Latest articles
by Ron Forthofer / July 26th, 2017
There is a Senate bill, along with a companion bill in the House, working its way through Congress with strong bipartisan support, that poses a significant danger to free speech. One would think this bill would be a big deal but, surprisingly, the bill has not received much coverage in the mainstream media.
Fortunately the American Civil Liberties Union is alert to efforts undermining free speech. Thus, in a July 20th article on the ACLU website about S. 720/H.R. 1697, the Israel Anti-Boycott Act, Bryan Hauss, Staff Attorney, wrote:
The bill would amend existing law to prohibit people in the United States …
A Review of Mugambi Jouet's Exceptional America
by William Hawes / July 26th, 2017
Exceptional America: What Divides Americans from the World and from Each Other is the type of book where you have to laugh in order not to cry when reading. Mugambi Jouet systematically explains how Americans are born and raised into an anti-intellectual culture where harsh incarceration practices, Christian fundamentalism, gun violence, and a plutocratic economic structure controls the lives of average citizens.
Jouet, a lawyer, reveals in the introduction of the book the strict, Old-Testament style of the US judicial system, where his client is faced with a sentence far longer than it should be. When Jouet appeals to reason …
Using our Unique Powers of Conscious Creativity to Find Joyous Harmony in Diversity
by Bob Anschuetz / July 26th, 2017
Having now completed my allotted span of “three-score years and ten,” I’ve undertaken to create at least for my own satisfaction an answer to the query once posed by the main character in a popular 1966 British movie. Played by the actor Michael Caine, he asks himself plaintively, “What’s it all about, Alfie?” In old age, I ask myself the same question, though it is rooted in a far broader perspective than is Alfie’s questioning about his tawdry love life.
Before it’s too late, I want to try to establish for myself–perhaps in living proof of Freud’s theory regarding “sublimation” of …
Resettlement, the UN and the US-Australia Deal
by Binoy Kampmark / July 25th, 2017
Having poured scorn and not an indecent amount of bile upon the refugee deal between the Obama administration and Canberra last year, US President Donald Trump was never going to make things easy for the resettlement of various groups held on Nauru and Manus Island.
Repeated emphasis has been made on the issue of how the anti-terrorism regime outlined in the USA Patriot Act disqualifies potential entrants, given the sheer scope of how “support” is defined. This is particularly applicable to the Tamils, numbering some 100, who might have been sympathetic to the cause of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil …
The long-discussed plan could see most of Gaza’s population end up in Sinai, alongside millions of Palestinian refugees
by Jonathan Cook / July 25th, 2017
Gaza has been the focus of intense talks behind closed doors in recent weeks as disquiet has risen among Arab states at the humanitarian crisis unfolding in the coastal enclave.
Palestinians there are enduring a scorching summer with barely a few hours of power a day, after Mahmoud Abbas’ Palestinian Authority (PA) has refused to finance essential services. Abbas is trying to weaken his Hamas rivals who rule Gaza and assert his own authority.
In the background, an ominous deadline is rapidly approaching. Gaza is expected to be “uninhabitable” within a few years, according to United Nations forecasts. Its economy has been …
by Manuel Garcia Jr. / July 25th, 2017
The fundamental flaw in human society is a lack of moral character. While certainly there are many people who have good moral character, they are too few to dominate the aggregate behavior of homo sapiens. Selfishness dominates. It issues many lies to distract and manipulate human consciousness to its advantage. Lies are the sound and literature of theft from the public good. Selfishness justifies itself with the excuses of “belief” and “moral principles,” which are attempted disguises for its denial of truth. People believe what they want to believe; facts don’t matter. Religions in particular, and often government systems, are …
One decent piece on climate change parsed and diced into Capitalism's Anti-Thinking -- Uninhabitable Minds
by Paul Haeder / July 25th, 2017
Human Evolution of the Mind Is Like a Hind Teat on a Texas Bull…
Here we are witnessing The Great Collective Amnesia of the Western World…. The great Forgetting, from the political crass class (total), intellectual wanderers (not all, but mostly all) and the general public (most, and these huge blocks against intelligence follow from generation to next generation with a fluidity equal to the amount of information – mostly junk – exponentially increasing on the world wide web and the number eye gazes at the weekly sales worldwide a la eBay, Amazon.dot.steal and any other number of …
by Alton C. Thompson / July 25th, 2017
My starting point here may seem rather remote from the question posed in the title of this essay, but certain background subjects must be given attention before addressing that question.
