Latest articles
by James Hoover / January 24th, 2015
The Trans-Pacific Partnership has been negotiated secretly for many years and there is good reason for the secrecy, especially in terms of how it affects billions of people in the world. As you might guess those who benefit most are governments and the rich and powerful.
Clyde Prestowitz, president of the Economic Strategy Institute, who served in the Reagan and Clinton administrations, says that TPP won’t deliver jobs or curb China’s power, the former a fallacy that seems to be pushed, or at least suggested, by both Congress and the Obama administration.
Supporters like Rep. Charles Boustany (R-La.) and former U.S. …
Who are the heroes of Greece?
by Winston Alpha / January 24th, 2015
As you may have heard, Greece will be holding national elections this Sunday, January 25. I’m not here to talk about the election itself, however—I’d rather focus on how the for-profit media has skewed their reporting on the election to imbue everything they write with a clear anti-Syriza bias. And this is an important issue to keep in mind, because as Malcolm X once observed: “If you aren’t careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.”
With that in mind, notice how virtually every mainstream …
by Walter Brasch / January 24th, 2015
Long before the price of gas and oil began to plummet, socially conscious churches, universities, non-profit organizations, and local governments began to divest themselves of fossil fuel stock and shock the fossil fuel industry to understand the environmental and public health concerns.
The World Council of Churches, which represents about 590 million Christians in 520,000 congregations, decided in July that to continue to hold fossil fuel stock would compromise its ethics, and recommended that the 349 member denominations consider divesting oil and gas stock.
Six of the eight Anglican dioceses of New Zealand and Polynesia, and four dioceses in Australia divested their …
by Binoy Kampmark / January 24th, 2015
What a spanner in the works of international relations he proved to be. The late King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz al Saud of Saudi Arabia was always the spoiler in the morality plays of Western powers keen to back him. Oil was always the greatest deterrent against getting on his wrong side, but it also meant the most intolerable of inconsistencies. For most governments, however, these were tolerated.
Those inconsistencies were there for all to see in the eulogies for the monarch. US President Barack Obama gave a description of someone who was distinctly different from a member of the House of …
by Gareth Porter / January 24th, 2015
The jury is still out in the trial of former CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling for allegedly having leaked the story of “Operation Merlin” – the covert CIA effort to lure Iran into working on phony plans for a key component of a nuclear weapon – to New York Times reporter James Risen.
But “Operation Merlin” itself was also on trial. The CIA was hoping that testimony by prosecution witnesses and a series of declassified CIA cables introduced as evidence would show that Risen’s account was wrong in recounting that the CIA’s human asset “Merlin” had immediately spotted a flaw in the …
by Felicity Arbuthnot / January 23rd, 2015
The threat is serious, the time short. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists does not move the hands of the Doomsday Clock for light or transient reasons. The clock ticks now at just three minutes to midnight because international leaders are failing to perform their most important duty—ensuring and preserving the health and vitality of human civilization.
— Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, January 2015
When Barack Hussein Obama was presented with the Nobel Peace Prize on December 10th, 2009, just eight months into his Presidency, the motivation was: “ for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and co-operation between peoples.”
The Nobel …
by Jonathan Cook / January 23rd, 2015
Yesterday I had an idea for a short story to explain the unrelenting insanity of the occupation for ordinary Palestinians. Tell me what you think.
In my story, there is a Palestinian family, let’s call them the Jaabaris, and they live next to a Jewish settlement, let’s call it Kiryat Arba, close to Hebron deep in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
One day the settlers decide to build a synagogue on the family’s private land in an effort to force them off.
This family decide to stand their ground. Sadly, they have no way to stop the takeover of land that has been in their family …
by Eva Bartlett / January 23rd, 2015
Twenty-six distinct photos, in black and white. Scenes of a ravaged city and the human beings within struggling to exist, let alone to find hope for the future. Gravestones of rubble. Homes looted, trashed. Civilians defending their country. Children aged beyond their years by the horrors they’ve lived.Hagop Vanesian, a 44 year old Syrian-Armenian photographer from Syria’s largest city, Aleppo (Halab), was meticulous in his choice of photographs for the exhibition, “My Homeland,” which opened at the United Nations Headquarters on January 8 and ran until January 16.
