Louis XVI needed a revolution, Napoleon needed two historic military defeats, the Spanish Empire in the New World needed multiple revolutions, the Russian Czar needed a communist revolution, the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires needed World War I, Nazi Germany needed World War II, Imperial Japan needed two atomic bombs, the Portuguese Empire in Africa needed a military coup at home, the Soviet Empire needed Mikhail Gorbachev … What will the American Empire need?
I don’t believe anyone will consciously launch World War III. The situation now is more like the eve of World War I, when great powers were armed and …
A binding treaty to regulate the activities of corporations could provide a vital counterpoint to controversial free trade and investment agreements, with potentially radical implications for a new international political, economic and legal order.
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In the last week of October, civil society came another step closer to achieving a legally binding instrument on transnational corporations (TNCs) and other business enterprises with respect to human rights. Delegates from many large social movements and networks met alongside state representatives at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland, to further proceedings for an open-ended intergovernmental working group set up two years …
. . . the potential first female president represent[s] a purely cosmetic form of diversity that works against the structural changes that need to be made at every level of culture and politics to expose and depose a political class that has acted with impunity to promote policies that benefit wealthy donors and powerful multinational corporations.
— Professor Catherine Liu
Hillary Clinton is not responsible for the terrible policies of the Bush Administration, but she is responsible for following in lock-step with those policies during her tenure as Secretary of State under the Obama Administration.
— Robin D., Tits and Sass
Interest groups and lobbyists have been busy peddling their client’s interests since 1816 when Delaware manufacturer Isaac Briggs teamed up with his colleagues in an attempt to convince federal lawmakers to impose tariffs on the import of foreign made manufactures.
Alexis de Tocqueville, writing in his two volume set Democracy in America (1835, 1840), observed the unique American characteristic of banding together in civic and issue specific interest groups for the purpose of influencing lawmakers, regulators and public opinion at the local, state and national levels.
Congressional legislation to limit the influence of lobbyists in the US Congress and the …
As human beings, we are naturally social and creative. The inherent curiosity that drives us to innovate is ultimately a testament to the creative impetus that resides within all of us. And the richness and flexibility of human behavior, including our capacity for cooperation and adaptation, further allow us to envisage and create a world that far outstrips the current economic and political models many regard as immutable and take for granted. Consider the standard economic model of human behavior, which holds that we are naturally self-important, rational consumers, simply striving to achieve maximum individual utility.
This is undoubtedly what a majority of voters are thinking as Election Day draws near because they aren’t happy with their options: In a CNN/ORC poll, when asked “How enthusiastic are you about voting?” neither presidential nominee—Clinton or Trump—eclipsed even 40 percent. ((Bump, Philip. “Why You Should Panic/Rejoice Over that New Poll from CNN, Whomever You Support.” The Washington Post. September 6, 2016.))
This discontent is reflected in third party support—to the tune of seven out of every 100 voters (Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson has steadily polled at five …
Seven is a winning throw of the dice. But in our civil society, seven now signifies the multi-thong scourge, the whip used by the Western world as its instrument of punishment and, in response; seven signifies Nemesis and her sisters, the inescapable agents of the West’s downfall.
The seven scourges of the Western world are used against the people of Asia, Africa, Latin and North America. These whips are constructed, wielded and unleashed especially by the US and the UK.
We’re monitoring this closely. And, you know, I think, as a general rule, my view is that there is a way for us to accommodate sacred lands of Native Americans. And I think that right now the Army Corps is examining whether there are ways to reroute this pipeline in a way…. So—so, we’re going to let it play out for several more weeks and determine whether or not this can be resolved in a way that I think is properly attentive to the traditions of the first Americans….
— President Obama on the Now This News website, November …
Parliamentary supremacy in British law and politics is akin to the fetish of the union in the United States. Challenge it at your peril; question it to your misfortune. The point was tested, with rumbling consequences, by the May government in its latest Brexit stumble dealing with Britain’s painful and at times confused response to exiting the European Union.
The way Theresa May’s government has respected that referendum result so far is open to question. Behind closed doors, it has promised various versions of what it might do, when in truth, it may well not know what it is doing at …
All Hallow’s Eve has come and gone, and so has the day when the dead come back for a visit, but we’re not out of the dark woods of our self-inflicted nightmare yet. The days are still getting shorter, the nights longer, as we edge toward the spooky haunted house of a national election marked, more than any in my memory, by an overwhelming sense of dread.
The obsession with the Witches’ Sabbath in a culture as denatured, as stripped of meaningful and time-bound ritual as ours is something that seems particularly perverse to me these days. Cheesy decorations started going …
Julian Assange talks to John Pilger (FULL INTERVIEW)
by RT / November 5th, 2016
Whistleblower Julian Assange has given one of his most incendiary interviews ever in a John Pilger Special, courtesy of Dartmouth Films, in which he summarizes what can be gleaned from the tens of thousands of Clinton emails released by WikiLeaks this year.
