The gift of giving of one's time spurs social awareness and a capacity to be inside someone else's skin
by Paul Haeder / January 18th, 2016
You Shall Receive an Awakening as Volunteer
In times of crisis, you should be able to count on your neighbors. We’re not talking about needing an extra egg or cup of sugar in a pinch. Think of Ice Storm 1996 (devastating Spokane, Washington, and surrounding areas for weeks with snapped trees, downed electrical lines, broken pipes, ice covered homes and roads) or this past Wind Storm Twenty-Fifteen (sheer hurricane force winds in November, 140 mph, and torn roofs, down power lines, clogged roads, electricity service off for 185,000 people for days).
The tradition of volunteering includes barn-raising, helping with the …
Paul Kagame has long been the darling of prominent liberals such as Bill Clinton, Samantha Power and Tony Blair. But, it’s become ever more difficult to publicly back the bloodstained Rwandan dictator.
After two decades in power Kagame recently had the constitution changed so (only) he can keep running for office. Alongside Kagame’s move to stay president for life, the regime has employed increasingly brazen tactics to deter dissent. Extending their assassination program beyond East Africa, in recent years Rwanda has assassinated (or attempted to) a number of former top officials in South Africa.
In Canada Gerald Caplan is Kagame’s leading liberal …
by The Real News Network (TRNN) / January 18th, 2016
Corporation for Enterprise Development’s Dedrick Asante-Muhammad explains the whitewashing of Martin Luther King’s legacy, transforming him from a leader for racial and economic justice who died in struggle to a post-racial patriot who died in victory.
There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.
— Howard Zinn, 1922-2010
Britain’s aiding and abetting of the brutal, head chopping, summarily executing, flogging regime of Saudi Arabia continues unabated.
In spite of a “Letter before action sent as a threat of legal action over arms export licences to Saudi Arabia increases …” by London law firm Leigh Day, acting on behalf of Campaign Against the Arms Trade “… challenging the government’s decision to export arms despite increasing evidence that Saudi forces are violating international humanitarian law (IHL) in Yemen …“, it transpires that UK military …
You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war.
– Albert Einstein ((Einstein: A Portrait (Corte Madera, CA: Pomegranate Artbooks, 1984).))
When we talk about violence in the context of mortal struggle between or inside nation states, we have to consider the factors that generated it. It is a given that every decent person in the world should decry the killing of kids, women, elderly, and civilians of all ages anywhere. However, our rage, analysis, and criticism should be directed primarily on all those …
There is no afterlife so one life to give is our only option: educate, agitate, infiltrate, regenerate!
by Paul Haeder / January 17th, 2016
Yes. I think that what is more important in Mexico is education. It’s for the children to be able to go to school. Of course, hunger is also a very big problem. But the one that really, really, really for me is very painful is education. And there’s very little money spent on education, on good teachers, on schools, on even rooms where children can go and work. And I think this is the worst problem in Mexico that has to be taken care of. And it has not been taken care of. I remember when I came to Mexico …
It is noteworthy that the only government objecting to the substance of our initiative is the United States, which for many years has stood in almost complete isolation trying to block successive efforts of the international community to prevent an arms race in outer space.
– statement by Russian Foreign Ministry on resolution for no first deployment of weapons into outer space which was approved by UN General Assembly on 8 December 2015. ((Matthew Bodner, UN Approves Russia-led Proposal …
An article in the Guardian on bosses’ pay by the director of the High Pay Centre, Deborah Hargreaves, presents the disparity between bosses’ pay and the average wage in the UK thus:
“Chief executives in the FTSE 100 companies took home £4.96m in 2014 compared with average wages of £27,645. And, if anything, the pay gap is getting wider. A typical incentive award for a top boss increased by 50% of salary compared with the previous year, while workforce wages were up by £445. Bosses’ remuneration has risen from around 47 times average wages in the 1990s to around …
I’ve been writing about the abuses going on in adult guardianship proceedings now for over ten years. Details regarding the physical and financial abuse of seniors and disabled are nothing new to me. One might have thought I would have been prepared for The Worst Interests of the Child, by Keith Harmon Snow. But I was not.
“This book is about the organized crime of Family Courts in the United States,” writes Snow in the preface to this book. Keith Harmon Snow is an award- winning journalist, photographer and writer who has worked in 45 countries. He worked as …
Judge Napolitano in an article ((“Two Smoking Guns: FBI on Hillary’s Case” by Andrew P. Napolitano)) explains the FBI’s investigation of Hillary Clinton. There are two aspects of the investigation. The original source of her trouble is the charge that she failed to safeguard national security secrets.
As Judge Napolitano explains, this crime does not require intent and can result from negligence or simply from a lack of awareness that a secret is being revealed, as in the case that Judge Napolitano provides of the US Navy sailor who was prosecuted for espionage because a “selfie” he sent …
In a landmark infrastructure bill passed in December, Congress finally penetrated the Fed’s “independence” by tapping its reserves and bank dividends for infrastructure funding.
