Latest articles
Face It, That's an Oxymoron!
by William Boardman / September 19th, 2015
Polls suggest America might elect a joke as President
Making fun of the assortment of Republican candidates for President as some sort of clown show is easy enough to do, which is probably one reason so many people do it. But that sort of ridicule is so insubstantial, so irrelevant, that it ends up serving as a form of endorsement of the motley crew, as if, underneath it all, these are actually serious people. This implied endorsement is reinforced by the tepid questions they are asked in conjunction with media coverage of …
by Christos Kefalis / September 19th, 2015
Weinberg’s polemics on positivism are to be found in a chapter of his Dreams of a Final Theory characteristically entitled “Against philosophy”. He polemicizes there against philosophy in general, making some negative judgments on eminent thinkers of the era of bourgeois progress and on Marxism. His observations are one-sided, to say the least, but deserve attention as being representative of weaknesses shared by many leading physicists, such as their inadequate acquaintance with philosophy, which prevent them from assimilating progressive thought and Marxism. We shall comment them briefly in this final part.
Weinberg is a physicist interested in the philosophical foundations of …
by James Petras / September 19th, 2015
Step by step, Washington is inexorably setting up a major provocation against China. Until now, the Obama regime tightened a military encirclement of China, expanding its armed forces agreements with Japan, the Philippines and Australia. In addition, it has promoted the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP), a regional trade agreement which openly excludes China. Obama has ordered a major naval build-up in the South China Sea and embarked on extensive cyber-espionage of Chinese industries and the government via major US high-tech companies, as revealed by Edward …
by Ted Glick / September 19th, 2015
It’s the morning of the twelfth day that I haven’t been eating. The only things I’ve been putting into my body are lots of water, salt, potassium and a multi-vitamin.
How do I feel? Weak, very weak, as do most of the others—about 15 as I write—who are also fasting and intend to do so until September 25, the day after the people’s pope speaks to Congress. 11 of the 15 are also, like me, on the twelfth day of water-only.
We’re physically weak mainly because of the water-only diet but also because we’ve been conducting this hunger strike on the sidewalk …
by Ralph Nader / September 18th, 2015
Yes, it’s official. General Motors engaged in criminal wrongdoing for long knowing about the lethal defect in its ignition switch that took at least 174 lives and counting, plus serious injuries. At least 1.6 million GM cars – Chevrolet Cobalt and other models – hid this danger to trusting drivers, according to the Center for Auto Safety. Corporation executives who lie to or mislead the federal government violate Title 18 of the federal code, and risk criminal penalties.
But, the long-mismanaged automaker was not required by the Justice Department to plead guilty at all. Preet Bharara, the U.S. Attorney …
‘Tis Again the Season to Celebrate a Centenary of Slaughter…
by T.P. Wilkinson / September 18th, 2015
Since the demolition of the World Trade Center in New York City in 2001, the volume written about a so-called New World Order has been enormous. For those who mark the beginning of the New World Order in progress with the spectacle of Manhattan skyscrapers collapsing, this order of things or re-ordering of things is a relatively new phenomenon. It has become an obsession among those who for the first time seem to have noticed that something was not well with the world. But isn’t this really a matter of perspective?
Who remembers the new world order that began seventy years …
by Andre Vltchek / September 18th, 2015
Why should I care whether Iran has nukes? It most likely doesn’t, but even if it does… it never attacked anyone, never overthrew any government, and never performed experiments on human beings. It had not committed a single genocide, and never dreamed about conquering the world.
So why should I even bother to think much about Iran’s nuclear program, big or small, “peaceful” or defensive?
