Latest articles
by Yves Engler / August 27th, 2015
We’ve all heard many times that “money talks” in politics but it was unclear how loudly. Now we know — one billionaire is heard over 50,000 ordinary Canadians.
While about 50,000 people and 175 organizations supported Up for Debate’s call for an election debate focused on women’s issues, it won’t happen because Stephen Harper refused to participate and NDP leader Tom Mulcair is unwilling to appear if the prime minister is not there to bash.
But the same politicians have agreed to a September 28 debate on foreign policy sponsored by an organization named after and financed by one of Canada’s richest …
by Jonathan Cook / August 27th, 2015
The British political and media elite have been agreed on one thing this summer: the need to character-assassinate Jeremy Corbyn, the only half-decent politician (make that, human being) running for the Labour leadership.
If Corbyn wins, it would be the first time in living memory that the UK has had a Labour leader who is actually of the left. It is a prospect terrifying our supposedly liberal media, including the BBC and most of the Guardian’s senior staff, from Polly Toynbee to Jonathan Freedland.
Because all indications are that Corbyn will win in a fair fight, the caretaker Labour leadership is trying to stitch up …
Black Lives Matter activists push edges that need pushing
by William Boardman / August 27th, 2015
After listening awhile, Hillary Clinton pettishly told a quintet of respectful Black Lives Matter activists that, “Yeah, well, respectfully, if that is your position, then I will talk only to white people about how we are going to deal with a very real problem.” More than being nonsensical, she was actually trying to avoid the reality that white violence against black people is an offense that only white people can stop. And she was also avoiding her own, very real role in promoting federal policies that have made black lives matter …
by Pedro Aibéo / August 26th, 2015
Last Saturday, August 22, around 10,000 citizens went down to the streets of Helsinki to protest against the governmental austerity measures. Does this come as a surprise if Finland just elected a billionaire businessman as prime minister?
Last Saturday we witnessed one of the biggest demonstrations this country has seen in its very young but (still) strong democracy. ((Finland was the first European country to introduce the universal suffrage in 1906, eleven years before becoming the republic of Finland)) Along the way, the crowd stopped and sat for 15 minutes in the street, blocking the traffic. This was not “occupy movement” …
From Hope to Fear and Despair
by James Petras / August 26th, 2015
Eight months will have passed since the election of Syriza on January 25 up to the snap elections in September. During that time Syriza’s leaders play-acted their ‘opposition to austerity’ and then knelt down in submission to the ‘Troika’.
The contrast between January and now is dramatic: Syriza’s leader, Prime Minister Alexi Tsipras, aroused joy and great hope among the Greek voters with his promises to end Greece’s subjugation to the European oligarchs (the “Troika”) but …
by Jonathan Cook / August 25th, 2015
The appointment by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu of one of his most hawkish and outspoken rivals as Israel’s new ambassador to the United Nations has prompted widespread consternation.
As one Israeli analyst noted last week, Danny Danon’s appointment amounts to a “cruel joke” on the international community. The new envoy “lacks even the slightest level of finesse and subtlety required of a senior diplomat”.
Last year Netanyahu sacked Danon as deputy defence minister, describing him as too “irresponsible” even by the standards of Israel’s usually anarchic politics. Danon had denounced the prime minister for “leftist feebleness” in his handling of Israel’s …
by Media Lens / August 25th, 2015
The BBC’s Nick Robinson has made a career out of telling the public what leading politicians say and do; sometimes even what they ‘think’. This stenography plays a key role in ‘the mainstream media’, given that a vital part of statecraft is to keep the public suitably cowed and fearful of threats from which governments must protect us. The ‘free press’ requires compliant journalists willing to disseminate elite-friendly messages about global ‘peace’, ‘security’ and ‘prosperity’, uphold Western ideology that ‘we are the good guys’, and not question power deeply, if at all.
But when a senior journalist complains of ‘intimidation and …
by Walter Brasch / August 25th, 2015
This week is the 10th anniversary of the destruction of the southeastern gulf coast by Hurricane Katrina.
