A thousand Israelis and their supporters gathered in Jerusalem’s International Convention Center on March 28 at a conference aimed at combating the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS).
The conference was a display of “fear, paranoia, anger and determination,” as described by Antony Loewenstein, and featured top government officials, members of the oppositions and a strange conglomerate of guests, including celebrity has-beens like Roseanne Barr.
Statements made at the conference were predictably frightening and antagonistic – they amounted to nothing more than a display of the language of blood and vengeance that people have grown accustomed to within the Israeli political …
Cactus Ed is out there somewhere in the Cabeza Prieta Desert in Pima County, Arizona, his tough old carcass still decaying and decomposing inside that tattered blue sleeping bag. Becoming fertilizer for cactus and sagebrush, as per his request. There’s likely not much left by now, other than a calaca covered with wisps of his signature whiskers, still clinging to brittle wrinkled remnants of skin. A bag of bones, defying the laws of the land with an illegal burial, much as Ed advocated throughout his life, which ended prematurely back in 1989. Edward Abbey was 62 when he joined the ranks of the deceased.
The Danish government is doing it – as are others. The Australian government, however, may count itself as one of the first ones to take the concerted step to repel potential asylum seekers who arrive to Australian shores by boat with threatening films. There is nothing sophisticated about the script behind such messages. All insist on repulsion. All, ultimately, insist on the hostile world that awaits those seeking to take to the sea.
The Journey is the most recent instalment in this campaign to use celluloid as a means of dissuasion. Commissioned by the propaganda specialists of the Australian immigration department …
We all feel the seemingly oppressive impact of the conservative force that has taken over the United States, but feel hard-pressed to identify where it started and the specific entities responsible. Most of us suspect that it was no accident. We can be most certain that it isn’t.
Most of us attaining maturity in the 1960s remember with some fondness the progressive wave awash in America after World War Two. Prosperity was with us. The middle class was surging. Consumers were spending. Into the 1960s and 1970s, government action on behalf of citizens, consumers and workers seemed irrepressible.
On April 5, 2010, WikiLeaks published classified military footage of a July 2007 attack by a US Army helicopter gunship in the Iraqi suburb of New Baghdad. The video titled Collateral Murder depicted the killing of more than a dozen men, including two Reuters staffers. At the time of release, the WikiLeaks website temporarily crashed with a massive influx of visitors, while versions popped up on YouTube, reaching millions.
The importance of The Collateral Murder video has often been talked about from the perspective that it provided visual evidence of unaccounted US military power and brutality. Now, on the …
A new song by Time. Chris Time Steele made this song called Flint State of Mind in solidarity with the people of Flint and dedicated it to the Flint Democracy Defense League and Water You Fighting For, and all the other groups fighting for justice.
Struan Stevenson, President of the European Iraqi Freedom Association (EIFA), is calling for “urgent action to end callous food and medicine blockade” of the Iraqi city of Fallujah.
Mr. Stevenson was a Member of the European Parliament from 1999 to 2014 and was President of the European Parliament’s Delegation for Relations with Iraq from 2009 to 2014. He outlines starkly the ongoing tragedy of the “City of Mosques”, which was seventy percent destroyed by US troops in 2004 with football pitches being turned into cemeteries such was the human carnage wrought by the “liberators.” The suffering, assaults and siege has never …
“Privacy is a fundamental human right that is being eroded more and more in the modern world. Each person has a right to privacy, whether they are a king or a beggar.” Few could disagree with the essence of this statement by Panamanian lawyer Ramon Fonseca, one of the founders of Mossack Fonseca, which has made the news in the last few days.
The Panamanian firm is known for one vital speciality: giving advice to an assortment of mainly powerful clients in areas of tax evasion, or minimisation, depending on the moral, and ethical take on the matter. Evasion tends to …
Colette Pichon Battle gave up a great job working as a corporate immigration lawyer in Washington DC to live in a tent in front of her flooded family home 50 miles from downtown New Orleans. She is now a much honored director of a small but powerful non-profit climate justice human rights firm advocating all along the Gulf Coast. Why the big change in her life? Katrina, climate justice and fish dinners.
Hypocrisy, the most protected of vices.
— Moliere (Jean Baptiste Poquelin, 1622-1673.)
On March 18th the twenty-eight European Union leaders reached: “an agreement that has an irreversible momentum”, according to German Chancellor, Angela Merkel.
From Monday April 4th, all refugees and economic migrants arriving in Greece from Turkey after March 20th, the majority Syrian and Iraqis fleeing for their lives, risking the perilous sea crossing in which over eight hundred have died, the risk being preferable to the dangers at home, will be returned to Turkey.
In exchange for this disgraceful human-beings-as-chattels deal, Turkey, which already hosts three million fleeing refugees, would see the …
What’s another 200 dead? That appears to be the logic behind the Obama administration’s recent drone strike in Yemen from March 22.