Thorstein Veblen [1857–1929] closed his “Some Neglected Points in the Theory of Socialism” ((This article was published in 1891, in The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science.)) with this paragraph (p. 74):
Certainly, the fact that constitutional government—the nationalization of political functions—seems to have been a move in the right direction is not to be taken as proof of the advisability of forthwith nationalizing the industrial functions. …
All you need to know
by Ricardo Vaz / July 25th, 2017
With the Constituent Assembly elections due to take place on July 30th, the Guardian published a piece titled “Venezuela elections: all you need to know”. But instead of breaking through the fog of falsehood and misinformation that is typical of the mainstream media’s coverage of Venezuela, the Guardian comes up with another propaganda piece laden with lies, distortions and omissions. In this article we go through the Guardian’s piece, clarifying the falsehoods, adding the conveniently omitted information and questioning the whole narrative that is presented.
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What …
Is Israel Losing the Syria War?
by Ramzy Baroud / July 25th, 2017
Israel, which has played a precarious role in the Syrian war since 2011, is furious to learn that the future of the conflict is not to its liking.
The six-year-old Syria war is moving to a new stage, perhaps its final. The Syrian regime is consolidating its control over most of the populated centers, while ISIS is losing ground fast – and everywhere.
Areas evacuated by the rapidly disintegrated militant group are up for grabs. There are many hotly contested regions sought over by the government of Bashar al-Assad in Damascus and its allies, on the one hand, and the various anti-Assad …
People and Army Unite to Battle “ISIS”
by Andre Vltchek / July 25th, 2017
Andre Vltchek with military leaders in Marawi, Philippines.
Covering the recent battle for the city of Marawi on Mindanao Island in the Southern Philippines, the Western media has been grossly exaggerating unconfirmed reports and rumors. It has been spreading twisted information and ‘facts’.
At the beginning of July, I visited Mindanao as one of only a few foreigners allowed inside the besieged city of Marawi and to its surrounding area.
General Rey, head of Joint-Task-Force, Ranao …
by Binoy Kampmark / July 25th, 2017
It plays out as a horror story of law enforcement. A distress call to the Minneapolis police about activity taking place behind the house on Washburn Avenue, possibly a sound of intercourse, distress, or both, taking place after 11 during the night of July 15. “Hi, I’m, I can hear someone out back and I, I’m not sure if she’s having sex or being raped.”
The caller, Justine Damond, had been spooked by the commotion. She had called her fiancé in Las Vegas who had, in turn, insisted she call the police. When the officers arrived, an unsuspecting Damond approached …
by Linda Ford / July 24th, 2017
I am a retired history professor and historian of women, a socialist, and a radical feminist. I know what feminism is, and I know it’s being co-opted. What is feminism? How is it defined? Feminism is the belief in equality for women. But feminism is being used now for unrelated, or even opposite causes, like war, transgender bathrooms, anti-Russia hysteria and political opportunism.
Large crowds of women descended on Susan B. Anthony’s grave in Rochester, NY, on Election Day 2016. Anthony’s grave, in what I saw as a desecration, became completely covered with “I Voted” stickers. I was not surprised to …
by Robert Hunziker / July 24th, 2017
Now that the Great Acceleration dictates the biosphere with ever more and more intensity, sudden changes in the ecosystem are causing climate scientists to stop and ponder what’s happening to our planet, alike never before… hmm!
The Great Acceleration: “Only after 1945 did human actions become genuine driving forces behind crucial Earth systems.” ((J.R.McNeill/Peter Engelke, The Great Acceleration, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, London, 2014, pg. 208.))
Abrupt changes outside the boundaries of natural variability are signs of climate fatigue, Mother Nature overwhelmed, defeated, breaking down. It’s happening fast and faster yet mostly on the fringes of the ecosystem …
Racism, Poverty, Violence…
by Kim Petersen / July 24th, 2017
“Make America Great Again” was Donald Trump’s campaign slogan. It appeals to the people whose hearts beat with patriotic fervor. But what does such a slogan explicitly point out?
