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 …
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 …
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 …
The most recent time periods of geological history (see below, source), consist of (a) 5 Ages of the Holocene Epoch of the (b) Quaternary Period of the (c) …
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 …
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 …
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.
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, …
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)
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 …
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 …
