Latest articles
by Hakim and the Afghan Peace Volunteers / December 8th, 2015
Former MSF Kunduz Hospital pharmacist, Khalid Ahmad, recuperating at Emergency Hospital in Kabul: “I feel very angry, but I don’t want anything from the U.S. military,” said Khalid Ahmad, a 20 year old pharmacist who survived the U.S. bombing of the Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) / Doctors Without Borders Hospital in Kunduz on the 3rd of October, “God will hold them accountable.”
The actions of the U.S. military elicit the same contempt from Khalid and many ordinary Afghans as the actions of the Taliban or the ISIS.
Khalid was …
Forbidding of the killing of innocents is not set in stone
by Gary Leupp / December 8th, 2015
News anchors scratch their heads. How could they have done this? How could a happily married young couple, with a good income, a six-month-old baby, and no apparent history of “radicalization,” execute this military-style massacre of 14 people in San Bernardino? Gosh, how to understand these people?
Actually, I think it’s not so difficult to grasp. One just has to examine the question seriously and not begin with the assumption that such massacres are incomprehensible–the products of minds so alien to our own that comprehending itself isn’t possible.
It seems to me that the basic components of ISIL-type ideology are …
Downsizing Quality and Credibility
by Walter Brasch / December 8th, 2015
On Monday, November 2, every National Geographic staffer was told to report to the magazine’s Washington, D.C., headquarters the next day to await a phone call or e-mail from Human Resources.
Ever since Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox corporation bought the magazine in September, there were rumors the new owner would maximize profits by terminating employees. Those predictions came through when Management fired 180 people, and told dozens of others they were being offered “voluntary buy-outs.”
The corporation also announced it was eliminating health coverage for future retirees and was freezing all pensions. Management told the public there would be …
by Matt Peppe / December 8th, 2015
In March, after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made denying a Palestinian state a pillar of his winning re-election campaign, officials in the Obama administration signaled to the media that they would reconsider the U.S. government’s staunch diplomatic support for Israel in the United Nations. The U.S. government feigned “very substantive concerns” and declared the administration may “reassess (its) options going forward” in response to Netanyahu’s explicit rejection of a two-state solution.
Mainstream media focused on the personal dynamics between the leaders of the two countries. CNN said the Obama administration felt “outright hostility” toward Netanyahu and the New York …
by Adnan Al-Daini / December 8th, 2015
The best that the high level climate talks in Paris (COP21) can achieve is to agree measures and actions to limit the increase in global temperature of our planet to 2C. Scientists, however, believe that even our best efforts will see a rise of 3C. Leaders of the industrialized rich west believe that the consequences of such a rise can be mitigated in their own countries by their advanced technology and expertise. For some countries in the developing world, however, such a rise in temperature would be devastating.
So, where do we go from here? Let …
by Ralph Nader / December 8th, 2015
The 50th anniversary of my book, Unsafe at Any Speed, which analysts associate with the launch of the modern consumer movement, prompts comparisons between 1965 and 2015.
The life-saving impact of the book through the highway and auto safety laws Congress passed in 1966, creating an auto safety enforcement agency to lift up safety standards for motor vehicles, has been historic. According to an analysis of deaths per mile driven by the Center for Auto Safety (CAS) “the 1966 federal laws, federal agency and general measures they created – have averted 3.5 million auto deaths over the past 50 years.”
CAS executive director Clarence …
Silicon Valley’s Infernal Landscape vs. the Barrio
by Christy Rodgers / December 7th, 2015
For most of my adult life I have lived in bohemia, that marginal filament of US culture wedged in the cracks between the sterile, necrotic suburbs, the bunkered mansions of the urban rich, and the trash-blown decay of the ghetto. It exists, as it ever has, only in our larger cities, and perhaps no longer all of those. It is at risk of extinction in San Francisco, once its Mecca. Its inhabitants in these times are not the sexual pioneers, eccentric artists, and non-conformists of yore, but a grimmer group: night-dwellers with bruised, dark-ringed eyes, crusty old radicals with rent …
by Jonathan Cook / December 7th, 2015
Once it fell to politicians and diplomats to solve international conflicts. Now, according to Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, responsibility lies with social media.
Tzipi Hotovely, Israel’s deputy foreign minister, headed off to Silicon Valley to meet senior executives at Google and its subsidiary YouTube late last month. Her task was to persuade them that, for the sake of peace, they must censor the growing number of Palestinian videos posted on YouTube.
Netanyahu claims these videos spur other Palestinians to carry out attacks, exemplified by the weeks of stabbings and car rammings against Israeli soldiers and civilians.
