Latest articles
British Empire Barely Mentioned
by T.P. Wilkinson / July 21st, 2014
There are many things that can be done while one is asleep. Bellini wrote a delightful opera about somnambulism. However, it is difficult to share the same sense of fascination or repose even a century after the outbreak of the Great War. Somehow it defies any standard of human sensitivity to allude to the acts and omissions leading to the millions of slaughtered men and boys at the hands of the greediest financial and industrial elites known to recorded history as the result of “sleepwalking”.
Consider the most peculiar omission in this prize-winning story, The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in …
by Robert Hunziker / July 20th, 2014
The California Division of Oil, Gas, and Geothermal Resources temporarily shut down as of July 18th, several oil and gas wastewater injection wells over concerns about contamination of the state’s aquifers.
That fact alone leads to one inescapable conclusion: Will humanity ever break away from the darkness of Dick Cheney (the subtext to this article)?
As it happened, because of Darth Vader Cheney’s tricky maneuvers a decade ago whilst serving as VP of the United States of America, today the “Halliburton Loophole” is haunting California’s tenuous water situation.
The Halliburton Loophole is a reference to the 2005 Federal Energy Bill, which stripped the …
by Paul Haeder / July 20th, 2014
No moral outrage, collectively, in the streets, at work, in seats of power? What a sick-sick little world the white Jewish-Christian species have become. Blowing up a facility, hospital blatantly, with patients bedridden, in rehab. I have clients with ID, DD and PD – you know, intellectual, developmental and psychiatric disabilities. The Obamas, Jews in Israel, and the military-poison-bomb-jet-drone complex, they are the ones with severe ID, DD, PD.
From what is becoming in my mind (don’t cast aspersions onto me for my daily listening to DN and understanding how Amy speaks to a rarefied elite of Jewish intellectuals) Jewish Democracy …
The people of the United States must work to end the interventionist violence of the U.S. Empire
by Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers / July 20th, 2014
This is Part I of a two part series on American Empire. Part II will focus on the Empire Economy and his it is failing to work for most Americans as well as most people of the world.
The historian who chronicles US Empire, William Blum, issued his 130th Anti-Empire Report this week. In it he notes that the US, by far, is seen by the people of the world as “the greatest threat to peace in the world today” with 24% taking that view. Only 2% see Russia as such a threat, and 6% see China.
This should not …
by John Andrews / July 20th, 2014
One of Britain’s best-known purveyors of misinformation, The Times, had the following words splashed across the front page of its July 19 edition: “MH17 lost after rebels shot down wrong jet”.
The story refers to the terrible tragedy of the mysterious crash of yet another Malaysia Airlines passenger plane two days earlier.
The subheading of the story in the Times reads: “World rounds on Russia for fomenting violence”.
The next ten pages of the paper were filled with the careful blend of fact and fiction which represents the state of the art of western propaganda. There is so much misinformation contained …
by Kim Petersen / July 19th, 2014
On Friday afternoon, hundreds of people gathered in front of the building which houses Canada’s state media, the CBC. An article in the CBC of the same day explains why the people of Halifax were disgusted; its subtitle quotes United States president Barack Obama: “’No nation should accept rockets fired into its borders,’ Obama says of Israel’s ground push.”
How should the nations where the United States carries out drone missile attacks respond to such an utterance from Obama? How should Korea which never attacked the US feel about the barrage of US rockets that obliterated so many Korean …
by Dennis Rahkonen / July 19th, 2014
During the 1967 Six Day War, my youthful ignorance and gullibility made me completely swallow pro-Israeli propaganda regarding that conflict, plus the overall glorification of Tel Aviv’s purpose relating to Palestinians. I remember a paperback book, Strike Zion, which prominently appeared on newsstands, extolling especially the Israeli military, while thoroughly demonizing Arabs.
I’ve since become a passionate supporter of Palestinian independence, based on irrefutable evidence that Israel, for many cruel decades, has built its own state via an ongoing genocidal effort to extirpate Palestinian rights and sovereignty by means not unlike how European colonists took America from its indigenous people.
…
by Mateo Pimentel / July 19th, 2014
The simple fact that China has grown by at least eight percent per capita annually, and for the last few decades, irks many pro-Washington, pro-European Union financial lackeys. Notwithstanding the prevailing wisdom espoused by many pro-establishment economics experts, China’s growth has largely made it the most successful economy in the world since 1978. Even renown Harvard economist Jeffrey Sachs admits as much. Despite many fringe complaints, China’s growth has not ceased. To dismiss China’s potential to boost struggling economies the world over is terribly ignorant, and possibly detrimental to millions in the Third World who stand to gain so much …
by Walter C. Uhler / July 19th, 2014
On 17 July 2014 Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 departed from Amsterdam with approximately 300 passengers and was headed toward Kuala Lumpur before it was blasted out of the sky in Ukrainian air space. Nobody survived.
Within hours of the disaster, Petro Poroshenko’s coup regime in Kiev boldly asserted that the plane had been shot down — either by the separatists in eastern Ukraine or by Russia.
