Latest articles
by James Hoover / May 16th, 2016
Right-wingers have adopted the outrage-machine over the last several decades, with the unceasing intention of dominating the media and influencing public opinion with a right-wing bias. The highly-funded choral and print network they have built is impressive and relentless at the same time. Almost all are petty, embellished or fabricated, but many imagined.
The really outrageous – most causing or involving death or injury — seem to be presented perfunctorily, fitted with “corporate lenses,” or consigned to more obscure treatment, even by mainstream media. Here is a small sample:
Considered cowardly by many, George Zimmerman re-listed for auction his gun. …
Part 1 of a 3 Part Series
by Israel Shamir / May 16th, 2016
Author’s Note: I returned just now from North Korea. Here is the first part of my report from this unusual land.
*****
A colossal mass demonstration, well choreographed to the level of ballet but with tens of thousands of participants in the centre of Pyongyang, completed and sealed an important and unusual political event in this remote and isolated land of North Korea – the Party Congress. The demo has been followed by a show, so big that it could not be staged anywhere else. Magnificent fireworks, twenty thousand men and women dancing with torches in the darkness of Pyongyang …
by Eric Walberg / May 16th, 2016
The sale of weaponized Light Armoured Vehicles (LAVs) to Saudi Arabia has raised a heated debate in Canada, pitting so-called realists against people who expect trade to be conducted according to a minimum set of moral values. Outgoing Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s swan song was the $15-billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia, which Harper boasted would provide 3,000 jobs.
A poll by Nanos Research showed that 60% of Canadians feel it is important to ensure arms go only to countries “that respect human rights” vs providing jobs to a few Canadians. The same poll showed that 86% hold a negative …
by James Petras / May 16th, 2016
Post-colonial empires are complex organizations. They are organized on a multi-tiered basis, ranging from relative autonomous national and regional allies to subservient vassal states, with variations in between.
In the contemporary period, the idea of empire does not operate as a stable global structure, though it may aspire and strive for such. While the US is the major imperial power, it does not dominate some leading global political-economic and military powers, like Russia and China.
Imperial …
by Jaan Islam / May 16th, 2016
The leader of the political party, the Bangladeshi Jamaat Islami, was executed on the 11th of May, 2016, having being given a death sentence for genocide, rape, and torture. But there is an important and under-represented perspective hiding from the international public: the corruption, lack of judicial independence, and political motivations behind the sentence.
Whether you’ve heard it or not, Bangladesh has a power problem. Amongst many concerns international commentators have had against the Bangladeshi government is the pattern of back-to-back criminal convictions of many opposition leaders in the country. United Nations officials and the Human Rights Watch (HRW) …
Nothing grows forever. The myth the economy can is destroying the biosphere.
by Glen Barry / May 16th, 2016
The present human condition is predicated on one of the biggest lies ever – that the economy can grow indefinitely. In a self-serving logical contortion, economists in service to the oligarchy measure the well-being of a society by how fast the economy grows, with little regard to the state of natural capital, human inequity, the welfare of ecosystems and other species, or the extent to which people and society are happy. Natural capital is defined as Earth’s stocks of natural assets including ecosystem services which make all life possible, which is unmeasured and thus undervalued by indices of economic growth….
by Barbara MacLean / May 15th, 2016
Some questions for the moderate left
Are you a Bernie supporter and wondering if you will or can vote for Hillary if he loses the nomination? Or have you already decided that you’re for Hillary – either because she’s a woman or because we have an obligation to do anything we can to keep Trump out? Do you believe that it’s your obligation to vote and you would not be upholding your responsibility as a citizen if you didn’t vote?
Looks like hell is going to be a pretty crowded place
Madeleine Albright has announced that there is a special place in hell …
by Gerald E. Scorse / May 15th, 2016
Thirty years have passed since America’s last major tax reform, and any attempt at an encore will face huge policy and political hurdles. That was the blunt overview from Jason Furman, chairman of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisors, in a speech early this year.
On the bright side, Furman said there was “increasing agreement that we can get additional revenue while improving efficiency through broad-based reductions in tax expenditures for those who derive outsized benefits…under the current system.” Putting it more simply, those who reap the richest rewards should be first in line when the tax reformer cometh. …
by E.R. Bills / May 15th, 2016
One hundred years ago this week, Jesse Washington, an eighteen-year-old African American man, was burned at the stake in Waco, Texas.
