Ever since the Scottish Independence Referendum campaign I have been envying the Scots for the liveliness and engagement of their political thought and conversation and wondering how the phlegmatic English could be prodded into really thinking about the politics that run this country. The answer appears to be Jeremy Corbyn.
Many people, battered and depressed by the result of the general election and the prospect of an all-Tory government for the next 5 years, with its austerity for the poor and tax breaks for the rich, cheered up when Jeremy announced he was entering the Labour leadership contest. Not because we …
Seventy years ago, the atomic bombs known as Little Boy and Fat Man were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In Hiroshima about 90,000 people were killed immediately; another 40,000 were injured, many of whom died in protracted agony from radiation sickness. Three days later, a second atomic strike on the city of Nagasaki killed some 37,000 people and injured another 43,000. Together the two bombs eventually killed an estimated 200,000 Japanese civilians. Was there really a need to create this nightmare? Did this nuclear onslaught really oblige Japan to surrender? This is too touchy a subject for public discussion in …
Sonoma County, Northern California — “Grapes versus eggs,” reports an excellent August 6 article in Sonoma County’s daily Press Democrat (PD). The Windsor Oaks Vineyard and Winery, seeking to expand its events, forced the closure of the popular Wise Acre Farm’s egg stand, disappointing many local food customers.
Selling eggs directly to people for years, Wise Acre owners Bryan Boyd and Raina Brolan were forced to shut down their operation by the winery that owns the road to the stand. A growing backlash against the wine industry erupted on YELP’s social media platform, supporting the food farmers. Many criticisms of the …
New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady says he had nothing to do with having air removed from game balls.
The NFL, following an investigation, says he did. It gave him a four game suspension, which he is appealing. That four game suspension could cost him somewhere between $2 million and $4 million of his $14 million 2015 salary. If he plays well with others, doesn’t get into any more trouble, and injuries and retirement don’t stop his career before he becomes 40 years old in 2017, he will earn $31 million for the 2016 and 2017 seasons.
The New York Times is a very good newspaper, except where ideology and party line demands intrude. Unfortunately these intrusions occur often and are of great importance. The Times is the paper of record of an imperial superpower whose leaders have long and regularly flaunted international law and used their great military and economic power recklessly, in good part because they can get away with it. They push and push, eventually starting or provoking a war when their target refuses to surrender (see Gareth Porter’s Perils of Dominance). The collapse of the Soviet Union worsened this situation by removing a …
It’s absolutely necessary to remember what happened 70 years ago in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, see the movies from then, listen to the survivors, the hibakusa. But it isn’t enough for us to rid the world of these crimes-against-humanity weapons. And that we must.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki is history and it is also the essence of the age you and I live in – the nuclear age. If the hypothesis is that by showing these films, we create opinion against nuclear weapons, 70 years of every more nuclearism should be enough to conclude that that hypothesis is plain wrong.
Our friends at Unist’ot’en Camp got visited by Klanada’s swiniest and we dropped everything and went to their territory to provide video support, as we have been doing for the past five years. We helped produce a couple of videos that got over half a million views and helped the Unist’ot’en get media attention, and much needed financial and physical support. The situation is rapidly developing and we will continue to support this shining example of grassroots Indigenous resistance.
This decision by Director General Yukia Amano to appear before the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations to testify on Iran’s nuclear program is regrettable, but it is also not surprising. Amano has been consulting with the U.S. Government on a regular basis ever since his appointment as Director General. This is well documented.
The dramatic change in the language of IAEA reports after Amano took over from Mohammad el-Baradei (whom the U.S. tried to kick out of office until he won the Nobel Peace Prize) shows the direct influence of the United States and Israel trying to indict Iran for …
Are Corbyn+Galloway the dream ticket to previously-unreachable ‘sunlit uplands’ of British politics? Would they present a much needed double-barrel warning to the warmongers of Tel Aviv and AIPAC’s lackeys in Washington? Could they clean out Westminster’s snake-pit and put Britain’s industries and workers first?
UK Labour Party bosses are on a suicide mission to block support for its most likely saviour, Jeremy Corbyn, who has emerged as the front-runner in the leadership contest.
Interim leader Harriet Harman is reported to have given orders to weed out hard lefties and other presumed mischief-makers, such as Tories, who are said to be joining the Party in …
by Edward S. Herman and David Peterson / August 5th, 2015
The “Srebrenica massacre” is repeatedly referred to in the Western media as “the largest massacre in Europe since World War II,” ((We take this phrase from the biographical entry for the former Washington Post reporter Michael Dobbs at the website of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.)) and its alleged Bosnian Serb perpetrators have been relentlessly pursued by the International Criminal Tribunal of the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) from 1995 up to the present time (the former Bosnian Serb President Radovan Karadzic and General Ratko Mladic are even now on trial for this and other purported crimes). The massacre took …
It has been stated that Bjørn Lomborga Danish economic analyst who has moonlighted as an environmentalist – the self-touted sceptical sort – may be one of the first climate change asylum seekers, a habitual castaway and ideological floater in need of mooring. The mooring, however, is simply not coming. “Lomborg has been rendered virtually ‘stateless’ as a political actor on climate since being defunded by the Danish government in 2012.”
