Latest articles
When Free Speech Becomes Dead Silence
by Media Lens / April 8th, 2015
The sudden cancellation of an academic conference on Israel, as well as the lack of outcry from ‘mainstream’ media, demonstrates once again the skewed limits to ‘free speech’ in ‘advanced’ Western democracies. “Je suis Charlie” already feels like ancient history. It certainly does not apply when it comes to scrutiny of the state of Israel.
The conference, titled “International Law and the State of Israel: Legitimacy, Responsibility and Exceptionalism,” was to be held at the University of Southampton from 15-17 April 2015. Planned speakers included Richard Falk, the former UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, …
Sea lice are back. Wild salmon endangered.
by Alexandra Morton / April 8th, 2015
As spring comes to the BC coast, young wild salmon are leaving the rivers where they were born and entering the ocean. Our pink and chum salmon take an exceptional gamble – they don’t spend a year in fresh water, they leave their rivers right away, tiny slips of silver weighing less that 1/2 a gram. These two species salmon are a gift to our rivers. Adult pink and chum salmon deposit tons of nutrients in the rivers when they spawn and die, but their babies don’t feed on the insect life that this abundance of nutrients produces, they leave …
Car-Production Plunges 96%; Many Banks Also Fail
by Eric Zuesse / April 8th, 2015
On Tuesday April 7th, Ukravtoprome (the Ukrainian Association of Automobile Manufacturers) reported that, in the three-month period January-March 2015, as compared to the same three months of 2014, production of passenger cars plunged 96%, commercial vehicles 23%, buses 43%, for an overall decline of 92%.
In March alone, as compared to March 2014, passenger-car production plunged 94.3%, commercial vehicles fell 31%. The figure for buses was not shown.
March figures were a considerable improvement over the month before: “compared to February, the number of cars produced has doubled.”
On April 2nd was reported that “Sales of new cars in …
by T.P. Wilkinson / April 8th, 2015
No later than the Wilsonian propaganda campaign to bring ordinary US citizens and the world to support US intervention in World War I, did the inhabitants—at least the “white” ones—become convinced that not only was their nation the new Eden but that merely by virtue of being an American one was loved and/or envied throughout the world. It is crucial to mention this ideological transformation because until 1917, when the US entered the war on the side of the British elite, most inhabitants of the US could be seen as despised. Ex-slaves were despised because of their skin-colour and despite …
Serendipity, fate, the roll of the dice, the big spinning wheel in the sky – who gets to be the child with developmental disabilities, and who does not?
by Paul Haeder / April 8th, 2015
The great leveler for those children with developmental and intellectual disabilities (I/DD) is they end up being born into families comprising of every ethnic, religious, cultural and economic origin and background.
Obviously, for parents, the challenge is living in a go-go-go society where physical prowess, drop-dead looks, and PhD smarts are valued over anything else.
“Having a child with a developmental disability is like having your brain rewired,” said Arc of Spokane’s Brian Holloway. “It forces this philosophical crisis in your life.”
All the things Holloway was taught – he has a master’s in composition and was ready to do the community college …
by Edward Martin and Mateo Pimentel / April 7th, 2015
For Marxist social philosophy, Jon Elster recognizes personal freedom and social solidarity as inseparable. Marxist tradition rejects, for the most part, liberal attempts to rationalize the division of justice and equality into two principles: one, in the area of political liberties; and two, in the area of economics. Social participation in liberal theory is primarily directed at the maximization of political freedoms while economic participation is limited to those with resources and capital. For Locke, the liberal democratic rights theory also prioritizes the individual’s negative immunity from political coercion or interference by any part including government itself. Yet, the implied …
by Peter Koenig / April 7th, 2015
As usual, western media are deliberately confusing in communicating on the latest Mid-East conflict which eventually led to the recent atrocious bombing of Yemen by the US-directed Saudi alliance, including Qatar and other Gulf monarchies. They are proxies, to be sure, for their Washington masters. My heart is bleeding for Yemen, a country of warm and generous people I got to know well, working with them in the 1990s and early 2000s.
Yemen is a patchwork of tribes, the result of former colonies, therefore made vulnerable for conflicts; easily ignitable conflicts. A situation left behind on purpose by the old …
by Ellen Brown / April 7th, 2015
The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don’t…. You have owners.
