Latest articles
by John Chuckman / September 14th, 2014
What else can you fairly call a people who attack a population of refugees confined to a small space surrounded on every side by fences and machine-gun towers, a population with nowhere to run? No, that is not put strongly enough. Not just attack, but use the latest and most ferocious weapons from the American arsenal to slaughter more than 2100 people, including more than 500 children, destroying along the way a major portion of the housing, businesses, and institutions of a poor people.
The definition of a coward is not the traditional military one of a soldier who won’t fight. …
by Paul Haeder / September 14th, 2014
“Unjust laws exist.” So wrote Henry David Thoreau in his 1849 essay, On the Duty of Civil Disobedience. He asked, “Shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once?” His answer: “I say, break the law.”
Famine, poverty and filth ruled the day . . . . And, hence, when you feed, clothe, pay people, and educate them to be critical of systems and governments and CEOs, and show them the connectivity of a global world and a local fabric, and when …
by John V. Walsh / September 14th, 2014
Susan Rice has just completed her visit to Beijing to prepare for Obama’s November visit. She arrived as the envoy of the President of the Indispensible Nation and was greeted at the very highest level by Xi Jinping himself, president of one of the many Dispensible Nations.
Susan probably conceives this as an advance visit in more ways than one since Beijing is the final scheduled stop on the U.S. Empire’s march through Eurasia – after sacking Iraq, Libya, Syria, Iran and Russia. Or so the plan goes.
But Rice might surely was given considerable pause on her visit. Just as she …
by William Manson / September 13th, 2014
Back in the 1980s, as I studied for a doctorate in anthropology, I found myself somewhat dismayed by certain social science dogmas. For one thing, the original unity of American anthropology—as a bio-cultural science studying Homo sapiens—had long been fragmented into ill-fitting shards. Cultural anthropologists were generally hostile to any perceived “biological reductionist” explanations for human behavior. To the extent that they were even interested in behavior, it was assumed to be entirely “culturally determined” (i.e., “learned”—although even an interest in actual psychological process was viewed as reductionist). At the same time, biological/evolutionary anthropologists (then called “physical”) were interested in …
by Alton C. Thompson / September 13th, 2014
When one wakes up in the morning, one takes for granted that the sun will take its usual (apparent) course across the sky. One assumes that the earth will continue to rotate, at a constant speed, on its axis; that the earth will revolve around the sun along a plane, making a complete revolution in about 365 days. And that as the earth revolves around the sun, it will not only maintain a 23 ½ degree inclination relative to the plane of revolution, but that the earth’s axis will maintain parallelism with itself as it revolves around the sun.
One assumes …
Henry Kissinger’s World Order Recipe
by Binoy Kampmark / September 13th, 2014
Never one to believe in the shackles of legality, former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger has decided to give advice entirely free of it. It is comforting to know that a man who was instrumental in illegal, unauthorised operations in Cambodia and Laos, among other things, should find it appropriate to advise the stumbling Obama administration where it might go next.
For Kissinger, the forces of the West better up and at them – the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq are no longer matters of sideshow amusement or ceremonial fanfare. “There can’t be any more debate about fighting …
by Finian Cunningham / September 13th, 2014
There’s one good reason for why Scotland should vote yes for independence: the breaking up of the United Kingdom would be an imminently good thing for the sake of world peace.
Anything that lessens the power of the London-centered United Kingdom is bound to be a good thing. So, if Scots walk away from the Union on September 18 by voting to establish their own separate, sovereign nation, that will deliver a positive blow to further weaken Britain’s legacy as an imperial power.
British Prime Minister David Cameron has said so himself, albeit indirectly. This week Cameron has run up the Scottish …
by David Swanson / September 13th, 2014
To the extent that the U.S. public is newly, and probably momentarily, accepting of war — an extent that is wildly exaggerated, but still real — it is because of videos of beheadings of James Foley and Steven Sotloff.
When 9-11 victims were used as a justification to kill hundreds of times the number of people killed on 9-11, some of the victims’ relatives pushed back.
Now James Foley is pushing back from the grave.
