Protests urging net neutrality under Title II were outside of Ajit Pai’s Arlington home on May 14, 2017. (Photo by Anne Meador, DC Media Group) Despite public opinion and the facts, he intends to serve the Telecom Industry. Pai is behaving like he is still Verizon’s lawyer, not someone required to serve the public interest.
Arlington, VA — Ajit Pai, the Chair of the FCC, is on a mission to destroy the Internet by reclassifying it so that it is no longer a common carrier where we all have equal …
All over America, school children are completing another academic year before their summer vacation. This invites the questions, what did they learn and what did they do with what they learned?
I’m not talking about their test scores, nor the latest fads in rebranding education, like the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) curriculum that de-emphasizes the first two thirds of the old mantra – reading, writing and arithmetic. Rather, I am questioning what they learned about their real-world surroundings, about preparing themselves for life as citizens, workers, consumers, taxpayers, voters and members of various communities.
Besides the grinding, debilitating repetition, the reason I can’t bear to watch comedians do their Donald Trump shtick is that the material is so obviously based on the premise that this guy is somehow unworthy of being our president. That his being elected was a monumental goof, a mistake, that we don’t deserve him.
David MacarayIn addition to being insufferably smug and self-congratulatory, that assumption is demonstrably false. If we step back and take an unsentimental, warts-and-all look at ourselves, we realize that Trump is …
Two centuries ago, a former European colony decided to catch up with Europe. It succeeded so well that the United States of America became a monster, in which the taints, the sickness and the inhumanity of Europe have grown to appalling dimensions.
— Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, pg. 253-4, 1963
Although the entirely illegal attack by the US on Syria’s Shayrat Airbase in response to an alleged chemical weapons attack by the Syrian government, showed not a thought towards Congressional debate, United Nations mandate or the rule of law, it seems that some thought might have gone into the …
A display of Israeli-style community policing before an audience of hundreds of young schoolchildren was captured on video last week. Were the 10-year-olds offered road safety tips, advice on what to do if they got lost, or how to report someone suspicion hanging around the school?
No. In Israel, they do things differently. The video shows four officers staging a mock anti-terror operation in a park close to Tel Aviv. The team roar in on motorbikes, firing their rifles at the “terrorist”.
As he lies badly wounded, the officers empty their magazines into him from close range. In Israel it is known …
For the past 20 years Washington has aggressively pursued the age-old imperial strategy of ‘divide and conquer’ throughout the Middle East, Southwest Asia and East Africa. Frustrated at its inability to control national policy of various independent nation-states, Washington used direct and indirect military force to destroy the central governments in the targeted nations and create patchworks of tribal-ethno-mini-states amenable to imperial rule. Tens of millions of people have been uprooted and millions have died because of this imperial policy.
Washington’s strategy of fragmentation and secession follows …
What a stealthy bugger of a problem. Malware deftly delivered, locking the system by encrypting files and making them otherwise impossible to access unless a fee is paid. A form of data hijacking that can only be admired for its ease of execution, for its viral-like replication that seeks, even hunts, vulnerable “unpatched” computer systems.
The global information environment is well and truly primed for plunder, vulnerable to such malicious “worms” as WannaCry. Each age creates the next circumstance for profit, often outside the boundaries deemed acceptable at the time. In a networked age reliant on huge quantities of data, times …
Jonathan Kay’s resignation from the Walrus for his role in promoting a prize for a writer who engages in cultural appropriation is a relief for the magazine. But, Canada’s leading liberal magazine can’t say they didn’t know Kay was intolerant when they hired him to be editor-in-chief two years ago. Kay has repeatedly smeared Arabs and Muslims in the service of Israeli expansionism.
After protests against Benjamin Netanyahu’s planned speech at Concordia in 2002 Kay let loose about “an Arabist rabble … well-steeped in the specious propaganda of the Arab world” that made the Montréal university “the …
The Kremlin would have been thrilled with the happy snaps, but these were, in the end, purely that. History is an assemblage of misguided images and false assumptions. The pictures of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact of 1939 remain rank, but brilliant for what modern gibberish-driven commentary terms “poor optics”. A pact featuring the signatures of Nazi Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Union made one British official claim that all “isms” had become “wasms” as a result.
Since political commentators became amateur optometrists, the obsessions with how events are viewed has begun to populate columns. From across the political spectrum, there is a terror …
I am in Russia for two weeks with a delegation of 30 Americans organized by the Center for Citizen Initiatives. We have had informative meetings with numerous people but the following two were especially interesting and relevant to international politics: Vladimir Kozin, member of the Russian Academy of Military Science, and Mikhael Gorbachev, former President of the Soviet Union. Meeting with Mikhael Gorbachev Roots of the New Cold War
Vladimir Kozin is an arms control specialist and member of the Russian Academy of Military Science who has worked on …
Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? That’s not my department.
