In January 2016, a medical doctor noted his surgery, the Brighton Homeless Healthcare centre, had seen 21 deaths last year alone. His figures also include 15 deaths in 2013 and 15 in 2014. Winter is fast approaching and preventive actions need to be explored. In July 2016, doctors have claimed the state of emergency accommodation in the city could contribute to a rise in homeless deaths. The doctor noted all the deaths were preventable.
The doctor said: “It’s a tragedy really that we have people dying on our streets. It’s looking like homelessness is only going to get worse over the …
We live in a country where the Hamburglar can freely walk down the street, but Ronald McDonald can’t.
— Twitter post by ‘BH’, Oct 12, 2016
They were always perfect as a foil to the criminal and dysfunctional outsider, with smile grotesque, garish mask, and nose obscenely red. The clown, in history, has often proved to be a fairly revolting creature, acting as both channel and code.
Through history, a vicious clown is an external manifestation of broader ill, a figure whose smile is discomforting rather than reassuring. Fun, in short, had nothing to do with it. What mattered was …
Ding-dong the witch is dead. Take, as evidence, Donald Trump’s profanity-laden celebration of rape, the tape of which has just surfaced (and is already being followed by more of the same) If that won’t drive a stake through his genuinely iniquitous heart, nothing will. How dead? Metaphorically, he’s as dead as Moammar Gaddafi whom Hillary gleefully dispatched with the words, “we came, we saw, he died.” Judged by the rather manic look on her face she sure got a kick out of it. But when the thrill was gone, Hillary left behind a dangerous, leaderless mess, rife with violence and terrorism. …
(Why and How These Theories thrive within Post-Industrial Post-Modern Bourgeois-State-Capitalism)
by Michel Luc Bellemare / October 21st, 2016
The theory of conceptual-commodity-value-management is the theory that prices, values and wages are based on what an individual, an entity and/or an enterprising alliance can get away with. That is, the arbitrary price, value and wage that these controlling individuals, entities and/or enterprising alliances are able to command and realize on the open market through various network exclusionary and collusionary practices. In fact, a market by definition is the product of an enclosure or privatization of a commodity, service and/or profession in the hands of a select few so as to manufacture an artificial demand in order to manufacture a …
by The Real News Network (TRNN) / October 21st, 2016
Madison Common Council Alderperson Rebecca Kemble speaks out after her arrest while working as a legal observer during the growing resistance to the Dakota Access Pipeline.
I’ve written often about our Iraqi refugee friend and his oldest son from Baghdad. I will call them Mohammed and Ahmed. They made the torturous flight last year from Baghdad to Kurdistan and then across Turkey. They were on three Greek islands before permission was granted them to continue their trip. They passed through several countries at the time the borders were being closed. They arrived finally at their destination in late September 2015. Finland.
Having lived with this family in Baghdad, I have the faces of the wife and each of the children before me. Below is a photo of …
I’ve been patiently sitting by my AM radio listening for information regarding what I should do about the emergency. The voices between the crackles and pops are saying things about the national emergency of Trump and Clinton, but politicians come in, politicians go out. The truth is politicians are always changing. I can say with the utmost confidence this is the innate ecology of democracy letting the submerged asphyxiated gurgles of freedom bubble to the surface as to achieve maximum greatness.
However, the emergency I’m most worried about is the state of our natural ecological systems where things like climate change, species extinction, and generally our ability to function on …
Forging certainty in the dust of Middle Eastern plays of power is an impossibility its participants never wish to accept. The imminent defeat of Islamic State forces in Mosul – deemed imminent, at least, by the forces assaulting the stronghold – provide a suggestion that there will be greater stability in the region. Nasty fundamentalist forces will be banished, paving the way for a peaceful order.
This naïve, even outrageous suggestion, is fairly standard. A new force of contention, backed by a slew of shady forces and finances, will come to the fore, only to then vanish and reconstitute itself as …
On War and Nukes, Clinton is “Much Scarier” Than Trump
by John V. Walsh / October 20th, 2016
On the issue of war and nuclear weapons, it is actually Hillary’s policies which are much scarier than Donald Trump who does not want to go to war with Russia. He wants to seek modes of working together, which is the route that we need to follow not to go into confrontation and nuclear war with Russia.
A glance at the front page of the New York Times or the editorial page or many other pages on any day at all gives a sense of the environment in which we find ourselves. …
Adam Curtis’ new, near three-hour documentary HyperNormalisation, showing on BBC iplayer, is being garlanded with predictable praise from liberal commentators. As ever, Curtis joins the dots in interesting, and sometimes compelling, ways. But HyperNormalisation also continues a trend by Curtis of using his insights to present a deeply conservative, disempowering and ultimately false impression of the world.
