Latest articles
Bernie Sanders, Democratic Socialism, and The Other America (Part Three of a Five Part Series)
by Edward Martin and Mateo Pimentel / February 24th, 2016
The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas.
— Karl Marx, The German Ideology
Capitalism, Michael Harrington argued, is characterized by a never-ending struggle between labor on one hand and the capitalists and their allies (co-opted government and legal system) on the other. For Harrington this constituted class struggle, a struggle waged over the cost of labor, safety and conditions at work, health care, education, living-wage work, public transport, etc. The conflict is created when workers are paid less than the value they produce. This is exacerbated by the fact that capitalists are locked into competition with each other …
The Middle East in US Foreign Policy
by Ramzy Baroud / February 24th, 2016
As US liberals and some leftists are pulling up their sleeves in anticipation of a prolonged battle for the Democratic Party Presidential nomination, the tussle becomes particularly ugly whenever the candidates’ foreign policy agendas are evoked.
Of the two main contenders, Hillary Clinton is the obvious target. She is an interventionist, uncompromisingly, and her term as Secretary of State (2009-2013) is a testament to her role in sustaining the country’s foreign policy agenda under George W. Bush (as a Senator, she had voted for the Iraq war in 2002 and advocating regime change in her own right. Her aggressive …
by Yves Engler / February 23rd, 2016
In violation of international law two major Canadian companies are buying the non-renewable resources of Africa’s last remaining colony.
Saskatoon’s PotashCorp and Calgary’s Agrium have partnered with Morocco’s state-owned OCP to export phosphate mined in Western Sahara, a sparsely populated territory in northwestern Africa that was ruled by Spain until 1975. When the Spanish departed, Moroccan troops moved in and a bloody 15-year war drove tens of thousands of Sahrawi into neighboring Algeria, where they still live in camps.
No country officially recognizes Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara. The UN calls it “occupied” and the Fourth Geneva Convention as well as the …
by subMedia / February 23rd, 2016
In this sedition of ITEOTWAWKIAIFF we look at the growing class unrest in Hong Kong that kicked off a massive rebellion in the lunar new year. Also street battles in Athens, where anarchists and farmers stormed the Greek capital in reaction to Syriza’s structural adjustment policies. On the music break we drop the now classic Dead Prez track: Malcolm Garvey Huey. We continue with an examination on how white supremacy plays a role in the mass starvation of people in the African continent and we wrap things up with Ajamu Nangwaya, an anarchist, educator and writer from Toronto, …
by Joseph Hickey / February 23rd, 2016
Correctness is a set of rules and mores constraining the form of public discourse and social behaviour. There is no place in a democratic society for “correctness” of any sort, least of all a correctness regarding politics: political ideas, speech and other expression. Let us reject standards of form in our debates, exchanges, interventions and criticisms.
The goal of political life is to influence society and be influenced by it. This can only happen through free exchange between individuals, where the form and content of the expression is decided by the speaker, for the speaker’s own purposes as an individual. For …
by Roger D. Harris and Chuck Kaufman / February 23rd, 2016
We find much to agree with in Clifton Ross’s rebuttal of us in Dissident Voice, “The Two Lefts and Venezuela,” as long as you take an extremely broad view of what constitutes the “left.”
Ross’s “left” for sure is not socialist as he colorfully sums up in the final sentence of his article, where he says “the hangman…more often than not, he’s dressed as a socialist.” No need then to expose Ross as masquerading as a socialist. He doesn’t bother to give his “left” a socialist gloss.
The key philosophical foundation of Ross’s ideology is his “belief that there are as …
by Robert Hunziker / February 22nd, 2016
The Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant disaster may go down as one of history’s boundless tragedies and not just because of a nuclear meltdown, but rather the tragic loss of a nation’s soul.
Imagine the following scenario: 207 million cardboard book boxes, end-to-end, circumnavigating Earth, like railroad tracks, going all the way around the planet. That’s a lot of book boxes. Now, fill the boxes with radioactive waste. Forthwith, that’s the amount of radioactive waste stored unsheltered in one-tonne black bags throughout Fukushima Prefecture, amounting to 9,000,000 cubic metres
But wait! There’s more to come. Another 13,000,000 cubic metres of radioactive soil …
by William A. Blunden / February 22nd, 2016
The media is erupting over the FBI’s demand that Apple help it decrypt an iPhone belonging to Syed Rizwan Farook, one of the attackers involved in the assault in San Bernardino this past December. Originally Apple wanted the FBI to keep things on the down low, asking the Feds to present their application for access under seal. But for whatever reason the FBI decided to go public. Apple then put on a big show of resistance and now there are legislators threatening to change the law in favor of the FBI. Yet concealed amid this unfolding drama …
Part 3 of 3
by Kim Petersen / February 22nd, 2016
Read Part 1 and 2.
