Latest articles
by Ralph Nader / July 18th, 2015
When I co-founded the Public Citizen Health Research Group with Dr. Sidney M. Wolfe in 1971, he declared that this was his “last job.” The drug industry might have been advised to quiver. For through his Worst Pills, Best Pills books, newsletters and spectacular outreach via the Phil Donahue show, he has exposed by brand names hundreds of drugs with harmful side effects (worst pills) compared to drugs without such an unfavorable risk-benefit profile (best pills). In the nineteen seventies, he and his associates successfully advocated that many totally useless prescription and over-the-counter drugs be taken off the market.
Saving lives and saving …
by Kathy Kelly / July 18th, 2015
Last weekend, about 100 U.S. Veterans for Peace gathered in Red Wing, Minnesota, for a statewide annual meeting. In my experience, Veterans for Peace chapters hold “no-nonsense” events. Whether coming together for local, statewide, regional or national work, the Veterans project a strong sense of purpose. They want to dismantle war economies and work to end all wars. The Minnesotans, many of them old friends, convened in the spacious loft of a rural barn. After organizers extended friendly welcomes, participants settled in to tackle this year’s theme: “The War on Our Climate.”
They invited Dr. James Hansen, an …
by Paul Craig Roberts / July 17th, 2015
Greece’s debt can now only be made sustainable through debt relief measures that go far beyond what Europe has been willing to consider so far.
— International Monetary Fund
Greece’s lesson for Russia, and for China and Iran, is to avoid all financial relationships with the West. The West simply cannot be trusted. Washington is committed to economic and political hegemony over every other country and uses the Western financial system for asset freezes, confiscations, and sanctions. Countries that have independent foreign policies and also have assets in the West cannot expect Washington to respect their property rights or their ownership. Washington …
by Gilad Atzmon / July 17th, 2015
I would like to congratulate The US Campaign to End Israeli Occupation (EOIO) for confirming the substance of my argument that Jewish domination of the solidarity movement has had a corrosive effect on the movement. My argument is detailed in my recent book, The Wandering Who.
Ten days ago, we learned that the Israeli Government has actually recruited left organisations to cleanse the Solidarity movement of its ‘radicals’ – those who dare to tell the truth about the Jewish State and the culture and ideology that drive its politics. EOIO seems to be exceedingly enthusiastic about its role as …
by Michael Freed / July 17th, 2015
If you could make a change, a single change to society that could illuminate its most pressing issues, bring them to the forefront and propose new solutions to many of society’s oldest problems, you would do it, wouldn’t you? If this change could help many, even if none of the people helped were you, yet no one could be harmed, you would quite probably wish for this change to occur, would you not? Perhaps even take action to help enact it? Vote on it? Sign a petition?
I want to propose such a change. One change, that in itself would address …
by Binoy Kampmark / July 16th, 2015
Stone age politics continues its creaky, inscrutable way in Canberra, with the Australian Prime Minister keen to show his acute lack of understanding about the renewable energy sector. One wonders whether he believes in its existence at all. On this occasion, Tony Abbott decided that even his energy minister, Greg Hunt, wasn’t to feature in his decision on whether the Clean Energy Finance Corporation should continue to fund wind-related projects.
To date, the CEFC has been responsible for providing $300 million to wind energy projects, with its investment portfolio being 33 percent solar, 30 percent energy efficiency, 21 percent wind and …
by Andrew Gavin Marshall / July 16th, 2015
In the early hours of Thursday morning, July 16, the Greek Parliament passed a host of austerity measures in order to begin talks on a potential third bailout of 86 billion euros. The austerity measures were pushed onto the Parliament by Greece’s six-month-old leftist government of Syriza, elected in late January with a single mandate to oppose austerity. So what exactly happened over the past six months that the first anti-austerity government elected in Europe has now passed a law implementing further austerity measures?
One cannot properly assess the political gymnastics being exercised within Greece’s ruling Syriza party without placing …
by John R. Hall / July 15th, 2015
The Shawshank Redemption is a movie I could watch a thousand times. By the time the last scene plays, my heart is once again filled with hope. In one prison scene Red tells Andy that hope is a dangerous thing and that it can drive a man insane. Andy, the optimist, believes that hope is the best of things, and that no good thing ever dies. To be clear, I’m not in prison and never have been, but as a citizen of Empire I find it increasingly difficult to keep hope in my heart.
