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by Harry J. Bentham / October 9th, 2014
Google Inc.’s 2013 book The New Digital Age, authored by Google chairman Eric Schmidt and Google Ideas director Jared Cohen, was showered with praise by many, but attacked in a review by Julian Assange for the New York Times, where it is described as a “love song” from Google to the US state. Also addressed in Assange’s subsequent book When Google Met WikiLeaks, Google’s book makes an unconvincing effort to depict the internet as a double-edged sword, both empowering (p. 6) and threatening our lives (p. 7).
The popular internet, Google argues, might help defeat the US’s “authoritarian” …
by Fran Quigley / October 9th, 2014
In February of 2013, I stood in a sweaty, overcrowded Port-au-Prince courtroom and watched as Jean-Claude Duvalier answered questions about hundreds of his political opponents being arrested, imprisoned, and killed during his tenure as Haiti’s “President for Life.”
Many of Duvalier’s rivals were held in the notorious three prisons known collectively as the “Triangle of Death”—Casernes Dessalines, Fort Dimanche, and the National Penitentiary. One political prisoner held in the Casernes Dessalines recalls being placed in a cell underneath the grounds of the National Palace, where Duvalier lived. The prisoner was led to an area so dark he could not see, but …
by Stuart Littlewood / October 9th, 2014
Ever since I began taking an interest in the Palestinians’ struggle – nearly ten years ago – those brave people have been cursed with rubbish leadership that has taken them steadily backwards instead of forwards… leadership that studiously ignores Palestine’s friends outside, fails its people inside and allows its territory and resources to dwindle.
Western Christendom is afflicted with similar misfortune. Corrupted leaders don’t lift a finger to stop the Holy Land, which is central to the beliefs of most of their people, from being smashed, grabbed and bloodied.
Now the Palestinians are huddled in the Last Chance Saloon drinking bad whisky …
by Gilad Atzmon / October 8th, 2014
Jews and philosophy have had a pretty troubled relationship. The collision between ‘the tribal’ and ‘the universal’ or, more accurately, between Athens and Jerusalem, is inevitable. The few great Jewish thinkers who transcended the tribal, such as Spinoza or Otto Weininger, have been harassed and labelled by the rabbis as ‘self haters’ and enemies of the Jews.
Some contemporary Zionist merchants insist upon wrapping their Judeo centrism in crypto philosophical arguments. Bernard-Henri Levy, for instance, advocates his Zionist warmongering using a pseudo ‘moralist’ terminology.
Today I came across a uniquely banal rant by Asa Kasher, a Jewish ‘philosopher’ at Tel Aviv University. Kasher, who also …
The U.S. without a war is like an apple pie without apples
by William Boardman / October 8th, 2014
A Nobel Peace Prize recipient is among the loudest voices for war nowadays. Better, this Nobel Peace prize recipient has unchecked power to wage war and uses it willfully in a variety of nations. Perhaps best, this prize-winning peace president has set out to a plan to make a desert and call it peace, for which a grateful power structure might well give him yet another prize.
Such absurdity dominates the world we live in now, because people in governments are committing us all to irrational choices based on no credible public explanation. Examples are myriad, but President Obama’s shrill war …
by Eric Walberg / October 8th, 2014
The 2nd conference “New Horizon: the International Conference of Independent Thinkers” was held in Tehran, September 29–October 1 2014, including over 30 journalists, writers and academics from around the world presenting papers and arguing issues of world geopolitics, with a focus on the Middle East. I came from Canada, along with University of Lethbridge Globalization Studies Professor Anthony Hall, author of Earth into Property: Colonization, Decolonization, and Capitalism (2010). It was greeted in western media by hysterical denunciations; firstly, by the American Jewish Committee which accused it of “promoting hatred of Jews and Israel”, and the Anti-Defamation League which accused …
by John Stanton / October 8th, 2014
At the same time the progressive evacuation in the 20th century of the nation-state as a means of class domination and the advent of a nomadic pirate class of financial capital, means that the practice of endemic global war has become indifferent to national territory and so functionally infinite in its horizons for future conflict The cannibal war-machine thus consumes persons and ecologies through forms of commodity production and price speculation that profit from the systematic creation of social chaos and its re-ordering through the violence and destruction of high-tech military performance and the enforced disciplines of emergency or pandemic …
by Ramzy Baroud / October 8th, 2014
I recall, with particular awkwardness, my first talk at a socialist student gathering at the University of Washington in Seattle nearly two decades ago. When I tried to offer an authentic view of the situation in Palestine from the viewpoint of a refugee, my hosts were hardly impressed.