— George Carlin, The American Dream
According to a new study from Princeton University, American democracy no longer exists. Using data from over 1,800 policy initiatives from 1981 to 2002, researchers Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page concluded that rich, well-connected individuals on the political scene now steer the direction of the country, regardless of – or even against – the will of the majority of voters. America’s political system has transformed from a …
by Paul Craig Roberts / April 6th, 2015
As readers know, I have emphasized for years that European governments are regarded by Washington as vassals who behave according to Washington’s wishes. It has been 70 years–two or three generations–since former world powers, such as Great Britain and Germany had an independent foreign policy.
In addition to this ignobility, European governments are also vassals to the EU, so on the sovereignty front European countries are twice damned. They simply have no sovereignty.
This is why it is so easy for Washington to spin a web of lies and drive its vassals into a “crisis” with Russia that does not serve the …
by Don Monkerud / April 6th, 2015
A plan to move the Republican Convention from Cleveland to Las Vegas brought cheer to the hearts of lobbyists when announced this week.
Responding to Republican demands to change the public perception of a bunch of uptight white guys, the GOP decided to jettison their plans to meet in a clean, staid, uptight Midwestern city and move it to Nevada to what is known as “Sin City.”
Speaking on Faux News, National Republican National Committee Chair A. B. Crookedlick said the party has nothing against dullness, mediocrity, stupidity or even Cleveland. Instead, the choice of Las Vegas would give delegates new hope …
by Craig Etchison / April 5th, 2015
“They” in my title refers to the major players in our food system. First is Big Ag—Monsanto and Dow being prominent—and those industrial farms that use Big Ag’s products. Second are large food corporations—General Mills and the like—who churn out processed foods and store their goods in warehouses before moving them to market. Third are those who breed and raise the livestock we eat. Fourth are those who import food from overseas. Many “theys” are involved in the food we eat, and many of those “theys” could care less about the safety of our food …
by Matt Peppe / April 5th, 2015
The New York Times recently published an editorial lamenting the “shameful impunity of the Islamic State” and encouraging the United Nations Security Council to refer the group’s crimes to the International Criminal Court (I.C.C.). The editorial, titled “The Crimes of Terrorists” (4/2/2015), should more accurately be titled “The Crimes of the U.S. and Its Allies Should Go Unpunished.”
In the last several months alone, the Times has repeatedly failed to condemn crimes by the U.S. government and its allies in Yemen, Iraq, Syria and the Palestinian territories.
When the Times writes that “the Islamic State’s campaign of religious and cultural cleansing has shocked …
Companies and their felon bosses look to Buddhism for more lightness in their global reach to control us all
by Paul Haeder / April 5th, 2015
Been listening and watching Mucho Mucho people of the white persuasion, many from those elite and so inflated follow-the-great-white-professor Ivy League schools, talking about, hmm, Kenya, Middle East, Blacks in America, undocumented from Latin America. You get the picture.
A sensibility, a common narrative, upbringings sort of liberal white Jewish (some non-Jews) but still keyed into their own internal story-telling, these novelists and playwrights, something about how their rhetoric is subsumed by so many unsuspecting folk. I never knew how collectively worthless in a very real sense all that education and all those millions of shelves weighted down with their tomes …
Starting April 20
by Eric Zuesse / April 4th, 2015
It has just been announced that, starting April 20, U.S. troops will start training troops of Ukraine’s Azov Battalion.
The Azov Battalion was founded and its members were selected by Andrei Biletsky, a Ukrainian nazi (that’s an ideological term, meaning racist fascist — not a term referring specifically to the first political party with that particular ideology, the National Socialist Party of Germany). When Britain’s Guardian interviewed members, the reporter was shocked to find that they’re nazis (“neo-Nazis”).
Biletsky proudly explains his ideology as follows:
Social Nationalism is based …
Human rights take a backseat to hegemony—again
by Jason Hirthler / April 4th, 2015
The American public seems not to clearly recognize that since “troops on the ground” went out of fashion, its government has devoted itself to arming terrorists and tyrants to do its bidding by proxy. This is no accident. Since the majority of the population seems to disagree with Washington policy choices—such as impoverishing its citizenry to pay for imperial wars in far-flung lands—and since it often responds to poll queries with alarmingly socialist views, pains must taken to deceive it. This is an ever more sophisticated practice, now requiring banks of slick public relations professionals and a colossal media …
by Andre Vltchek / April 4th, 2015
There is nothing, absolutely nothing right in the Middle East these days. There seems to be no hope left, and no fervor. All that was pure was dragged through filth. All that was great here was stolen or smashed by the outsiders. Enthusiasm had been ridiculed, then drowned, or burned to ashes, or shattered by tanks and missiles.
