Latest articles
Western Civilization and its Discontents
by Raj Patel / September 26th, 2015
There is a refugee crisis in Europe going on right now. It is, above all, a humanitarian crisis. The issue at stake should be how to take in the refugees. We should be working out the details of the political response from the European Union and the United States. Instead, we’re talking about if we should take in the refugees, and indeed, if the refugees are a threat to Western Civilization. My view is that at the heart of this inaction is a worldview about the place of the so-called West that fundamentally misconstrues the nature of the world we …
by Paul Craig Roberts / September 25th, 2015
Washington’s IQ follows the Fed’s interest rate — it is negative. Washington is a black hole into which all sanity is sucked out of government deliberations.
Washington’s failures are everywhere visible. We can see the failures in Washington’s wars and in Washington’s approach to China and Russia.
The visit of Chinese President Xi Jinping, was scheduled for the week-end following the Pope’s visit to Washington. Was this Washington’s way of demoting China’s status by having its president play second fiddle to the Pope? The President of China is here for week-end news coverage? Why didn’t Obama just tell him to go to …
by Kenneth Eade / September 25th, 2015
The Internet has outgrown the common law of defamation, and new regulations to protect the Internet, free speech and the freedom to speak anonymously have been abused by cyber-bullies and cyber-stalkers, who have used this new medium to dispense their bullying in a greater distribution among more people. In my latest novel, I thought it may be interesting to examine the possibility of an Internet bully or cyber mob hiring a hit man anonymously through the Internet. I thought that this would be a unique idea, but, upon delving into the macabre world of the Dark Net, I …
The giant millstone of the federal budget
by Jason Hirthler / September 25th, 2015
Those who’ve read George Orwell’s 1984 remember the frequent—or rather incessant—rocket fire that occurred throughout Oceania. Destruction was always imminent and so commonplace that citizens took it in stride. Permanent war—by design. Though foreign terrorist attacks rarely happen in the “homeland,” America has been on permanent war footing since the Second World War. You’ve heard the catchphrases that summarize the idea. We’re a garrison state. We’ve traded perpetual peace for perpetual war. Beware the military industrial complex. Between 2002 and 2012 the U.S. war budget skyrocketed 48 percent when you include actual war costs, those special dispensations that Congress …
by Graham Peebles / September 24th, 2015
Does the purpose of our lives change with age; does the life of a thirty-something have more point to it, than, say, a fifty-year-old, a sixty-year-old; indeed is there any real ‘point’ to either, and how would we discover what it is?
To many of us ‘The Cow’ is the best pub in London. On a quiet balmy Wednesday in June, I met a fellow middle-aged man for a beer, a bite, and, much to my surprise, what turned out to be some searching existential chatter. What, my friend asked – after a beer or two – is the point to …
by Sequoyah De Souza Vigneswaren / September 24th, 2015
Progressive change is about more than just one man; it requires the strength of a collective mass movement. But Jeremy Corbyn’s success could represent a victory for principle, democracy and humanity.
The hope of change and bringing big ideas in is now back at the centre of politics: ending austerity, tackling inequality, working for peace and social justice at home and abroad.”
It is the 21st century, and although it seems impossible to believe, those are the words of the leader of the Official Opposition in Britain. A self-proclaimed democratic socialist, whose first act as leader was to attend a rally …
by Ralph Nader / September 24th, 2015
The mass media, with usual exceptions, have allowed themselves to be pulled down to the level of the political circus. If the Republican Party’s early primary campaigns for the presidential nomination had an elephant and a clown car, Ringling Brothers would be in trouble. It is hard for the Republican presidential candidates to resist temptation, defined by hyping an entertainment circus led by the chief circus barker – Donald Trump of gambling casino fame.
Sixteen candidates, after inexplicably excluding Mark Everson, the former IRS commissioner under George W. Bush and the first to announce, are hurling epithets, war-mongering bravados, and assorted …
everything from education to marketing, to social engineering to capturing money -- Madness Wins
by Paul Haeder / September 24th, 2015
I’ve been watching the news, reading the news, studying the news. I work by day, $18 an hour, as an employment specialist – working with adults with developmental disabilities. I know, I am not supposed to talk about low wages, with two masters degrees, and a shit load of experience teaching in prisons, gang programs, barrio programs, migrant worker programs, refugee programs, on military compounds, for academies, universities, colleges, even K12, and as a private contractor teaching businesses how to communicate, and, well, I was a full-time print journalist, radio show host and producer, activist, union organizer, dive master, and …
by Gareth Porter / September 24th, 2015
For well over three years, heavy doses of propaganda have created a myth about a purported steel cylinder for testing explosives located on a site at Iran’s Parchin military testing reservation. Iran was refusing to allow the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to inspect the site while it sought to hide its past nuclear weapons-related work, according to that storyline.
