Latest articles
Yanis Varoufakis and John McDonnell have Some Remedies
by Lesley Docksey / December 4th, 2015
The Rally involving Yanis was immensely successful in moving the debate about austerity forward into a discussion about how we can not only oppose the attack on our welfare state, but as importantly, how we can create the society we need… a tremendous achievement.”
— Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell
Why is so little hope growing among so many riches?
— Yanis Varoufakis
It has been a depressing few weeks for the supporters of the British Labour Party’s new leader Jeremy Corbyn. After seeing crowds attending meetings across the country to hear him speak and the roar that raised the roof when the election results …
by Robert Hunziker / December 4th, 2015
Tokyo 2020: “Tokyo Ready to Proceed With $1.3-Billion Olympic Stadium,” Los Angeles Times, December 1, 2015. (Note: Beijing’s Bird’s Nest cost $414 million.)
When Tokyo was first awarded the 2020 Olympics, Nature News opined: As Fukushima Radiation Rages, Tokyo Awarded Bid to Host 2020 Summer Olympics, Hilariously Named the ‘Safe Games’ (September 8, 2013): “Why would any sane organization vote to host a global event that brings hundreds of thousands of people to a location just a short distance away from a collapsing nuclear power plant that is utterly and completely out of control with no end in sight?” Good question.
According …
by Eric Walberg / December 3rd, 2015
The leader of the Islamic Revolution has once again addressed western youth, who either for the most part are misinformed about Islam because of the bias in media and society in favour of Israel and Zionism, or are Muslim but living in a climate of Islamophobia and in desperation have drifted to the militant jihadist movement which began in Afghanistan in 1979 with US blessing, and is now a permanent feature of world politics. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei calls on them to “reconsider the threat of terrorism in the world, its roots and to find a deep insight into Islam.”
The …
Continuing criminal enterprise: climate talks involve hubris and celebrity cult not civil society
by Paul Haeder / December 3rd, 2015
No-no-no more Bill McKibben, please. He is capitalism lite, loving each climate change bubble of CO2, nitrous oxide and toilets a flushing as part of COP 21. Can he stay home and teach? Do we need parading after parading of the usual suspects – Naomi Klein, Billy-boy, Prince Charles, Mark Ruffalo, Björk, David Bowie, Coldplay, Yoko Ono, Iggy Pop, Colin Firth , Emma Thompson Julia Roberts, Cameron Diaz, Gwyneth Paltrow ou encore Nathalie Portman Sean Penn, Leo Dicaprio.
Can we cart these planet-killing capitalists out the door with the 200 world leaders and now get a move on with grassroots activism? …
Regime change in Chicago!
by Linn Washington, Jr. / December 2nd, 2015
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel made a bold yet belated move when he fired his embattled police superintendent in the wake of a national uproar surrounding the release of a chilling video that captured the police killing of a teen–a ward of the city of Chicago.
Included in that uproar is anger over mounting evidence of a cover-up connected to the brutal and unjustified shooting graphically displayed on that video. Political and civic leaders in Chicago had demanded the removal of Chicago top cop Garry McCarthy months before Emanuel’s uproar-triggered ouster.
If Mayor Emanuel is really serious about his stated desire to rebuild …
by James Hoover / December 2nd, 2015
I don’t think anyone can dispute that GOP candidates for president have exploited the primeval forces driving humankind from its earliest moments on this Earth, those of fear and angst. Even government is posed as a threat, at all levels, but especially at the national level. In Ronald Reagan’s First Inaugural address in 1981, he said: “Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” More recently, the “Jade Helm” U.S. military exercises in Texas were seen as a cover for a military takeover among some conservatives.
The Republican Party attacks on government since Reagan’s comments escalated. …
by Kieran Kelly / December 2nd, 2015
What is Fascism? Recently Chris Hedges wrote of an imperialist US that is infected by “the virus of fascism, wrapped in the American flag, held aloft by the Christian cross and buttressed by white supremacy.” Hedges was not using the term fascism as it would be used by a political theorist or historian. It is common to use “fascism” to indicate a more general and imprecise fascistic tendency. Yet there comes a point when so many fascistic traits are in evidence that you know you must be dealing with a type of Fascism.
The US has become a …
Syria and Imperialist Deceit
by Sequoyah De Souza Vigneswaren / December 2nd, 2015
“Bombing for peace is like fucking for virginity,” as the old phrase goes.
