On November 9, 2014, Germany and its Western Allies, celebrated the ‘Fall of the Berlin Wall’ and the subsequent‘re-unification’of the ‘two Germanys’. Prime Minister Merkel described the ‘historic event’ as a “victory of freedom for all peoples in Europe and across the world.” The entire Western media and officialdom echoed Merkel’s rhetoric, as 300,000 Germans gathered at the Brandenburg Gate hailed their leader as she spoke of ‘one people, one nation and one state in freedom, peace and prosperity…’ But Merkel’s discourse is a self-serving chauvinist fabrication which distorts the real consequences of a united Germany. …
Many states contracted post WWII to set up the United Nations in order to settle disputes among nations; eliminate wars and maintain peace, order and cooperation amongst them. The Charter that was adopted set out the terms of that contract between states and identified the remit of the Security Council to implement these terms. Although the victors of WWII with the veto powers wanted to ensure that their activities were not shackled by real judicial scrutiny and thus the International Court of Justice was not given such authority, it remained true to say that at no place in the Charter …
The courageous journey of seriously wounded Iraq War veteran, Tomas Young, ended this past Monday, nearly eleven years after he was ambushed in a wholly exposed military truck. He passed away in Seattle while being lovingly cared for by his wife Claudia.
Tomas did not go quietly, despite his being paralyzed from the chest down, excruciating pain, comas and reliance on caregivers. He became an anti-war peace activist, addressing convocations and responding to as many interview requests as his agonized condition could tolerate.
I learned about Tomas when his mother, Cathy Smith, called from Walter Reed Army Hospital in 2004, where her …
The British Prime Minister was evidently enjoying the backslapping as he strode into the Australian parliament. David Cameron felt at home before members he could count on, so much so the weak jokes seemed to have effect. The UK-Australian relationship was discussed. Like a long union, it had gathered some dust, losing its frisson perhaps, but never its presumption of friendship. “It is extraordinary to think that no British Foreign Secretary had visited Australia in nearly 20 years. I was determined to change that.”
Rocky times were still times when the couple stuck it through. “Our ties have been woven …
It is reported by NBC that the Senate, controlled by Democrats, will not take up the confirmation of Loretta Lynch as Attorney General during the lame duck session of the Senate. The current rule, recently changed by Harry Reid, is that an appointment such as Attorney General, requires a simple majority. Can anyone believe that having Mitch McConnell as the next majority leader in the Senate officiate this confirmation will be preferable?
Such ill-considered decision-making is exactly why the Democrats got their butts kicked during the midterm elections. From the very beginning, even before the Republicans took the House in 2010, …
The governing Liberals in BC and Conservatives in Canada insist that jobs, public revenues and economic growth all depend on expanding fossil fuel exports. Christie Clark’s Liberals won the 2013 BC election promising a future of jobs and rising public revenues based on the export of liquified natural gas. Now two years later faced with widespread protests and declining oil and gas prices, no LNG project has proceeded.
Additional oil pipelines to the Pacific are promoted but only Kinder Morgan is actually proceeding. Here preliminary efforts to double the existing line to Burnaby to carry diluted bitumen from the tar sands …
James Connolly is primarily remembered in Irish history as the Socialist revolutionary hero of the Rising of 1916, executed in Kilmainham Prison while strapped to a chair. Connolly’s place in Irish history is far more than that, however. He was a proud Socialist, the founder of both the Irish Socialist Republican Party and the Labour Party, and the writer of the influential pamphlets Labour in Irish History and The Reconquest of Ireland. Connolly’s political pragmatism in forming the Labour Party was the culmination of idealistic defeats that began with the dissolution of the ISRP in 1904. He believed that, in …
A story grows in Arizona. The state’s legal landscape shifted drastically in 2010, when voters marginally succeeded in legalizing the Arizona Medical Marijuana Act (Prop 203, commonly). According to CNN reports at the time, the Arizona ballot measure—to legalize the consumption of medical marijuana—passed with only 50.13 percent of the vote. Prop 203 was effectively the only ballot to eek through the citizens-initiative process. Marijuana, however, was no stranger to the AZ ballot four years ago. In the mid-to-late 1990s, voters twice attempted to pass initiatives. Technical errors with wording resulted in the laws’ inability to protect patients from arrest. …
Democracy, like love, is a word oft used and little understood. We have a vague sense of what love “means.” We tend to apply the word indiscriminately, based on a deep need to be loved by the people who are important to us. We like to see the word in print. We feel warm and safe when we hear it said aloud.
When we are “in love” our vision is hazy. Our judgment is weak. We tend to believe what we want to believe and shunt aside any indication that what we believe may not be true.
The “great powers” are marking the centenary of World War One. Ironically the world is still at war. There are global and regional conflicts in progress. Rising tensions between India and Pakistan (two nuclear powers), civil wars in Iraq and Syria, as well as the on-going Palestinian Israeli “armed conflict” which continuous without an end in sight. Europe has not been spared the horrors of conflict in 2014 either. Ukraine has descended into a mutually agreed upon slaughter fest. Call it a proxy war if you like. That is, this eastern European former Soviet republic is now the scene of …
Israel has banned Norwegian doctor and human rights activist Mads Gilbert from entering Gaza for life.
