Latest articles
Review of The 1% and the Rest of Us
by Kim Petersen / August 10th, 2016
Legalized chattel slavery did not die out because it was an abhorrent system but because the system of wage labour and debt money offered a more effective and useful economy of power for dominant owners.
— Tim Di Muzio, The 1% and the Rest of Us: A Political Economy of Dominant Ownership, p 100
Tim Di Muzio, a senior lecturer in international relations and political economy at Wollongong University in Australia, has written a book – The 1% and the Rest of Us: A Political Economy of Dominant …
Obama versus Trump, Putin and Erdogan
by James Petras / August 9th, 2016
Many of our interlocutors have been purged or arrested.
James Clapper, US Director of Intelligence on Turkish Coup, Financial Times, 8/3/16, p. 4
Washington has organized a systematic, global, no holds barred campaign to oust Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump from the electoral process. The virulent anti-Trump animus, the methods, goals and mass media resemble authoritarian regimes preparing to overthrow political adversaries.
Comparable propaganda efforts led to political coups in Chile in 1973, Brazil 1964, and Venezuela in 2002. The anti-Trump forces include both political parties, a Supreme Court …
by Simon Threlkeld / August 9th, 2016
Judges should not be chosen by popular vote, nor by politicians. Both approaches are undemocratic and deeply flawed, perhaps even absurd, despite the fact that the former is in widespread use at the state level, and the latter has always been used at the federal level (in the form of appointment by the President and confirmation by the Senate). A far better option is for judges to be chosen by juries drawn from the public by random selection.
In Classical Athens, often called the birthplace of democracy, a wide range of decisions were made by juries drawn from the citizens by …
by Nick Fillmore / August 8th, 2016
The annual gathering of the World Social Forum (WSF) – the left’s response to the elitist annual Davos World Economic Forum – runs in Montreal from August 9 to 14 with several thousand people from dozens of countries attending.
More than 1,000 self-managed sessions have activists discussing and creating progressive alternatives to traditional political, economic and social policies that they will take back to their own countries.
While as many as 100,000 people have attended sessions some years in some developing countries, perhaps only as many as 10,000 are taking part in Montreal.
While Montreal was selected this year …
Erdogan Trumps Gulenist Coup
by James Petras / August 8th, 2016
For the past decade, the US intelligence agencies operating in Turkey have worked closely with the increasingly influential parallel government of Fethullah Gulen. Their approach to power was, until recently, a permeationist strategy, of covertly taking over political, economic, administrative, judicial, media, military and cultural positions gradually without resort to elections or military coups. They adopted flexible tactics, supporting and shedding different allies to eliminate rivals.
In 2010 in support of Erdogan, they played a major role in arresting and purging 300 Kemalist military officials. Subsequently the …
by Felicity Arbuthnot / August 7th, 2016
Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.
— J. Robert Oppenheimer, “father of the atomic bomb”, quoting from the Bhagavad Gita, after the explosion of the first atomic bomb, New Mexico, July 16, 1945
When Paul Tibbets was thirteen years old he flew a bi-plane over Florida’s Miami Beach dropping a promotional cargo of Babe Ruth Candy Bars directly on to the promotional target area, in an advertising stunt. It was his first solo flight and: “From that moment he became hooked on flying.”
He became a test pilot and: “one of the first Americans to fly in world War …
by Matthew Behrens / August 6th, 2016
Rabble — There’s something about Justin Trudeau and his PR-spinning Liberal Team that reminds me of the Tennessee Williams character Harvey “Big Daddy” Pollitt from Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Pollitt famously uttered the line:
What’s that smell in this room? Didn’t you notice it, Brick? Didn’t you notice a powerful and obnoxious odour of mendacity in this room?… There ain’t nothin’ more powerful than the odour of mendacity… You can smell it. It smells like death.
Mendacity, for those without instant dictionary access, is a code word for behaviour that is disingenuous, two-faced, deceitful, hypocritical. In other words, …
Scandinavia on the Skids: The Failure of Social Democracy
(Part 7 of a 7 Part Series on Scandinavia’s “Socialism”)
by Ron Ridenour / August 6th, 2016
Illegally I stepped upon the Royal Family’s castle grass in central Copenhagen during the flag day ceremony (September 5, 2013) honoring Danish voluntary soldiers’ return from their war in Afghanistan. My sign read and my voice shouted: “Stop the War! War Criminal Mercenaries!”