Here in the belly of the beast social progress takes a step forward …
by Christy Rodgers / July 15th, 2015
Every morning I wake to sunshine and birdsong (sometimes a little bit of morning fog). I rise to take my morning coffee. (There is always coffee. And my pantry is always full of good food. Make a note of that.)
Then I begin my work. I do this work on behalf of all of you, although I’ve never spoken of it before. But lately I’ve heard people wondering: why is it we are not more upset by the things that are going on in the world? In our own country, our own town? Why is there no generalized rage at the …
by William O. Beeman / July 15th, 2015
No one can claim that President Obama was not transparent in this masterful press conference. He answered every question, and even extended the press conference to answer more. It may take a sledgehammer to get the Republicans to take their fingers out of their ears and hear the clear facts the President laid out in the plainest terms.
The Vienna accords were not about freeing prisoners, saying bad things about Israel, worrying about how Iranians were going to spend their own money which the sanctions sequestered, supporting Assad or the Houthis. Or tellingly about the Bush/Cheney-era neo-conservative plan to bring about …
The Logic of Life and Death in Gaza
by Ramzy Baroud / July 15th, 2015
Another row is brewing between Israel and the Palestinian Resistance Movement, Hamas, over the release of Avraham Mengitsu, an Israeli citizen who, according to Israeli military sources, ‘slipped into Gaza’ on September 7, 2014.
The circumstances of Mengitsu’s entry into Gaza remain unclear, especially since Hamas’ political leader, Khaled Mashaal, denied that the military wing of Hamas is holding the Israeli citizen.
According to Israel’s Defense Ministry, another Israeli is also being held in Gaza. A gag order on Mengitsu’s disappearance was just lifted, but another remains in effect regarding the other, allegedly, detained Israeli.
Indirect negotiations for their release are …
by Tony Kashani / July 14th, 2015
One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit. Everyone knows this. Each of us contributes his share. But we tend to take the situation for granted.
— From On Bullshit by Harry G. Frankfurt
President Obama sings Amazing Grace at the funeral of state Sen. and Rev. Clementa Pinckney, one of nine people shot at Emanuel AME church in Charleston, S.C. and it is hailed as a healing moment for the nation. Obama supporters can go on pretending that we live in a post-racial society, affordable care act is our solution to the …
by Ellen Brown / July 14th, 2015
The crushing Greek debt could be canceled the way it was made – by sleight of hand. But saving the Greek people and their economy is evidently not in the game plan of the Eurocrats.
Greece’s creditors have finally brought the country to its knees, forcing President Alexis Tsipras to agree to austerity and privatization measures more severe than those overwhelmingly rejected by popular vote a week earlier. No write-down of Greece’s debt was included in the deal, although the IMF has warned that the current debt is unsustainable.
Former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis calls the deal “a new …
by William O. Beeman / July 14th, 2015
Iran has won the diplomatic struggle over its nuclear program in Vienna. Its success was not due to United States negotiators’ fecklessness as Republican critics and Prime Minister Netanyahu have been quick to assert. Iran was able to win because it was very easy for it to bluff, by giving up activities in which it had never engaged and never intended to engage.
On the other side of the negotiating table, the United States had already abandoned its Bush-era goal of effecting regime change in Iran, making its negotiating position considerably weaker. Moreover, the talks were tightly constrained by the 1968 …
by John R. Hall / July 14th, 2015
All right, I know it may be just a tad presumptuous for an unknown writer with little formal education to tackle a job like penning what just might be the most important document in the history of mankind, but somebody needs to do it. Given the likelihood that humans are on the verge of extinction, either by way of World War III or greed-induced climate catastrophe, it is high time for a human from the slave class (99%) to step up to the plate, take the bull by the horns, and make hay while the sun shines. So to speak. Frankly I’ve got nothing better to do, and I’m a little …
by Adnan Al-Daini / July 14th, 2015
Yanis Varoufakis, the former Greek finance minister, in an article in the Guardian entitled “Germany won’t spare Greek pain – it has an interest in breaking us”, frames the Greek tragedy in clear terms thus:
In 2010, the Greek state became insolvent. Two options consistent with continuing membership of the eurozone presented themselves: the sensible one, that any decent banker would recommend – restructuring the debt and reforming the economy; and the toxic option – extending new loans to a bankrupt entity while pretending that it remains solvent. Official Europe chose the second option, putting the bailing out of French and German …
by Ike Nahem / July 13th, 2015
From April 28 – May 5, 2015 representatives of the July 26 Coalition of New York-New Jersey organized a people-to-people program to Cuba with a dozen travelers.