The separatists quickly denied having any role in the disaster, claiming that their weapons were capable only of reaching targets flying below 4,000 feet – which was well below the 33,000 feet at which Flight 17 …
The Time Has Come
by Bo Filter / July 19th, 2014
Wars of aggression are ripping the planet apart from one end to the other. Nuclear weapons are on the table. A politically self-anointed elite believe they are about to squash the last few remaining independent states. When their New World Order reaches lockdown, freedom will have nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.
So, how did we get here? Is there any way out of our predicament? Simplistic solutions are offered across the spectrum—from shenanigan preachers to Wall Street gangsters. Here’s another one, kindled in the fear that little time is left, …
by Binoy Kampmark / July 19th, 2014
You have to give him some credit. The soul of the prison warder who inhabits the public school boy is not always easy to contain. Unrestrained, and lacking sound judgment, he is bound to spring out, however democratic, or liberal, a system can be. Prime Minister David Cameron, on the issue of jamming through bills connected with increased surveillance powers, has just about gotten what he wants. The rule in his playbook here: call anything you don’t want looked at a matter of emergency.
For Cameron, “No government introduces fast track legislation lightly. But the consequences of not acting …
by Scott Thomas Outlar / July 18th, 2014
The end. Of everything.
What else is there to say? After the final annihilation of consciousness. After the Big Bang in reverse. After the last hint of freedom is snuffed out. After the lights go down. Does it all start over again? Is existence an eternally recurring cycle? Do we get second chances on such a large scale as that of universal rebirth? Or does it all stay dead?
Find out the answers to these questions as well as many others on the next episode of Existential Pondering on the Status of God’s Whereabouts. A daily television show broadcast directly into the …
They want war? Then launch a full-blown BDS assault on Israel and its supporters
by Stuart Littlewood / July 18th, 2014
There was never a better moment for the BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) movement to mass-mobilise for a mega-campaign to not only impact more heavily on the lawless Israeli state but also unmask those in business and public life who shamelessly support the criminal programme that was embedded in its DNA while on the Zionists’ drawing board.
This could include politicians, businesspeople, entertainers, sports stars, churchmen and the many organisations and fan clubs that nourish the thuggish vanity and horrendous cruelty of the Zionist regime. Zero tolerance is needed. Those who fund or support the inhuman behaviour we have witnessed, not …
by David Swanson / July 18th, 2014
I was not sure I would like a book called Worth Fighting For by a former soldier who walked across the United States to raise money for the Pat Tillman Foundation. The website of that foundation celebrates military “service” and the “higher calling” for which Tillman left professional football, namely participation in the U.S. war on the people of Afghanistan and Iraq. Rather than funding efforts to put an end to war, as Tillman actually might have wished by the end of his life, the foundation hypes war participation, funds veterans, and to this day presents Tillman’s death …
by John V. Walsh / July 18th, 2014
Ever more antiwar voices are clamoring for a Stop Hillary Clinton movement in the Democratic primaries – and with very good reason. There are many alarming, indeed frightening, indictments of her tenures as one-half president in the 90s and then as Senator and Secretary of State. Her estranged relationship with truth, her callousness toward human life and her love for every imperial military adventure and regime change scheme are beyond worrisome. They are downright scary.
But the most damning indictment yet of the Clintons on the world stage comes in the book Superpower Illusions by former Ambassador …
by Paul Craig Roberts / July 18th, 2014
The unilateral US sanctions announced by Obama on July 16 blocking Russian weapons and energy companies access to US bank loans demonstrate Washington’s impotence. The rest of the world, including America’s two largest business organizations, turned their backs on Obama. The US Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers placed ads in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post protesting US sanctions. NAM said that the manufacturer’s association is “disappointed that the US is extending sanctions in increasingly unilateral ways that will undermine US commercial engagement.” Bloomberg reported that “meeting in Brussels, leaders of the …
by Gilad Atzmon / July 18th, 2014
The IDF launched a vast ground operation in Gaza last night. Until now, Israel has failed to articulate its military objectives. No one in Israel is willing to commit to a definition of what a victory would look like. I am afraid that the military objective is obvious: saving Netanyahu’s political career.
Prime Minister Netanyahu and his defense minister Moshe Ya’alon have no other options. The two have tried to avoid a ground operation. Like most IDF leaders, Netanyahu and Ya’alon know that the Israeli army lacks the capability to counter Gaza’s ballistic defiance. Israel lost its power of deterrence a …
by Robert Hunziker / July 18th, 2014
According to the Assessment of Southwest Climate Change (Arizona Institute of the Environment), the five decades from 1950 to 2000 were the warmest in over 600 years. The report predicts that reduced snowfall and increased evaporation from global warming will lead to more droughts over the next 90 years.
Droughts are a natural part of the climate cycle. As a matter of fact, studies of tree rings going back 1,000 years show mega droughts lasting for decades. Then, nature alone was the culprit, but what happens now when global warming/climate change is superimposed onto nature’s handiwork?
