Latest articles
by Binoy Kampmark / July 15th, 2016
British politics has seen it before: a good deal of political bloodletting in a dramatic Cabinet reshuffle. Prime Minister Harold Macmillan did so on July 13, 1962 in what became known as Britain’s own variant of the much cruder and bloodier German event of 1934.
Similarly, the new Prime Minister Theresa May, was intent on going a bit deeper than the surface after coming to power, removing such old Tory hands as the Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, and replacing him with former foreign secretary Philip Hammond. The ideologically charged Michael Gove, who has made his irreparably damaging …
Israel's apologists would call the BDS campaign "immoral", but the slander is laughably false.
by Stanley Cohen / July 15th, 2016
Israeli think-tank fellow Yossi Klein Halevi, writing recently in the Los Angeles Times, would have American readers believe that the Boycott, Divest and Sanctions movement is “immoral” and threatens the peace of “the region’s only intact society”, while simultaneously boasting it can’t touch Israel’s health and global economic integration.
Yet his reasoning from “morals” rings hollow, and amounts to little more than the shilling of the professional apologist industry deployed on Israel’s behalf throughout the Western media, in the never-ending defence of the oppressive status quo in Palestine.
Halevi excoriates BDS, disingenuously, for making the Jewish state “the world’s most pressing problem” today, …
by K.J. Noh / July 15th, 2016
A car is stolen. It’s a car that has been in the family for generations: picnics, road trips, weddings, funerals, accidents. There are pictures, memories, indelible life events. There is a huge robbery of the entire house, in the confusion, mayhem, and distraction, the car also disappears.
A few days later, a neighbor turns up with the car. The neighbor claims it’s their car. They say that they bought it–for a single dollar from someone, a Tomas, a well-known car thief, who is arrested. Alternatively, they say they found it on their property, and that …
by Ken Meyercord / July 15th, 2016
It’s ironic that the country most vocal in calling on China to abide by the ruling of the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) in the case brought by the Philippines under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) itself refuses to sign on to the convention. Adding to the irony is the fact that the court’s ruling, met by our China-bashers with unconcealed glee, makes it even more unlikely that we will ratify the convention.
While we are not a signatory to the convention, we assert that we support its provisions. Daniel J. Kritenbrink, Senior Director for Asian …
by Zarefah Baroud / July 15th, 2016
In the early morning of July 5th, 37 year-old father of five, Alton Sterling, was shot in both his chest and his back by law enforcement officers outside a convenience store in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
Following this tragedy, on the night of July 6th, a 32 year-old father, Philando Castile, was brutally slain with 4 to 5 shots by a law enforcement officer outside St. Paul, Minnesota, after being pulled over for a minor traffic violation – a faulty tail-light. Witnessing the murder was his girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds, and his 4-year-old daughter. His daughter attempted to comfort her distressed mother, while …
by John V. Walsh / July 15th, 2016
Norman Solomon betwixt the political sheets with Robert Kagan? How could that be? Has our political world turned upside down?
Driving south to Mountain View in my new home state of California, I tuned into KPFA, the Pacifica outlet in the Bay Area. Norman Solomon, longtime prominent figure in Progressive Democrats of America (PDA) and co-founder of “Roots Action” was being interviewed on a program called “Talkies.” Just a few hours earlier Bernie Sanders had endorsed Hillary Clinton, betraying the millions who voted for him (and voted against her) and losing the respect of many millions more.
On air Solomon …
by James Petras / July 14th, 2016
The European Union is controlled by an oligarchy, which dictates socio-economic and political decisions according to the interests of bankers and multi-national business. The central organs of power, the European Commission (EC), the European Central Bank (ECB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have systematically imposed austerity programs that have degraded working conditions, welfare programs, and wages and salaries.
EU policies demanding the free immigration of non-unionized workers to compete with native workers have undermined wage and workplace protections, union membership and class solidarity. EU financial policies have enhanced the power of finance capital and eroded public ownership of …
by Mateo Pimentel / July 14th, 2016
Tom approached me in the parking lot and asked if I could spare some change.