Once again our imperial elitists are “making the case” to utilize instruments of death and destruction against a country thousands of miles away that has not attacked us. In order, we are told, to bring about more peace and less death.
Let us ponder that logic once more. Western powers — who are already steeped in historical and contemporary blood-letting of monstrous magnitude — are once again trying to justify their latest illegal imperial venture in noble terms: of military necessity and moral superiority.
And that we — who have …
Insanity and drooling for the last bites of capitalism's moldy pie
by Paul Haeder / December 2nd, 2015
“You’re retired, aren’t you?” the 29 year old says to me today, while I am with a friend, 62, who used to be my board president over at United Cerebral Palsy, just one of several jobs I’ve been sacked from by the Controllers – this time, unfortunately, by two insecure, anti-male-in-the-workplace self-described Jewish women who could not square that I was smarter than they were-are and that I had a passion for representing my people, clients living with severe disabilities, developmental and intellectual and psychological. I’ve written about that work here and here!
The 29 year old was flabbergasted …
by Ramzy Baroud / December 1st, 2015
Israeli commentators, Yaron Friedman, of Ynet News and Haviv Rettig Gur, of the Times of Israel are clueless about the driving force behind the Palestinian mobilization and collective struggle. In two recent articles, and with unmistakable conceit, they attempted to highlight what they perceive as the failure of the current Palestinian uprising, or ‘Intifada’.
Gur argues that ‘the terrorism’ of the Palestinians is not a surge of opposition to Israel but a “howl against the pervasive sense that resistance has failed”. He reduces the Intifada to the mere act of alleged stabbing of Israelis, and points out to the painful truth …
by Ajamu Baraka / December 1st, 2015
Danelly Estupiñan, a powerful Afro-Colombian human rights activist and personal friend of mine, is now facing a mortal threat from the fanatical criminals aligned with powerful economic interests who are committed to keeping Black people subjugated in the port city of Buenaventura and throughout Colombia.
An activist and member of the Black Communities Process (PCN), Danelly joins a long list of women, labor and youth activists who are facing death or have been murdered for daring to organize Afro-Colombians to defend their dignity.
At 5:30pm on November 23, Danelly received a death threat stating: “Danelly, you are close to the end.” Less …
Day one, and the marchers are sipping wine and eating baguettes
by Paul Haeder / December 1st, 2015
Running around for that continental breakfast, in old Paris, a bizarre follies bergere of people shouting at the SWAT-Legionnaires teams, holding hands and placards defining some climate change demands lite, and the legions of illegitimate world leaders (sic) prancing and all the convulsing media from those mighty first worlders staging and all the NGOs and their followers making money off of “activism” and “on-line” organizing (sic) and getting a trip to Paris, to boot.
You have got to be kidding, with Amy “Soros” Goodman talking to climate change darling, Naomi Klein, that 350.org love child of the upper class in the …
by Ron Ridenour / December 1st, 2015
Colourful grass roots ingenuity spread throughout major streets in Copenhagen, November 29. We were between 10,000 and 15,000 of the million who marched in 175 countries at 2300 sites. Yet unbeknownst to me we were being “led” by a major politician of the economic-political Establishment responsible for the very pollution we oppose, and for the wars that murder millions, send more millions in flight, and pollute the planet.
My woman friend and I were not part of the planning but had participated in banner-making workshops by groups in which we are active—Tid Til Fred – aktiv mod krig (Time for Peace …
by William A. Blunden / November 30th, 2015
Glenn Greenwald has written an op-ed piece for the Los Angeles Times. In this editorial he asserts that American spies are motivated primarily by the desire to thwart terrorist plots. Such that their inability to do so (i.e., the attacks in Paris) coupled with the associated embarrassment motivates a public relations campaign against Ed Snowden. Greenwald further concludes that recent events are being opportunistically leveraged by spy masters to pressure tech companies into installing back doors in their products. Over the course of this article what emerges is a worldview which demonstrates a remarkable tendency to accept events …
by James Petras / November 30th, 2015
We work so hard to establish ourselves and to get where we are and to have somebody (Jonathan Pollard) screw it up… and then have Jewish organizations line up behind this guy and try to make him out a hero of the Jewish people, it bothers the hell out of me…
— Admiral Sumner Shapiro, US Navy Rear Admiral who served as Director of the Office of Naval Intelligence (1978-82), Washington Post, 6/16/2008
We … feel obligated to go on record with the facts regarding Pollard in order to dispel the myths that have arisen from the clever public relations campaign… …
by Robert Hunziker / November 30th, 2015
Economically speaking, in today’s world of nations-without-borders, an extraordinarily potent Transnational Capitalist Class, with no allegiance to individual nation-states, determines the fate of society at large.
