Latest articles
by Paul Craig Roberts / March 22nd, 2017
March 20, 2017: Listening today to the broadcast of testimony by FBI Director Comey and National Security Agency Director Admiral Michael Rogers before the House Intelligence Committee (an oxymoron) made it clear that the Democrats, Comey, and Rogers intend conflict with Russia.
The Republicans, for the most part, were interested to know how security leaks targeted at Trump Republicans came from meetings at which only the CIA Director, NSA Director, and FBI director were present. Of course, they did not get an answer, which shows how powerless congressional oversight committees are. Comey repeatedly said that he could not tell the committee …
Review of David Macaray's book, How to Win Friends and Avoid Sacred Cows: Weird Adventures in India Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims - When the Peace Corps was New
by Kitty Thuermer / March 22nd, 2017
Every Peace Corps Volunteer has a near-death story. For David Macaray, supplementing his diet of curry and rice with a ball of opium did the trick.
But not to worry. Had he died, he wrote, “Our mothers and fathers would have received the obligatory telegram from the State Department: ‘Dear Parent: [stop] Your son ate opium, passed out, and set house on fire. [stop] He is deceased. [stop] Details to follow.”
Fifty years later, one wonders if Macaray, in a fit of nostalgia, ingested a bit of opium while organizing this sometimes heartbreaking but mostly hilarious book. Because it’s not really a …
by Gary Brumback / March 22nd, 2017
A dear lawyer friend of mine for nearly 60 years recently posted a Facebook comment lamenting President Trump’s new, tightened immigration policy, saying that “immigration made America great.” My wife and I will be visiting him and his wife not long after this essay is published. It is, in effect, a long response to his lament, but I am leaving out here any elaboration on what I will also say to him, “Jim, face it, America has never been great.”
The land yet named “America,” after first being set afoot by voluntary immigrants thousands of years earlier, was subsequently touched for …
This is What Democracy Looks Like
by Keith Harmon Snow / March 22nd, 2017
The United States and its allies have embarked on a dangerous path of aggression against the government of North Korea and its allies China and Russia.
As usual, the western propaganda system presents a near unified front showing how horrible and atrocious the North Korean government is purported to be, and how murderous and ruthless and amoral their intentions are purported to be, and how their military objectives and missile programs — now allegedly targeting the “free” world–are out to dominate the rest of the world, starting with their deadly missiles being launched against the United States and our ally Japan. …
'Just The Facts, Ma'am'
by Media Lens / March 21st, 2017
So what is objective, impartial journalism?
The standard view was offered in 2001 by the BBC’s then political editor, Andrew Marr:
When I joined the BBC, my Organs of Opinion were formally removed. ((Marr, The Independent, January 13, 2001.))
And by Nick Robinson describing his role as ITN political editor during the Iraq war:
It was my job to report what those in power were doing or thinking… That is all someone in my sort of job can do.’ ((Robinson, ‘”Remember the last time you shouted like that?” I asked the spin doctor, The Times, July 16, 2004.))
‘Just the facts, …
Part 2 of a 2-part series
by Ricardo Vaz / March 21st, 2017
Mural at the Communist Party headquarters in Lisbon
The European Union is in turmoil. Years of crisis and brutal austerity have had terrible social consequences, especially in peripheral countries. In Portugal a change of government after the 2015 legislative elections brought an end to the previous troika-imposed austerity and even a reversal of some policies. But structural problems persist due to the nature of the EU and its mechanisms, particularly the single currency. To discuss the political situation in Portugal, the consequences of entering the single market and …
by Kathy Kelly / March 20th, 2017
This week at the Voices for Creative Nonviolence office in Chicago, my colleague Sabia Rigby prepared a presentation for a local high school. She’ll team up with a young friend of ours, himself a refugee from Iraq, to talk about refugee crises driven by war. Sabia recently returned from Kabul where she helped document the young Afghan Peace Volunteers’ efforts to help bring warmth, food and education to internally displaced families living in makeshift camps, having fled the Afghan War when it raged near their former homes.
Last year Sabia had been visiting with refugees in “the Calais Jungle,” who …
An Era Ends in Ecuador: Forward or Back?
by James McEnteer / March 20th, 2017
On April 2 Ecuador will choose a new president. For the first time in a decade, Rafael Correa’s name will not be on the ballot. After ten years in office, Correa is stepping down from the presidency and, however temporarily, stepping away from politics.
