The Base Heather Stroud
Obsolete: The AI Industry’s Trillion Dollar Race to Replace You–and How to Stop It Garrison Lovely
The Political Economy of Dissent Peter Blunt
What I Saw in Ukraine: 2015-2022: Diary of an International Observer Benoit Paré
At the Lost and Found: Personal & Political Dispatches of Resistance and Hope Edward Curtin
Class War, Then and Now: Essays toward a New Left Chris Wright
America's Hijacked Peace Dividend: Long Overdue and Immediately Payable John Rachel
Mind Abuse: Media Violence and Its Threat to Democracy Rose Dyson
Anthropause: The Beauty of Degrowth Stan Cox
Broken Stars: Gaza Poems Buff Whitman-Bradley
What a fine race it has become! Both Hilary Clinton and Donald Trump are competing in it as a who is the ‘tougher guy/gal’ in what could be easily described as a 21st Century Tarantino-style (or Scorsese-style) political pulp fiction gore.
What they both utter, may often sound like some staged bluff: “Are you talking to me? Hey, there’s nobody else here… Are you talking to me?”
But just think for a moment what would really happen if one of them sticks to his or her ‘promises’ and ‘principles’, after getting elected! (The bullets would be flying, the nukes exploding, and millions …
Al Gore, former Democratic nominee in 2000, has a warning for anyone concerned about climate change that is planning on voting for a third-party candidate like Jill Stein: don’t! He urges them to vote for Hillary Clinton, saying that he knows from “experience” the damage that third party candidates can do to spoil it for corporatist Democrats. We explain why he’s wrong.
Ignores Bata's Unsavoury History
An elitist, nationalist, bias dominates all areas of Canada’s paper of record.
On the front of last weekend’s Style section the Globe and Mail profiled Sonja Bata on turning 90. Business partner and wife of the deceased Thomas Bata, the Globe lauded Sonja for the “many contributions she has made to Canada”, including the Bata Shoe Museum and various other establishment “cultural, environmental and social causes.” The article touched on the shoemaker’s early history and described how she “traveled the world building a shoe empire – between 1946 and 1960, 25 new factories were built and 1700 Bata …
(The IOC and FIFA as corporate rod and gun clubs)
In the period from 1945 until approximately 1989, the white empire in North America learned to rely upon its cadres of military officers throughout the world to directly control its non-white (in the US a term which extends to most of the world’s population) dominions. This was defended by the pretext — inherited from the propaganda of WWII — that the Red Army which had quite surprisingly defeated Western attempts to destroy it culminating in Operation Barbarossa (a campaign that would have been impossible without the tacit consent of France, Britain and the US), would be able to drive the …
We’ve got the best,
Glass bottles. Goats and girls,
In the town we call the World.— Ditty on Charters Towers, circa late 19th Century
Charters Towers, North Queensland — The Australian outback shrinks human life forms. In a manner no doubt similar to an extra-terrestrial experience, the human form becomes minute, placed before yawning spaces and vast horizons. It also explains the sheer bombast behind those who, in places of intense isolation, find grand terms to reduce space and insignificance.
It is with wonder that such hotels as The Imperial (“Impy” for the locals) water and feed patrons in the small town of Ravenswood …
… a landmark agreement that will save lives and ease the immense human suffering caused by armed conflict around the world. It will reduce the number of illegal arms …We should be proud of the role Britain has played to secure this ambitious agreement … that will make our world safer for all.
— David Cameron on the Arms Trade Treaty, April 2, 2013.
The death toll in Yemen is now so high that the International Committee of the Red Cross is donating “entire morgue units” to hospitals still standing, having so far escaped the illegal Saudi assault, backed, advised and …
The Bolivian cooperatives’ protests and their August 25 killing of the Bolivian Vice Minister of the Interior Rodolfo Illanes requires us to question our assumptions about cooperatives. What are the Bolivian mining cooperatives? Most began during the Great Depression as miners banded together to work a mine in common. However, like many cooperatives in the US that arose out of the 1960s, they have turned into small businesses. Regardless of their initial intentions, cooperatives existing in a surrounding capitalist environment must compete in business practices or go under.