An angry civilian rushed up behind me and placed an iron grip over my mouth. The large man was quickly accompanied by a soldier and police who dragged me away. I refused to agree to not demonstrate again and was jailed for six hours so that Social Democrat Prime Minister Helle Thorning Schmidt could honor her warriors unbothered. …
Afterthoughts in a world tied to bats in the belfry as our daily existence to just make it past the 10 pm news
by Paul Haeder / August 6th, 2016
A non-writing writer is a monster courting insanity.
— Franz Kafka, Letter to Max Brod, July 5, 1922
I’m listening to Hedges and Reich, on the other millionaire’s venue, Amy Goodman. Let’s make no bones about it – that former labor secretary and now professor at UC-Berkley, and then the former NYT journalist and now best-selling Pulitzer Prize winning author, and the War and Peace Report Democracy Now host and producer, they all have a few cool million in the bank.
Retirements, investments, equity, all of that, and power, a certain powerful First World elite self-agency, the power of …
by Binoy Kampmark / August 6th, 2016
Obsessions of any sort, notably of a consuming nature, are never healthy matters. The drive to win gold, laced with a desperation often reflected in steroid consumption and psychological battering, has made the Olympic Games the least of savoury spectacles.
Even worse than the physical reduction of the athlete to mechanism and medal winning machine is the complicity towards it from the coaching establishment and hungry spectators. Nothing is quite as terrifying as triumph – or failure – by association, the vicarious delight, or woe, the groupies feel when their chosen champion falls. “We,” they claim, were also in the pool …
New information has come to light about thousands of mostly Yemeni children believed to have been abducted in the 1950s
by Jonathan Cook / August 5th, 2016
For nearly 40 years, everything about Gil Grunbaum’s life was a lie, including his name.
He was not, as he had always assumed, the only son of wealthy Holocaust survivors who owned a baby garments factory near Tel Aviv. Grunbaum had been stolen from his mother by doctors at a hospital in northern Israel in 1956, moments after she gave birth.
His biological parents – recent immigrants to Israel from Tunisia – were told their child had died during delivery. They were sent home without a death certificate and denied the chance to see their baby’s body or a grave.
Despite his darker …
by Felicity Arbuthnot / August 5th, 2016
In our age there is no such thing as ‘keeping out of politics.’ All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia.
— “George Orwell” – Eric Arthur Blair, 1903-1950
The UK, it seems, has joined the US in its authorities and government developing a collective form of acute paranoia. A mildly deviant act by any petty criminal or a soul with mental health problems is immediately labeled a potential terrorist act before investigations have even begun.
“We are fighting them over there so we don’t have to fight them over here” was the …
by Ralph Nader / August 5th, 2016
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has recently advanced a clean energy plan which mandates that New York transition half of its energy needs to renewables by 2030. By regressive contrast, New York’s Public Service Commission (PSC) has approved enormous subsidies for three aging nuclear power plants?Ginna, Nine Mile Point and FitzPatrick?located in Upstate New York. Estimates of the costs of these subsidies range from $59 million to $658 million by 2023, with specialists such as Blair Horner of the New York Public Interest Research Group predicting that costs could grow to $8 billion. New York consumers will be covering the …
by Yves Engler / August 4th, 2016
Imagine during Jim Crow a Canadian political party polled its members about pressing Ottawa to stop subsidizing US racism only to be smeared by an organization driving the discrimination. But, instead of relishing the attacks, party leaders sought to placate the racist group by inviting them to address their convention, which the said organization refused, claiming… discrimination.
This hard to fathom scenario mirrors the Jewish National Fund of Canada/Green Party scrimmage since members put forward a resolution calling for the Canada Revenue Agency to revoke the JNF’s charitable status because …
by Mateo Pimentel / August 4th, 2016
But the state lieth in all languages of good and evil; and whatever it saith it lieth; and whatever it hath it hath stolen.