… Indigenous peoples are not typically respected, even at the level of text, never mind at the level of geo-politics, as possessing ‘true’ sovereignty.
— T’uu’tuk ((Robin R. R. Gray (T’uu’tuk), “Ts’msyen Revolution: The Poetics and Politics of Reclaiming,” PhD thesis, University of Massachusetts Amherst, September 2015, p. 182.))
[I]t seems unfair that the coastal Indian, who had little or no opportunity of entry into other industries, and who still depends in large measure upon the salmon for his winter food supply should have to bear the privation which results from the white man’s …
by Felicity Arbuthnot / February 21st, 2016
Things come apart so easily when they have been held together with lies.
— Dorothy Allison, Bastard out of Carolina, 1992
On September 7th, 2002, speaking at a Press Conference flanked by Prime Minister, Tony “dodgy dossier” Blair, President George W. Bush stated that Saddam Hussein was just six months away from an Iraqi nuclear age. The timeline, said Bush, had come from the International Atomic Energy Agency Report issued that morning.
Blair confirmed:
…The threat from Saddam Hussein and weapons of mass destruction …that threat is real. We only need to look at the Report from the International Atomic Energy Agency …
by John V. Walsh / February 21st, 2016
The New York Times vendetta against Donald Trump continues with its latest theme that The Donald is “vulgar.” This highly newsworthy charge recently made it to the front page with the headline, “With a Slur for Ted Cruz, Donald Trump Further Splits Voters.” The Times tells us that the slur involved a “vulgar word.” How this “splits voters” is not made clear – but never mind.
Not until paragraph ten, after a boring slog through nine paragraphs of gratuitous anti-Trump invective do the two intrepid reporters required to track down this momentous story inform us what the “vulgar word” …
by Harvey Lothian / February 21st, 2016
The unwritten but very real and clearly understood social contract under which the citizens and workers of the United States and Canada developed the countries has now been broken by the wealthy classes, the owners of major industries and businesses and the politicians, The contract is now invalid. A new social contract is needed.
It was clearly understood by everyone in both countries, from the very beginning of the countries, that if men got what education they could, or wanted or needed, got a job, worked hard, were frugal with their money, they would eventually be able to buy a …
TOPS and Tigers
by T. Mayheart Dardar / February 20th, 2016
On the night of February 11th, I may have seen something that has mostly escaped me in my over half century of living in Louisiana, a genuine attempt at political honesty. Two days after the cacophony of Mardi Gras had died away to be replaced by the solemnity of Ash Wednesday the newly elected Governor of the Bayou State came before his electorate. Just one month after his inauguration John Bel Edwards had some bad news for state he is now charged with leading.
Edwards brought us together Thursday …
by James Petras / February 20th, 2016
The class struggle from above found its most intense, comprehensive and retrograde expression in Argentina, with the election of Mauricio Macri (December 2015). During the first two months in office, through the arbitrary assumption of emergency powers, he reversed, by decree, a multitude of progressive socio-economic policies passed over the previous decade and sought to purge public institutions of independent voices.
Facing a hostile majority in Congress, he seized legislative powers and proceeded to name two Supreme Court judges in violation of the Constitution.
…
by Rajesh Makwana / February 20th, 2016
Every year since 2009, the United Nations has highlighted February 20th as the World Day for Social Justice in a bid to underscore the glaring inequalities that increasingly characterise the world today – from growing levels of poverty and rising unemployment rates, to various forms of discrimination on the basis of class, race and gender. The pursuit of social justice has long been fundamental to the UN’s mandate to promote equitable development and human dignity for all, and the theme for this year’s social justice day is ‘A Just Transition – environmentally sustainable economies and societies’, guidelines for which have been …
Israel is forcing Palestinian schools in occupied East Jerusalem to switch over to an Israeli-controlled curriculumf
by Jonathan Cook / February 20th, 2016
Israel is to put financial pressure on Palestinian schools in occupied East Jerusalem in an effort to make them switch over to an Israeli-controlled curriculum, according to local activists and officials.