On May 8, 1916 a 53-year-old white woman named Lucy Fryar was bludgeoned to death outside her home, seven miles south of the city. The chief and only suspect was Washington, an illiterate farm hand who worked for Lucy and her husband George.
Reported to have anger issues and mental disabilities, Washington allegedly left his cotton plow to get more seed from Mrs. Fryar. As she was measuring cotton seed out, she reportedly scolded him for his harsh treatment of the …
by Steve Horn / May 15th, 2016
Some of the country’s biggest law firms have recently penned “client alert” memoranda, suggesting to their clients that they closely monitor the ongoing Attorneys General investigations occurring in states nationwide on the potentially fraudulent behavior of ExxonMobil.
DeSmog tracked down alerts written by three different firms: Crowell & Moring, Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman, as well as King & Spalding. All of them have maintained fossil fuel industry clients as well as tobacco industry clients, a DeSmog review has revealed.
A previous DeSmog investigation pointed out that Exxon has hired Ted Wells, who …
by Ellen Brown / May 14th, 2016
“Print the money” has been called crazy talk, but it may be the only sane solution to a $19 trillion federal debt that has doubled in the last 10 years. The solution of Abraham Lincoln and the American colonists can still work today.
“Reckless,” “alarming,” “disastrous,” “swashbuckling,” “playing with fire,” “crazy talk,” “lost in a forest of nonsense”: these are a few of the labels applied by the media commentators to Donald Trump’s latest proposal for dealing with the federal debt. On Monday, May 9th, the presumptive Republican presidential candidate said on CNN, “You print the money.”
The remark …
by John Stanton / May 14th, 2016
When the United States goes to war they will introduce a war economy. This means sacrificing everything for the army and war purposes – and misery for the population. How can there be a self-sustaining economy for the United States? In times of peace you have 10 million unemployed – and this in a time of relative prosperity; during crises you have 13 to 14 million unemployed. Moreover you must export. To do this you must import. What? Products that will ruin your farmers, who are even now being supported artificially? No, there is no possibility. Instead, it is necessary …
by James Hoover / May 13th, 2016
In life, Sandra Bland didn’t appear to matter, but the tragic circumstance of her death has prompted a keen interest, which leads to the question, “What actually happened to Sandra Bland?”
Sandra was found dead at the Waller County Jail in Hempstead, Texas, on July 17, 2015. She was hanging from a bathroom privacy partition with a plastic, jail-issue garbage bag noose around her neck. Authorities had “full faith” that she committed suicide. They said there was no contrary evidence in the cell or on the person of the 28-year-old African-American woman, a woman who was jailed after an alleged …
by Andre Vltchek / May 13th, 2016
There are several essential messages literally shouting from the screen, whenever one watches ‘The Last Supper’ (La Ultima Cena), a brilliant 1976 film by a Cuban director Tomas Gutierrez Alea.
The utmost one: it is impossible to enslave an entire group or race of people, at least not indefinitely. Longing for freedom, for true liberty, is impossible to break, no matter how brutally and persistently colonialism, imperialism, racism and religious terror try to.
The second, equally important message is that the whites and the Christians (but mostly the white Christians) have been behaving, for centuries and all over the world, like a …
Part 1 of a 2 Part Series
by Media Lens / May 12th, 2016
We live in a time when state-corporate interests are cooperating to produce propaganda blitzes intended to raise public support for the demonisation and destruction of establishment enemies.
Below, we will examine five key components of an effective propaganda campaign of this kind.
1: Dramatic New Evidence
A propaganda blitz is often launched on the back of ‘dramatic new evidence’ signifying that an establishment enemy should be viewed as uniquely despicable and targeted with ‘action’.