After the meeting, …
Diana Johnstone Dissects Hillary, Queen of Chaos
by John V. Walsh / December 7th, 2015
Were Diana Johnstone, author of Queen of Chaos, to bump into Samantha Power in a dark alley, both would be instantly annihilated in a blaze of energy. For Johnstone, is the anti-Samantha Power, best known for her book, Fools’ Crusade: Yugoslavia, NATO and Western Illusions, where she meticulously uncovers the truth about the war on Serbia, thereby dismantling the fairy tale constructed by Power to justify the NATO assault on the Balkans. That fairy tale has been a model for similar sagas rolled out to whiten the sepulchers of the many “humanitarian” wars since, every one of which bears some …
But lets talk about good Canada’s done in Uganda
by Yves Engler / December 7th, 2015
A recent Globe and Mail article (reprinted on Rabble.ca) by Gerald Caplan detailing Canadian relations with Uganda made me mad.
Why?
It was not so much for what’s in the article, but rather what it ignores, which is reality. Any progressive author writing about Canada’s foreign affairs betrays his readers if he ignores the bad this country has done and feeds the benevolent Canadian foreign-policy myth.
“Canadians have had ties to Uganda for many decades”, writes Caplan, a self-described “Africa scholar” citing the establishment of diplomatic relations soon after independence. He also mentions many Canadians who “found their way to the …
Finding truth in an endless parade of stories in the not-so-mainstream-press
by Paul Haeder / December 7th, 2015
Universe in the back seat of the station wagon
I do this quite a lot – looking at those American towns I call home or still have connections with and try to make universal tie-ins to the larger world, certainly connections that overlay here, say, Portland, to the universal Amerika, fed through the lens of American Capitalism Gone Hard Fascist Right.
Scouring newspapers – those that are left, still independent, or those part of monopolies like Gannett, Advance Publications, Hearst Corp., McClatchy Newspapers and Tribune Co. or otherwise – gives me a look into the madness of American planning, lack of it, and …
by Dissident Voice Communications / December 6th, 2015
In an effort to embolden police officers to break through the blue wall of silence and restore the trust of the communities they are sworn to protect, artist Michael D’Antuono will be taking his latest painting “It Stops With Cops” to the steps of the Mitchel Courthouse in Baltimore from Dec 7-11. The artist will come with a a seventeen foot traveling billboard, an eight foot banner and will be handing out free posters of the piece to protesters.
…
Anti-Empire Report #141
by William Blum / December 6th, 2015
Questions to ask President Obama the next time (also the last time) you’re invited to one of his press conferences:
Which is most important to you – destroying ISIS, overthrowing Syrian president Assad, or scoring points against Russia?
Do you think that if you pointed out to the American people that Assad has done much more to aid and rescue Christians in the Middle East conflicts than any other area leader that this would lessen the hostility the United States public and media feel toward him? Or do you share the view of the State Department spokesperson who declared in September that …
Cancer Arises From Stress-induced Breakdown of Tissue Homeostasis: Part 2
by Denis Rancourt / December 6th, 2015
This is Part 2 of a four-part article. Part 1 provides a general introduction for the whole article which is available as a single PDF file on ResearchGate. The article was presented at the University of Ottawa on November 21, 2015, and is available in video as Parts One and Two.
PART 2: Review of the randomized trials for treatments and screening
Here, I critically review the randomized trials for treatments and screening, especially for breast cancer. It has been advanced that screening does more harm than good, and that treatment protocols have little effect on net population …
by Dave Lindorff / December 6th, 2015
A staggering 168 people, 12 times as many as those killed earlier this week in San Bernardino, and including a whole daycare center class of 15 little children, were killed by a crazed terrorist in the 1995 Oklahome City truck-bombing of the Murrah Federal Building. The killer, Timothy McVeigh, was a right-wing Christian fanatic who wanted to avenge the killing of a bunch of Christian cultists in Waco, Texas by federal agents two years earlier. His accomplice Terry Nichols had the same deranged goal.
Although there are plenty of right-wing and fanatic Christian nut-jobs in the US, somehow Americans get on …
by D. Sidney Potter / December 6th, 2015
If there’s one thing that conservative Democrats can rejoice about, given the less than stellar reviews of their point person who now occupies 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, rent free, is that the ‘shout-out’ heard around the world would have to be President Obama’s “opening” with Cuba that occurred earlier this year.
The residual effect of this better than late coup d’état in terms of international diplomacy, is that the opening with Cuba will somewhat allow Americans in a roundabout way to buy investment real estate without the red-tape that existed before, when that other young President, with the initials JFK …
by Eoin Higgins / December 5th, 2015
On December 4, the owner of the home that the alleged — alleged, innocent until guilt is proven is still the law — San Bernardino attackers, Syed Farook and his wife, was opened to the media. The scene was pandemonium as a swarm of reporters, cameramen, and members of the public ransacked the home.
