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 …
It was 30th May, deep autumn in Argentina. The streetlights had been turned on an hour earlier, just as I was entering the house/museum. Now inside, it was dark, silent, warm and cozy.
Magda Konopacka de Bruzzone brought two cups of tea upstairs, after locking the gate. For a while, we sat in silence.
“Now tell me about the world outside,” she whispered, after I took my first sip.
“People are freezing to death,” I said. “Argentinean people are dying.”
She looked at me and then her eyes moved somewhere behind, way beyond me.
In May of 2014, financial firm Credit Suisse AG pled guilty to serious criminal charges. The giant bank aided and assisted approximately 22,000 wealthy U.S. taxpayers (whose names Credit Suisse AG escaped having to send to the Justice Department for law enforcement) for over a decade in filing false income tax returns and other documents with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).
The full extent of these crimes, according to a Department of Justice news release, are as follows: “assisting clients in using sham entities to hide undeclared accounts;” “soliciting IRS forms that falsely stated, under penalties of perjury, that the sham …
Neoconservatives arrayed in their Washington offices are congratulating themselves on their success in using the Charlie Hebdo affair to reunite Europe with Washington’s foreign policy. No more French votes with the Palestinians against the Washington-Israeli position. No more growing European sympathy with the Palestinians. No more growing European opposition to launching new wars in the Middle East. No more calls from the French president to end the sanctions against Russia.
Do the neoconservatives also understand that they have united Europeans with the right-wing anti-immigration political parties? The wave of support for the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists is the wave of Marie Le …
Imagine living in a town or neighborhood where a serial killer is on the loose. The killer’s primary weapon is a pipe bomb filled with small metal projectiles like BBs and nails. The bombs are designed to kill and maim those in the vicinity of the explosion. The killer’s weapons are usually aimed at male targets, but quite often several others in the vicinity are also killed, including women and children. Oftentimes, a note is sent to the media after the attacks warning of future attacks unless the people being targeted give in to …
A veil of methane originating in the Arctic is heading southward, slowly spreading all across the Northern Hemisphere.
As it happens, with 2014 the “hottest year ever,” the Arctic heats up evermore. It is especially vulnerable to the effects of heat-trapping green house gas (GHG) carbon dioxide (CO2). In turn, the warming Arctic is stirring up humanity’s biggest nightmare, methane (CH4).
Stuart Scott, Deputy Director General of IESCO and founder of the United Planet Faith & Science Initiative offers visualization of the dreaded methane veil in a new video, Rethinking Economics in the Age of Climate Change. The video was …
If you could change anything, what would you change? Would you go on vacation for the rest of your life? Make fossil fuels stop causing climate change? Ask for ethical banks and politicians? Surely nothing could be more unrealistic than to keep everything the way it is and expect different results.
Our private financial and emotional struggles mirror global upheaval and disaster. We could spend the rest of our days trying to douse these fires one by one, but they stem from the same source. No piecemeal solution will serve; we need to rethink everything according …
It’s those immeasurably powerful moments when we stand still and stay close to ourselves that make us see things more clearly, and that give us a better understanding of ourselves and our connectedness with each other.
I was born into this culture/religion but I was raised not practicing it. There are actually lots of aspects about Islam that I can’t relate to. Same as I can’t relate to much of what’s in other faiths. So, I’m a nominal Muslim at the most. I don’t even see it as part of my identity. As cliché as it may sound, I consider myself …
In 2003, a top security expert told filmmaker Michael Moore, ‘there is no one in America other than President Bush who is in more danger than you’. (Michael Moore, Here Comes Trouble: Stories From My Life,’ Allen Lane, 2011, p.4) Moore was attacked with a knife, a blunt object and stalked by a man with a gun. Scalding coffee was thrown at his face, punches were thrown in broad daylight. The verbal abuse was ceaseless, including numerous death threats. In his book, Here Comes Trouble, Moore writes: ‘I could no longer go out in public without …
Those who want to claim we are in the midst of a clash of civilisations have an easy time perpetuating their narrative. Just look at the very different responses to the new Charlie Hebdo cover. The cartoon shows the Prophet Mohammed weeping as he holds up a “Je suis Charlie” placard – with the words “All is forgiven” above the image.
Poor Tim Willcox, now terrorised for doing a professional job at the Paris anti-terror march.
In a live TV report the BBC’s Willcox was interviewing people in the crowd and talking to a Jewish woman about her fears of persecution. She said: “The situation is going back to the days of the 1930s in Europe.”
Willcox replied: “Many critics, though, of Israel’s policy would suggest that the Palestinians suffer hugely at Jewish hands as well.”
