Latest articles
by Binoy Kampmark / June 27th, 2016
Jeremy Corbyn, the grand hope of the Labour Party in Britain, is being politically assassinated. The process has been a gradual one, coming in the form of poison administered over a series of months and thinly veiled promises. But now, the issue has become even more violent. The anti-Corbyn clique is now brandishing its weapons in the open.
The Brexit vote has resulted in much blood letting. A Prime Minister fell on his sword, promising to depart to ready the uncertain ship for his successor. The poor Labour campaign, always marred by different ideologies between the Blairites and Corbynistas, was also …
Unprepared Government is paralysed. Need for an all-party transitional cabinet with vision to steer it through
by Stuart Littlewood / June 27th, 2016
Democracy has delivered. The UK as a whole has spoken. It’s Brexit. Not everyone likes it, and the enemy within is plotting to obstruct it.
Prime minister Cameron and Chancellor Osborne are tight-lipped, Cameron appearing only to announce his resignation sometime soon, but not soon enough. Osborne threatened a vicious emergency austerity budget if the country voted Leave, and people now want to know what to expect. He has rather belatedly announced that he will do “everything I can” to make Brexit work, but who believes it? The ruling Conservative Party is in turmoil as hopefuls jockey for vacant positions.
New Labour …
Japan is Part of the Neo-Colonialist Clique
by Andre Vltchek / June 27th, 2016
Write that ‘Japan is part of the neo-colonialist clique’, and you will never again be invited to participate in any public debate conducted by Japanese mass media outlets.
And that is exactly what I wrote several months ago, after being approached by an important publication based in Okinawa.
When my documentary film about the US bases on Okinawan territory was broadcasted by the South American television network TeleSUR in both Spanish and English, there seemed to be at least some appetite to bring my opinions on the subject to the Japanese public. At one point I was asked to write a 1,200 …
by Jonathan Cook / June 26th, 2016
The enraged liberal reaction to the Brexit vote is in full flood. The anger is pathological – and helps to shed light on why a majority of Britons voted for leaving the European Union, just as earlier a majority of Labour party members voted for Jeremy Corbyn as leader.
A few years ago the American writer Chris Hedges wrote a book he titled the Death of the Liberal Class. His argument was not so much that liberals had disappeared, but that they had become so co-opted by the right wing and its goals – from the subversion of progressive economic and social ideals …
by Ankur Singh / June 26th, 2016
Over the past decade the United States has seen an exponential growth of the Hindu practice of Yoga, which has inspired the government of India to create International Yoga Day every June 21st in an effort to encourage peace and harmony. Yet, India has a long history of perpetuating brutal violence on its many minority populations and is using International Yoga Day as a tool to brand itself to yoga tourists by promoting a false narrative that Western yoga practitioners are eating up through cultural commodification and appropriation.
The epitome of the current state of yoga in the West can be …
The Real Meaning of Bruce Rauner’s Cradle-to-Career Education
by John Klyczek / June 26th, 2016
Last year, the union-busting governor of Wisconsin, Scott Walker, took his corporatist agenda to a new level as he pushed to rewrite the mission statement of the University of Wisconsin system by erasing the phrases “search for truth” and “improve the human condition” and overwriting them with a new objective for the college: to “meet the state’s workforce needs.” Just south of the Wisconsin border, Governor Bruce Rauner is touting a similar “cradle-to-career” overhaul of education policy in Illinois, which will deemphasize traditional academic studies while prioritizing corporate workforce training through privatized charter school curriculums.
Consistently, the Illinois governor has …
A book review of The Joy of Tax
by Stuart Jeanne Bramhall / June 25th, 2016
In his book The Joy of Tax: How a Fair Tax System Can Create a Better Society, Richard Murphy, UK Tax Justice Network co-founder, offers a radically pioneering approach to tax and fiscal policy. Murphy is one of the first economists to link tax policy to the 400- year-old reality that nearly all money is created by private banks out of thin air.