— Wernher von Braun ((From Tom Lehrer’s ballad of Wernher von Braun.))
From MAD to Madness: Inside Pentagon Nuclear War Planning is the enlightening memoir by Paul Johnstone, a man who worked in the “department” that decided where “they” would come down. Johnstone labored there during WWII and then from 1949 to 1969, the initial period of the Cold War and the period covered by this book. On August 29, 1949, …
Barack Obama’s ascendancy to the presidency was a curse on black America’s political heritage.
— Margaret Kimberley, Black Agenda Report
It is no secret that the folks over at Black Agenda Report have never cottoned much to ex-President Obama. It was, after all, BAR’s executive editor Glen Ford who, long before Obama’s 2008 election, and in reference to the great bulk of black elected officials throughout this nation-state, including most especially, the Congressional Black Caucus, coined the term “black misleadership class.” Once Obama actually took the oath of office in ’08, Ford promptly placed him at the head of that class. …
For the love of God, for the love of your children and of the civilization to which you belong, cease this madness. You are mortal men. You are capable of error. You have no right to hold in your hands – there is no one wise enough and strong enough to hold in his hands – destructive power sufficient to put an end to civilized life on a great portion of our planet.
— George F. Kennan, Boston Globe, March 18, 2005
The cynic might wonder if, when UK Prime Minister Theresa May spent so much time clutching Donald Trump’s hand on her …
It is unfortunate that policies otherwise deemed middle of the road and social democratic tend to be seen in Britain as offspring of a lunatic mother long held in indefinite detention at Her Majesty’s Pleasure. But such is the nature of the current electioneering round, which has seen a source, most likely a disgruntled Labour hack, leak the manifesto of Jeremy Corbyn’s party ahead of its debate by the National Executive Committee.
Even Labour co-chair, Andrew Gywnne, claimed that the policies outlined in the document amounted to something akin to Clement Atlee’s radical programme commenced in 1945. “We think we’ve …
Palestinian refugee camps are up in flames across the country, a result of the disputes between the rival factions, but also of ‘unsavory’ influences from abroad. As everyone knows here, there are, for instance, the Al Qaida-affiliated militants hiding in the South. In Palestinian Refugee Camp, South Lebanon
There are Israeli incursions into Lebanon, both by land and by water. There are also drones, flying habitually from Israel into and through the Lebanese airspace. Lebanon-Israel border
There is …
Now that the Palestinian Islamic Movement, Hamas, has officially changed its Charter, one should not immediately assume that the decision is, in itself, an act of political maturity.
Undoubtedly, Hamas’ first Charter, which was released to the public in August 1988, reflected a degree of great intellectual dearth and political naïveté.
“Allah is great, Allah is greater than their army, Allah is greater than their airplanes and their weapons,” the original Charter partly read.
It called on Palestinians to take on the Israeli occupation army, seeking “martyrdom, or victory”, and derided Arab rulers and armies: “Has your national zealousness died and your …
Imagine if a corporation had to justify its existence beyond making money for capitalists. What would happen if a social balance sheet, as well as financial one, had to be filed every year and companies continually in a deficit position would eventually disappear?
Consider Barrick Gold. Would the world be better off if the world’s largest gold miner ceased to exist?
Pick a continent and you will find a Barrick run mine that has ravaged the environment and spurred social tension. Present at the company’s recent shareholders meeting in Toronto were two women from Papua New Guinea who say they were raped …
The result of all of this, besides the abuse of law, is that people may be afraid to exert their rights to be critical of Muslims who use religion to justify inexcusable actions.
— The Jakarta Post, October 18, 2016
One need not be a zealot in the human rights field to find the latest turn in Indonesian politics disconcerting. Jakarta’s governor, Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, known as Ahok, was always a nicely packaged target, confident and assertive, very much the beaming confident politician. Being Chinese was one aspect of the problem; being a non-Muslim was the other. From that standpoint, vulnerabilities were …
Having refused to admit his errors, the [FBI] Director cannot be expected to implement the necessary corrective actions.
— US Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein
Any sense that Donald Trump had found some accord with James Comey of the FBI gathered from his investigative zeal regarding Hillary Clinton’s improper use of a private email server should always have been doubted.
