Latest articles
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 …
by Ellen Brown / August 18th, 2015
The United States can pay any debt it has because we can always print money to do that. So there is zero probability of default.
— Former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan on Meet the Press, August 2011
In a post on “Sovereign Man” dated August 14th, Simon Black argued that Donald Trump may be the right man for the presidency:
[T]here’s one thing that really sets him apart, that, in my opinion, makes him the most qualified person for the job:
Donald Trump is an expert at declaring bankruptcy.
When the going gets tough, Trump stiffs his creditors. He’s done it four times!
Candidly, …
by Gary Leupp / August 18th, 2015
Most pundits predict that Obama will have enough votes to push through the Iran nuclear deal. An AIPAC-driven Congress will oppose it, but Obama will use his veto power to overcome the opposition. At the end of the day, optimists forecast, the president will receive the requisite support in Congress to prevent a veto override.
But I’m keeping my fingers crossed. Netanyahu and the Israel Lobby are pulling out all the stops. Anyone who’s ever doubted the strength of that Lobby (rooted in the Christian Zionism of U.S. evangelicals, and in the political war chests of various diehard Israel support groups) …
by Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin / August 18th, 2015
On 5th of August 2015 the Irish Navy ship LÉ Niamh was sent to help an overcrowded vessel about 25 miles off the Libyan coast. As two rigid inflatable boats (Ribs) from the LÉ Niamh approached they signaled to the people to stay where they were so that life jackets could be given out. However, according to Capt Dave Barry: “Whatever happened, a number rushed to one side, and it capsized and sank in a couple of minutes”. A total of 367 survivors and 25 bodies were taken to the Sicilian port of Palermo. …
by Gilad Atzmon / August 18th, 2015
Paul Eisen, until a week ago anonymous as far as most Brits were concerned, is now a kingmaker. The UK Jewish Lobby is convinced, for some reason, that the nature of Eisen’s relationship with Labour’s leading candidate Jeremy Corbyn will determine the future of this country.
As we witness the most important political debate in Britain for generations being hijacked by the Zionist media and ‘Jewish sensitivities’, the time is ripe to ask: who is Paul Eisen?
Eisen has been described by the Jewish press and its acolytes as an ‘anti Semite’ and a ‘holocaust denier’, but peculiarly, no one mentions …
by Matt Peppe / August 17th, 2015
A few days ago former President Jimmy Carter announced that he has cancer and it is spreading. While it would be premature to assume this spells the end for the 90-year-old, it does present an opportunity to take stock of the tenure of a President who, like the current occupant of the White House, entered office with a promise to respect human rights, but failed miserably when given the opportunity to do so.
Carter just last month published a memoir about his “Full Life.” Others have begun to look back at his four years as President. David Macaray, …
by Kim Petersen / August 17th, 2015
The Chinese port city of Tianjin is reeling following devastating explosions. It is a human-caused disaster that has authorities seeking answers and a proper response to Tianjin residents. It brought a rapid response.
The response to the Tianjin explosions stands in stark similarity and contrast to the response accorded the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina in the southeastern United States. Hurricane Katrina was a force of nature (a force that may well have been exacerbated by anthropogenic climate change), but much of the blame for destruction as a result of the winds …
The Moral Bankruptcy of Italy and NATO
by Ramzy Baroud / August 17th, 2015
On April 26, 2011, a meeting that can only be described as sinister took place between the then Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, and French President, Nicolas Sarkozy. The most pressing issue discussed at the meeting in Rome was how to deal with African immigrants.
Sarkozy, who was under pressure from his right-wing and far-right constituencies to halt immigration originating from North Africa (resulting from the Tunisian uprising), desired to strike a deal with the opportunistic Italian leader. In exchange for an Italian agreement to join a French initiative aimed at tightening border control (Italy being accused of allowing immigrants …
by Felicity Arbuthnot / August 17th, 2015
Bereaved UK families who lost sons and daughters in the illegal invasion of Iraq have now threatened legal action against Sir John Chilcot who headed the near two year long, £10m Iraq Inquiry (30th July 2009 – 2nd February 2011) if a date for release of Inquiry findings is not announced publicly within two weeks. Further, suspicions over the reason for the approaching five years near silence from Sir John are raised by a detailed investigation by journalist Andrew Pierce.
Writing in the Daily Mail he highlights the seemingly close relationship between Sir John Chilcot and Tony Blair.
Pierce refers to …
No. I’m Not Going to the Reeducation Camp
by John Stanton / August 17th, 2015
…if you sit around and wait for the one who is in power to make up his mind that he should end it, you’ll be waiting a long time. And in my opinion the young generation of whites, blacks, browns, and whatever else there is, your are living in a time when there has to be a change…a better world needs to be built…And I will join in with anyone, I don’t what color he is, as long as he wants to change the miserable condition that exists on this earth.
