Latest articles
Since when did we decide that police officers should be above the law?
by William Boardman / November 1st, 2015
Two of the biggest police unions in the country are now on record in opposition to free speech. They are on record against constitutionally protected free speech that opposes the epidemic of police violence across America (more than 900 killed by police so far in 2015).
The current round of police union intimidation tactics started October 24, after filmmaker Quentin Tarantino spoke briefly to the “Rise Up October” protest, a “Call for a Major National Manifestation Against Police Terror.” The crowd of thousands …
by Bill Annett / November 1st, 2015
Ellen Hodgson Brown, a West Coast writer with a law degree, or perhaps more accurately, an attorney who likes to write in order to right, is one of the few people around who talks sense about banksters in general, central banking in particular, and the international excuse for both that prevails these days.
She talks about the leveraged buyout of America, how giant “bancorps,” as they like to style themselves, perhaps because it sounds so new-worldy cool, have gluttonized to the point where they own just about …
by Lucas Koerner / November 1st, 2015
CARACAS – Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro firmly rejected recent statements by US Southern Command Chief John Kelly on Tuesday, which he dismissed as unacceptable interference in the South American nation’s internal affairs.
Speaking on CNN Español, the head of US military operations in Central and South America and the Caribbean described Venezuela as on the brink of “implosion” due to “inflation” and “drug trafficking” and expressed willingness to provide assistance in the event of a “humanitarian crisis”.
President Maduro hit back at the US general during his weekly television program, challenging the Pentagon’s double standards in expressing humanitarian “concern” for Venezuela while …
by The Real News Network (TRNN) / October 31st, 2015
Trinity College’s Vijay Prashad discusses how no Syrian voices were represented at the Vienna peace talks, but geopolitical interests were front and center.
https://youtu.be/-rA6AZ1EWFQ
Movements on the right and left are changing the political culture. Their impact can be seen in the Democratic and Republican primaries, but the corporate media does not report it.
by Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers / October 31st, 2015
Confusion reigns in the Democratic and Republican primaries. Huffington Post political reporters write, “It’s Time to Admit: Nobody Knows Anything about the 2016 Campaign,” now that “the old ‘rules’ of presidential politics no longer seem to apply.”
Why the confusion? Media pundits have not given credit to the popular movements on both the right and left. This election cycle is showing the impact of social movements on the primary campaigns — both in the polling results and in the candidates’ rhetoric.
Tea Party and Occupy change the political culture
On the Republican side, Tea Party anger is showing itself. Republicans co-opted …
by subMedia / October 31st, 2015
by Andre Vltchek / October 30th, 2015
When respected philosophers get attacked in the middle of the street, you know that something is going terribly wrong with the nation.
The Czech Republic (and before, Czechoslovakia) was always a tough, racist place. It had its shameful share of anti-Semitic pogroms (Franz Kafka wrote, after one of them, that he will never be able to feel that he belongs to Czechoslovakia, anymore). It voluntarily exterminated a great number of its Gypsy (Roma) population during the Second World War. And it kicked out millions of Germans right after the war, following a shameless orgy of rape, murder and looting. “Shameless”, because …
by William A. Blunden / October 30th, 2015
For years spy masters have warned that foreign governments are scheming to send the United States back to the dark ages by hacking the power grid. One such apocalyptic scenario, modeled by the University of Cambridge, predicts that a broad scale cyberattack on the grid could cost the American economy as much as $1 trillion. Yet after incessantly directing the public’s attention to foreign hackers it would seem that the Pentagon has finally succeeded in reminding us exactly which power grid threats are the most serious. As Pogo quipped, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”
Yesterday …
Justin Trudeau withdraws fighter jets from Syria-Iraq
by Yves Engler / October 30th, 2015
Right-wing commentators are calling Justin Trudeau’s decision to withdraw fighter jets from Syria-Iraq “un Liberal” and unfortunately they’re right.
But, by citing the Liberal sponsored Responsibility to Protect (R2P) to justify Canadian participation in the US-led bombing, these pundits are revealing the essence of this “humanitarian imperialist” doctrine.