The two candidates, Lenin Moreno and Guillermo Lasso, have radically different agendas. Moreno is Correa’s former vice president and designated successor. He would continue Correa’s center-left social programs for the poor and the infrastructure, despite the country’s ongoing economic crisis. Lasso, a banker, has pledged to reduce taxes, cut spending and return the country to its …
Part 1 of a 2 Part Series
by Ricardo Vaz / March 20th, 2017
Mural at the Communist Party headquarters in Lisbon
The European Union is in turmoil. Years of crisis and brutal austerity have had terrible social consequences, especially in peripheral countries. In Portugal a change of government after the 2015 legislative elections brought an end to the previous troika-imposed austerity and even a reversal of some policies. But structural problems persist due to the nature of the EU and its mechanisms, particularly the single currency. To discuss the political situation in Portugal, the consequences of entering the single market and …
by Stansfield Smith / March 20th, 2017
With the hullabaloo about Trump and fascism, it is useful to review Hitler’s first months in power to get a sense of a real fascist regime.
Hitler came to power January 30, 1933, Trump on January 20, 2017, making easy a chronological comparison of their lead ups to power and their first months in power. The comparison shows how silly and hysterical it is to claim Trump represents fascism.
Hitler did not take power by entering into the primaries of a German version of the Republican Party. In complete contrast to Trump, he built, controlled, and ran under the banner of his …
by David Macaray / March 20th, 2017
With apparently nothing more challenging to do with its time, the UN, since 2012, has been publishing an annual list of the happiest countries in the world. The document is cheerfully titled, “The World’s Happiness Report.” Not surprisingly, its 2017 findings place Norway at the head of the pack, followed closely by last year’s winner, Denmark.
Although such lists are always going to be accused of being grossly subjective or unfairly skewed, the six broad categories in which citizens of 154 countries were asked to assess themselves are: caring, freedom, generosity, honesty, income, and good governance.
The 2017 top ten countries, all …
by Alison Weir / March 20th, 2017
Dear Israeli Government:
You’ve recently banned foreigners who support boycotts against Israel or Israeli settlements from being allowed to enter Israel – even Jewish foreigners, a first for the self-proclaimed Jewish state After all, your “Law of Return” has allowed (and encouraged) Jewish foreigners to freely immigrate to Israel, even as multitudes of Palestinians have been banned from returning to their homes.
People throughout the Western world have objected in outrage to your new law, particularly Jewish Westerners who have family and connections in Israel from whom they’ll be cut off in retaliation for their political positions.
Critics, even some who oppose boycotting Israel …
Han Kang’s Human Acts and the Gwangzu Uprising
by Christy Rodgers / March 19th, 2017
South Korean author Han Kang has written two short novels translated into English in the past five years. In a time of global social movements for liberation like the mid-20th century, they would doubtless have been considered part of the literature of socio-political engagement. In the dyspeptic early 21st century, in the Age of Consequences that is now dawning, they are instead examples of what I would call a “literature of mourning.” What they are mourning for is the ever-less tenable idea that humanity is engaged in an irreversible process of triumph over its most destructive qualities.
Booker Prize winner The …
Latin America, the Middle East, and Ukraine
by James Petras / March 19th, 2017
Over thirty year ago a savvy Colombian peasant leader told me, “Whenever I read the word ‘peace accords’ I hear the government sharpening its knives”.
In recent times, ‘peace accords’ (PAs) have become a common refrain across the world. In almost every region or country, which are in the midst of war or invasion, the prospects of negotiating ‘peace accords’ have been raised. In many cases, PAs were signed and yet did not succeed in ending murder and mayhem at the hands of their US-backed interlocutors.
…
by Binoy Kampmark / March 18th, 2017
The rain pours with torrential fury in north Queensland, opening up with ominous welcome as it slices through layers of stifling humidity. But the fury is also being registered in the rag like bleating sheet known to locals as the Bullie, that beacon of local sentimentality that noisily proclaims its voice.
