Latest articles
by Frank Scott / July 31st, 2014
For a shamefully bloody example of how little single issue identity politics can mean, check out the unity of supporters and opponents of same sex marriage, supporters and opponents of abortion, and supporters and opponents of every other divisive issue clouding the minds of a population kept from acting as a democratic majority, we need look no further than the disgrace of this government’s congress voting to approve and finance the current Israeli slaughter in Gaza.
Note that all our taxes, without exception for straight, gay, people of color, people of no color, Catholics, Jews, Mormons, Baptists, agnostics, atheists and those …
...while the global community gives Israel all the elbow-room it needs to crush Gaza and its 'nuisance' inhabitants permanently
by Stuart Littlewood / July 31st, 2014
As Gaza and its lovely people were being blown to smithereens by Israel’s state-of-the-art weaponry, paid for by the grotesquely unlovely US administration, I put what I thought was a simple enough question to Dr Hanan Ashrawi on Palestine’s accession to the Rome Statute and the International Criminal Court (ICC) after her remarks in this TV interview.
Ashrawi is an executive member of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), head of information and culture, and a wonderfully articulate ambassador for the Palestinian cause. From what she was saying, only the decision to accede to the Statute had been made so far, …
by Jonathan Cook / July 31st, 2014
Israel’s effective loss of its only international airport for a couple of days last week—and the cloud of uncertainty that continues to hang over its operation in the future—has deeply unsettled Israelis.
The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) banned American carriers from flying to Israel, a move soon followed by many European airlines, after a rocket from Gaza landed close to Ben Gurion airport, near Tel Aviv, on July 22. The FAA and the airlines seemed especially jittery after the downing of a Malaysian passenger jet over war-torn Ukraine a few days earlier, killing 298.
The suspension of flights was overturned barely …
Pipe Dream, Meet Fool’s Errand
by Robert S. Becker / July 31st, 2014
As left and right partisans fold Chicken Little into the Boy Who Cried Wolf, high time to label our latest national derangement: Impeachment Addiction Affliction. One day militant Tea Partiers sound the alarm, capping off laughable threats to “sue the White House” with the primal scream, “impeach the anti-American devil president.” Next day contrite House leadership demurs, “No, no, not on the agenda,” sweeping “off the table” a true nuclear option. Yet, weeks later, rising like an untreated infection, the House Majority Whip, Steve Scalise (R-La.), bluntly refuses to take “off the table” the time-bomb his own party denies …
by Paul Haeder / July 31st, 2014
Drinking Soda Stream and Eating Kosher While Bombs Belly-up Kids, Women, Grandparents, and UN Workers and Journalists
So you get free tuition, Tel Aviv U, if you have your child-woman-old man murder passport stamped by IDF, JDL, Israel star of David Mafioso clearly inked blue and white and Nazi-all-over-again!
Really, these Jewish thugs, these immoral thieves, give the punks of SWAT and Airborne and Drone killing free books, tuition and soda-stream for a year, after joy-sticking and white phosphorus-ing people who their ancestors thugged and murdered into submission, to a point.
Nadim Nashif, the director of Baladna – the Association for Arab …
by Anthony Lawson / July 31st, 2014
The blood of the thousands of Palestinians who have been killed by the so-called Israel Defence Forces since the beginning of the siege of Gaza, stains the hands of each and every politician who has done nothing to censure Israel for this cruel and illegal act of virtual imprisonment, or who has taken any kind of bribe to bolster his or her election-campaign coffers, in return for turning their backs on the quite obvious fact that Apartheid Israel has never had any intention other than to genocide the Palestinian people.
http://youtu.be/hSPAm-ZWBAQ
Pay No Attention to That Man Behind The Curtain
by William A. Blunden / July 30th, 2014
A few days back the Economist published an essay which dismissed the idea of fascists in Kiev as an illusory product of Russian propaganda. This is a narrative which the editors at the Economist have put forth on a number of occasions. Of course, they’re not alone. A less flagrant article published by the New York Times editorial board used a weird double negative to assert that “Russian leaders prefer not to accept that the C.I.A. did not engineer the preference of many Ukrainians for what they see in the West.”