The attack came on the heels of a strike the week before in Somalia that killed upwards of 150. Even by the standards of the Obama administration’s drone war, this is a marked escalation.
When the president was asked about the increased body count from the two strikes, he gave a typically political non-answer. “There has been in the past legitimate criticism that the architecture, the legal architecture around the use of drone strikes or other …
Now that the Syrian armed forces have liberated Palmyra, President al Assad has thanked Vladimir Putin and the Russian people for the substantial support they provided to his country. Side by side, Syria and Russia have been fighting against the ISIS and other terrorist groups operating in the region – mainly the implants from the staunch allies of the West: Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey.
After recent victories in Syria, the myth of invincibility of the terrorism has collapsed, smashed to pieces. It has become clear that if fought honestly and with full determination, even the most fanatical ones can be …
118 years after U.S. troops landed at Guánica, Puerto Rico, the liberal political site the New Republic asks, “Why Are We Colonizing Puerto Rico?” The occasion for this comically tardy acknowledgment of Puerto Rico’s colonial status is a Republican proposal to deal with the island’s $72 billion debt problem by allowing a cabal of unelected technocrats to carry out austerity measures against the will of the Puerto Rican people. Or, as the bill puts it: “To establish an Oversight Board to assist the Government of Puerto Rico … in managing its public finances.”
The Republican plan most certainly would “spell disaster for …
Compliance, Rise of the Punishment Class, Poverty and Foreclosures and Fines Make “them” a lot of money! (Part 3 of 5)
by Paul Haeder / April 3rd, 2016
Now, then, in order to understand white supremacy we must dismiss the fallacious notion that white people can give anybody their freedom.
– Stokely Carmichael, “Black Power“, Voices of Democracy, 1966
It’s a living felony, minute by minute, poor person by poor person, convicted “criminal” by convicted criminal.
I am on the front lines, former faculty, teacher, erudite not, but still, teacher of literature, drama, English composition, journalism, writing, poetry, even politics and rhetoric. Adjunct, fired, laid off, vilified because my toes saw no line to step to, cared little for any of the Dean-lets or ADMIN class, and found abhorrent the …
It might have been a moment that jolted Israelis to their senses. Instead the video of an Israeli soldier shooting dead a young Palestinian man as he lay wounded and barely able to move has only intensified the tribal war dance of the Israeli public.
Last week, as the soldier was brought before a military court for investigation, hundreds of supporters protested outside. He enjoys vocal support too from half a dozen cabinet ministers, former army generals, rabbis and – according to opinion polls – a significant majority of the Israeli Jewish public.
Most Americans have probably never heard of the 1960 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, Flemming v. Nestor. It is one of several important facts about Social Security that are unknown to the public. The essence of the ruling is that nobody has an “earned right” to Social Security benefits, no matter how much money they have paid into the program.
The court upheld the denial of benefits to Nestor even though he had contributed to the program for 19 years and was receiving benefits. In it’s ruling, the Court established the principle that entitlement to Social Security benefits is not a “contractual …
Fear and suspicion of undocumented immigrants has lead to a showdown of sorts. The issue is a polarizing one, with some showing compassion and welcoming the alien merely seeking refuge from hostilities aboard. Others, however, see this as a threat to employment, welfare, security and overall stability of the homeland.
None have taken a stronger stance than Billionaire mogul and business tycoon Bruce Wayne of Gotham City, waging a war of aggression against one such alien from Krypton. In a recent press conference, Wayne said the following: “When Krypton sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re sending men of …
[H]istory is past politics, and politics is present history.
— Edward A. Freeman (November 18, 1880)
When the tormented history of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia is written, the eyebrows of legal authorities will be raised in assortments of confusion. Soon after the Radovan Karadži? verdict, the harshest dished out by the ICTY, the firebrand and frequent patriotic buffoon Vojislav Šešelj of the Serbian Radical Party found himself acquitted. It had taken some 13 years for the Chamber to reach that conclusion, a lengthy circus of delay, obstruction and challenge.
Šešelj, labouring with the effects of cancer, neither cared, nor …
All fans of science fiction are familiar with Star Trek. It is an iconic science fiction show that has bequeathed the public with five TV series, ((A sixth series will debut in 2017.)) one animated series, and a number of films over five decades. The storyline of Star Trek, however, spans three centuries. What makes Star Trek particularly attractive for many viewers is its progressivism. Star Trek depicts a future where the scourges of sickness, racism, poverty, and war have been eradicated on Earth and throughout much of the Federation, an inter-planetary alliance of which the Earth is a founding …
Sometimes even to the most towering cynic, American hypocrisy is more than breathtaking.
As they lambast their latest “despot”, Syria’s President al-Assad — a man so popular in his country and the region that the US Embassy in Damascu had, by the end of 2006, devised a plan to oust him — arms sales to countries where human rights are not even a glimmer on the horizon have for the US (and UK) become an eye watering bonanza.
