Decades ago James Lovelock constructed a principle called the Gaia hypothesis, contending that a biosphere teeming with life works together with inorganic matter to self-regulate conditions for maintaining a livable planet.
The oxygen levels in our air are maintained, and the salinity of the seas – everything that’s needed to keep conditions within the zones which nurture life on the planet. This is a theory embraced by many deep environmentalists because it offers hope for the future of life forms on the planet.
When one creature (such as man) gets to be so out of control that it threatens the other …
According to a “sensational” article by the Telegraph, the US director of National Intelligence was recently instructed by Congress to “conduct a major review into Russian clandestine funding of European parties over the last decade.” This disclosure – a classic “controlled leak” – is intended to warn disobedient yet popular political entities across Europe to scale back their ambitions to rebalance the roles and weight of their nation states within the European Union. Hungary’s Jobbik, Greece’s Golden Dawn, Italy’s Lega Nord, and France’s Front National are explicitly included in the …
By Friday, January 29, Palestinian journalist Mohammed al-Qeq had spent 66-days on hunger strike in Israeli jails. Just before he fell into his third coma, a day earlier, he sent a public message through his lawyers, the gist of which was: freedom or death.
Al-Qeq is 33-years of age, married and a father of two. Photos circulating of him online and on Palestinian streets show the face of a bespectacled, handsome man. The reality, though, is quite different. “He’s in a very bad situation. He fell into his third coma in recent days, and his weight has dropped to 30 …
Out of the mirror they stare,
Imperialism’s face
And the international wrong.
— W.H. Auden, 1907-1973
It is more than possible to speculate why Prime Minister David Cameron has declared it his mission to scrap the Human Rights Act – which is incorporated into the European Convention on Human Rights – it appears he simply does not believe in human rights.
For example, the fact that Saudi Arabia executed – including beheadings – forty seven people in one day last month, displaying their bodies from gibbets, failed to deter him from having British military experts to work with their Saudi counterparts, advising on which targets …
Welcome to the very first “A is for Anarchy” a monthly video series that breaks down anarchist concepts, theories and thoughts. On this episode we look at the concept of “Autonomy.”
The Globe and Mail’s recent coverage of Rwanda has been schizophrenic. While South African-based correspondent Geoffrey York has done important work detailing how Paul Kagame’s government has assassinated its opponents and contributed to violence in Eastern Congo, columnist Gerald Caplan has justified its repression and echoed Kigali’s position on regional conflicts.
At the start of January York reported on two new books describing the totalitarian nature of President Kagame’s regime. “Village informers”, wrote York. “Re-education camps. Networks of spies on the streets. Routine surveillance of the entire population. The crushing of the independent media and all political opposition. A …
One can point to many reasons for such a tragic development in an otherwise decent, wealthy and hitherto well-respected country.
• It’s become too easy to go to war. The generation of politicians who might have a sense of war are long gone. If you take property owned by people who have fled thousands of kilometres because their life opportunities have been smashed and who carry just what they could grab in a hurry and carry – you simply have no idea of what life is like in a war zone. Neither do …
The Empire has developed a complex system of slapping faces and humiliating all those who defy its dictate. It has also become increasingly generous when rewarding its allies and lackeys.
Of course, no medals are distributed. But much better goodies are offered. The Empire uses all sorts of propaganda tricks, even “employing” some international organizations, like the United Nations, to reward its best pawns. Muslim school children at the site of the 1955 Bandung Conference (Andre Vltchek)
Very often then, what is obviously black is redefined and propagated as white. Something dreadful is hailed as a great indisputable …
Like the Pony Express roaring out of a cloud of dust, the GOP candidates came last week, promising to return the U.S. to the 1880s.
In this Great March Back to the Past, there are only a few things you need to know about the GOP candidates as they change positions, jockey for advantage and pontificate endlessly to promote guns, to cut taxes for the rich, to hate for gays and immigrants, and to end government regulations and programs.
Each candidate proclaims himself a purer reactionary and better dismantler of our government, making it hard to stand out in the …
Transparency International (TI) releases its latest report entitled the Corruption Perceptions Index and continues to find that corruption is rife globally and remains a blight around the world. Overall, two-thirds of the 168 countries on the 2015 index did not fare well.
Denmark took the top spot for the 2nd year running for least corrupt, with North Korea and Somalia the worst performers.
TI states on their website that the goals to aim at for a corruption free country has certain characteristics such as: “high levels of press freedom; access to budget information so the public knows where money comes from and how …
A people’s history of the U.S. working class starts with the conflict between resistance and repression.
