The most striking feature of recent elections is not ‘who won or who lost’, nor is it the personalities, parties and programs. The dominant characteristic of the elections is the widespread repudiation of the electoral system, political campaigns, parties and candidates.
Across the world, majorities and pluralities of citizens of voting age refuse to even register to vote (unless obligated by law), refuse to turn out to vote (voter abstention), or vote against all the candidates (boycott by empty ballot and ballot spoilage).
On Thursday of last week (22/6/17) the United Nations General Assembly voted overwhelmingly by 94 votes to 15, with 64 abstentions, on a motion advanced by Mauritius seeking a referral to the International court of Justice (ICJ) for an advisory opinion on the Chagos Islands.
One suspects that the majority of any given population in Europe, Asia, Africa, the Americas and Australasia would have trouble identifying where the Chagos Islands might be, let alone the significance of the vote.
It was, however, a vote of considerable significance and to understand why, and the identity of the 15 naysayers, a …
On 29 June 2017, the Congolese Solidarity Campaign (CSC), a grassroots human rights based social movement will once again hold its Un-Independence Day event in a form of panel discussion. It will take place at the Diakonia Centre — 20 Diakonia venue, Durban, South Africa.
While the rest of the country celebrates 57 years of “Independence,” we the impoverished, the marginalized and the oppressed will be mourning the absence of this independence that our mothers and fathers fought for so hard. We will say as long as the history of our country is still characterized by civil wars, political instability, insecurity, …
Here in south Louisiana we are, to a degree, surrounded by levees. For those not familiar with them, levees are manmade earthen barriers that are designed to protect the inhabited areas of the region from rising waters and storm surges. They are not a new strategy, historical accounts tell us of levees being erected by the first European settlers to the area three centuries ago. European styled settlements were always challenged by the climate and ecology of the bayou land.
Levees, locks, canals, and pumping stations are all modern …
The French president Emmanuel Macron, in an interview with El Pais (22 June 2017), said that the removal of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad from power is no longer a priority in resolving the Syrian crisis.
“France no longer sees the displacement of Assad as a priority for anything as well as I do not see who could become his legitimate successor,” Macron said.
President Emmanuel Macron (center), in an interview with El Pais. Jean-Christophe Marmara
The French president also called on countries to concentrate on …
"Beyond urgent... on verge of a catastrophe... last chance to save Christian presence in Holy Land"
by Stuart Littlewood / June 23rd, 2017
The National Coalition of Christian Organizations in Palestine (NCCOP) has just issued a final plea for help in the form of an open letter to the World Council of Churches and the ecumenical movement. It is signed by over 30 organisations in Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza and can be read in full here.
The problem is well known to everyone who’s paying attention. The letter recaps for us:
We are still suffering from 100 years of injustice and oppression that were inflicted on the Palestinian people beginning with the unlawful Balfour declaration, intensified through the Nakba [Palestinian ‘catastrophe’] and the …
Unsurprisingly, and not unreasonably, many people are looking for heads to roll as a result of the terrible fire that destroyed Grenfell Tower in London. It killed as yet unknown numbers of people, at least seventy nine so far. It was a fire that should never have happened. An excellent documentary about the tragedy by Panorama revealed that for the last few years many warnings had been given to the owners of the building, Kensington and Chelsea Council, warnings that fire precautions were inadequate and a tragedy waiting to happen, warnings which were all but totally ignored. At this …
If a guy does something bad to someone else, but then complains later when another person does that same thing to him, what do we say? Stop being a hypocrite. Either you change tact or you got what you deserved.
Does the same moral logic apply to countries?
Purported Russian meddling in US, French and other elections has received significant attention recently. “Russian meddling abroad underscores need for electoral reform in Canada” declared a Rabble.ca headline this week while CBC noted “Russian attempts to infiltrate U.S. election systems found in 21 states: officials”. An earlier Globe and Mail headline …
Charred, lifeless and brutal, the hollowed out remains of Grenfell Tower in west London screams of the human agony inflicted when, on 14th June, the building became an inferno.
Whilst there are various theories about what triggered the fire – dodgy wiring, a faulty fridge, a gas leak – what is clear is that this disaster was not an accident, it was the consequence of a social housing policy dating back to the 1980’s, systematic neglect, social injustice and the ongoing war being waged on the poorest members of British society by the Conservative government. And this time the result is …
Three-term Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, a member of both the Armed Services and Foreign Affairs committees, has proposed legislation that would prohibit any U.S. assistance to terrorist organizations in Syria as well as to any organization working directly with them. Equally important, it would prohibit U.S. military sales and other forms of military cooperation with other countries that provide arms or financing to those terrorists and their collaborators.
