Latest articles
Surges To World’s Second in High Quality Science.
by John V. Walsh / May 19th, 2016
The headline reads, “The Rapid Rise of a Research Nation: China’s economic boom is mirrored by its similarly meteoric rise in high quality science.” This was not a headline in People’s Daily or China Daily but in the most prestigious of Western scientific publications, Nature.
The 38 pages, which follow that headline in a special Supplement to the journal Nature, tell us that China is now second in the world in high quality science publications and growing fast. This certainly contradicts the Western, dare I say racist, stereotype of the hardworking, but unimaginative, Asian drudge, dutifully churning out mounds of low …
by John Andrews / May 19th, 2016
Natalie Bennett recently announced she will not be standing for re-election as leader of Britain’s Green Party. I’m pleased about that. She should have gone a year ago after the Greens’ dismal performance in the general election.
Of all the main political parties the Green Party is the biggest disappointment: it has so much potential, but delivers so little, a true paper tiger. Only the Greens have a set of policies which, if put into practice, would help to terminate the destruction of our planet that’s currently underway, and end Britain’s economic and social race to the bottom. What they do …
by James McEnteer / May 18th, 2016
The corrupt, interminable 2016 presidential primary process has revealed terrible flaws in United States democracy. The biggest takeaway is that our two-party monopoly system is outmoded and inadequate to represent our diverse U.S. population. We need a fresh start, with more — and more open — parties, more closely resembling other western democracies. Too many Americans are now excluded for various reasons, with no say in their own governance.
It is clear that our two major parties are actually four. The Trump faction of Republicans, the latest incarnation of the Know Nothings, is the feral flowering of inchoate frustration. In Paddy …
by Mark Mason and Susan Cain / May 18th, 2016
The dynamics of capitalism is postponement of enjoyment to the constantly postponed future.
— Norman O. Brown, Life Against Death: The Psychoanalytical Meaning of History, 1959
Is There No Alternative? Thinking Outside the Ballot Box
Are we happy yet? Where is the democracy we were promised? Where is the hope and change we were promised? How can we transform society when we are discovering, to our dismay, that we’re doing everything wrong? What means can people use to rid themselves of abusive governments controlled by a wealthy elite serving only themselves to the detriment of the many and the teetering ecosystem? What …
Part 2 of a 3 Part Series
by Israel Shamir / May 18th, 2016
DPR Korea is thoroughly demonised. It is supposed to be the poorest country (Wikipedia); hell on earth, its national airline “the world’s worst”, its cities shambles. The demonisers did a good service for N Korea as my expectations were so low that I immensely enjoyed every minute and every meal. Actually Air Koryo, the native airline, is not too bad and comparable to provincial airlines of its neighbours Russia and China.
Pyongyang airport is eerie if anything. It is big, modern, advanced, marble-floored, immaculately clean; our old reliable TU-154 looked like a rusty bus on its perfect tarmac. Its many immigration booths …
The High Court and Senate Voting Reform
by Binoy Kampmark / May 18th, 2016
How to find the voice of a people? Electoral systems are the stuff of political nightmare and experiment, all attempting the same goal: how best to capture an appropriately, accurate choice. Australia’s preferential election system is regarded as better than most, envied for its attempt to prevent the premature exhaustion of votes and avoid the misrepresentative nature of “first past the post” polling.
The Australian Senate has been a curious beast in this regard, abandoning first past the post voting in 1919 and introducing the concept of grouped candidates in 1922. But it was 1983 which saw the introduction of a …
by subMedia / May 17th, 2016
This week, we take a look at the tens of thousands of migrants tapped in limbo in Europe, facing down the prospect of being deported back to the war zones they’ve just escaped.
For the musical break, we’ve got The Haymarket Squares, with Let’s Start a Riot.
We wrap things up with a look at the highly charged level of racial tensions in the United Snakes, and an interview with Paul, an organizer with All Out Atlanta, who helped coordinate a convergence of anti-racists to shut down the Klan …
by Yves Engler / May 17th, 2016
How can you tell when “remembering” horrible events is being twisted to defend the status quo and support the powerful against the weak? When a sports network airs a Nazi Holocaust themed show.
Last week TSN ran a six-minute video feature about Hank Rosenbaum, a Polish Jew whose life was turned upside down when German troops invaded 77 years ago. The sports angle for TSN’s “Yom HaShoah, the international day of remembrance for the more than 6 million Jews who died in the Holocaust during WW II” commemoration, was that Rosenbaum became a hockey fan when he arrived …
Nuclearized or Lobotomized?
by James Petras / May 17th, 2016
Over half the US electorate views the two leading candidates for the 2016 Presidential elections with horror and disdain.
In contrast, the entire corporate mass media, here and abroad, repeat outrageous virtuous claims on behalf of Hillary Clinton and visceral denunciations of Donald Trump.
Media pundits, financial, academic and corporate elites describe the prospects of her presidency as one of responsibility, national security, business prosperity and political normalcy.
…
by Ramzy Baroud / May 17th, 2016
On May 15th of every year, over the past 68 years, Palestinians have commemorated their collective exile from Palestine. The ethnic cleansing of Palestine to make room for a ‘Jewish homeland’ came at a price of unrelenting violence and perpetual suffering. Palestinians refer to that enduring experience as ‘Nakba’, or ‘Catastrophe’.
However, the ‘Nakba’ is not merely a Palestinian experience; it is also an Arab wound that never ceases from bleeding.
The Arab ‘Nakba’ was namely the Sykes-Picot Agreement, which divided much of the Arab world between competing Western powers. A year later, Palestine was removed from the Arab equation altogether and …
Part 2 of a 2 Part Series
by Media Lens / May 17th, 2016
The recent furore surrounding a supposed ‘Labour antisemitism crisis’ is a classic propaganda blitz of the kind described in Part 1 of this alert.
Dramatic New Evidence
As with so many propaganda blitzes, intense media coverage was triggered by ‘dramatic new evidence’; namely, the discovery of a graphic posted by Naz Shah two years ago, before she became a Labour MP. The graphic shows a map of the United States with Israel superimposed in the middle, suggesting that a solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict would be to relocate Israel to the US.
Shah’s post was highlighted by right-wing political …
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 …
