Latest articles
by Binoy Kampmark / March 6th, 2015
Like a neutrino bomb on the landscape of banking, regulation and journalism, the HSBC tax evasion story via its Swiss subsidiary keeps spreading with devastating effect – at least for those whose careers concern it. According to investigative journalist Nafeez Ahmed, who managed to get hold of rather golden whistleblower material from Nicholas Wilson, a “conspiracy of silence” has characterised the treatment of HSBC within the regulatory community, law-enforcement authorities and the media generally.
Wilson, a former debt recovery specialist at Weightmans solicitors, revealed to Ahmed how “Britons have been defrauded of a total of one billion pounds worth of …
by Ralph Nader / March 6th, 2015
Apart from inadvertently making the case for equal time by his Israeli pre-election opposition, the spectacle of Benjamin Netanyahu’s wild diatribe at the joint session of Congress amidst the feral cheers of his congressional yahoos will be remembered as a textbook case of propaganda unhinged from reality.
Starting from his preposterous premise that Iran, a poor country of 77 million people with an economy nearly the size of Massachusetts’, is planning a caliphate to conquer the world, Mr. Netanyahu builds his case on belligerent words by Iranian leaders, who believe they are responding to Israeli belligerence backed by its ultra-modern, U.S. …
by Robert Hunziker / March 6th, 2015
The planet has warmed by 0.85C since the industrial revolution, or since 1880, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which is the baseline for measurement by the scientific community. That doesn’t seem like much; it’s such a small number, less than one.
But, remarkably, the increase of 0.85C happened within 150 years, whereas historically it normally took much, much longer for the planet’s temperature to increase by that amount. Ostensibly, it’s speeding up by quite a bit.
Beware! The 0.85C temp increase is mere triviality when compared to some prior events in the paleoclimatic record books. An ominous event …
Intense Challenges to Wineries Erupt
by Shepherd Bliss / March 5th, 2015
(Sebastopol, California) — Sonoma County’s premium wine industry in the San Francisco North Bay has become a magnet that attracts developers from around the country, across oceans, and nearby. They move heavy industrial operations into rural areas and expand them to become event centers and commercial bottling operations. Under the pretense that they are merely agriculture, rather than alcohol-producing factories, large wineries seek to avoid Environmental Impact Reports (EIR) and the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA).
Such wineries over-use precious, limited resources—such as water, air, and land—which threatens the environment and the quality of life in our semi-rural region. The contiguous Napa, …
More Bodies, Plus Women, Necessary
by John Stanton / March 5th, 2015
…Evil minds that plot destruction. Sorcerers of death’s destruction. In the fields the bodies burning as the war machine keeps turning…Politicians hide themselves away. They only started the war. Why should they go out to fight? They leave that role to the poor.
— Black Sabbath, War Pigs
Oh, it’s out there. It is the US government’s Selective Service/Draft program that currently requires all males 18 years of age to willingly sign up for the opportunity to have the US government force them, under penalty of law, to work for the government in a killing and maiming capacity (military employment), or in …
Spokane as both incubator and small town suffocation – 14 years writing about us
by Paul Haeder / March 5th, 2015
A little inculcation of my friend John Steppling’s blog, over here, now, read, please:
The House of Tards
The very idea of language, of putting that raging and pulsating syntax and grammar to work, with precision and poetry, well, this is a time of fifty book wonders, folks who write nothing, really, pick your topic, and those I am feeling the old stomach turning on the most are tied to climate change, faux social justice, renewable energy, all the lies about a new green economy, a la the corporate model.
Language is a …
Imprisons Kurdish journalist
by Ophelia Murphy and Dylan Murphy / March 3rd, 2015
Kurdish journalist and writer Ozgur Amed has recently been sentenced to 3 years in prison for his political activism on behalf of the Kurdish people. The 7th Criminal High Court of Diyarbakir sentenced Ozgur on the trumped up charge of “committing an illegal organization crime while not being an illegal organization member”.
This piece of double speak refers to Ozgur’s participation in a demonstration in Diyarbakir three days after a Turkish war plane massacred 34 Kurdish civilians in the Roboski village on the 28th December 2011.