Corruption thrives – corruption that inundated this entire region since the early days of Western colonialism, and then was sustained through the present-day imperialist global regime.
The land of the Middle East is tired; it is crying from exhaustion. It is scarred by wars. …
Please Tell Me This Was an April Fools’ Joke
by William A. Blunden / April 3rd, 2015
The White House has announced a new sanctions program that will authorize the executive branch to penalize malicious cyber “actors” whose behavior endangers “the national security, foreign policy, or economic health or financial stability of the United States.” Sadly the President is opting for theater that creates the perception of security rather than actually making it more difficult for attacks to succeed.
Obama’s new executive order rests on a strategy of deterrence, a cold war idea that’s been revived by the likes of former NSA director Mike McConnell and more recently by current NSA Director Mike Rogers. …
by Mark Weiser / April 3rd, 2015
Georgia made religious snake handling a felony in 1941, with sentencing guidelines being twenty years for promoting handling and the death penalty for the accomplices of any snake that took someone’s life with a venomous bite. These penalties were considered unjust by Georgia juries, and because they failed to convict time and time again, the law was repealed in 1968 – it could be they thought the death of a church member through faith based ritual as penalty enough, or considering the ritual itself signified faith and trust in God, they may have even considered that God’s justice had …
by Paul Craig Roberts / April 3rd, 2015
John W. Whitehead is a constitutional attorney. As head of the Rutherford Institute he is actively involved in defending our civil liberties. Being actively involved in legal cases, he experiences first hand the transformation of law from a shield of the American people into a weapon in the hands of the government.
American civil liberty was seriously eroded prior to 9/11 and the rise of the police/warfare state, a story I tell in How America Was Lost. Lawrence Stratton and I documented the loss of law as a shield of the American people in our book, The Tyranny of …
Real and Imagined
by Dan Glazebrook / April 3rd, 2015
David Cameron’s attempts to style himself as the latest incarnation of a long tradition of ‘British values’ of tolerance, democracy and the rule of law is belied by both British history and his own policies. It also plays right into the hands of ISIS.
David Cameron has been at it again. Following the brutal attacks on visitors to the Bardo museum in Tunisia last month, Cameron took the opportunity to repeat one of the most common and pernicious falsehoods of his premiership – that he is a staunch defender of a set of moral absolutes he calls ‘British values’. “In …
The Anti-Empire Report #138
by William Blum / April 3rd, 2015
Cold War 2.0, part I
In last month’s Anti-Empire Report I brought you the latest adventure of US State Department Spokesperson Jen Psaki trying to defend the indefensible. She said then: “As a matter of longstanding policy, the United States does not support political transitions by non-constitutional means,” which prompted me to inform my readers: “If you know how to contact Ms. Psaki, tell her to have a look at my list of more than 50 governments the United States has attempted to overthrow since the end of the Second World War.”
On March 13 her regular attack on all things Russian …
by Uri Avnery / April 3rd, 2015
I must start with a shocking confession: I am not afraid of the Iranian nuclear bomb.
I know that this makes me an abnormal person, almost a freak.
But what can I do? I am unable to work up fear, like a real Israeli. Try as I may, the Iranian bomb does not make me hysterical.
My father once taught me how to withstand blackmail: imagine that the awful threat of the blackmailer has already come about. Then you can tell him: Go to hell.
I have tried many times to follow this advice and found it sound. So now I …
by Robert Hunziker / April 3rd, 2015
When a Rockefeller decides to divest fossil fuel investments, heads turn. After all, America’s pioneer/father of oil production is John D. Rockefeller (1839-1937) founder of America’s first great business trust, Standard Oil Company, dominating the oil industry for years.
In September 2014, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, an $860 million philanthropy, decided to join the divestment movement of college campuses around the country. These forerunners of decarbonizing are acting on “environmental principles,” according to John Schwartz. ((John Schwartz, “Rockefellers, Heirs to an Oil Fortune, Will Divest Charity of Fossil Fuels,” New York Times, Sept. 21, 2014.))