Now Iran has agreed to allow the IAEA to visit the site at Parchin and environmental samples have already been collected at the site. However, the politically charged tale of the bomb test chamber of Parchin is beginning to unravel. IAEA …
by Ajamu Baraka / September 23rd, 2015
It was a pathetic spectacle, another black face in a high place in the person of General Lloyd J. Austin III, head of the United States Central Command, came before the Senate’s Armed Services Committee to report to incredulous members that the 500 million dollar program to train 5000 so-called moderate rebels in Syria had only resulted in the training of a few dozen.
He went on to report that of that number, half had already been either captured, or some say “integrated,” into the al-Qaeda’s official Syrian affiliate, the al-Nusra Front, leaving just four or five individuals in …
by John R. Hall / September 23rd, 2015
My fellow revolutionaries, internationalists, and travelers on the road to social justice,
I’m writing this letter to praise the legacy of a great man, and to remind you of how much we owe to his selfless efforts. A phrase is etched into his monument and mausoleum in Santa Clara, Cuba beneath his towering, south facing sculpture. He signed all personal correspondence with those same immortal words: “Hasta la Victoria Siempre”. Until Victory, Always.
Dr. Ernesto “Che” Guevara de la Serna, the consummate, quintessential revolutionary. The man who bravely fought and fearlessly died attempting to precipitate a world-wide revolution against the formidable forces of neo-colonialism and imperialism. Che! His quest was carried out in the name of love, but …
by Felicity Arbuthnot / September 23rd, 2015
All victims of human rights abuses should be able to look to the Human Rights Council as a forum and a springboard for action.
— Ban Ki-moon, UN Secretary-General, 12 March 2007, Opening of the 4th Human Rights Council Session.
Article 55 of United Nations Charter includes:
Universal respect for and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms for all, without distinction as to race, sex, language or religion.
In diametrical opposition to these fine founding aspirations, the UN has appointed Saudi Arabia’s envoy to the United Nations Human Rights Council to head (or should that be “behead”) an influential human rights panel. …
Haudenausaunee Prof publishes study of suicide, prescribes resistance as cure
by Kerry Coast / September 23rd, 2015
Resistance is the cure for Indigenous suicides. There is nothing “wrong” with Indigenous individuals that was not caused by the relentless violence of ongoing colonization, and therefore the treatment of the fatal condition of dispossession and oppression is to right that basic wrong. That, and an anti-capitalist campaign that will set the humanistic balance of pre-capitalist, or pre-Columbian, economics back in place.
So writes the very qualified lead author of Dying To Please You: Indigenous Suicide in Contemporary Canada (Theytus Books, 2015) Dr. Roland Chrisjohn (co-author: Shaunessy M. McKay), Onyota’a:ka of the …
by Jonathan Cook / September 23rd, 2015
With the announcement that Barack Obama will soon host Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House, it is time to brace for the resumption of a tired debate about whether the Israeli prime minister seriously wishes to revive the peace process. Few now believe Netanyahu can change his right-wing spots, but many still wonder whether the Israeli left can exert an influence for good.
There is much speculation about whether opposition leader Isaac Herzog, head of the Zionist Union party, can be enticed into Netanyahu‘s government and encourage it towards peace. But a deeper truth about the Israeli left was exposed this …
by Robert Hunziker / September 23rd, 2015
Some nuclear advocates suggest that wildlife thrives in the highly-radioactive Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, animals like it, and not only that, a little radiation for anybody and everybody is harmless and maybe good, not bad. This may seem like a senseless argument to tackle were it not for the persistence of positive-plus commentary by nuke lovers. The public domain deserves better, more studied, more crucial answers.