“Honestly,” he said, “I just want to get out of the heat for awhile and sit in some air conditioning.”
Anyone caught in the Phoenix summer could relate. By midday, the heat can easily work its way up into “the teens” with temperatures outside exceeding 110 degrees. When Tom said air conditioning was his priority, I knew he meant it.
I had seen from a distance that he was dripping with sweat, starting at the top of his tanned head and working down over …
by Jay Janson / July 14th, 2016
When this writer first heard of the slogan ‘Black Lives Matter’ he winced. Sounded ignominious, humiliating, undignified, embarrassing, pleading, definitely not noble, not appropriate to repeated murdering of innocent folks and children and other inhuman behavior.
Who the hell thought up such a slogan? Martin Luther King or Malcolm would never have made up such a wimpish slogan. Strikes one as beggarly, deplorable like ‘Hey, Blacks are People Too,’ or ‘Please Stop Killing Black People.’ No, centuries long internationally institutionalized racist crime against humanity deserves a stronger slogan.
Muhammad Ali put …
by Yves Engler / July 14th, 2016
56 years ago today the United Nations launched a peacekeeping force that contributed to one of the worst post-independence imperial crimes in Africa. The Organisation des Nations Unies au Congo (ONUC) delivered a major blow to Congolese aspirations by undermining elected Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba. Canada played a significant role in ONUC and Lumumba’s assassination, which should be studied by progressives demanding Ottawa increase its participation in UN “peacekeeping”.
After seven decades of brutal rule, Belgium organized a hasty independence in the hopes of maintaining control over the Congo’s vast natural resources. When Lumumba was elected to pursue a genuine de-colonization, …
by Rick Sterling / July 14th, 2016
Recently I went on a 15 day visit to Russia organized by the Center for Citizen Initiatives. The group visited Moscow, the Crimean peninsula, Krasnodar (southern Russia) and St. Petersburg. In each location we met many locals and heard diverse viewpoints. CCI has a long history promoting friendship and trying to overcome false assumptions between citizens of the USA and Russia. The founder Sharon Tennison has focused on making people-people connections including the business community, Rotary clubs, etc.. This delegation was organized because of concern about escalating international tensions and the danger of a drift toward world threatening military …
by Steve Church / July 14th, 2016
According to this CommonDreams article, Bernie has kept his promise. You remember, the one he made at the beginning of his so-called “revolution”, that he would endorse la Clinton if she became the Democratic nominee for the presidency. Considering that it was probably decided before the whole spectacle began, he could hardly have done anything else. He played his role perfectly, Judas Goating his millenials and other assorted revolutionary wannabes away from anything resembling a slight alternative to the slaughterhouse of dreams.
Triangular Bill perfected this duplicitous strategy, Obama enlarged upon it, and good old obedient Bernie gathered …
by Binoy Kampmark / July 13th, 2016
The slimmest of hopes, which got extremely threadbare in the last month, was nursed that Bernie Sanders might have taken his support base and made it into a third movement. A US political scene so typified by the banking retainers, the counterfeit pioneers and fraudulent managers, could have done with a new force.
Sanders, having watered and cultivated a genuine counter to a Democratic stream so deeply compromised, ultimately succumbed to the Clintonite machine. His July 12 message reads in part tones of regret, condescension and capitulation. There is also that sense of self-deception. …
Don’t Call Him “Bernie” Anymore
by Gary Leupp / July 13th, 2016
The worst disservice Sanders has done to his supporters, other than to lead them on a wild goose chase for real change, is to virtually ignore his rival’s vaunted “experience.” He need not have mentioned Hillary Clinton’s Senate record, since there was nothing there; her stint as law-maker was merely intended to position her for a run for the presidency, according to the family plan. But there was a lot in her record as Secretary of State.
