Latest articles
by Adnan Al-Daini / October 6th, 2015
Have you ever wondered what happened to the £375billion, equivalent to £6,000 for every man, woman and child in the UK, created by the bank of England electronically? This colossal sum of new money is created through the programme called Quantitative Easing (QE), and pumped into the financial markets by the purchase of government bonds.
The campaigning group Positive-Money estimates that this money pushed share prices up by 20%. The idea was that those benefiting from this would invest this new wealth in the real economy. But the reality is that this new wealth simply went into more financial …
by Kathy Kelly / October 6th, 2015
Before the 2003 Shock and Awe bombing in Iraq, a group of activists living in Baghdad would regularly go to city sites that were crucial for maintaining health and well-being in Baghdad, such as hospitals, electrical facilities, water purification plants, and schools, and string large vinyl banners between the trees outside these buildings which read: “To Bomb This Site Would Be A War Crime.” We encouraged people in U.S. cities to do the same, trying to build empathy for people trapped in Iraq, anticipating a terrible aerial bombing.
Tragically, sadly, the banners must again condemn war crimes, this time …
by Jonathan Cook / October 6th, 2015
Since a boy named David slew the giant Goliath with a slingshot, the stone has served as an enduring symbol of how the weak can defeat an oppressor.
For the past month Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has tried to rewrite the Bible story by declaring war on what he terms Palestinian “terrorism by stones”.
There are echoes of Yitzhak Rabin’s response nearly 30 years ago when, as defence minister, he ordered soldiers to “break bones” to stop a Palestinian uprising, often referred to as the “intifada of stones”, against the Israeli occupation.
Terrified by the symbolism of women and …
by Edward S. Herman / October 5th, 2015
I was a bit surprised as well as appalled at the reported reaction of U.S. military personnel who had participated in the November 2004 destruction of Fallujah under Operation Phantom Fury, to the January 2014 taking control of the city by Sunni insurgents. The New York Times reporter covering this story says that “watching insurgents running roughshod through the streets they once fought to secure, often in brutal close quarters combat, has shaken their faith in what their mission achieved.” ((Richard A. Oppel, Jr., “Falluja’s Fall Stuns Marines Who fought There,” New York Times, January 10, 2014.)) Marine Corps sergeant …
by Media Lens / October 5th, 2015
Last month, 250,000 party members voted Jeremy Corbyn leader of the Labour party, ‘the largest mandate ever won by a Party Leader.’ The combined might of the political and media establishment had fought and lost its Stalingrad, having bombarded Corbyn with every conceivable smear in a desperate attempt to wreck his reputation with the British public. The more extreme the attacks, the more people caught on. Social media surely played a part in this awakening; but the public simply needed to compare the cynicism with Corbyn’s obvious decency and common sense.
Long lines of media futurologists, having all dismissed Corbyn’s …
by Felicity Arbuthnot / October 5th, 2015
Oh what a tangled web we weave,
When first we practice to deceive.
— Walter Scott, 1771-1832, “Marmion.”
How speedily the lies of the “international community” in general and those of the US and UK in particular about the Syrian situation are unraveling since the participation of Russia.
Take UK Prime Minister David Cameron. On September 24th last year he addressed the United Nations, committing British aircraft to targeting IS/ISIL/ISIS in Iraq adding unequivocally that there would be no similar action in Syria and absolutely no “boots on the ground.”
Referring to Iraq he added that the West should not be frozen by “past …
by Lesley Docksey / October 5th, 2015
One glance on Sunday morning at The Guardian website demonstrated quite clearly what is wrong with Britain – and, probably, the rest of the ‘developed’ world. Three major concerns of the average household were news. And all three are connected, not just to each other, but to the way this country is being run.
