The big oil price crash is a question that seems to be front and center on the mind of financial markets these past few months, but, not to worry, it’ll come back up, it always does! So goes the reasoning of oil analysts and investors, but what if something other than supply temporarily overriding demand is at work on a longer-term basis, then what?
Sure, American fracking has upped the competitive stakes by producing fossil fuels from tight shale formations that were previously too difficult, too expensive, thereby effectively constricting import demand by one of the Middle East’s biggest customers, the …
Recently, Greece’s radical leftist party Syriza claimed victory in their national election. The party vowed to break ties with the European Central bank and roll back the EU’s neoliberal economic agenda. True to their word, they are already implementing some of those changes. From the birthplace of democracy, excitement is spreading across Europe and revitalizing the hope that real change may still be possible through the electoral arena.
The news from Greece also energized progressive circles in America. For many, the question arises: Can this rebirth of democracy happen in the U.S.? After Obama’s absolute betrayal of his promised …
February 20, 2015, marks the one-year anniversary of the heinous slaughter of protesters and police by neo-Nazi snipers who transformed a relatively peaceful protest against Ukraine’s democratically elected president, Viktor Yanukovych, into a violent anti-Russia coup. To this day, the illegitimate regime ruling in Kiev has done virtually nothing to bring their sniper allies to justice.
Many political actors in the West, including the Obama administration’s CIA and State Department, as well as members of the European Union were accomplices in the anti-Russia coup. Foolishly, they supported a coup in Kiev that provoked anti-Kiev mobilizations among Russians living in Crimea and …
by The Real News Network (TRNN) / February 18th, 2015
Indigenous women are five times more likely to be murdered, and most attacks are from outside their communities, says Audrey Huntley of the No More Silence campaign in Canada.
The murder of three American Muslims at a University of North Carolina condominium on Tuesday, 10 February, 2105 was no ordinary murder, nor is the criminal who killed them an ordinary thug. The context of the killings, the murder itself and the media and official responses to the horrific event is a testimony to everything that went wrong since the United States unleashed it’s long-drawn-out “war on terror”, with its undeclared, but sometimes declared enemy, namely Islam and Muslims.
Horrific as it was, the killing of a husband and wife, Deah Shaddy Barakat, Yusor Abu-Salha and her sister, Razan Abu-Salha, …
The Right Honourable Stephen Harper, P.C., M.P.
80 Wellington Street
Ottawa, ON K1A 0A2
Dear Prime Minister:
Many Americans love Canada and the specific benefits that have come to our country from our northern neighbor’s many achievements (see Canada Firsts by Nader, Conacher and Milleron). Unfortunately, your latest proposed legislation—the new anti-terrorism act—is being described by leading Canadian civil liberties scholars as hazardous to Canadian democracy.
A central criticism was ably summarized in a February 2015 Globe and Mail editorial titled “Parliament Must Reject Harper’s Secret Policeman Bill,” to wit:
Prime Minister Stephen Harper never tires of telling Canadians that we are at war with the …
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.
*****
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 …
Bill Harvey’s Bar and Grill
1600 Cord Meyer Avenue
Angleton, NJ 00799
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.