Last week senior Maclean‘s writer Michael Petrou called on Trudeau to rethink his commitment to stop Canadian bombing raids, writing “reasons for confronting Islamic State with force are decidedly Liberal. Your party pioneered the notion of ‘responsibility to protect’.” For his part, National Post columnist Matt Gurney bemoaned how “the …
Resisting the UN
by Binoy Kampmark / October 30th, 2015
The Obama administration is caught between history. They want to lift the embargo, but they cannot ignore the law of the land.
— Augusto Maxwell, Miami Herald, October 27, 2015
Whatever might be said about the efforts last December, and then those in July, to normalise relations between the US and Cuba, the United Nations General Assembly vote served to illustrate the cold reality. By 191 votes to 2, members voted to condemn the US blockade that has been in effect since the island did the insufferable and unthinkable in Washington’s eyes in going Communist.
Since the 1960s, the blockade …
by James Hoover / October 30th, 2015
As Americans we fail to understand the impact of ideas and the forces behind them, whether they originate in domestic or foreign contexts. But the contexts merge into global in our contemporary world.
Islam is a monotheistic religion articulated by the Quran (Koran), the Islamic Bible. Islamism, also known as political Islam, believes that Sharia, or Islamic, law should guide social and political life. Jihadists like the Islamic State functioning as strict purists take Islamism to a deadly and abhorrent extreme, bringing death and enslavement to non-believers, even near-believers.
Americans …
by Buddy Bell / October 30th, 2015
Okinawa — In late October 2015, I was with 3 Okinawa peace activists and a British solidarity activist on a tour of local resistance to U.S. military bases. After an hour of driving north from the city of Nago, crossing deep ravines and shimmering blue bays, we approached a dense forest, where the U.S. military’s only jungle warfare training center is situated, way up in the northernmost section of the island of Okinawa.
As we continued driving, the highway was suddenly blocked by some large, camouflage military vehicles, and we got out to investigate. One of the vehicles was an armored …
by Robert Hunziker / October 30th, 2015
The Fukushima disaster is radiantly exposed in the Pacific Ocean, but as for people behind the disaster, it is treated like the Manhattan Project, circa 1942… Top Secret!
Still, “It’s against international law to dump radioactivity into the sea, but that is precisely what is happening on a daily basis,” according to Dr. Keith Baverstock, former regional adviser for Radiation and Public Health, World Health Organization (“WHO”), speaker at the Citizen-Scientist International Symposium on Radiation Protection, October 23, 2015.
As intimated by Dr. Baverstock, inexplicably Fukushima is immune to international law, standards, and conventions, and nobody cares enough to do anything about …
by Mateo Pimentel / October 29th, 2015
A Checkered Past
Thanks to research and the minds behind it, a great deal of human progress is undeniable. Yet, equally undeniable is the fact that research has the potential to fuel awful social transgressions. Consider Amy Maxmen’s writing on genetics. She broaches a handful of research Frankensteins like human radiation experiments, Tuskegee, and Nuremburg. Although such reprehensible instances happened years ago, research’s checkered past is by no means distant.
In recent years, the World Bank funded a billion-dollar experiment in Afghanistan. Policy Research Working Paper 6129 details the bank’s findings and the efforts behind the hefty price tag. One of the …
by Binoy Kampmark / October 29th, 2015
All of the available evidence points to Australian officials having committed a transnational crime by, in effect, directing a people-smuggling operation, paying a boat crew and then instructing them on exactly what to do and where to land in Indonesia.
— Anna Shea, refugee researcher at Amnesty International, October 28, 2015
It surfaced back in June as a nasty reminder about how Canberra’s officials have been disposed to the issue known as the “refugee problem”. It came in the form of a refusal on the part of then Australian Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, to rule out a policy whereby people smugglers would …
by Jonathan Cook / October 28th, 2015
The official Israeli story about Israa Abed – the Nazareth woman who was shot six times on October 9 by Israeli security forces as she stood motionless in a bus station – has changed so many times, it’s difficult to know what to believe any more. By a small miracle she survived the shooting.
I raised many questions about this incident, based on two videos taken by bystanders, in a post on the day she was shot. That post, including the videos, is available here.