I chose the photographs showing the destruction, and children. I have many …
by Kathy Kelly / January 23rd, 2015
The Bureau of Prisons contacted me today, assigning me a prison number and a new address: for the next 90 days, beginning tomorrow, I’ll live at FMC Lexington, in the satellite prison camp for women, adjacent to Lexington’s federal medical center for men. Very early tomorrow morning, Buddy Bell, Cassandra Dixon, and Paco and Silver, two house guests whom we first met in protests on South Korea’s Jeju Island, will travel with me to Kentucky and deliver me to the satellite women’s prison outside the Federal Medical Center for men.
In December, 2014, Judge Matt Whitworth sentenced me to three …
Israel’s claims of an imminent threat of Hizballah attack are not credible. More likely it wants to subdue the Lebanese militia so that it has a free hand to manipulate the Syrian battlefield to its advantage
by Jonathan Cook / January 22nd, 2015
Israel has good reason to fear that the Lebanese militia Hizballah and Iran’s Revolutionary Guard will seek dramatic revenge for the killing of 12 senior figures from the two organisations in an air strike in Syria on Sunday.
Israel’s concerns were underscored on Wednesday by the decision of its military chief of staff, Benny Gantz, to cancel a trip to meet his European counterparts, as the Israeli army remained on high alert.
Earlier, on Monday, Israel moved an Iron Dome anti-missile battery to the northern border, in case of rocket fire from Hizballah. That is precisely what Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah had …
by Medea Benjamin / January 22nd, 2015
On January 23, Kathy Kelly, co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence, a campaign to end U.S. military and economic warfare, will begin a three-month jail sentence in federal prison for a protest against drones (also known as “unmanned aerial vehicles”) at Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri. I had a chance to interview her before she had to turn herself in.
Medea Benjamin: Can you just say why you have been particularly moved to take action against drone strikes?
Kathy Kelly: I think 21st-century militarism is very …
by Yves Engler / January 22nd, 2015
Psst. Looking for arms? Guns, ammunition, high tech supplies, armoured vehicles, and more, all quality Canadian made. Background check? We can get around that. Not democratic? No worries. Tools of repression? Sounds good to us.
Stephen Harper’s Conservatives are working to expand Canadian arms exports and the focus is Middle Eastern monarchies entangled in a great deal of violence.
At the start of last year the Conservatives announced Canada’s biggest ever arms export agreement. Over the next 10 to 13 years General Dynamics Land Systems Canada will supply $14.8 billion worth of light armoured vehicles (LAVs) to the Saudi military.
Ottawa pushed this …
by Media Lens / January 22nd, 2015
Last week, climate researchers at both NASA and the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced that 2014 was the planet’s warmest year in the modern record, going all the way back to 1880. The ten warmest years have now occurred since 2000, with the sole exception of 1998 when there was a strong El Niño warming event in the Pacific Ocean.
Climate scientist Jennifer Francis of Rutgers University put the scale of global warming in stark perspective when she told Associated Press:
The globe is warmer now than it has been in the last 100 years and more …
by Ramzy Baroud / January 22nd, 2015
Francois Hollande is not a popular president. No matter how hard the ‘socialist’ leader tries to impress, there never seems to be a solid constituency that backs him. He attempted to mask his initial lack of experience in foreign affairs with a war in Mali, after his country enthusiastically took on Libya. While he succeeded at launching wars, he failed at managing their consequences as the latest attacks in Paris have demonstrated.
Following the attack on satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, he is now attempting to ride a wave of popularity among his countrymen. On January 11, an estimated 3.5 million people …
by Greg Palast / January 20th, 2015
Europe is stunned, and bankers aghast, that polls show the new party of the Left, Syriza, will win Greece’s parliamentary elections to be held this coming Sunday, January 25.
Syriza promises that, if elected, it will cure Greece of leprosy. Oddly, Syriza also promises that it will remain in the leper colony. That is, Syriza wants to rid Greece of the cruelty of austerity imposed by the European Central Bank but insists on staying in the euro zone.