As she recounts in her memoir, she wanted a heftier “surge” in Afghanistan than Obama was prepared to order. Anyone paying attention knows …
by Media Lens / July 13th, 2016
Last week, seven years after the Iraq Inquiry was set up, Sir John Chilcot finally delivered his long-awaited report. Although it stopped short of declaring the Iraq war illegal, and although it failed to examine the real motives for war, the report was not quite the whitewash that had been feared by peace campaigners.
Lindsey German, convenor of the Stop the War Coalition, gave a succinct summary of the Chilcot report, listing four of the main findings (each followed by our own comment):
1. There was no imminent threat to Britain from Saddam Hussein, so war in …
by Roger D. Harris / July 13th, 2016
With Bernie Sanders’ endorsement of Hillary Clinton two weeks before the Democratic National Convention, his pledge to “take the fight to the convention floor” is passé.
Berning Man
The Sanders campaign was hatched in talk show host Bill Press’ living room based on two premises: raise issues and do no harm to the Democratic Party. Press, a former chair of the California Democratic Party and author of Buyer’s Remorse: How Obama Let Progressives Down, recalls (pers. com.) they had no idea how popular the campaign would be and no …
by Dave Lindorff / July 12th, 2016
Bernie Sanders threw in the towel today in his epic campaign to win the Democratic Party’s nomination for president, standing on a stage in Portsmouth, New Hampshire beside the woman he had spent the whole primary season denouncing as a tool of the corporate elite and especially of the Wall Street banking cabal, and saying he endorsed her as the party’s candidate for president of the United States.
The event marked the sad, if widely predicted, end to what for a brief time had electrified millions of young and working class voters: a major party candidate for president openly calling himself …
by Mateo Pimentel / July 12th, 2016
It wouldn’t be strange for a contemporary 2D artist to imagine her sketchbook as a kind of immediate scientific laboratory, a site where her repeated experiments and knowledge-building practices get drawn into existence. Moreover, the art that accumulates within the pages of the artist’s sketchbook would likely provide a unique description of her as an individual, especially after a lifetime of drawing. And, the ultimate composite portrait comprised of so many transformed pages would likely be an intimate one.
If thinkers of late have been critical of any one aspect of the sketchbook realm of artistry, it has been the …
by Bill Quigley / July 12th, 2016
by Ramzy Baroud / July 12th, 2016
Last year, I wrote an article that made many readers unhappy. As soon as it was published, I began receiving messages of abuse and angry, threatening calls.
I hesitated about reporting the threats to the local police in Washington State and, in the end, I resolved to file the unpleasant experience under a burgeoning folder of ‘controversies’ caused by my writings. The title of the article was: “‘I Can’t Breathe’: Racism and War in America and Beyond.”
As a Palestinian columnist and a book author over the past 20 years, it has not been entirely easy …
by Robert Jensen / July 12th, 2016
Facing what seems like an endless stream of news about racialized conflicts and violence, many people call for us to get beyond our history and find solutions for today, concrete actions we can take immediately, ways of expressing love right now to help us cope with the pain.
This yearning is understandable, but it’s just as important that we grapple with history, realize the inadequacy of any actions we might take today, and accept the limits of love in the face of political and economic realities. Better that we start with a harsh, but honest, assessment: The United States has …
by Gary Brumback / July 12th, 2016
This is another occasional article in my crusade to put venal corporate America and its pawn, corrupted, captive government, in their well deserved slime light, one that can’t be missed by anyone who is observant and not fooled. Nevertheless, this article may shed some further slime light.
Industry Overview
The industry evolved from the public’s and various organizations’ and enterprises’ needs to be protected at a cost less than being unprotected from the risks that might occur from various mishaps such as those associated with property damage, death, automobile accidents, health care; etc. The earliest instances of transferring or distributing risk date …
by Linda Martín Alcoff / July 12th, 2016
The Indypendent — This election season has been a game changer for left strategies in the United States. Suddenly, radicals who had dismissed the electoral arena entirely as forever compromised by corporate power are rethinking the possibilities a national platform can provide. Despite facing down formidable odds, Bernie Sanders, an avowed socialist running a left-populist campaign, nearly closed the gap with his primary opponent, Hillary Clinton. Starting out more than 55 points behind Clinton just over a year ago, Sanders ended the primary season receiving 43 percent of the Democratic Party vote and 45 percent of the delegates …
by William Boardman / July 12th, 2016
There is no possible justification for these kinds of attacks or any violence against law enforcement. Anyone involved in the senseless murders will be held fully accountable. Justice will be done.
