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by Kim Petersen / January 11th, 2015
It is reported that a million people marched the streets of Paris today shouting “Liberté” and “Charlie”? ((See “France attacks: Million-strong unity rally in Paris,” BBC, 11 January 2015.))
Charlie who? Charlie Hebdo? Why would I want to align myself with cartoonists who show intolerance/prejudice to other cultures and religions?
I distance myself from adherence to ancient texts such as the Koran, Bible, and Torah. Nonetheless, a plurality of humanity subscribes to the word in these texts – but in differing degrees. Muslims are not a monolith. There are sections of Muslims who are extremist in outlook and practice. However, the …
by Finian Cunningham / January 10th, 2015
Speaking outside Elysée Palace in the aftermath of this week’s terror killings in France, former President Nicolas Sarkozy condemned the violence as “an attack on civilization.” Coiffured, sun-tanned and nattily dressed, Sarkozy’s solemn words made him appear like the embodiment of civility.
That’s a quaint turn in etiquette by a politician who is mired in allegations of sleaze and corruption, as well as war crimes.
Sarkozy wasn’t too concerned about “civilization” when he and his British allies launched the NATO bombing campaign of Libya in March 2011 in stark violation of a UN mandate. That seven-month onslaught led to the murder of …
by James Hoover / January 10th, 2015
A campaign of attitude and traditional truth was engineered and disbursed by conservatives some forty years ago, propagated by a growing (spearheaded by Reagan trashing the Fairness doctrine and eschewing media regulation) conservative media and has stuck like Velcro to the fabric of mainstream news. Consequently, we are consistently lied to – or at the least, the truth is misrepresented — by even the mainstream media.
Some lies are ongoing. Some are outgrowths of generalizations. Some based on prejudices established with conservative ideals. Some rise from ignorance. But two large issues stand out in contemporary news stories.
Most media sources fail its …
by John Andrews / January 10th, 2015
The news has been dominated recently by events in France. Reports say that about ten people who worked in Paris for a satirical magazine, “Charlie Hebdo”, were gunned down in their offices by a group of Muslim extremists. Apparently the magazine is well-known for satirising Mohammed (and other religious figures) and its staff have received numerous death threats in the past. Thousands of French took to the streets in support of free speech, many with placards saying “Je suis Charlie”.
Although the gunmen escaped from the scene of the crime, the French authorities released photographs of two brothers they said were …
by Safed Gulab / January 10th, 2015
On 2 December 2014, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that in future 25 December would be celebrated as Good Governance Day because it was the birthday of Hindu nationalists Madan Mohan Malaviya and Atal Behari Vajpayee. Subsequently a circular was sent out to schools ordering them to cancel the public holiday on the 25th and require children to come to school on Christmas Day for a variety of activities. Education Minister Smriti Irani was suspected of sending out the circular and lying when she denied it, but given PM Modi’s propensity to bypass his …
by David Swanson / January 9th, 2015
Some killings are reported on in a slightly different manner from how the Charlie Hebdo killings have been. Rewriting a drone killing as a gun killing (changing just a few words) would produce something like this:
Freedom Fighters Gun Strike in Europe Is Said to Have Killed 12 Militants
PARIS, France — At least 12 foreign militants were believed to have been killed in a freedom fighter gun strike in the North Paris tribal region on Wednesday morning, a Liberation security official said.
The Liberation official said guns fired 128 precision bullets into a compound in the …
How Western governments and media have created and promoted terrorism
by Mark Weiser / January 9th, 2015
Dear Mr. Maher, liberal comedian, social commentator and professed atheist. I’ve witnessed you claiming religious extremism from any particular faith can be a negative force. I see you’re in the news again in what appears as an, “I told you so,” triumph with the recent shootings in France committed by Muslim extremists. In the past on your own show, depending on one’s point of view, I’m certain you’ve been perceived as anti-Muslim, with the belief that the Islamic religion promotes and condones acts of terrorism. And yes it is true, Muslim extremists are among us in the world. But the …
US Pressures Palestine to be Patient
by Stuart Littlewood / January 9th, 2015
Dennis Ross, writing in the New York Times, criticises Mahmoud Abbas for using international institutions to put pressure on Israel.