The bill was a start. But some experts, including Congressional candidate Tim Canova, say Congress should go further and authorize funds to be issued for infrastructure directly.
For at least a decade, think tanks, commissions and other stakeholders have fought to get Congress to address the staggering backlog of maintenance, upkeep and improvements required to bring the nation’s infrastructure into the 21st century. Countries with less in the way of assets have overtaken the US in …
Is Victor Orban the 'Chavez of Europe? (Part 1 of an 11 part series)
by Gearóid Ó Colmáin / January 16th, 2016
If aggression against another foreign country means that it strains its social structure, that it ruins its finances, that is has to give up its territory for sheltering refugees, what is the difference between that kind of aggression and the other type, the more classical type, when someone declares war, or something of that sort.
— Sawer Sen, India’s Ambassador to the UN
In an EU press conference on September 3rd, 2015 Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban candidly referred to the current refugee crisis in Europe as “Germany’s problem”. Orban was referring to the fact that refugees amassing at the border of …
Screenshot: Palestinian protestors falls after being targeted and shot by Israeli sniper
A chilling video has been published by Palestinian activists on the YouTube page of Kareem Asakra, showing Palestinians being shot while protesting near Ramallah. The video includes the voices of Hebrew speakers, purportedly between an Israeli sniper and his commanding officer. The officer is heard praising, encouraging, and congratulating the sniper. Ma’an News is reporting …
— Marianna Mazeh: “Starving Syria child” revealed as south Lebanon girl
This is a brief article with the intent of merely alerting people to the latest campaign to demonize the Syrian government and army, and also at the same time to depict the terrorists inhabiting Madaya as somehow noble or in the right… as somehow not the human shielding terrorists that they, in fact, are. Madaya is the new Yarmouk. [See this post regarding the lies and propanda that were put forth in the exact same manipulative manner on …
As viewed from American, European, and Israeli angles, a system of united Arab states presaged a challenge mainly on three issues: the primacy of imperialism, Zionism, and anti-communism in their geopolitical agenda. This explains why the West has consistently adopted anti-Arab policies. For the imperialist West, accepting the emergence of unified or even confederated Arab states means dealing with the largest political entity on earth sitting on an enormous land mass in excess of five million square miles stretching from the Arab-Persian Gulf to …
As the New Year gets underway, the highest-paid CEOs of many large corporations have already paid themselves more than the average worker will earn in the entire year! By the end of the first week of January, the highest-paid CEOs had already made as much as their average workers will earn over 8 years.
An analysis by Equilar, a consulting firm specializing in executive pay, found that on average, the 200 highest-paid CEOs make approximately $22.6 million a year, or almost $10,800 an hour, a 9.1% increase from the previous year. Meanwhile, the Census Bureau reports the average household earns approximately …
by National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee / January 15th, 2016
A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.
— Martin Luther King Jr.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. denounced the deep connections between United States militarism and the social and racial problems in the United States. He warned of the moral injury created by the war in Vietnam and the impact of war back home. As our country celebrates his life, war tax resisters call for action to shift national priorities from war spending to peace.
King’s birthday and the annual holiday coincide with the time when …
“No nation dares to attack us or our allies because they know that’s the path to ruin.” — US President Barack Obama
Militarism
“The United States of America is the most powerful nation on Earth. Period. It’s not even close. We spend more on our military than the next eight nations combined. Our troops are the finest fighting force in the history of the world.” One of the most prominent themes in President Obama’s State of the Union Address of January 12, 2016, was militarism.
Militarism. It is “[t]he belief or desire of a government or people that a country should maintain a …
Yesterday the Oscars were announced, and once again they were notable for a lack of diversity. Popular entertainment helps shape how we view the world, and Hollywood shapes the world as a very white male place. While every year has exceptions, the Oscars often follow the trend of the rest of Hollywood, snubbing films like Selma for the awards last year, and giving its seal of approval to a whitewashed world. But the Oscars are also just reflecting the bleak reality of who is given the resources to make films that might qualify.
One of the tasks that we clearly have is to rebuild trust in our political system … it’s about making sure people are in control and that the politicians are always their servants and never their masters.
— David Cameron, First speech as Prime Minister, May 11, 2010
David Cameron has made “transparency” a mantra. In May 2010 he vowed to rip off the: “cloak of secrecy” around government, extending transparency and stating:
Greater transparency is at the heart of our shared commitment to enable the public to hold politicians and public bodies to account.
