Latest articles
The impact of the North America Nakba Tour
by Paul Larudee / June 7th, 2016
For two months in the spring of 2016, two stateless Palestinian women from two refugee camps in Lebanon carried their message thousands of miles to audiences throughout North America. Mariam Fathalla, expelled from Palestine in 1948 at the age of 18 and now 86 years old, and Amena Ashkar, born 22 years ago in the Bourj el-Barajneh camp, overcame many obstacles and were unable to overcome some, but their message never waivered. Palestine runs through our veins and we intend to return and to recover every square inch of it. It is our land and no one else is entitled …
by Kieran Kelly / June 7th, 2016
I started a conspiracy to harm Her Majesty’s Government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (HMGUKGB&NI). I wanted to deal as much damage to them as possible so I conspired with a poet to plant an explosive and incendiary petition right in the heart of their own website. It was a petition to make the UK Government respond or debate the question of appearing before the International Court of Justice and allowing it to rule on the case of the Chagos Archipelago.
At issue is the terrible injustice to the Chagossians and their descendants …
by Kim Petersen / June 7th, 2016
In 1949, Communist troops led by Mao Zedong defeated the Nationalist forces led by Jiang Jieshi (Chiang Kai-shek). The Guomindang (KMT) escaped across the Taiwan Strait to the island of Taiwan. The United States continued to recognize the KMT as the government of all China and pledged the US 7th fleet to the so-called defense of Taiwan. With that policy, the United States effectively intervened in the Chinese civil war with the declared aim to to prevent the reintegration of all China under a Communist government.
In 1979, US president …
by Felicity Arbuthnot / June 7th, 2016
It’s really 19th century behavior in the 21st century. You don’t just invade another country on phony pretexts in order to assert your interests.
— John Kerry, Meet the Press, March 2nd, 2014
If “a week is a long time in politics”, a quote attributed to British Prime Minister Harold Wilson (1964-1970 and 1974-1976), under David Cameron’s tenure – a man who has been kicked into myriad U-turns over feckless, reckless decisions – a day is an age.
On June 3rd it was announced that a summary of the long awaited Iraq Inquiry (November 24th, 2009 to February 2nd, 2011) chaired by Sir …
by Robert Hunziker / June 7th, 2016
Disasters can be cleaned up.
Naohiro Masuda, TEPCO Chief of Decommissioning at Fukushima Diiachi Nuclear Power Plant, finally publicly “officially” announced that 600 tons of hot molten core, or corium, is missing, ((“Fukushima Nuclear Plant Operator Says 600 Tons of Melted Fuels is Missing”, Epoch Times, May 24, 2016.))
Now what?
According to Gregory Jaczko, former head of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), it is not likely the fuel will ever be recovered: “Nobody really knows where the fuel is at this point, and this fuel is still very radioactive and will be for a long time.” ((Ibid.))
A big part of the …
by Frank Scott / June 6th, 2016
Failing institutions, nations or empires are often run by people whose capacities reflect the deteriorating material conditions. The greater the crisis, the more likely that morally crippled, mentally challenged or psychologically disturbed leadership may assert command. But when disastrous conditions are systemic and transcend borders, the weapons handled by the incompetents are the most lethal in recorded history and the area blanketed in propaganda and ignorance extends from municipality to province to nation, far more than a local population is under assault.
As the international political economic crisis becomes more serious the reaction from capital takes on a more desperate nature. …
by Ike Nahem / June 6th, 2016
Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go ten thousand miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human rights?
No, I am not going ten thousand miles from home to help murder and burn another poor nation simply to continue the domination of white slave masters of the darker people the world over. This is the day when such evils must come to an end. I have been warned that to take such a stand would put my …
by Gary Brumback / June 6th, 2016
There are roughly 15,000 publically traded companies and countless millions of people who invest in them. Each of these companies belongs to an industry of companies in similar businesses. Three industries are the subject of this short article; the funeral service industry, the gun industry, and the war industry.
The first provides burial and crematory services and paraphernalia for people no longer living due to nonviolent domestic deaths. The second provides the means to cause violent domestic deaths. The third provides the means to murder people in foreign lands.