More than 1,800 people died. There is no estimate for the number of pets and wildlife. Damage was estimated at more than $100 billion.
About 80 percent of New Orleans was flooded. In Mississippi, the water surge flooded as much as 10 miles from the beaches.
The Category 3 storm should not have caused that much damage, but it exposed poorly-designed levees that should have protected New Orleans.
Sanctimonious critics, many of them conservative politicians, claimed that if the residents had evacuated New Orleans like they were …
that is . . . Military-Legal-Pharma-Media-Prison-IT-Retail-Medical-Insurance-Banking-HR-Surveillance-Hedge Fund COMPLEX
by Paul Haeder / August 25th, 2015
Ahh, little things count – you know, when those big bad ass union bosses pulling in $150K a year or more, yammer on about $15 an hour minimum wage, but, err, not for unions:
But Rusty Hicks, who heads the county Federation of Labor and helps lead the Raise the Wage coalition, said Tuesday night that companies with workers represented by unions should have leeway to negotiate a wage below that mandated by the law.
“With a collective bargaining agreement, a business owner and the employees negotiate an agreement that works for them both. The agreement allows each party to prioritize what …
by subMedia / August 24th, 2015
by Lesley Docksey / August 24th, 2015
I’ve done it, pushed out my boat on to uncharted seas and voted for Jeremy Corbyn to be leader of Britain’s Labour Party. I thought I should do it before the notorious ‘they’ took away my chance to vote because I wasn’t a genuine Labour supporter. I support Corbyn because of the policies he wants to push through, policies that used to represent the Labour Party. It was what was ‘genuine’ about Labour. But no more.
The media are totally obsessed by Labour’s leadership elections, and all due to the ‘leftwing’ candidate Jeremy Corbyn. Without him it would have been one …
by Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin / August 23rd, 2015
Recent reports have suggested that Ireland is set to become the most obese country in Europe.
Estimates of obesity, projected out to 2030, are part of the World Health Organisation’s Modelling Obesity Project and were presented at the European Congress on Obesity in Prague, Czech Republic during May 2015. The figures for Ireland have huge implications for the seriously financially-squeezed Irish health system:
In terms of obesity alone, the estimates show a big jump for women in the Irish Republic, soaring from 23 per cent to 57 per cent. The proportion of obese Irish men was expected to …
by Yves Engler / August 23rd, 2015
Canadian policy in Africa can be summed up in nine words: Do what is good for Canadian-owned mining companies.
Despite rhetoric about aid to the poorest people in the world, the Harper Conservatives have worked assiduously to ensure that Canadian corporations profit from Africa’s vast mineral resources.
Even widespread criticism of their operations has failed to dampen the Conservatives’ support for Canada’s many mining interests in Africa. Canadian mining companies have been accused of bribing officials, evading taxes, dispossessing farmers, displacing communities, employing forced labour, devastating eco-systems and spurring human rights violations.
But, more important than the specific instances of abuse, which I …
With Bitcoin?
by Pedro Aibéo / August 23rd, 2015
On the last 18th of August I attended the Robin Hood ((Robin Hood is an activist hedge fund. They use financial technologies to democratize finance, expand financial inclusion, and generate new economic space. They analyze big data, write algorithms, deploy web-based technologies, and engineer financial instruments to create and distribute surplus profits for all. (Source.) )) pop up lab in Helsinki, Finland. I was expecting one more of those nurturing sessions of saving the world with much love and of course, post-its! No, it was a well-attended session where a real practical approach is being thought out …
by James Petras / August 23rd, 2015
2015 has become a year of living dangerously.
Wars are spreading across the globe. Wars are escalating as new countries are bombed and the old are ravaged with ever greater intensity.
Countries, where relatively peaceful changes had taken place through recent elections, are now on the verge of civil wars.
These are wars without victors, but plenty of losers; wars that don’t end; wars where imperialist occupations are faced with prolonged resistance.
…
by Edward J. Martin / August 22nd, 2015
Because Democrats and Republicans and all those who hold fast to the divine status of the market theory do not want a national discussion on free markets and for whom these free markets are really designed to serve. And this is why the 1% and international elites need to pull the plug on a socialist who has some serious political momentum.