Israa is one of Israel’s 1.6 million Palestinian citizens. She lives in Israel, not the occupied territories.
Let’s be …
by Stanley Cohen / October 28th, 2015
The list of settler ambushes upon Palestinian women and children and unarmed men in the West Bank is endless. It grows day by day with more and more ferocity. In fact, there have been more than a thousand such documented attacks by rabid settlers on Palestinian civilians, although many more go unreported as futile. Of late the victims of settler violence have begun to include other Jews.
With predictable panic, once again the Israeli government is running about aimlessly blaming the victim for inviting their own victimization. This time it was a youthful Eritrean Jew who foolishly ventured out in public …
by Ramzy Baroud / October 28th, 2015
Saeb Erekat is an enigmatic character. Despite minimal popularity among Palestinians, he is omnipresent, appears regularly on television and speaks with the moral authority of an accomplished leader whose legacy is rife with accolades and an astute, unwavering vision.
When Palestinians were polled by the Jerusalem Media and Communications Center (JMCC) in August, just prior to the current Intifada, only 3 percent approved of his leadership – compared with the still meagre approval rating of 16 percent of his boss, Palestinian Authority President, Mahmoud Abbas. Even those who are often cast as alternative leaders – Fatah leader, Marwan Barghouti, and …
by Andrey Fomine / October 27th, 2015
This past weekend the CyberBerkut team revealed another story, shocking in its extraordinary cynism even for today’s Ukraine. It turned out that the top Ukrainian Interior Ministry officials are abusing Western military assistance, designated to reequip and strengthen the Ukrainian National Guard (internal police forces). They organized an international traders’ chain to secretly reexport these arms to the Middle East where they would most likely appear in the hands of Saudi-linked radical groups operating in Syria and other hot spots.
According to the hacked documents, on April 14, 2015 the president of the Polish weapons trader Level II …
Artists Against Police Brutality
by Kim Petersen / October 27th, 2015
U.S. citizen Kyle Lydell Canty, 30, has applied for refugee status in Canada citing fear of being killed by police. ((Chad Pawson, “Black U.S. citizen Kyle Lydell Canty seeking refugee status in Canada,” CBC News, 23 October 2015.))
In his hearing with Canada’s Immigration and Refugee Board on October 23 in Vancouver Canty said, “I’m in fear of my life because I’m black.”
Canty maintained, “This is a well-founded fear.”
Does Canty believe that police in Canada are “racially” color blind or just that it can’t be any worse than in the US? ((Certainly in Canada, if one is a darker …
by Ellen Brown / October 27th, 2015
Until the control of the issue of currency and credit is restored to government and recognized as its most conspicuous and sacred responsibility, all talk of the sovereignty of Parliament and of democracy is idle and futile.
— Canadian Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King, 1935
On November 3rd, the US government will again run out of money due to a debt ceiling artificially imposed by Congress. This is the third time in four years that a radical faction has taken the country to the brink of default to extort concessions that are at best only marginally related to the budget.
The …
The sword inspires the romance of war in those who haven't seen it slice open bellies
by Jack Balkwill / October 27th, 2015
That night, almost fifty years ago, I remember something wet hitting my cheek, so I reached up and wiped it off, noticing it was a bloody piece of flesh. It was then that I turned to see that the man sitting next to me in the ditch had just had his face blown off. This thought came to me often decades ago, and I strained to remember who the man was, but my memories always went dark at that point. I would push my memories day after day, but nothing came. I finally gave up, developing a theory that one’s …
Former RAF Pilot Gives His View of US Bombing of MSF Hospital in Kunduz
by Media Lens / October 27th, 2015
In our previous media alert, ‘Sick Sophistry,’ we examined media coverage of the deliberate US bombing of a Médecins Sans Frontières hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan on October 3. In particular, we exposed the BBC’s Pentagon-friendly reporting of the hospital as having been ‘mistakenly‘ bombed.
