Latest articles
by Ismail Salami / August 30th, 2014
The nuclear talks which were infused with unnecessary optimism are no longer seen by many to yield much fruit as Washington once again reveals its true colors and pernicious intentions by imposing further sanctions on Iranian companies and individuals.
As a rule, Washington has never proved to be a trustworthy and reliable dialogue partner and any idea to the contrary stems from a naïve perception of the realities on the ground.
On Friday, the US government announced the imposition of a new round of sanctions on over 25 Iranian individuals and companies, including shipping firms, oil companies, airlines and six banks despite …
Strips the West of all Legitimacy
by Paul Craig Roberts / August 30th, 2014
The Donetsk National Republic States The Facts
“Every time you come to Russia with a sword, from a sword you will perish.”
The former Russian provinces, which Soviet party leaders carelessly attached to Ukraine at a time when it seemed to make no difference as all were part of the Soviet Union, are now independent republics with their own governments. The West pretends that this isn’t so, because Washington and its puppet capitals don’t recognize the independence of formerly captive peoples. But the West’s opinion no longer counts.
In the last couple of days the newly formed military units of the Donetsk National …
by Ralph Nader / August 30th, 2014
Over twenty years ago, Pat Palmer, in her own words, “stumbled upon a $400 overcharge in a bill my father received for a routine medical procedure.” That might have become the costliest “overcharge” the gouging, overbilling health care industry ever inflicted on itself. Because it led Ms. Palmer, whom Steve Brill (author of the Time magazine cover story, “Why Medical Bills are Killing Us,” April 4, 2013) called “one of my earliest tutors as I tried to figure out the dysfunctional world of medical economics and billing,” to start a business investigating the overbilling of patients.
Located in Roanoke, Virginia, …
by Michael T. Hertz / August 30th, 2014
If you think that police violence has increased recently, you’re right: between July 17 and August 12, five unarmed black men died at the hands of police in New York, Ohio, Missouri and California,. The worst one was the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri on August 9. Brown’s death led to demonstrations, looting, and some of the most extreme examples of police militarization yet seen. It took a week before Missouri’s Governor and the state police could bring some sort of calm to the outraged community.
The five victims were all black men. One could argue that the problem …
by Nick Beams / August 29th, 2014
Interviews with senior Labor Party figures, both past and present, published in the new book Triumph and Demise by the Australian newspaper’s leading political journalist Paul Kelly, cast a further revealing light on the circumstances surrounding the June 23-24, 2010 coup that ousted Labor leader Kevin Rudd as prime minister and installed Julia Gillard.
Kelly does not delve into the driving forces of the coup, in particular the role played by the United States as the Obama administration set in place the anti-China “pivot” to Asia. However, what he does present demolishes the fiction that Rudd’s removal was about poor public …
by Binoy Kampmark / August 29th, 2014
The current prime minister of Australia may have never had it. If he did, he has certainly lost the plot. Every national image is bound to be wrapped in some ghastly ribbon, the sort that, when untied, looks as absurd as its producer. For Prime Minister Tony Abbott, it has become necessary to articulate the worst and the dullest of patriotic slogans. His latest addition, only cursorily dusted from his days as a brash pugilist, is that of Team Australia.
If you want to fight terrorism, embrace Team Australia. If you want to back counter-terrorism laws that will roughen, rather than …
by Jack A. Smith / August 29th, 2014
The maintenance of superpower prestige above all obligates the Obama Administration to launch a full scale air war against the against the well organized, well supplied and so far victorious barbaric Islamic State (IS) in Iraq and Syria (formerly ISIS, the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria).
After 13 years of stalemated wars against al-Qaeda and the Taliban, Washington is in no position to ignore the much more powerful IS that now controls a third of the territory in two countries — larger than Great Britain and inhabited by 6 million people. This most powerful jihadist organization is the unanticipated …
by Ron Ridenour / August 29th, 2014
US – Part One
You’ve probably heard that a nine year-old girl just killed her gun instructor, Charles Vacca, with an Israeli Uzi sub-machine gun the Zionists use to kill Palestinians and other Arabs. We all know that US Americans are crazy about their guns but, really, a nine-year girl in pink shorts and pink earmuffs taking gun lessons in the Mojave Desert in Arizona?