Our delegation included doctors and other health care providers, teachers, trade unionists, and activists against the decades-long U.S. government policy aimed at destroying the Cuban Revolution which triumphed in 1959.
That unchanging anti-Cuba policy – which has included, over the decades, mercenary invasion, economic and travel sanctions, state-sponsored terrorism, sabotage, and even biological warfare, as well as all forms of covert action and subversion – ultimately resulted in the utter and embarrassing isolation of the …
by John Pilger / July 13th, 2015
A historic betrayal has consumed Greece. Having set aside the mandate of the Greek electorate, the Syriza government has willfully ignored last week’s landslide “No” vote and secretly agreed a raft of repressive, impoverishing measures in return for a “bailout” that means sinister foreign control and a warning to the world.
Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has pushed through parliament a proposal to cut at least 13 billion euros from the public purse – 4 billion euros more than the “austerity” figure rejected overwhelmingly by the majority of the Greek population in a referendum on 5 July.These reportedly include a 50 per …
Families are angered by the promotion of Israeli officer accused of killing protesters to post of national police chief
by Jonathan Cook / July 13th, 2015
Fifteen years after Israeli police shot her 19-year-old son Ahmed in the eye, killing him instantly, Hadiya Jabareen has yet to lay his ghost to rest.
Instead, the mother of six has watched Bentzi Sau, the commander who oversaw the police operation in which Ahmed and 12 other demonstrators died, rise rapidly through the ranks.
His success has come despite a judicial-led inquiry into the killings in 2000 that harshly criticised Sau and recommended that he be barred from promotion for at least four years.
The inquiry found he had used – for the first time inside Israel – an anti-terror sniper unit, …
50 African Union Troops killed by Al Shabaab terrorists in Somalia: Western leaders silent
by Gearóid Ó Colmáin / July 12th, 2015
An African Union increasingly coming under the influence of China is fighting NATO sponsored destabilization in the form of Wahhabi terrorism such as Al Shabaab and Boko Haram.
The spate of terrorist attacks in France, Tunisia and Kuwait on June 26th brought condemnation from most of the world’s leaders, especially the terrorist attack against the US Air Products plant in Isere, France, which received most of the media attention.
But another terrorist attack by the group Al Shabaab on an African Union military base in Lego, Somalia, received little attention and no widely publicized official condemnation by Western governments. Fifty Burundian …
by Robert Hunziker / July 12th, 2015
Climate change/global warming is the main protagonist on the worldwide stage of collapsing ecosystems.
The ecosystem is a combination of living organisms in harmony with nonliving elements like air, water, and mineral soil interacting as one whole. But, what if the living and nonliving elements stop interrelating as “one harmonized whole”? Then, what happens?
As things stand today, the planet’s future is decidedly in the camp of “then, what happens?”
Signals of planetary stress are literally off the charts. Meanwhile the world continues spinning like always, as people go to work, drive cars, go out to dinner, and watch TV, some read books …
by James Petras / July 12th, 2015
The post neo-liberal regimes which flourished in five Latin American countries in the first decade of the 21st century were a product of three inter-related historical processes. The breakdown of the neo-liberal development model, which in turn ignited mass popular movements for radical political-economic transformations; the incapacity of the mass movements to produce a viable alternative worker-peasant based regime; the beginning of a decade long mega commodity boom which provided a huge influx of revenues which allowed the Center-Left regimes to finance a capitalist recovery, and secure support from the extractive capitalist sector and finance generous increases in …
by William Boardman / July 11th, 2015
[NOTE: Shortly after this story was filed, the UN announced a “humanitarian pause in the country’s ongoing conflict” starting July 10 and expected to last a week. As framed by the UN, the “pause” was agreed to by “Yemen’s President Hadi” as well as the Houthis and “other parties” in Yemen, as if there were no other significant combatants. This deceitful framing omits the most aggressive, undeclared war-making carried out against Yemen by the US, Saudi Arabia, and sundry other UN members. The UN missive makes no mention of the months of Saudi-American bombing, even though the bombers must have …
Wisdom emerges through endurance and diversity
by L'Ordre / July 11th, 2015
In my past articles on the Mont Order club, I talked about what the group used to be and how I think it represents an ideal of wisdom through diversity of religious, political and philosophical thought that I see a great role for in the world.