Here is video of Foley talking about the lies that are needed to launch wars, including the manipulation of people into thinking …
by Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers / September 12th, 2014
All of the elements required to create climate justice seem to be in place. The climate movement can put hundreds of thousands on the streets, organize creative civil resistance, get thousands to risk arrest and mobilize blockades of tar sands, fracking, oil pipelines and mountain top removal.
Polls show high levels of public support for taking action on climate change. A 2014 Gallup Poll shows 65% of Americans support emissions controls and a 2014 George Mason-Yale study found Americans were twice as likely to support a congressional or presidential candidate who strongly supports action to reduce global warming.
There is …
A First-hand Account of the Use of Mortars against Civilians
by Eva Bartlett / September 12th, 2014
In stark contrast to the sparse coverage of the brutality of ISIS and other terrorist groups in Syria over the past few years, there has recently been substantial coverage of the emergence of ISIS in Iraq and the terrorist acts that this US-backed and funded group has been committing. This surge of media focus on ISIS’ brutality in Iraq and particularly on the recent alleged be-headings of two American journalists is extensively considered, amongst independent political analysts, to be setting the stage for NATO and the Axis-of-Imperialists to “fight terrorism” …
There are Limits
by Robert Jensen / September 12th, 2014
We are biological creatures, part of an ecosphere, living in communities. Like any other organism, our genetic code sets parameters within which we live. The ecosphere is governed by laws of physics and chemistry that set the parameters within which all organisms exist. And we encounter the world not as isolated, independent individuals but through social systems that affect how we understand ourselves and the possibilities for our lives.
Stated this generally, few people would disagree. Yet in practice, contemporary high-energy/high-technology society ignores these ecological realities, and people routinely endorse practices—or ignore the need to change practices—that leave us …
Corporate Executives Couldn't Care Less about Civil Liberties
by William A. Blunden / September 12th, 2014
The Washington Post reports that in 2008 the government threatened to fine Yahoo $250,000 a day if it failed to relinquish user data on behalf of the NSA’s PRISM program. Yahoo’s general counselor Ron Bell claims that the recently disclosed lawsuit is proof that the company fought the government “every step of the way.” ((Craig Timberg, “U.S. threatened massive fine to force Yahoo to release data,” Washington Post, September 11, 2014.)) In this sense the Post’s article depicts Yahoo as a champion of human rights, fighting courageously to protect user data from government surveillance.
This impression conflicts sharply with Yahoo’s …
by Mateo Pimentel / September 12th, 2014
The notion that history tends to favor the hegemonies that would write it is nothing new. This is especially the case for the United States today. Take US-Latin American international relations, for example: they are indelibly stippled with gunboat diplomacy and seditious coups; even the many perverse trade agreements and subsequent growing poverty belie the neoliberal overtures that America continually makes. Yet, in spite of a most basic realpolitik approach to assessing America’s litany of hegemonic aggression, history is still quick to cite the anarchic nature of international relationships in general, and in doing so, it excuses fratricidal US ‘diplomacy’ …
by Ralph Nader / September 12th, 2014
It is remarkable what very profitable drug companies—as they merge into fewer giant multinationals—continue to get away with by way of crony capitalism. Despite frequent exposure of misdeeds, the army of drug company lobbyists in Washington continues to gain political influence and rake in corporate welfare at the expense of taxpayers. The drug industry goes beyond crony capitalism when it then charges Americans the highest drug prices in the world.
Here is a short list of the honey pot produced by the lobbying muscle of the $300 billion a year pharmaceutical industry. It receives billions of dollars in tax credits for …
Retreat, Re-Armament, and Relaunch
by James Petras / September 12th, 2014
The NATO proxy war in the Ukraine started with the violent US-EU-sponsored overthrow of the elected government via a mob putsch in February 2014. This was well financed at $5 billion, according to President Obama’s Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, Victoria Nuland.
The result was a junta, composed of neo-liberal puppets, rightist nationalists and fascists, which immediately proceeded to purge the Ukrainian legislature of any politicians opposed to the coup and Kiev’s submission to the European Union and NATO. The NATO-sponsored client regime …
Celebrity Crime and the Gated Community
by Binoy Kampmark / September 12th, 2014
It has been said that the Oscar Pistorius trial in South Africa will be one of those events that say less about the procedural bricks and mortar itself than it does about the society it was meant to echo. The drama consultants flogging off live coverage of a trial as suitable consumption would have been thrilled by the copy – South African athlete and role model Oscar Pistorius (the Blade Runner), humbled by acts of lethal madness when he shot his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp to death.