On October 24, MSF announced that 30 people had now tragically died, up from the initial toll of 22. The humanitarian organisation, also known as Doctors Without Borders, continued to call for an independent international investigation into what it has called a ‘war crime.’ Associated Press has just reported new evidence ‘that …
by Felicity Arbuthnot / October 27th, 2015
The individual is handicapped by coming face to face with a conspiracy so monstrous he cannot believe it exists.
— J. Edgar Hoover, 1895-1972
Just five days after it was revealed that former British Prime Minster Tony Blair and then President George W. Bush had made a pact to attack Iraq and overthrow the country’s sovereign government a full year before the invasion took place – as Blair continued to mislead government and populace stating that diplomacy was being pursued and no decisions made – another snake has slithered from under the hay (as the Arab saying goes) in the form …
by Rick Sterling / October 27th, 2015
If the U.S. is to ever change its foreign policy based on dominance and aggression to a foreign policy based on diplomacy and respect for international law, there needs to be a foundation of realistic assessments. Foreign policy decisions need to be based on reality not fantasy and propaganda.
Unfortunately, dysfunction, deception and propaganda extend across the spectrum from Congressional Republicans to Hillary Clinton to the White House to Bernie Sanders. The following are recent examples:
Benghazi Hearings in Congress ignore important issues to focus on superficial
Congress recently held hearings on what happened in Benghazi Libya leading up to the death of …
by Ben Schreiner / October 27th, 2015
As if Americans didn’t already have enough to worry about in regards to the recently resurrected Red Menace, we can now add the fear that those devious Russians are threatening to–horror of horrors–bring down the Internet.
As the New York Times‘ David Sanger and Eric Schmitt report, “Russian submarines and spy ships are aggressively operating near the vital undersea cables that carry almost all global Internet communications, raising concerns among some American military and intelligence officials that the Russians might be planning to attack those lines in times of conflict.”
As Navy spokesman Cmdr. William Marks adds, “It would be a concern to …
by Yves Engler / October 27th, 2015
Over the past eighteen months two of the world’s largest automakers have been found responsible for deadly conspiracies. But, recent revelations can’t compete with the industry’s previous scandals.
Last month Volkswagen was caught rigging millions of its cars’ emissions testing systems to meet regulatory standards. The German company programmed its turbocharged direct injection diesel engines to activate emissions controls during laboratory testing while in real-world driving the vehicles produced up to 40 times more nitrogen oxide (NO). Hundreds, probably thousands, of people will be afflicted with asthma, lung disease and other ailments as a result.
The Volkswagen scandal follows on the heels …
by Joseph Grosso / October 26th, 2015
It is fair to say that the affairs of the Republic of Guatemala don’t register all that much in the minds, nor in the media, of Americans. This probably shouldn’t be taken as surprising. The same can be said for most, if not all, small impoverished countries. Still in recent weeks very astute readers of newspapers would have come across a small smattering of stories, all of which it goes without saying would have received sprawling headlines if they involved a larger, non-impoverished country:
Months of mass demonstrations leading to the resignation and arrest of president Otto Perez Molina for his …
A Review of Diliorah Chukwurah’s Last Train to Biafra
by Chuks Iloegbunam / October 26th, 2015
Many books have been written on the Nigerian civil war, which has turned out to be the greatest impetus to national literary creativity. The factual and fictional accounts of the war are in the hundreds. Established authors wrote some. Others are the works of those who never thought circumstances would force them into the drastic action of putting pen on paper.
Two of the best known Nigerian writers, Chinua Achebe and Wole Soyinka, wrote profusely on the war; Achebe as an instant participant, and Soyinka as a distant but no less interested party. It’s difficult to fully appreciate Nigeria’s civil …
Canadians assess the aftermath of Harper’s political demise
by Eric Walberg / October 25th, 2015
Canada’s prime minister for the past nine years, Stephen Harper, led a charmed life until the 19 October federal election. Canada’s first-past-the-post elector system, where three parties — two left-liberal and one conservative — have split the vote election after election, allowed him to hold power with a third of the popular vote.
The traditional source of political power in Canada is the Liberal Party, but they lost power after a string of scandals and weak leadership a decade ago, and Harper, having captured the traditionally moderate Progressive Conservatives and inserted his radical right wing followers, used the electoral split to …