Another creature in the vast enterprise known as the Murdoch empire, this paper does the bidding of fossil fuel interests in the state. Where there is a mine to exploit, an interest to advance, the Townsville Bulletin will be there, heavily armed, for the next mud wrestle with environmentalists.
This wrestling …
by Yves Engler / March 18th, 2017
Is the NDP establishment scared to have party members discuss Canada’s international posture?
At the party’s first leadership debate last weekend there wasn’t a single foreign policy question despite a host of contentious recent party positions on international affairs.
Certainly at a time when the mainstream media is giving prominence to militarist voices, many members would be keen to hear the four candidates’ positions on military spending. The party’s 2015 platform said an NDP government would “meet our military commitments by maintaining Department of National Defence budget allocations.” In addition to backing Stephen Harper’s budget allocations, the NDP aggressively promoted the …
by Denis A. Conroy / March 18th, 2017
Alternativism has given alternative media something to think about in America. The new regime in Washington DC has activated a veritable tsunami of grieving voices spitting hatred at their ‘populist’ billionaire President as he commences to re-shuffle his deck of cards. The new boss-man tweets his own superlatives in the small hours of the night revealing his indifference to the superlative-ridden cant of his predecessors. The ‘new broom’ possesses its own brand of cant which is currently being fed into an alternative lexicon…and it sure has lots of snap, crackle and pop. But what is it recycling?
The election of the …
by Paul Haeder / March 18th, 2017
Because the tribe is its members, the tribe is what its members want it to be—nothing more and nothing less.
? Daniel Quinn, Beyond Civilization: Humanity’s Next Great Adventure
The shape of my life is the daily intersections of the people I have come to integrate into part of my total life clan – sources as journalist, people in academia who have inspired me, students, the places in my mind from countless travels out of this culture, USA, and the many I have worked with as both instructor and social worker. And many more.
The foundation of my “man lost of tribe” …
by Graham Peebles / March 18th, 2017
Poverty blights the lives of billions of people throughout the world: in developing countries, where it is acute, and industrialised nations, where it’s hidden but growing. It rises out of social injustice, makes exploitation and abuse inevitable, brings death and disease, robs people of opportunity and dignity, feeds anger and resentment.
Much like the rubbish that litters the streets of our cities, the poor, destitute and hungry are swept out of sight. Their existence is an embarrassment to politicians and sits uncomfortably within the shiny materialistic image promoted by cities and countries eager to attract ‘inward investment’.
As more jobs become obsolete …
by Nozomi Hayase / March 17th, 2017
WikiLeaks dropped a bombshell on the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. Code-named “Vault 7”, the whistleblowing site began releasing the largest publication of confidential documents that have come from the top secret security network at the Cyber Intelligence Center. Long before the Edward Snowden revelations, Julian Assange noted how “The Internet, our greatest tool of emancipation, has been transformed into the most dangerous facilitator of totalitarianism we have ever seen.” He …
by Gary Brumback / March 17th, 2017
America’s churches, synagogues and mosques can be thought of as places of business as well as worship. Individually and collectively they are Religion, Inc. and not really all that different from Corporations, Inc. This short essay makes some sweeping generalizations that nevertheless should be self evident about the commonalities between the two entities.
Both are places of worship. Both have leaders. Both depend on “Mother” government. Both have never seen a U.S. declared or undeclared war they didn’t start, promote, or defend. Both have brick and mortar pyramids. Both make rules for their members. Both indoctrinate. Both peddle.
Places of Worship
Both entities …
The Diabolical Business of Global Public Relations Firms
by Peter Phillips / March 17th, 2017
The expansion of public relations and propaganda (PRP) firms inside news systems in the world today has resulted in a deliberate form of news management. Maintenance of continuous news shows requires a constant and ever-entertaining supply of stimulating events and breaking news bites. Corporate media are increasingly dependent on various government agencies and PRP firms as sources of news.
The PRP industry has experienced phenomenal growth since 2001. In 2015, three publicly traded mega PR firms—Omnicom, WPP, and Interpublic Group—together employed 214,000 people across 170 countries, collecting $35 billion in combined revenue. Not only do these firms control massive wealth, they …
by Ramzy Baroud / March 15th, 2017
“We must look back twenty-five years to realize how far Israel has fallen in world support,” wrote famed Jewish scholar, Harvard sociologist, Nathan Glazer in 1976.