The unnamed girl was on vacation with her parents from New Jersey. They thought this was a fun tourist thing to do so they filmed their daughter getting instructions from the shooting range instructor, a former US …
by Mateo Pimentel / August 29th, 2014
Imagine living in the world’s most literate nation—a nation where health care is free and universal, and of the highest quality by world standards.
Imagine that, in this nation, education (also free and universal) is not only considered a human right, but it is also higher in quality than that of the wealthiest, most super industrialized country the world has ever known.
Imagine that this nation actively seeks—from social to governmental dimensions—to correct and eradicate racism, and racist proclivities, so as to ensure a truer, more democratic inclusion for all.
Imagine its dedication to gender equality and women’s rights: more than forty percent …
by Ron Jacobs / August 29th, 2014
It certainly is a fine mess the warmaking establishment has gotten the US into. From the Middle East and South Asia to Europe, war and threats of war are once again the stuff of the daily news. Inflamed by warmongers in the media who would put William Randolph Hearst to shame and fostered by a legislature beholden to the gods of war and their corporate minions here on earth, the present situation is dismal at best.
I’m not one to disparage the potential and real violence of the entity calling itself the Islamic State. Then again, I am also not one …
by Walter Brasch / August 29th, 2014
It’s Labor Day weekend, the schools have been in session about a week, and the disgruntled voices of a minority drone on. Their screeching refrain, often in letters to the editor and talk show call-ins, is familiar:
— Teachers only work half a year.
— Teachers are overpaid.
— Local school districts and their taxpayers shouldn’t have to hold the burden of teacher salaries.
Often, those who complain the most are those who were average or below-average students who blame teachers, not themselves, for their mediocrity. Although most claim to be strong free-market capitalists, they believe teachers should not have much higher wages and …
by Jordan Flaherty / August 29th, 2014
Deon Haywood is the Executive Director of Woman With a Vision, a New Orleans social justice non-profit founded in 1991 by a grassroots collective of African-American women in response to the spread of HIV/AIDS in communities of color. According to the WWAV website, “We envision an environment in which there is no war against women’s bodies, in which women have spaces to come together and share their stories, in which women are empowered to make decisions concerning their own bodies and lives, and in which women have the necessary support to realize their hopes, dreams, and full potential.”
Jordan …
by Denis A. Conroy / August 29th, 2014
The notion of the absurd has been prominent in literature throughout history. Many of the literary works of Soren Kierkegard, Samuel Beckett, Franz Kafka, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Jean Paul Sartre and Albert Camus contain descriptions of people who encounter the absurdity of the world.
Until quite recently, the word existentialism, in association with the word angst had been the domain of the more inner-looking among us, especially in Europe.
But not anymore it seems. Likud Israel’s European style colonial enterprise has reapplied the meaning of the word existential (threat) to the state itself in order to better mythologise its victimhood. Never mind that …
by Yves Engler / August 29th, 2014
Why does a demonstration of hundreds of people against “anti-Semitism” in Toronto seem more like a march for white supremacy than a rally against racism?
On August 20, reported the Canadian Jewish News, several thousand took to Bathurst Street under the slogan “We Will Not be Silent: A March Against Global Anti-Semitism.” The demonstration was organized by United Jewish Appeal Federation of Greater Toronto, the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, B’nai Brith Canada, Canada Israel Experience, March of the Living Canada, and the Jewish National Fund (JNF) Canada.
If one were to take the organizers’ slogan seriously this demonstration was among …
by Scott Thomas Outlar / August 28th, 2014
The Unidentified Flying Object is falling. Quickly. Parachuting downward from the heavens. Earthbound with a message. Laced with an agenda. Sending out flares of warning. This could be the day of the invasion. Or this could be the day of the implosive flame up from within. When the enemy strikes it will come from the least expected avenue. As a parasite that has been holed up inside the guts, toiling away in the acidic nature of the swampy environment, taking its sweet ass time and planning a devilish assault. When starved will attack. Symbiotic relationship of the flesh eater. …
by Arshad M. Khan / August 28th, 2014
An interesting equation has developed in the Middle East. There is ISIS, and then there is everyone else … or almost. Everyone is against ISIS: the US, the UK and EU countries, Russia, Turkey, Iran, Syria, Iraq, the Kurds; and Saudi Arabia remains silent. Yet, by all accounts, ISIS is organized, well-trained and well-armed, possessing sophisticated weapons. The Iraqi army and the vaunted Kurdish fighters were no match in its lightning advance until US airpower blunted their offensive.