The Bolivian mining cooperatives themselves underwent this process, and have become businesses whose …
Down with Capitalist Australia’s Military Build Up! U.S., Australian Militaries: Stay Out of the South China Sea!
In October 2015, the U.S. warship, the USS Lassen destroyer (pictured left) sailed through waters, not far from mainland China, that are claimed by the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) as its territorial waters. This provocative action in the South China Sea was fully backed by the right-wing Australian government and the ALP Opposition. Moreover, the Defence White Paper of 25 February 2016 released by Prime Minister of Australia Malcolm Turnbull’s government announced a massive military buildup for the Australian Defence Forces (ADF) which the White Paper could not …
America cannot "lead the world" without a valid election
When confronted on his alleged foreign interference in the US election by leaking emails discrediting Hillary Clinton’s campaign, Julian Assange rightly pointed out that he doesn’t get a chance to vote in the US election. He should have that chance, he implied, due to his own country of Australia being an involuntary member of the US “alliance”.
This argument is more powerful than the mere quip Assange intended it to be. If America is a democracy, and America believes in its responsibility to “lead the world” as President Obama loves to repeat in his speeches, should it not validate this mandate …
Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.
— Bhagavad Gita, Arjuna 1:45
If Hillary Rodham Clinton becomes US President, she will be the first neoconservative to actually occupy that office. The neoconservatives have been an ascendant force in policymaking since the Reagan administration, and remained (through Vice President Dick Cheney) an unsteady heartbeat from the presidency in the G.W. Bush administration. Now possession of the highest office in the land is within their grasp.
This is important because the neoconservatives are wedded to war, death and destruction. It is the foundation of their policy and it dominates the culture that they …
The exoneration of a man accused of the worst of crimes, genocide, made no headlines. Neither the BBC nor CNN covered it. The Guardian allowed a brief commentary. Such a rare official admission was buried or suppressed, understandably. It would explain too much about how the rulers of the world rule.
The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague has quietly cleared the late Serbian president, Slobodan Milosevic, of war crimes committed during the 1992-95 Bosnian war, including the massacre at Srebrenica.
Far from conspiring with the convicted Bosnian-Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, Milosevic actually “condemned ethnic cleansing”, opposed …
If I told you that Democratic Party lobbyist Tony Podesta, whose brother John Podesta chairs Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, is a registered foreign agent on the Saudi government’s payroll, you’d probably think I was a Trump-thumping, conspiratorial nutcase. But it’s true.
The lobby firm created by both Tony and John Podesta in 1988 receives $140,000 a month from the Saudi government, a government that beheads nonviolent dissidents, uses torture to extract forced confessions, doesn’t allow women to drive, and bombs schools, hospitals and residential neighborhoods in neighboring Yemen.
The Podesta Group’s March 2016 filing, required under the Foreign Agents …
The practices we now call conservation are, to a large extent, local alleviations of biotic pain. They are necessary, but they must not be confused with cures. The art of land doctoring is being practiced with vigor, but the science of land health is yet to be born.
— Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac
The malls are the soon-to-be ghost towns
So long, farewell, goodbye— Modest Mouse, “Teeth Like God’s Shoeshine”
We all know that our money will be worthless soon, yes? Our national debt is over 19 trillion and counting, gaining approximately one trillion dollars per year.
Do you know that our government, …
With the rigged Democratic presidential nomination behind us, the US election reality show continues. The mass media is creating sensations around what has become a national embarrassment with this contest of the lesser of the two crazies. On the one hand we have Donald Trump, depicted as a quintessential narcissist and on the other, Hillary Clinton who is often portrayed as a sociopath. Hype is created by putting these labels on the candidates, pitting one personality disorder against the other.