— Malcolm X at Oxford, 1964
Out here in the …
by Robert Hunziker / August 17th, 2015
Twenty-one children in America have filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Government and the president of the United States, seeking declaratory and injunctive relief. The lawsuit claims the federal government, abetting, if not causing, climate change, “has violated the youngest generation’s constitutional rights to life, liberty, property, as well as failed to protect essential public trust resources.” (source: ourchildrenstrust.org)
This is a landmark constitutional climate change lawsuit.
Essentially, the lawsuit challenges the federal government’s national fossil fuel programs.
Provocatively, since adults don’t seem to “get it,” the children of America are taking the lead to stop, and hopefully reverse, decades of governmental abuse …
by Shepherd Bliss / August 17th, 2015
Santa Rosa, CA — An overflow crowd spilled into the lobby at California State Senator Mike McGuire’s August 13 promised Town Hall. Many were alarmed by an article at the top of the front-page of the prior day’s pro-wine industry local daily newspaper.
“Wine Industry’s ‘Water Grab’” headlined the Press Democrat (PD) story.
It described legislation being drafted that would secure unfair water rights and control of water for the wine industry in the Russian River watershed.
After listening to two articulate politicians and four staff members for nearly two hours, as the meeting was coming to a close, McGuire finally mentioned, in passing, that pending bill. …
by Yves Engler / August 17th, 2015
Where are Conservatives most likely to be elected in Canada? Historically, rural and suburban White, Protestant ridings and the wealthiest parts of English-speaking cities have been where the Tories enjoyed the most success.
Certainly the Conservatives have never been the party of those marginalized for economic, social or religious reasons.
Yet, at the start of the month Stephen Harper launched his re-election campaign from the Ben Weider Jewish Community Centre in Mount Royal, one of two ridings in the country with a Jewish plurality (about 36% of the population).
If Conservative candidate Robert Libman wins Pierre Trudeau’s old seat it would represent a …
Part 4: Civilization in Transition
by George S. Svokos / August 17th, 2015
The news media recently reported that the Mashco Piro Indians in the Peruvian Amazon have been pushed out of their environment of evolutionary adaptation that they have occupied for at least 600 years because of commercial concerns and natural resource extraction (same old story.) An added complication here is that the Mashco Piro are the last uncontacted tribe in this area of South America. In the interests of holy preservation, why cannot these people just be left to themselves? They are, or were, a self-sufficient hunter-gatherer society that required no “assistance” from the developed world. It would seem they will …
American Psychological Association acts to heal itself
by William Boardman / August 16th, 2015
American psychologists have voted overwhelmingly against helping their government torture people. In an even more radical step, the psychologists voted to obey international law, even in instances where US law tolerates war crimes or crimes against humanity. In an even more radical step, the psychologists voted to obey international law, even in instances where US law tolerates war crimes or crimes against humanity. erwhelmingly against helping their government torture people. In an even more radical step, the psychologists voted to obey international law, even in instances where US law tolerates …
Part 3: Symbols of Transformation
by George S. Svokos / August 14th, 2015
The Self or Anthropos quaternio symbolically represents what we cannot, in fact, see. Carl Jung’s Aion, Volume 9 of his Collected Works brilliantly describes the Self and shadow archetypes as quaternios. Archetypes only become visible through their symbols, not themselves as such. Anthropos is a reflection of the “higher Adam” (Self, or the center of the unconscious) and occupies the upper apex of the diamond-shaped quaternio which is joined at its base by a mirror image of itself. Thus, the diamond appears to be two pyramids attached at their bases with an apex point and a basal point. The basal …
by Binoy Kampmark / August 14th, 2015
“From what GOP faction might Trumpites come? The establishment? Social conservatives? Unlikely.”
— George F. Will, The Washington Post, August 12, 2015
The raging, erratic fire refuses to go out. The longer the Donald flame flickers and burns in its impetuous, cartoonish way, the more the GOP is agitated in recoiling horror. In itself, this assessment suggests that the GOP is the vestal virgin being assaulted by the barbarian who is not merely at the gates but in the bed chamber.
The conservative commentariat have gathered their pens in what is becoming a united front against Donald Trump. Their anger is an indicator, …
by Andre Vltchek / August 14th, 2015
I don’t really know, I don’t understand how it feels: to live in a rich European country, which is rich mainly because it has been directly plundering many poor nations around the world. Or it has been plundering by association, through its membership in some extremist organization like NATO. To live there, refusing to acknowledge why it is rich, how it became rich.
Palaces, theatres, railroads, hospitals and parks in that rich country are built on broken skeletons and restless specters, on lakes of blood and shameless theft.
