Latest articles
by Barb Weir / July 21st, 2015
As many of you already know, Alison Weir (no relation, and she pronounces her name WEER while mine is pronounced WAH-YER) and her organization, If Americans Knew (IAK), have been expelled from the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation (USCEIO). I decided to get to the bottom of this important development, so I got in touch with Rube Joshner at the USCEIO, who agreed to be interviewed on condition of anonymity.
Barb Weir: For our readers who may not know, could you please explain why the USCEIO expelled IAK and Alison Weir from your organization?
Rube Joshner: Alison Weir violated our …
But Does Anyone Hear Pope Francis?
by John Stanton / July 21st, 2015
Though not explicitly stated, America’s most powerful instrument of national power is Capitalism. The pistons that power Neoliberal American Capitalism are: Diplomacy, Information, Military, Economic, Financial, Law Enforcement, Intelligence and Human Capital/People. The clearest exposition of the instruments of national power on record can be found in the US Army’s 2008 Special Operations Forces Unconventional Warfare Manual.
No assessment of American political, economic, international, cultural or military strategy/action can be stamped “legitimate” without reference to, and understanding of, these Olympian tools of power that America’s leaders have at their disposal. Combined they are the elements that form the spear and …
by James Hoover / July 21st, 2015
Are we special? Scientists have been asking that question for perhaps centuries. In various philosophical and religious ways, we have too.
The truth is that we don’t really know. Politicians, more assuredly, American politicians, feel obligated to say that America and Americans are special. The GOP, especially, bases its politics on a version of America having jingoistic trump (not with a big T) cards, one seen especially with the George W. Bush administration.
Americans justified an imperialistic vault into the West based on what we called “Manifest Destiny,” the belief that we are so special that displacing “inferiors,” more primitive than us, …
by Roshan Kissoon / July 21st, 2015
The recent celebration of two hundred years of Gurkha recruitment into the British Army in London, at the Royal Chelsea Hospital on the 11th of June, attended by the Queen and various dignitaries and celebrities, was not really a cause of celebration. In fact, it is disgraceful and a should be a source of shame for the British, the Nepalese, the Indians, and any country that has ever been invaded by the British Army and was ever part of the British Empire. Its time to call for an end to this outdated colonial practice.
The Gurkhas were first recruited by …
Email to the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation
by Free Palestine Movement / July 21st, 2015
Please be advised that the Free Palestine Movement resigns from the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, effective immediately.
We resign because of the disgraceful, disrespectful and unjust treatment of Alison Weir and her organization, If Americans Knew, in the procedures to expel her from the Campaign on the spurious grounds of insufficient avoidance of anti-Semitic persons and institutions.
We resign because it is clear that the decision had been made to expel IAK before the proceedings to do so had ever begun.
We resign because, in defiance of the most basic principles of justice, Ms. Weir was not given the …
by Alton C. Thompson / July 21st, 2015
In her This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate (2014), Naomi Klein states:
What is really preventing us from putting out the fire that is threatening to burn down our collective house? I think the answer is far more simple than many have led us to believe: we have not done the things that are necessary to lower emissions because those things fundamentally conflict with deregulated capitalism, the reigning ideology for the entire period we have been struggling to find a way out of this crisis. (p. 16)
By posing climate change as a battle between capitalism and the planet, I …
by Chris Wright / July 21st, 2015
One doesn’t have to be a brilliant social analyst to see that the contemporary world order is doomed, destined to start visibly crumbling within the next decade or two at the latest. The neoliberal system, in fact the corporate capitalist system, is radically unsustainable. It is too unstable, too universally rapacious, too humanly exploitative and environmentally destructive, too demoniacally self-consuming–for capitalism can profit from its self-immolation!–to last much longer.
Is it even necessary anymore to argue for these claims?
Capitalism means self-sabotage. Its profit-making interest lies in paying wage-earners as little as possible, and ideally in mechanizing and automating them out …
by Eric Walberg / July 21st, 2015
Kevin Barrett has become known in the US as a fearless journalist who cuts to the quick, his political and analytic skills leading to provocative, truthful explanations of our mostly inexplicable reality. He has written several books dealing with 9/11, and is currently an editor at Veterans Today, and pundit at Press TV, Russia Today, al-Etejah and other international channels. His website is TruthJihad.com. He builds on a well-established American journalistic tradition of brave exposers of government misdoings. Bill Blum and Seymour Hirsh are best known, but there are hundreds more.
Great American tradition
Blum is a legend from the 1960s, as …
by David Swanson / July 21st, 2015
Behind John Rawls’ veil of ignorance, an American ethics professor would imagine himself or herself choosing a society of wonderful economic and social justice, unheard of equality and liberty, and the “right” to “defend” itself through the counterproductive and self-destructive instrument of military empire and war. Peace isn’t permitted even in utopia, in U.S. academe. Why? Because John Rawls murdered Japanese people “in defense” and occupied their nation as philanthropy.
And why do others support other wars? Principally because of where they happen to have been born and what flavor of fairy tales they have been told as children. Which ancient …
by Herb Dyer / July 21st, 2015
You know, I tried to talk about good roads and good schools and all these things that have been part of my career, and nobody listened. And then I began talking about niggers, and they stomped the floor.