She countered: “We can’t do an amalgam.”
Willcox said: “You understand everything is seen from different perspectives.”
The reporter’s remarks were widely criticised by viewers, with some calling for his …
Last May, the Saudi Arabian blogger Raif Badawi was sentenced to ten years in prison, 190,000 Euro fine and 1,000 lashes. The latter should be enforced, spread across 20 Fridays, that is: Every Friday 50 lashes over a period of almost five months. 2008, Badawi founded the website “Free Saudi liberals”.
Raif BadawiBadawi has been convicted for alleged blasphemy and “insult of Islam”. According to Amnesty International , Badawi did nothing wrong “than to have dared to create a public forum for debate”. In Spring 2014, Raif Badawi’s …
The “civilized” have created the wretched, quite coldly and deliberately, and do not intend to change the status quo; are responsible for their slaughter and enslavement; rain down bombs on defenseless children whenever and wherever they decide that their “vital interests” are menaced, and think nothing of torturing a man to death; these people are not to be taken seriously when they speak of the “sanctity” of human life, or the conscience of civilized world.
— James Baldwin
I have witnessed the spectacle of Eurocentric arrogance many times over my long years of struggle and resistance to colonial/capitalist domination and dehumanization. The …
In a searing and cogent piece entitled “Thousands of Black Lives Mattered in Nigeria, but the World Didn’t Pay Attention,” the Root‘s Kirsten West Savali compares and contrasts the West’s response to the terror killings of almost 20 mostly white folks (including the gunmen) in Paris to the contemporaneous wholesale slaughter of ten times that number of blacks in Africa’s most populous nation-state, Nigeria.
This time the hypocrisy is blatant, obvious, palpable. And “willful,” says Savali.
It is still not about Islam, even if the media and militants attacking western targets say so. Actually, it never was. But it was important for many to conflate politics with religion; partly because it is convenient and self-validating.
First, let’s be clear on some points. Islam has set in motion a system to abolish slavery over 1,200 years before the slave trade reached its peak in the western world.
Ignore Facts, Blame Muslims, Trumpet U.S. Propaganda
by Democracy Now! / January 13th, 2015
Who are the so-called terrorism experts? In the wake of the Paris attacks, the corporate media has once again flooded its news programs with pundits claiming authority on terrorism, foreign policy and world events. We discuss the growing and questionable field of “terrorism experts.”
January 18 is Martin Luther King’s birthday and will occasion another three day official national holiday with TV specials of criminal deception limiting King to having been merely a hero of the civil rights movement period. Another year’s deceitfully erasing from history King’s condemnation of his country’s government as the “greatest purveyor of violence in the world,” and his having held himself and his fellow Americans responsible for “atrocity wars and covert violence on three continents since 1945 in order to maintain unjust predatory investments.”
For a near half-century, King’s outrage, King’s hellish description of America’s wars on innocent people …
P. Sainath started building the People’s Archive of Rural India only a couple of years ago. But the passion behind the innovative online project that mixes journalism and oral history, which was launched last month to overwhelming acclaim, goes back more than two decades.
As a young journalist in the early 1990s, Sainath helped focus India’s attention on rural poverty by traveling 100,000 kilometers to report stories for The Times of India. Born into an urban political and intellectual culture, Sainath found his professional calling in a countryside that many in the country’s rising middle class wanted to …
I am well aware that I’m stepping into a hornet’s nest by posting this video, which is going viral. Those who wish to silence all debate have an easy card to play here, accusing me of buying into a conspiracy theory. There’s only one problem: unlike the video-maker, I have few conclusions to draw about what the significance of this video is in relation to the official story. That is not why I am posting it.
But it does, at least to my mind and obviously a lot of other people’s, judging by how quickly it’s spreading, suggest that Ahmed Merabet, …
What would it be like if we really lived in a democracy? These days just about everybody seems to be enjoying the benefits democratic government, that is if you believe government propaganda and you are one of the credulous many who are eager for a sense of well being at any price. But what is usually called democracy is in fact an oligarchy of elected representatives responsible to the business interests who bankrolled their campaign. If people were actually given the opportunity to choose democracy, they might do so, provided they understood what the word actually means. Our one uncontested …
Last month Blade Runner played the Castro Theatre in San Francisco, and I went to see it on their old-school big screen, where it belongs. This was the Final Cut, one of multiple versions (not all of which have been released theatrically) made since the film’s first release in 1982. For some reason the Final Cut has been unavailable to theaters since it debuted seven years ago. Blade Runner’s production and re-production history is a saga in itself, as a little web research will show you. It’s clearly always been an object of obsession for its director, Ridley Scott. And …
Is the climate movement at a political tipping point? Could right now, 2015, this moment in history, be something akin to the 1964-1965 period for the civil rights movement? Those were the years that two major pieces of legislation, the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, ended legal segregation in the South and opened the way for a whole series of positive social, cultural, and political changes in the USA in the years since.