For political reasons, most economists try to conceal that private bank loans; i.e., debt, is the source of nearly all money in circulation. According to Murphy, the recent admission by the Bank of England (Quarterly Bulletin April …
by Binoy Kampmark / June 25th, 2016
Twenty-four hour news networks are both terrible and worthy sites to gauge herd-like assumptions. A gaze at CNN’s coverage of the Brexit over the course of Friday suggested the dismay, growing into outrage that the infallible market had somehow failed to detect the Leave voters on its all divine radar.
“The markets got it so wrong,” came one CNN pundit reporting on the various erosions of the European stock market. Assumptions of the all wise market deity continued to come out, as if the market has body, soul and form. If the Brexit vote should have taught such figures anything, it …
What matters more? War around the world, or mass shootings at home?
by William Boardman / June 24th, 2016
What’s the difference between these two Democrats, Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut and Rep. Barbara Lee of California? Chris Murphy puts on a pointless, pompous filibuster to achieve a meaningless vote on gun control measures he knows will never pass. Rep. Barbara Lee is in her 15th year of quietly trying to persuade ANY other Representative or Senator to accept constitutional responsibility for deciding whether or not the US should go to war. Guess who gets more attention?
What is wrong, truly, profoundly wrong with Democrats? Republicans are easy, they embrace their commitment to naked power without principle beyond a simple-minded …
by Aniqa Raihan / June 24th, 2016
December 14, 2012. Newtown, Connecticut. Adam Lanza murdered his mother in her bed and then drove her car to the local elementary school, where he embarked on a shooting spree that left 20 first-grade students and 6 educators dead.
In April 2013, the US Senate voted down a proposal to expand background checks to gun shows and online sales. The National Rifle Association, the most powerful gun lobby in the country, spent over $500,000 on advertisements opposing the amendment. Only 4 Republican Senators crossed the aisle to vote for gun reform, while 4 …
by Jason Holland / June 24th, 2016
Hello, fellow citizens!!
I’m VERY excited to present a special offer. For a limited time only we will have exclusive deals which could create a secure financial future for your entire family. In today’s topsy-turvy world one never knows what lies in hand and how many lie in the bush. It’s a world of fear and insecurity. Each day there is more tragic news, and extremists everywhere are out to get you, as you’ll notice how much scarier the situation with ISIS gets with each passing day, and we wouldn’t at all be overstating the threat, nor did we do anything to bring on …
by Felicity Arbuthnot / June 24th, 2016
Anthony Charles Lynton Blair, currently back in Britain, cast a dark shadow over those campaigning to stay in the European Union in the June 23rd referendum. Inflicting himself on the Britain Stronger in Europe group, he spoke at every opportunity – reminding even the most passionate Europhile of the last time he assured “I know I’m right” – Iraq.
If the “Remainers” had an ounce of sense, Blair should have been ditched in a nano-second. He is not “Toxic Tony” for nothing.
However, since the long awaited Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq invasion is to be published just thirteen days after the …
by Steve Church / June 24th, 2016
According to EuroNews and France Inter this morning (8 am French time, Friday 24 June), the Brits have voted (roughly 52% – 48%) to leave the EU. Jubilation!
While the world of finance tears its hair out and, at the same time, is probably colluding to somehow punish “the people” who had the courage to finally say Enough!, Brussels is gathering its “Good little Eichmanns” (h/t to Ward Churchill), otherwise known as its commissioners and heads of state, to come up with some plan to thwart a mass exodus from the cultural and financial prison they so …
by Stuart Littlewood / June 24th, 2016
I had a bad feeling about it. And although we got the desired result against all expectations, the sense of foreboding is still there. Maybe it’s reserved for the actual implementation of Brexit and the possibility – no, probability – that it will be comprehensively fouled up.
All the parties (except UKIP) tried to bludgeon the British public into voting to stay in the EU. None can therefore be trusted to carry out the people’s wish as diligently as one would normally expect. David Cameron is standing down as prime minister but not soon enough. With all this in mind I …
by Ellen Brown / June 23rd, 2016
The war on cannabis that began in the 1930s seems to be coming to an end. Research shows that this natural plant, rather than posing a deadly danger to health, has a wide range of therapeutic benefits. But skeptics question the sudden push for legalization, which is largely funded by wealthy investors linked to Big Ag and Big Pharma.