The problem is austerity run wild is merely a symptom of an illness. The underlying …
by James Hoover / January 20th, 2015
In the winter of 2014-15 has the polar vortex wind-chill jolt subsided? Do we even need to address its source and its cause? Scientists promise that it is part of the extremes climate change brings, and will return. But how is that paradox – extreme cold out of a warming planet — possible?
It’s elementary – at least initially.
The movement of air from high pressure to lower pressure is called wind. The wind’s strength depends on the pressure differences between warm air that rises and cold air that falls. The jet stream is a higher altitude air flow that affects …
Another tale from “Post-Racial America”
by Herb Dyer / January 20th, 2015
The city of Chicago was founded by a black man. But you knew that already, right?
On Monday, Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, Chicago restored a downtown sculpture of its Haitian-born black founder situated on Michigan Avenue’s Manificent Mile near where the fur trader’s palatial (by 18th century standards) home, trading post, saloon, and expansive farm stood for half a century. On Sunday (the day before the celebration of “King Day”) it was discovered that a black mask had been painted across the face of the artwork.
Credit: Chicago …
by Felicity Arbuthnot / January 20th, 2015
This is a very serious matter – they will slaughter him.
— Sabah Al-Mukhtar, President of the Arab Lawyers Association
On Saturday, January 10th, the BRussells Tribunal circulated a Press Release which stated, “Iraq: Mr Uday Al-Zaidi – Appeal of Extreme Urgency.”
It outlined “an appeal for the immediate and urgent mobilization of (the relevant UN Agencies, Amnesty International. Human Rights Watch and other international NGOs and appropriate legal bodies) in securing the release of the prominent human rights defender, Mr Uday Al-Zaidi.”
The Appeal was necessarily brief, but the wider context is vital to understanding as another life hangs in the balance …
The Anti-Empire Report #136
by William Blum / January 20th, 2015
After Paris, condemnation of religious fanaticism is at its height. I’d guess that even many progressives fantasize about wringing the necks of jihadists, bashing into their heads some thoughts about the intellect, about satire, humor, freedom of speech. We’re talking here, after all, about young men raised in France, not Saudi Arabia.
Where has all this Islamic fundamentalism come from in this modern age? Most of it comes – trained, armed, financed, indoctrinated – from Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria. During various periods from the 1970s to the present, these four countries had been the most secular, modern, educated, welfare states …
by John Steppling / January 20th, 2015
To the first: the end of the anti-colonial era was followed immediately by the not so rosy dawn of neoliberalism. Quickly, Arab nationalism gave way to Gulf capitalism; the always bourgeois PLO gave way to the neoliberal Palestine Authority. Simultaneously, the Arab working-class suffered a set of quintessential neoliberal losses compounded by what might be called the economic shock doctrine brought on by the likes of World Bank and IMF that came with the end of colonialism and the beginning of the neoliberal era. Thus, before any fruits of decolonization could be fully enjoyed, the working class of the global …
Or, Rather, is Our Hubris Showing?
by Alton C. Thompson / January 19th, 2015
by Kathy Kelly / January 19th, 2015
From January 4 – 12, 2015, Witness Against Torture (WAT) activists assembled in Washington D.C. for an annual time of fasting and public witness to end the United States’ use of torture and indefinite detention and to demand the closure, with immediate freedom for those long cleared for release, of the illegal U.S. prison at Guantanamo.