On this day a 38 strong group of villagers from Roboski …
by Matt Peppe / March 3rd, 2015
In recent weeks the Ebola epidemic in West Africa has slowed from a peak of more than 1,000 new cases per week to 99 confirmed cases during the week of February 22, according to the World Health Organization. For two countries that have taken diametrically opposed approaches to combating the disease, the stark difference in the results achieved over the last five months has become evident.
The United States, which sent about 2,800 military troops to the region in October, has announced an end to its relief mission. Most soldiers have already returned. Pentagon Press Secretary Rear Admiral John Kirby declared …
by James Petras / March 2nd, 2015
Over the past 50 years the US and European powers have engaged in countless imperial wars throughout the world. The drive for world supremacy has been clothed in the rhetoric of “world leadership”, the consequences have been devastating for the peoples targeted. The biggest, longest and most numerous wars have been carried out by the United States. Presidents from both parties direct and preside over this quest for world power. The ideology which informs imperialism varies from “anti-communism” in the past to “anti-terrorism” today.
Washington’s drive …
Everything from growing food demands, climate change, and environmental refugees are changing our future
by Paul Haeder / March 1st, 2015
In an age when man has forgotten his origins and is blind even to his most essential needs for survival, water along with other resources has become the victim of his indifference.
— Rachel Carson
It’s not as if we in the Inland Northwest have a shortage of adherents of the mother of modern environmentalism, Dr. Rachel Carson, whose seminal work, Silent Spring (1962) is both the bible and standard manual for today’s activists looking to stave off environmental and societal collapse.
I’ve had the pleasure of running the Spokane River, Little Spokane, Coeur d’Alene, and parts of the Columbia with some passionate …
Riffing in a time of Ebola, Agnotology and Death of the Planet
by Paul Haeder / March 1st, 2015
Note: It’s been a long while since I posted. Obvious reasons include massive amounts of work, and, well, really, what do these articles, amassed, do to forward a revolution against the United States of Israel, the Empire of Entropy, the Star Chambers and warped men and women in Brooks Brothers outfits? Really. One fine fellow recently said that all the so-called progressive and lefty liberals writing these days for things like Counterpunch or In These Times, The Nation, what have you, are part of the leisure class, or at least those pleasantly surviving with health insurance, no rental or mortgage payment …
by Will Kramer / February 28th, 2015
On Wednesday, February 25, the Wisconsin Senate passed a so-called “right-to-work” bill, which will almost certainly be approved by the Republican-dominated state Assembly next week and signed by Governor Scott Walker. As debate began, I was arrested and dragged away by at least six police officers along with my brother. We were standing in a hallway outside the Senate chamber; the police deemed that we as Wisconsin citizens had no right to be there, in our own house of government. I was processed and held at the county jail, and charged with disorderly conduct and resisting arrest. Resisting arrest is …
by Bill Annett / February 28th, 2015
Coursing through the trackless wastes between Toronto and Winnipeg, our intrepid reporter Rap (short for “rapporteur,” just to add a touch of class), taking a leaf from Stephen Colbert (Col-bear) and his Report (pronouced Re-poor), checked in recently. In fact the paper trail of his expense account items continued, meandering across Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania, notably hovering in Camden, N.J. with an item for $139.50 dateline Moe’s Jazz Society. But no matter. He’s now in Atlantic City and has updated us with a full report.
Unfortunately, Rap has recently uncovered a breaking news item that threatens to derail the whole fracking/pipeline …
by Matt Peppe / February 28th, 2015
Yoan Moncada, the 19-year-old Cuban baseball phenom, agreed on Monday to sign with the Boston Red Sox. He is the latest talent from the baseball-crazy nation to join the Major Leagues. Moncada will receive a $31.5 million signing bonus, which should make him financially secure for life. But because of the U.S. government’s continued economic war on the Cuban people, in the form of the 54-year-old embargo, Moncada — unlike MLB prospects from any other country on the planet — will be forced to surrender residency in his native land to realize his professional dreams.
Since September 2013, the Cuban …
Freedom to Control
by Binoy Kampmark / February 27th, 2015
The Federal Communications Commission chairman Tom Wheeler was bullish after the 3-2 vote of his commission reclassifying broadband as common carriers. Companies such as Verizon had made their mark in previous litigation, arguing that the FCC had bungled over imposing common carrier regulations on broadband providers. The issue was one of classification: as such providers were never common carriers to begin with – at least within the purview of the FCC – they could not be treated as such.