His recent films have been premised on the notion that our societies are driven almost exclusively by a struggle of ever-more complex ideas, often dangerous ones, and only marginally by economic forces. As it has become ever harder to find plausible solutions to an …
Unknown to most people, the White Helmets brand was conceived and directed by a marketing company named “The Syria Campaign” based in New York. They have managed to fool millions of people. Walt Disney might have made a great movie about this: unarmed volunteers fearlessly rescuing survivors in the midst of war without regard to religion or politics. Like most other “true life” Disney movies, it is 10% reality, 90% fiction.
Due to its success, Western countries are dedicating ever larger amounts of funding. The White Helmets were the 17 October Time magazine cover story. Nikolas Kristof …
Two items of interest have tickled the airwaves and triggered some commentary over the last few days. The first was an ABC Four Corners program covering the fate of refugees in the detention facility on Nauru, known euphemistically as a “processing centre” costing $35.3 million a year to the Australian tax payer.
The Four Corners program was, in turn, informed by a significant Amnesty International report, aptly titled Island of Despair, which was released on Monday night. That report examined the rather ghoulish extent the Australian government, with its Nauru satraps, has been going about the business of “processing” boat …
by The Real News Network (TRNN) / October 19th, 2016
For one thing, the leaks show prohibitions on requiring foreign companies to employ local workers, says Deborah James, director of International Programs at the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, D.C.
When I was growing up in Jamaica, Queens, New York, I played hardball in the sandlots with a pitcher who was small in size but more than made up for it with his determination to become a top-notch pitcher and lead-off hitter. It was only when I was about 18 years old (we played together for ten years) that Jesse told me about the techniques he used as a hitter and pitcher. Up until I was 18 we often played against each other so he had to keep his trade secrets to himself. As a lead-off …
This week we bring you a special sedition on the anniversary of one of the most bad-ass and sophisticated revolutionary organizations in the United Snakes… The Black Panther Party.
We kick things off by setting the stage in AmeriKKKa during a time of weekly riots in urban centers in response to police killings of black youth. After the break we look at the brutal repression unleashed on the Panthers by J. Edgar Hoover and his FBI program COINTELPRO. We close things up with a special interview with former panthers JoNina Abron-Ervin and Lorenzo Komboa-Ervin about …
During most of the past two decades Washington has aggressively launched military and economic wars against at least nine countries, either directly or through its military aid to regional allies and proxies. US air and ground troops have bombed or invaded Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, and Lebanon.
More recently Washington has escalated its global economic war against major economic rivals as well as against weaker countries. The US no longer confines its aggressive impulses to peripheral economic countries in the Middle East, Latin America …
The House of Commons Home Affairs Select Committee has just issued its report ‘Antisemitism in the UK’ in response to concerns about “an increase in prejudice and violence against Jewish communities” and “an increase in far-right extremist activity”. It was also prompted by allegations of antisemitism in political parties and university campuses.
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The following observations are based on the report’s Conclusions and Recommendations, which is as far as most people will read.
Israel is an ally of the UK Government and is generally regarded as a liberal democracy.
Hardly. It is no friend of the British people. Nor is …
How California Can Save $10 Billion on a $9 Billion Loan
by Ellen Brown / October 18th, 2016
School districts are notoriously short of funding – so short that some California districts have succumbed to Capital Appreciation Bonds that will cost taxpayers as much is 10 to 15 times principal by the time they are paid off. By comparison, California’s Prop. 51, the school bond proposal currently on the ballot, looks like a good deal. It would allow the state to borrow an additional $9 billion for educational purposes by selling general obligation bonds to investors at an assumed interest rate of 5%, with the bonds issued over a five-year period and repaid over 30 years. …
It was a tough week for Romeo Dallaire, Louise Arbour, Gerald Caplan and other liberal Canadian cheerleaders of Africa’s most bloodstained dictator.
Last Tuesday’s Globe and Mail described two secret reports documenting Paul Kagame’s “direct involvement in the 1994 missile attack that killed former president Juvénal Habyarimana, leading to the genocide in which an estimated 800,000 people died.” In other words, the paper is accusing the Rwandan leader widely celebrated for ending the genocidal killings of having unleashed them.
Another front-page story the following day quoted Marie-Rose Habyarimana, who was studying here when her father was assassinated and …
A heroin epidemic is on fire all across America. Heroin deaths shot up from 1,779 in 2001 to 10,574 in 2014 as Afghan opium poppy fields metastasized from 7,600 hectares in 2001 (when the War in Afghanistan began) to 224,000 hectares currently.
The Taliban outlawed opium in Afghanistan in 2000 and within a year it was all but gone, demonstrating that Afghan opium can be eradicated quickly for any administration that chooses to do so. Afghanistan is, by far, the number one source globally of both opium and heroin.
In 2014, 7,554 tons of raw opium were produced worldwide, including 6,400 tons …
Reading the “liberal” press has become a truly Orwellian experience. What was true yesterday is a lie today. What was black today will be white tomorrow. Two reports on today’s front page of the Guardian could easily be savage satire straight from the pages of the novel 1984.
