To be white and from money is to live a life of largely unrecognized privilege, bequeathed as it is from one’s first wet, howling breath. In the affluent socio-economically partitioned town of Saratoga Springs, NY where I’m from there was actually a railroad track serving as the demarcation line between affluent whites residing on one side and the other side of which nothing was known because you just didn’t go there, ever. It was literally the “wrong side of the tracks”.
Raised in that remarkable state of incurious joy and suffering within narrow undiluted lines of stratified suburban sameness, I could …
In 2012 President Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Defense Secretary Ashton Carter launched a new chapter in their quest for global dominance: a realignment of policies designed to shift priorities from the Middle East to Asia. Dubbed the ‘pivot to Asia’, it suggested that the US would concentrate its economic, military and diplomatic resources toward strengthening its dominant position and undercutting China’s rising influence in the region.
The ‘pivot to Asia’ did not shift existing resources from the Middle East, it added military commitments to …
Most Americans must be getting accustomed to hearing lie after lie from the two presidential candidates. According to fact checkers, Clinton lies on average 28 percent of the time and Trump lies 80 percent of the time. This is a sad commentary on how low our political parties and candidates have sunken. But lies from government officials and agencies has become commonplace in our treasured American way of life.
All lies are bad, but some lies do more harm to the livelihood of American civilians than others. Probably, the biggest lie, which most severely hurts millions of Americans, involves the true …
The collapse of the Grenadian Revolution on 19 October 1983 ((The violent seizure of power by a faction of the New Jewel Movement and disarming of the labouring classes provided the pretext for the invasion and destruction of the Grenadian Revolution by the United States on 25 October 1983.)) should be carefully examined for the lessons that it might offer to organizers in the Caribbean who are currently organizing with the labouring classes. If the working-class shall be the architect of its liberation, the process of revolution-making should enable them to fulfill that role. Fundamental change should not be the …
The missile attack on a US ship off the coast of Yemen was a major news event, but the subsequent follow up story, that it may never have happened, was either ignored by mainstream media or intentionally covered up. The whole thing has the same odor as the Gulf of Tonkin incident that never occurred.
Does history repeat itself? Sure does seem like it. That is if you compare America’s entry into the Vietnam civil war, with America’s latest entry into the war in Yemen.
Don’t be mistaken. We have been at war with Yemen for a year now. America sided with …
What do today’s right wing Quebec and Israeli nationalists share in common? A claim to victimhood that enables them to deny their role in oppressing others.
This commonality became clear when a prominent right-wing Québec nationalist politician cited the French language and Jewish sensibilities to criticize immigration and the veil. It also reflected a historic reversal in Québecois/Jewish relations. More significantly, it highlighted the dangers of an ‘empowered sense of vulnerability’, a psychological state many Quebeckers and Jews seem to share.
(I admit, up front, that generalizations about large groups of people most often reflect …
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.
*****
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 …
