Latest articles
by Uri Avnery / September 4th, 2015
The misdeeds of Napoleon’s occupation army in Spain were not photographed. Photography had not yet been invented. The valiant fighters against the occupation had to rely on Francisco Goya for the immortal painting of the resistance.
The partisans and underground fighters against the German occupation of their countries in World War II had no time to take pictures. Even the heroic uprising of the Jewish Ghetto in Warsaw was not filmed by the participants. The Germans themselves filmed their atrocities, and, being Germans, they catalogued and filed them in an orderly way.
In the meantime, photography has become common commonplace. The Israeli …
by Media Lens / September 4th, 2015
Unsurprisingly perhaps, our search of UK newspapers for the terms ‘Jeremy Corbyn’, ‘Vikings’ and ‘Mayans’ delivered only one result. After all, how could they possibly be linked? Rachel Sylvester explained in The Times on September 1:
Just as the Vikings and the Mayans brought about their own extinction by destroying the environment on which their cultures depended…
Already the heart has dropped. Is this really leading where we think it’s leading?
…so the Labour party is threatening its survival by abandoning electoral victory as a definition of success. If Labour chooses Jeremy Corbyn – a man who will never be elected …
The Disgrace of Britain’s Immigration Detention Centres
by Graham Peebles / September 3rd, 2015
Fleeing war, persecution and acute poverty, men, women and children have been arriving in Britain for generations. They come in search of peace: for work or education, and to build a decent life in a country were the rule of law is observed and human rights are respected.
Currently the largest numbers, according to Mary Bosworth, (author of Inside Immigration Detention), arrive from the sub-continent: India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. They also come from Nigeria and Jamaica, and from current and recent war zones: Syria, Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq. Many of those making the hazardous journey have been the victim of …
by John R. Hall / September 3rd, 2015
An antiemetic might possibly help with this little recurring problem I have. As the years roll by, the sessions seem to be getting much more severe and frequent. It doesn’t take much to kick it off. A bumper sticker with some patriotic phrase like “Proud Grandparents of a U.S. Marine”, “God Bless our Snipers” (really!), or simply “Freedom isn’t Free”. A Norman Rockwell-esque moment where an elderly veteran sporting a V.F.W. cap is vigorously shaking the hand of a uniformed pimple-faced adolescent, fresh out of boot camp, exchanging thank you’s for their service. President Obama gushing about American exceptionalism and how the U.S.A. has the finest fighting force in the history of mankind, …
by Ramzy Baroud / September 2nd, 2015
The crisis of leadership throughout Palestinian history did not start with Mahmoud Abbas and will, regrettably, be unlikely to end with his departure. Although Abbas has, perhaps, done more damage to the credibility of the Palestinian leadership than any other leader in the past, he is also a by-product of a process of political fraud that started much earlier than his expired Presidency.
Abbas’ unforeseen announcement on August 27 that he, along with a few others, will resign from the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) Executive Committee and his call for an emergency session of the Palestine National Council (PNC) is …
The UK Labour Frontrunner’s Controversial Proposal
by Ellen Brown / September 2nd, 2015
British MP Jeremy Corbyn has proposed a “People’s QE” that has critics crying hyperinflation and supporters saying it’s about time.
Dark horse candidate Jeremy Corbyn, who is currently leading in the polls for UK Labour Party leadership, has included in his platform “quantitative easing for people.” He said in a July 22nd presentation:
The ‘rebalancing’ I have talked about here today means rebalancing away from finance towards the high-growth, sustainable sectors of the future. How do we do this? One option would be for the Bank of England to be given a new mandate to upgrade our economy to invest in new …
An Anonymous Senior Official at the White House provided the following confidential letter to us.
by John V. Walsh / September 2nd, 2015
Dear President Xi,
On September 3, your country is hosting a commemoration of the end of World War II on the 70th Anniversary of the day recognized as its termination in the Asia-Pacific. You have invited both me and President Abe of Japan. We both have chosen to refuse – just as we refused to attend the earlier commemoration of the defeat of Fascism in Moscow last Spring.