“We have addressed that issue, that is the underlying issue, that is the sine qua non of all …
by David Swanson / February 27th, 2015
Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad to hear that Congress members will skip Netanyahu’s speech no matter what reason they offer. Here are some of them:
It’s too close to Netanyahu’s election. (That doesn’t persuade me. If we had fair, open, publicly funded, un-gerrymandered, verifiably counted elections, then “politics” wouldn’t be a dirty word and we would want politicians to show themselves doing things to try to please us before, during, and after elections. I want them acting that way now, even with our broken system. I don’t want the U.S. interfering in Israeli elections, but allowing a speech …
by Medea Benjamin / February 27th, 2015
As a secular Jew, I don’t do much praying. But this week, as the powerful pro-Israeli government lobby AIPAC (the American Israel Public Affairs Committee) holds its annual policy meeting in Washington DC, I’m praying that this year marks the beginning of the end of the lobby’s grip on US foreign policy.
From March 1-3, over 10,000 AIPAC supporters will descend on the nation’s capital. The meeting comes at a time when the relationship between President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is at an all-time low. Speaker John Boehner’s invitation to Netanyahu to address a joint session of Congress …
by Robert Hunziker / February 27th, 2015
Imagine this scenario: The following is a Public Service Announcement by the New York Department of Environmental Conservation, Division of Water, July 4, 2015: Because of low water levels in state reservoirs, the Division of Water proclaims a statewide water-rationing program. Starting next month, on August 1st, 2015, water service will turn off at 1:00 P.M. on a daily basis for an indeterminate period of time. Service will return the following morning.
Now, imagine a city the size of the State of New York with its 20 million people subjected to the same water-rationing plan. As it happens, São Paulo, capital …
by Andre Vltchek / February 27th, 2015
India can hardly be part of BRICS, if BRICS is to remain one of the main symbols of the fight against Western imperialism and savage global market fundamentalism.
“India is dreaming about becoming next United States. And people, brainwashed by the Western and Indian corporate media, are hoping that Prime Minister Modi will take them there,” explained Mr. Binu Matthew, the editor of an influential progressive Indian web-based magazine Countercurrents, which operates from the southern state of Kerala. “Poor people and the lower middle-class are fully obliterated; they have disappeared from television screens, from newspapers and from Bollywood films… Unless …
by William T. Hathaway / February 26th, 2015
“The world can only be changed by people who don’t like it,” wrote Bertolt Brecht in explaining why radicals have a negative attitude about the society we live in. We don’t like the way things are. Sometimes our dislike can even become loathing.
It was in just such a fit of loathing that the idea for my new novel, Lila, the Revolutionary, came to me. I was appalled by how capitalism has become so pervasive and aggressive, a globalized madness. In despair, I saw all these predatory men and women in dark suits commanding us, marching us resolutely towards war and …
by Adam Engel / February 26th, 2015
Because I could not stop for Death
He carjacked my Mercedes.
I did not fear his epithets,
Nor crave his white-gowned lady.
I’d buried myself — long — ago
Death wasn’t — even — spooky.
Languid — dark — and hop-head slow —
He seemed less grim than kooky.
I sold my — soul — long time — before
Death — purchased his — black — Lugar.
I am The Man — Death is my whore,
My cheap-by-the-pound-of-flesh loser.
Oh, yes. That “freedom thing.” Of course.
Can’t tell. Classified. Guarded secret — of the stage.
Behave — like Death — be a good horse —
I pay a living wage….
by Ajamu Nangwaya / February 26th, 2015
…when you select heroes about which black children ought to be taught, let them be black heroes who have died fighting for the benefit of black people. We never were taught about Christophe or Dessalines. It was the slave revolt in Haiti when slaves, black slaves, had the soldiers of Napoleon tied down and forced him to sell one half of the American continent to the Americans. They don’t teach us that. This is the kind of history we want to learn.
— Malcolm X ((Malcolm X, By Any Means Necessary (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1970/1992), 125.))
February 21, 2015 marked the …
Shock and Awe Has PTSD. Yet Obama’s Game for More.
by Norman Ball / February 26th, 2015
We must cheer our allies even when they meet us in half-measure.