Housing and the ‘Right to Buy’
This country has never recovered from the 1980s Great British Sell-off of our social housing – council houses and flats. Having sold them off, councils weren’t then allowed to use the money to build much needed… council houses. There has …
Pope Francis, Vladimir Putin, Xi, Jinping, Hassan Rouhani, and Jeremy Corbyn
by James Petras / October 5th, 2015
Western imperialism, in all of its manifestation, is being challenged by five political leaders, through diplomacy, moral persuasion and public pressure. In recent time, Pope Francis, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, and Labor Party leader Jeremy Corbyn have raised fundamental questions concerning (1) war and peace in the Middle East and the Caucuses; (2) climate change and the destruction of the environment; (3) economic sanctions, military threats, and confrontation; and (4) growing inequalities of class, gender, and race.
The New Global …
by Andre Vltchek / October 5th, 2015
Southeast Asian elites “forgot” about those tens of millions of Asian people murdered by the Western imperialism at the end of, and after, the WWII. They “forgot” about what took place in the North – about the Tokyo and Osaka firebombing, about the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombs, about the barbaric liquidation of Korean civilians by the US forces. But they also forgot about their own victims – about those hundreds of thousands, in fact, about the millions, of those who were blown to pieces, burned by chemicals or directly liquidated – men, women and children of Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, …
by Andrey Fomine / October 4th, 2015
The media frenzy in the countries of the anti-Assad coalition over the Russian air strikes on Al-Qaeda-linked guerrillas in Syria has made one very significant fact quite clear. Along with the nervous reaction of the US, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and some other countries it is irrefutable proof that the interests of seemingly opposing forces – NATO and radical jihadism – are actually tightly intertwined. And their relations go far beyond the Syrian crisis.
Ultimately it makes no practical sense to differentiate Daesh and Jabhat Al Nusra merely on the basis of the fact …
Will B.O. and Palmerston Junior send their Light Brigade into the Valley of Death?
by T.P. Wilkinson / October 4th, 2015
Ever since Russian President Vladimir Putin addressed the UN General Assembly on 28 September, the spokespersons for the US regime and its propaganda apparatus have tried to present Russia as a nostalgic power seething with envy. Such misrepresentations of current Russian policy and Russian history in the US are not unusual. In fact, they have been the rule since 1917. Unlike the US, Russia is not an island whose ignorance and idiocy have been preserved by two oceans separating it from the rest of humanity (except the non-whites and half-whites south of Miami and the Rio Bravo).
Hence when Julia Ioffe …
by Jay Janson / October 4th, 2015
Years from now when the East resumes world leadership after five centuries of savage European racist domination and the UN is free of colonial powers control, people will look back in astonishment to UN debates in which nations bombed and invaded by the US and NATO were unable call for justice under the Nuremberg Principles of international law. Syria allowing the US to get away genocide in 2015 one example.
Truth (as in documented history of the United State of America and Syria)
“Assad Must Go, Obama Says” ((Washington Post, August 18, 2011.))
Four years later the United States is …
by Jonik / October 3rd, 2015
It’s the most democratic thing you can do!
by Pedro Aibéo / October 3rd, 2015
Here is why you should not vote: There are plenty of better things to do with your personal time, for yourself and for your community than go voting! With this time you could be doing something much more meaningful with direct results on your life.
What you need to do is to work on the democratic decisions at the community level. If you train to mobilize people for discussions and alternative solutions to the current issues and events, or even just to meet to clean the streets every Sunday morning (instead of listening to the church monologue), you will be learning …
by Dan Glazebrook / October 3rd, 2015
Europe needs to fascisise its policies, because if it doesn’t — fascism will grow. This was the message from Frans Timmerman, Vice-President of the European Commission following last week’s fraught negotiations over the so-called refugee crisis. “We have to patrol our borders better”, he told reporters on Thursday. “If we’re not able to tackle this issue, if we’re not able to find sustainable solutions, you will see a surge of the extreme right across the European continent.”
