Latest articles
by Edward S. Herman / July 8th, 2017
It has been amusing watching the New York Times (Times) and its fellow mainstream media (MSM) cohort express their dismay over the rise and spread of “fake news.” They take it as an obvious truth that what they provide is straightforward and unbiased fact-based news. They do offer such news, but they also provide a steady flow of their own varied forms of genuinely fake news, often in disseminating false or misleading information supplied them by the CIA, other branches of government, and sites of corporate power. An important …
by John Andrews / July 8th, 2017
It was recently reported that Hawaii may be the first US state to introduce Universal Basic Income (UBI). Given that it’s generally a good idea to be deeply suspicious of anything that any capitalist government does, perhaps this piece of news is not quite as hopeful as it may appear.
The idea of UBI has been around for quite a long time. It is, for example, a core policy of the Green Party in England and Wales. The Greens call it “Citizens’ Income”, and propose that it should replace most forms of state benefit, and be payable to every citizen …
by Pedro Aibéo / July 8th, 2017
The following is an interview by Jana Turk (from Moniheli) to Pedro Aibéo, on Direct Democracy, Demarchy, political activism and Architectural Democracy.
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Jana Turk: in your opinion, what are the best ways of participating and influencing?
Pedro Aibéo: The good and bad thing concerning your question is that there is no magic formula. There are many unpredictable ways of having a voice in the decision-making processes. It can be associated with the originality of it, the quality of one’s argument or simply due to perseverance. In my view, the …
by Felicity Arbuthnot / July 8th, 2017
I think most people who have dealt with me, think I’m a pretty straight sort of guy, and I am.
— Tony Blair, BBC “On the Record”, 16th November 1997.
On 30th November last year, Michael Gove, currently UK Environment Minister, pretty well unloved by swathes of the population whatever Ministry he heads, declared at the post-Chilcot Inquiry debate in Parliament regarding Tony Blair’s role in dragging the UK into a monumental tragedy for which history will not forgive: “History, I think will judge him less harshly than some in this House do.” Deciding whether or not to illegally invade Iraq was …
by Graham Peebles / July 7th, 2017
The existence of nuclear weapons is an ugly symbol of the violent consciousness that plagues humanity. Despite tremendous technological advancements, developments in health care and wonders of creative expression, little of note has changed in humanity’s collective consciousness: Tribalism, idealism and selfish desire persist, negative tendencies that under the pervasive socio-economic systems are exacerbated and encouraged. People and nations are set in competition with one another, separation and mistrust is fed, leading to disharmony, fear and conflict.
Such engineered insecurity is used as justification for nations to maintain a military force, and in the case of the world’s nuclear powers, arm …
by Shawgi Tell / July 7th, 2017
On July 4, 2017 the National Education Association (NEA), the nation’s largest teachers’ union, issued a policy statement on charter schools.
The lengthy statement begins with the oft-repeated erroneous claim that charter schools “were initially promoted by educators who sought to innovate within the local public school system to better meet the needs of their students.” On the real origin of charter schools, see:
The Untold History of Charter Schools. April 27, 2017
Podcast: The Origin of Charter Schools. September 13, 2016
This point on the origin of charter schools is not a minor one because many sources uncritically repeat it …
Loux the Vintage Guru in We are Dandy by Rose Callahan and Nathaniel Adams
by T.P. Wilkinson / July 7th, 2017
Thomas Carlyle wrote, “A dandy is a clothes wearing man, a man whose trade, office and existence consists in the wearing of clothes.” ((Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Resartus, 1821.)) Perhaps Carlyle, in his single most difficult and at the same time profound work, was by no means disparaging. After all Carlyle’s book, the title of which means “tailor retailored” presents an entire philosophy of clothes.
The Oxford English Dictionary conjectures that the word “dandy” may be a shortening of the word “jack-a-dandy”, in use between the 16th and 18th centuries, whereby “dandy” in the 18th century meant exquisite, swell. North Americans are …
Ideology of the Ruling Class
by James Petras / July 7th, 2017
Throughout the US and European corporate and state media, right and left, we are told that ‘populism’ has become the overarching threat to democracy, freedom and … free markets. The media’s ‘anti-populism’ campaign has been used and abused by ruling elites and their academic and intellectual camp followers as the principal weapon to distract, discredit and destroy the rising tide of mass discontent with ruling class-imposed austerity programs, the accelerating concentration of wealth and the deepening inequalities.