Fortunately, as well as unfortunately, the world has two major real life archetypes of radiation’s impact on the ecosystem: Chernobyl and Fukushima. Chernobyl is a sealed-off 30klm restricted zone for the past 30 years because of …
by T.P. Wilkinson / September 23rd, 2015
Amidst all the handwringing across the political spectrum, commentators of every type decry the deplorable conditions that prevail in the parts of the world that have been under attack by the US, NATO, and the historic colonial powers of Europe: Britain and France. That is to say jointly and severally the wealthiest countries on Earth concentrated in the North Atlantic region of the world. However, the vast majority of the text generated on this subject is truly tiresome.
While nearly everyone is willing to say that the nature of the violence prevailing in the Middle East and various parts of the …
by Ellen Brown / September 22nd, 2015
Predictions are that we will soon be seeing the “nuclear option” — central bank-created money injected directly into the real economy. All other options having failed, governments will be reduced to issuing money outright to cover budget deficits. So warns a September 18 article on ZeroHedge titled “It Begins: Australia’s Largest Investment Bank Just Said ‘Helicopter Money’ Is 12-18 Months Away.”
Money reformers will say it’s about time. Virtually all money today is created as bank debt, but people can no longer take on more debt. The money supply has shrunk along with people’s ability to borrow new money into …
Israel’s High-stake Game in al-Aqsa and Why Netanyahu May Prevail
by Ramzy Baroud / September 22nd, 2015
The State of Israel was established on the ruins of Palestine, based on a series of objectives that were initialed by letters from the Hebrew alphabet, the consequences of which continue to guide Israeli strategies to this day. The current violence against Palestinian worshippers at al-Aqsa Mosque in Occupied East Jerusalem is a logical extension of the same Zionist ambition.
Plan A (February, 1945), Plan B (May, 1947) and Plan C (November, 1947) all strove to achieve the same end: the ethnic cleansing of Palestine of its original inhabitants. It was not until March 1948 that …
Brought to You by Western Imperialism
by Andre Vltchek / September 22nd, 2015
While Europe is erecting fences, deploying armies and expressing its “concern” about how to deal with the annual influx of some 300,000 asylum seekers, vast areas of the world – namely the Middle East and Africa – are essentially ceasing to exist.
For years, I have been witnessing the desperate movements of millions of refugees and migrants all over the world.
The West has been redrawing the borders everywhere, performing direct invasions, or using proxy wars, in order to destabilize or directly destroy all “hostile” governments (read: those that have been determined to feed, educate, house and cure their own people).
Wherever a …
by Michael Parenti / September 22nd, 2015
Today, across the nation, we witness homicidal violence delivered against unarmed people by law enforcement officers. These beatings and killings are carried out with something close to impunity. The cops almost always get away with murder. Moreover, these crimes are nothing new; they are longstanding in practice.
A study of police brutality in three major cities–conducted just about half a century ago in 1967–found that all the victims had one thing in common: they were from low-income groups. Other studies however showed that it often was enough just to be Black, even if middle class. Take the case of Carl Newland, …
The Silent Coup and 40 Years of Neocon, Neoliberal War
by John Stanton / September 21st, 2015
The [Washington] Post lied to its readers by printing stories it knew were false, and they allowed Woodward to lie with impunity. That included printing stories that claimed that Moorer or others had never talked to us for Silent Coup, when in fact the Post’s reporters not only knew they had been interviewed, but they had done so on tape. Their editors and allies waged a campaign of disinformation and intimidation against other media organizations that considered printing parts of Silent Coup or airing stories about the book.
— Len Colodny, Silent Coup, May 1st 1991, St Martins Press (NYC)
If …
Don’t Get Berned Again
by John V. Walsh / September 21st, 2015
By now we have heard chapter and verse, repeatedly so, on the failure of Bernie Sanders to take an antiwar position, much less a stance against U.S. Empire. (Yes, Bernie, there is an Empire.) Paul Street is a leader in the genre with well-documented dissections of Sanders’s flaws on every front and David Swanson provides the latest addition.
The Pro-Empire Candidate.