As income inequality widens in the U.S., the narrative that we need to “take back” our country, or return to an America where hardworking people are rewarded for playing by the rules, is everywhere. But is this really the history of the U.S.—or a fairy tale that obscures the U.S.’s path to industrial dominance?
On January 19, 2016 a great convergence took place, the substance-free world of “reality’” entertainment that epitomizes the great American fantasy came full circle and the wall between reality and illusion came crashing down. On that day Presidential candidate Donald Trump, standing in front of a wax likeness of John Wayne, received the endorsement of Wayne’s daughter Aissa who proudly declared to Trump that her father would have been very proud of him.
The war on terror was initiated after 9/11 – Afghanistan 10/7. Denmark went along without thinking. The idea came from Washington, so what was there to think about?
At the time about 400 people were killed in international terrorism per year; today the Global Terror Index informs us that 32.000 people are killed in terrorism. It must be the stupidest war in modern time and the majority of the victims are found in the Middle East, not in Europe and not in the US.
But we bomb – and create more terrorism. And more refugees. Politics having become …
All anti-nuclear campaigners in Britain knew that Jeremy Corbyn wanted rid of Trident, the UK’s nuclear missile; he’s been at the forefront of anti-nuclear campaigning for longer than quite a few British MPs have been alive. And we all, left and right, knew that Trident missiles would become an issue when Corbyn became leader of the UK Labour party, because both the Conservatives and those Labour MPs who love the idea of having nuclear missiles use his anti-nuclear stance as another stick to hit him with.
But, with another debate on whether Trident should be replaced coming up in Parliament …
Aggression is arguably the highest form of terrorism as it invariably includes the frightening of the target populations and their leaders as well as killing and destruction on a large scale.. The U.S. invaders of Iraq in 2003 proudly announced a “shock and awe” purpose in their opening assault, clearly designed to instill fear; that is, to terrorize the victim population along with the target security forces. And millions of Iraqis suffered in this massive enterprise. Benjamin Netanyahu himself defined terrorism as “the deliberate and systematic murder, maiming and menacing of the innocent to inspire fear for political ends.” This …
To: Mr. Cobus de Swardt and Mr. Miklos Marschall, Managing Director and Deputy Director, Transparency International
by Kersasp Shekhdar / January 31st, 2016
Corruption can only be diverted, pushed back, or temporarily controlled using checks, inquiries, and stopgap measures of the kind Transparency International advocates and employs. Corruption cannot be eliminated with such techniques nor can a system be modified towards making it corruption-proof. To try to eliminate corruption, other than ‘eliminating’ venal and lawless persons of moral turpitude, human systems must be re-engineered such that the system itself is hostile to corruption and will not allow it to occur, let alone thrive, within that system.
Corrupt activity, like any criminal activity, is drawn to the darkness and shuns the light. …
Facebook users were not instructed to do so, but may nonetheless wish to change their profile pictures in solidarity with the families and friends of victims of recent terrorist attacks.
A great many of the victims were aspiring university students, others were school teachers, children, infants, parents, and elderly. Their bodies were torn apart in the acts of violence, many unidentifiable.
Most of these innocent victims will go unnamed, their murders obfuscated, or largely unnoticed, in Western media. Zein Abudllah, 8, injured by shrapnel to his face in the December 12 terrorist …
Once again Denmark appears in the international community and media for the wrong things, this time for a law package with three main, draconian anti-refugee laws. One legalises stealing – that’s what it is – valuables owned by refugees upon arrival if they exceed US$ 1450; the second cuts down on the already meagre daily benefit and the third extends the family reuinion period from 1 to 3 years.
188 MPs voted yes, 108 No and 37 abstained. The main argument is that Denmark wants to “signal” that asylum seekers should go elsewhere. Otherwise marketing-conscious politicians have overlooked that there are …
In her first public appearance as Federal Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, Jody Wilson-Raybould, Kwakwaka’wakw, publicly spoke to the letter I sent on January 4th, 2016 to both her and the Prime Minister of Canada Justin Trudeau calling for a National Inquiry into the Ts’Peten/Gustafsen Lake Standoff 1995. She was asked three times by three women, to take action, to call this Inquiry and to address the ongoing genocide that is taking place on our Territories. Her response, as the Federal Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada was disrespectful and dismissive. You all need a …
During a three-month period in 2015, August until October, one could not open a newspaper, turn on a television or visit a news website without being subjected to reports on the mounting wave of refugees coming to the European Union from countries such as Syria, Iraq or Libya. The majority of reports in the media covered the responses of EU countries such as Germany or France. A number of reports debated the state of Greece and its handling of the refugee influx. A higher number of reports were devoted to the refugees’ struggles and treatment they encountered on the …
Sebastopol, California — Protests against Monsanto’s Roundup, with its poisonous, weed-killing glyphosate, have spread around the globe. An arm of the World Health Organization (WHO) declared it a probable cause of cancer in 2015. California’s Environmental Protection Agency (CA EPA) recently decided to label it as such.