Zionism has always seemed to me to be a mischievous political creed, untenable by any patriotic citizen of the United Kingdom.
— Lord Edwin Montagu
Show me one time where a Jew was persecuted in any country because of his religion…. It’s always their impact on the political, social, or economic customs and traditions of the community in which they settle.
— Benjamin Freedman
The latest anti-Semitism witch-hunt being conducted by the Zio-Inquisition in the UK is all hogwash if the statements of two leading Jews are to be believed.
One is the speech by successful Jewish businessman Benjamin Freedman at the Willard Hotel, Washington, …
Survival International has learned that an elephant-hunting safari operation jointly owned by a French billionaire has been implicated in human rights abuses against local Baka “Pygmies” and their neighbors, including illegal evictions and torture.
Media coverage of the Standing Rock protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline has been hopelessly myopic. Certainly environmental justice, police brutality and the violation of sacred burial grounds are important topics, but no one has addressed the larger systemic issues at play: Native American treaty rights and how their handling portends dismally for the everyone else. Even the most self-centered and politically apathetic must realize Pastor Martin Niemöller’s warning that it’s only a matter of time before even the most mainstream of society are persecuted.
To truly appreciate the full significance of the face-off at Standing Rock, one has to …
Julian Assange interview with John Pilger (Courtesy Darthmouth Films)
by RT / November 4th, 2016
As Wikileaks releases another batch of emails from Hillary Clinton’s campaign, RT presents the next part of an exclusive interview given by the whistleblower website’s co-founder Julian Assange to renowned documentary maker John Pilger and Dartmouth Films.
People should have known they were being played for fools when Cameron said “the British people have made a very clear decision….” In reality, under 52% of Britons voted to leave the EU in a non-binding referendum. Think about that, because apparently nobody has in these last 5-and-a-bit months. Less than 52% voted to leave and they only represent 37% of the total electorate because 13 million people did not vote at all. There was only a 72% turn-out and roughly half voted on each side.
So why are people like Cameron and Theresa May so adamant that “Brexit means Brexit”? …
Collars serve to rein dogs in,
Quell their nerve with shades and sin.
Wild wolf’s kin such bangles scorn,
Free-born I stay, son of Fionn.
— From the Fenian Brotherhood, “Ní Bóna Ná Coróin”
With the election nearing, massive amounts of citizens are finally beginning to understand the dangerous and growing divisions, the serious sickness in our society. The mainstream media makes it appear that the battle between those on the right and left will be fought mainly on issues of identity politics and the wider “culture wars”. This is nonsense, of course. The real fault line lies between those brave and imaginative enough to join …
The first “Battle of Kunduz” took place from April to October 2015 for control of the city, where Taliban forces were playing cat and mouse for months and finally overran the city, forcing government forces to flee. The capture marked the first time since 2001 that the Taliban had taken control of a major city in Afghanistan. The Afghan government claimed to have largely recaptured Kunduz by October 1 in a counterattack, but by October 6 the Taliban had recaptured substantial portions of Kunduz.
In the confusion, on October 3, long after the government had supposedly recaptured the city, still looking for …
At first sight, compassion appears to loom large in ‘mainstream’ politics and media. When the American and British governments target countries like Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, ‘compassion’ is always at or near the top of the agenda.
Time and again, the cry from the political system is: ‘We Must Do Something!’ ‘We’ must save Afghan women from the ‘Medieval’ Taliban. ‘We’ must save Kuwaiti new-borns flung from their incubators by Iraqi stormtroopers. ‘We’ must save Iraqi civilians from Saddam’s shredding machines. ‘We’ must save civilians in Kosovo from Milosevic’s ‘final solution’.
You say “European cultural institutions”, and what should come immediately to mind are lavish concerts, avant-garde art exhibitions, high quality language courses and benevolent scholarships for talented cash-strapped local students.
It is all so noble, so civilized!
Or, is it really? Think twice!
I wrote my short novel, Aurora, after studying the activities of various Western ‘cultural institutions’, in virtually all the continents of the Planet. I encountered their heads; I interacted with the ‘beneficiaries’ of various funding schemes, and I managed to get ‘behind the scenes’.
In 1959, Phoenix, Arizona was growing like a weed. As its population doubled every few years, I was working my way through the public school system, doing my best to obey most of the rules, or at least not get caught doing otherwise. The teacher’s dreaded paddle was something to be avoided at all cost. Dust and asbestos fibers from school construction filled the air as the little city burgeoned into the epicenter of the baby-booming desert Southwest. As my school’s enrollment grew beyond its limits, boundary lines were redrawn in order to fill the classrooms of a newer school, a mile to the East. So …
With the advent of the social impact bond… if Adam Smith were around today, he’d be talking not just about the invisible hand of markets but the invisible heart of markets.