We will begin by examining the conceptual manipulation of ‘populism’ and …
by Kim Petersen / July 7th, 2017
Following a successful ICBM test by the Democratic Republic of Korea (DPRK, also referred to as North Korea), United States president Donald Trump behaved in what he considers an unpresidential fashion and took to twitter:
North Korea has just launched another missile. Does this guy have anything better to do with his life? Hard to believe that South Korea…..
….and Japan will put up with this much longer. Perhaps China will put a heavy move on North Korea and end this nonsense once and for all!
“[T]his guy” is obviously a reference to the supreme leader of the DPRK, Kim Jong-un. …
by Margaret Flowers / July 6th, 2017
2017 is the make or break year for the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Seven years in, the flaws of the ACA are clear – tens of millions are still without health insurance, premiums and out-of-pocket costs are rising and causing people to either avoid and delay care or go into debt, and the US continues to rank poorly in health outcomes. There is one way to fix the ACA, and I call it the Private Extraction.
What are we to do?
The Republicans are seeking a way to keep their promise …
by Rick Sterling / July 6th, 2017
Western media and Democratic Party politicians have made a major campaign accusing Russia of “meddling” in the U.S. election, colluding with and helping Trump win the Presidency. The charges began as “allegations” but now are routinely asserted as facts. The Washington Post recently ran a long article claiming all the above plus saying the operation was directed by Russian President Putin himself and implying not enough has been done to “punish” Russia. The July-August 2017 edition of Mother Jones magazine features an article headlined “The Russian Connection: Collusion? Maybe. Active Enablers? Definitely. Trump Knew the Truth, but he …
by David Macaray / July 6th, 2017
With yesterday being the Fourth of July, I once again used the occasion to remind my young grandchildren of some of the things they need to know if they wish to consider themselves “informed citizens.”
Actually, me giving this lecture has become something of a family tradition. Excruciatingly tedious and self-righteous in many regards, but a tradition nonetheless. Grandpa talks, and the kids listen (or respectfully pretend to listen). I like to think that we’re all working off the premise that it’s never too early to begin an education.
Here are some of the things I’ve long insisted are important to know. …
by Robert Hunziker / July 6th, 2017
Pingos may sound cute, but they are not cute, even though they start out as small, kinda cute, mounds of earth. Rather, they are monsters from the depths. Whether pingos are threatening is a stimulating question that scientists are still trying to figure out. Pingos are suddenly popping up in the darnedest places!
Pingos are one more solid piece of evidence that global warming is a real threat to humanity. Global warming is quintessentially part of the Great Acceleration. Is the world ready?
Already, Russian scientists have identified 7,000 “alternative pingos” in Siberia. According to The Washington Post, “Russian Scientists Find 7,000 …
by Ralph Nader / July 6th, 2017
For his smallish stature, Amazon Boss Jeff Bezos has a booming, uproarious laugh. Unleashed during workdays, its sonic burst startles people, given it comes from as harsh and driven a taskmaster as exists on the stage of corporate giantism.
Is Bezos’s outward giddiness a worrisome reflection of what Bezos is feeling on the inside? Is he laughing at all of us?
Is Bezos laughing at the tax collectors, having avoided paying most states’ sales taxes for years on all the billions of books he sold online, thereby giving him an immediate 6 to 9 percent price advantage over brick-and-mortar bookstores, that …
by Paul Larudee / July 6th, 2017
On April 5, 2017, National Geographic released a preview of its film, Hell on Earth: The Fall Of Syria And The Rise of ISIS, by filmmaker Sebastian Junger and producing partner Nick Quested:
The film itself debuted on April 26, 2017, at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York and on the National Geographic channel on June 11. Junger and Quested persuaded NG to release the preview early, following the suspected chemical attacks in Syria on April 4.
There are, unfortunately, several problems with the footage in both the preview and the film, as well as with the claims made …
by Mathew Maavak / July 5th, 2017
The United States is a schizophrenic asylum of extreme paradoxes: While its internal politics reverberates with fake news-mediated recriminations, Americans yet find merit in the same disinformation machinery that facilitates false flags abroad.