Almost all of East Jerusalem’s schools currently use a syllabus developed by the Palestinian Authority, a Palestinian government-in-waiting created in the mid-1990s by the Oslo accords. Before that, they relied on the Jordanian curriculum.
Palestinian officials have slammed the move, warning that it is part of intensified efforts by Israel to disconnect East Jerusalem from the neighbouring West Bank and entrench its control over the 300,000 Palestinians in the city.
Peace efforts …
History has been cruel to candidates on the wrong side of the ruling Forces of Greed (FOG)
by Jack Balkwill / February 20th, 2016
I find it hard to believe that Bernie Sanders has a chance at becoming president. His views have excited a number of potential voters both in the Democratic Party and outside of it, particularly among the young.
But he’s immersed in the kind of politics which sometimes gets people killed in the Land of the Free.
A year before Hillary Clinton announced she would run for president, I predicted she would get the support of the establishment and “win.” She currently has a massive lead in the primary because of “super delegates,” the party establishment, mostly already pledged to her. The Democratic …
Open letter to John Lewis
by Monica Moorehead / February 20th, 2016
Dear Brother John Lewis,
I am a Black woman, who, like you, was born in Alabama at the dawn of the modern day Civil Rights Movement. My parents supported the Montgomery Bus Boycott. I, like millions of others, suffered through the indignities of Jim Crow, including watching, as an adolescent, my mother being “escorted” out of a white-only public bathroom by the police.
So I understand firsthand and respect your bravery and your contribution to the Black freedom struggle.
I know that half a century ago, you were nearly beaten to death when state troopers and Klansmen attacked the march from Selma to …
by Jack Random / February 20th, 2016
A brilliant legal mind with an energetic style, an incisive wit and colorful opinions…he will no doubt be remembered as one of the most consequential judges and thinkers to serve on the Supreme Court.
— Barack Obama ((“Obama’s Views on Antonin Scalia and the Justice’s Successor” by Kishnadev Calamur, The Atlantic, February 13, 2016. ))
Go gentle into that good night, you angry toad man.
— Natasha Vargas-Cooper ((“Bye Scalicia: Antonin Scalia’s Worst Decisions on the Rights of Women and LGBTQs” by Natasha Vargas-Cooper, Vice, February 13, 2016.))
It is always amusing to observe the twisted testimonials of politicians and …
by Walter Brasch / February 19th, 2016
Like millions of Americans in the middle of February I have the flu.
Unlike millions of Americans I have a deadline.
Forced to stay at home, sucking Vitamin C drops, I have read newspapers, listened to radio, and watched television as a source of diversion.
Dominating the media is the campaign for the presidency.
In Iowa, all of the candidates went to fairs, restaurants, and anywhere there was any sign of carbon-based organic life to grab votes. Because hogs and corn stalks haven’t yet been granted the right to vote, the candidates resorted to talking with humans, and making sure that everyone got more …
by Andre Vltchek / February 19th, 2016
I thought about writing this essay when I was working in Iraqi Kurdistan, not far from the city of Mosul, one of the areas overrun by ISIS.
Since my last visit at the end of 2014, the entire “Kurdistan Region” has been collapsing. Unemployment has been on the rise, unofficially reaching 50%, poverty is rampant, official numbers are massaged. Salaries have not been paid for months, and the influx of refugees arriving from Mosul are often in near starvation, relying only on their relatives and friends for help.
But the West has been singing the praises of this obedient part of Iraq. …
Part 2 of 3
by Kim Petersen / February 19th, 2016
Read Part 1.
LAX KXEEN — The Salmon Nation Summit led to an emphatic declaration:
The undersigned First Nation leaders and citizens of the Nine Allied Tribes of Lax Kw’alaams hereby declare that Lelu Island, and Flora and Agnew Banks are hereby protected for all time, as a refuge for wild salmon and marine resources, and are to be held in trust for all future generations.
Our ancestral knowledge, supported by modern science, confirms this area is critical to the future abundance of the wild salmon our communities rely on. It is our right and our responsibility as First …
by Paul Craig Roberts / February 19th, 2016
This morning I was stuck in front of a Fox “News” broadcast for a short period and then with a NPR news program. It was enough to convince me that Nazi propaganda during Hitler’s Third Reich was very mild compared to the constant stream of dangerous lies that are pumped out constantly by the American media.
