Latest articles
Signaling an End to a Western-dominated Era?
by Ramzy Baroud / January 25th, 2017
No, it was not just ‘another Middle East peace conference,’ as a columnist in Israeli Jerusalem Post attempted to depict the Paris Peace Conference held on January 15, with top official representations from 70 countries attending. If it was, indeed, just ‘another peace conference’, representatives from the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority (PA) would have attended as well.
Instead, it was a defining moment that we are likely to remember: as the one that has officially ended the peace process charade after 25 years.
In fact, if the Madrid Conference of October 1991 was the vibrant official start of peace …
by Anthony Tarrant / January 25th, 2017
My aching 2003 Toyota Matrix is finally at the mechanic’s for some major surgery. The kind only plastic can pay for. So I’m shut in, housebound – stuck inside with nothing to do but stream DemocracyNow’s coverage of the “March on Washington DC”. I’d planned to watch a bit of it anyway as some recourse to the pharmaceuticals I lack but badly require after bearing witness to the kabuki theater of a sparsely attended anointment of our 45th potentate the day before. Like my car, I’m badly in need of uplift.
All I’ve got is this near frozen bottle of Prosecco, …
by Kathy Kelly / January 25th, 2017
This morning, here in Minneapolis, I’ll learn whether six jurors believe beyond a reasonable doubt that Dan Wilson and I are criminals. The court case stems from an action protesting the execution of Jamar Clark, age 24, who died in the early morning of November 15, 2015 outside a north Minneapolis apartment complex. Two Minneapolis police officers, Mark Ringgenberg and Dustin Schwarze, were involved in the shooting. Jamar Clark died after a bullet was fired directly into his head. Several witnesses say that he was handcuffed and motionless when he was shot dead. The police officers have been cleared of …
A victory for world peace enabled by a warring president
by Ron Ridenour / January 24th, 2017
Tears flowed freely down my face as I told my partner that Chelsea’s imprisonment is commuted.
Contradictions galore! The jingoist nation’s most warring president just committed the one decent thing in his eight years of war-making against seven nations, conjuring up false enemies with competing capitalist states Russia and China, and harsh treatment against all the whistle-blowers during his contentious term.
During the US’s worst president’s first term, Chelsea Manning sent Wikileaks important secrets—secrets the world had every right to know—about how the US murdered and lied its way across Afghanistan and Iraq. Since then, Wikileaks’ initiator Julian Assange has been …
George H. Haddad
by Ralph Nader / January 24th, 2017
Ever wonder about the people who make our health care system work at a time when reports of greed, fraud, profiteering and harmful malpractice are rampant and remedies are not advanced?
I was recently reminded how hard these proficient and caring physicians, nurses and physician assistants are working day after day and how their commitment to patients and their profession receives so little recognition. The sad occasion for these reflections was the passing this month of Dr. George H. Haddad, an alert 101-year-old surgeon who had worked for many years in New York City’s public hospitals.
Growing up in Egypt, he graduated …
Future Battles with President Donald Trump
by Binoy Kampmark / January 23rd, 2017
Factionalism and fury are basic ingredients of the US Republic. Designed as a classic response to the lynch mob fantasy of direct democracy, and the weakness of unaccountable monarchy, those behind the US constitution contrived a select form of paternal snobbery: letting groups fight it out in the amphitheatre of politics. Such a battle would always adhere to certain demarcations of power along the separation of powers.
This was all well and good, bar one fundamental problem. The State blossomed and ballooned. Bureaucracy became both purpose and fetish, despite being opposed in a rhetorical way by various presidential administrations and politicians. …
by James Petras / January 23rd, 2017
The malady, common among political leaders who commit heartless crimes while craving popular adulation as heroes and misunderstood saints, is ‘Political Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy’ (PMSP).