The first industry is tangential to the focal point off this article. The …
by Gary Leupp / June 6th, 2016
Rachel Maddow, the famously progressive MSNBC show host, pronounced it “her greatest speech of the campaign.” Chris Matthews agreed, adding that it would “have a very strong appeal to the neocon movement.” He mentioned in particular Bill Kristol, the Weekly Standard editor and TV commentator, as someone likely to be impressed. “A very smart man,” opined Matthews, the conservative Democrat and “Hardball” host, causing the entire cosmos to shudder.
You’d think that that war in Iraq, which Kristol had tirelessly championed, had never happened. And that its results had been anything other than horrific for the entire Middle East.
Hillary Clinton’s fiery …
by Paul Larudee / June 6th, 2016
The group SSUK (s?k), has registered its strong objection to, and condemnation of, the participation of Dr. Tim Anderson in the Crossing Borders Conference on Refugees, to convene July 7-10 on the Greek Island of Lesbos. Dr. Anderson is the author of The Dirty War on Syria: Washington, Regime Change and Resistance. Their complaint is that Anderson presents facts and a point of view that SSUK does not like.
We understand their concern. It is difficult enough to justify their support for some of the world’s most vicious terrorists without having someone like Dr. Anderson presenting genuine facts and …
Free-speech organisers pull the plug on her 'Birds not Bombs'
by Stuart Littlewood / June 6th, 2016
In a highly-regarded public speaking competition 15 year-old Leanne Mohamad, a pupil at Wanstead High School in London, stood up and gave an impassioned speech about the appalling situation back home in the Holy Land. It was so moving that she won the regional final and a video of her speech was posted on the organisers’ website.
Then a blogger called Edgar Davidson complained and Leanne’s speech was deleted. He said it was “full of ignorant lies and blood libels”.
The Speak Out Challenge! operates in nearly every secondary school in London and Essex and claims to be the largest …
by Jonathan Cook / June 6th, 2016
In a familiar muddying of the waters, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has spent the past week talking up peace while fiercely criticising Friday’s summit in France – the only diplomatic initiative on the horizon.
As foreign ministers from 29 nations arrived for a one-day meeting in Paris, Netanyahu dusted off the tired argument that any sign of diplomatic support for Palestinians would encourage from them “extreme demands”.
France hopes the meeting will serve as a prelude to launching a peace process later in the year. French president Francois Hollande said he hoped to achieve a “peace [that] will be solid, sustainable …
by James Hoover / June 5th, 2016
As suggested by Jane Mayer in Dark Money, never have two members of one American family spent so much time and money to control our democracy, and in their effort, foster economic damage for most Americans. The guilty parties: Charles and David Koch. It is also likely that self-delusion and insularity from the less-fortunate have rendered both impervious to any recognition that their course is detrimental to the well-being of a great majority of Americans.
Ironically, “well-being” seems to be an overblown term Charles has used to describe his goal for the good of all Americans, claiming that free-market ideology …
by James Petras / June 5th, 2016
During her 4 years as Secretary of State of the United States (2009-2014), Hillary Clinton controlled US foreign policy. She had access to the most confidential information and state documents, numbering in the tens of thousands, from all of the major government departments and agencies, Intelligence, FBI, the Pentagon, Treasury and the office of the President. She had unfettered access to vital and secret information affecting US policy in all the key regions of the empire.
Today, Mme. Clinton’s critics have focused on the technical aspects …
Warlords, military industrialists, neoliberals, neocons, political killers beware
by Paul Haeder / June 5th, 2016
They are young, high school, seniors, boys and girls, running hard, 8 am, along Salmon Creek, a place where I burn the body in a course of hard bicycling waiting for a bald eagle to baptize my day. Great blue herons, red-tailed hawks, egrets, meadowlarks, red winged black birds, and dozens of other species capturing the soul before facing off the empire.
Oh, maybe 50, hot and pink faced, running toward the big park and the pond. Running into hell, into the cornering that the empire paints into almost everyone’s life. What in hell is the US Marines offering these middle …
by Glen Barry / June 5th, 2016
The global ecological system is collapsing and dying as humanity overruns natural ecosystems and the climate. We are entering an age of unrelenting violence and suffering, prior to biosphere collapse and the end of being, unless dramatic social change based upon a global ecology ethic arises quickly.