In the last forty years since Glazer wrote his piece, which was uncovered and transmitted by Philip Weiss, Israel’s global support has fallen much further. The country that once appealed to both United States’ capitalism and the Soviet Union’s socialism is now militarily powerful but, otherwise, politically isolated on the international stage.
The misleading perception that Israel is a ‘beacon of light’ among nations has worn off. Worse, the last time this phrase was uttered …
by Rick Sterling / March 15th, 2017
Hacking and “leaking” have become major news items. Are the leaks good or bad? The answer depends on the nature of the leak. Are the leaks exposing crimes or covering them up? Are they for or against the public good?
Following are some famous leaks or disclosures that have done good.
Beginning in 1969, Daniel Ellsberg started xeroxing the Vietnam war analysis known as the Pentagon Papers. Two years later the secret documents were finally ready and published for the first time. This disclosure of classified information allowed the public to learn about the reality of what was going on in …
by Chris Wright / March 15th, 2017
In a world becoming more atomized and misanthropic by the day, where it seems sometimes that you have only to be a raving degenerate in order to achieve fame and power—witness Donald Trump and Steve Bannon, or, in a different way, Milo Yiannopoulos (whose degeneracy, though, has partly caught up with him)—it is useful to be reminded of the other side of human nature. The institutions of modern capitalism happen to reward depravity, first and foremost in the economic sphere, but since the maturation of mass society generations ago, in the cultural sphere as well. One is constantly confronted, therefore, …
by Ricardo Vaz / March 15th, 2017
President Hugo Chavez
“Journalists” who want to write fake news about Venezuela, or about any other country or group that dares to stand up to US imperialism, only need to follow this simple recipe:
Choose one or more countries/groups opposed to US imperialism
If available, have a former official, now being paid by the US government, make the accusations
Season well with doses of “war on terror” and/or “war on drugs”
Sprinkle with opinions of “experts” who work in DC think tanks or US-funded NGOs
While this looks like …
by Jonathan Cook / March 15th, 2017
Taha Muhammad Ali is an unlikely dramatic hero. His arms shake with age and infirmity, his legs occasionally buckle, and he often appears lost on stage, as if adrift in a vast expanse of sadness. But for an hour the story of this Palestinian poet has a vice-like hold on our attention and our hearts.
The one-man show “Taha” receives its English-language premiere on Wednesday at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington DC. It offers not only a rare chance to learn about one of Palestine’s finest poets, but provides a visceral account of what it was like …
by Ellen Brown / March 15th, 2017
The Canadian plan also helps Canadians live longer and healthier than Americans. . . . We need, as a nation, to reexamine the single-payer plan, as many individual states are doing.
— Donald Trump, The America We Deserve (2000)
The new American Health Care Act has been unveiled, and critics are calling it more flawed even than the Obamacare it was meant to replace. Dubbed “Ryancare” or “Trumpcare” (over the objection of White House staff), the Republican health care bill is under attack from left and right, with even conservative leaders calling it “Obamacare Lite”, “bad policy”, …
by Gary Brumback / March 15th, 2017
Note that the title begins with an indefinite article for there are many roots of evil, but the one most invasive and destructive is America’s corpocracy. It is the mother root with two branches that are slowly snuffing out America and the world with it. Those two branches are corporate America and government America. This essay is about the first, corporate America, and specifically, evil corporate leadership, defined here as profoundly immoral, socially irresponsible, and harmfully consequential behavior.
There are many scholarly theories of leadership, but neither a scholar nor theory is needed, just ordinary common sense to define leadership. It …
by Yves Engler / March 15th, 2017
The corporate media presents Russia as militaristic but ignores Canada’s invasion of that country.
100 years ago today a popular revolt ousted the Russian monarchy. Enraged at Nicholas II’s brutality and the horror of World War I, protests and strikes swept the capital of Petrograd (Saint Petersburg. Within a week the czar abdicated. Later in the year the Bolsheviks rose to power in large part by committing to withdraw from the war.
The English, French and US responded to the Bolshevik’s rise by supporting the Russian monarchists (the whites) in their fight to maintain power. Six thousand Canadian troops also invaded. According …