Syntactically, Trump is telling Americans that the United States of America is not great. A country can only become something again when it is currently not that something it seeks to recapture – in this case, that something is greatness. So currently the US is not great according to the mantra of Trump.
Two questions are raised by this?
1. When was America …
by Yves Engler / July 24th, 2017
Two weeks ago the worst fear of Canadian opponents of neoliberal ‘free trade’ agreements came true.
Surprisingly, there has been almost no reaction from the political parties, unions, and other organizations that warned these agreements would be used to undermine Canadian law, even though this is exactly what happened.
After David Kattenburg repeatedly complained about inacurate labels on two wines sold in Ontario, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) notified the Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO) that it “would not be acceptable and would be considered misleading” to declare Israel as the country of origin for wines produced in …
by Ellen Brown / July 24th, 2017
Illinois is teetering on bankruptcy and other states are not far behind, largely due to unfunded pension liabilities; but there are solutions. The Federal Reserve could do a round of “QE for Munis.” Or the state could turn its sizable pension fund into a self-sustaining public bank.
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Illinois is insolvent, unable to pay its bills. According to Moody’s, the state has $15 billion in unpaid bills and $251 billion in unfunded liabilities. Of these, $119 billion are tied to shortfalls in the state’s pension program. On July 6, 2017, for the first time in two years, the …
by Nayvin Gordon / July 23rd, 2017
The Republican Party prepares to violate the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution: Social Security — the 14th amendment and “odious debt”.
For decades the working people have been paying millions more than was needed into Social Security and for years the excess money has been borrowed by the government. Presently there is almost $3 trillion owed by the government to the Social Security Trust Fund. The Republican Party now controls the government and has a budget plan that will give less than was promised to millions of people who have paid excess into Social Security for years. ((New York Times, …
Social Justice Discourse and Ideology as Knowledge
by Julian Vigo / July 22nd, 2017
Implicit in the banking concept is the assumption of a dichotomy between human beings and the world: a person is merely in the world, not with the world or with others; the individual is spectator, not re-creator.
— Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1968)
As a scholar who has spent my professional life reading, writing, and teaching university students, I have come to realize how lucky I was to have been fully funded for my graduate studies and likewise received into departments around the world where my scholarship was welcomed by scholars from countries whose compatriots, when they immigrate to …
Book Review of Arundhati Roy's The Ministry of Utmost Happiness
by Vacy Vlazna / July 22nd, 2017
Of the roughly millions of novels published annually worldwide, Arundhati Roy is one of the rare maverick authors for whom justice and politics is integral to her art and to her identity. Her new novel, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, which I would describe as her summa injustica of India, has been criticised as “A Novel That Is Neither Creative Nor Fiction.”
Well, it is definitely outside the run-of-the-mill novel genre enjoyed by suburban book clubs, and you can thank the god of your …
by Stuart Littlewood / July 22nd, 2017
In a letter to a local newspaper about Brexit and the way prime minister Theresa May is handling it, I happened to mention in passing the Balfour Declaration, criticising her plans to celebrate the centenary “with pride” and invite Israel’s PM Netanyahu to the fun. This drew a sharp response from someone spouting the usual Israeli propaganda ‘facts’ and saying my attitude harmed the Jewish community worldwide.
The Balfour Declaration is a deadly serious subject. It is a cause of great horror and grief, of justifiable international anger, and a matter for profound regret. This is a right time and proper …
Lament in an Insane World: Stateless, Expelled Camels
by Felicity Arbuthnot / July 22nd, 2017
After his visit to the Kingdom in May, Donald Trump decided to back the Saudi-led blockade of tiny Qatar (2015 population 2.235 million, but just 313,000 citizens) imposed less than a month later.
The siege was also joined by Bahrain, Doha, the Maldives, the UAE – Abu Dhabi, Ajman, Dubai, Fujairah, Ras al-Khaimah, Sharjah and Umm al-Quwain. It was quickly pointed out that:
(The) US President has long history of lucrative investment deals with Saudi Arabia but few ties to the small Gulf nation.