As you very well know, Jinping, if I may use your given name, this makes the United States look pretty mean spirited. And to put it plainly, your cooking up these events with Vlad …
by Jack Balkwill / September 2nd, 2015
I’d love to change the world,
But I don’t know what to do,
So I’ll leave it up to you.
— Alvin Lee and Ten Years After, I’d Love to Change the World, (From Space in Time album, 1971)
Have you ever asked yourself, “Why am I here, what is my purpose?”
The Great Masters of the East, Buddhist monks who devoted their lives to long meditations through which they claim to have discovered the secrets to our existence, believed they knew the answer: that we are here to make a better world.
In the eighth and final week of my basic meditation course I …
Is there anyone who believes that Yemeni Lives Matter?
by William Boardman / September 2nd, 2015
Saudi ground forces invaded Yemen for the first time in this war on August 27. Officially, the Saudi government characterizes the invasion as an incursion that will be limited and temporary. The Saudi government made similar representations about their terror-bombing of Yemen that began March 26 and has continued on a near-daily basis to the present.
Other foreign troops have invaded southern Yemen in support of the ousted Yemeni government.
At the same time as the Saudi invasion, the ousted Yemeni government, now talking tough from the safety of Riyadh, the Saudi capital, says …
by Salah eddine Salmi / September 1st, 2015
On September 4th Morocco will hold municipal elections, after having postponed them as a response to the political parties’ demand, and due to tremendous reluctance among citizens to register as voters. As elections approach, Moroccan society has been divided into two major groups. One that advocates participation in the elections, and another group that is in favor of boycotting the elections. As always in Morocco during the lead-up to elections, debate has been rampant on Facebook and on other social media.
Generally speaking, elections are of great significance in any democratic country. Democracy is premised on all people having the same …
Canadian Behind-the-Scenes Imperialism
by Yves Engler / September 1st, 2015
Unlike the US or France, Canada is not a leading military force in Africa. But Ottawa exerts influence through a variety of means including training initiatives.
Canadian Forces have trained hundreds of African soldiers at the Canadian Army Doctrine and Training Centre in Kingston Ontario and Lester B. Pearson Centre in Nova Scotia. Canadian forces have also directed or participated in a slew of officer training initiatives, running courses in Botswana, Kenya, Namibia, Mali among other places. In recent years Ottawa has funded and staffed various military training centres across the continent such as the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Center …
by Laurie A. Couture / September 1st, 2015
I have worked as a professional in the human services and as an advocate of social justice for nearly two decades. I have worked with thousands of children and families in multiple roles including as a mental health counselor, parenting coach, social worker, educator, and mentor. I am also the proud Mom of a 21-year-old son who I adopted from the foster care system when he was 11. Through my extensive research and work with children and families over many years, I have been able to see the threads of how childhood trauma and attachment breaks in each individual family …
Part 1: The Trojan War
by T.P. Wilkinson / September 1st, 2015
For me 2015 began with a suicide. I was on my way to Berlin with an early train just after midnight on 1 January. About 8 am our connecting train from Hamburg stopped approximately 25 kilometres down the line because someone had apparently gotten up early that morning and travelled to a point in the middle of nowhere to jump in front of it. Since our train was approximately 45 minutes late, this person not only had to contemplate his way to the tracks but wait perhaps impatiently for the wheeled engine of his demise to do its work.
Later, in …
by Robert Hunziker / August 31st, 2015
“Paris 2015” designates the 21st Session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP21) to be held November 30 to December 11. The participants will be seeking a new international agreement on climate with a goal of holding global warming below 2°C (3.6°F) relative to pre-industrial temps. Can they do it? Yes, but will they?
If history is a guide, the odds are 50/50, maybe 25/75. However, this time history may be a poor guide because the pressure to accomplish an agreement has never been more pronounced, more eagerly sought, or more crucial. …
by Anthony Tarrant / August 31st, 2015
Establishment forces are trying to silence Stanley Cohen, a lawyer for those who resist.
*****Stanley,
Hey, so I was on Youtube listening to the unforgettable Amiri Baraka, the late playwright, jazzman, truth teller and mounting flame who never sold out, reciting his great poetic indictment “Somebody Blew Up America” against the backdrop of a plaintive Joycian beat generation sax riff. It’s the poem that got him defrocked as New Jersey’s Poet Laureate not too many years before the light of that noble life left us all the worse for its extinction. “Who, Who, Whoo, Whooooo”!