PMSP best explains the pathologic drive of politicians and policy makers who inflict relentless, systematic mass destruction and then intervene in a most theatrical manner to save a few victims – thus drawing gratitude from the victim and public support for their ‘humanitarian intervention’ – ignorant of their fundamental role in creating …
by Stuart Jeanne Bramhall / January 23rd, 2017
Negroland is a memoir by theater and book critic Margo Jefferson about growing up in the American Negro aristocracy in the 1950s. Far more than a memoir, the book carefully chronicles the history of Black America’s elite professionals, academics and business people. For the most part these families are descended from the children of white slaveholders, from ancestors bought and freed by slavery-hating whites, from ancestors descended from free Negroes (non-slaves) or ancestors who bought their own freedom with hard work and cash.
These ancestors, in turn, used …
by Eric Walberg / January 23rd, 2017
The shock election of Donald Trump has thrust Canada into one of the most perilous periods of its existence. Our relationship with the United States, upon which so much of our security and prosperity depends, has never been more uncertain.
Canada’s staid liberal-conservative political map on most economic issues and even social issues has been relatively flat. Conservatives in Canada, like in the US, are what Trump supporters (really just Tea Party lite) call “cuckservatives” — cuckolded by the liberals on both economic and social issues (free trade, global warming, feminism, abortion, affirmative action, gaylib).
Canada just emerged from a nasty Conservative …
Israel has advanced plans to raze the village of 150 homes and replace it with a town for Israeli Jews
by Jonathan Cook / January 23rd, 2017
They came in their thousands, from across Israel and from occupied East Jerusalem, to bury Yacoub Abu al-Qiyan after Friday midday prayers. The small dusty valley at the heart of Umm al-Hiran village in the Negev desert turned dark with rows of worshippers. But Abu al-Qiyan’s body never materialised.By early afternoon, it was confirmed that the Israeli police had refused to release the corpse, two days after Abu al-Qiyan was shot dead during a pre-dawn raid to bulldoze his home and those of another dozen families.
A sword has hung over the heads of Umm al-Hiran’s 1,000 inhabitants for many months, …
by Andre Vltchek / January 23rd, 2017
Philippines, for decades a limping invalid, poor and suffering from countless ailments, is now suddenly finding itself at the vanguard, reshuffling the entire Asia Pacific, sending Western imperialists packing.
In Manila, where the US used to roam unopposed, now Russian warships are calling on goodwill and symbolic visits.
On January 6, 2017, Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte boarded the Russian anti-submarine combat vessel Admiral Tributs, chatted with its officers, and then declared, loudly and clearly: “Friends, long live! That’s from the heart; I hope you can come back more often.”
Definitely, Russians will be happy to come back!
Associated Press (AP) reported on January 6:
Defense …
by Adnan Al-Daini / January 21st, 2017
Are we witnessing the unfolding of the last chapter of the Tories’ plan to privatise the NHS? The first step was taken by the Tory government under Margaret Thatcher in its National Health Services and Community act in 1990. This act introduced the internal market and competition, instead of cooperation, within the NHS. The Health and Social Care Act of 2012 pushed the marketisation and outsourcing of health and social care to private health providers to new levels. Allyson Pollock, professor of public health research and policy at Queen Mary College, University of London, in an …
How and Why He Sundered the First International
by Dave Fryett / January 20th, 2017
bakunin and marx from russia with love
I recently read Wolfgang Eckhardt’s The First Socialist Schism, and what I discovered disturbed me. A friend had told me that in it Karl Marx accused Mikhail Bakunin of wanting to be the dictator of the First International. The slapstick incongruity of the charge piqued my interest, and left me wondering if perhaps it were Groucho and not Karl who was its author. What I learned, however, was anything but amusing.
I knew that there had been a clash between …
....and so does the Palestinian leader (again)
by Stuart Littlewood / January 20th, 2017
The Middle East peace conference in Paris was the usual farce with Israel and Palestine, the subjects under discussion, both staying away. Netanyahu called the talks “useless” and Abbas was off opening an embassy in Vatican City and meeting the Pope while 70 nations gathered to take part in another peace pantomime. It ended with a pathetic declaration urging both sides to “officially restate their commitment to the two-state solution”.
Is this what the much-trumpeted 2-state solution looks like?