All the world’s a stage wrote Shakespeare. Are readers supposed …
by Kathy Kelly / July 30th, 2014
Kabul — Last week, here in Kabul, the Afghan Peace Volunteers welcomed activist Carmen Trotta, from New York, who has lived in close community with impoverished people in his city for the past 25 years, serving meals, sharing housing, and offering hospitality to the best of his ability. Put simply and in its own words, his community, founded by Dorothy Day, exists to practice “the works of mercy” and to “end the works of war.” We wanted to hear Carmen’s first impressions of traveling the streets of Kabul on his way from the airport to the working class neighborhood where he’ll be …
by Yves Engler / July 30th, 2014
From a left-wing community once at the forefront of struggles against racism, unconditional support for Israel has turned a significant proportion of Toronto Jews into promoters of hatred against “Arabs” and into allies of right wing, bigoted, homophobic Christian Bible literalists.
During 15 years of activism in Montréal, Ottawa and Vancouver I haven’t seen anything equivalent to the racist, militarist pro-Israel movement experienced recently in Toronto. And sadly the quasi-fascistic organization driving the charge seems increasingly enmeshed within a community that once led the fight against racism and fascism in the city.
On Saturday at Queen’s Park (the grounds of the Ontario …
by Adam Engel / July 30th, 2014
…or so said The Phantom of /dev/null before he hit the road. Didn’t say where he was going. Just mumbled something about not being able to obtain a Visa. Something about his Birth Certificate having been invalidated by his Death Certificate or some such bureaucratic nonsense.
/dev/null is in the process of being gentrified. Everyone split. No one around but Raghead (wisely posting from an ‘undisclosed location;’ then again, he’s a professional…).
Well, only a matter of time before the Hipsters, so-called, occupy /dev/null upon college graduation to pursue their musical careers — after …
by Gilad Atzmon / July 30th, 2014
IDF’s colossal defeat in Gaza this week leaves Israel and Israelis with just three political and personal options:
1. Mass expulsion – ethnic cleansing of the entire Palestinian population from territories controlled by Israel. Such action may sound unreasonable or even phantasmic, but it is actually consistent with Zionist ideology and has many supporters within Israel and within the current Israeli cabinet. Moreover, oppression and brutality are embedded within Jewish political culture and even within the culture of the Jewish Left. ((It was Stalin’s ‘willing executioners’ who wiped out millions of Ukrainians in the name …
by Ramzy Baroud / July 30th, 2014
To some, US secretary of state John Kerry may have appeared to be a genuine peacemaker as he floated around ideas during a Cairo visit on 25 July about a ceasefire between Israel and resisting Palestinian fighters in Gaza. But behind his measured diplomatic language, there is a truth not even America’s top diplomat can easily hide. His country is very much involved in fighting this dirty war on Gaza that has killed over 1,050, injured thousands more, and destroyed much of an already poor, dilapidated space that is barely inhabitable to begin with.
US economic and military aid …
The Moral Failure Of The West
by Paul Craig Roberts / July 29th, 2014
Readers are asking for my take on the Israel-Gaza situation, and, believe it or not, Oxford University’s famous debating society, the Oxford Union, invited me to debate the issue.
I replied to the Oxford Union that I was unprepared to take responsibility for the Palestinians without undergoing the extensive preparation that an Oxford Union debate deserves and requires. Unless things have changed since my time at Oxford, one prevails in a Union debate by anticipating every argument of one’s opponent and smashing the arguments with humor and wit. Facts seldom, if ever, carry the day, and sometimes not even wit and …
by Kim Petersen / July 29th, 2014
by Roger Tucker / July 29th, 2014
It is only right and fitting that a proper response be made to the OpEd written by Moshe Feiglin, Deputy Speaker of the Knesset, and head of the Manhigut Yehudit (“Jewish Leadership”) faction of Israel’s governing Likud party, entitled “My Outline for a Solution in Gaza” and published in Arutz Sheva on July 15th, 2014.
1. An international commission should be established to bring Israel and its supporters to account for its ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people, dating back to the first terrorist attacks on Palestinian and British targets in Palestine by the Irgun and other Jewish terrorist organizations …
by Jonathan Cook / July 29th, 2014
I really wonder what it says about the Guardian or its readers that it publishes an article like this one by Yuli Novak, a former Israeli air force officer. The discourse, even on the left, is still so degraded on the issue of Israel-Palestine that this seems to pass for progressive thought.