And then, I thought …
by Shepherd Bliss / August 31st, 2015
I have been contemplating why the growing struggle by rural residents against the expanding, industrial wine industry in Sonoma and Napa counties, Northern California, has touched my heart and soul so deeply.
An email from Sister Julie DeRossi of the Starcross Monastic Community to the Board of Supervisors, which follows at the end of this article, provided insight. It stimulated a consideration of the environmental, ethical, spiritual, and agricultural costs of the invasive wine industry that consumes and spoils our diverse rural land at an increasingly rapid rate.
Nuns, monks, and other religious people have pursued farming as spiritual practice …
Peace is War
by James Petras / August 30th, 2015
Colombia has received more US military aid — over $6 billion dollars in the past decade — than any country in the Western Hemisphere. For its part, Colombia allowed the Pentagon to build seven military bases, more than all the other countries in the region combined. There are over 2,000 US military officers and private US ‘mercenary’ contractors engaged in military activities in Colombia – more than any other country in Latin America.
During the decade-long (2001-2010) regime of President Alvaro Uribe, (a drug trafficker and death …
by Denis Rancourt / August 30th, 2015
The establishment, not so very long ago, had a healthy fear of juveniles. In the 1950s:
A thousand conferences, agencies, committees, and newspapers alerted the country [USA] to the danger. Juvenile delinquency was the only rebellion around, and it had to be stopped.
Articles on teenage delinquency gushed forth. Experts labelled it a “national epidemic,” projecting some two and a half million cases. “Unless this cancer is checked early enough,” warned one popular book, 1,000,000 Delinqints (1955), “it can go on spreading and contaminate many good cells in our society…. ((Jacoby, Russell, The Last Intellectuals, 1987 (2000 edition, Basic Books), p. 63.))
Although …
by T. Mayheart Dardar / August 30th, 2015
I awoke this morning (29 August 2015) about 6 A.M. even though I’d set my alarm for an hour later to take advantage of a restful weekend. As my eyes opened memories flooded in and I could not help being a bit overwhelmed by the thoughts of this same day ten years ago.
On that morning I sat before a television screen at the home of some friends hundreds of miles from my southeast Louisiana home having evacuated two days before. I watched transfixed as a computer generated symbol …
by Ralph Nader / August 30th, 2015
Among the hundreds of billionaires and megabillionaires in the U.S., there are more than several enlightened persons upset by the problems our society faces who could make serious improvements possible.
The next step is breaking down a roadblock of sorts. A prominent, very rich businessman summed it up when he said to me: “Ralph, we all know how to make a lot of money but we don’t have a clue as to what to do with it, including me.” It is not as if these super-wealthy are contemplating their navels. Many do give away lots of money but wonder if their …
by Press TV / August 29th, 2015
People dying in their dozens – whether crammed into a truck or a ship en route to seek safety or better lives is a tragic indictment of Europe’s failures to provide alternative routes. Countries neighboring conflict areas are reaching their maximum capacity to absorb any more refugees. Without legal alternative routes for refugees to enter European countries, people fleeing conflicts in the Middle East, Africa and elsewhere have taken matters into their own hands.” Those are just excerpts of statements by human rights organizations about the global asylum-seeker crisis. In the face of tragedies in Austria and Libya, questions are …
Reality Check
by Ben Swann / August 29th, 2015
Is Donald Trump correct that so called “anchor babies” are not actually entitled to birthright citizenship?
https://youtu.be/O3Lshci7BPk
The NDP and Palestine
by Dan Freeman-Maloy / August 29th, 2015
A friend recently expressed his confusion about the outrage over the death of Ali Dawabsheh, the 18-month-old Palestinian toddler who was killed last month when Jewish settlers firebombed his home in the occupied West Bank. ((See Patrick Martin, ‘Palestinian child’s death in terrorist attack stirs call to end violence,’ Globe and Mail (31 July 2015).)) (The child’s father was also badly burned in the attack, and eight days later died from his injuries.) An attack that kills a sleeping toddler is surely horrific. But Israeli violence against Palestinian children is an aspect of the Palestine conflict almost …
Lousy Food, Small Servings
by Sam Husseini / August 29th, 2015
There’s an old joke about two elderly men at a Catskill resort. One complains: “The food here is horrible.” The other vigorously agrees: “Yeah, I know — and the portions are so damn small!”