If Iran is capable of defending itself – then excellent; I am only happy! At least it will not be wiped out from the face of the Earth, as happened to its unfortunate neighbors Iraq and Afghanistan …
by The Real News Network (TRNN) / September 17th, 2015
Dr. Binoy Kampmark discusses the political situation that has led to the fourth prime minister of Australia since 2013.
https://youtu.be/Gwt0MPoX72U
by Visualizing Palestine / September 17th, 2015
August 26, 2015 marked the first anniversary of Israel’s offensive on the Gaza Strip, during which 2,219 Palestinians were killed. However, a large part of the story is left untold. Over half of those killed were refugees who were displaced from their homes in Yafa, Salama, Isdud, and many other villages and towns, as a result of and following the Nakba in 1948. The majority of those killed lived in refugee camps in the Gaza Strip within a 30 mile (50 km) radius of their homes of origin. A total of 1,236 refugees were killed during the 2014 offensive, including …
by Matt Peppe / September 17th, 2015
Seven months ago, UK Prime Minister David Cameron lamented the “sickening murder” of Jordanian pilot Moaz al-Kaseasbeh by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). President Barack Obama also decried the “viciousness and barbarity” of the act. Obama even declared al-Kaseasbeh’s murder demonstrated ISIS’s “bankrupt” ideology. In his home country, al-Kaseasbeh was remembered as a “hero” and a “martyr” by government officials. The killing was seen by the Western coalition and allied Arab monarchies fighting ISIS as a symbol of the evilness of their enemies, which necessitated their own righteous military intervention.
The act that precipitated such a strong …
by Rick Sterling / September 16th, 2015
The Photo that went Round the World
Around 3:30 am September 2, Aylan Kurdi, his brother, mother and nine others drowned trying to reach a Greek island from Bodrum Turkey.
Around 6 am that morning, the staff photographer from Dogan News Agency came upon Aylan’s body on the beach, and took the famous photograph.
In a few hours it was published online and ‘went viral’ on Turkish then English language social media. Washington Post Beirut chief Liz Sly posted the photo with comment that Aylan’s death is “emblematic of world’s failure in Syria”. …
by James Hoover / September 16th, 2015
It was the ideal audience for Donald Trump. American Airlines center was packed with 20,000 enthralled Texans who seemed to hang on every word of boast, harangue, and self-aggrandizement that passed through Trump’s lips. They whooped and hollered through 90 minutes of Trump speech-making. In scattered and rather loose references to issues, Trump skillfully intermixed attributes of puerile boasting about his skills, mocking his opponents and their cluelessness, and lionizing his “oft-demonstrated” business skills.
The biggest winner was his condemnation of American immigration policy while characterizing all “illegals” as leaving a large swatch of murder, rape, and pillage in their wake. …
Another Device for Controlling the Masses
by Jack Balkwill / September 16th, 2015
Oh, Howard Hughes
Did your money make you better?
Are you waiting for the hour
When you can screw me?
‘Cause you’re big enough
To do the Wall Street Shuffle
Let your money hustle
Bet you’d sell your mother
You can buy another
– “The Wall Street Shuffle,” 10cc from their 1974 album Sheet Music
Of all the corporate media propaganda which warps reality in America, one echoed statement makes me wretch more than any other, and that’s “the jobs straw man” in defense of laissez faire capitalism, a commonly-used device to declare that greed is good despite the damning evidence.
The jobs straw man exists to convince the public …
by Ahmed E. Souaiaia / September 16th, 2015
Politics is the art of compromise. Successful politicians rarely give ultimatums because doing so would limit their ability to navigate complex issues. In 2012, President Obama misread the complexity of the crisis in Syria. He drew a “red line” for President Assad: the use of chemical weapons would have “enormous consequences” and would “change [his] calculus” on American military intervention in Syria’s civil war. A year later, someone used weaponized chemicals, killing hundreds of civilians. Although no investigation was conducted to identify the perpetrator at that time, the U.S., pressured by its regional allies like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey, …
Schools of Violence
by Binoy Kampmark / September 16th, 2015
A few minutes into the class we heard these popping noises and we all went completely silent.
— Charlie King, Delta State University student, September 14, 2015
School instruction can be about many things. There is the expected tedium, the unanticipated intellectual rush. Generally speaking, it is mundane. But resolving conflict through mayhem and massacre should not normally fall within that ambit. The triple deaths surrounding Delta State University in Mississippi have added, not so much a chapter as a lengthy footnote in terms of campus gun culture in the United States.