I am also appalled that I almost find myself pleased that this former soldier, an insider, is telling us that Israel is acting immorally in its current attack on Gaza. But in doing so she bolsters a patently ridiculous mythology that, for most of its history, Israel had a moral army – the …
An interview with Nicolas Krameyer of Amnesty International France
by Angola 3 News / July 29th, 2014
Amnesty International France and La Boîte à Bulles have published a 128-page French language graphic novel entitled Panthers in the Hole. The book’s co-authors David Cénou and Bruno Cénou present with visual art what Amnesty France describes as “la tragique histoire des Trois d’Angola” (the tragic story of the Angola 3).
Robert H. King, Herman Wallace, and Albert Woodfox are the trio of Black Panther political prisoners known collectively as the Angola 3. On October 1, 2013 Herman Wallace was dramatically released from prison after 41 years in solitary confinement. At the time of his release, he had …
In the mainstream media, silence
by Kate Bond / July 28th, 2014
Most people know Geneva as the hub of the UN. Slick and cosmopolitan, it is Switzerland’s second most populous city, with a population of 200,000 and a patchwork of nationalities. A massive forty per cent of its inhabitants are foreigners. Understandably, given its central role in international affairs, it is no stranger to the world stage, but on Saturday you’d have been forgiven for overlooking it. Why? Because, like millions, Genevans turned out in their thousands to condemn Israel’s attacks on Gaza and the mainstream media ignored them.
I came across the protest by accident as I made my way home. …
by Gilad Atzmon / July 28th, 2014
As one of the first to predict an immanent Israeli defeat in this round of violence, I was delighted to read this morning that Zionist mouthpiece Jeffrey Goldberg admits that Israel has lost the war. “Why Is Israel Losing a War It’s Winning?” asks Goldberg. The Jewish State is a regional super power, its lobbies dominate Western politics, it is technologically superior, so what could have gone wrong?
Jeffrey Goldberg, a veteran Israeli concentration camp guard produces a few uniquely amusing arguments that deserve our attention.
He writes, “In a fight between a state actor …
by James Petras / July 28th, 2014
Chaos reigns and spreads as enraged leaders in the US, Europe and their clients and allies pursue genocidal wars.
Mercenary wars in Syria; Israel’s terror bombing on Gaza; proxy wars in the Ukraine, Pakistan, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Somalia.
Tens of millions of refugees flee scenes of total destruction. Nothing is sacred. There are no sanctuaries. Homes, schools, hospitals and entire families are targeted for destruction.
Chaos by Design
…
by William Hanna / July 28th, 2014
Israel should have exploited the repression of demonstrations in China, when world attention was focussed on that country, to carry out mass expulsions among the Arabs of the territories.
— Benjamin Netanyahu speaking to students at Bar Ilan University (from the journal Hotam, November 24, 1989.
On Saturday (Jewish Sabbath) 27 December 2008, while the gutless and hypocrisy-ridden West was still preoccupied with its seasonal glutinous overindulgence and goodwill towards all men — except Palestinians — Israel yet again proceeded to “defend” itself against 1.8 million virtually unarmed Palestinian civilians who for some 60 years had been waiting for a state of …
by James Hoover / July 28th, 2014
The August 2014 Scientific American article, “A New Kind of Inheritance” got me thinking about the tragedies of autism and similar developmental disorders. Autism is a fearsome condition which seems to have no attributable cause and no effective treatment. In too many cases, children are sentenced to a disability that thwarts a promising life, including extra care needs by parents, and communication disorders.
In other words, its cause and cure have stumped science, helping to launch suspicion and distrust of once accepted common practices, such as, for example, vaccinations against diseases like measles and smallpox. Looking for its cause and fearful …
by Robert Hunziker / July 28th, 2014
America’s single most pressing issue for the foreseeable future is a changing climate, more important than immigration, health care, or the ever-present wars because those can be fixed. The changing climate cannot be fixed. Once broken it stays broken, and it gets worse and worse until life becomes unbearable, too late to fix.
