Latest articles
by Walter C. Uhler / September 2nd, 2014
In its editorial titled, “Mr. Putin Tests the West in Ukraine” (28 August 2014), the New York Times excoriated President Vladimir Putin for playing “his dangerous game in Ukraine with cunning and deceit since the ouster in February of the corrupt Viktor Yanukovych lost him a president he could manipulate.” Relying on intelligence provided by NATO, the Times accused Mr. Putin of ordering a “significant escalation” in Russia’s military “interference” in Ukraine.
Many Western analysts believe Russia’s “significant escalation” explains why the separatists in Eastern Ukraine were able to halt their near encirclement by Ukraine’s army and launch a counterattack …
by Binoy Kampmark / September 2nd, 2014
Some historians see the period between 1914 and 1945 as the replication of another Thirty Years War. There was the illusion of peace between 1919 and 1939 – the failed efforts of the League of Nations (that failure is still misunderstood), attempts to outlaw war and attempts to construct a viable international system controlled by mild dispute resolution. But the war system was simply too alluring as a means of redressing grievances. The seeds sown in the trenches of the First World War flowered in toxic blooms for the Second.
The battles being waged across the scarred landscape of the Middle …
by Jonathan Cook / September 2nd, 2014
I have noted in several previous articles the unusual, possibly unique, problem relating to media coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The reporting corps is awash with “partisan reporters” – that is, Jews who have an ideological, social or familial connection and sympathy with one side, the Israeli side.
I have no objection to reporters having views, even strong ones, about this conflict, or any other issue in the news. I do myself. In fact, I believe journalists cannot be “objective”, as I have explained at length elsewhere. But in the case of Israel-Palestine, many reporters are being chosen precisely for their partisanship – and these reporters are …
by Jay Knott / September 2nd, 2014
I wrote a brief reply to Yves Engler’s “Toronto’s Racist, Militarist Pro-Israeli Movement” on Dissident Voice.
I don’t know if he read it, but if he did, he didn’t agree with it. His latest article continues to fudge the issue of Jewish supremacy, by amalgamating it with ‘white privilege’.
Engler’s latest article describes a march in Toronto organized by Canada’s main Jewish organizations, who defended Israel’s recent campaign of mass murder in Gaza. They claimed they were opposing “anti-Semitism”, which they say is a variant of “racism”. Engler’s critique is to argue that, far from being against racism, the …
by John Chuckman / September 2nd, 2014
Despite my title, this is not a memoir, dealing as it does with some of the most deadly serious subjects on the planet.
I was brought up by a hard-working, fiercely honest woman. She was brave in the most profound way, not the momentary, over-hyped stuff of soldiers and sports stars, but the unsung stuff of facing great odds and painful situations and doing her duty, not for moments or days, but for year after year. She was unusual for the early 1950s, a time of great social conformity in America, for having left my father whose drunken abuse she …
by Ted Glick / September 2nd, 2014
I began to involve myself in actions and organizing to address the global warming crisis 10 years ago, in 2004. The first thing that I did was to attend a national conference related to that subject in Washington, D.C. in early January of that year.
I went to the conference fired up about the urgency of this crisis. I had spent several months in the fall of 2003 studying the issue following the August heat wave in Europe which killed 30,000 or more people. That study convinced me that we were facing worldwide climate catastrophe much sooner than I had thought …
by Robert Hunziker / September 2nd, 2014
The UK’s right wing machinery, i.e., Mail Online in conjunction with its reliable mythmaker author David Rose, posted an article about global warming just in time for the Drudge Report, and sites of similar ilk, to pick up their seemingly devastating article about the “myth of Arctic meltdown” for the long Labor Day weekend, thus, assuring maximum exposure. Globally, Mail Online is the most visited newspaper website.
The headline of the article even goes so far as to use all caps in the middle of a sentence: “… despite Al Gore’s prediction it would be ICE-FREE by now.” Of course, that …
Time to Rain Money on Main Street
by Ellen Brown / September 1st, 2014
You can always count on Americans to do the right thing, after they’ve tried everything else.
— Winston Churchill
When an article appears in Foreign Affairs, the mouthpiece of the policy-setting Council on Foreign Relations, recommending that the Federal Reserve do a money drop directly on the 99%, you know the central bank must be down to its last bullet.
The September/October issue of Foreign Affairs features an article by Mark Blyth and Eric Lonergan titled “Print Less But Transfer More: Why Central Banks Should Give Money Directly To The People.” It’s the sort of thing normally heard only from money reformers …
The Zero-Sum Game of Perpetual War
by William A. Blunden / September 1st, 2014
Readers with a morbid sense of curiosity can visit a web site called NukeMap that allows visitors to witness the devastation caused by nuclear weapons of varying yields on a city of their choosing. ((NUKEMAP by Alex Wellerstein)) Herman Kahn, who was an armchair theorist from RAND during the Cold War, insisted that nuclear war was winnable. ((Louis Menand, “Fat Man: Herman Kahn and the nuclear age,” New Yorker, June 27, 2005)) But a few hours with NukeMap will disprove Kahn’s folly and the baleful smiley face that he tried to slap over human extinction.
Against this backdrop it’s …
by William Hanna / September 1st, 2014
On 17 July 1998, the international community reached an historic milestone — that has so far proved of little useful purpose — when 120 States adopted the Rome Statute, the legal basis for establishing a permanent International Criminal Court (ICC). The Court’s mandate was “to try individuals rather than States, and to hold such persons accountable for the most serious crimes of concern to the international community as a whole, namely the crime of genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and the crime of aggression, when the conditions for the exercise of the Court’s jurisdiction over the latter are …
How to stay safe when exercising your rights
by Stefan Verstappen / September 1st, 2014
If you’re planning on participating in a peaceful demonstration or protest keep one thing in mind, at any time it could turn into a bloody riot. In the past it has been a common practise for governments to send agent provocateurs to mingle among the demonstrators until a given time or signal, and then to begin instigating violence as both a way to demonize the peaceful protesters in the media, and as an excuse to send in the riot troops to bust heads. As demonstrations around the world can attest to, this tactic has not gone out of fashion.
So what …
by Dave Smith / September 1st, 2014
The war-drums are beating. Hysteria is spreading across the nation and reaching fever pitch! Al Baghdadi and his hordes of masked men are on their way to kill us all! Nobody is safe! First Syria, then Iraq, next … Australia? Poor James Foley is the sign of things to come. Soon white men everywhere will be losing their heads!
I must have missed something! Last time I checked the ‘Islamic State’ was not actually a state and the army of the non-state state barely warranted the title army.
I don’t mean to minimise the terrible acts of carnage that have taken place …
by Scott Thomas Outlar / September 1st, 2014
Weather all storms. Eventually the sun will surely shine. In due time, after negative karma gets washed away, a feeling of purity and cleanliness will be felt. Radiate truth. Deconstruct lies. Banish wickedness. Embrace goodwill. Charity of the seven seas. Cross any body of water to reach the shoreline of inner peace. All paths lead to paradise.
The methodology of madness inherent in the diabolic nature of sleaze balls is easily recognized once one becomes hip to the game. The …
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 …