Then, when one looted country after another begins to sink, when there is nothing …
by Nizar Visram / August 13th, 2015
News coming out of the occupied Palestine on 8 August 2015 said that Saad Dawabsheh, the father of a Palestinian toddler Ali who was killed in a firebombing of his home a week ago, has died from wounds he sustained in the incident.
Early in the morning of July 31, Israeli settlers hurled a Molotov cocktail into a window of Dawabsheh’s home in the Duma village in occupied West Bank. His 18-month-old son, Ali was burned to death in the arson attack, while his four-year-old son Ahmad, and his wife, Riham were seriously injured and remain in critical condition.
The arsonists left …
by Graham Peebles / August 13th, 2015
We all want peace, don’t we? Peaceful relationships and communities; an absence of violence and conflict: a World at Peace. This is surely everyone’s heartfelt desire. Without peace nothing can be achieved, none of the subtler essential needs of our time, such as feeding everyone and providing good quality health care and education to all – let alone the urgent need to save our planet (S.O.P.), beautify the cities and develop sustainable alternative energy sources.
Despite the fact that we all hanker after peace, there are currently around thirty armed conflicts taking place across the globe – wars in which …
And how we can best end it
by Jack Balkwill / August 13th, 2015
To get a job is like that haystack needle,
‘Cause where we live, they don’t use colored people
— Stevie Wonder, “Livin’ for the City”
I was raised in a racist family, in a racist neighborhood and a racist world, in the 1940s and ’50s. In those days everyone around me was white, almost always and almost everywhere I went in Tacoma, Washington. The man who swept our street with a push broom was white. The cop who walked the beat which included my neighborhood was white. All of the delivery people– the milk man, the ice man, and all of the tradesmen.
One …
by Fernando Andres Torres / August 12th, 2015
August 7, 2015. Yes. I cannot find a better analogy to place Manuel Contreras in his right place, and I don’t want to leave out other good candidates such as the likes of Göring, Himmler, or Hess. Every now and then a creature is produced that shames our species and besmirches our collective conscience and history.
Manuel Contreras, aka El Mamo, died today in a comfortable bed at a military hospital in Chile. He was the brains behind the DINA, Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional, the Chilean Gestapo who killed, tortured, raped and sent to concentration camps and/or exiled thousands of Chileans …
by John R. Hall / August 12th, 2015
In 1953 at the age of 5, I was positive that I’d grow up to be Superman. When George Reeves paid his weekly visit to the family television set I was ready. With a dish towel cape, hands upon my hips, wearing an invincible expression, I was ready to battle the bad guys with truth, justice, the American way, incredible strength, and an unparalleled flying technique.
But even Superman had his Kryptonite. Now, 62 years later, my Achilles’ heel turned out to be fair skin. Too many severe sunburns in the Sonoran Desert came back to haunt. Basal cell carcinoma now decorated my upper lip.
The procedure to remove this face invader …
by Gary Brumback / August 12th, 2015
I conceived of “twittersod” a few years ago as a possible means of mobilizing millions of activist tweeters to “save our democracy” from two powerful elements of America that are making life miserable and worse for humanity.
One is America’s corpocracy, about which I have written extensively. Big corporations rule our government, not the reverse. Big corporations continuously commit wrongdoing that harms people sometimes in dangerous and deadly ways yet escape accountability because their, not our, government maintains a hands-off policy toward them. Their government also gives them handouts totaling billions of dollars yearly that could otherwise be spent to …
by Felicity Arbuthnot / August 12th, 2015
This fortress built by Nature for her self
Against infection and the hand of war,
….
This precious stone set in a silver sea
…
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England…
England, bound in with the triumphant sea,
Whose rocky shore beats back the envious siege …
— William Shakespeare, 1564-1616, Richard II
Britain’s top “diplomat”, Foreign Office Minister Philip Hammond has accused “marauding” migrants – the desperate, dispossessed, bereaved, orphaned children even, attempting to reach the UK, where many have relatives, contacts or speak the language – of threatening Britain and Europe’s “standard of living.”
In a racist rant he told the BBC:
Europe can’t protect itself …
by Ramzy Baroud / August 12th, 2015
Strange how intellectual discussion concerning the so-called “Arab Spring” has almost entirely shifted in recent years – from one concerning freedom, justice, democracy and rights in general, into a political wrangle between various antagonist camps.
The people who revolted across various Arab countries are now marginalized in this discussion and are only used as fodders – killers and victims – in a war seemingly without end.
But how did it all go so wrong?
There was once a time when things were so simple, so easy to understand and explain: People, who were long oppressed, revolted against their oppressors (Arab regimes) and benefactors …