In recent years, 180 institutions, including …
Crisis for capital, hope for humanity
by Al Engler / April 3rd, 2015
For capital in Canada and the U.S. the sudden drop in oil prices is a disaster. For humankind it is a signal that fossil fuel use must decline.
Thirty years ago scientists pointed out that the burning of fossil fuels was causing global warming. To prevent catastrophic climate change, carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere would have to be kept below 350 parts per million, a level that could be maintained only if three quarters of known reserves of conventional fossil fuels were left in the ground.
Corporate capitalism in Canada responded by investing tens of billions in tar …
Pax Amercana vs offshore balancing
by Eric Walberg / April 3rd, 2015
The latest jargon justifying imperialism, as if straight from the business page contrasts Pax Americana, where if they behave well, clients become more prosperous and more democratic. If that fails but you have a few reliable regional partners, there is an offshore balancing system, where the empire’s quislings bear the primary responsibility for dealing with crises on the ground, and US military strategy is oriented toward policing the seas and skies. Nothing new except the name. The British were masters of ‘offshore balancing’.
Since the Cold War, and especially since 1991, the Pax Americana idea has predominated. But in the Middle …
by Chris Williams / April 2nd, 2015
Barely discernible among the surrounding rock-strewn ground, a meandering dirt track winds its way up a barren, windswept hill. In the arid heat, dotted amid the dry ocher soil, the rocks look baked from the sun. A few stubby trees and scrubby bushes bestrew a landscape with no obvious signs of habitation in this parched land of northern Kenya. But on top of the hill, sitting behind a low wall made of the abundant stones that litter the ground, we find six men. They have been living on the hill for eight years. Every two weeks, food and water is …
by Elliot Scott / April 2nd, 2015
Having exhausted all diplomatic avenues, a Texas boy last week contracted Blackwater to carry out pre-emptive security services on his 89 year old grandmother, who had recently arrived from the old country to live with the family. The security services provider, formerly known as Xe Services and Academi is again known as Blackwater, as with the passage of time it is now viewed fondly for its services to our homeland.
A hair-trigger imbroglio between the adorable little nipper and the suspicious, babushka’d elder began when in defiance of house protocol and using recipes she may have concealed in her underwear, …
The Case of Andergachew Tsige
by Graham Peebles / April 2nd, 2015
On 23 June 2014 Andergachew Tsige was illegally detained at Sana’a airport in Yemen whilst travelling from Dubai to Eritrea on his British passport. He was swiftly handed over to the Ethiopian authorities, who had for years posted his name at the top of the regime’s most wanted list. Since then he has been detained incommunicado in a secret location inside Ethiopia. His ‘crime’ is the same as hundreds, perhaps thousands of others, publicly criticising the ruling party of Ethiopia, and their brutal form of governance.
Born in Ethiopia in 1955, Andergachew arrived in Britain aged 24, as a political refugee. …
You believe the lies of the elite, of the media, of the Hollywood crocodile tear factories -- we are all the precarity
by Paul Haeder / April 2nd, 2015
Interesting! National Adjunct Walkout Day. Sad and the same old. Same-same-same controlled opposition. Look at the tepidness of the movement, below – walking out and teaching in, at lunchtime –
Hello,
Because we believe the University of Arizona will support people who support education, we invite you to join adjuncts and Non-Tenure Track faculty as we reinvest in student learning and quality instruction. On February 25, 2015, in solidarity with National Adjunct Walkout Day, we will be walking out and teaching-in from 11:30 am – 1:00 pm, to raise awareness about the value of adjunct, contingent, and Non-Tenure Track labor. We invite …
by Ramzy Baroud / April 1st, 2015
Waiting on Israeli society to change from within is a colossal waste of time, during which the suffering of an entire nation – torn between an occupied home and a harsh diaspora – will not cease. But what are Palestinians and the supporters of a just peace in Palestine and Israel to do? Plenty.
Those who counted on some sort of a miracle to emerge from the outcome of the recent Israeli elections have only themselves to blame. Neither logic nor numbers were on their side, nor the long history laden with disappointing experiences of “leftist” Israelis unleashing wars and …