Ever so tepidly, Ron Paul’s widely-reported recent editorial How Many More Wars? recasts the fiscal preoccupations that often dominate the war question. Uninitiated readers could easily conclude that fiscal irresponsibility is the immoral center of U.S. military misadventures. Yet surely Mr. Paul, the killing and maiming of tens of thousands out-outrages budgetary malfeasance? Nonetheless we’ll acquiesce to the former Senator’s favored moral compass, parsimony, as a way in to the latest looming debacle out of Washington ’cause, sadly enough, money commandeers the debate in ways both subtle and …
by Coromoto Jaraba / February 26th, 2015
In Venezuela, politics is always a cause for misunderstanding and long heated conversations among friends and people in the streets. But Venezuelans are far from being a people who would turn against each other. We are known for our easygoing nature and good humor, for loving our visitors, and for being talkative and even sometimes nosy.
During the last year, however, we have seen a fierce media campaign to portray Venezuela as not only a chaotic nation and impossible to govern, but a place where political factions are ready to launch a violent civil war.
In fact, the states that border Venezuela …
A review of Made by Raffi
by Kim Petersen / February 26th, 2015
… The school has the power to modify the social order.
— John Dewey ((John Dewey, Moral Principles in Education (NY: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1909): location 37.))
There are people, usually of a Leftist persuasion, who otherwise come under the umbrella term of progressivism. Many might well point to the ineffectiveness or futility of progressivism as a movement given the regressivist trends in society: fascism as adduced by corporatization of the power structure, the mere existence of a power structure and its hierarchy, greater inequality, government secrecy and intrusion into the privacy of citizens, espionage, militaristic policing, racism, militaristic hegemony, wars, …
Truth in Media
by Ben Swann / February 25th, 2015
Ben Swann investigates the origins of the militant group referred to as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
http://youtu.be/o6kdi1UXxhY
by Ralph Nader / February 25th, 2015
Make no mistake about it, sports are important.
That’s true if for no other reason than the fact that sports absorb billions of hours of people’s time – at all ages. Whatever you think about sports, they’re clearly important for that reason alone.
Sports are also important because they have become a multibillion-dollar industry, one of the top ten biggest industries in the country. According to Plunkett Research, the estimated size of the entire sports industry in 2012 was $435 billion. That makes it much bigger than the U.S. auto industry, movie industry and many others.
Sports are important …
US spin on Middle East violence must change
by Ramzy Baroud / February 24th, 2015
Truly, US President Barack Obama’s recent call to address the root causes of violence, including that of the so-called “Islamic State” (IS) and al-Qaeda was a step in the right direction, but still miles away from taking the least responsibility for the mayhem that has afflicted the Middle East since the US invasion of Iraq in 2003.
“The link is undeniable,” Obama said in a speech at the State Department on 19 February. “When people are oppressed and human rights are denied – particularly along sectarian lines or ethnic lines – when dissent is silenced, it feeds violent extremism. It …
Tracking Patient Data Like Tracking a Missile
by John Stanton / February 24th, 2015
“Defense Contractor” is no longer a valid term for US weapons makers.
References to the “military industrial complex” are agonizingly silly particularly since the man who coined the term — President Dwight Eisenhower — was as ruthless as his CIA director John Foster Dulles. According to the Miller Center at the University of Virginia, defense spending never fell below 50 percent of the US budget during Eisenhower’s presidency. In fact, he increased spending on nuclear weapons. And it gets worse:
During his first year in office, Eisenhower authorized the CIA to deal with… Iran that had begun during Truman’s presidency. In August …
by Kim Petersen / February 24th, 2015
Elie Wiesel has jumped on his horse to once again topple the enemies of the Jewish state. Wiesel identifies Iran as such an enemy, although it seems rather that it is Israel that has made itself the enemy of Iran.
Wiesel says, in an ad placed in the New York Times and Washington Post: “The Ayatollah Khamenei has been as clear as his predecessor in declaring his goal: ‘the annihilation and destruction’ of Israel. He is bent on acquiring the weapons needed to make good on the deadly promise.” ((See the ad here.))
There is something about the Shoah and chutzpah …