Ecosystem loss is biosphere collapse
Humans evolved within a lush and vibrant Eden teaming with life, which until just a few generations ago provided for natural abundance and the prospect of perpetual human existence. We are one of many species utterly dependent …
by Ajamu Nangwaya / June 4th, 2016
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense (BPP). It is arguably the most revolutionary and impactful organization created by the African-American liberation struggle. There is much that may be learned from the legacy of the BPP in advancing today’s struggle for freedom, justice and a world that is free of capitalism, patriarchy, imperialism and racism.
The BPP’s explicit commitment to revolutionary socialism was a notable development, which serves as a contrast to the failure of many current activists and social justice organizations to openly embrace socialism. Well, we are not …
by Sheri Heller / June 4th, 2016
In the aftermath of the Paris massacre I found myself pondering the surreal state of the world and the myriad humanitarian disasters and violations of international law infiltrating the globe. War crimes in Iraq, Gaza, Syria and Libya accompanied by air strikes, bombing raids and regime changes have become routine. The genocide in Yemen, albeit a humanitarian catastrophe, receives little media attention. U.S. led propaganda and harsh sanctions have economically destabilized Venezuela, conceivably as a prelude to invasion. Governmental looting of pensions and savings has begun, devastating retirees and their surviving spouses while corporate moguls earn 380x more than the …
by Dennis Rahkonen / June 4th, 2016
In harsh places around the formerly colonial Third World, where poverty born of foreign exploitation left many millions living wretched lives in unrelenting misery, a reason to believe in better tomorrows inspiringly arose during the first decades of the second half of the 20th Century.
Word spread of a champion from across the sea who, like them, didn’t possess a European skin shade. That champion took on and defeated all comers, doing so while extending solidarity to this planet’s hewers of wood, drawers of water, and the sweatshop workers who toiled for the smallest imaginable remuneration each tiring day.
He defied the …
by Eric Walberg / June 4th, 2016
Why do I find the transgender bathroom debate so irritating? While Obama daily launches drones, killing dozens of innocent foreigners (or militants, it doesn’t matter – both drone deaths are crimes against humanity), we are fed self-righteous nostrums, showing what a great liberal he is (soon to be joined, no doubt, by the Supreme Court).
Dress is mostly unisex now — women wear pants, so what’s the problem? If you must wear make-up and act like a woman, just dress down if you are out in public. In the interests of public courtesy, bite the bullet and use ‘the men’s’ if …
by Rajesh Makwana / June 4th, 2016
For how much longer do we want to witness the annual palaver of these global conferences on poverty and undernutrition, while nothing is done on an adequate scale to help these tragically neglected people? Is it not true that all the millions of dollars spent on organising such recurring high-level summits over several decades could instead have been used to save many such lives already? Meanwhile, we—the minority privileged who take the human rights of Article 25 for granted—continue to overconsume and waste the world’s food and other essential commodities, instead of demanding that our governments redistribute our nation’s surplus …
by Binoy Kampmark / June 4th, 2016
Censoring climate change and its reporting is a big business, notably among fossil fuel obsessives and those in denial. It continues to fulfil a role in the policies of Australia’s Turnbull government. Even after the demise of Tony Abbott last year, his successor continues to scrub his own environmental credentials from his profile. As he does so, an assortment of weasel words have found their way into the political argot: “innovation”, “growth” and a host of other empty treats.
Despite lauding various efforts to pursue “clean energy” (PM Malcolm Turnbull decided to reverse the previous leader’s decision to scrap the Clean …
by Andre Vltchek / June 3rd, 2016
They were marching shoulder-to-shoulder, young and old, in absolute silence. Some were carrying small placards with names and photos of their loved ones, who disappeared four decades ago, during the pro-Western dictatorship here in Uruguay.
The entire center of Montevideo came to a standstill. Blocks and blocks of this marvelous city were literally inundated by the river consisting of human bodies.
