Unstoppable climate change, massive refugeeism, genocide, starvation, domestic militarization, violence, human trafficking, poisoning of the Earth, constant war, terrorism, maltreatment of women, American exceptionalism, wealth and income disparity. Sounds like a laundry list of human disasters, doesn’t it? That’s because it is. And that’s the short list.
These massive global trends seemingly have nothing in common, except that each one adds another layer of human decomposition to the accumulation of the centuries. The Earth as we know it is dying. Why is this happening now? Is it just coincidence? Or perhaps only a different perspective triggered by the speed of communication, …
Are you depressed? Have you lost interest in things you used to enjoy? Are you eating or sleeping too much? Big Pharma hopes so! The push to convince people who are dealing with job, family, relationship and money problems that they actually have “depression” has resulted in almost one in four American women in their 40s and 50s taking antidepressants. Ka-ching.
Psychiatry is often accused of not being “real medicine” because the diseases it diagnoses cannot be proved on blood tests and brain scans. That’s why this month’s announcement of the “first blood test to diagnose major depression in adults” …
Soon after children start noticing differences between others and themselves, they’re old enough to believe they’re superior or entitled in some ways. These feelings come naturally, and are reinforced by adults as children learn social behaviors by comparing attributes and values so they can fit in with, or be seen apart from, certain others in society. This is all instinctual to some degree and a normal part of life. To make the case for instinct and superiority, think about what anyone would consider when choosing a partner for a serious or long-term relationship. If a potential partner does not meet …
Congress has fled town to avoid voting for or against a new war. Many of the big donors to Congressional campaigns would want Yes votes. Many voters would want No votes, if not immediately, then as soon as the panic induced by the beheading videos wears off, which could be within the next month. Better to just avoid displeasing anyone — other than people who notice you running away.
The standard for legal-ish cosmopolitan respectability in the U.S. now has become getting five kings and dictators to say their on your side as you start bombing a new country.
Danish government more loyal with the U.S. than with its own citizens
by Jan Oberg / September 26th, 2014
What’s your image of Denmark? Apart from the Little Mermaid, Carlsberg beer and H.C. Andersen perhaps something with decency, welfare, development aid, equality and peace?
Unfortunately, that image is outdated. During the last good 15 years Denmark has participated in wars on/in Yugoslavia and Afghanistan, it was an occupying country in Iraq for four years and a main bomber nation of Libya.
The government’s decision earlier today to send 7 F16s to fight with the U.S. increases the risk of terror actions against Denmark.
It must have been known for quite some time since, about a month ago, the Danish government …
Paul Krugman is an outstanding scholar-journalist, arguably the most enlightening among the New York Times’s regulars. He has grown in his years with the Times, possibly to the dismay of the top brass of the paper. When he was taken on as a regular in 2000 Krugman was a free trade enthusiast, and in his very first regular column (January 2, 2000) he admonished the protesters at the World Trade Organization gathering in Seattle (12/99) for portraying globalization as “an ideology of and for a rootless cosmopolitan elite that is out of touch with ordinary people.” He claimed then that …
ASIO, Surveillance and Australia’s New Security Laws
by Binoy Kampmark / September 26th, 2014
What we’ve seen [tonight] is, I think, a scary, disproportionate and unnecessary expansion of coercive surveillance powers that will not make anybody any safer but that affect freedoms that have been quite hard fought for and won over a period of decades.
— Senator Scott Ludlam, Australian Greens, Sydney Morning Herald, September 26, 2014
So much for Parliament and its representative functions. So much for politicians who have a rather nasty habit of forfeiting duties and, in the name of duties, smoothing the path to a surveillance and policing imperium. Where is the mettle, the determination in Canberra? Distinctly absent, given the …
Abbas denies mounting claims that Egypt has offered territory for a Palestinian state. Should we believe him?
by Jonathan Cook / September 26th, 2014
What is Israel’s endgame in Gaza? It is a question that has been puzzling analysts and observers for some time. But belatedly, there are indications of the future Israel and Washington may have in mind for Gaza.
Desperately overcrowded, short on basic resources like fresh water, blockaded for eight years by Israel, with its infrastructure intermittently destroyed by Israeli bombing campaigns, Gaza looks like a giant pressure cooker waiting to explode.
It is difficult to imagine that sooner or later Israel will not face a massive upheaval on its doorstep. So how does Israel propose to avert a scenario in …
Looking at the hardware and software of the killers, Murder Inc., really sets out what we are up against
You don’t need to be a Georgetown graduate of the diplomatic killing corps or a rocket scientist or some overpaid pig of entertainment journalism or pundit or war hero or black president or a member of the publishing class to understand what bombing Syria and Iraq and any other country means to the military and civilian murder machine. Below, just the facts, ma’am. Clearly laid out as the direct military profiteers engaged in killing people abroad or in their neck of the …
The U.S. war establishment is using the ISIS propaganda scare to police the world and continuously subject resistant nations to their global NATO imperial plans through massive aerial bombardment violence that is already murdering people not taking part in hostilities.