South Africa had never been treated to such manic “pop” criminal coverage, one that featured …
by Robert Hunziker / September 12th, 2014
The film Disruption, produced and directed by Kelly Nyks and Jared P. Scott, executive producer, Jon Warnow is a prelude to the People’s Climate March, which, according to 350.org, will be the “largest climate march in history,” scheduled for September 21st at Central Park West/NYC between 59th and 86th streets, beginning at 11:30 am.
The People’s Climate March will be conducted prior to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s UN Summit on the Climate Crisis scheduled for September 23rd.
The world will be watching.
As a byword for the film, Frederick Douglas is quoted as saying:
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never …
by James Hoover / September 11th, 2014
Space is not an uneventful void. On a cosmic time and space scale, over millions of years and millions of miles, there are soundless, smell-less, visually-undetected threats to humankind, threats that might develop over several lifetimes but suddenly cross into our currency, thus changing our lives.
Using visible or invisible waves of energy, generally heat from the asteroid or the Sun’s reflection, only a small percentage of such objects in space – mainly asteroids – are detected. Consequently, by the time undetected physical threats approach our atmosphere, it is too late.
Our most recent shock to Earthly senses was a sixty-foot-diameter boulder, …
ISIS is a side issue at best
by John V. Walsh / September 11th, 2014
Obama took to the airwaves yesterday, oh so coincidentally, on the eve of September 11, to roll out his latest “smart war.” And it comes, oh so coincidentally, just before Congressional midterms when every member of Congress fears like the plague to be painted as a dove, just as happened in 2002 before Bush II took us to war.
Whatever role ISIS plays in this, Syria is certainly the target. It is telling that when it comes to money, Obama is asking Congress only for funding to train the Syrian “moderate rebels” in that bastion of Sunni moderation, Saudi Arabia.
The rationales …
by Paul Craig Roberts / September 10th, 2014
The tragedy of September 11, 2001, goes far beyond the deaths of those who died in the towers and the deaths of firefighters and first responders who succumbed to illnesses caused by inhalation of toxic dust. For thirteen years a new generation of Americans has been born into the 9/11 myth that has been used to create the American warfare/police state.
The corrupt Bush and Obama regimes used 9/11 to kill, maim, dispossess and displace millions of Muslims in seven countries, none of whom had anything whatsoever to do with 9/11.
A generation of Americans has been born into distain and distrust …
by Scott Thomas Outlar / September 10th, 2014
Verily, be honest, decent and ethical while living righteously through your actions.
Verily, turn away in hatred from that which is indecent, unethical, morally ambiguous and wrong.
Be not caught up in the temptations and snares of materialism, shallowness and narcissism; be not distracted from the highest calling of your true self, but connect fully with that inner voice which propels your will along the path of what you are meant to pursue in this life.
Verily, the soul is deep.
Verily, dive into its waters.
Flow in the River Tao where consciousness is reflected cosmically in a conductive ocean of collective connectivity. Breathe of …
by James Petras / September 10th, 2014
To the growing army of critics of US military intervention, who also reject the mendacious claims by American officials and their apologists of ‘world leadership’, Washington is engaged in ‘empire-building”.
But the notion that the US is building an empire, by engaging in wars to exploit and plunder countries’ markets, resources and labor, defies the realities of the past two decades. US wars, including invasions, bombings, occupations, sanctions, coups and clandestine operations have not resulted in the expansion …
by Jonathan Cook / September 10th, 2014
An image speaks a thousand words – and that is presumably what Israel’s supporters hoped for with their latest ad in the New York Times.
Two photographs are presented side by side. One, titled ISIS, is the now-iconic image of a kneeling James Foley, guarded by a black-hooded executioner, awaiting his terrible fate. The other, titled Hamas, is a scene from Gaza, where a similarly masked killer stands over two victims, who cower in fear.