Then, in front of the municipality, the silence was broken. A huge screen above the square lit up, and photographs of each man and woman who disappeared, suddenly emerged, one …
by Robert Hunziker / June 3rd, 2016
There have been 21 presidential debates, which, by and large, skirted the biggest issue affecting the most people, back-to-back, back-to-back, and back-to-back, and on and on record-setting planetary heat!
Nowadays, rather than hitting yearly heat records, the planet is hitting monthly heat records (maybe global warming’s accelerating): e.g.:
March was also the 11th consecutive month to set a record high for temperatures, which agencies started tracking in the 1800s. With the release on Tuesday of its global climate report, NOAA is the third independent agency — along with NASA and the Japan Meteorological Association — to reach similar findings, each using slightly …
Part 2 of a 2 Part Series
by Felicity Arbuthnot / June 3rd, 2016
With the publication date of the Chilcot Inquiry into the illegal invasion of Iraq just weeks away (July 6th) reportedly set to “savage” former Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair he has made a rare return to the UK and gone in to manic diversionary tactic overdrive.
It seems no radio, television news or current affairs programme is without Blair giving his opinion on the upcoming UK referendum on whether to stay in the European Union, making near libelous comments on the current courteous, dignified, non-warmongering leader of the Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn (who was implacably against Blair’s foreign interventions.) He …
The State of the Inland Empire's (and USA's) Health is All Up To Us
by Paul Haeder / June 2nd, 2016
I can’t take a budget that eliminates marketing, outreach and in-person assistors seriously.
— Teresa Mosqueda, member of the Washington State Health Benefit Exchange board.
You can’t afford to get sick, and you can’t depend on the present health care system to keep you well. It’s up to you to protect and maintain your body’s innate capacity for health and healing by making the right choices in how you live.
— Dr. Andrew Weil, an American physician, author, spokesperson, and sort of guru for holistic health and integrative medicine.
Docs and Nurses Everywhere You Look
I grew up around doctors and nurses, and while my surgeon …
by Gary Brumback / June 2nd, 2016
I was prompted to write this article when a twitter contact of mine wondered whether some of my writings about the corpocracy amounted to a conspiracy theory. Having been a behavioral scientist most of my adult life I know a thing or two about what’s theory and what’s not. I don’t know how anyone, scientist or lay person, could mistake the corpocracy for a theory. I doubt if any readers of articles published in the alternative news media would confuse the two. Nevertheless, I want to tell you what I have learned over the years.
A Tacit Conspiracy, Not a Public …
A few final lies
by Jason Hirthler / June 1st, 2016
The late “rhetorical pugilist” Christopher Hitchens sub-titled his book God Is Not Great with “How Religion Poisons Everything.” He might have added, and perhaps did in his leftist days, that propaganda poisons everything, too. It certainly feels like its ideological signature is everywhere these days. Not least on President Obama’s final tour of Asia, including stops in Vietnam and Japan as highlights of his farewell junket.
Memories of Mayhem
Perhaps no leg of this absurd journey is more disorienting than the stopover in Obama demanding Vietnam make new human rights commitments–the USA telling Vietnam this after committing genocide across Southeast Asia …
A response by the Syria Solidarity Movement®
by Paul Larudee / June 1st, 2016
The short sentence in the illustration contains so many lies. What then of the entire article, attacking the Syria Solidarity Movement® and its members? Here is some deconstruction:
(1) The Syria Solidarity Movement® is not “pro-Assad”. We are pro-Syria and pro-international law. While the violent opposition and their allies say “Assad must go”, we do not say “Assad must stay”. We say “It’s up to the Syrian people.” The US, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and other countries are trying to dictate who can or cannot be the leader of Syria, …
by James McEnteer / June 1st, 2016
On September 11, 2001, George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, et al, were either negligent about, or complicit in, the terrorist attacks that killed thousands of Americans. There is no third alternative. We require a thorough judicial proceeding to determine which it was. Fifteen years later we still need to know.
Which presidential campaign will promise to find the truth?
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Sharks are attacking humans in unprecedented numbers around the world. What’s pissing them off? Has our wanton pollution of the seas literally come back to bite us?
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Antonin Scalia’s death leaves Justice Clarence Thomas the undisputed …