Everyone knows Netanyahu and the Israeli regime have never wanted peace. Land-grabbing and ethnic cleansing is what they do, so the jackboot of …
by Kim Petersen / January 20th, 2017
The bona fide war criminal Barack Obama commuted the unjust prison sentence of political prisoner and courageous whistleblower Chelsea Manning (along with Oscar López Rivera and others). It is a big deal. But does it mitigate the numerous heinous crimes of Barack Obama?
First, there are plenty of other political prisoners who are still languishing in the American gulag. Leonard Peltier and Mumia Abu-Jamal spring immediately to mind. Also there are still 45 people incarcerated at Gitmo, a facility that Obama promised to close on Day …
by Ben Swann / January 19th, 2017
by Scott Thomas Outlar / January 19th, 2017
The Russians are everywhere! Prepare! Rip out your hair! Didn’t you hear? The Russians are here!
And the Big Orange Toad God Emperor of Man is being pulled like a puppet by their strings. It seems so likely! The CIA loves you. The Military Industrial Complex loves you. Big Pharma loves you. Pop another pill. Go back to fucking sleep.
Meanwhile, Candidate B received massive campaign funding from Saudi Arabia and other repressive regimes, while her opponent was vilified and attacked constantly by foreign leaders all across the world …
by Yves Engler / January 19th, 2017
The media’s foreign affairs motto often seems to be ignorance is bliss. The Toronto Star, for instance, has devoted significant attention to the Trudeau government’s plan to dispatch 600 soldiers to Africa, but it has largely ignored the most relevant information.
In a recent installment of its “Should Canada go to Africa?” series the Star quoted former Royal Military College board member Jack Granatstein saying, “wherever we go in Africa is not where we should be going” and Canada’s contribution will “achieve nothing.” Countering Granatstein’s Afro-pessimism, the story cited Royal Military College professor Walter Dorn’s blanket support for UN missions since “the image of the peacekeeper is key to the Canadian …
by Jonathan Cook / January 18th, 2017
Here is another image (copyright: Keren Manor) that conveys the situation of Palestinians – these ones Palestinian citizens of Israel – more completely than any words. The man on the ground is Ayman Odeh, a member of the Israeli parliament, the head of the Joint List, the third largest party in the parliament, and the highest-ranking Palestinian politician in Israel.
Photo Credit: Keren Manor
Israeli police have just shot him with rubber-tipped bullets, not once but twice – including to the face. Odeh is one of the least confrontational politicians among Israel’s large Palestinian minority, a …
by Ajamu Baraka / January 18th, 2017
With the establishment of the period when the nation would celebrate the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, no one could have anticipated the possibility that one day that period would converge with the date when a “first black president” would be turning over executive power after serving two terms. But in just a few days Barack Hussein Obama will conclude an ironic but historic chapter in the ongoing story of this strange and dangerous place called the United States of America.
The overlap of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day and the constitutionally mandated turnover of power by the …
What Can We Do Together About It?
by Shepherd Bliss / January 18th, 2017
I no longer feel as safe as I used to.
How about you? Do you think that the worlds in which you live are becoming more dangerous? What threats might you perceive? What could enhance your safety?
What do you, dear reader, do when you don’t feel safe? Reach out to friends? Or do you deny those feelings, retreat, and try to hide under the covers? What threatens your feelings of security?
Fear seems to be growing in the United States, even in our beloved Sonoma County, Northern California, where I have lived and worked on a farm in the countryside for the …
by Chris Time Steele / January 18th, 2017
We just released this new song before the inauguration, that twists Wyclef’s classic Gone Till November. The song is called About November produced by Giuseppe.
The song is in solidarity with antifa movements, Women’s March on Washington, refugee communities, undocumented communities, LGBTQ communities, disabled communities, Muslim communities, Black Lives Matter, Idle No More, #NODAPL
https://soundcloud.com/timeraps/time-about-november-prod-giuseppe/s-5EBVR
by Binoy Kampmark / January 17th, 2017
It should be a point of some delicious reflection for peace activists who have fought for decades against the nature of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. It brought the US deep into West European affairs, turning European states into garrisons. It involved the stationing of nuclear weapons. It compelled member states to go to war if the security of any one was threatened or breached.