Since then, Lomborg has landed at a rather unlikely place – a parcel service centre in Lowell, Massachusetts. This did not prevent Lomborg from living in Prague at the …
Social Capital, Investment in our Culture, What it Means to be an Inland Northwesterner
by Paul Haeder / August 5th, 2015
The behavior of an individual is determined not by their background, but by the character of their ancestry and cultural environment.
— Franz Boas, Race and Democratic Society (“Introduction,” 1945)
The universal question is what makes for a good community or a strong family or supportive team. I asked a wide variety of people to help contextualize and characterize what social capital and social movements can do to build a “community of sharing, fairness and resiliency.”
Even after getting responses from a minister, a director of a non-profit peace organization, a membership coordinator of a business chamber, a professor of social work at …
And Other Linguistic Shackles Guiding Us Into Slavery
by Jack Balkwill / August 5th, 2015
When people ask, “Why is it that we have such a corrupt government, with rigged elections and an economy which serves only wealthy transnational investors and their transnational corporations?” I would offer, “In part, because our language is being redefined by regents of the ruling Forces of Greed.”
Useful terms which could better explain our circumstances have been purposefully perverted so that they are now all but unintelligible. Such are the fruit of “think tanks” which strive to convert most of society into an ignorant, subservient class on behalf of corporate greed at any cost to the public interest. The American …
70 years ago (August 9, 1945) an all-Christian bomber crew dropped a plutonium bomb over Nagasaki City, Japan, instantly vaporizing, incinerating or otherwise annihilating tens of thousands of innocent civilians, a disproportionately large number of them Japanese Christians. The explosion mortally wounded uncountable thousands of other victims who succumbed to the blast, the intense heat and/or the radiation. An irradiated crucifix lies in the ruins of the Urakami Cathedral Following the Atomic Bombing of Nagasaki
In 1945, the US was regarded as the most Christian nation in the world (that is, …
The CBS news program 60 Minutes on Sunday aired an extended segment titled “The Battle Above” that relayed the concerns of various US military personnel that China and Russia could pose a threat to the vast system of American satellites that are used for military purposes and for commercial use by banks, telecommunications companies, farmers and others.
“Top military and intelligence leaders are now worried those satellites are vulnerable to attack. They say China, in particular, has been actively testing anti-satellite weapons that could, in effect, knock out America’s eyes and ears,” said correspondent David …
One-and-a-half year old Ali Saad Dawabsha became the latest victim of Israeli violence on July 31. He was burnt to death. Other members of his family were also severely burnt in a Jewish settlers’ attack on their home in the village of Duma, near Nablus, in the West Bank.
A spokesman for Rabbis for Human Rights told Aljazeera Arabic that this is the tenth attack on Nablus by settlers in July. A statement issued by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) provided an even more alarming statistic, putting the number of Jewish settlers’ attacks, some of them lethal, at an …
Water – its dearth or its abundance – is already a global problem. It manifests itself in poor countries, poor regions and poor neighborhoods first, but most assuredly will affect us all within the next generation. In 2015, the World Economic Forum (WEF) Global Risk Reports rated “Water crises” as the most important risk facing the world.
The United Nations reports that we have some 15 years to avert a full-blown water crisis and that, by 2030, demand for water will outstrip supply by 40 percent. As water supplies dwindle and as nations abuse water sources, the UN, our …
The oceans of the world are currently experiencing a “perfect storm” that is nasty, real nasty with too much warming, too much acidification, too much CO2, too much fishing, too many chemicals, too much Ag runoff, too much radiation (Fukushima), and too little ice (Arctic Ocean) bringing on too much methane (CH4). Whew!
How much can the oceans handle?
The answer to that question may be coming to surface. According to ABC News, May 19, 2014, “Mysterious Mass Animal Deaths All Over the World”:
Millions of birds, fish, crabs and other small marine life have been turning up dead in massive numbers from …
A gross violation of human rights gives rise to a set of state obligations, including that of providing remedies to the victims. Among such remedies is the duty to establish the true circumstances surrounding the violation and ensuring the identification and punishment of those responsible for it. The mass killings of 9/11 were, apart of being a huge crime, also a gross violation of the right to life of approximately 3,000 people. Yet legal literature has not dealt with this event from that perspective. Thus, the right of the victims to have the truth established and the perpetrators identified and …
From July 24-26 over 1500 registered Black activists and organizers from all over the U.S., Canada and even the Caribbean converged in Cleveland, Ohio for the 2015 Movement for Black Lives Convening. In addition to police terror and state violence, pertinent issues such as mass incarceration, economic empowerment, education, culture, housing and Black health were all working parts to an overwhelmingly incredible weekend.