Since I last wrote on this subject, the Internet has proved to be firm and reliable ground upon which to rebuild the Mont Order as a real community and a real organization. This means that a new iteration of the Mont Order exists and the group is no longer defunct. At this time, a …
by John R. Hall / July 11th, 2015
George Carlin said it best: “Forget the politicians. The politicians are put there to give you the idea you have freedom of choice…you don’t. You have owners. They own you. They own everything…” Of course, I’ve been aware of how the American political system works for quite some time now, but for a brief shining moment I was distracted. Overcome with hope. Hoodwinked by a young politician named Barack Obama. Hopeful that this erudite guy who talked the talk might just get away with walking the walk. Silly me. They own him too. If he’d been what I’d hoped he …
As gag order lifted, small Ethiopian community says the case of Avraham Mengistu, who disappeared 10 months ago, has been ‘swept under the carpet’.
by Jonathan Cook / July 11th, 2015
The belated admission by Israel that one of its citizens was last seen entering Gaza 10 months ago, and that little is known of his fate since, has caused outrage among the country’s small community of Ethiopian Jews.
Avraham Mengistu’s family, able to speak for the first time on Thursday after a gag order imposed since September was lifted, accused the government and security forces of foot-dragging and racism.
The assumption among Israeli authorities is that the 28-year-old has been detained by Hamas in Gaza since he went missing.
Officials confirmed at the same time that another Israeli civilian, a Bedouin man from …
by Joseph G. Ramsey / July 11th, 2015
Up here in Boston, just days ahead of July 4th, someone hit Christopher Columbus with a big bucket of blood. Or what looked like blood.
Local media stations were all over the story. But no one on TV would say the word.
Paint, said reporter after reporter, Paint. Not paint made to look like blood. Not blood-colored paint. Justpaint. Someone had poured paint on the “historic” marble statue of Christopher Columbus. A senseless act of vandalism.
Why would anyone do such a thing? What sort of hoodlums would show such disregard for public property?
The tagging of …
by Jonathan Cook / July 11th, 2015
Former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis offers a clear explanation of what the euro-elites have been really up to in enforcing endless austerity on Greece.
The popular line that Greeks need to pay the price for their years of profligacy and learn fiscal discipline is, as Varoufakis observes, cover for the euro-elites’ efforts to force European tax-payers to bail out yet again the recklessness of their nation’s banks. That is why the “debt relief” for Greece is helping the banks rather than ordinary Greeks.
After the 2008 financial crash, the banks had to be saved from their reckless lending to individuals through deeply …
by Vanessa Beeley / July 11th, 2015
Yemeni people are not bad people, they are good people. They want to be respected, they want their sovereignty to be respected. We did not wage a war, a war was brought upon us. Our issue was an internal one and it would have been sorted out internally.
— Hanan al-Harazi
Hanan al-Harazi, her mother and her 8 year old daughter fled Yemen 10 days after the first bombs started to tear holes in her beloved country. Hanan’s daughter had begun to present the early signs of PTSD and for her sanity, the family decided to split itself down the middle, leaving …
by Kim Petersen / July 10th, 2015
No court in Canada will ever hear a case against the Crown or the fucking churches about their genocide.
— Samuel Wedge ((In Kevin Annett, Samuel Wedge: A Memoir of Necropolis (Bloomington, IN: authorHouse, 2015).))
I was asked to review the novel Samuel Wedge: A Memoir of Necropolis. I read, but don’t usually review novels, but the author’s father told me: “It’s an autobiographical novel.” So I agreed to review it because I consider the subject matter highly important. I already know the story of author Kevin Annett fairly well.
I …