The names of these ill-fated participants will vanish …
How Yarmouk Came About
by Ramzy Baroud / September 16th, 2015
When Zionist Haganah militias carried out Operation Yiftach, on May 19 1948, the aim was to drive Palestinians in the northern Safad District which had declared its independence a mere five days earlier, outside the border of Israel.
The ethnic cleansing of Safad and its many villages was not unique to that area. In fact, it was the modus operandi of Zionist militias throughout Palestine. Soon after Israel’s independence, and the conquering of historic Palestine, the militias were joined together to form the Israeli armed forces.
Not all villages, however, were completely depopulated. Some residents in …
Part 2: Mom, Is It War Yet?
by T.P. Wilkinson / September 16th, 2015
As a fifth-grader my history teacher gave me and one of my classmates an extra task, one might say a riddle. I believe the reason was that there was a certain kind of rivalry between us as to who “knew more” in class. In any case in the days before the Internet, anything we thought we knew came from class or books– remember them? The question was “what does ‘e = mc2’ mean? A couple of days later he asked us for our answers. My classmate, Richard, said he could not complete the task because he could not find the …
by Christy Rodgers / September 16th, 2015
The metaphors are too ripe. California, symbol of limitless abundance, material wealth, possibilities for personal transformation. California, the impossibly over-endowed beauty, who wins all the contests, to the bitter envy or sycophantic admiration of the average Joes and Janes. California, the consummate global destination for the millions of who are desperate for reinvention: sexual, political, economic. California – thanks to the limitless marketability of human desire, which built its gargantuan industry of dreams – the world’s avatar for the whole USA.
All this is now tinder in a planetary fireplace.
New York, financial capital of the uniquely nameless and stateless global empire …
by Yves Engler / September 16th, 2015
Over the weekend a memorial was unveiled to victims of British colonial violence in Kenya. Paid for by London, the monument in Nairobi grew out of London’s 2013 apology to the Mau Mau, which included some compensation to 5000 victims of British policy who pursued London court.
Britain’s small step towards atoning for its colonial past is an opportunity to explore Canada’s contribution to this brutal period, which was an offshoot Ottawa’s long-standing endorsement of colonialism Africa.
Image Mau Mau HistoryIn 1952, the Kikuyu, Kenya’s …
by Cécile Lawrence / September 16th, 2015
On the Monday in January 2015 marked in the U.S. by many to commemorate the life of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the organization called Healthcare-Now in the U.S. emailed its subscribers a message titled “Reader’s Guide to Racial Equity in Healthcare.” The message started with the still necessary reminder that no biological basis for race exists, then went on to point out that “[i]n the United States … segregationist politics in Congress blocked national healthcare for much of the 20th century – not, as is often claimed, the growth of employer-based insurance during WWII.” Their email said …
by Matt Peppe / September 15th, 2015
U.S. and Cuban delegations met in Havana Friday to “focus on setting priorities for the next steps in the normalization process,” according to the Miami Herald. They set up a “steering committee in the rapprochement process” expected to hold regular meetings. The process was laid out last month after the American flag was raised at the newly-opened U.S. embassy in Havana. Secretary of State John Kerry noted on the occasion that “the road of mutual isolation that the United States and Cuba have been travelling is not the right one, and that the time has come …
Jeremy Corbyn, quo vadis?
by T.P. Wilkinson / September 15th, 2015
Last week a new leader of the British Labour Party was chosen. Already the chimes can be heard from the belfries of thousands of Labour parishes, with coronation eulogies published in the journals of political dissent. The abdication of the Miliband dynasty would seem to herald the end of New Labour’s reign of terror begun when Thatcher acolyte, Anthony Charles Lynton Blair kissed hands in 1997. One commentator has already ventured the fantasy of the “special relationship” led after 2016 by one Rt Hon J Corbyn and President Sanders. ((Oliver Tickell, “Victory! Corbyn’s Political Earthquake Will Resound Long and Deep”, …
by David Swanson / September 14th, 2015
Senator Bernie Sanders taped a PBS show at the University of Virginia on Monday. I had corresponded with the host Doug Blackmon beforehand, and offered him ideas for questions on military spending and war, questions like these:
1. People want to tax the rich and cut military spending, which is 54% of federal discretionary spending according to National Priorities Project, but you only ever mention taxing the rich. Why not do both? What — give or take $100 billion — is an appropriate level of military spending?