We have heard Sanders’s defense of the Israeli atrocities in the bombing of Gaza, his call for Saudi Arabia to do even more killing and his concern about Putin for – well, being Putin and Russian. Thus Bernie …
by Jack Balkwill / September 21st, 2015
He went to fight wars for his country and his king
Of his honor and his glory, the people would sing
Ooh, what a lucky man he was
Ooh, what a lucky man he was
A bullet had found him, his blood ran as he cried
No money could save him, so he laid down and he died
Ooh, what a lucky man he was
— Emerson, Lake and Palmer, “Lucky Man” from their album “Emerson, Lake and Palmer”, released in UK November 20, 1971
Nowhere is it clearer that there’s not a dime’s worth of difference between Republicans and Democrats than on the issue of nuclear …
by Robert Hunziker / September 21st, 2015
Japan’s Abe government claims portions of Fukushima Prefecture (original population 2 million) are safe for habitation, radioactivity is acceptable; whereas scientific data by third-party NGOs indicates otherwise, stay away!
PM Abe’s specific maneuvers towards rehabilitation give the appearance that the Fukushima full-blown nuclear meltdown is relatively minimal in comparison to Chernobyl’s disastrous explosion of 1986. After all, to this day, Chernobyl after 30 years is still a 30km “exclusion zone” where nobody is allowed due to excessive levels of radiation.
Meanwhile, back in Japan, PM Abe is moving people back into former restricted zones four years after the fact.
It remains an open …
by Gary Leupp / September 20th, 2015
The Pentagon and State Department, echoed as usual by the cororate press, have expressed “concern” about Russian deliveries of the most modern tanks, fighter aircraft, surface-to-air missiles and other military equipment to Syria. They call them “counterproductive,” although it’s not clear what sort of productive cause they counter.
They say these shipments–which they’ve tried to thwart by instructing NATO allies to deny delivery flights through their airspace–are likely “to prolong the war” in that tragically suffering country. Cable news anchors, with furrowed brows and glaring eyes, warn their viewers that Moscow’s stepped-up support for the Assad regime is a “worrisome development.” …
by Jonathan Cook / September 20th, 2015
In autumn 2002 the Observer newspaper’s correspondent Ed Vulliamy found confirmation of a terrible truth many of us already suspected. In a world-exclusive, he persuaded Mel Goodman, a former senior CIA official who still had security clearance at the Agency, to go on record that the CIA knew there were no WMD in Iraq. Everything the US and British governments were telling us to justify the coming attack on Iraq were lies.
Then something even more extraordinary happened. The Observer failed to print the story. In his book Flat Earth News, Nick Davies recounts that Vulliamy, one of the Observer’s most trusted reporters, …
by Litsa Chatzivasileiou / September 20th, 2015
I am deeply indebted to the Coast Salish people, the Squamish, Tsleil-Waututh, and Musqueam nations on whose unceded lands I think, teach, learn, and write. With my heartfelt gratitude.
It is springtime again and the Five Days for the Homeless Campaign has just concluded at the University of British Columbia. The campaign’s website states, that student participants had to make five days of “personal sacrifices for the betterment of their community,” and suspend any sense of comfort to raise awareness on the issues of homelessness in Vancouver. The students camped outside of the Irving K. Barber library with their …
by Yves Engler / September 20th, 2015
Where does anti-Black racism among Toronto police come from? Can we trace discrimination today, such as disproportionate police carding, to past events when this bias developed?
Based on research for my new book Canada in Africa: 300 Years of Aid and Exploitation, I’d say yes.
While the most obvious source of this racism is the legacy of justifications for enslaving Africans, Toronto has made a distinct contribution as well. For example, dozens of Torontonians participated in British expeditions to subjugate various parts of Africa and the conquest was generally cloaked in the rhetoric of superior and inferior “races”.
…
by Binoy Kampmark / September 20th, 2015
The last thing the GOP field of candidates would have wanted was Donald Trump continuing to make headlines and confronting them with such bread and butter issues of prejudice as what to do with Islam in the United States. Then there was that issue that had shadowed Trump like a storm of doubt: Is Obama really “American”? Has a follower of the Prophet been occupying the White House all this time?
Having smeared and praised Washington’s southern neighbours as rapists and marauders yet inspired by an ambitious leadership, Trump decided to go a few rounds with the issue of …
by Douglas Valentine / September 19th, 2015
The outlawing of narcotic drugs at the start of the Twentieth Century, the turning of the matter from public health to social control, coincided with American’s imperial Open Door policy and the belief that the government had an obligation to American industrialists to create markets in every nation in the world, whether those nations liked it or not.
Civic institutions, like public education, were required to sanctify this policy, while “security” bureaucracies were established to ensure the citizenry conformed to the state ideology. Secret services, both public and private, were likewise established to promote the expansion of private American economic interests …