It leads to the obvious question of who armed and trained the ISIS fighters if everyone is opposed to them. Perhaps the answer …
by Adam W. Parsons / August 28th, 2014
The latest bestseller in economics has done a great deal of service to progressives in highlighting the imperative of shared wealth. But given the social and ecological limits to economic growth, this emerging conversation on global sharing has to get a lot more radical.
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There is no doubt that Thomas Piketty’s best-seller, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, has done a great deal of good in highlighting the urgency of tackling spiralling levels of global inequality. But could his main policy prescription – an annual global tax on capital – lead to a genuine sharing of wealth within and across societies?
The Guardian …
by Paul Haeder / August 28th, 2014
one giant huff and puff industry of pundits and philosophers stuck in the meaning of the universe from their safe, warm ivory towers and fat-butt computer chairs
Meta-cognition, big-talking intellectuals, the tribe talking among itself, whites & Jews controlling the narratives, and more and more delusional stuff tied to grassroots movements and the big lies of Media-Corporations-Big Government-Schools-PR-Religion.
It all starts with a Henry Giroux talking to a Dennis Bernstein, and the beat goes on and on. Look, I am a fan of some of Henry’s stuff, the pedagogy of the oppressed, the discussions on youth, on corruption, and on empire and …
by Ron Forthofer / August 28th, 2014
Many Americans may think this foreign policy issue doesn’t concern them. If they think about this issue at all, many say that it’s not our business and we should just let them fight it out. However the US has been deeply involved in this conflict since before Israel declared its existence.
A Strong and Accurate Warning
For example, in 1947 before the Partition Plan for Palestine was approved by the UN General Assembly, Loy Henderson, director of the State Department’s Office of Near Eastern and African Affairs, warned: “The UNSCOP [U.N. Special Committee on Palestine] Majority Plan is not only unworkable; …
by Burkely Hermann / August 28th, 2014
Commemorations of WWI have already begun in the West. Over ten million died in battle and another twenty million, soldiers and civilians alike, died from hunger and disease. In “War is the Health of the State“, an excerpt from his book, A People’s History of the United States, Howard Zinn wrote: “No one since [1914]…has been able to show that the war brought any gain for humanity.” It is important, therefore, to set the record straight and demonstrate that WWI was an imperialist war.
There were a number of motives for this war, one being a determination of the ruling …
Is driving a wedge between us all
by Lesley Docksey / August 27th, 2014
Three weeks to go and the debate over the Scottish Referendum gets no better. Reason goes down the drain. The large number of anti-independence people giving their views can do nothing but issue gloom and doom warnings for Scotland’s grim fate if it casts itself adrift from the United Kingdom.
The No side, or Better Together as it likes to be called (it was going to change that to “No Thanks” but that seems to have been quietly forgotten) focuses almost entirely on money – sorry – “economy”. It produces some totally inane statements, such as “Pakistan is richer …
Why Was Gaza Betrayed
by Ramzy Baroud / August 27th, 2014
Ask any Arab ruler, and they will tell you of the great sacrifices their countries have made for Palestine and the Palestinians. However, both history and present reality are testaments, not only to Arab failure to live up to the role expected of them and stand in solidarity with their own oppressed brethren, but also to the official Arab betrayal of the Palestinian cause. The current war on Gaza, and the dubious role played by Egypt in the ceasefire talks between Hamas and Israel are cases in point.
Read these comments by Aaron David Miller, a …
by Scott Thomas Outlar / August 27th, 2014
Verily, wicked minions who serve Satanic energy forces work to subvert and suppress the Holy Human Spirit by keeping our minds, hearts, guts and souls locked in a low, base, materialistic, illusory, physical vibration.
Verily, they can only achieve their Evil Ends if we allow them to influence our lives by acting in compliance with the methods of control and manipulation they use.
If we follow the guidelines of their corrupt and decadent system, we are willingly placing ourselves in their greedy, dirty, soiled hands.