Contrary to what the US government and corporate media have conditioned us to associate only with North Korea, a Korean in the South finds herself subject to prosecution for violating the South’s National Security Law because she seeks to move to the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea [DPRK].
Kim Ryon-hui, 48, a North Korean, kept in the South against her will for the past six years, has been demanding repatriation, having been tricked by a “defection” broker to come to South Korea. South Korea’s ironically named Ministry of Unification maintains that Kim’s repatriation is not allowed by domestic law.
A new investigation reveals the presence of clandestine prisons in the south of Yemen, run by the United Arab Emirates with the help of American interrogators.
There is a small courthouse from the ‘British era’, standing right in the center of Hong Kong. It is neat, well-built, remarkably organized and some would even say – elegant.
Earlier this year I visited there with an Afghan-British lawyer, who had been touring East Asia for several months. Hong Kong was her last destination; afterwards she was planning to return home to London. The Orient clearly confused and overwhelmed her, and no matter how ‘anti-imperialist’ she tried to look, most of her references were clearly going back to the adoptive homeland – the United Kingdom.
Five months into Trump’s presidency, dropping the largest non nuclear bomb in history on Afghanistan and 525 years into the colonial system of what bell hooks deems “imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy” more people are finding themselves and each other to resist exploitation and destruction amidst rising fascism and ecological destruction. Although Wells Fargo, Chase, and multinationals continue to fund the leaking pipeline on indigenous land in North Dakota, people continue to organize.
After a tumultuous week which brought a number of nasty shocks and alarms, including the shooting down of a Syrian jet by the United States military in Syria, spiraling tensions, and fears of direct US-Russian confrontation in the Middle East, on Wednesday evening yet another horror story jumped off the screen and out of the evening news on German public radio to slap me in the face with the full force of its repellent vulgarity. The most infamous and despicable living war criminal, America’s Henry Kissinger, was once again being honored and treated as a wise elder statesman by a …
Increasing U.S. military strikes against Assad-allied forces in Syria threaten to undermine the fight against ISIS and spark direct conflict with Russia and Iran, says Ben Norton of Alternet‘s Grayzone Project.
Just recently I went through a destabilizing, confusing, painful, shocking and infuriating experience of being stripped of my rehire rights as an adjunct college instructor. For those who do not know the term “road scholar” or “freeway flyer” is another way of saying that I cobble together a livelihood traveling from college to college. Adjuncts are like intellectual day laborers: the last hired and the first fired, with few, if any, protections or recognition.
I have taught at this school for 13 years. I have worked hard to get my guarantee of 3 classes each semester, have some …
The United States Ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, seems to be championing a single cause: Israel.
When Haley speaks about Israel, her language is not merely emotive nor tailored to fit the need of a specific occasion. Rather, her words are resolute, consistent and are matched by a clear plan of action.
Along with Haley, the right-wing Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu is moving fast to cultivate the unique opportunity of dismissing the United Nations, thus, any attempt at criticizing the Israeli Occupation.
Unlike previous UN ambassadors who strongly backed Israel, Haley refrains from any coded language or any attempt, however …
The Western world has slowly been forced to realize that the old cornerstones of society are no longer a given. Liberal market economy, representative democracy and the shift of influence away from citizens up to a global and unreachable level makes for a drop in confidence.
The new political currents have led the rulers of the West to react with alarm. Finally, there has begun to be an understanding that the left-right-scale no longer applies. It has been replaced by a people-elite scale or a close-large scale. But instead the debate is dominated by the fear of populism. News reporters and …
An idiot American pilot shot down a Syrian fighter that was attacking ISIS, thus confirming that Washington is not fighting ISIS, as Washington claims, but is protecting ISIS, its agent sent to Syria by Obama and Hillary to overthrow the Syrian government. General Michael Flynn revealed on a TV interview that Obama and Hillary had, over his objection as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, made the “willful decision” to send ISIS to Syria.
Washington’s pretense that Washington is fighting ISIS, rather than supporting it, is the excuse for Washington’s illegal presence in the Syrian conflict. Russia and Iran are in …
Qatar has been making waves for some weeks now, and in the deluge, it has also strung along a few companions. One is the UK bank Barclays, which prided itself for having avoided a government bailout in the financial crisis of 2008. In the ensuing chest thumping, executives could claim to have spared the British taxpayer the need to fork out for private deals gone wrong.
In a statement by the bank, it was revealed that the UK Serious Fraud Office had filed charges “in the context of Barclays’ capital raisings in June and November 2008.” The statement from the …
As far as Europe’s far right is concerned, Trump is a loser.