Abbas, after failing to obtain a UN Security Council resolution requiring Israel to end its decades-long occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza, had announced his intention to join Palestine to the International Criminal Court and seek justice via that route.
“Why not wait?” asks Ross. “If a new Israeli government after the elections is prepared to take a peace initiative and build settlements only on land that is likely to be part of Israel and not part of …
by Andre Vltchek / January 9th, 2015
A hundred years ago, it would have been unimaginable to have a pair of Muslim men enter a cafe or a public transportation vehicle, and then blow themselves up, killing dozens. Or to massacre the staff of a satirical magazine in Paris! Things like that were simply not done.
When you read the memoirs of Edward Said, or talk to old men and women in East Jerusalem, it becomes clear that the great part of Palestinian society used to be absolutely secular and moderate. It cared about life, culture, and even fashion, more than about religious dogmas.
The same could be said …
by Robert Hunziker / January 9th, 2015
For example, when we say that the Chilean state should become a true guarantor of material rights, that is certainly antithetical to the neoliberal capitalist vision which turns rights into a business to be regulated by the market.
— Camila Vallejo (former Chilean student protest leader) ((Interview by Zoltán Glück at CUNY Graduate Center, Oct. 15, 2012.))
Neoliberalism has been an “occupying force in Latin America” for over three decades while it has stripped the nation/state(s) of the functionality of a social contract, pushed through wholesale privatization of public enterprises, and expropriated the people’s rights to formal employment, health, and education, …
by Graham Peebles / January 9th, 2015
Ethiopia is being hailed as a shining example of African economic growth. Principle donors and devotees of the International Monetary Fund/World Bank development model (an imposed ideological vision which measures all things in terms of a nations GDP) see the country as an island of potential prosperity and stability within a region of failed states and violent conflict. “Economic performance in recent years has been strong, with economic growth averaging in double-digits since 2004,”states the IMF country report. The economic model (a hybrid of western capitalism and Chinese control) adopted by the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) government is …
by Don Monkerud / January 9th, 2015
Today Mike Huckabee, former Arkansas governor, Baptist preacher, and news commentator, announced he is changing his name.
“Nobody remembers a name like Huckabee, and besides I’m tired of jokes about a low-growing shrub,” said Huckabee.
The once chubby governor decreed that henceforth he would be known as Michael Chuckleberry.
“It sounds more upbeat and light hearted,” said Chuckleberry. “Plus it has an air of dignity and legitimacy.”
Speculation is rife that Huckabee changed his name in anticipation of the upcoming 2016 presidential race. Chuckleberry, running under his birth name, won the 2008 Iowa primary with strong support from conservative, backwoods …
by Roger D. Harris / January 8th, 2015
A day after President Obama announced initiatives to normalize relations with Cuba, he seemingly reversed course by enacting the latest round of sanctions against Cuba’s staunchest ally, Venezuela, on December 18. His action conclusively ended any threat of a thaw in frosty relations since the US and Venezuela withdrew their respective ambassadors in 2010. The US Senate had approved the legislation on December 8, followed two days later by the House in a bipartisan gush of unity with no debate or dissenting votes. The legislation will allow the president to deny visas and freeze assets of Venezuelan officials accused of …
by Ludwig Watzal / January 8th, 2015
Two Muslim killers wiped out the whole editorial team of the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo at noontime in Paris on Wednesday, January 7, 2015. This cold-blooded murder is an indefensible crime. The killers claimed that they have “avenged the Prophet Mohammad”. And Allah was considered “great”. Have they committed their heinous crime in the name or in defense of Islam? Charlie Hebdo has a long history of angering Muslims with cartoons, but it caricatured also all religions.
Worldwide, the terrorist attack was amicably considered as an attack on freedom of …
Or Is It Just another False Flag Operation?
by Gilad Atzmon / January 8th, 2015
The massacre in France was a devastating crime against freedom and the right to laugh.
But was it really executed by a bunch of lunatic irrational Muslims who to decided to kill mercilessly because their prophet was mocked?
French people should be asking what led members of their society to commit such cold blood murders against their fellow citizens.
France should ask itself why it has been dropping bombs on Muslims. Who enthusiastically advocated these ‘interventionist’ wars? What was the role of Bernard-Henri Lévy, the prime advocate of the war against Libya for instance?