Environmental groups and activists in Northern California, a region known for its wines, advocate a moratorium on this herbicide as health concerns mount. Roundup is the world’s most widely used pesticide.
Roundup’s active ingredient, glyphosate, was the focus of a January 28 informational event. It was initiated by the Watertrough Childrens Alliance as a fundraiser …
National Missile Defense is of a nature to retrigger a proliferation of weapons, notably nuclear missiles. Everything that goes in the direction of proliferation is a bad direction.
The “defense” industry is relishing the current boom in international conflicts, seeing massive profit in it. War and terrorism may not be welcome to the masses of the world, but those who control mass media and finance our elections delight in it so much that they actually scheme to make a more dangerous world.
What is it about some radicals’ (including this one) problem with the inevitable, the predictable? Given our accurate worldview—the world is run for the rich and powerful, by the rich and powerful—we ought not be perturbed when the rich and powerful do what’s in their perceived interest. Is it because the expected is so loathsome? Could it be we still harbor some jot of hope that right makes might?
The latest example of disgusting normal is the New York Times’endorsement of Hillary Clinton—its fourth across the years (twice for US Senate, and for the Democratic nomination in 2008). What …
Coercive Engineered Migration: Zionism's War on Europe (Part 6 of an 11 Part Series)
by Gearóid Ó Colmáin / January 31st, 2016
Since the unification of German states by Bismark in 1871, the German question has been at the centre of European geopolitics. From the Treaty of Berlin in 1924 — which gave assurances to the USSR of Germany neutrality in the case of imperialist aggression against the Soviet state, to the Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact of 1939, which sabotaged the Rome, Berlin, Tokyo axis, thereby threatening to ruin Anglo-American plans to use Germany to destroy the USSR — the basis of transatlantic strategy regarding Germany has been to prevent the European central power from becoming too close to Russia.
LONDON, UK — Police and prosecutors scheme to secure convictions of persons who did not participate in any crime. Racial minorities disproportionately bear the brunt of this improper practice.
Sounds like too many cities across the United States.
However, this practice of racist law enforcement is also rampant in three of the largest cities in England, including the capital city of London, according to a report released recently by the Centre For Crime and Justice Studies of Manchester Metropolitan University.
“The key findings [indicate] the criminal justice system is more flawed than we might imagine,” states the conclusion of the report entitled “Dangerous …
This is written for those who argue against reparations for slavery on the grounds that slavery happened oh so very – too – long ago to be a rational idea; for those who contend that no living black people were slaves; who argue that no living white people were slave owners; for people who insist, therefore, that the time to ask for slavery reparations has long since passed. And, anyway, why didn’t the ex-slaves themselves demand reparations/compensation?
Mary Frances Berry is a former chairwoman of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and …
Today, 30 January 2016, Finnish people gathered in Helsinki’s City center, holding the motto “No racism in my name!” Mostly women were there. Why so? And why is the slogan misleading.
There has been a controversial movement over here, in Suomi, of the right wing extremist group “Soldiers of Odin” (a name of either poor polytheistic revivalism or of rich Hollywoodish influence). They are about 500 men patrolling the streets of Finland for its safety, so they say and so they look, with their gym intensive schooling.
Their most popular demand is to close down the borders to protect …
I asked Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein about her platform this week and came away believing it had a better chance of winning than Bernie Sanders’. I know that platforms don’t run, people do, and they do so within a two-party dominated system. But this already crazy presidential election could turn into a crazier five-way race. And, even if it doesn’t, or if it does but still nobody ever learns that Jill Stein exists, there is nonetheless much for us and for the other candidates to learn from her platform.
Far-right activists spying on Israeli human rights community received hidden funds from Netanyahu government
by Jonathan Cook / January 29th, 2016
Israeli government funds have been secretly transferred to far-right organisations leading a smear campaign against groups opposed to the occupation, a series of investigations show.
The right wing groups have received tens of millions of dollars in state funding, either directly from the government or via Israeli local authorities representing the settlements in the West Bank.
In three known cases, publicly funded far-right organisations launched spying operations on human rights groups.
Other state money has gone towards ad campaigns claiming to expose peace activists as “moles”, planted by foreign governments to damage Israel.
Human rights activists, the campaigns claim, are betraying their country by …