Gilbert, a professor at the University Hospital of North Norway, where he has worked since 1976, earned international renown for his philanthropic work in late 2008, during Israel’s Operation Cast Lead, an attack that, according to Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem, killed roughly 1,400 Gazans, including almost 800 civilians, 350 of whom were children.
The aid worker, along with fellow Norwegian doctor Erik Fosse, decided to volunteer in Gaza as soon as he heard that bombing had started, on 27 December 2008. Thanks …
On November 12—thirteen years after the onset of George W. Bush’s dirty underground war against “unlawful combatants”—the Obama administration finally told the United Nations Committee Against Torture that the United States believed, in the words of Assistant Secretary of State Tom Malinowski, “that torture, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment and punishment are forbidden in all places, at all times, with no exceptions.” Finally! Not so fast.
Torture is as old as human civilization. Assyrians skinned victims alive. Torture was a routine feature of Greek and Roman interrogations. Execution by torture took the form of crucifixion for the Romans, stoning for the …
Spain’s deeply rooted distrust of popular participation in democratic processes is reminiscent of the swift, top-down transition some forty years ago. As such, it is a painful reminder of Spain’s unfinished revolution.
Spain’s peaceful transition to democracy has been extolled as a model to emulate for democratizing nations across the globe. Following the death of General Franco in 1975, King Juan Carlos transformed the authoritarian regime into a European democracy, and did so without shedding a drop of blood. And yet Spanish democracy nowadays is not without its critics. The Catalan movement for independence unveils just what’s amiss in Spain’s celebrated …
No matter what high-blown claims the politicians make each year on Remembrance Day, The Great War was essentially a fight between two branches of a single royal family over the balance of power on the continent of Europe, British foreign policy holding to a longstanding principle that no one nation should ever be permitted to dominate the continent.
It was also a war between the world’s greatest existing imperial power, Britain, and another state, Germany, which aspired to become a greater imperial power than it was.
To a considerable extent, it was a war resulting from large standing armies and …
by Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers / November 13th, 2014
After getting clobbered on November 4, the Democratic Party needs to ask itself some tough questions and come up with honest answers. If it doesn’t, it’s going to continue to lose elections because it lacks credibility with its own voter base.
The 2014 election was a disaster for Democrats. Any Democratic partisan who tries to explain it away is doing a disservice to their party. When the Maryland’s Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown loses to an unknown Republican in a state where the Democrats have a 2-to-1 registration advantage, the Democratic Party better look in the mirror and ask: Why didn’t people …
Laura Poitras Omits Corporate Spies and State Capture
by William A. Blunden / November 13th, 2014
A couple of days ago Laura Poitras, the filmmaker who directed the movie Citizenfour, gave an interview to the Dutch news outlet NRC Handelsblad. For those in the audience who don’t speak Dutch there’s a rough English translation available at Cryptome.
Readers following the Snowden affair won’t encounter much in terms of new material but there are certain statements that Poitras makes near the end of her interview that are astonishing. For example, Poitras comments that both Google and Apple have made great strides towards protecting users:
I think certainly a change in consciousness has come after Snowden. Google’s servers …
“The Berlin Wall, this symbol of state abuse cast in concrete, took millions of people to the limits of what is tolerable, and all too many beyond it.”
On the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, German Chancellor Angela Merkel delivered a speech of sublime hypocrisy when juxtaposed beside the illegal Apartheid/Annexation Wall and beside the blockade ‘wall’ constricting Gaza constructed by Israel, which she once vowed, “Germany will never abandon Israel but will remain a true friend and partner.”
Merkel rhapsodised,
The fall of the Berlin Wall showed us that dreams can come true — and that nothing …
by Dissident Voice Communications / November 13th, 2014
Word: writers reading from their work to the accompaniment of imagery to set the mood.
Or perhaps it’s something else entirely. Why these images, for ‘audio A’ and those other images for ‘audio B?’ The image sequences don’t seem to be ‘literal’ interpretations of the spoken text.
But, as Yogi Berra said, “It ain’t over till be be finale of seem; then we can all go out for ice-cream, my treat…’
That is, it ain’t like this stuff is set to ‘program music.’
Unless, possibly, it is, or something along those lines. Perhaps the images are hieroglphs, a new ‘lingo’ to emerge from the …
As I was finalizing my research for this article, I found myself browsing through a heap of hilarious videos by mostly Egyptian TV show hosts Tawfiq Okasha and Amr Adeeb.
In one of his numerous videos on Youtube, Okasha, the star and host of the Cairo-based privately funded al-Faraeen channel, tries to explain the differences between the brains of humans and water buffalos. Along with Adeeb, they occupy a large space of Egyptian media discourse, wreaking so much havoc with their mostly unsubstantiated claims, frequent incite and outrageous claims.