Report one: The Guardian provides supportive coverage of the beginning of a full-throttle assault by Iraqi forces, backed the US and UK, on Mosul to win it back from the jihadists of ISIS – an assault that will inevitably lead to massive casualties and humanitarian suffering among the civilian population.
Rodrigo Duterte, the outspoken President of the Philippines, has by now most likely joined the concealed, prestigious and permanent hit list of the Empire.
The hit list is very long; it has already been long for several decades. One could easily lose count and get confused: how many personalities have been marked and secretly condemned to death? How many of them actually died?
It reads like a catalogue of illustrious world leaders: from Patrice Lumumba (Zaire), Mohammad Mosaddegh (Iran), Hugo Chavez (Venezuela), Sukarno (Indonesia), Juvénal Habyarimana (Rwanda), Salvador Allende (Chile) to Muammar Gaddafi (Libya), Al-Basheer (Sudan) and Fidel Castro (Cuba), to name …
From the time when energy became a state ambition and the central, almost paranoid platform of security, its messiness became apparent. Energy reserves needed to be controlled; corrupt regimes with access to such resources needed to be placated, or, if not, overthrown and replaced by compliant puppet governments. The world of energy is one governed by invasion, acquisitive brutality and resistance.
Even within countries less susceptible to regime change via energy exploitation, the tendency to politicise the issues surrounding access and acquisition remain. Cleaner, more sustainable options are deemed unpatriotic, draining traditional industries and jobs. The sense that the climate change …
The first principle of the rule of law in a constitutional democracy is constitutional supremacy: when in conflict with federal or provincial legislation constitutional legislation is paramount and the other legislation is void.
Most determinatively section 109 of the Constitution Act, 1867, enacts that provincial Crown land remains subject to the Indian interest in such land as remains unceded by the Indians to the Crown, by nation-to-nation treaty.
The Royal Proclamation of 1763 is constitutional legislation. It enacts that the Indian Nations live under our “Protection” and may not be “molested or disturbed” in the possession of any land whatsoever that has …
“What did he say?” not merely “When did he say it?”
by John V. Walsh / October 15th, 2016
What was the purpose of this whole thing (the war on Iraq)? Hundreds and hundreds of young people killed. And what about the people coming back with no arms and legs? Not to mention the other side. All those Iraqi kids who’ve been blown to pieces. And it turns out that all of the reasons for the war were blatantly wrong. All this for nothing. (Emphasis, JW)
Tuesday’s House of Commons debate in Britain was filled with the hollow anguish of impotence, fresh with statements about Russian war criminality tossed about like freshly made blinis. Ever easy to point to, Russian support for a regime which Western powers wish to remove, at the expense of further catastrophe, has accelerated the ruthless disposition of the conflict. Peace talks have died in utero; the agents’ actions lack conviction and they pursue, instead, the moral outrage that only impotence engenders.
Hence the scenes of pent up indignation in the Commons, with members running up flags of desperation against a force …
A document produced last December by the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office, headed: “UK Non-Humanitarian Aid in Response to The Syria Conflict”, makes interesting reading. The British government, it states, has spent “over £100 million” since 2012, “working closely with a range of actors” to “find a political solution to the conflict and prepare to rebuild the country in the post Assad era.” (Emphasis added.)
“Our efforts … include providing more than £67 million of support to the Syrian opposition.”
One of the “actors” to benefit from hefty chunks of British taxpayers moneys is the Syrian National Coalition whose website …
As Western outrage erupts over the relentless destruction of Aleppo and its people, why is there no similar clamour for a halt to the more prolonged pulverising of Gaza and the continuing slaughter of civilians there?
The UK’s Permanent Representative to the UN, Matthew Rycroft, said the other day: “Russia’s actions in recent weeks have exposed just how hollow Russia’s commitment to the political process is. Today we have seen that commitment for what it really is; a sham….
“I echo the words of the Archbishop of Canterbury who described the destruction of Aleppo as the absolute contempt for the human …
In evaluating Walter Rodney one characteristic stands out. He was a scholar who recognised no distinction between academic concerns and service to society, between science and social commitment. He was concerned about people as well as archives, about the workplace as well as the classroom. He found time to be both a historian and a sensitive social reformer. ((Cited in Winston McGowan, “Walter Rodney the Historian” The Journal of Caribbean History, 39, 2 (2005): 129.))
— International Scientific Committee, UNESCO General History of Africa
Dr. Walter Rodney was a revolutionary intellectual, socialist, Pan-Africanist and organizer who made a significant contribution to the …
The desert town of Agadez in Niger is currently best known as a stop on the people-smuggling route between West Africa and Europe, but it is about to take its place in the geopolitical stage as the American military has announced it will build a drone base on its outskirts. Reportedly costing U.S. taxpayers as much of $100 million, the base is just the latest American play for military supremacy in Africa — Niger is the only country in that volatile region of the continent prepared to risk allowing Washington a base for its MQ-9 Reapers, the …