Sustainable solutions are, of course, available, and always have been; namely 1) stop destabilising Africa and the Middle East: which means, precisely, stop …
Palestinian minority in Israel worried by top cop’s twin-track as interrogator for secret police and hardline settler
by Jonathan Cook / October 3rd, 2015
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu parachuted in a new police chief last week after the government’s previous candidates were thwarted by controversy.
Roni Alsheikh has officially been brought in as a new broom to sweep away a culture of corruption and sex scandals that has plagued the Israeli police for years.
The first choice for police commander, Gal Hirsch, a former army general, had to be dropped last month after it emerged that the FBI had passed on suspicions about his arms-dealing company.
Another hopeful, Benzi Sau, who served as acting police commander over the summer, drew a storm …
by Binoy Kampmark / October 3rd, 2015
Normalised mass violence has become the unmentioned subject of US school syllabi. Teachers’ meetings and academic retreats must be getting longer and more perturbed: How do those in a university setting cope with an armed assailant who will take a dozen lives in a short span, and then perish?
Twenty-four hour reporting loves such phenomena. It is crack violence for whoring reporting. It seemed most appropriate that the 10 deaths, repeated aerial shots of provincial Umpqua Community College, police and control centres, should be run around the clock on Oregon, even as Russian bombings of supposed ISIL sites in Syria were …
by Yves Engler / October 2nd, 2015
Last week former defence minister Jason Kenney said if re-elected the Conservatives would significantly expand Canada’s special forces. Kenney said they would add 665 members to the Canadian Armed Forces Special Operations Command (CANSOFCOM) over the next seven years.
Why? What do these “special forces” do? Who decides when and where to deploy them? For what purpose? These are all questions left unanswered (and not even asked in the mainstream media).
What we do know is that since the mid-2000s Canada’s special forces have steadily expanded to 1,900 members. In 2006 the military launched CANSOFCOM to oversee JTF2, …
by Ralph Nader / October 2nd, 2015
Next year, the federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) will celebrate its 50th anniversary as one of the finest laws our Congress has ever passed. It is a vital investigative tool for exposing government and corporate wrongdoing.
The FOIA was championed by Congressman John E. Moss (D-CA), who strove to “guarantee the right of every citizen to know the facts of his Government.” Moss, with whom I worked closely as an outside citizen advocate, said that “without the fullest possible access to Government information, it is impossible to gain the knowledge necessary to discharge the responsibilities of citizenship.”
All fifty states have …
by Andrey Fomine / October 1st, 2015
Contrary to the expectations of many experts who were predicting a “second Munich” from Vladimir Putin in New York, the Russian president made no grandiose proclamations during his address to the UN General Assembly. In fact, he was outwardly far milder than one might have imagined. By comparison, Obama’s emotional speech, which was replete with strident but unsubstantiated claims, seemed sad, and occasionally even comical. For example, there was a passage about the ouster of Assad, but then less than a day later the US position flip-flopped …
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by Jonik / September 30th, 2015
by John Pilger / September 30th, 2015
George Orwell said, “In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” [This quotation is not verified. — DV Ed]
These are dark times, in which the propaganda of deceit touches all our lives. It is as if political reality has been privatised and illusion legitimised. The information age is a media age. We have politics by media; censorship by media; war by media; retribution by media; diversion by media – a surreal assembly line of clichés and false assumptions.
Wondrous technology has become both our friend and our enemy. Every time we turn on a …
by Jack Balkwill / September 30th, 2015
Some would say I was a lost man in a lost world
You could say I lost my faith in the people on TV
You could say I’d lost my belief in our politicians
They all seemed like game show hosts to me
— Sting, “If I Ever Lose My Faith in You” from the 1993 album ‘Ten Summoner’s Tales”
Saturday morning, CNN’s Carol Costello, microphone in hand, asked a girl in the Philadelphia audience awaiting the arrival of the Pope if she was concerned that the Pope might be a socialist.
It never ceases to amaze me that anyone still believes the mainstream press …
by John R. Hall / September 30th, 2015
“And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.”