– George Wallace, after winning Alabama’s governor’s office in 1962
After losing his first run for governor in 1958, George Wallace famously told his campaign finance chief Seymore Trammell that he had been “out-niggered” by his opponent. There was no viable Republican Party in Alabama in the 1960s. Thus, winning the Democratic Party primary – any Democratic primary — was tantamount to …
by Matt Peppe / July 21st, 2015
A recent New York Times profile of Marco Rubio accurately describes the junior Senator from Florida, and member of the three-ring circus that is the Republican Presidential primary field, as Cuba’s “least favorite son.” The piece quoted a Havana resident as saying Rubio is “against Cuba in every possible way… Rubio and these Republicans, they are still stuck in 1959.” Presumably this view was representative of others that Times writer Jason Horowitz encountered while conducting his research in Cuba. This should not come as a surprise. Rubio is a reactionary fanatic who demagogues incessantly about the evils of the Cuban …
by Peter Phillips / July 20th, 2015
July 18th 2015 was the first day of this year’s summer camp for the world’s business and political aristocracy and their invited guests. 2,000 to 3,000 men, mostly from the wealthiest global one percent, gather at Bohemian Grove, 70 miles north of San Francisco in California’s Sonoma County—to sit around the campfire and chew the fat—off-the-record—with ex-presidents, corporate leaders and global financiers.
Speakers this year giving “Lakeside Chats” include past Secretary of Defense and the CIA Leon Panetta, Paul Volcker Jr. former Federal Reserve Chairman, retired Admiral Mike Mullen former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, NYU Law Professor Bryan …
by Shepherd Bliss / July 20th, 2015
Sonoma County Winegrowers bought an expensive, full-page, color ad, using tax dollars, in the July 12 daily Santa Rosa Press Democrat and in various weeklies, such as the North Bay Bohemian and Sonoma West. The ad ignited a firestorm of protest with angry letters to editors and online comments from the community storming local publications that ran the ad.
As someone who practices, writes about, and teaches college students at Sonoma State and Dominican Universities about what “sustainable” really means, the ad offends me. It is blatant propaganda of false advertising to hoodwink readers.
Winegrowers received a $377,282 federal grant in 2014 …
by Robert Hunziker / July 19th, 2015
Year-over-year, America sets new prison records. No other nation on Earth comes close to America’s “lock’em up” ethos.
Therefore, assuming that imprisonment records are accurate, the U.S. is one of the most dangerous countries in the world. How else explain the enormous “lock’em up” numbers? What’s going on? Is America riddled with criminals? Jeez, it’s a wonder that tourists come to America with so many criminals on every street corner.
Not to worry! Tourists feel safe because the jails are bulging, overflowing, thus, criminals must be off every street corner and already locked up. That’s what they presume to be true. Why …
by John R. Hall / July 19th, 2015
Somewhere in Washington, D.C. in the labyrinth of congressional offices there lurks a nearly unknown congressman. Unknown because he carefully avoids high profile or controversial issues. A veritable deaf-mute when it comes to voicing his opinion on vital matters. Considering the herd of loud-mouth miscreants with whom he shares those hallowed halls, you might even call him a breath of fresh air. And his name shall remain unspoken here, for this isn’t about him. When it all comes down to dust this public servant who appears to possess few personal opinions will be remembered for one sentence. A sentence so insightful and thought provoking that it will likely …
Government orders TV channel closed for links to Palestinian Authority, while Israel’s culture minister vows to "censor" critics
by Jonathan Cook / July 19th, 2015
The Israeli government has declared war on a Palestinian TV channel that launched last month from a mobile studio-truck near the city of Nazareth in Israel.
The station, which broadcasts six hours a day to Israel’s 1.5 million Palestinian Arab citizens, focuses on news, arts, food and celebrities, as well as offering children’s programmes and quiz shows.
Despite the channel’s modest budget and ambitions, however, Israel’s public security minister, Gilad Erdan, ordered its closure last week, describing its operations as a “breach of Israel’s sovereignty”.
The satellite channel – called Palestine ’48 – is the first to serve Israel’s Palestinian minority that is …
Free Kindle Book Download
by Dissident Voice Communications / July 19th, 2015
DV contributor Gary Brumback’s newest book, Corporate Reckoning Ahead, is available to DV readers as a free Kindle download from 20 July to 24 July.
Palestinian groups and individuals in the occupied homeland, refugee camps and the diaspora are speaking out
by Syria Support Movement / July 19th, 2015
We are Palestinians and Palestinian organizations that declare our solidarity with the Syrian people in their historic struggle for survival, now in its fifth year. We are in a unique position to understand and appreciate the challenges facing our Syrian brothers and sisters, because we face the same challenges.
We understand what it means to have our lands and our property taken by foreign usurpers. We understand what it means for millions of our people to be driven out of their homes and to be unable to return. We understand what it means for our interests and our national rights to …
by Andre Vltchek / July 18th, 2015
One of the mightiest South American waterways – Rio Paraguay – is forming a national frontier between Argentina and Paraguay, two countries with similar cultures but diametrically different political systems.
Argentina is socialist, with free medical care and mostly free education. It has a progressive government. It sent its creditors, the World Bank and IMF, packing. It defaulted its debt, which was accumulated during the right-wing and pro-Western governments (Greece should study and follow Argentina’s model). It is increasingly close to other socialist Latin American countries, and also to non-Western powers like Russia and China.
Paraguay is a divided country. Even …
It's Time for a Real Investigation
by Jack Balkwill / July 18th, 2015
There appears to be a bigger lie than “weapons of mass destruction.” It’s not simply that the illegal invasion of Iraq was based on lies, but that the entire “war on terrorism” is likely based on lies.
We were told by our government that Afghanistan was invaded for giving shelter to Osama bin Laden, who was responsible for the 9/11 attacks. Mainstream press have pushed this so repeatedly that “9/11” and “Osama bin Laden” have become interchangeable.
While working on this piece I asked the first three people I ran into at my local grocery store “Who was responsible for the 9/11 …
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 …