This is a corporate sponsored election charade doing business as usual and distracting people from the real power behind …
Political Suicide
The media battle between Republican candidate Donald Trump and Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton has sidetracked the impact of an unusual congressional campaign and diluted its essential meaning — voter dissatisfaction. In the democratic primary race for Washington’s 7th congressional district, State Senator Pramila Jayapal’s victory relates an important story of this election year — the public favors a new Democratic Party, which is partially guided by the objectives and politics of Senator Bernie Sanders. State Senator Jayapal, founder and executive director of OneAmerica, a pro-immigration advocacy group, was one of the first 2016 congressional candidates to earn an endorsement from …
Yemen is being destroyed. A US-backed “Saudi Coalition” has been bombing and shelling Yemen for 16 months. The UN puts the civilian death toll at 3700, but (aside from the question of why combatants’ lives apparently only count if they are Western soldiers) this probably vastly under-represents the death toll by both direct violence and by the indirect effects of the war. Most of the country has no reliable access to clean water and people, particularly young children, are dying of disease and deprivation.
On August 22nd, two eminent commentators gave interviews on Yemen. Harper’s magazine editor Andrew Cockburn …
Donald Trump, in a speech given in Charlotte on Thursday, August 18, cast himself as the truth teller for forgotten Americans and a champion of those who feel that the best is behind them. He was clearly presenting himself as a guy who fundamentally calls it as he sees it…in contrast to Clinton’s politically correct doublespeak. “I am running to be the vote for every forgotten part of this country that has been waiting and hoping for a better future” he said. “The insiders fighting for the insiders…I am fighting for you” was his pitch.
Putting the cat among the pigeons …
The Financial Times editorial page carries a logo that proclaims: “Without fear and without favour”. Indeed the editors have shown no fear when it comes to… fabricating lies, promoting imperial wars decimating countries and impoverishing millions, whether in Libya, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen and now Venezuela. The fearless “Lies of Our Times” have been at the forefront forging pretexts for inciting imperial armies to crush independent governments.
Despite its pretentious scribblers and prestigious claims, the FT is seen by the Anglo-American financial class …
For as long as women have gone to the beach to try to enjoy themselves, it seems, people have followed them there to pester them about their clothes.
— Selina Cheng, Quartz, August 24, 2016
Revolutions are often sparked by folly driven ideas about regulating human behaviour. Banning the worship of symbols renders them more sacred than not; prohibiting certain items that would otherwise be embraced with general enthusiasm adds unintended zest.
Women have never been allowed much truck when it comes to fashion, even in areas of life where relaxation has been assumed. The beach as a place of relaxation became, in time, …
Elizabeth May’s response to Green Party members voting to oppose Canadian support for Israeli colonialism has been wildly anti-democratic. She has not simply disagreed with a majority of members, which could reflect healthy internal processes, but publicly derided the party’s procedures and members’ clearly expressed opinions. After diluting a resolution about revoking the Jewish National Fund of Canada’s charitable status strongly endorsed by members in an online poll, May threatened to resign if the party didn’t organize another vote on a BDS resolution members strongly backed in a pre-convention online poll, convention caucus and full convention vote.
The possibility of the …
The loathsome two are moving into full view, mustering weapons and taking aim at each other in a US election campaign that continues to be filled with colourful missives. But the one to lose most is Hillary Clinton, whose nasty appropriation of the high ground of propriety seems more contemptible by the day.
On Thursday, Clinton pushed further into the field of righteous indignation, traducing extremists all over as the bane of politics. Trotting out of her stable of suggestions was the testy problem of race, that permanent malady of US political and cultural history.
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, she claimed, …
There is a pressing issue in American health care that warrants at least a modicum of airtime from radio talk show pundits—a softheaded lot that continues to spin the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, as a textbook failure of state meddling in the marketplace.
Though they do not earnestly care, the free market mouthpieces on talk radio – who shamelessly misinform their listeners about the government’s role in economics – continue to wrongly attribute the turmoil surrounding Obamacare (in states like Arizona and Tennessee) to a much larger failure of government.