The US is now threatening Syria over an imminent “chemical weapons attack” without offering a shred of proof to the international community. Then again, the last time the US resorted to due UNSC process had instead resulted in wars and mayhem that continue till today. The vial brandished by Colin Powell was found to contain nothing more than a concoction of fraudulent intelligence and mass-mediated hysteria …
A review of Hooper's War by Peter Van Buren
by Nozomi Hayase / July 5th, 2017
With the failure of the Democratic establishment, the crisis of liberal democracy is now seized by a new rise of power. The US empire with Trump as commander-in-chief has renewed its vow toward colonial domination. With nationalism and militarism in full swing, Trump’s America aims to radically alter the future of this country. His campaign slogan “make America great again” was a kind of historical revisionism, ignoring the deep oppression and inequality that runs beneath this nation’s history. From mass murder in the Middle East and the chaos of Libya to the destruction of Syria, along with conflicts with Russia …
"Trumpism" is Symptom of Decades-Long Imperial Arrogance
by Ramzy Baroud / July 5th, 2017
No matter how hard White House officials try, they cannot construct a coherent ‘Trump doctrine’ that would make sense amid the chaos that has afflicted US foreign policy in recent months.
However, this chaos is not entirely the making of President Donald Trump alone.
Since 1945, the United States has vied for total global leadership. The 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union, and the subsequent disintegration of the Eastern Bloc, gave it complete global hegemony.
The US became the force that stabilized and destabilized any region in the world, as it saw fit – which always served the interests of the US …
by Jonathan Cook / July 5th, 2017
Perhaps it was fitting that the most significant act of organized mass resistance by Palestinians to the occupation in many years was launched from behind bars. In April of this year more than 1,500 political prisoners began an indefinite hunger strike against their increasingly degrading treatment by the Israeli authorities. Some called it a prison “intifada,” the word Palestinians use for their serial efforts to “shake off” Israeli oppression.
Over the past five decades, Israel’s incarceration industry is reported to have locked away some 800,000 Palestinians, amounting to 40 per cent of the male population. At any moment, there are few …
Interview with Mariana Tsichli
by Ricardo Vaz / July 5th, 2017
Rally in Athens in support of OXI (“NO”) in the run-up to the 2015 referendum
The crisis in Greece has no end in sight. While the media cheered a recent agreement between the Syriza government and creditors, there is no escaping the reality of an unsustainable debt, a completely destroyed economy in which successive austerity programs have brought immense suffering to the Greek people. To better understand the current situation in Greece, and how it may develop from here, we have interviewed Mariana Tsichli, a lawyer and a …
by Seymour Hersh / July 4th, 2017
Retaliation: Tomahawk missiles from the “USS Porter” on the way to the Shayrat Air Base on April 6, 2017 (Quelle: picture alliance/Robert S. Pri/dpa Picture-Alliance / Robert S.)
President Donald Trump ignored important intelligence reports when he decided to attack Syria after he saw pictures of dying children. Seymour M. Hersh investigated the case of the alleged Sarin gas attack.
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On April 6, United States President Donald Trump authorized an early morning Tomahawk missile strike on Shayrat Air Base in central Syria in retaliation for what …
by Sophie Mangal / July 4th, 2017
Recently Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced his readiness to conduct a new military operation in the north of Syria to prevent the emergence of a Kurdish state there.
Turkey has already confirmed its seriousness on this issue by the recent air strikes carried out by Ankara at the positions of the Kurds and by continued armed clashes between the opposition sides. Moreover, Turkey has redeployed some of its armored units in the area of Azaz settlement.
In this regard, the Kurdish officials urged Assad and his partners to protect them from external threats. …
by Jonathan Cook / July 4th, 2017
There has been much disingenuous criticism of those, like me, who question why the western corporate media have studiously ignored the latest investigation by renowned journalist Seymour Hersh on Syria. Hersh had to publish his piece in a German newspaper, Welt am Sonntag, after the entire US and UK media rejected his article. There has still been no mention of his investigation more than a week later.