It’s not just the ISIS group that is an instrument to launch further wars for empire, either. There are new groups and endless enemies that the Washington war cabal is now naming, including the Khorasan group.
The U.S. war criminals dropped as many bombs on Syria in one night on September 23 than the entire span of recent bombings/170 plus death dealing …
On its own the Arabic word al-Nakhwa, means “gallantry.” Combined with the word “al-Arabiya” – “Arab gallantry” – the term becomes loaded with meanings, cultural and even political implications and subtext. But what is one to make of “Arab gallantry” during and after Israel’s most brutal war on Gaza between 8 July and 26 August which killed 2,163 Palestinians and wounded over 11,000 more?
Is this the end of Arab Nakhwa? Did it even ever exist?
As a Palestinian Gaza refugee from a simple peasantry background, I was raised to believe that al-Nakhwa was an essential component of one’s Arab identity. Together …
The Climate Change March on September 21, 2014 could be a game-changer. Why? Because not only did it draw nearly 400,000 people to the largest climate change demonstration in history, but because it inspired similar marches and demonstrations around the globe to coordinate with it. 2646 events in 156 countries.
Reverend William Barber and his Moral Monday Movement inspired a similar geographically broad demonstration in late August 2014, with a Moral Week taking place in 12 states. The Climate Change marches were much larger in number, but both movements demonstrated the possibilities of coordinated demonstrations in …
The covert war on Syria has now finally exploded into the open, with US warplanes launching a blitzkrieg on the Arab country over night.
Washington and its allies have now crossed a dangerous Rubicon, setting the stage for an all-out war on Syria under the guise of “defeating extremism.”
The absurd contradictions and deceptions of this latest US-led war in the Middle East should be brazenly obvious for anyone not brainwashed by Western “news” propaganda. The extremists that Washington is supposedly hunting now down are the progeny of American covert war in Syria that the Syrian government has been battling against for …
The US Administration has escalated its three-year-long war for regime change in Syria by launching air attacks, not authorized by the Syrian government or the UN Security Council, on ISIL positions in Syria; by increasing funding and training of “moderate rebels” in Syria to the tune of $500 million; and by enlisting the support of other countries in a new “coalition of the willing” to do its dirty work. The Syria Solidarity Movement believes that these belligerent US actions amount to a further attempt at regime change in Syria through the back door. We believe that the USA will, in …
Dennis Trainer Jr. (of AcronymTV.com) recently appeared on Abby Martin’s “Breaking the Set“.
Mr Trainer spoke about the anniversary of the Occupy Movement and was suggesting the Movement now focus its efforts on the issue of climate change. I think he was mistaken.
One of the most telling, and accurate, arguments levelled against the wonderful Occupy Movement was that it had no direction: it was clear about what it was against, but not clear what it was for. The Movement was obviously against economic injustice. Although this fact was hugely and solidly supported by millions all around the world, there was …
However painful the remedy, America the Dense apparently needs another round of 2 X 4’s to the head. Despite fiery warnings from the world’s best social, economic and scientific analysts — aghast how many mammoth problems are trivialized, key state voting majorities still buy the faery dust of the failed right. Don’t Tea Partiers have slews of educated children desperate for absent career positions? Don’t they realize big banks thrive when elected Republicans (and conservative Democrats) call the shots? Hats off to GOP propaganda: worsening conditions are simply wished away, covered over with their perverse version of …
Blood money means different things to different people. In some cultures it’s the price paid to the victim’s family by the perpetrator after a family member is murdered. Elsewhere it can be a fine paid for committing libel, theft, physical harm, or rape. If you employ a contract killer, their payment is also blood money.
In cultures influenced by Christian traditions, blood money refers to a historic market transaction. When you talk blood money there, you’re talking about those infamous thirty pieces of silver paid to Judas Iscariot for squealing on his boss. After the fact, when Judas tried to return …
Ready for the rollout. Tanks on every street. Snipers atop every building. Skyscraping bullets unleashed in a militarized theater of war. Occupied brainstems. Parasite in the blood. Psychologically based, trauma induced, hypnotic trance. Categorized demolition of old theory propaganda. Irreconcilable differences of opinion go nowhere fast down a one-way street. Ears clogged. Waxed over canals of disinformation. Vibration pollution. Cell phone tower broadcasted belligerence. Presidential decrees sent via text message disturbances. We interrupt your day with a war-mongering warning from the dictator. White House monstrosity. Black soul of darkness. Poison the hearts of the young. Get them early while in …
A letter signed by 43 veterans of an elite Israeli military intelligence unit declaring their refusal to continue serving the occupation has sent shock waves through Israeli society. But not in the way the soldiers may have hoped.