The systems engineering discipline is at once an exceptional holistic and precision tool for conceptualizing, designing, fielding, maintaining, upgrading and recycling systems as diverse as handheld mobile communications devices, the Internet/WWW, urban transportation systems, and US military weapons systems like an aircraft carrier. Generally speaking, the systems engineering methodology considers the entire life cycle of the system/product from beginning to end. The life cycle process must account for other key inputs: materials, human/humans, labor, time, funding, costs/prices, operational environment, disposal, etc.
A critical determinant in the overall systems engineering process is often the role of human capital: Where does …
International Left Intellectuals Respond to Venezuelan Government’s Legislative Election Setback
by Roger D. Harris and Chuck Kaufman / January 15th, 2016
Five hours after the polls had closed, the National Electoral Council (CNE) announced a landslide victory for the opposition in Venezuela’s the National Assembly elections.
Almost immediately after, President Maduro addressed the nation accepting “these adverse results,” the worst defeat for the followers of Hugo Chávez in the 20 elections since 1998. Maduro subsequently has called for a “deep process of revision and self-criticism” in the wake of the December 6th, 2015, election.
The response of international left intellectuals has ranged from critical support to outright rejection of the socialist project in Venezuela. We argue for the importance of …
Blowback. Karma. Unintended consequences. A corollary to the golden rule. We have many words to describe the concept: Doing harm to others often results in bad things happening to us or people we “care” about, sometimes many years later.
Since the November attacks in Paris Boko Haram has killed nearly twice as many people as Daesh/ISIL/ISIS did in the City of Lights. But the carnage in northern Nigeria has received much less attention and Canada’s connection to it none at all.
Five days after the Paris killings Boko Haram claimed responsibility for suicide attacks in Yola and Kano that killed 50. …
Research by Dr. David Bailey provides empirical evidence for what many activists and campaigners have long suspected: that we have entered a prolonged period of dissent characterised by an escalation in the magnitude and diversity of public protest. The UK-based data clearly indicates that the catalyst for this upsurge in social unrest was the financial crisis of 2008, which continues to have a detrimental impact on economic security for the vast majority of citizens – even while the combined wealth of the richest 1% continues to soar.
Although many would regard 2011 as the year that mass civil disobedience …
Context is lacking in the media’s coverage of the minor naval dispute between the US and Iran
by Eoin Higgins / January 14th, 2016
A tense 24 hours followed the capture of ten US sailors in Iranian territorial waters. The situation was resolved quickly, though, with Iran releasing the sailors, apparently none the worse for wear, the morning after their detainment.
For the past 24 hours and counting, US media sources have been perpetuating story-lines and assumptions about US-Iranian relations that are at best misleading, while leaving out context and important facts.
*****
First of all, US media has glossed over the fact that the US naval forces were violating Iranian territorial waters. …
So far, we have argued that international and regional interventions brought Syria to the present violent point and that Western imperialist and regional objectives (American, Israeli, European, Saudi, Turkish, etc.) are at work throughout the Arab world. It is also self-evident that all of America’s wars after WWII were about imposing its dominance and confirming its aspiration to be a super-hegemon. Moreover, American imperialism (hyper-imperialism ((B. J. Sabri, “The Hyper-Imperialist Paradigm,” Parts Part 1, Part 2, Part …
Literary scholar and critic Walter Benjamin said that for human social progress to occur it was necessary to “dissolve myth into the space of history” but he was wrong. From the vantage point of the early 21st century, myth is back, and badder than ever. It is the ultimate Ghost in the Machine of the Scientific Revolution. And I’m going to suggest that not only will we not rid ourselves of the mythic worldview in any conceivable social formation that might actually be thought of as progress, but that it has been a great mistake even to try.
A room that isn’t any larger than 10 feet square. Two metal folding chairs face one another. Acoustical tile ceiling. Windowless. One door. Might have been a storage closet in some previous incarnation but found its true vocation being what it is now: a minor interrogation room for those whose assumed intelligence remains of dubious import.
Jeremy’s interrogator does not lift his eyes as the prisoner is escorted to his seat. The interrogator is a pale man in his late forties or early fifties. Short gray black hair receding a good way back on his scalp. Clean shaven. In process of …
While some may believe that the corporation’s failure to provide fair and balanced journalism is a relatively recent phenomenon, many others will recognise that it stretches back many decades: coverage of the West’s destruction of Libya in 2011; the invasions of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003; Nato’s war on the former Yugoslavia in 1999; genocidal UN sanctions …
Step right up folks and see the greatest show on the planet. El Chapo is his name, and magic is his game. Is he saint or is he sinner? Watch in awe as this vertically challenged boy from Sinaloa transforms himself from lowly peasant to powerful prince before your very eyes. Gaze in amazement as El Chapo escapes daringly from not one, but two maximum security prisons, only to be captured and imprisoned once again. Observe him attending a Mexican Governors’ Conference, joking and partying with top executives from all over the country, while under the protection of heavily-armed soldiers …
