Latest articles
Another Lesser-of-Evils Myth Dies
by Steve Breyman / February 26th, 2016
Since their arrival on the American political scene in the eighties and nineties, Green activists and voters have been tagged by Democrats as spoilers and reckless idealists. In each and every election in which a Green has run, Democrats warned that the interloper would throw the election to the Republican candidate. The barrage was heaviest in 2000 when Democrats falsely claimed Ralph Nader caused Al Gore to lose to George W. Bush.
When all else fails to convince a Green to vote for the Democratic presidential candidate, Democrats deploy their nuclear option: the composition of the Supreme Court hangs in the …
by Felicity Arbuthnot / February 26th, 2016
Only days after Prime Minister David Cameron’s embarrassing Little Englander strut around the European Parliament attempting to dictate – sorry, “negotiate” – new terms for Britain’s membership of the European Union, the EU Parliament has delivered a backhanded, but unmistakable, blow to the UK and its partner in crime, Saudi Arabia.
As Saudi decimates Yemen with British made bombs and missiles, dropped from British aircraft, advised by British military experts based in the Saudi Command and Control Centre, the European Parliament voted on Thursday, February 25th, for an EU-wide arms embargo against Saudi in protest at its assault on its southern …
by Matt Peppe / February 26th, 2016
When asked by Wolf Blitzer in January if she was “the establishment,” Hillary Clinton replied: “I just don’t understand what that means. He’s been in Congress, he’s been elected to office a lot longer than I have.” Several weeks later, her Democratic primary opponent Sen. Bernie Sanders made the case in a debate that the issue was who enjoyed the support of more powerful elected officials, arguing that “more governors, mayors, members of the House” back Clinton.
Clinton framed the notion of “the establishment” as consisting solely of political bodies of elected officials. Sanders simply argued that a better indicator …
by Linn Washington, Jr. / February 26th, 2016
Hollywood honchos told a big lie 74-years ago.
That lie told in 1942 is a link in the sordid chain of perceptions and practices that have produced the present brouhaha surrounding the 2016 Oscar awards featuring an all-white bevy of acting category nominations.
That lie is part of a legacy the stretches to the very founding of the United States of America: a persistent refusal to forthrightly tackle racism, particularly insidious institutional racism.
The fact that so few have no clue about this Hollywood lie evidences the need for better understandings about facets of American history that are purposely forgotten yet have a …
by Denis A. Conroy / February 26th, 2016
Mankind, it seems, likes to get behind a banner as a way of defining collective identity. This season it is the election of a new authority figure to occupy the White House that ineluctably sucks us up into the dizzy heights of a form of American pantomime that flashes itself to all and sundry. The Barnum & Bailey Circus spin-doctoring pitch to the audience (native and global) is a dynamo unto itself that can banish all insouciance, and does, in order to bring us ‘The Greatest Show On Earth’ per supposedly democratic means. ‘The Greatest Show On Earth’ is also America incarnate, embracing the myth of ‘The …
by Binoy Kampmark / February 25th, 2016
He always had a rough deal. He strayed as a young man, a situation that would have been perfectly acceptable if he had picked the approved rogue group or terrorist collective to vent his adolescent angst. Al Qaeda, and their Taliban hosts, were not on that list. Having fallen out of favour with the Oscar equivalent of good terrorist nominees, Australia’s David Hicks found himself in the dark, picked up in Afghanistan in November 2001 and conveyed to that terrestrial nightmare known as Guantánamo Bay soon after.
From January 2002 to March 2007, he was detained at the US Naval Base …
Corporate Media shrugs and remains silent
by Eva Bartlett / February 25th, 2016
The terror-ravaged neighbourhood of al-Zahra’a, in Homs, has again mercilessly been hit by western and Saudi-backed terrorists’ bombings. Local journalists put the number of murdered at 57 now, some hours after the double-vehicle bombing earlier today. Russia Today reports:
The explosions at a traffic light at al-Siteen Street in the al-Zahra neighborhood happened within minutes of each other, witnesses said. …Witnesses said at least one of the two blasts was triggered by a suicide bomber driving a car.
A follow-up bombing after an initial blast is a common terrorist tactic, which allows them to hit first responders, who rush to …
by Bill Quigley / February 25th, 2016
Louisiana, which has the highest incarceration rate in the country, no longer provides public defenders to all its people accused of crimes; within months over half its public defender offices are expected to become insolvent.
“It’s a nightmare,” according to James Dixon, the chief Louisiana Public Defender. “You have people in jail that don’t have lawyers. It’s that basic.” In Louisiana, public defenders are appointed to represent nearly 250,000 people each year. Dixon has been warning of a constitutional crisis for years due to inadequate funding. His office has recently been sued in a federal …
by K.J. Noh / February 24th, 2016
The following is a leaked transcript of Hillary Clinton’s 1st speech to Goldman Sachs delivered on 6/04/2013. Two other speeches are also rumored to be in circulation. This is the full transcript. Secretary Clinton received $225,000 for this speech.
HILLARY CLINTON: Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you very much, Lloyd [Blankfein], and thanks to everyone at Goldman Sachs for welcoming me today. I’m delighted to be back among friends, colleagues, collaborators, supporters, kindred spirits…
Let me jump right in. You know, over the past few months, there have been popular concerns about an economy that still isn’t delivering for the …
by James Petras / February 24th, 2016
The presidential elections of 2016 have several unique characteristics that defy common wisdom about political practices in 21st century America.
Clearly the established political machinery — party elites and their corporate backers — have (in part) lost control of the nomination process and confront ‘unwanted’ candidates who are campaigning with programs and pronouncements that polarize the electorate.
But there are other more specific factors, which have energized the electorate and speak to recent US history. These …
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 …