What was all this French fuss about …
by T.J. Petrowski / January 8th, 2015
The tragic shooting in Paris of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, which published caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed in 2011, that left 12 people dead is a direct consequence of Western imperialism’s interventions in the Middle East.
The U.S. and its Western imperialist allies have continuously violated the national sovereignty and the right to self-determination of every country in the Middle East and North Africa in the last 50 years. Attacks such as the shooting in Paris, the September 11th attacks on New York (if we are to believe the dubious official story of the U.S. government), the 1998 U.S. embassy …
by Paul Craig Roberts / January 8th, 2015
There are two ways to look at the alleged terrorist attack on the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.
One is that in the English speaking world, or much of it, the satire would have been regarded as “hate speech,” and the satirists arrested. But in France Muslims are excluded from the privileged category, took offense at the satire, and retaliated.
Why would Muslims bother? By now Muslims must be accustomed to Western hypocrisy and double standards. Little doubt that Muslims are angry that they do not enjoy the protections other minorities receive, but why retaliate for satire but not for France’s participation …
by Douglas Valentine / January 8th, 2015
Diana Johnstone asks the rhetorical question at CounterPunch, “What to Say When You Have Nothing to Say?” in regard to the I Am Charlie “terror” attack in Paris. Hers is an emotional response, exasperation; there is plenty to say that is quite rational.
America’s industrial sized war machine is never said by the corporate press to engage in terror, terrorism being “the use of violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims.” CNN, Fox, and Tommy Friedman never said America terrorized Iraq, which of course it did, on a massive scale. Iraq continues to be the most terrorized place …
by Shepherd Bliss / January 8th, 2015
2015’s opening offers an appropriate time to examine high technology and its development of weapons of mass destruction and other threats to the Earth. My own background to write about these issues includes being raised in the Southern military family that gave its name to Ft. Bliss, Texas. I served briefly as an officer in the U.S. Army, resigned my commission to protest the American War on Vietnam, and have engaged in an extensive study of the military. This includes teaching courses on “War and Peace” at Sonoma State University and contributing chapters and poems to half a dozen books …
Palestinians at the Hague
by Jonathan Cook / January 8th, 2015
Intense pressure from Israel and the US last week on members of the United Nations Security Council narrowly averted Washington’s embarrassment at being forced to veto a Palestinian resolution to end the occupation.
The Palestinians’ failure to get the necessary votes saved the White House’s blushes but at a cost: the claim that the US can oversee a peace process promising as its outcome a Palestinian state is simply no longer credible.
Looming is the post-peace process era. Its advent appears to have been marked by Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas’ decision in the immediate wake of the Security Council vote …
Interview with Özgür Amed Journalist and Researcher
by Dylan Murphy / January 8th, 2015
The emergence of ISIS during the summer as a regional war lord in Iraq and Syria led to the usual media hysteria about the latest threat to our turbo-consumerist societies in the West. ISIS is going to take over the Middle East and then come to get us in our affluent homelands where freedom and democracy are under peril from the Islamist bogeyman.
Such simplistic nonsense echoes the media disinformation about ISIS and its ”irresistible” expansion across the Middle East. The media puts on the same tired old record. The plight of the Kurds and other ethnic minorities in Northern Iraq …
by Ajamu Nangwaya / January 8th, 2015
The ideological deficiency, not to say the total lack of ideology, within the national liberation movements — which is basically due to ignorance of the historical reality which these movements claim to transform — constitutes one of the greatest weaknesses of our struggle against imperialism, if not the greatest weakness of all.
— Amilcar Cabral ((Amilcar Cabral, “The Weapon of Theory,” Marxist.org, January 1966. Accessed January 4, 2015.))
What is it about the term “capitalism” that inspires many of us to not call its name in vain and in the public square? Why is it that many of us will …
The Palestinian application to the ICC has set in motion a series of events with potentially dramatic consequences for both Israel and the Palestinians
by Jonathan Cook / January 7th, 2015
At the weekend, Fatah posted an image on its Facebook page of Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu next to a hangman’s noose, alongside the words ‘coming soon’ and the scales-of-justice logo of the International Criminal Court in the Hague.
This is certainly how many Palestinians would like to view Netanyahu’s fate over the coming months.