Several writers have noted Bernie Sanders’ scant comments about foreign policy — small portions.
But another problem is the little that he has articulated in terms of foreign policy — the foreign policy issue that he’s been most passionate about really — is extremely regressive and incredibly dangerous. That issue is the role of Saudi Arabia. Sanders has actually pushed for the repressive regime to engage in more …
Ask Pope Francis and Mohammed Mesbahi
by Adam W. Parsons / August 29th, 2015
The latest book by Naomi Klein is essentially a call to share the world’s resources, but its thesis on social transformation is missing a crucial factor: a profound awareness of the reality of hunger and life-threatening deprivation. While Pope Francis’ recent encyclical calls on us to prioritise this global emergency in our efforts to combat global warming, Mohammed Mesbahi proposes a people’s strategy for how we can finally end the moral outrage of extreme poverty amidst plenty.
*****
Climate change is a historic opportunity to not only heal the environment, but also to roll back the tide of injustice and …
by John R. Hall / August 29th, 2015
The title for this piece is a line from the lyrics of “Strawberry Fields Forever”, sung for the bemusement and ponderation of future generations by The Beatles, and written by John Lennon, Paul McCartney, John Winston, and Paul James. Back in ’67 when the song was new and freshly put to vinyl, the lyrics made perfect sense. Of course, I was smoking a lot of weed in those days. Socrates is credited with saying that the only thing we can truly know is that we can know nothing. Enigmatic phrases from many of their songs would indicate that The Beatles concurred.
A quick internet search turned up four distinctly …
Defied UN Resolutions 1970 and 1973
by Yves Engler / August 28th, 2015
Since the start of the Canadian election campaign a series of posts have detailed the Harper Conservatives repeated abuse of power. The Tyee published “Harper, Serial Abuser of Power”, which listed “70 Harper government assaults on democracy and the law.” But the widely disseminated list omitted what may be the Conservatives’ most flagrant – and far-reaching –lawbreaking. In 2011 Ottawa defied UN Security Council Resolutions (UNSCR) 1970 and 1973, which were passed amidst the uprising against Muammar Gaddafi’s four-decade rule in Libya.
In direct contravention of these legally binding resolutions, Canadian troops were on the ground …
by Andre Vltchek / August 28th, 2015
Beirut is burning; it is hurt, angry and uncertain about its own future.
Ambulances are howling. Hundreds are injured. Rubber bullets are flying and so is live ammunition.
A Revolution? A rebellion?
Who are those men, stripped from their waist up, muscular, throwing stones at the security forces in the center of Beirut? Are they genuine revolutionaries? Are they there in order to reclaim so badly discredited “Arab Spring”?
Or did they come here in a show of force, because the West is paying them? If the Lebanese state collapses, ISIL could move in, and …
by Jack Balkwill / August 27th, 2015
The first time, ever I saw your face,
I thought the sun rose in your eyes
And the moon and the stars were the gifts you gave
to the dark and the endless skies”
— Ewan MacColl
We live in a culture that promotes images of beautiful women everywhere we look. Turn on the TV and commercials feature super models standing beside products the capitalists want us to buy. Step outside and you see them on billboards doing same. Online they lurk at the outer edges of our screen, sirens luring us to purchase sports cars, perfume, or smart phones.
But the attention falls short of …
by Mateo Pimentel / August 27th, 2015
Is Donald Trump’s racism bewildering, upsetting, and alarming to you? Having trouble looking at him during television appearances? Do your ears burn from his cacophonous sound bytes?
If so, chances are good that you are not alone.
This brief “operator’s guide” highlights a few parallels between Trump, the 2016 United States presidential hopeful, and other outspoken racist figures of America’s past. Hopefully, this short and largely incomplete survey will elucidate some of the historical underpinnings of Trump’s current bigoted agenda.
Readers will note that, as with many race-related social ills today, Trump’s racist and xenophobic agenda clearly bears much in …
