With a general election looming in the United Kingdom and Spain possibly following Greece’s revolt against austerity later this year, we need to think, not just who or what we are voting for, but why we should vote at all.
People are suffering from a deficiency which is as unbalancing as a hormone or vitamin deficiency. What we are severely lacking in is democracy. Many of those pondering on the state of politics feel unhappy and somehow depleted. They haven’t yet realised it is democracy that’s lacking because they have believed what so many politicians have told them, over and over …
Saul believed Wednesday morning would be the best time for his visit to the New Health Care Market.
“Hey, $55 dollars and we’ll have that urticaria off your face in no time at all. Money back guarantee!”
They must think Saul is a real greenhorn. Everybody knows whoever has the first stall near the auditorium’s entrance was sure to be peddling overpriced, shoddy product.
“Don’t listen to him. $40 and we’ll have you all looking like new in half an hour.”
Another one. Saul understood they figured he wasn’t just browsing, but he was beginning to feel like chum surrounded by ravenous …
The announcement by the Obama administration that it will seek congressional authorization to expand the war on ISIS in Syria and possibly send more heavy weapons to its client government in Ukraine did not generate the kind of muscular opposition and sense of urgency that one would expect from the anti-interventionist liberals and significant sectors of what use to be the anti-imperialist and anti-war left.
Outside of a few articles written by some of us confined to the marginalized and shrinking left, the reports that the administration was considering both of these courses of action were met with passing indifference. It …
by The Real News Network (TRNN) / February 17th, 2015
With 90 percent of Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s campaign donors being U.S. Americans, the Falic family tops the list, and their influence reaches both sides of the aisle in Congress.
It’s really 19th century behavior in the 21st century, you just don’t invade another country on phony pretexts in order to assert your interests.
— Secretary of State, John Kerry, “Meet the Press”, March 2, 2014
Various professional psychology sites state succinctly: “Projection is a defense mechanism which involves taking our own unacceptable qualities or feelings and ascribing them to other people.”
Further: “Projection tends to come to the fore in normal people at times of crisis, personal or political, but is more commonly found in the neurotic or psychotic – in personalities functioning at a primitive level as in narcissistic …
The U.S. Olympic Committee’s decision last month to make Boston its candidate for the right to host the 2024 Summer Games has generated much excitement within the city and its environs. It has also engendered considerable opposition.
Although Boston Mayor Martin Walsh has pledged to expend no public funds except for upgrading city infrastructure, critics have raised myriad concerns. These include worries about gentrification and displacement, qualms about billions of dollars in “homeland security” spending and the creation of what would effectively be a police state, and fears that efforts to ready Boston will divert energy and resources …
Mr Engler, I must respectfully take issue with your article, ‘Capital Must Be Taxed’ (Dissident Voice, February 12th 2015) which repeats the old Keynesian myth that capitalist depressions are caused by “a fall in demand caused by declining wages and rising unemployment”. These phenomena are the effects but not the cause.
And rather than quoting Thomas Picketty’s, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, I would venture to suggest that one would do far better to read the original Capital published in the nineteenth-century; and, in addition, the associated work, Value, Price and Profit.
An inherent feature of the capitalist system is its …
Numa hung a left turn only to find himself caught up in the middle of a nastily developing situation.
Line after line of passengers stood waiting, bags by their side, as they slowly, one by one, were herded to the front.
But there was no grand prize awarded for making it into the brightly shining spotlight. No special privileges were offered at the checkpoint. Arriving to the front of the line was not a victory by any means. What …
Amazingly, the history of the Vietnam War is still being fought over in the United States. There seems to be an effort to reframe that horrific and shameful campaign into some honorable intervention. For example, the National Defense Authorization Act of 2008 authorized the U.S. Secretary of Defense to conduct a program to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Vietnam War. In 2012, President Obama signed a proclamation stating that the commemoration would begin on Memorial Day (May 28th) 2012 and would continue until Veterans Day (November 11th) 2025.
Unfortunately, the specified goals for the commemoration were limited and ignored the …
The religo-fascist Islamic State’s penchant for beheading opponents and innocents, and its intentional burning to death of a Jordanian pilot captured after his jet was downed is, of course, horrific, as is its slaughter of prisoners, the torture and murder of fellow Muslims and others, and its abduction and violation of women. Most recently, IS released a video showing the beheadings by its militants of 21 Egyptian Christian immigrant workers in Libya.
“Over the past several months,” according to Stratfor Feb. 12, “the Islamic State has released videos documenting the executions of thousands of Syrian and Iraqi prisoners of war. In …
TEXAS—At their annual meeting in Big Bucks Bay, Bahamas, airline executives promised that cheaper jet fuel would not lead to lower prices. Instead, they vowed to follow a long airline tradition and raise prices while lowering their services.