The New York Times, Washington Post, and a couple of think-tank types were represented on NPR. They delivered the most crude propaganda imaginable and questioned no US government statement.
Did you know that all the trouble in Syria is due to the Russians and Assad? The …
by Ralph Nader / February 19th, 2016
The passing of Supreme Court Justice Antonin “Nino” Scalia evoked widespread commentary about how outspoken he was both on the Court and at law schools and other forums where he often lectured and sometimes tangled with audiences. Knowing of Justice Scalia’s unusual expressiveness for a jurist, my colleague Robert Weissman and I wrote him a challenging letter in 2006, starting with these words:
We are writing to inquire as to how the application of the Bill of Rights and related constitutional protections to the artificial creations known as corporations can be squared with a constitutional interpretation theory of “originalism.”
We referred to …
by Graham Peebles / February 19th, 2016
Division and fear are the age-old tools of tyrants; unity and peaceful coordinated action the most powerful weapons against them.
Frightened and downtrodden for so long, there are positive signs that the Ethiopian people are beginning to come together, – peacefully uniting in their anger at the ruling party – the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) — a paranoid brutal regime that suppresses the people, is guilty of wide-ranging human rights violations, and has systematically encouraged ethnic divisions and rivalries.
Anti-government protests have been growing over the last few years, and in recent months large-scale demonstrations have taken place throughout Oromia …
Blatant BBC propaganda
by Graham Vanbergen / February 19th, 2016
Mark Urban is the diplomatic and defence editor of BBC’s Newsnight that goes by the strap-line: “This is where the global struggle for peace and security gets incisive, informed, coverage.”
He has just written and headlined with “US remains reluctantly tied to global security role” – categorised under US/Canada.
Urban’s article starts with.
America’s military finds itself pulled in several directions – and even the $582bn (£403bn) defence budget rolled out earlier this month will not be enough to satisfy all of its needs. New challenges – from Russia and the so-called Islamic State (IS) group – are forcing the Pentagon to change its plans, and reopening …
by Eoin Higgins / February 19th, 2016
He’s just as bad as you tried to forget he was.
When former president George W. Bush kicked things off on Monday with a typically smug, heh-heh performance at a Jeb (!) Bush rally in South Carolina, I didn’t expect to have the same kind of visceral reaction I used to have to the sound of his voice.
For eight years I listened to that Texas drawl, dripping with patrilineal Connecticut Yankee privilege, explain away blatant corruption, governmental negligence, and the most destructive foreign policy in modern memory (and that’s saying something!).
I thought after seven years of the …
by Binoy Kampmark / February 18th, 2016
Specifically, the FBI wants us to make a new version of the iPhone operating system, circumventing several important security features, and install it on an iPhone recovered during the investigation.
— Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, February 16, 2016
The world of security and the world of capital can be unfriendly to each other. The incentive to make money is not necessarily one that works well with law enforcement, if one is to believe the arguments made by such entities as the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The latter insists on eliminating all risk, while those insisting on privacy as they make money out …
Part 1
by Kim Petersen / February 18th, 2016
As a scientist, I am dismayed by the common tactic of pleading scientific uncertainty as an excuse for continuing to allow people or companies to do things known to harm salmon.
— geomorphologist David R. Montgomery ((In King of Fish (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2004): p. 242.))
LAX KXEEN ((The colonial designation is Prince Rupert, “British Columbia,” “Canada.” I discussed the subject of Indigenous versus colonialist designations in “America: The Morality of a Geopolitical Designation,” Dissident Voice, 6 August 2014.)), ((The city’s name is an eponym for Prince Rupert of …
Latest word from mom of three trapped in the hell we created...
by Stuart Littlewood / February 18th, 2016
There is little joy in writing about the plight of the Palestinians, as I have done for the last 10 years. But one of the rewards is that, occasionally, I receive a letter from someone who’s living the nightmare and prepared to share their innermost fears.
So I was delighted to hear from Amal again but dreaded what she might be about to tell me.
Amal (means ‘hope’) is a young wife and mother of three in Gaza. She is university educated and her English is excellent. As I’ve said before, Palestinians – especially the ladies – are very keen on education …