A headline stating “This is the face of radical Islam” tries, like the images, to equate the two organisations.
We have heard this line repeatedly from Israel’s prime …
by Bill Annett / September 10th, 2014
Part 1 – From Bible Bill to Uncle Ben
In 1932, in the depths of the Great Depression in Alberta, William Aberhart, a Calgary school principal, lay Baptist preacher and creator of The Prophetic Bible Institute and its radio program “Back To The Bible Hour,” founded Alberta’s Social Credit Party. Four years later, he and his party were swept into power and he became Premier of the Province of Alberta. “Bible Bill” – as he was called by his mainstream party scoffers – died in 1943, but the Social Credit Party was to hold sway in the Province of Alberta until …
by Harry J. Bentham / September 10th, 2014
With the US facing internal state crisis, symbolized by recent protests against arbitrary violence and cruelty by militarized police in places like Ferguson, Missouri, it would be wise draw upon the counsel of veterans of the US civil rights struggle like Charles E. Cobb, Jr. With this in mind, his book This Nonviolent Stuff’ll Get You Killed (2014) is an excellent place to start. It is also especially relevant due to the prominence of the Second Amendment in recent US political discourse.
I have already given my arguments in favor of US gun rights within the context of the …
by Ramzy Baroud / September 10th, 2014
Netanyahu’s war-turned-genocide in Gaza has backfired badly – his strategy has helped resurrect Hamas, the very movement he tried desperately to crush
Aside from being a major military setback, Israel’s war on Gaza has also disoriented the policies of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu like never before. Since the announcement of a ceasefire on 26 August, his statements appear erratic and particularly uncertain, an expected outcome of the Gaza war.
Since his first term as a prime minister (1996-99), Netanyahu has showed particular savviness at fashioning political and military events to neatly suit his declared policies. He fabricated imminent threats that were neither …
by Gareth Porter / September 9th, 2014
IPS — Israel and its supporters abroad have parried accusations of indiscriminate destruction and mass killing of civilians in Gaza by arguing that they were consequences of strikes aimed at protecting Israeli civilians from rockets that were being launched from very near civilian structures.
That defence has already found its way into domestic U.S. politics. A possible contender for the Democratic nomination for president, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, defended her vote for more military aid for Israel during the Israeli assault on Gaza by citing the rocket launch defence.
“[W]hen Hamas puts its rocket launchers next to hospitals, next to schools, they’re using …
by Paul Craig Roberts / September 9th, 2014
Some Western commentators interpret the cease fire in Ukraine obtained by President Putin as a victory for Russia. The reasoning is that the cease fire leaves Ukraine with disputed borders, which rules out Ukraine’s membership in NATO.
But will the cease fire hold? The right-wing Kiev militias, whose members often wear nazi insignias, are not under Kiev’s complete control. These militias can easily violate the cease fire, and there are already reports of violations. Moreover the billionaire oligarch that Washington has installed in Kiev as president of Ukraine will violate the ceasefire on Washington’s orders, unless, of course, Putin has put …
by William Hanna / September 9th, 2014
A Dead Statesman
I could not dig: I dared not rob:
Therefore I lied to please the mob.
Now all my lies are proved untrue
And I must face the men I slew.
What tale shall serve me here among
Mine angry and defrauded young?
— Rudyard Kipling, “Epitaphs of the War”
How can a just peace be achieved between the Israelis and the Palestinians? The answer is simply to appoint as peace envoy a war criminal who — like former French President Nicolas Sarkozy — also happens to be an Israeli sayan. Before qualifying as a fully fledged war criminal, Blair started out as …
by Fernando Andres Torres / September 9th, 2014
I lived through an unarmed socialist revolution that lasted for one thousand days.
As a teenager I witnessed the electoral triumph of President Allende and I was still a teenager when I witnessed his killing and the destruction of his popular program and everything around him. Airplanes destroying buildings in downtown Santiago, schools with no arms, a beer battle, and cats shooting at police while the bloody hand of a mad US foreign policy was all over it.
It was my first 9/11.??In a few hours after the coup d’etat started on Tuesday September 11, 1973, 11am, major political centers and media …