After years of poor-mouthing, airlines merged, drove out competition and are now able to set prices with little thought to competition or regulation.
“We rule the skies,” said Joe Butspark, CEO of Gouge Airlines. “We have no competition. What are people going to do, take the bus?”
As Butspark addressed his fellow CEOs, they sipped $8000 champagne, gorged on caviar and steak, …
Another year, another set of coups that we can expect to be administered by the West.
This year, it is all beginning in February. First the onslaught against Argentina and following that comes yet another coup against Venezuela, and its democratically elected, progressive government.
Nicolas Maduro announced Thursday that the government had thwarted a coup attempt which was being coordinated by Venezuela’s right-wing opposition with the support of the U.S. government.
Just the day before the revelations, opposition leaders Leopoldo Lopez, Maria Corina Machado and Antonio Ledezma released a “transition plan” which involved privatization …
Six weeks after being abducted on her way home from school in the occupied West Bank, 14-year-old Malak al-Khatib was released on Friday from the jail where she was being imprisoned by Israeli occupation forces. The youngest Palestinian girl ever to be incarcerated, Malak is one of hundreds of children to be prosecuted through the Israeli military court system each year. As of December 2014, there were 156 Palestinian child prisoners, 17 of which were under 16 years old, according to the Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association. As the benefactor of …
At a time when governments are failing abysmally to mitigate climate change, reduce inequality or end poverty, the key to creating a more equal and sustainable world is establishing participative forms of political engagement at all levels of society – from the local to the global.
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In an era of politics characterised by unconstrained corporate lobbying, a well-oiled ‘revolving door’ between industry and government, and an endless stream of campaign contributions from dirty oil and other lucrative industries, is the long-championed ideal of a truly democratic state now a lost cause? Should concerned citizens and activists turn their attention …
While the fossil fuel industry merrily hums along with blessings from the world’s body politic, especially in America, climate scientists ponder the question: Can global warming be solved… in enough time?
This hand-wringing conundrum has been swirling around for years but nobody has stepped forward with one really good idea that has gained traction — none whatsoever!
The National Academy of Sciences recently released a study that addresses the issue of whether technological manipulation can do the job. Their short answer seems to be “no,” but it is much more complex than that. ((Climate Intervention is Not a Replacement for Reducing Carbon …
The disqualification of Haneen Zoabi highlights the difficulties the new political bloc faces maintaining cohesion after polling day, says Jonathan Cook
by Jonathan Cook / February 14th, 2015
Haneen Zoabi, a member of the Israeli parliament since 2009, was barred from the campaign by the Central Elections Committee, a highly partisan body dominated by the major Israeli political parties.
As expected, the right-wing parties of prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu and foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman petitioned for her disqualification, accusing her of making statements in support of armed struggle.
But, more surprisingly, they were supported by the Zionist Camp, which has positioned itself as a centre-left alternative to the Netanyahu government. It is currently the second most popular party after Netanyahu’s.
The committee members ignored the advice of the country’s attorney-general, Yehuda …
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
The literary anthology, Mishuga Americansher Zeitung, (MAZ) is now accepting submissions of fiction, nonfiction, water, non-water, prose-in-verse-format (“poetry”), photography, graphic design and art for its 2015 publication.
Wrote a buncha stuff? Took real nasty photos of your drunken friends? Send it to /dev/null!
All con artists, lewd photographers, Beaten writers, Beaten poets, Beaten, stupefied, clueless creeps, ghouls, graphomaniacs, sylvanicides and blabber-mouths are invited to submit entries celebrating the writer as artist, though submissions are not limited to this theme. In fact, we prefer …
Brian Williams, American television network anchor caught telling his audience a fantasy version of his experience on a foreign assignment, has unintentionally provided us with a near perfect allegory and tale of caution about American journalism and the role it plays in politics and foreign affairs.
I am not referring to the fact that a number of prominent Americans have done exactly the same thing Williams did making false public claims of risky deeds, this Münchausen-like condition being surprisingly common among American politicians. Hillary Clinton, in her 2008 nomination campaign, claimed she came under fire in Tuzla, Boznia in 1996, …
Talk about a contrived crisis. NATO, in its ongoing struggle to create enemies and thereby provide itself with a reason to exist, is now calling Russia its greatest threat. In other words, there really is no threat, unless NATO provokes Moscow and in doing so, creates one. In the current period—one that was preceded most recently by almost complete military domination of the world by the United States—Russia’s recent and relatively mild reactions to its growing encirclement by US client regimes and NATO military forces has been ratcheted up to what NATO is calling the greatest threat faced …
As I was leaving India, which is, according to the Empire “the largest democracy on Earth”, a flight hostess of Qatar Airways distributed, even before take-off, copies of the International New York Times. One of its cover stories was titled “China sounds alarm on ideas from West, with a big exception”.