My best guess is that the Christian Crusades of nine centuries ago, the genocide carried out against the rightful residents of the Western Hemisphere which began five centuries ago, and the ongoing history of imperialist wars for profit have all been justified, in large part, by these few words from the Holy Bible. I know that dominion over …
What Is There to Celebrate?
by Ramzy Baroud / September 30th, 2015
It has been recently announced that Arab ‘media experts’ plan to ‘celebrate’ Arab Media Day on April 21, 2016. The theme for the first day, of what is meant to be an annual tradition, is: “The Role of the (Arab) Media in Combatting Terrorism”.
The mockery is surely multi-faceted. One is the clearly politicized choice of the theme of the proposed event. The term ‘terrorism’ is a political one, and is rarely applied to violence committed by Arab regimes: it only applies to their detractors.
Another is the fact that the committee of ‘experts’ which made the decision was, itself, …
by Lesley Docksey / September 30th, 2015
How the British right-wing media (that’s almost all of it these days) must have anticipated Jeremy Corbyn’s speech to Labour’s Annual Conference. After all the sniping and sneering, the attempts at character assassination, the dredging up of something he said 30 years ago and the universal hands held up in horror because he didn’t sing ‘God Save the Queen’ (nor, if you study photos of the event, did some others), here was their chance to really put the boot in.
Since Corbyn was so convincingly elected Labour’s leader, the press has been full of articles saying he was ‘unelectable’ …
by Arthur D. Robbins / September 30th, 2015
A president of the United States would never operate outside the law, ignore the U.S. Constitution and the courts, shut down the presses, imprison his domestic adversaries or turn his guns on his own people. Well, Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president did of all of that and, curiously, has been turned into a national hero for his troubles. Lincoln ignored his closest advisors and the temper of the times to engage in the bloodiest war in American history, a war that could easily have been avoided. Single handedly Lincoln terrorized the entire nation. So let us take notice. What happened …
by Mateo Pimentel / September 30th, 2015
For a number of decades, corporate entities have made financial investments in expatriating workers. Such investments are supposed to cover monetary compensation, skill development, and the toil that future assignments might entail. Due to overseas business interests, professional researchers have had to acknowledge “reentry” — the repatriation phase of international assignment — since at least the 1960s. Ultimately, though, it has been the expatriation phase of international assignment, and not reentry, that has received the lion’s share of scholarly attention. ((Storti, C. The Art of Coming Home, Yarmouth, ME: Intercultural Press, (1997).)) Moreover, available research suggests that international assignees (workers …
by Robert Hunziker / September 30th, 2015
The Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant No. 2 nuclear reactor fuel is missing from the core containment vessel. ((Up to 100% of No. 2 Reactor Fuel May Have Melted, NHK World News, September 25, 2015.))
Where did it go? Nobody knows.
Not only that but the “learning curve” for a nuclear meltdown is as fresh as the event itself because “the world has never seen anything like this,” Never.
Utilizing cosmic ray muon radiography with nuclear emulsion, researchers from Nagoya University peered inside the reactors at Fukushima. The nuclear fuel in reactor core No. 5 was clearly visible via the muon process. However, …
Petition to UK Parliament: A Few Reasons Why
by Felicity Arbuthnot / September 29th, 2015
The word genocide comes to mind.
— Weapons expert Dai Williams, letter to Tony Blair warning of consequences of Iraq action, 13th October 2002
On Saturday, September 26, Ahmed Mahdi Al Faqi was arrested and delivered to the International Criminal Court at The Hague. He is charged with war crimes, the deliberate destruction of religious or historical monuments in Mali and especially the irreplaceable ancient shrines of Timbuktu, in 2012.
The ICC’s Chief Prosecutor, Fatou Nesouda described the destruction in Timbuktu as “a callous assault on the dignity and identity of entire populations and their religious and historical roots.”
Timbuktu City is a …