Trump’s financial bounties from Saudi “… includes the purchase of tens of millions of dollars in Trump’s real …
by Kathy Kelly / July 21st, 2017
I come and stand at every door
But none shall hear my silent tread
I knock and yet remain unseen
— Nazim Hikmet, I Come and Stand at Every Door
On July 18, 2017, at a U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing focused on “The Four Famines: Root Causes and a Multilateral Action Plan,” Republican Senator Todd Young, a former Marine, asked officials present if ongoing war in Yemen could fail to exacerbate the catastrophe developing there – one of four countries, along with Southern Sudan, Nigeria, and Somalia, set to collectively lose 20 million people this year, one third the death toll …
by Graham Peebles / July 21st, 2017
This time of year Mediterranean beaches are the destinations of choice for many European holidaymakers; it’s also the beginning of the busiest time of year for the people smugglers based in Libya and elsewhere along the North African coast. July to October is their peak season — during this time in 2016 around 103,000 refugees were crammed into unsafe boats, often in the dead of night, and cast off into the Mediterranean Sea.
Some don’t survive the crossing. Whilst the number of migrants arriving at Europe’s back door may have decreased — from 205,858 in the first five months of 2016, …
by Binoy Kampmark / July 20th, 2017
Dusting away the must on a constitutional text may be a rare thing, but it should be a point of order for the elected officials of a country. Often, these contain laws that are irretrievably archaic, and resist change by virtue of being embedded in a document deliberated over in another age.
The one provision in the Australian Constitution that has received considerable attention of late is section 44, one unmistakably dull yet absolute in effect:
Any person who is under any acknowledgment of allegiance, obedience, or adherence to a foreign power, or is a subject or citizen or entitled to the …
by Stuart Jeanne Bramhall / July 20th, 2017
In From Global to Local: The Making of Things and the End of Globalisation, Finbarr Livesey challenges the common neoliberal claim that globalization is the be-all and end-all of global prosperity.
Livesey’s premise, which he supports with an impressive array of data, is that globalization peaked shortly after 2008 and the world economy is in a period of deglobalization. World trade is slowly declining as a percentage of GDP, and many companies who moved factories to the third world are improving their bottom line by reshoring them to the …
by John Stanton / July 20th, 2017
The very idea of freedom presupposes some objective moral law which overarches rulers and ruled alike. Subjectivism about values is eternally incompatible with democracy. We and our rulers are of one kind only so long as we are subject to one law. But if there is no Law of Nature, the ethos of any society is the creation of its rulers, educators and conditioners; and every creator stands above and outside his creation.
We should value those who solicit our votes by other standards than have recently been in fashion. While we believe that good is something to be invented, we …
by Yves Engler / July 20th, 2017
While few Canadians could find Zambia on a map, the Great White North has significant influence over the southern African nation.
A big beneficiary of internationally sponsored neoliberal reforms, a Vancouver firm is the largest foreign investor in the landlocked country of 16 million.
First Quantum Minerals (FQM) has been embroiled in various ecological, labour and tax controversies in the copper rich nation over the past decade. At the end of last year First Quantum was sued for US$1.4 billion by Zambia Consolidated Copper Mines Investment Holdings (ZCCM-IH), a state entity with minority stakes in most of the country’s mining firms. The …
by Bernard Marszalek / July 19th, 2017
Should capitalism be put in a museum?
If you think that’s a good idea, you should visit the Museum of Capitalism (MOC) in Oakland, California.
Some might object that this is an outlandish idea, that capitalism is hardly material for a museum in the way communism or apartheid may be. The Apartheid Museum, for your information, opens daily at 9am in Johannesburg. And if you happen to be in any number of Eastern Europe’s major cities, most likely you will find enterprising young people doing sardonic museum-without-walls tours of communist wastelands—the former industrial sites—like Nova Huta, the Russian built …
How Trump and Netanyahu pushed Palestinians into a Corner
by Ramzy Baroud / July 19th, 2017
Early October 2016, Misbah Abu Sbeih left his wife and five children at home and then drove to an Israeli police station in Occupied Palestinian East Jerusalem.
The 39-year-old Jerusalemite was scheduled to hand himself over to serve a term of 4 months in jail for, allegedly, trumped up charges of ‘trying to hit an Israeli soldier’.
Misbah is familiar with Israeli prisons, having been held there before on political charges, including an attempt to sneak into and pray at Al-Aqsa Mosque.
Al-Aqsa Mosque is part of a large compound known as Haram al-Sharif, which includes – aside from Al-Aqsa – …