If looked at in that light, the answer is almost certainly “no.” Given the dominance of the Senate and the House by climate denier Republicans, …
Question One. In 1990, twenty percent of all children in the US lived in poverty. What percent of the children in the US live in poverty today?
A: Ten percent
B: Fifteen percent
C: Twenty percent
Question Two. The median wealth of black households in the US is $11,000. What is the median wealth of white households?
A: $22,000
B: $62,000
C: $141,000
Question Three. In 1960 the median earnings of women who work full-time year-round were about 60 percent of men’s. In 2010, women’s median earnings were about 77 percent of men’s. At this rate, in what …
Some time ago, Al Jazeera America carried an item by David Cay Johnston with the jaw-dropping revelation that “Americans fared better after the Great Depression than today.” I should mention that Johnston is a Pulitzer Prize winning former investigative reporter for the New York Times who now teaches business, tax and property law of the ancient world at Syracuse University’s Law School, so that’s all you need to know right there. I mean, there’s nothing more ancient, let alone interesting, for most people than the Dirty Thirties, because you can usually check that decade out by watching most movie …
The Israel-Palestinian issue form the time of the court’s inception was the nightmare scenario.
— Madeleine Morris, NPR, Jan 11, 2014
Where to, with the International Criminal Court this year? Much has been put into it, and even more written about it. But the body continues to receive submissions and requests in terms of indicting war crime suspects that seem to gather dust. When efforts have been successful, the usual charge of partiality towards Africa is suggested. The current chief prosecutor of the ICC, Fatou Bensouda, assumed her job in June 2012. Since then, she has introduced …
In a BBC interview following the Charlie Hebdo Massacre, Jewish Chronicle writer David Aaronovitch advised those who do not approve of ‘freedom of speech’ to ‘move to Pakistan.’ It is not surprising to find a Zionist Jew advocating voluntary cleansing; after all, expulsion is a Jewish nationalist favourite adventure. Judging by Aaronovitch’s endorsement of elementary liberty, I am happy to announce that the appeal for freedom of expression is the immediate and very positive outcome of the disastrous events in Paris.
But I am not convinced that those protesters who call themselves ‘Charlie’ are genuinely advocating the …
It is true that the police have exercised a degree of discipline in handling the demonstrators. In this sense they have conducted themselves rather ‘nonviolently’ in public. But for what purpose? To preserve the evil system of segregation.
After half a century, Martin Luther King, Jr.’s words to his “fellow clergymen” in the South still ring true. From behind bars in that Birmingham city jail, MLK keeps writing to us, and his words resonate loudly and clearly with the American people of the 21st century. His words yet give us …
When President Obama announced he would direct his administration to start normalizing relations with Cuba several weeks ago, there was one giant catch: the embargo against Cuba would still remain in place. As Obama noted, the embargo has been codified in legislation. He announced his intention to engage with Congress about lifting the embargo. But with both chambers of Congress now in the hands of a party whose entire platform for the last six years has been opposing Obama, it doesn’t appear likely. But the reality is that Obama doesn’t need Congress’s permission. As he did when he announced he …
Press freedom has been under attack with the deaths in Paris of nine Charlie Hebdo employees, including editor Stephane Charbonnier, and the continued incarceration in Cairo of three Al Jazeera journalists. The circumstances of the victimization of the journalists are starkly different.
Charlie Hebdo has made defamation of the Prophet Muhammad its calling card in recent years. The magazine was unsuccessfully sued in 2006 by Islamic organizations for publishing the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons. The cover of a 2011 issue, dubbed “Charia Hebdo” (a pun on Sharia law), depicted a cartoon of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. The newspaper’s office was fire-bombed …
Governments must get a grip on a situation which IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has ignored. A strategy of mitigation and adaptation is doomed to fail. It will be impossible to adapt to the worst consequences of global warming, as IPCC suggests.
— John Nissen, Chairman, AMEG ((Arctic Methane Emergency Group, Press Conference Announcement, COP20, Lima, December 4, 2014))
According to AMEG, an Arctic meltdown is nearly upon us, and the consequences will be brutal for everybody alive today. “In fact, the September sea ice volume is already down 75% with a trend to zero by September 2016, suggests …