He is the nemesis of an intensifying European far right movement that has suddenly turned sour. Like the Black Plague of mid-14th century Europe, whatever happens, stay away from him! Poll numbers as well as voting for far right candidates throughout Europe drop with a hair-trigger when candidates associate with Trump.
Conversely, Trump may be the best that ever happened to establishment policies, like neoliberalism. Unwittingly, he’s pulling neoliberalism out of a very deep hole; i.e., a failure to perform for the public at large both economically and socially. As …
Why does gratuitous violence also attract the "compatible Left"?
by T.P. Wilkinson / June 20th, 2017
For years there have been two films from Hollywood that have drawn innumerable fans, especially among the “cultivated” (compatible) Left. These are Aliens with Sigourney Weaver and The Silence of the Lambs with Anthony Hopkins and Jody Foster. I have had to endure excerpts but have never been able to overcome the revulsion in order to actually sit through either film in its entirety. This was, of course, long before I recognised that I cannot watch “war films” anymore either, although I grew up on a steady fare of John Wayne, Robert Mitchum and all the other usual suspects who …
A massive fire engulfed Grenfell Tower in the early hours of June 14th. Grenfell Tower is a 24-storey building of public housing flats in the North Kensington area of London. Over 600 people were believed to be inside the building and there are fears that the death toll, currently at 58, will rise to over a 100. This incident generated a wave of public anger over ignored safety warnings, an inadequate response from authorities, and most of all about the (housing) policies that safeguard …
Cypriot press reported last week on a large joint Israeli-Cypriot military drill.
The following Israeli video publicises an elite Israeli commando brigade engaged in aggressive military routines around Cyprus’ Troodos Mountain range.
How did this came about? How did the Cypriots, who are known to support the Palestinian cause, become a province of the Israeli empire?
An Israel-Europe gas pipeline deal is the answer.
In the beginning of April we learned about a proposed 2,000 kilometer subsea pipeline connecting gas fields located offshore in Gaza …
Mass Incarceration, Prison Labor in the United States
by John Stanton / June 20th, 2017
The Federal Prison Industries (FPI) under the brand UNICORE operates approximately 52 factories (prisons) across the United States. Prisoners manufacture or assemble a number of products for the US military, homeland security, and federal agencies according to the UNICORE/FPI website. They produce furniture, clothing and circuit boards in addition to providing computer aided design services and call center support for private companies.
UNICORE/FPI makes its pitch for employing call center support personnel to firms thinking about off-shoring their call center functions. The logic is that, hey!, they may be prisoners, but it’s keeping the jobs in the USA that matters. …
This week, in New York City, representatives from more than100 countries will begin collaborating on an international treaty, first proposed in 2016, to ban nuclear weapons forever. It makes sense for every country in the world to seek a legally binding ban on nuclear weapons. It would make even more sense to immediately deactivate all nuclear weapons. But, by boycotting and disparaging the process now underway, the U.S. and other nuclear armed nations have sent a chilling signal. They have no intention of giving up the power to explode, burn and annihilate planetary life. “The United States is spending $1 …
A review of Naomi Klein’s No Is Not Enough: Resisting Trump’s Shock Politics and Winning the World We Need
by Robert Jensen / June 20th, 2017
Naomi Klein understands that President Donald J. Trump is a problem, but he is not the problem.
In her new book, No Is Not Enough: Resisting Trumps Shock Politics and Winning the World We Need, Klein reminds us to pay attention not only to the style in which Trump governs (a multi-ring circus so routinely corrupt and corrosive that anti-democratic practices seem normal) but in whose interests he governs (the wealthy, those he believes to be the rightful winners in the capitalist cage match), while recognizing the historical forces that make …
“I’ll never forget that day—it was the day of his mother’s funeral. I’d heard the news of Kennedy’s death on the TV and I’d gone into the living room, where the adults were consoling one another, to let everyone know. I was fourteen at the time and the first person I told was my grandfather, who didn’t hear a word I said, and who, when I repeated myself, pulled away from me and said, ‘I don’t care.’ Next I told my father the awful news, ‘Dad’ I said excitedly, ‘The President’s been shot and they got the guy who did …
Although I voted for the Labour Party in the recent general election, I’m not disappointed they didn’t win the thing. The explanation for this apparent contradiction is easy to see.
Britain is a mess – the inevitable consequence of almost forty years of capitalist “austerity”. And as a direct consequence of thirty years of craven, mostly illegal warmongering in the Middle East and North Africa, we have helped the US create the worst global refugee crisis since WW2, and fashion a monster in the shape of Islamic terrorism that now stalks the streets of Britain. Add to all this the fact …