The Blair government’s infamous September 2002 dossier on Iraqi WMD contained four mentions of the claim that Iraq was able to deploy WMD against British citizens …
A Palestinian Perspective on Britain’s ‘Anti-Semitic’ Controversy
by Ramzy Baroud / May 11th, 2016
There is a witch-hunt in the British Labor Party. Britain’s Opposition party leader, Jeremy Corbyn, is being hounded for not rooting out alleged anti-Semitism in his party. Those leading the charge are pro-Israel Zionists and their supporters within the party, members who are mostly allied with the former Prime Minister, the largely discredited pro-war Tony Blair. The Blairites are quite unhappy that Corbyn, who won the party’s leadership election last September with a landslide victory is a non-elitist politician, with a deep-rooted grassroots activist past, and, yes, a strong stance for Palestinian rights.
Corbyn has been subjected to …
by Mateo Pimentel / May 11th, 2016
Y estábamos pasando el río cuando nos fusilaron con los máuseres. Me devolví porque él me dijo: ‘Sácame de aquí, paisano, no me dejes.’
— Juan Rulfo, El llano en llamas
On March 30 of this year, the National Border Patrol Council (NBPC) endorsed Donald Trump, effectively backing his bid for the presidency of the United States. NBPC president Brandon Judd heads the organization, which describes itself online as “the exclusive representative of approximately 18,000 Border Patrol Agents and support personnel assigned to the U.S. Border Patrol.” Judd himself published the NBPC’s pro-Trump communiqué, asserting that “if we do not secure our …
by Lamont Lilly / May 10th, 2016
On April 2, 1969, twenty-one members of the Harlem Chapter of the Black Panther Party were formally indicted and charged with 156 counts of “conspiracy” to blow up subway and police stations, five local department stores, six railroads, and the Bronx based New York Botanical Garden.
By the early morning hours of April 3, mass sweeps were conducted city wide by combat squads of armed police. Law enforcement agencies ranging from the CIA, FBI, U.S. Marshalls and NY state police worked simultaneously to coordinate assaults on panther homes and community-based offices. After numerous raids, ten panther men and two panther women …
Bring the Blade to their Root
by L'Ordre / May 10th, 2016
An important contribution to modern political rhetoric, Jean-Paul Marat’s The Chains of Slavery (1774) is easy to dismiss as a simplistic and formative work in Europe’s climb to the French Revolution. Even “like a fairy tale”, as historian Ernest Belfort Bax called it, this book is a valuable work of political rhetoric and a glimpse into the history of dissent.
Marat’s mission was opposition to deception by any ruling regime. Although primarily opposed to the monarchs of his time, he would be no less saddened by the nature of the regimes existing today. Endless deception has become the only consistent …
by Steve Salmony / May 10th, 2016
Icebergs are breaking away from Antarctica. Greenland’s ice sheet is melting. Global sea levels are rising and temperatures are getting hotter worldwide. Arctic ice is thinning. The ocean’s surface layer is warming. Methane gas releases from permafrost and fracking as well as CO2 emissions are polluting the air. Mammals and other species are becoming extinct at an accelerating rate. All this environmental change is occurring now on our watch.
Nature itself, it appears, will likely “force our hand” to make necessary behavioral changes toward sustainability. At least one question remains open: At that future moment in space-time will global ecological circumstances have been so …
by Robert Hunziker / May 9th, 2016
Christine Lagarde, the Queen of Troika and the Head Honcho of the IMF, on May 6th, threatened to pull the IMF out of the Greek rescue plan, with a straight face, calling it a “rescue plan.” Oh, please!
Yet, it is extremely doubtful the IMF would ever entirely pull out since the plan really bails out its own constituency of banks at an unfathomable expense to the Greek people.
Meantime in Greece, transportation and civic services throughout the country grind to a screeching halt, full stop, as the people hit the streets.
Queen Christine’s backroom stratagem, described in a Wikileaks’ leaked confidential letter …
by Andrey Fomine / May 9th, 2016
Five days before the celebration of the 71st anniversary of Nazi Germany’s capitulation to the Soviet and allied troops in the WWII, the new NATO Supreme Commander in Europe Curtis Scaparrotti announced that he came to beat the drums of war again. Ignoring the historic facts and legitimate Russian interests in its around, in his first speech after assuming office he condemned alleged “Russian aggressive behavior that challenges international norms” and called the bloc members to “fight tonight if deterrence fails.”