The latest jaw dropper, as Saudi Arabia continues to bombard Yemen with US and UK armaments dropped by US and UK-made aircraft, is …
Neoliberalism sucks the air out of the middle class, and it suffocates politicians.
It likely makes no difference who wins the November elections because the course of neoliberalism is already powerfully set in place, and it sets the course for America, not politicians; they simply follow orders. This reality, in turn, serves to anticipate disruption of the American capitalistic system. It is very likely doomed to utter failure by caving in under its own vibrations, its callousness, its self-indulgence, its narcissistic tendencies with a high probability that a major disruption of the neoliberal capitalist state is dead ahead.
Citizen, you are not adequately serving your society.
Citizen, you should feel shame for your selfish desire for free time, pleasure, and the pursuit of happiness.
Citizen, you should be thankful and happy around us. We have given you a job and allowed you to live on this planet. We have given you the amazing exciting opportunity to pay for resources that have been stolen and immorally cordoned of by us so that we may profiteer off your existence. You should be grateful we have chosen you as a worthy candidate for employ.
Citizen, you should not complain about not having enough. If …
Violence against American Muslims is growing faster than at any time since 9/11, with assaults on Muslim individuals and their places of worship having tripled since the Paris and San Bernardino terror attacks. A New York Timesarticle published last December cites several examples, which include shootings and vandalism. According to the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), last year set a record for the highest number of incidents targeting U.S. Mosques. As a result of this violence, Muslims across the country, including women and children, have conveyed to the public that they genuinely fear for their safety and …
On the night of October 3, 2015, a United States Air Force AC-130 gunship repeatedly attacked a Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan. Forty-two people were killed and dozens wounded. The US military plane had conducted five strafing runs over the course of more than an hour despite MSF pleas to Afghan, US and Nato officials to call off the attack. The remains of a bed frame in a room on eastern wing of the main Outpatient Department building.
As we reported at …
Money changers, Judas, the perversion of lending (sic) and renting (sic)
Two of Five
by Paul Haeder / March 30th, 2016
It’s a dangerous sign – the consumer crank sold from birth to grave, tied to the perverted narrations of elites and college grads and these under bites we call the creative class. Californians and Big Apple sucks, and for the majority of the tools of lobotomizing and propaganda coming from these distorted humans on Broadway, in Hollywood, in those fake academic circles, the movies and fluff and sickness of this mob crack orgy, well, here we are, sold a bill of goods called weekend leisure and fractured thinking. These film schools and directors from the upper class of nepotism incorporated, …
If the Boliviarian government has its way, one of the largest massacres of Venezuelan civilians in recent history will soon be swept under the rug, along with all the other disasters of the country. Indeed, the impending electrical blackout of the country—the shutting down of the Guri Dam’s hydroelectric system which provides some 60% of the nation’s energy is just days away—is only matched by the news blackout of the country’s catastrophic problems. Journalists and other media workers on March 30, 2016 protested all over Venezuela against censorship and the closing of independent daily newspapers. They point out …
Whether history moves in a straight or cyclical line, it matters little. The uncontested fact is that it is in constant motion. Thus, the current situation in Palestine is particularly frustrating to a generation that has grown up after the Oslo Peace Accord because they have been brought up within a strange historical phenomenon: where the earth below their feet keeps shrinking and when time stands still.
The nature of the current uprising in the West Bank and East Jerusalem is a testament to that claim. Previous uprisings were massive in their mobilization, clear in their message and decisive in their …
It has been one hundred years since the heroic Easter uprising of the IRB (Irish Republican Brotherhood) and the ICA (Irish Citizen Army) against the might of the British Empire in 1916. The planning of the 2016 commemoration was thrust into the hands of the conservative Fine Gael/Labour government who would have been at least a bit uneasy about the potential for increasing the political support base for the more politically radical Sinn Féin. However, the problem of artistic representation of the events was at least partially resolved by the well-worn techniques used by successive conservative Irish …
May of 2012, the U.N.’s Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Prof. Olivier De Schutter, visited his first NATO country, Canada. He found Canada’s poor generally deprived of adequate nutrition (“People are simply too poor to eat decently”). He found the Aboriginal peoples at risk.
In October, 2013, the UN Special Rapporteur on Indigenous rights, James Anaya, visited Canada and found Canada’s Aboriginal peoples “in crisis.” 20% lived in unfit housing. There was an alarming suicide rate. There were high rates of violence against women. And high rates of incarceration. Discriminatory funding disparities. Lack of adequate funding. …
The uneven distribution of justice is the bane of any system that purports to be fair. The problems are made even more problematic when it comes to the issue of war crimes trials conducted by international tribunals.
Last Thursday, Radovan Karadži?, the Bosnian Serb leader of Republika Srpska during the Yugoslavian Civil Wars of the early 1990s, was convicted on all but one of 11 charges and sentenced to 40 years in prison. These comprised two counts of genocide; five counts of crimes against humanity, and four counts of violations of the laws or customs of war.