In its usual vitriolic manner, a newspaper that could easily be described as the flagship of official Western propaganda, commented:
“They are out there, hiding in library stacks, whispering in lecture halls, armed with dangerous textbooks and subversive pop quizzes: foreign enemies plotting a stealthy academic invasion …
Buh-bye, Kayla. Have fun with your 72 Yasser Arafats.
— Debbie Schussel, February 10, 2014
The circumstances of her death are still coming to the fore. Aid worker and activist Kayla Mueller, an ISIS hostage captured in August 2013, supposedly died in a Jordanian air raid on February 6. While much of the commemorative nature of Mueller’s death veered into the land of over sweetened reminiscences and nobility, an undercurrent of dislike bubbled to the surface.
The rejoicing and scolding did not take long to slither their way into the public arena. But what was striking about the vitriol was that you could …
It is crowded on the Gaza Strip. Very few playgrounds. Besides being crowded, it is also dangerous. Traps everywhere. Houses that were bombed to rubble during the last war have not been reconstructed. Children playing in the rubble get injured. Walls collapse, unexploded ordinances detonate when played with. Everything is missing to recreate the home that disappeared during the bombing. There is no cement, iron bars, aggregates, pipes, tools, wood. There is no electricity, water or sewage management. Everything must be imported and the tunnels are few and narrow.
Become Ocean, composed by John Luther Adams, commissioned and performed by Ludovic Morlot, music director, Seattle Symphony Orchestra, won the Grammy for best contemporary classical composition, February 2015.
Indeed, Mr. Adams also won the Pulitzer Prize for the same haunting orchestral piece, suggesting a “relentless tidal surge, evoking thoughts of melting polar ice and rising sea levels,” (2014 Pulitzer Prize Winners, Music.)
Thus and so, global warming gains recognition within a vanguard of artistic creation, on stage in orchestral performance, the Seattle Symphony Orchestra’s first-ever Grammy, 2015.
John Luther Adams (Fairbanks, Alaska) has long been inspired by the expansive, untamed landscape of …
If there is one story that encapsulates the corruption of public life at every level, it is the latest revelations about HSBC’s Swiss bank helping thousands of clients evade tax. Some £78 billion was stashed away, out of sight of the tax authorities of various countries.
HSBC was praised in the UK after the banking crash for being the “clean” bank, the one that didn’t need a massive bail-out from public money for the semi-legal but wholly unethical practices the other banks were engaged in. Maybe that was because HSBC preferred to engage in completely illegal practices.
The man who sat atop this global money-laundering …
It would be in a place you’d recognize immediately: just another dark, clean, church basement, in an old church near a bus stop. With fluorescent lighting and folding chairs. Cool and quiet inside, with a reassuring, but somehow melancholy feel. Only the ones who’ve dropped out of the light, become invisible to the rest of the fast-moving, forward-racing world, would go there. The losers, the ones who’ve fallen in the race and sit on the sidelines as the others speed on out of sight, holding their sides and gasping, baffled and exhausted and sad.
Despite its success of repelling Israeli military advances in Gaza, Hamas’s regional political maneuvers of recent years are not bearing fruits. Jointly isolated by Israel and other Arab parties, unaided by the Palestinian Authority (PA) of Mahmoud Abbas, the Islamic Resistance Movement is once again facing difficult choices, and it seems to be choosing a cautious return to its old camp of Iran and Hezbollah. The maneuver this time is particularly risky.
Hamas’ other options, however, are too limited or simply don’t exist. The movement is facing formidable challenges: a mired economy, ruined infrastructure, destroyed Rafah tunnels and a persisting …
You may have noticed that nearly every essay or article emerging from the underfunded ghettos of leftist thinking in this country in the wake of a terrorist atrocity immediately offers a firm and frequently hysterical disclaimer that the author does not approve of the terrorist atrocity he will now discuss. This is necessary because the intelligentsia has conflated any form of self-criticism with condoning terror. It may be perfectly apt to reflect on “how good we are,” as George W. Bush once mumbled. It may be admirable to haughtily meditate on the liberties enshrined in that hallowed scroll hidden in …
In the 1940s, following decades of booms, busts, unemployment, disorder, wars and destruction, rigid free market policies were abandoned. Governments began to deliberately act to maintain employment and market demand. This shift was identified with J.M. Keynes, a prominent British economist and government adviser who had made the case that classical economics was wrong. Depressions, he wrote, were not caused by a decline in the supply of capital but by a fall in demand caused by declining wages and rising unemployment.
During Keynesian times, until the late 1970s, economies and employment grew steadily. Democracy came to mean that governments had a …