This convening was more than just an assembly of passionate activists and talented organizers. It was way more than just workshops and Black radical thought. This mass convening was a weekend of love, a sacred and safe space …
Last Monday, the historic trial of former Chadian President Hissène Habré commenced at the freshly created Extraordinary African Chambers in the Senegalese capital of Dakar. Like most post-independence leaders of Chad, an extremely poor landlocked country south of Libya and east of Sudan, Habré showed himself to be a vile creature, giving orders to imprison, torture and kill large swathes of his population based on little more than his own paranoid mind. The fact that the Chambers, an African entity jointly agreed upon by Senegal and the African Union (AU), is proceeding the long overdue judgment of a notorious war …
On July 20, 2015 the United Nations Human Rights Committee in its 7 page Concluding Observations Report adopted a number of critical observations of Canada’s human right practices, treatment of indigenous people and criticized Harper’s policies on Immigration and treatment of refugees. The Report was termed “A wake up call” on Canada’s human rights performance.
The Committee composed of 17 International Experts conducted the first review of Canada’s human rights record in nearly a decade. The committee heard representations from the Canadian Government and also from Canadian Non-Governmental Organizations like Amnesty International and the International Human Rights Program at …
The truth about stone throwing as a form of resistance is that it is not an equal encounter between the thrower and the thrower’s quarry. Do not however minimize the power of stone throwing as stones can gravely injure or kill their intended targets. With that said in all of the almost thirty years that stone throwing has been officially utilized by Palestinians as an active form of resistance, fortunately to date very few Israelis have died from being hit with a stone (11 killed). It is estimated that each year there are 3,500 to 4,500 stone throwing incidents in the occupied territories.
Para gliders are flying over the stunning emerald sea. Summer hordes are descending on a Greek island of Kos from all corners of increasingly aggressive European Union. On the faces of visitors, there seems to be no regret, no shame, that Europe just raped and humiliated Greece, forcing its government to cancel democracy, instead succumbing to dictate of the mighty Germany and other dictatorial powers.
Tourists are busy frying themselves, stuffing their stomachs with seafood and boozing up in countless cafes, bars and restaurants of the old city. Hotels and eateries are packed. It is yet another hot and sunny day. …
The rulers of the two most powerful authoritarian regimes in the Middle East are launching major wars to reconfigure the Middle East. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has declared war by proxy on Iran, announcing full-scale military mobilization within Israel (July 27-29) and organizing the biggest political campaign of ultra Zionist Jews in Washington. The purpose of this two-pronged propaganda blitz is to defeat the recently signed US-Iranian agreement and start another major Middle East war. Ultimately, Netanyahu intends to take care of his ‘Palestinian Problem’ for good: complete the conquest and occupation of Palestine and expelling the …
On Tuesday both Russia and Ukraine celebrated the thousand-year anniversary of the death of Prince Vladimir, the man who historians credit for converting Russia to Christianity in 988. According to the Primary Chronicle, Prince Vladimir compelled a substantial number of Kiev’s inhabitants to accept Christian baptism. Supposedly, word from Vladimir went around town that “Whoever does not turn up at the river [Dnieper] tomorrow, be he rich, poor, lowly or slave, he shall be my enemy”. ((The Emergence of Rus 750-1200, Simon Franklin and Jonathan Shepard, p. 163))
During a grand reception held in the Kremlin, President Putin incorrectly, and …
Evolution is nature’s way of preserving itself, but nature is losing out for the first time ever as it becomes curiously unnatural, artificially induced to adapt to human existence. It is human-made evolution, through and through.
The Anthropocene is a term first coined (yr. 2000) by atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen (Nobel Prize 1991). It is currently under review as an official new geologic epoch; nevertheless, it has become a standard reference point in everyday science.
The Anthropocene is the dawn of a new age when humans consciously and subconsciously shape nature, altering an evolutionary process as old as life itself and challenging …
My father made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. Luca Brasi held a gun to his head and my father assured him that either his brains, or his signature, would be on the contract.
— The Godfather (1972)
In the modern global banking system, all banks need a credit line with the central bank in order to be part of the payments system. Choking off that credit line was a form of blackmail the Greek government couldn’t refuse.
Former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis is now being charged with treason for exploring the possibility of an alternative payment system in …
Jimmy Carter called a war waged in Vietnam by the United States — a war that killed 60,000 Americans and 4,000,000 Vietnamese, without burning down a single U.S. town or forest — “mutual” damage. Ronald Reagan called it a “noble” and “just cause.” Barack Obama promotes the myth of the widespread mistreatment of returning U.S. veterans, denounces the Vietnamese as “brutal,” and has launched a 13-year, $65 million propaganda program to glorify what the Vietnamese call the American War:
As we observe the 50th anniversary of the Vietnam War, we reflect with solemn reverence upon the valor of a generation that …
A second round of peace talks between Afghan government officials and Taliban representatives, expected to begin before the end of July, 2015, suggests that some parties to the fighting want to declare a cease fire. But even in the short time since the first round on July 7th, fighting has intensified. The Taliban, the Afghan government forces, various militias and the U.S. have ramped up attacks, across Afghanistan.
Some analysts say the Taliban may be trying to gain territory and clout to give them leverage in ‘peace talks.’ Taliban forces, apparently beginning to splinter since the supposed death of Mullah Omar, …