In that regard, it is believed that a small nucleus of people is behind the climate denial movement in America, and they have been successful. The U.S. Congress has thumbed its nose on the climate issue whilst its in-house deniers talk about how “the climate always changes” and …
by Harvey E. Whitney, Jr. / July 27th, 2014
In response to John Andrews’ reflections upon my most recent article “The ‘People’s Thesis’ in Environmental History the History of Ideas, and its Relevance to Cultural Studies”, it is apparent that Mr. Andrews did not comprehend the meaning of the people’s thesis but also asserted that the people’s thesis was a construction on my part. The term “people’s thesis” is a construction, not unlike when one names a group of objects that are equilateral, isosceles, and obtuse, “triangles”. Not all constructions are bad (more on that in a moment) and what “the people’s thesis” refers to, the specific …
Don’t expect to live much longer
by Paul Craig Roberts / July 27th, 2014
European governments and the Western media have put the world at risk by enabling Washington’s propaganda and aggression against Russia.
Washington has succeeded in using transparent lies to demonize Russia as a dangerous aggressive country led by a new Hitler or a new Stalin, just as Washington succeeded in demonizing Saddam Hussein in Iraq, the Taliban in Afghanistan, Qaddafi in Libya, Assad in Syria, Chavez in Venezuela, and, of course, Iran.
The real demons–Clinton, Bush, Obama–are “the exceptional and indispensable people” above the reach of demonization. Their horrific real crimes go unnoticed, while fictitious crimes are attributed to the unexceptional and dispensable …
The School of Kindness Project
by John Andrews / July 27th, 2014
One of the main reasons that so many millions of basically good and decent people at first volunteered, and then complied with being conscripted, to take part in one of the greatest mass abominations in human history, known as the First World War, was ignorance. The vast majority of those people were not stupid people, they were merely victims of an ancient and unspeakably evil political system that had always seen fit to ensure that ordinary men and women never understood that as far as their great trusted leaders were concerned their lives were of no more importance than the …
by Walter Brasch / July 27th, 2014
A group of white gun-rights advocates plan to sling rifles, shotguns, and semi-automatic assault weapons onto their bodies, and walk through a Black neighborhood in Houston.
What could possibly go wrong with that?!
The march through Houston’s Fifth Ward is planned for August 16 to “educate” Texans about their rights to openly carry firearms.
To deflect criticism that the march is racially-insensitive, the testosterone-enhanced group, apparently with straight faces to hide its freeze-dried minds, says all it wants is for racial equality.
It says because the state charges $250 for a gun permit, it unfairly discriminates against Blacks who have twice the poverty rate …
Are Ukraine and Gaza both part of the same war?
by William Boardman / July 26th, 2014
The same day that Israeli tanks crossed into Gaza, to continue killing civilians and the occasional Hamas fighter, MSNBC decided to ignore the Israeli invasion in favor of wall-to-wall coverage of the presumed shoot-down of Malaysian Airliner MH17 over eastern Ukraine. Why would MSNBC make a choice that looks so much like propaganda?
The last time the Israelis invaded Gaza, in 2009, more than 100 Palestinians died for each Israeli killed. The 13 dead Israelis were soldiers on the attack, the 1,400-plus dead Palestinians were mostly civilians with nowhere safe to go. That hasn’t changed much.
The last …
As US Empire fades, we must choose our path forward
by Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers / July 26th, 2014
World history is filled with empires, e.g. the Roman and Byzantine empires, the European colonial empires, various ancient Iranian empires, the Arab Caliphate and Ottoman Empire, the Soviet Union to name a few. These historic empires have one thing in common: they no longer exist. As the lifecycle of empire wanes, rather than being a benefit to the home country, sustaining empire becomes more expensive than it is worth.
While the US economy and military remain the largest in the world, the economy is faltering and losing its vitality. Chalmers Johnson, a CIA analyst who became a critic of the agency …
by Stuart Littlewood / July 26th, 2014
Today in London crowds are gathering to vent their anger in a mass demonstration and march to Parliament to “stop the massacre in Gaza” and call for an arms embargo against Israel. This follows last weekend’s huge protest outside the Israeli embassy and campaigns against the BBC’s pro-Israel bias in reporting the assault on Gaza.
There is growing resentment among British people at being endlessly shamed by their government’s complicity in the mega-injustices and non-stop crimes inflicted on the native people of the Holy Land, exemplified by Whitehall’s attempts to whitewash Israel’s latest genocidal offensive.
And on this the 19th day of …