In April, Pennsylvania became the 24th state to legalize medical cannabis, a form of the plant popularly known as marijuana. That makes nearly half of US states. A major barrier to broader legalization has been the federal law under which …
by Graham Peebles / June 23rd, 2016
Ethiopia is regularly cited as an African success story by donor nations; the economy is growing they cry, more children are attending school and health care is improving. Well GDP figures and millennium development statistics reveal only a tiny fraction of the corrupt and violent picture.
What development there is depends, the Oakland Institute relate, on “state force and the denial of human and civil rights”; the country remains 173rd out of 187 countries in the UN Human Development Index and around 40% of the population live below the extremely low poverty line of $1.25 a day, – the World …
by Jonathan Cook / June 23rd, 2016
Here is a prediction about the outcome of today’s UK referendum on leaving the European Union. Even in the unlikely event that the remain camp loses, the UK will still not Brexit. Europe’s neoliberal elite will not agree to release its grip on a major western nation. A solution will be found to keep the UK in the union, whatever British voters decide. Which is one very good reason to vote Brexit, as I’ll explain in a minute.
It has been hard to find much commentary, even in the most liberal corners of the corporate media, making a progressive case for exit. Instead Britain …
by Johnny Gaunt / June 23rd, 2016
Peace is an interlude between wars.
— Benito Mussolini
The world is corkscrewing through loops of violence and war; repeating.
In the UK we have to hold up a mirror to ourselves and accept our own culpability in this global horror-show. Britain’s imperialist pursuit of wealth and power has never really stopped, only changed its mask to better hide its behaviour. The present mask was created under the auspices of neoliberal dogma. It is producing terrible repercussions for our future generations.
The UK’s imperialist policy fits snuggly as a small piece within a much grander Western agenda. It has been …
by William A. Blunden / June 22nd, 2016
Truthout.org: In the movie Sneakers, a motley gang of security experts chase after a little black box that can crack any form of encryption. Though the idea of a digital skeleton key may seem like the stuff of Hollywood thrillers, there are researchers at the University of Michigan who’ve recently created just that. They’ve built a stealthy hardware back door that can be inserted into the blueprints of a computer chip to give intruders complete access to a system after executing an obscure series of commands.
Consider the implications: This kind of low-level attack is extremely difficult to …
by Frank Scott / June 22nd, 2016
The latest mass tragedy has seen the usual shock, sadness and fear expressed by ordinary people, and the usual professional grieving, intellectual hypocrisy and moral disability by most of what passes for American leadership. While various political, professional and identity group spokespeople claim the tragedy as suffered by all but especially their own communities and seek both real and imagined sources of the horror unleashed at Orlando, the so-called war on terror that has murdered millions elsewhere and has repeatedly come home to America in brutal fashion still seems useful only in mostly ignorant rhetoric.
While the new antichrist for …
by Lamont Lilly / June 22nd, 2016
During the height of the Ferguson Rebellion in late summer 2014, youth organizer, Joshua Williams quickly rose to the call of duty. In the aftermath of Officer Darren Wilson’s brutal murder of unarmed Black teenager, Mike Brown, 19-year-old Josh Williams, stepped forward in the most dedicated and courageous way possible – on the front lines.
Joshua Williams at Ferguson protest, 10 Sept 2014.At protests, Williams stood his ground against armed police, national guardsmen, tanks …
The US State Department Dissent on Syria
by Binoy Kampmark / June 22nd, 2016
To get 51 signatures on a dissent channel message is remarkable and suggests a very broad consensus at the working level responsible for implementing policy decisions, that the current [Syria] policy is failing and is destined to keep failing.
— Robert Ford, Detroit News, Jun 18, 2016
The entire messiness of the Syrian conflict should be an object lesson repudiating all alleged moral measures that come before it. Capitals across the Middle East, Eurasia, Europe and the United States have dirtied themselves in the endeavour, claiming to be protecting civilians when they have been merely fronting for various sides in the …
by Gilad Atzmon / June 22nd, 2016
The Political is Personal
Whatever the British people decide about the EU the people who dwell on this island have been pushed to think patriotically and nationalistically. The decision each of us make to vote for ‘remain’ or for ‘leave’ will be based on the realisation that this political decision will have a significant personal impact.