— Friedrich Nietzsche, The New Idol, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Many people, it is true, never contemplate the possibility of total power; the very thought of it scares them.
— Simone Weil, On the Abolition of All Political Parties
Not long ago, Obama openly leveled criticism against the political establishment in Cuba. He righteously decried a lack of democracy and political freedom there, indicting the Cuban government for its role in continuing an antidemocratic …
by Survival International / August 4th, 2016
The Guarani have a deep sense of connection to their land, but have seen most of it stolen and destroyed by intensive agriculture. © Fiona Watson/SurvivalOn the eve of the Olympics, a tribe in Brazil has made a powerful statement to the ranchers who are destroying their land and subjecting them to genocidal violence and racism.
This follows a recent wave …
by Gary Olson / August 4th, 2016
When detractors accused the great English economist John Maynard? Keynes of being inconsistent in his views, he reputedly replied, “When my information changes, I change my mind. What do you do?”
In a June 2015 op-ed, I wrote, “If the race in Pennsylvania or New Jersey is extremely close, I can imagine voting for Clinton for only reason: The Krusty the Clown clone emerging as the GOP candidate will be worse…” I was,? of course, voicing the by now well-rehearsed “lesser of two evils”? position, a topic adroitly analyzed by both David Swanson and Mike Albert in recent days.
The Republican clown was an easy call. Trump is a …
by Denis A. Conroy / August 4th, 2016
There is no place in the world anymore that is immune to the presence of hegemonic forces. Money and technology are the main ingredients that influence our beliefs, our tastes and our perceptions of what social values should mean. In becoming consumers, we are co-opted into cultural norms that validate the dominant ideology. Since being force-fed that praxis of knowledge, better known as neoconservative-ideological-gruel to justify ideological expropriation of wealth, a rancid deceit wrapped in dubious economics has plagued us for decades. We have been sold an economic status …
by subMedia / August 4th, 2016
In this week’s sedition, we take a look at the so-called “War on Cops” in the United Snakes, simmering anti-cop sentiment in the UK and the fallout stemming from Turkey’s recent failed coup.
On the musical break we’ve got Rocky Rivera with Godsteppin.
We follow that up with a retrospective look at the lackluster resistance to the RNC in Cleveland, and end things off with an interview with Cleveland-based anarchist, Tom Nomad.
Track Selection:
XOC – Super Mario Theme
Dead Prez – Copshot
Dead Prez – Police …
And the Story of the “Clock Tower Sniper”
by Gary G. Kohls / August 4th, 2016
It is a fact that 90% of America’s school shooters were on prescription brain-altering psychiatric drugs – drugs that are well known to cause inebriation, intoxication, loss of impulse control, rage, aggression, homicidal ideation, suicidal ideation, and temporary drug-induced mania and/or psychosis.
But the well-documented psychiatric drug connections to school shootings and a host of other widely-publicized episodes of “senseless violence” has been treated as a taboo subject by Big Media, Big Pharma and the medical profession. (For much more on the connections between psych drugs and “irrational” behaviors of many types.)
The first cover-up started rather innocently …
by Michel Luc Bellemare / August 4th, 2016
Last year, Doctor Stephen Hawking and other esteemed scientists signed a petition stipulating that Artificial Intelligence was the greatest threat to the future of the human species. The argument is that A.I. would evolve to such technological complexity that it would surpass the human species in every domain and discipline, and, in short, render the human species obsolete. A.I. would become an autonomous free thinking entity and would eventually cast off the shackles of humanity and enter a post-human era, one where A.I. would be supreme.
The problem with this post-apocalyptic vision is that A.I., regardless of how technologically …
Liz Spayd, the new “public editor” reports
by John V. Walsh / August 3rd, 2016
An astonishing piece appeared in the New York Times (NYT) recently. It reported a fierce bias in the Times’s coverage of politics and current affairs, most notably when it comes to Donald Trump. The bias turns up not just in the opinion pages but in the News, reports Liz Spayd, the new “public editor,” a position once called the ombudsman.
