the United States from the “Iran Nuclear Deal”. On October 15, Trump will reportedly “decertify” American participation in this historical agreement. This action is dangerous. This action will endanger the world. It will erode American credibility with both allies and enemies, and will destabilize the Middle East by worsening relations with Iran.
Moreover, Trump will throw the dirty work of withdrawing to Congress.
The “(de-)certification process” has nothing to do with the 2014 “Iran Nuclear Deal,” more formally known as the …
by Edward Curtin / October 7th, 2017
Cram them full of non-combustible data, chock them so damned full of ‘facts’ they feel stuffed, but absolutely brilliant with information. Then they’ll feel they’re thinking, they’ll get a sense of motion without moving.
— Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451, 1951
It is not only information that they need – in the age of Fact, information often dominates their attention and overwhelms their capacities to assimilate it…What they need, and what they feel they need, is a quality of mind that will help them to use information and to develop reason in order to achieve lucid summations of what is going on in …
by John Andrews / October 6th, 2017
About fifteen years ago I was a normal person. I had an average job, to help pay my average mortgage and average living costs. I was of average intelligence and had received an average education. I thought I pretty much understood how the world worked, because I followed the news every day on the BBC and frequently read The Times newspaper which, as everyone knew, was the best newspaper in the whole world. If anyone had suggested otherwise I would have been slightly offended, as if I’d been called stupid. But the fact was, like most normal people I knew …
by Jan Oberg / October 6th, 2017
Our thanks to the Nobel Peace Prize Committee for awarding its 2017 Prize to ICAN – the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons.
Undoubtedly nuclear disarmament and, ultimately, nuclear abolition is a major – if not the major – goal of humankind. There can be no lasting peace with these weapons and there exists no goal, the achievement of which would legitimate the use of this type of weapons.
Even when not used, nuclear weapons cause problems, distrust, risks and pretext for wars – think Russia-NATO, Iraq, the nuclear deal (JCPOA) with Iran, US-North Korea, Israel, India-Pakistan – and documented technical …
by Media Lens / October 5th, 2017
Walking past a packed beach on a sweltering summer’s day, the lefty progressive is like a fish out of water.
And by the way, he’s not staying: he’s taking a constitutional after a morning spent reading about genocidal sanctions on Iraq and before an afternoon spent writing about genocidal killings in East Timor.
Among the knotted handkerchiefs, Hawaiian shirts and burrowing thongs, he appears surreally overdressed in his black Doc Martin shoes, black jeans (full-length in the heat) and regulation no-logo T-shirt.
His dark, subdued clothing carries subtle meaning: ‘It’s not about me.’ After all, he describes himself …