It is always the same old story that floods the airwaves: …
Part 4: Saudi Arabia on the American Chessboard
Uncovering the extent and details of Saudi Arabia’s involvement in the U.S. wars against selected Arab and non-Arab states is somewhat complicated, and the reason is shortage of reliable information. Even if such information were available, we may have to sieve through a huge amount of data searching for patterns, relations, and critical values. For instance, how to search for the methods the U.S. employs to enforce Saudi involvement in its plans and polices? What drives the Arab and regional policy (and wars) of the Saudi regime?
We can answer these and other related questions by mixing facts with speculations. But …
Nuremberg: “a war of aggression … is the supreme international crime”
Waging genocidal war on a defenseless country was never so baldly and honestly put on any agenda for talks among US secretary of state John Kerry, representatives of Saudi Arabia’s dictatorship, and their mutual allies, even though they are all engaged in an endless genocidal war on Yemen. This war is a war of aggression, started by Saudi Arabia in March 2015, with crucial US blessing, participation, personnel, and ordnance. The US has been a willing, guilty partner and enabler in 18 months …
Isn’t it about time that American corporate leaders who lie, cheat, mislead, and defraud the public be held accountable? Wall Street was the high-water mark of corporate fraud, a fraud that government institutions let happen, hurting millions of investors, consumers, and workers – actually global citizens who trusted the banking industry and the government to keep them safe from common thieves in the financial industries.
Public officials, in effect, made it easy for Wall Street to exploit an unregulated financial system for their own gain. Then when they defrauded and nearly broke the system, government bailed them out and excused their …
“You deserve to see your loved ones suffer and die. But, maybe, you would be hurt before them,” was part of a threatening message received by a staff member at ‘Al-Mezan’, a Gaza-based human rights group. The photo attached to the email was of the exterior of the activist’s home. The gist of the message: ‘we are coming for you.’
‘Al-Mezan’, along with three other Palestinian rights groups – ‘Al-Haq’, ‘Al Mezan’, ‘Aldameer’ and the Palestinian Center for Human Rights – are actively pushing a case against Israel in the International Criminal Court (ICC) accusing it of war crimes …
If the West in general, and the United States in particular, left the Arab and Muslim world alone and in peace, we would most likely never see all those terrorist attacks, which are rocking the world from Indonesia to France. There would be no Mujahedeen and its mutation into al-Qaida; in Afghanistan or elsewhere. There would be no traces of the ISIS (or ISIL or I.S. or Daesh or however you choose to call it), in Syria, Iraq, Libya or anywhere else.
Part of the Saudi Royal mafia. …
Sticks and stone may break my bones, but names will never hurt me — and they may come back to haunt the name-callers.
In finding anti-Semites behind every challenge to Canadian complicity with Israeli colonialism, mainstream Jewish organizations are emptying the term “anti-Semitism” of its historical weight.
“The Green Party of Canada’s vote in favour of the anti-Semitic boycott campaign against Israel shows the party has been infected by a vicious strain of anti-Jewish hate,” said the President of Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies Avi Benlolo. In case anyone missed his point the head of the …
but in a "liberal world" we can pine over 109 days before Christmas
I can’t believe it, but then I can believe it, or I must believe it. These are compliant times, where people in the US workforce are kowtowed and then for years these multiple generations in the workforce have thrown in the towel and been so bullied by the Politically Crap Corrective Collective Group-Think that they are not even human — they can’t even rage against the injustice befalling them. I have both taught and worked alongside people who just believe deep down there’s no sense in fighting the powers that be, and that’s it, too bad, sure, but what can …
The world is in bad shape. Every reasonably intelligent, aware, objective person in the world knows, if only intuitively, that something is very, very wrong. There should not be this many armed conflicts, this much anger, this much violence, this much unemployment and underemployment, this much debt, this much homelessness, hunger, poverty, this ever widening gap between the income and wealth of the super rich and everyone else, and this much distrust in government and politicians. The future does not look good; a financial crisis and a socioeconomic collapse are just around the corner. Another World War or innumerable smaller …