But the surprise does not end there. Spayd’s report is based on letters from liberal readers, which are filling her inbox to overflowing. Here are some examples that she cites:
“You’ve lost a subscriber because of your relentless bias against Trump …
by Jim Prues / August 3rd, 2016
The great Fred Hampton, Black Panther leader that was murdered by Chicago police in cahoots with the FBI on December 3,1969, had a refrain he used in his speeches. “I am a revolutionary.” Partly he was killed because of his oratory skills, partly because of his organizing skills. He was in the process of merging the Black Panthers with other activists groups of the day — and J. Edgar Hoover put a stop to all that.
The 1960s were the last time the revolutionary spirit lived in the U.S. It was powerful enough to enable the Equal Rights Act, Voting Rights Act, …
by Felicity Arbuthnot / August 3rd, 2016
The individual is handicapped by coming face to face with a conspiracy so monstrous he cannot believe it exists.
— J. Edgar Hoover, Elks Magazine, August 1956.
On May 23rd Sean Adl-Tabatabai wrote what now surely seems a prophetic article: “Erdogan Is Preparing For Military Coup In Turkey.”
The writer warned that: “President Recep Tayyip Erdogan seems to be out of control. He is cracking down on opposition, imprisoning opponents and seizing media outlets … the Turkish leader has threatened to dissolve the Constitutional Court.” This at a time when: “…the security problems have deteriorated amidst a wave of terrorism.
Moreover: “The events make …
Muslim's inflammatory rhetoric promotes the killing and suffering of more Muslims
by Denis R. O'Brien / August 3rd, 2016
I have never seen a political convention exploit dead children like this year’s DNC. Sure, we’ve come to expect Joe Biden’s perennial tear-jerking allusions to Beau, but this cycle we’ve also had eight black mothers of kids gunned down by cops, all wearing black except the lady who didn’t get the memo and who wore a gorgeous blue dress, probably not intending it to be a sign of solidarity with the silent blue line. And we’ve got the Mad Muslim from Maryland, Khizr Khan, who has gone mega-viral by turning his hero son’s death into a …
by Kieran Kelly / August 3rd, 2016
In a post on Aotearoa’s The Daily Blog, a supposedly “leftist” blogger, Chris Trotter, took “Bernie’s die-hard supporters” to task for being “ridiculous”. He was endorsing Sarah Silverman’s words, but after some inconsequential waffle, he took it a bit further: “That makes the ‘Bernie or Bust’ crowd something much more than ridiculous, Sarah, it makes them dangerous.”
Trotter is not alone in this sentiment, but it is highly arrogant to presume to criticise without showing any insight or seeming to know much about the subject at all. Not only is the disruption and protest valid, the circumstances that …
by Ramzy Baroud / August 3rd, 2016
Donald Trump wants to keep us out of the country altogether. But Bill Clinton, former president and husband of a Democratic presidential nominee, does not mind us staying, as long as we, Muslims, behave ourselves.
Welcome to America where racial profiling is the country’s most popular idea, and where citizenship is now conditioned on blind obedience.
This is what Clinton said at the Democratic National Convention (DNC) on July 26: “If you’re a Muslim and you love America and freedom and you hate terror, stay here and help us win and make a future together, we want you.”
If this is …
A Look at the Green Candidate’s Radical Funding Solution
by Ellen Brown / August 3rd, 2016
Bernie Sanders supporters are flocking to Jill Stein, the presumptive Green Party presidential candidate, with donations to her campaign exploding nearly 1000% after he endorsed Hillary Clinton. Stein salutes Sanders for the progressive populist movement he began and says it is up to her to carry the baton. Can she do it? Critics say her radical policies will not hold up to scrutiny. But supporters say they are just the medicine the economy needs.
Stein goes even further than Sanders on several key issues, and one of them is her economic platform. She has proposed a “Power to the People …
by Bill Quigley / August 3rd, 2016
by Matt Peppe / August 2nd, 2016
After baseless allegations from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) that the Russian government was behind a hack of the DNC’s emails, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump sarcastically quipped that he hoped Russia would find and release the deleted emails from Hillary Clinton’s private server from her time as secretary of state. The New York Times failed to note the sarcasm and treated the comments as evidence of high crimes against the state. It was an example of the modern day red-baiting against Trump, who is portrayed as being in league with Russian President Vladimir Putin to conspire against the United States …