However, the head of the student group knew how to move the crowd. He spoke of Palestinian and Israeli proletariat classes, which, according to him were ultimately fighting against the same enemy, the neoliberal capitalist elites shamelessly subduing the working classes in both Palestine and Israel. But what the audience loved the most …
by Luke Eastwood / October 8th, 2014
Back in 2008 we all became aware of corporate recklessness and poor governance that led to the financial crash. Against our better judgment, most people failed to object to the bailouts – the use of public funds to save bankrupt private enterprises.
That many countries around the world, Europe and America especially, let this happen with barely a murmur of complaint is both sad and laughable.
Unfortunately where we stand now is in an even worse position – no lessons have been learned, the mistakes of the corporate sector continue unpunished and worse still, the public continues to fund the recapitalisation of …
by Jim McCluskey / October 8th, 2014
At last the American government has found the perfect formula for war without end: Invade and bomb Middle East states. This creates jihadists which must be got rid of. So bomb the jihadists. This creates more jihadists who must also be bombed and so on. The military/industrial complex is in business in perpetuity. Endless peace by waging endless war as forecast by Gore Vidal has now come to pass. And the UK, obedient as ever, clicks into the backup position. The UK government’s propaganda is blatant and shameless. We must bomb ISIS because it presents a direct threat to the …
by Ismail Salami / October 8th, 2014
With the ISIL terrorists mounting more gory adventurism in Syria and Iraq and capturing villages and towns, there seems to be no tangible impediment to stop this influx of terror.
The ghastly images circulated freely by the cult on the internet from beheading to crucifying their victims in cold blood have incensed the international community on the one hand but on the other hand, they have regrettably conduced to Islamophobia, a plan long funded by the officials in Washington.
The root causes of the ISIL cult are not hard to imagine and there are times that those involved in the creation and …
by Kathy Kelly / October 7th, 2014
On October 7, 2014, Kathy Kelly and Georgia Walker appeared before Judge Matt Whitworth in Jefferson City, MO, federal court on a charge of criminal trespass to a military facility. The charge was based on their participation, at Whiteman Air Force Base, in a June 1st 2014 rally protesting drone warfare. Kelly and Walker attempted to deliver a loaf of bread and a letter to the Base Commander, encouraging the commander to stop cooperating with any further usage of unmanned aerial vehicles, (drones) for surveillance and attacks.
The prosecutor, USAF Captain Daniel Saunders, said that if Kelly and Walker would …
by Jan Oberg / October 7th, 2014
First some principles to stimulate another discourse, another way of thinking that is not militarist – and then the concrete proposals below – 27 in all for your deliberation, discussion with friends and perhaps to share through your social and other media.
The proposals are not numbered – there is no linearity, some of it can be done simultaneously.
How to make bombing and wars irrelevant
Stop the financing of ISIS – sadly it is non-democratic allies of the West – Saudi-Arabia, Qatar, UAE etc – that seem to pay its bills. Joe Biden apologised for being truthful.
Allegedly, …
by Jan Oberg / October 7th, 2014
First some principles to stimulate another discourse, another way of thinking that is not militarist – and then some concrete proposals – 27 in all for your deliberation, discussion with friends and perhaps to share through your social and other media.
Neither war nor doing nothing
The principle of ”An eye for an eye will one day make the whole world blind” – said Mohandas K. Gandhi who was born on October 2, 145 years ago. Since then, human civilisation has not advanced much when it comes to handling conflict.
Let’s recognise that it is a difficult situation – the Middle East is …
by Jonathan Cook / October 7th, 2014
Questioning someone’s integrity is not something I do lightly, especially when I share much ideological common ground with them. But the unsavoury behaviour of George Monbiot, a leading columnist for the Guardian and one of Britain’s most prominent progressive intellectuals, is becoming ever harder to overlook – and forgive.