However, in order to keep their “house in order,” these transnational capitalists may want to consider supporting quasi-socialist presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, aka: “The Bern.”
He could help bail them out, as the next financial tailspin will likely need some cushion, considering a populace which may revolt at the first sign of another torpedoing of the economy, as happened in 2008 when financial derivatives popped like firecrackers in July.
Alarmingly, as of today, derivatives are much larger …
by Dan Glazebrook / November 30th, 2015
Nigeria’s Boko Haram are now officially the deadliest terror group in the world. That they have reached this position is a direct consequence of Cameron and Co’s war on Libya – and one that was perhaps not entirely unintended.
According to a report just released by Global Terrorism Index, Boko Haram were responsible for 6,644 deaths in 2014, compared to 6,073 attributed to ISIS, representing a quadrupling of their total killings in 2013. In the past week alone, bombings conducted by the group have killed eight people on a bus in Maiduguri; a family of five in Fotokol, Cameroon; fifteen …
by William Boardman / November 30th, 2015
Rooted in a story of generosity and partnership, Thanksgiving offers an opportunity for us to express our gratitude for the gifts we have and to show our appreciation for all we hold dear….
So begins the official Presidential Proclamation of Thanksgiving Day, 2015, signed and issued by Barack Obama. While it hearkens back to earlier Thanksgivings in St. Augustine in 1565 and Plymouth in 1621, this is an essentially imperial document than gives only vague lip service to giving “thanks for the many blessings bestowed upon us.” When his proclamation gets …
by Matt Peppe / November 30th, 2015
In a dramatic segment on CBS News’ 60 Minutes titled “The Last Prisoner of the Cold War,” former United States Agency for International Development (USAID) subcontractor Alan Gross tells of horrifying experiences in captivity: “They threatened to hang me, they threatened to pull out my fingernails, they said I’d never see the light of day.”
Gross portrays a harrowing ordeal. He purports to have feared for his safety and his life, as if he was chained in a medieval dungeon at the whims of an arbitrary monarch. This description likely sounds credible to many Americans who view the Cuban …
by John Andrews / November 30th, 2015
“We must do something!” is often heard today in relation to the terrorist group known as ISIS. It’s very true, we should do something, but let’s think for a minute about what “we” already did.
ISIS did not exist until after the illegal war in Iraq, which “our” government supported. Al Qaeda had no significant presence in Iraq until the US/UK governments killed over a million Iraqis, destroyed their country, crushed their army and then, their oil fields safely back under “our” control, abandoned the Iraqi people. An Al Qaeda group established itself in the power vacuum, which then evolved into …
The Extraordinary Trial of Arthur Topham: Part 3
by Eve Mykytyn / November 29th, 2015
On November 7, Arthur Topham was convicted of inciting hatred against a racial group, the Jewish people. Mr. Topham maintains a website, Radical Free Press, in which he publishes and comments upon various documents. These documents include The Elders of the Protocols of Zion, various anti-Zionist texts, and a tract entitled Germany Must Perish, first published in 1941 and then satirized by Mr. Topham as Israel Must Perish.
Mr. Topham’s defense rested primarily on the theory that his writing was not directed at Jews as a race or religion, but rather at the politics espoused by a number of …
Britain’s Robust Arms Export Control Regime
by Felicity Arbuthnot / November 29th, 2015
As Prime Minister David Cameron attempts to persuade Parliament to back another illegal assault on a country posing no threat to the UK, Syria, it transpires that Britain may face war crimes charges anyway for arms sales to Saudi Arabia, arms being used to decimate civilians and civilian infrastructure in Yemen.
“Advisers to Philip Hammond, the Foreign Secretary, have stepped up legal warnings that the sale of specialist missiles to the Saudis, deployed throughout nine months of almost daily bombing raids in west Yemen … may breach international humanitarian law”, states a report in the Independent.