Those who support, either explicitly or implicitly, the meddling in Syria’s affairs by hostile foreign powers are, of course, delighted that Hersh’s revelations are being kept out of the spotlight. They don’t want every side …
by Kathy Kelly / July 4th, 2017
At an April, 2017 Symposium on Peace in Nashville, TN, Martha Hennessy spoke about central tenets of Maryhouse, a home of hospitality in New York City, where Martha often lives and works. Every day, the community there tries to abide by the counsels of Dorothy Day, Martha’s grandmother, who co-founded houses of hospitality and a vibrant movement in the 1930s. During her talk, she held up a postcard-sized copy of one of the movement’s defining images, Rita Corbin’s celebrated woodcut listing “The Works of Mercy” and “The Works of War.”
She read to us. “The Works of Mercy: Feed the hungry; …
by Chris Wright / July 4th, 2017
It’s always fascinating to observe ruling classes seemingly willfully destroying the conditions for their own future rule. History is black with the ashes of self-immolated wealthy classes, grim reminders of the autosarcophagous nature of infinite greed. In eighteenth-century France there was the parasitic aristocracy that shunted all responsibility for the kingdom’s finances onto the lower classes, thus setting the stage for the French Revolution. Today, there is the parasitic oligarchy that strips the lower and middle classes of everything but their labor-power and their debt, thus setting the stage for…revolution?
Let’s consider some of the remarkable methods the U.S. ruling class, …
by Ajamu Nangwaya / July 3rd, 2017
The controversy surrounding the May 19th unveiling of a bust of Jamaica’s first national hero and Pan-Africanist Marcus Mosiah Garvey on the Mona Campus of the University of the West Indies (UWI) has led some Garveyites and Pan-Africanists to call for the study and use of his philosophy in the service of African liberation.
Garveyites are up in arms about the Raymond Watson’s created bust of Garvey that bears no resemblance to the most common photographic (re)presentations of this exponent of African Nationalism and racial uplift.
Retired UWI professor and organic intellectual Carolyn Cooper captures mass sentiments on this bust …
Book Review: Ukraine in the Crossfire by Chris Kaspar de Ploeg
by T.P. Wilkinson / July 3rd, 2017
Let’s be honest. The only reason anyone in the West, perhaps with the exception of Germans, is interested in the Ukraine is because since the current state was carved out of the Russian Empire, the Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Poland following the Great War, it has been the focus of attacks on the Soviet Union and the Russian Federation. The number of states or countries where political instability is aggravated by ethnic, religious or nationality conflicts is great. The number of places that draw attention or better said are targeted for mass media attention is far smaller. This …
Destabilization by any means necessary
by Jason Hirthler / July 2nd, 2017
In the brilliant but flawed David Fincher film Fight Club, based on the book by Chuck Palahniuk, Tyler Durden’s (Brad Pitt) underground boxing club reconfigures itself into something called “Project Mayhem,” a skulking, surreptitious program to wreak havoc on the consumerist hive of corporate America. Typical projects included mandates to “destroy a piece of corporate art and trash a franchise coffee bar” in a single act and set skyscraper offices on fire to create a fiery smiley face when viewed from afar. Project Mayhem eventually has committee meetings for arson, assault, mischief, and misinformation. The overarching goal is to “break …
by Manuel Garcia Jr. / July 2nd, 2017
Bigotry lets stupid people feel powerful. They are bigots because they are greedy, and they are greedy because they are fearful. They are fearful because they are hollow, and desperate for their materialism and worship of power to fill the void of their lack of character, to mask their internal weakness with an illusion of external power.
In American politics: bigotry is allowed to shape the arguments, and money is allowed to control the voting. Hillary Clinton had the most well-deserved electoral defeat in American history; Donald Trump, the most undeserved win. It’s not Trump’s fault, the preference for TV over …
by Greg Maybury / July 1st, 2017
It has been a splendid little war, begun with the highest motives, carried on with magnificent intelligence and spirit, favored by that Fortune which loves the brave.
— US Secretary of State John Hay, defining the Spanish-American War of 1898, in a letter to Theodore Roosevelt, July 27 of that year, the war ushering in America’s Imperial era and unequivocally heralding its hegemonic ambitions.
…I’ve seen that we do not intend to free, but to subjugate [people]….[We’re there] to conquer, not to redeem. It should be our pleasure and duty to make people free, and let them deal with their own domestic …