If we shun and hate their system by denying and turning away from its rules, regulations and unjust …
Stop brown coal mining
by Ron Ridenour / August 27th, 2014
Choking on tears, the owner of Campsite Deulo haltingly greeted 300 activists standing by the camp’s lake, which the “leftist” regional Brandenburg government of Social Democrats (SPD) and socialist The Left (Die Linke) ((Brandenburg Die Linke recently reversed its anti-coal position, contradicting national Die Linke’s stand. In the last regional elections it won 30% of the votes and rules with the SPD, which took 35% of the votes. Apparently, Die Linke, which was pro-socialist, anti-capitalist and against imperial wars, has capitulated to what it sees as acquiring more votes from some sectors of the working class, including miners. Ironically, traditional …
All of Them
by Robert Hunziker / August 26th, 2014
Bees are some of the busiest, most industrious creatures on planet Earth. Basically, they mind their own business whilst performing pollination chores that ultimately provide humankind with every third bite of food. Yes, they’re absolutely critical to the world’s food chain all the way up to your mouth, every third bite.
“Pollen truly is the ‘gold dust of nature’. It is the culmination of the life force of plants,” The Importance of Bees, CC Pollen Co.
But, horror of horrors, bees are dying off like never before. For example, Michigan and Indiana lost 60% of their bee populations this past winter, …
Constitutes Culpable Criminal Complicity
by William Hanna / August 26th, 2014
Throughout history, it has been the inaction of those who could have acted; the indifference of those who should have known better; the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most; that has made it possible for evil to triumph.
Haile Selassie, former Emperor of Ethiopia (1892-1975)
After more than sixty years of being paralysed into silence by the Zionist venom — the stigma of anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial — that prevented condemnation of incalculable cheating, lying, stealing, murdering, and ruthless violation of the legal and natural human rights of the Palestinian people by a nation devoid of conscience, humanity, …
by John Andrews / August 26th, 2014
He cried in a whisper at some image, at some vision – he cried out twice, a cry that was no more than a breath, ‘The horror! The horror!’”
— Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad
Last Monday (18th August) Channel Four’s “Dispatches” screened a documentary by the independent film maker Evan Williams titled Nigeria’s Hidden War. Broadcast as it was, at 11 p.m. on a weekday night, it probably only attracted about six viewers. I recorded it.
It was truly horrific. Those of us who are familiar with Africa’s long history of agony would not have been too surprised by the content …
by Jan Oberg / August 26th, 2014
Denmark’s participation in the Iraq war and as occupying power 2003-2007 is, without a doubt, the worst and most criminal piece of foreign policy since 1945.
It was decided by the government of Anders Fogh Rasmussen who afterwards was rewarded by being appointed to the post of NATO S-G.
Now a military transport for the U.S.
On Wednesday this week, the Danish parliament, Folketinget, will decided to continue this foreign policy blunder by authorising a Danish Hercules military transport aircraft to participate in bringing weapons into the Kurdish areas of Northern Iraq at the request of the U.S.
Humanitarian less than a week …
by Robert S. Becker / August 26th, 2014
SNL Satire Downplayed Her Fraudulence
Awash with grim, hard times, and pained by Robin Williams’ tragic departure, those of us whose survival depends on comic interludes have not yet abandoned hope. Did not Williams show the way, mining laughter from misery? There are goofy right wing stalwarts, like Rick Perry, Ted Cruz, and Louis Gohmert, still parading as lords of misrule. But who matches Sarah Palin as clueless clown – blundering on, immutably dense, feet firmly cemented in mouth? Her latest, get-rich-quick stunt – her subscription-only TV channel about all things Palin. What a deal, for only ten bucks a month? …
by Gary Engler / August 26th, 2014
For the numerous readers who asked: “But what can we do?” after reading my Top 10 Reasons to Hate Capitalism published here on Dissident Voice:
10. We can elect governments that represent people rather than corporations. This will require serious electoral reform and include laws to make it clear corporations are not people and therefore cannot participate in the political process. A government representing all the people would regulate corporations to ensure socially responsible behaviour and transform psychopathic capitalist monstrosities into democratic, social enterprises that benefit all.
9. We can build communities and organizations that encourage solidarity, compassion and altruism. These …