Donald Trump, however, has little time for it. Selecting the Bild newspaper and the Times of London as forums to expand on his views on NATO, the President-elect decided to shake the tree that much more.
America …
by Stansfield Smith / January 17th, 2017
It should be a scandal that leftists-liberals paint Trump as a special threat, a war mongerer – not Obama who is the first president to be at war everyday of his eight years, who is waging seven wars at present, who dropped three bombs an hour, 24 hours a day, the entire 2016. Here is some of the worst of this anti-Trump hysteria propagated by mouthpieces for liberal Democrats — calling Republicans “fascist” is a favorite left-liberal sport.
It is probably true Trump represents “a regime of grave danger,” an “immoral peril to the future of humanity and the …
by Gary Leupp / January 17th, 2017
2700 U.S. soldiers backed by a column of tanks are rolling across the central lowlands of Poland, in an operation dubbed “Atlantic Resolve.” It is, according to the Guardian, “the biggest deployment of US troops in Europe since the end of the cold war.”
The first troops have crossed the German border and arrived in Zagan, the Silesian town where the Nazis held POWs during World War II, and will advance east towards the Belarus border. (Poland shares a border with Russia — the Baltic enclave of Kaliningrad — to the north, but is separated from the Russian mainland by Belarus …
What Elor Azaria Taught Us about Israel
by Ramzy Baroud / January 17th, 2017
For some, the ‘manslaughter’ conviction – following the murder by Israeli army medic, Elor Azaria, of already incapacitated Palestinian man, Fattah al-Sharif – is finally settling a protracted debate regarding where Israelis stand on Palestinian human rights.
Nearly 70 percent of the Israeli public supports calls to pardon the convicted soldier who is largely perceived among Israelis as the “child of us all.”
Israeli leaders are also lining up to lend their support to Azaria and his family. These sympathetic politicians include Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and ministers Naftali Bennett and Miri Regev, among others. Leading opposition leaders are also …
by Edward Curtin / January 17th, 2017
Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
— Martin Luther King, Strength to Love, 1963
As Martin Luther King’s birthday is celebrated with a national holiday, his death day disappears down the memory hole. Across the country – in response to the King Holiday and Service Act passed by Congress and signed by Bill Clinton in 1994 – people will be encouraged to make the day one of service (from Latin, servus = slave). Etymological irony aside, such service does not include King’s commitment to protesting a decadent system of racial and economic injustice …
by Jonathan Cook / January 16th, 2017
Forget the empty posturing of world leaders in Paris yesterday. This photo tells us what the Israel-Palestine “conflict” is really about.
Imagine for a second that the little boy – how old is he, eight, nine? – is your son, trying to adjust his keffiyeh because it keeps falling over his eyes and he can’t see anything. Imagine your small son surrounded by masked Israeli “soldiers”, or what looks more like a Jewish militia than an army. Imagine that the boy is likely soon to be bundled into the back …
by Radmilo Bozinovic / January 16th, 2017
The curtain on the long and sad quadriennial spectacle of “democratically” reselecting American executive government is presumably falling with the approaching formal inauguration of the 45th President of the U.S. While past experiences — along with objective fatigue from a grotesquely distended process — would suggest a relatively “business-as-usual” transfer of power within closed elite circles, the controversy and acrimony surrounding the incoming Trump administration persist.
Much of this is currently played out in conjunction with Martin Luther King Day, highlighted by protests against the crude, divisive and often racist rhetoric of the president-elect himself and yet many other reactionary elements …
by Robert Hunziker / January 16th, 2017
The waters of the Pacific off the California coast are transparently clear. Problem is: Clear water is a sign that the ocean is turning into desert. ((National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NOAA))
From Alaska to Central America, and beyond, sea life has been devastated over the past three years like never before. Is it Fukushima, or nature running its own course, or some kind of perverse wrath emanating from global warming? For a hint, scientists refer to the lethal ocean warming over the past few years as “the Warm Blob.”
After all, global warming hits the ocean much, much harder than land. …