Participants in our eight day fast started each day with a time of reflection. This year, asked to briefly describe who or what we had left behind and yet might still carry in our thoughts that morning, I said that I’d left behind an …
Martin Luther Obama Jr., as dictated to David Swanson
by David Swanson / January 19th, 2015
I come to this magnificent house of worship tonight because the Republican Congress leaves me no other choice. I join you in this meeting because I am in partial yet profound agreement with the aims and work of the organization which has brought us together: Clergy and Laymen Concerned about Vietghanistan. The recent statement of your executive committee are the sentiments of my own heart, if not my brain, and I found myself in sympathy with your desires when I read its opening lines: “A time comes when silence is betrayal.” That time has not come for us in relation …
by Walter C. Uhler / January 19th, 2015
On 8 January 2015, Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk demonstrated once again that he is either a liar or an ignoramus (inspired by Russophobia) when he told a German TV channel, “I will not allow the Russians to march across Ukraine and Germany, as they did in WWII.” Putting aside his ludicrous bravado – analogous to a crazed, dying gnat promising to stop a bull elephant — only the untaught do not know that it was Hitler’s Nazi Germany that invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941. Moreover, while most military historians specializing in the history of the Eastern …
by Jonathan Cook / January 19th, 2015
Israel has been having its own internal debate about the significance of the Paris killings this month, with concerns quite separate from those expressed in Europe.
While Europeans are mired in debates about free speech and the role of Islam in secular societies, Israelis generally – and their prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, in particular – view the attacks as confirming Israel’s place as the only safe haven for Jews around the world.
The 17 deaths in Paris have reinforced Israeli suspicions that Europe, with its rapidly growing Muslim population, is being dragged into a clash of civilisations it is ill-equipped to combat.
More …
by Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers / January 18th, 2015
There is bi-partisan opposition in Congress to Fast Track and a large movement of movements mobilized to stop it.
The corporate media is reporting that since the Republican leadership and President Obama support Fast Track trade authority, it is a done deal. And that message, also heard by countries negotiating the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), is driving the race to finalize that agreement.
The truth is: Fast Track is not a done deal. There is bi-partisan opposition in Congress and a large movement of movements organized to stop it.
Across the political spectrum there is mass opposition to fast tracking the secretly negotiated TPP, …
by Binoy Kampmark / January 18th, 2015
Laws have certain flexibility to them, the vast legroom that allows a degree of significant contortions. The most resilient ones tend to be those concerning security. Where safety is perceived to be at stake, the legroom widens. Interpreters of national security laws tend to make leaps to extend their application as far as possible. Rather than reading down the effects of legislation, with the tendencies to limit civil liberties, the desire lies in expanding power. The drafting, for that reason, is fundamental.
Since 2000, the Committee to Project Journalists (CPJ) has noted an institutionalised campaign against that noble profession, with a …
The World Seen Through a “Progressive” Western Keyhole versus a Panoramic Lens
by John V. Walsh / January 18th, 2015
One of Castro’s closest comrades, the Argentine-born guerilla Che Guevara, had been in Guatemala in 1954 and witnessed the coup against Arbenz. Later he told Castro why it succeeded. He said Arbenz had foolishly tolerated an open society, which the CIA penetrated and subverted, and also preserved the existing army, which the CIA turned into its instrument. Castro agreed that a revolutionary regime in Cuba must avoid those mistakes. Upon taking power, he cracked down on dissent and purged the army. Many Cubans supported his regime and were ready to defend it. (Emphasis, jw)
Stephen Kinzer, The Brothers: John Foster …
by James Hoover / January 18th, 2015
The Republican retreat in Hershey, PA is rather symbolic of their tactics and their attitude toward the people. The Hershey brand of chocolate is a perfect metaphor for the Republican tactic of rebranding with the most appealing and tasty stances but never delivering on the nutritional substance.
Then like a metaphor of Recycle and Reuse, Romney revisited a Bush moment. He — sort-of — re-launched a 3rd campaign for president on an aircraft carrier, mocking the tone and site of a George W. Bush “Mission Accomplished” declaration over 10 years ago on another carrier. Mitt Romney spoke to a Republican …
by Gareth Porter / January 17th, 2015
US contradictions between the Obama administration’s policy in Syria and realities on the ground have become so acute that US officials began last November discussing a proposal calling for support of local ceasefires between opposition forces and the Assad regime in dozens of locations across Syria.
The proposal surfaced in two articles in Foreign Policy magazine and in a column by the Washington Post’s David Ignatius. Those indicated that it was under serious consideration by administration officials. In fact, the proposal may even have played a role in a series of four White House meetings during the week of …