Trump is not a president who likes matters accountable and clear, except in a jaw jaw sort of a way, the brute who wants to avoid surprises while always keeping one in reserve. The language of the hectoring bully is never far, the …
In bygone years, defenders of the Guardian’s supposed ‘progressive’ credentials would typically cite the presence of Seumas Milne, Owen Jones and George Monbiot. The newspaper’s cupboard is looking decidedly threadbare now. After a year’s leave of absence, Milne left the paper permanently in January to continue leading Jeremy Corbyn’s media team. Jones has been notable for his, at best, conflicted support of Corbyn having, for two years, turned a blind eye to his paper’s relentless opposition to Corbyn’s leadership. Jones has also allowed himself to …
The Supreme Court will soon be ruling on the question of whether union contracts can legally include provisions where employees waive the right to join in class-action lawsuits. While unions and the NLRB argue that this provision violates an employee’s inherent right to “collective action,” management argues that all disputes should be settled individually, by way of binding arbitration, a method that has proven quicker and less expensive.
This reached the Supreme Court as a result of the lower courts being split on the issue. And with the Supreme Court being composed of five, pro-business, anti-labor conservatives (Justices Thomas, Roberts, Alito, …
by Anarchist Collective Rouvikonas / May 9th, 2017
In broad daylight anarchists in Athens attacked an auction house known for selling off the homes of poor families in debt. Communique below.
*****
The issue of auctions has become a taboo in public discourse. Theoretically, nobody likes auctions, apart maybe from the troika. The governments so far are supposedly giving ”negotiation battles” in order to prevent auctions. Banks are telling us they do not want auctions because they are recorded as loss. Notaries supposedly abstain from these procedures collectively, pretending they have some kind of social empathy.
Unfortunately this couldn’t be any further from the truth. Auctions take place in courts on …
On May 5, John Pilger was presented with the Order of Timor-Leste by East Timor’s Ambassador to Australia, Abel Gutteras, in recognition of his reporting on East Timor under Indonesia’s brutal occupation, especially his landmark documentary film, Death of a Nation: the Timor Conspiracy. The following is John Pilger’s response.
Filming undercover in East Timor in 1993 I followed a landscape of crosses: great black crosses etched against the sky, crosses on peaks, crosses marching down the hillsides, crosses beside the road. They littered the earth …
In the run-up to budget discussions, the Trump Administration floated various proposals for a dramatic increase in military spending on top of the already bloated $596 billion Pentagon budget. This, figure doesn’t even represent the true expenditures devoted to war-making and militarism in the $1.1 trillion discretionary side of the national budget. The $596 doesn’t include the $65 billion in veterans spending and $26 billion for nuclear weapons. That brings the total to about $690 billion or 63% of all discretionary spending! To fund this outrageous theft of the peoples’ resources for the military/industrial/complex, the Administration called for unprecedented …
Academy Award-winning director and revered documentary filmmaker Stone said in interview with the Sydney Morning Herald that his new film about Putin will be released soon. “It’s not a documentary as much as …
For almost 50 years, the US economy and society has taken a great leap backward — accelerating during the past three Presidencies. Not only have we experienced the reversal of past socio-economic legislation, but also our presidents and Congress have dragged us into multiple aggressive wars. Now, the threat of a nuclear attack against our ‘declared enemies’ is ‘on the table’.
Since the end of the Viet Nam war, US military ‘interventions’ have become wars of long duration. These have cost millions of lives overseas, tens …
The cheer was always going to be qualified. The bubbles would be less effervescent, more a case of relieved sighing rather than frothy exultation. After another electoral hack, and another round of threats, the French election was being played out in an era that may, in time, be given the Trump name.
The pollsters did rest a bit easier after the election result, with Emmanuel Macron outdoing his contender Marine Le Pen by fifteen percent. Their soothsayers have been failing of late, and this result provided some form of revival. But what it did show, as it did in the United …
Well, that is only a slight exaggeration since change — if by that is meant a real change in the relations of power — has never been effected by elections.
As satirist Tom Lehrer once sang about the SCUM ((I heard once from someone in the US Navy that this was the only word you can make from the letters u-s-m-c)): “All their rights respected, until someone WE like can be elected”. Elections have always been a ritual to stabilize a regime not to change it. Some regimes prefer other means or better said dispense with the cosmetics.
It’s time for us as a people to come together, to form an understanding about our natural environment, and our connection to it. If we are to survive long into this century and beyond, our society will have to learn to re-indigenize itself. This will be a painful process for those dependent on creature comforts, on the electrical grid’s continuous power supply, on the streams of TV, Netflix, even the internet itself, on factory-made pharmaceuticals, etc. It will be difficult for those whose illusions are about to be shattered, for those who thought they could live for so long and …
Does Toronto have too little or too much public space?
Depends on what the “public” space is used for.
This seems such an obvious answer but one of Toronto’s best urban affairs writers can’t seem to separate the private cars from the public space they destroy.
In an otherwise excellent defence of the square where younger, poorer and darker fans enjoy Raptors and Maple Leaf games outside the arena, Toronto Star columnist Christopher Hume concludes that “the lack of public space in Toronto is a perennial problem.” Huh! How could a commentator, who has promoted sensible urban planning as much as to …