This commonplace declaration fairly correlates with the military and media strategy the Western ruling class adopted decades ago. …
Part 5 of 5 Part Series
by Paul Haeder / May 9th, 2016
What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.
— Crowfoot, Blackfoot warrior and orator
What is the soul of a country, or the collective will of people who look toward flag and nation, or what can a people say about how they came into being in their geological and political space, or how the land was used in this people’s creation and how has it changed through time, or how and if the …
by Jonathan Cook / May 9th, 2016
It was an assessment no one expected from the deputy head of the Israeli military. In his Holocaust Day speech last week, Yair Golan compared current trends in Israel with Germany in the early 1930s, as Nazism took hold.
In today’s Israel, he said, could be recognised “the revolting processes that occurred in Europe … There is nothing easier than hating the stranger, nothing easier than to stir fears and intimidate.”
The furore over Golan’s remarks followed on the heels of a similar outcry in Britain at statements by former London mayor Ken Livingstone. He observed that Hitler had in practice been …
by Felicity Arbuthnot / May 9th, 2016
Nothing justifies killing of innocent people.
— Tony Blair, CNN, January 15th, 2015
The publication of the Chilcot Inquiry which began in 2009 and concluded three years ago, investigating the illegal 2003 invasion of Iraq, so far costing a reported £10,375,000, is to be delayed until after the June 23rd UK European Union referendum on whether Britain stays in or leaves the EU.
According to the Daily Telegraph Prime Minister David Cameron is “delaying (the) Chilcot Report to avoid embarrassing Tony Blair”, whose government’s “dodgy dossiers”, produced when he was Prime Minister, were such an integral part of America’s excuse to invade, …
by Andre Vltchek / May 9th, 2016
I am not sure who has invented those rumors that Cuba is now facing a mortal danger, that it has lost its bearings, and that it could collapse at any moment, after just one lethal visit by US President Barack Obama. The rumors and speculations are snowballing, and in some circles of the North American and European Left, they are already being confused with reality.
I know, admire and love Cuba. It is an exceptionally strong, determined and resilient nation. Reading all the alarming reports, I decided to return and to speak to the Cuban people directly.
I visited Cuba again. This …
by Binoy Kampmark / May 9th, 2016
“Big fan of LBJ, me mum,” said Chris Uhlmann, journalist for the ABC’s Twenty-Four hour television news network. And that, perhaps, was the only thing of any interest in what must be regarded as one of the most boring exhibitions of television in decades. The topic? Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s journey to seek the Governor General’s permission to dissolve both houses of parliament. An election looms.
A twenty-four hour news station on a Sunday is bound to be desperate for material, and in a country where nothing much happens of global significance, apart from a desire to intervene in distant …
by Christos Kefalis / May 8th, 2016
Contemporary art has not given us as yet many interesting works criticizing capitalist globalization. This is not because occasions and issues that could attract the attention and the sensitivity of radical artists were missing; on the contrary, globalization, with its large and growing contradictions, gave – and gives – rich material for inspiration. The very historic defeat and retreat of progressive movements and ideas during the last decades, after the dissolution of the USSR in 1990, however, went side by side with a parallel waning of progressive art. The result was a domination of colorless “lifestyle” vogue, all that apolitical …
by Jack Balkwill / May 7th, 2016
Damned by a corrupt system, it appears voters will be given a choice between Hillary Clinton and her friend Donald Trump this year, with no realistic alternative allowed by corporate media and their establishment patrons.
I say “friend” because the Clintons and Trumps have a relationship going back for years.
Seeing Trump as their enemy, many liberals are opining that Hillary is the lesser evil, saying they will vote for her.
I am not so sure Hilary’s the lesser evil. I told friends years ago that I thought she would be the next president. Long before she announced she would run …
by Gilad Atzmon / May 7th, 2016
National socialism won in Scotland (once again) and for a reason. If global capitalism is the disease, then national socialism is the remedy.
Labour wasn’t wiped out (as predicted) which suggests that the Jewish siege against Corbyn and Co didn’t dissuade Labour voters. Corbyn may now stand up and clean his party of foreign agents and Zionist oligarchs. Can he do it? Will he do it? I can only hope.
The fact that Labour didn’t increase in popularity after six years of austerity suggests that working class people in Britain are …