— President Obama, at the NATO summit in Warsaw, July 8, 2016
What the President expressed is a conventional wisdom meme, and it is both inadequate and false in so many ways, but it reflects the unhealthy American zeitgeist all too well. Probably this argument will offend some people, but its purpose is to get beyond the popular willingness to be offended and get to a more considered place of comprehension. …
by Christy Rodgers / July 12th, 2016
Burned all my notebooks
What good are notebooks?
They won’t help me survive
My head is burning
Feels like a furnace
That burning keeps me alive
You haven’t been to war until you’ve learned to flinch at the sound of a traffic helicopter overhead, as your body waits for the pop of machine gun fire spattered on the crowds below.
You haven’t been to war until you fear having your back to the street as you turn your key in the lock of your own front door, because of how easy it would be to take you out from behind as you stand there.
You haven’t been …
by Eric Walberg / July 11th, 2016
Afghanistan keeps dropping out of the headlines. Despite its endless bleeding, its Enduring Freedom torment, caused by America’s anti-communist obsession, and perpetrated by its imperialist instinct for world control at all costs, it’s just not interesting for the thrill-seeking msm, and is embarrassing to its lame-duck Nobel laureate president.
It doesn’t get much help from Hollywood, either. No Bob Hopes, who was once the bedrock of WWII-era United Service Organizations (USO), exhorting idealistic troops to fight a very real fascism, a genuine threat. He refashioned his skits to fit …
by Mark Ashwill / July 11th, 2016
One simply cannot engage in barbarous action without becoming a barbarian… one cannot defend human values by calculated and unprovoked violence without doing mortal damage to the values one is trying to defend.
– J William Fulbright, The Arrogance of Power
Imagine, for a moment, what would happen if a foreign university in the United States appointed an individual who had killed US civilians – or anyone, for that matter – to serve as chair of its board of trustees?
Or this post-World War II European example from David Marr, a US American historian of modern Viet Nam and Australian National University professor …
by Ralph Nader / July 11th, 2016
Imagine you are a shareholder in a big company and the top executives are sitting on huge amounts of cash and are not interested in putting it to work through productive capital investments, research and development, reducing company debt or paying employees a higher wage. What would you want done about it? Since you and other shareholders are the owners of the company, you’d likely say “give us back our money in cash dividends.”
“No way,” say your hired hands, the company managers, who have spent a staggering $2.1 trillion of your money in the last five years on stock buybacks …
The "Natural History" of the Declining White Working Class in America
by James Petras and Robin Eastman-Abaya / July 11th, 2016
UPDATED: 11 July — The white working class in the US has been decimated through an epidemic of ‘premature deaths’ – a bland term to cover-up the drop in life expectancy in this historically important demographic. There have been quiet studies and reports peripherally describing this trend – but their conclusions have not yet entered the national consciousness for reasons we will try to explore in this essay. Indeed this is the first time in the country’s ‘peacetime’ history that its traditional core productive sector has experienced such a dramatic demographic decline – and the epicenter is in …
by Paul Craig Roberts / July 11th, 2016
A Reuters news report under the names of presstitutes Robin Emmott and Sabine Siebold shows how devoid the West is of honest, intelligent and responsible journalists and government officials.
First we will examine the dishonesty or incompetence of the reporters and then that of Western government officials.
Emmott and Siebold describe NATO as a “Western defense alliance.” Since the Clinton regime NATO has been an alliance for waging offensive war, a war crime under the Nuremberg rules established by the United States. Under the NATO banner a number of countries have been bombed, invaded, and had their governments overthrown …