On a whole range of issues, such as corporate greed and threats to the planet posed by climate change, I agree wholeheartedly with Monbiot. It is also entirely possible for two people to disagree, even intensely, but still believe their opponent’s views are legitimate and advanced in good faith. That is how …
by Alton C. Thompson / October 6th, 2014
Knowledge has been accumulating over the past few decades suggesting that our current situation, as humans, is dire. One irony associated with this body of knowledge is that it is likely now too late to act on that knowledge in a way that might save us. A second irony is even more saturated in irony: Had we had this knowledge 40—or even 30—years ago, and acted on it, it’s likely that our situation would not now be dire; however, it’s unlikely that we would have acted to save ourselves even then! It’s enough to make one cry!
What knowledge am I …
by Scott Thomas Outlar / October 6th, 2014
Verily, that which is abominable must be abolished.
That which has become completely corrupted must now, with deliberate haste, be shunned and cast out.
Verily, ignorance and naivety are no longer justifiable states of consciousness with the Apocalypse being now so near at hand.
The heart, mind, gut and soul of every person must be fully alert and awake to witness the coming of that which is Most Awful so its onslaught of chaotic damage can be minimized as best as possible and our species can have at least a fighting chance for survival. Those who seek to hide from the storm will …
by Gary Engler / October 6th, 2014
My fellow lobsters, we are being cooked.
I know some of you don’t believe it and others have come to the conclusion there is nothing we can do, but the simple truth is the gas has been turned on, the fire lit and the temperature is slowly rising. There is no significant disagreement amongst our lobster pot scientists about these basic facts. In fact, the latest study argues the water is much hotter than previously thought. Our only way of avoiding the rolling boil is to come up with a plan to turn the gas off and then take the …
Now the Hard Part, Kick out the US, Build National Consensus
by Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers / October 5th, 2014
When protests in Hong Kong exploded people looked for US involvement. It was not hard to find. The overt intrusion of the US is available in budgets, documents and websites; the covert involvement has not yet been uncovered but is no doubt there. What does US involvement mean for the credibility of the protest movement and the future of Hong Kong?
The issues raised by the protests, democracy and unfair economy, are very real. But so are the concerns of Beijing for economic growth and continuing to lift people out of poverty, something China has done remarkably well. Those who seek …
by Denis A. Conroy / October 5th, 2014
“FBI Believes It Has Identified ISIS Hostage Executioner
The U.S. believes it has identified the British-accented masked man in the video depicting the beheading of two American journalists and a British aid worker, The FBI director says.”
— Huff Post Politics September 25, 2014
A telling message percolating from top to bottom into the passive receptors of the mesmerised multitude? Yes, dear multitude, potato yourselves on your couches, get comfortable, stay uncritical and listen to big brother identify the goodies from the baddies for you. It’s them or us.
For starters, we the media of your choice, will regale you with some images …
by Dr. Hakim / October 5th, 2014
Kabul — “I woke up with the blast of another bomb explosion this morning,” Imadullah told me. “I wonder how many people were killed.” Imadullah, an 18 year old Afghan Peace Volunteer, (APV), from Badakhshan, had joined me at the APVs’ Borderfree Community Centre of Nonviolence.
The news reported that at least three Afghan National Army soldiers were killed in the suicide bomb attack, in the area of Darulaman. Coincidentally, the Afghan Peace Volunteers (APVs) had planned to be at the Darulaman Palace that same morning. To commemorate Gandhi’s birthday and the International Day of Nonviolence, we wanted to form …
by Steve Breyman / October 4th, 2014
Every national peace group (large and small, new and old, religious and secular) opposes Barack Obama’s war against ISIS in Iraq, and its recent extension to Syria. Their opposition extends to Obama’s Congress-sanctioned arming of “moderate” Syrian rebels (for which legislators found half a billion dollars).
The anti-war movement’s antagonism is sturdy and reasoned. It’s based on irrefutable historical, political, economic and cultural analysis focused on the past thirteen years of bloody, wasteful, failed war on Afghanistan and Iraq, Pakistan and Yemen, Libya and Somalia. Find some here, here, and here.