Party Politics is A Severe Form Of Detachment
Both major parties failed to assess the huge appeal of the ‘call to leave.’ This blindness proves that the estrangement between the British political universe and the public is complete. This shouldn’t be much of a surprise. Many …
by Ramzy Baroud / June 22nd, 2016
Entire communities in the West Bank either have no access to water or have had their water supply reduced almost by half.
This alarming development has been taking place for weeks, since Israel’s national water company, “Mekorot”, decided to cut off – or significantly reduce – its water supply to Jenin, Salfit and many villages around Nablus, among other regions.
Israel has been ‘waging a water war’ against Palestinians, according to Palestinian Authority Prime Minister, Rami Hamdallah. The irony is that the water provided by “Mekorot” is actually Palestinian water, usurped from West Bank aquifers. While Israelis, including illegal West Bank …
by James Hoover / June 22nd, 2016
It is official! The vast majority of Senate Republicans may be enemies of the people. Their photos could be posted on post office bulletins boards. Their faces could well be featured in the dossiers of FBI agents as friends of enemy combatants. They could be considered supporters of terrorists and thus on the no-fly list.
They might even be considered traitors. They are truly representatives of the NRA, though most of its five million members support some regulation. Their vote indicates they are not representatives of Americans who oppose free use of guns by terrorists, the mentally ill …
by Gary Leupp / June 22nd, 2016
In the beginning — as you know — God created the heavens and the earth. On the Sixth Day, after creating cattle, creeping things, and the first two people (Genesis 1:26-28), sleepless, fidgeting, and for no particular reason, He created what we call “the Two Party System.”
(In God-language: ???????-???????.)
Now, why the Two Party System? you ask. As opposed to something else?
As it turns out, that was the very question in the Creator of Everything’s own mind at that very time. You might think He’d have consulted with Adam and Eve, the first two humans He’d made in His own image. …
by E.R. Bills / June 22nd, 2016
Two years ago, on June 23, 2014, Dallas resident Charles Robert Moore drove to his hometown of Grand Saline, Texas and parked his car in a Dollar General parking lot on East Garland Street. He lingered there momentarily and then placed a foam mat on the ground. He knelt down on the mat, poured gasoline over his head and lit a match. He immediately burst into flames.
As Moore stood up and began to scream, two men rushed over and extinguished the blaze. He was transported to Parkland Hospital, but succumbed to his burns later that day.
By all accounts, Charles Robert …
by Steve Church / June 22nd, 2016
This is getting really frustrating. We’ve got a “security” agent, employed by a British outfit, shooting up a bar in Florida. A British MP is murdered by one of her own constituents. The US teams up with the Middle East’s former masters, the Brits (again), to recolonize that part of the world. The US teams up with the French in a joint effort to recolonize former French interests in Africa so as to enlist the French in Libya’s destruction, along with other subsidiary projects (TAFTA/TTIP/TISA, Russia sanctions, for example). The US has somehow strong-armed Germany into doing its economic dirty …
by Eric Walberg / June 22nd, 2016
Nino Ricci’s latest novel, Sleep, inspired by his own sleep disorder, is really more a fun text book on the latest brain research and the blind use of powerful drugs to alter — and possibly restructure (who knows?) — the brain. It’s like a ‘don’t smoke’ ad that’s actually informative and hilarious, with a classic ‘death of a salesman’ plot moving it along.
The complexity of the brain and the perilousness of the chemical warfare we casually inflict on it is far greater than, say, sending a …
Spastic Nature of University Work Under Capitalism
by Barbara MacLean / June 22nd, 2016
Orientation
I received my masters degree in career development from a private, upper-middle class college. This school was preparing most of the students in the program to work either in private practice or with an ‘out-placement’ firm. Without realizing it we were also being trained to imagine what counseling would be like in these settings. The scene included working in “50-minute hour” appointments, in a private, soundproofed room, with a schedule we set for themselves, with time to chat with the client for 5 minutes or so as we escorted them to the door. In the case of working in an …