But first let’s look at Bernie Sanders. He is not a cult figure working the masses into a frenzy. Nor is the Feel the Bern movement going to fizzle anytime soon. This is because the personal pain of real human …
by Shepherd Bliss / August 22nd, 2015
Sonoma County, California — Activists objecting to the over-growth of the wine/hospitality industry in rural areas of four Northern California counties have met monthly for half a year. At their August 15 meeting in Healdsburg, Sonoma County, one of the wine industry’s epicenters, they agreed to name themselves Wine and Water Watch (WWW).
They ratified the following mission statement:
We challenge the over-development of the wine tourism industry and promote ethical land and water use. We advocate agricultural practices that are ecologically regenerative.
The new WWW name replaces the temporary name of Four County Network, which was agreed upon at the third meeting. …
Democratic Socialism Is Returning to Britain’s Labour Party
by Adnan Al-Daini / August 22nd, 2015
Who amongst the contenders for the leadership of the Labour Party would have had the vision and the courage of Aneurin Bevan to establish the British National Health Service? The answer, surely, would be only Jeremy Corbyn.
In his ten point plan “standing to deliver” he proposes to return the railways and the energy sector to public ownership, an end to austerity, and the establishment of a national investment bank to direct funds to create tomorrow’s jobs.
This is a direct challenge to free-market unregulated capitalism with its mantra of “the market knows best” …
by Joan Wheeler / August 22nd, 2015
Seven to ten million American adoptees’ original birth certificates are sealed after a new one is created. It happened to me. My names, and family, were stolen by adoption fifteen months after my legitimate birth in 1956. I have known the truth since I was eighteen in 1974, but do not have the right to possess my own birth certificate and must present the fake one as proof of my identity.
Making someone else’s child “your own” by adoption causes the State’s Director of Vital Statistics to issue a replacement birth certificate presenting false facts as truth and then seals the …
by James Hoover / August 21st, 2015
Nature versus Nurture is still used to broadly categorize the influences on human development, literally, what make us human. It is a question tied with the past (even back to Shakespeare) when the understanding of the genetic blueprint was vague, a gap we’ve filled in with theory. Nature was what you inherited from your parents and nurture was everything else – total environmental influences.
Greatly impacting the nurture side, epigenetics has changed the way we think about ourselves, our behavior, and our environment. The behavior side was once covered by a psychology often tentative and ineffective. Now it is known …
by John R. Hall / August 21st, 2015
The Aha Makhav believed that the god Matevilya created all life forms on the sacred summit of Spirit Mountain. This high point in the Newberry Range now looms over the towns of Laughlin, Nevada, Bullhead City, Arizona, and Fort Mohave, Arizona. The rich Colorado River bottom land, stretching from what is now Hoover Dam southward for more than 200 miles, was home to the Aha Makhav for untold thousands of years.
When the people had been put on the land, the god Mastamho made the mighty Colorado River and taught the people how to use the water to grow crops. Not …
by Andre Vltchek / August 21st, 2015
Could any dictator desire more? Almost the entire population of the Empire is now thinking the same way!
The populace is “educated” at schools and the universities staffed with submissive, and cowardly teachers and professors.
The populace is “informed” by hundreds of thousands of servile journalists and “analysts”. There is almost no deviation from the official narrative.
Congratulations, Western Empire! You have succeeded where others tried but failed. You have achieved almost absolute obedience and discipline, a total servility.
And more than that most of the people actually think that they are free, that they are in control. They believe that they can choose, …
by Yves Engler / August 21st, 2015
Reading the comments below a recent Toronto Star op-ed reminded me of an important, if rarely mentioned, rule of Canadian foreign policy. The more impoverished a nation the greater the gap is likely to be between what Canadian officials say and do.