2. Do you agree with Eisenhower that military spending creates wars?
3. Can you possibly …
Spokane County Conservation District works to fill the void of aging farmers with soldiers
by Paul Haeder / September 14th, 2015
He will judge between the nations, and will render verdicts for the benefit of many. They will beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nations will not raise swords against nations, and they will not learn warfare anymore.
– Isaiah 2:4
There definitely are some exciting studies that (show) horticulture, getting outside, working with plants, definitely has some healing effects on the cognitive and all the areas of brain function (and) recovering from brain damage.
— Michael O’Gorman founder of nonprofit Farmer-Veteran Coalition, based in Davis, California
Spokane, like big dog Seattle, or funky Portland – similar to almost …
by Myles Hoenig / September 14th, 2015
A lot of people are taking comfort in Jeremy Corbyn’s amazing victory in England for leader of the Labour Party as part of a leftist surge in Europe, coming to the USA. They’re right about Europe. We see it with Labour in Great Britain, Podemos in Spain, Syriza (before they folded) in Greece, and the Communists in Portugal, who stand to make enormous electoral gains on October 4. People in the US are making the connection to the Bernie Sanders campaign. If only it were true.
Without going into details, his policies are not like theirs. Perhaps in economic and …
by Robert Hunziker / September 14th, 2015
The movers and shakers in the Republican Party must be firmly convinced that Obama and the world community are finally willing to commit to climate change action in Paris at COP21 this November. Key Republican operatives have been spotted maneuvering in the gutters and the sewers covertly assuring foreign embassies that the Republican Party will “fight Obama’s climate agenda at every turn.”
In short, the Republicans are essentially telling the world community to relentlessly keep on pumping carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere because climate change negotiations ultimately go nowhere.
The Republicans are thus breaking every rule and protocol of international diplomatic …
by T.J. Petrowski / September 12th, 2015
The widely circulated photo of Aylan Kurdi, a three-year-old Syrian boy whose body was found on a beach in Turkey and whose family was “making a final, desperate attempt to flee to relatives in Canada even though their asylum application had been rejected” by the Stephen Harper Government, has caused widespread outrage and forced Western leaders to acknowledge that there is a “refugee crisis”.
In Canada, the leaders of the Liberal and New Democratic parties have used the news of Kurdi’s tragic death, along with the deaths of his five-year-old brother and his mother, to criticize the Harper Government’s response to …
And in Portugal?
by Pedro Aibéo / September 12th, 2015
Despite disagreeing with the legitimacy of power and disillusioned with the constant shift of left wing politicians to the right wing careerism, let us all still vote for the one party which advocates new practical measures to limit such power, based on technology: the Pirate Party.
I was blessed by a meeting in Athens last week with several members of the Greek Pirate Party, including the Greek Minister of the Flying Spaghetti Monster Church, Vassilis Perantzakis. His Highness told me that the …
by Binoy Kampmark / September 12th, 2015
Jeremy Corbyn has done it. The agitation of the Left in a deflated, and to a large extent ruined British Labour Party, raised Corbyn from the status of the rank outsider to that of leader with a mighty 59.5 percent of the vote. The Times deemed him a “veteran backroom operative” who became prominent while working for “Red” Ken Livingstone over the course of 12 years, eight of which he did so as chief of staff.
Shocked out of their nonchalance, various contenders, and former leader Ed Milliband, immediately made it clear that they would be reluctant to …
by Keith Harmon Snow / September 12th, 2015
At 3:00 pm on 4 September 2015 five hostile U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents stormed the Baltimore MD home of Rwandan asylum seeker Dr. Leopold Munyakazi in a surprise Gestapo-like raid. A man that international human rights experts believe to be the victim of a smear campaign by the criminal military regime in Rwanda, Dr. Munyakazi has 100% complied with all immigration reporting and monitoring requirements over the course of his six year struggle to regain his freedom.
…