— Sir Ronald Cohen (a.k.a. “high priest of money-making”).
On the Rockefeller Foundation website, president Judith Rodin asks, “How can innovative finance shift charity to opportunity?” Her answer: By unlocking “greater amounts of private capital to do public good” through impact investing. Rodin goes on to describe “two distinct new opportunities” that will facilitate this financial innovation: Social and Development Impact Bonds (SIBs/DIBs). SIBs and DIBs are characterized by financing where private …
Wall Street and the Pentagon greeted the onset of 2016 as a ‘banner year’, a glorious turning point in the quest for malleable regimes willing to sell-off the most lucrative economic resources, to sign off on onerous new debt to Wall Street and to grant use of their strategic military bases to the Pentagon.
Brazil and Argentina, the most powerful and richest countries in South America and the Philippines, Washington’s most strategic military platform in Southeast Asia, were the objects of intense US political operations in the run-up to …
Last July, the Palestinian Authority took the unexpected, although belated, step of seeking Arab backing in suing Britain over the Balfour Declaration. That ‘declaration’ was the first ever explicit commitment made by Britain, and the West in general, to establish a Jewish homeland atop an existing Palestinian homeland.
It is too early to tell whether the Arab League would heed the Palestinian call, or if the PA would even follow through, especially considering that the latter has the habit of making too many proclamations backed by little or no action.
However, it seems that the next year will witness a significant …
November 2 marks the centenary of the Balfour Declaration of 1917, which began the still-ongoing colonisation of Palestine and sowed the seeds of an endless nightmare for the Palestinian people. The UK Government needs to make amends for its crimes against the Holy Land. Campaigners are calling on it to apologise.
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In 1937 the Peel Commission declared that British promises to Arabs and Zionists were irreconcilable and unworkable. Too late, Britain dropped its commitment to the Zionists and began talking about a Palestinian state with a guaranteed Arab majority and protection for minorities.
The Zionists reacted furiously. Their underground military …
Washington Abstains Against Itself on Cuba at the UN
by Ike Nahem / November 2nd, 2016
The UN Announcement
Right before Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez closed the first round of high-level diplomats speaking in favor of the annual United Nations General Assembly Resolution on the “necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed by the United States of America against Cuba,” the Obama Administration’s top diplomat at the UN, Samantha Power, took the podium to deliver an announcement. “For more than 50 years,” Power stated, “the United States had a policy aimed at isolating the government of Cuba. For roughly half of those years, UN member states have voted overwhelmingly for a General Assembly …
Israel has just emerged from its three-week high holidays, a period that in recent years has been marked by extremist religious Jews making provocative visits to Al Aqsa mosque compound in occupied East Jerusalem.
Many go to pray, in violation of Israel’s international obligations. Most of them belong to groups that seek to replace the mosque with a Jewish temple. They now enjoy increasing parliamentary support, some of it from within prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s party.
A rash of such visits last autumn outraged Palestinians and triggered a wave of so-called lone-wolf attacks on Israelis. The attacks have recently abated.
The American journalist, Edward Bernays, is often described as the man who invented modern propaganda.
The nephew of Sigmund Freud, the pioneer of psycho-analysis, it was Bernays who coined the term “public relations” as a euphemism for spin and its deceptions.
In 1929, he persuaded feminists to promote cigarettes for women by smoking in the New York Easter Parade – behaviour then considered outlandish. One feminist, Ruth Booth, declared, “Women! Light another torch of freedom! Fight another sex taboo!”
Bernays’ influence extended far beyond advertising. His greatest success was his role in convincing the American public to join the slaughter of the First …
I reside in Orlando, a city laden with socio-economic facades which echo the theme park set pieces for which the city is best known – Shiny on the outside and hollow on the inside. If you tilt your head up in the downtown area, you’ll see glossy clean structures that speak to affluence, but it’s difficult to ignore the contradictions on street level where homeless swallow their pride and beg for money, which is not unlike most American cities. It is not uncommon to observe homeless, near retirement age, bound to wheelchairs, who announce their desperation with pleas for help on crudely rendered signage in hopes a passerby will show …
Perhaps the biggest perceived political dilemma for the world right now is what will happen in the United States, and thereby to the world, depending on which of the two becomes president. Because of this unprecedented hate-filled election campaign, many pundits consider this election to be the most important in USA history.
I have long postponed making a prediction about what could occur with either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton as president. I also vacillated about making a prognosis regarding Barack Obama when he first campaigned for the presidency. The main reason for both hesitations has to do with the two …