In a rare corporate daily breakthrough, solidarity activist Mark Phillips detailed a decade of anti-democratic Canadian policy in Haiti. But, a number of readers were clearly discomforted by the piece titled “Hey Canada, stop meddling in Haitian democracy”. “Money pumped into this dysfunctional country, is money down a rat hole,” read one. Another said, “Yes — let’s stop ‘meddling’ …
by Robert Hunziker / August 20th, 2015
In March 2015, Raw Story interviewed Senator Ted Cruz. ((Eric W. Dolan, “Watch: Ted Cruz Says he Doesn’t Believe in Climate Change Because he “Follows the Science”, Raw Story, March 24, 2015.))
The interviewer challenged the senator about his wish for millions of young voters to turn out. Yet, he’s against pot, gay marriage, and doesn’t believe global warming is man-made all of which the interviewer claims young people have a different view. The senator chose to refute the global warming claim.
The following rebuttal of the senator’s view on global warming is self-explanatory in highlighting the political problem global warming/climate change …
by Mitchell Thompson / August 19th, 2015
A recent report by the Canadian Federation of Students identifies a link between the defunding and deregulation of post-secondary education and the reduction in the living standards of students. These were cemented by changes to bankruptcy law that restricted their access to protection or discharge.
Despite how the crisis is usually portrayed in the press, this appears not to just be a case of the government failing to protect students from creditors and universities. Rather it is also a case of the government empowering those institutions over the students. The current crisis is the result of government cementing the dangers …
by Jack Balkwill / August 19th, 2015
Somebody’s gonna hurt someone,
Before the night is through.
Somebody’s gonna come undone,
There’s nothin’ we can do.
— The Eagles, Heartache Tonight
Most Americans are unaware that unemployment does not occur by chance, but is manipulated by those who run the country on behalf of the ruling plutocrats and their corporations.
Unless millions of people are kept unemployed, wages will rise, so the psychopaths who rule do not allow anything approaching full employment. I say psychopaths because they claim to be intelligent and informed people, so one would assume they know that keeping unemployment high results in massive suffering — hunger, homelessness, the world’s …
by Jonathan Cook / August 19th, 2015
Officials in Jerusalem have approved a massive construction project, including plans for housing, shops and a hotel, on one of the largest and most historically important Islamic cemeteries in the Middle East.
A previous project to build a courthouse at the site, part of Mamilla Cemetery, was scrapped two years ago after it provoked a storm of protest.
The graveyard, just outside Jerusalem’s Old City walls, is said to be the final resting place of the Prophet Mohammed’s companions as well as thousands of Saladin’s warriors who helped expel the Crusaders from the Holy Land nearly 1,000 years ago.
It also served as …
A Review of Tamara Pearson's The Butterfly Prison
by Andre Vltchek / August 19th, 2015
The Butterfly Prison begins slowly, combining seemingly disconnected stories that are taking place in poor neighborhoods of Australia. The stories are like tiny vignettes; shy, modest, minimalistic but always significant and beautifully told. A fear here, a bitter humiliation there, a dream of a child interrupted by a police officer.
Then suddenly, the stories begin to interconnect, intertwine, and the novel gains speed. Real pain – deep and overwhelming – emerges. Profound hurts, bitterness and injuries are slapping the faces of the characters, and somehow, we are drawn in and begin suffering with them.
It is Australia that we don’t know; …
by Kathy Kelly / August 19th, 2015
A nation that will keep people in slavery for 244 years will ‘thingify’ them—make them things. Therefore they will exploit them, and poor people generally, economically. And a nation that will exploit economically will have foreign investments and everything else, and will have to use its military to protect them. All of these problems are tied together. What I am saying today is that we must go from this convention and say, ‘America, you must be born again!’
— Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Speaking on behalf of indigenous people in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, earlier this summer, Pope Francis apologized for the …
by James Hall / August 18th, 2015
The paradox in the question of who wins in a currency war presupposes that any participating combatant can actually claim victory. If winning means ending up with the most cash, when the value of the money as a store of tangible wealth is debased, it is doubtful anyone can be declared the victor. The absurdity of lowering the purchasing power of a country’s currency to enable exports to be more competitive is economic sacrilege that the heretical “Free Trade” mythos is based upon. Without a reliable standard of objective comparison, floating currencies maneuver their exchange rates to disguise internal imbalances …