Their demagogic discourse presented through daily campaigns of misinformation and vilification of …
The Australian delegation has provided the comic relief in diplomatic circles for some time now. Its pugilist humanoid of a prime minister, Tony Abbott, has made inane remarks about “shirt fronting” Vladimir Putin, something which distinctly did not happen at the APEC summit in Beijing. Photos were taken showing a disinterested Putin feigning interest in some zygotic life form. And Canberra’s toadies have been doing their utmost best to keep climate change off any meaningful agenda ahead of the G20 gathering in Brisbane. Why discuss something that, in the shallow minds of most of Tony Abbott’s front bunch, doesn’t exist?
by Dissident Voice Communications / November 12th, 2014
Real interviews with Real People who know stuff…
People Who Know Stuff: Eric Larsen: Inside Existence
People Who Know Stuff: Eric Larsen: Subversion
Eric Larsen, Publisher and Founder of Oliver Arts and Open Press, is a native of Minnesota who has lived in New York City since 1971. He taught writing and literature for thirty-five years at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY. He is now retired and devoting himself full time to writing and to The Oliver Arts & Open Press. Up through the 1980s he published fiction, essays, and reviews in numerous magazines, from quarterlies like The …
This is the shits of America, the more and more irrelevant prattlers of Democracy Now as we see this pig of a human, three-star general, retired, now getting his triple dipping blood money for a book full of fluff, lies, in this shit story of his shit life as a Murder Incorporated General — Why We Lost: A General’s Inside Account Of The Iraq And Afghanistan Wars by Three-star Criminal General, Daniel Bolger, worth 502 pages of forest-killing propaganda, a faux memoir. This general who’s been to war college after war college on how to bomb, destroy, drone, blast humanity. So Amy …
Twenty-five years ago this week, six Jesuit scholars at the Universidad Centroamericana (UCA) in El Salvador opened the doors of their residence to members of a government death squad, who had been armed and trained by the United States. The soldiers marched the priests to the back garden. They were ordered to lie face down. They were shot and killed like dogs along with their housekeeper and her teenage daughter.
Father Ignacio Ellacuría Bescoetxea, one of the six Jesuits executed that night, had been a vocal advocate for a negotiated political settlement to the war that had devastated the small Central …
by Dissident Voice Communications / November 12th, 2014
Roger Golden began studying Tai Chi and other martial arts forms after graduating from high school in the mid-1960s. A classic ‘clown,’ in the folk-lore sense of the cunning trickster who gets over on Power, as opposed to collaborating with, endorsing and representing it, he laughed his way from low-level street deals of the then ‘new thing,’ marijanna, to become one of the major ‘importer-exporters’ of this particular herb, in the United States (after the CIA, of course) until his incarceration for ten years in the early 1990s. With ‘Tai Chi, Thai Stick,’ the various lives …
by Dissident Voice Communications / November 12th, 2014
Presented by Douglas Valentine. Douglas Valentine is author of The Phoenix Program, a meticulously researched, ground-breaking history of the CIA’s complex ‘neutralization program’ used in Vietnam; the comprehensive, two-volume history of United States drug policy from 1900 through 2010, The Strength of the Wolf (1900-1968) , The Strength of the Pack (1968-2010) and The Hotel Tacloban. Valentine’s unique oeuvre of books and articles includes the widely acclaimed, With Our Eyes Wide Open, an anthology of international poets who ‘bore witness,’ translating personal accounts of war and related …
by Dissident Voice Communications / November 12th, 2014
Listed below are the ten quercks slated for this first dec of Leaving da Camera On. As-yet to be completed and uploaded quercks will be listed under ‘TBA’ until further notice (i.e. they’re completed — a relative term — and uploaded):
If Julian Assange was initially perceived by many as a controversial but respected, even heroic, figure challenging power, the corporate media worked hard to change that perception in the summer of 2012. After Assange requested political asylum in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, the faux-feminists and corporate leftists of the ‘quality’ liberal press waged war on his reputation.
This comment from the Guardian’s Deborah Orr summed up the press zeitgeist:
It’s hard to believe that, until fairly recently, Julian Assange was hailed not just as a radical thinker, but as a radical achiever, too.
Contrarian values escalated to the highest peak. Uppercased and placed on a silver pedestal. Super human friction fundamentals scratch against the metal spike, working out all the rough edge elementals. Flashpoint of retardation as the species takes a high voltage dose of vaccine liquidation straight to the head. Recalcitrance flows through the muddy stream until reaching a waterfall of sludge and scrap iron plating. Pencil neck, bureaucratic, chicken hawk, fuck faces fudge numbers to get a bigger budget for their war profiteering schemes of madness. Evaluation ceremonies in the high loft take place on the backroom casting couch. Sell your …
For the past four years we have been visiting the Unist’ot’en camp and since then, we just can’t shut up about them. Why? Because their form of protest is beyond words and it’s manifested in direct action. They have created a real physical wall of opposition to all the proposed pipelines that could bring oil from the tar sands and fracked gas to world market in the Pacific ocean. We introduced them to the world with our “Oil Gateway” video back in 2011, and then with “The Action …