The groups don’t merely oppose more war. They …
by Jason Hirthler / October 4th, 2014
The third century Christian theologian Tertullian is famously credited with defending his faith with the outrageous claim, “Credo quia absurdum” (I believe, because it is absurd). That is a paraphrase of Tertullian’s actual statements from De Carne Christi, notably “certum est, quia impossibile” (It’s certain because impossible). Some have claimed that Tertullian was appealing to an Aristolean notion that it is possible to deduce an argument of probability from the astonishing improbability of an event. If so, then we ought to take seriously President Obama’s strategy “degrading and destroying” ISIS, no matter how absurd it seems.
The folly of fools
Welcome …
by Jonathan Cook / October 3rd, 2014
It’s not often I praise the BBC for producing real journalism. Further, it is with some disbelief that I find myself applauding Jane Corbin, who I will struggle till my dying day to forgive for her despicable piece of Israeli propaganda parading as reportage a few years back on the Israeli navy’s attack on the Mavi Marmara aid ship to Gaza.
Nonetheless, Corbin has now fronted a truly disturbing revisionist documentary on Rwanda, called Rwanda’s Untold Story. The programme’s argument is that the official story about a straightforward genocide by the Hutu majority of Rwanda’s Tutsis 20 years ago is highly selective and …
by Rajesh Makwana / October 3rd, 2014
As further evidence comes to light of how our economic systems are decimating the natural world, sharing is fast emerging as the central theme in the discourse on how to ensure prosperity for all within planetary boundaries.
*****
Barely a week after more than half a million people marched for decisive action on climate change, the World Wildlife Fund for Nature (WWF) released their latest Living Planet report, which serves as a timely reminder that the environmental crises we face extend far beyond the popular discourse on global warming. As ever, this year’s report makes for grim reading, with updated …
by Ron Jacobs / October 3rd, 2014
British novelist Doris Lessing wrote a novel titled The Good Terrorist. The story revolves around an autonomous leftist cell in London that decides to step up their participation in the struggle against capitalism and imperialism by providing material support to the IRA. Eventually, the cell moves on to taking their own armed actions, which results in the death of one of their members. The main character in the novel, a woman named Alice, has political and moral disagreements with the course she and her comrades have taken but remains committed to the course of action. The cell’s living quarters is …
by Media Lens / October 2nd, 2014
The referendum campaign on Scottish independence heightened many people’s awareness of the pro-elite bias of the ‘mainstream’ news media. The grassroots power of social media in exposing and countering this bias was heartening to see. But the issue of independence for Scotland is just one of many where the traditional media consistently favour establishment power.
The essential feature of corporate media performance is that elite interests are routinely favoured and protected, while serious public dissent is minimised and marginalised. The BBC, the biggest and arguably the most globally respected news organisation, is far from being an exception. Indeed, …
by Ron Ridenour / October 2nd, 2014
1. President Barak Obama spoke to youth on June 11, 2014
And if there’s one message I want to deliver to young people like a Tumblr audience is, don’t get cynical. Guard against cynicism. I mean, the truth of the matter is that for all the challenges we face, all the problems that we have, if you had to be — if you had to choose any moment to be born in human history, not knowing what your position was going to be, who you were going to be, you’d choose this time. The world is less violent than it …
by Scott Thomas Outlar / October 1st, 2014
The duplicitous machinations of the insane elitists who menacingly hover above and methodically trample upon the downtrodden masses careen carelessly down the ever widening scope of masochistic malfeasance, crushing everything within a thousand mile vicinity with hobnailed boots of black-hearted doom. Nowhere to turn. Nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide. Cornered. Like a rat. Starving for its piece of the cheese. Ready to violently strike out. Lips snarling. Fangs flashed. Blood on the teeth. Knife to the neck. A shadowy sanctimonious scene silhouetted against the backdrop of a …
by Lesley Docksey / October 1st, 2014
English though I am, I was both angered and saddened by the result of the Scottish Referendum; saddened because I had hoped the Yes side would win, and angered because of all the sneering, negative and arrogant campaigning done by Westminster via the Better Together campaign. That didn’t go down too well so they brought in Gordon Brown to do his patriotic bit, which included talking about how many Scots had fought and died in the UK’s wars. To quote:
We fought two world wars together. And there is not a cemetery in Europe that does not have Scots, English, Welsh, …