MSNBC reporter Kerry Sanders was tracked by a live shot though the Redlands home, rifling through photographs and documents on live television. MSNBC anchor Andrea Mitchell showed some discomfort as Sanders found pictures of children and showed them to the cable channel’s audience, but the …
Sheikh Raed Salah warns that outlawing of Islamic Movement is a prelude to wider assault on Palestinian rights
by Jonathan Cook / December 5th, 2015
In the tangle of back streets in the city of Umm al-Fahm, the three-storey building that until recently housed the headquarters of the northern Islamic Movement stands dark and empty, its front-door padlocked shut.
The movement’s leader, Sheikh Raed Salah, has been forced to decamp to a large covered market on the outskirts of the city that has been hurriedly converted into an unlikely hub of political activity for Israel’s Palestinian minority.
Tens of thousands of visitors have come to this protest tent in the past three weeks, since Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu invoked emergency laws – bequeathed by the British …
by Eve Mykytyn / December 5th, 2015
The New York Times delivered a first of its kind front page editorial today deploring the proliferation of guns in America. The editorial has been widely praised in the media as if the writing alone would have an effect on gun violence.
The first line reads as follows: “It is a moral outrage and national disgrace that civilians can purchase weapons designed to kill people with brutal speed and efficiency.” I don’t disagree with the sentiment, but the timing is odd. Americans have been subject to a number of random gun attacks by disturbed and disturbing shooters, the majority …
by Peter Breschard / December 5th, 2015
John was wondering why he was where he was. After all, he’d purchased the weapon weeks ago.
“And when was it, exactly, that you decided you needed an automatic rifle?” Filling out a form, Marsha, an intake worker, concentrates on her computer screen, making no eye contact with the new admission.
“I don’t know. I saw the ad online. You know. Don’t we all have the right to protect ourselves?”
“Yes. Of course. And how were you planning to use this automatic weapon?” John couldn’t see Marsha’s fingers on the keyboard but he could hear faint clicks …
by Binoy Kampmark / December 5th, 2015
If Zuck wants a ‘gives 99% to of his stock to charity’ headline, he ought to earn it – by giving 99% of his stock to actual charities. Charities that aren’t named after him. Charities he doesn’t control.
— Ted Rall, CounterPunch, December 3, 2015
Philanthropy, by its very existence, operates as is its own justification. It is a self-serving economy of needs, the quintessential admission that the world is unequal, that poverty is necessary, and alleviation of it in modest amounts encouraged.
It provides a moral imperative for a guilty conscience bruised by huge wealth; it keeps government from fulfilling its appointed …
by Philip A. Farruggio / December 4th, 2015
Baby boomers like myself remember urban Main Street America. In our neighborhoods of Brooklyn N.Y., we had the appearance of little villages. The main shopping avenues were lined with Mom and Pop retail stores. You wanted bread, we had Italian, Jewish and German bakeries. You wanted fruit, you went to the neighborhood fruit and produce store. Needed women’s wear — a ladies shop. We had men’s shops, tailors to fit you for a suit or pants, handbag stores, leather shops, jewelry shops, hardware stores, paint stores, neighborhood pharmacies, where they delivered your medicine, coffee shops, pizza parlors, Jewish delis, German …
Biased and Misleading Analysis on Syria, Russia, Turkey
by Rick Sterling / December 4th, 2015
PBS Newshour is considered high quality journalism by many North Americans. But is it? A test case is their report on November 24 when a Russian jet was shot down and one pilot killed as he descended in parachute.
This was a significant international event and the situation is still dangerous. The conflict in Syria could get even worse. PBS Newshour presented a discussion/analysis of the event with two guests: Nicholas Burns and Angela Stent. The PBS Newshour host was Judy Woodruff.
This critique applies to the PBS Newshour broadcast on November 24 but the essential points apply to the present. …
by Ira Glunts / December 4th, 2015
My deepest sympathy for the family of Ezra Schwartz. My deepest sadness that some lives are more valued than others.
— Dave Zirin, @edgeofsports tweet, November 23, 2015
The only tweet I found questioning the appropriateness of the Patriot’s moment of silence.
In a brazen attempt to conflate the struggle between Palestinians and Israeli Jews with random terrorist political violence in the consciousness of the American public, the New England Patriots recognized Ezra Schwartz in a brief ceremony before a Monday Night Football game. (See video here.) On November 23rd, a crowd of 70,000 stood in honor of Schwartz while they …
Part 1: Context of Cancer Research
by Denis Rancourt / December 4th, 2015
The article is in four parts, following the structure of this overall abstract:
Abstract
Part 1: I critically review the context of cancer research, where it has been advanced that most published research findings are false, that medicine itself is the third leading cause of death in the Western world, and that experienced stress arising from an individual’s position in society’s dominance hierarchy is the primary determinant of individual health.
Part 2: I critically review the randomized trials for treatments and screening, especially for breast cancer. It has been advanced that screening does more harm than good, and that treatment protocols have little …
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 …