Unusually, this small group of reservists has gone beyond justifying their act of refusal in terms of general opposition to the occupation.
Because of their place at the heart of the system of control over Palestinians, they have set out in detail, in the letter and subsequent interviews, what their work entails and why they find it morally repugnant.
There is a pronounced deceptive aura to the Obama Administration’s disclosures about the new U.S. war in Iraq and Syria against the religio-fascist Islamic State (IS). The White House even says it is not a war but a simple counterterrorism strategy, as in Yemen. This is intended to mislead Americans and to generate substantial support for the long war to come.
Every U.S military intervention in Muslim countries since the late 1970s has eventually resulted in unintended negative consequences, both for Washington and the target country. There is no reason to think that President Obama’s latest Middle East military adventure will …
UN Summit on Failed Climate Change … Not Showing Up to 90 Percent of Our Jobs Would Save the World
More and more parades, theater of the absurd, mugging for media, book tours, and academics and Jewish writers speaking for the masses on “alternative media.” For planet earth. Can we just say goodbye to Bill McKibben and Naomi Klein and this fucked up Facebook and Google and Apple and “the world will be better without energy and dirty hydrocarbon investments” mentality about really stopping climate change, or even talking about it. None of this is rational, none of it, and I …
Among those who will be speaking there briefly is Medea Benjamin, who remarked Monday evening:
This is exactly what ISIL wants. They’re trying to get the U.S. involved in a war. There are already U.S. troops in combat and this will mean more. We shouldn’t fall into the trap of another immoral and unwinnable war.
Today the US – backed by “moderate” Arab states like Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar and Jordan – started bombing territory in another sovereign state, Syria, without a UN Security Council resolution or a plausible argument that it is acting in self-defence. That makes it a crime of aggression, defined at Nuremberg as “the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.”
In a sign that Obama’s war on ISIS in Syria could quickly be extended into a war against Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, Israel downed a Syrian jet inside Syria this …
On September 3, 2014 The Associated Press reported: “Secretaries of State past and present meet for rare reunion for a museum ground breaking event…a museum and education centre that will demonstrate the ways in which diplomacy matters now and has mattered throughout American history. Secretary of State John Kerry warned Wednesday against creeping American isolationism, making the case that U.S. global leadership is essential in uncertain times as he hosted a rare public reunion of five of his predecessors.”
Accompanying the text was a picture of these emissaries of tokenism walking in single file on a strip of carpet laid down …
by The Real News Network (TRNN) / September 22nd, 2014
Professor Chris Williams says a solution to the climate crisis requires a restructuring of the global economy, but when the last opportunity to do so came after the 2008-9 financial crisis, world leaders saved the banks instead.
An in depth look at the events that unfolded in Ferguson, Missouri following the police murder of Michael Brown, a black teenager. Also features an exclusive interview with former Black Panther, Ashanti Alston, about the state of black “America”, abolishing penile power and taking care of your peeps in the muthafuckin resistance.
The greatest action ever for the protection of Mother Earth took place in 166 countries, September 21. We were half-a-million people filling streets in some 3000 events (a few, the day before).
Three hundred thousand marched in New York City, the city where some 125 heads of states were to meet on September 23. Among many celebrities and politicians participating was UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. He had called for the UN summit, the first in which so many heads of state were to attend since the COP15 fiasco held in Copenhagen, December 2009. At that time 100,000 people marched demanding …
by Nicholas Smaligo and James Anderson / September 22nd, 2014
How did the student debt regime come to be?
The question was posed as the first debtors’ assembly of the fall semester got underway on Southern Illinois University campus.
The following analysis is derived from the talk that took place at the beginning of the assembly held September 17, on the third anniversary of the Occupy Wall Street movement.
To begin, we pose as a problem the $1.2 trillion cumulative student load debt supposedly owed to the government and financial institutions and the almost 30 grand graduates owe on average in student loan debt.
Student loan debt is a relatively …
The big climate march in New York City and a big new book have concentrated attention on the climate. Enough denial and delay the marchers chant; This Changes Everything, says Naomi Klein in her latest call to action.
“It’s not about carbon, it’s about capitalism,” says Klein.
I couldn’t agree more. It’s time we faced not just the symptoms, but the system that is cozying us up to catastrophe.
Our economic system of extract, exploit and profit is colliding with our eco-system, writes Klein and in case anyone is unclear about the consequences of that: when the ideology of infinite growth meets the …