“Since March this year, …
by Nick Fillmore / November 28th, 2015
In the early-1950s, when it became widely known that smoking caused cancer, giant tobacco companies formed the Tobacco Industry Research Council (TIRC). Its main goal was to deny the harmful effects of tobacco and confuse the public.
The tobacco lobby wormed its way into the United Nations’ World Health Organization (WHO), wreaking havoc and slowing the WHO’s efforts to reduce the growing number of cancer deaths.
Realizing that the tobacco corporations were obstructing progress, the WHO finally built a firewall between public health officials and industry lobbyists. Only then was it possible to better control tobacco.
Flash …
by subMedia / November 28th, 2015
This week we bring you black and brown power worldwide as peeps from Manila to Chicago fight the powers that be. In the Philippines, anti-capitalist warriors told APEC leaders to pack up and get the fuck out of dodge, while comrades in Minneapolis took a page from the Ferguson riots, and stormed a police station and in Chi-town, a strong reaction to the Laquan McDonald shooting tape. On the music break Argentine-French rapper, Keny Arkana with “Gens Pressés.” In our featured interview, climate change journalist Dahr Jamail tells us just how fucked we are and what we need to …
by Richard Greeman / November 28th, 2015
The fear that is gripping France today stands in ghastly contrast with the positive national mood during the days immediately following the horrific Nov. 13 attacks in Paris. ((See my report, “France at War.”))
Two weeks ago, the French people gallantly defied fear by gathering out of doors to share grief, affirm solidarity and demonstrate their love of peace and of freedom. Last weekend, the streets were deserted (it’s true the weather turned cold) and soldiers with submachine guns were on patrol. The nights have been punctuated by unnecessarily brutal SWAT-team style commando raids on mosques (two here …
Part I -- Yawning out of the Insanity with a new book
by Paul Haeder / November 28th, 2015
Finished the first draft of a book about my commentary looking at the belly of the beast from the lower intestine up at the unending gluttony of Capitalism. It feels good, and I am ready to send it to the publisher, after a fellow dissident — John Steppling — looks at it, and, I hope writes a bang up introduction to inculcate some magic from my muses. As always, though, being hyper precarious in this rot gut society, I can’t see much these days as worthy of celebratory zeal to the point of letting my guard down.
The book is …
by Robert Jensen / November 28th, 2015
Bill McRaven is a highly respected retired admiral and popular chancellor of the University of Texas System. But his remarks at a recent conference on national security left me doubting his intellectual and moral fitness to lead institutions of higher education.
While my lack of deference to a boss who is a decorated veteran may seem uppity, it’s important—especially for professors at highly respected public universities—to contest McRaven’s ahistorical analysis, which offers a deluded account of the past and prescribes a dangerous course for the future of U.S. foreign policy.
This statement of McRaven’s captures his main points: “In the …
by John R. Hall / November 28th, 2015
After their wildly successful anti-war classic Mash, actors Elliott Gould and Donald Sutherland ventured out on a very weak limb and made a film version of a hit and miss Broadway production. Alan Arkin directed the film and played the part of mentally disturbed Lieutenant Practice of the NYPD. The year was 1971. My beautiful baby daughter had just entered the world. I’d recently been convicted of twice refusing induction into the U.S. Army, and was awaiting my court date for sentencing. Somehow, amid the mix of joy, sadness, and confusion, my wife and I managed to slip out and take in a movie. Little Murders would haunt …
by Siddhant Issar / November 28th, 2015
We live in dark times. For some, the accident of birth provides insulation and safety. A womb-like existence defined by ephemeral exposures, if at all, to the presence of an outside. Simultaneously, an overwhelming majority have the exact opposite experience. Unambiguously marked and categorized in a world not of their making, life itself, seen through the former lens, appears to be a transient game of reactions. The goal of the game is simple — survival. In continuation with this Manichean portrait of the world, my thought will work through two dominant registers. Needless to say, these registers are wholly conceptual; …
by K.J. Noh / November 28th, 2015
Millions of people over the US will be gathering on Thanksgiving to share a meal together and to give thanks for the people and the blessings in their lives. As you gather, it’s important to think about the meaning of this celebration, and to challenge the received myths about this problematic holiday.
While some form of harvest celebration is found in most cultures, the historical circumstances of Thanksgiving in the US are deeply intertwined with the oppression and genocide of the indigenous peoples by the settlers.
The anthropologist Levi-Strauss suggests that myth is an attempt to create an imaginary resolution of a real, …