Last week, Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, reluctantly signed on to the Rome Statute, paving the way for ICC membership, after he failed to win a vote at the UN Security Council on a resolution to end the occupation by 2017.
The loyalists of Abbas’ Fatah …
Part 2 of 2: Interview with author Arnold August
by Kim Petersen / January 7th, 2015
In Part 1, author Arnold August discussed the relationship between anarchists and communists in revolutionary Cuba as well as the development of democracy in Cuba. In December, the Obama administration made an overture toward Cuba by releasing the last of the Cuban Five and signalling a change in the relationship. Some Cuba followers are skeptical of this apparent thaw in relations. ((See, e.g., author Ron Ridenour’s “US-Cuba Policy Change: Score 11-1, US Wins,” Dissident Voice, 20 December 2014.)) In the conclusion to the interview, August gives his take take.
*****
KP: What is your take on the seeming …
by Ellen Brown / January 7th, 2015
Greece and the troika (the International Monetary Fund, the EU, and the European Central Bank) are in a dangerous game of chicken. The Greeks have been threatened with a “Cyprus-Style prolonged bank holiday” if they “vote wrong.” But they have been bullied for too long and are saying “no more.”
A return to the polls was triggered in December, when the Parliament rejected Prime Minister Antonis Samaras’ pro-austerity candidate for president. In a general election, now set for January 25, the EU-skeptic, anti-austerity, leftist Syriza party is likely to prevail. Syriza captured a 3% lead in the polls following mass public discontent …
Time to Move Out
by Ramzy Baroud / January 6th, 2015
It was the moment many had been waiting for. On January 2, Palestine’s United Nations envoy, Riyad Mansour formally requested membership at the International Criminal Court (ICC).
“We are seeking justice for all the victims that have been killed by Israel, the occupying power,” he said.
There was no explanation why Palestine’s membership of the Rome Statue (through which the ICC is governed) was delayed in the first place; of why no justice was ever sought for thousands of victims in Gaza, and many in the West Bank and Jerusalem, although such membership would have been granted much earlier.
In fact, …
Part 1: Interview with author Arnold August
by Kim Petersen / January 6th, 2015
Political economy is more often than not depicted as a Left-Right bifurcation. This is too simplistic. It overlooks the difference between, on the one hand, right-wingers such as the Conservatives, Labour Party, and Liberal Democrats from, on the other hand, the far Right British National Party in the United Kingdom. It also omits the differences on the Left, for example, between Communists and anarchists.
Since right-wingers are capitalist in orientation, they are supported by moneyed interests, aka elitist class interests. And, insofar as money denotes power, the right-wingers have a significant advantage over socialist-oriented left-wingers.
Given the uneven playing field, …
Stop the NYPD Coup and Create the Police-Community Relationship We Want to See
by Kevin Zeese / January 6th, 2015
Do the police serve the city or are they a law unto themselves? This is an issue of concern throughout the country but it has come into crisp focus in New York.
The conflict in New York City spurred by the death of Eric Garner and the failure of a Staten Island grand jury to indict the police officer who choked him to death; followed by the killing of two police officers, Officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu, by a deranged person has sharpened the conflict over policing in New York. The NYPD is trying to bully Mayor Bill de Blasio as they have …
by Herb Dyer / January 6th, 2015
Former Speaker of the House and perennially failed Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich told CBS’s Bob Schieffer on Sunday that President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder are the real instigators and root causes of the current racial tension now evident and obvious throughout the US.
On the other hand, however, Gingrich averred that both former New York City Mayors Rudy Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg had actually “saved” more African-American lives than anybody else in the country by institutionalizing racial profiling against New York’s millions of black citizens.
Gingrich was gracious enough to admit that America’s “criminal justice” …
by Jordan Flaherty / January 5th, 2015
More than 100 years after the birth of cinema, it sometimes feels like every story has been told. But the best films of 2014 dared to break out of their genres, explore new ways of filmmaking, and inspire viewers. Some of them even provided tools for popular understanding of our current political moment. This year, Selma, Tales of the Grim Sleeper, and Out In The Night all told stories of a criminal justice system harming Black communities, while Dear White People used satire to address racist power structures. Documentaries like The Great Invisible and Citizenfour attacked government and corporate malfeasance, …