Is an intensified mega drought in …
And History and Legality be Damned!
by Felicity Arbuthnot / July 18th, 2014
The concept of a “Greater Israel”, according to the founding father of Zionism Theodore Herzl, is a Jewish State stretching: “From the Brook of Egypt to the Euphrates.” Rabbi Fischmann, of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, stated to the UN Special Committee on 9th July 1947 that: “The Promised Land extends from the River of Egypt up to the Euphrates, it includes parts of Syria and Lebanon”, wrote Michel Chossudovsky. Thus “from the Nile to the Euphrates.” Herzl’s detailed thesis was written in 1904.
Quoted in the same article is Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya on The Yinon Plan (1982) “ … …
by Gareth Porter / July 17th, 2014
WASHINGTON, July 17 2014 (IPS) — As the negotiations on the Iranian nuclear programme approach the July 20 deadline, both U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif have signaled through their carefully worded statements that they are now moving toward toward agreement on the two most crucial issues in the talks: the level of Iranian enrichment capability to be allowed and the duration of the agreement.
Their statements after two days of meetings Sunday and Monday suggest that both Kerry and Zarif now see a basis for an agreement that would freeze Iran’s enrichment …
by Andrey Fomine / July 17th, 2014
On July 17, 2014 the madness of a three-month-long Ukrainian military conflict in the East has brought the first shocking international consequence. At 3.20PM GMT the Malaysian Airlines Boeing 777-200 jet flight #MH-17 en route from Amsterdam to Kuala-Lumpur disappeared inside the Ukrainian airspace right above the area of intense military combat in the Donetsk region and crushed near Grabovo village, around 60 km to the east from Donetsk. All 285 passengers and 15 crew members have reportedly died.
According to data available the airliner “was moving at the altitude of 10,600 meters on the 350th flight level”. This flight level was …
by Press TV / July 17th, 2014
A well-known Israeli politician and parliament member has branded Palestinians as terrorists, saying mothers of all Palestinians should also be killed during the ongoing Israeli assault on the besieged Gaza Strip.
Ayelet Shaked of the ultra-nationalist Jewish Home party called for the slaughter of Palestinian mothers who give birth to “little snakes.”
They have to die and their houses should be demolished so that they cannot bear any more terrorists,” Shaked said.
She added, “They are all our enemies and their blood should be on our hands. This also applies to the mothers of the dead terrorists.”
The remarks are considered as a …
by Jonathan Cook / July 17th, 2014
There’s something deeply ugly, verging on mendacious, about this eye-witness account of the strike against four children on Gaza’s beach by William Booth in the Washington Post. It begins with what appears to be context but is, in fact, simply an effort to deflect criticism from Israel and blame the victims.
He starts with this: “It is not unusual for militants to launch rockets from sites near my hotel.”
So had rockets been launched from the spot where the children were killed? Here’s the account of veteran Guardian/Observer correspondent Peter Beaumont:
The building that was hit was just a shipping container next …
Not If Your Life Is On The Line
by William A. Blunden / July 16th, 2014
In the wake of Ed Snowden’s revelations there’s been a litany of calls for the widespread adoption of online anonymity tools. One such technology is Tor, which employs a network of Internet relays to hinder the process of attribution. Though advocates openly claim that “Tor still works” ((Cooper Quintin, “7 Things You Should Know About Tor” Electronic Frontier Foundation, July 1, 2014.)) skepticism is warranted. In fact, anyone risking incarceration in the face of a leveraged intelligence outfit like the NSA would be ill-advised to put all of their eggs in the Tor basket. This is a reality which …
Big Banks Hit with Monster $250 Billion Lawsuit in Housing Crisis
by Ellen Brown / July 16th, 2014
For years, homeowners have been battling Wall Street in an attempt to recover some portion of their massive losses from the housing Ponzi scheme. But progress has been slow, as they have been outgunned and out-spent by the banking titans.
In June, however, the banks may have met their match, as some equally powerful titans strode onto the stage. Investors led by BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, and PIMCO, the world’s largest bond-fund manager, have sued some of the world’s largest banks for breach of fiduciary duty as trustees of their investment funds. The investors are seeking damages for …
by Adam W. Parsons / July 16th, 2014
TTIP is the latest bid to capture policymaking by the profit-making interests of the 1%, with dire implications for anyone who upholds a vision of a more equitable and sustainable economic order. But campaign groups and activists are working hard to expose this trade agreement for what it is, and to build an overarching global movement that can prevent this massive transfer of power to transnational corporations.
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As the next round of negotiations for the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) take place in Brussels this week, civil society groups are continuing to mobilise against this ongoing free trade …
by Ramzy Baroud / July 16th, 2014
When the bodies of three Israeli settlers – Aftali Frenkel and Gilad Shaar, both 16, and Eyal Yifrach, 19 – were found on June 30 near Hebron in the southern West Bank, Israel went into a state of mourning and a wave of sympathy flowed in from around the world. The three had disappeared 18 days earlier in circumstances that remain unclear.
The entire episode, particularly after its grim ending, seemed to traumatize Israelis into ignoring harsh truths about the settlers and the militarization of their society. Amid a portrayal of the three as hapless youths, although one was a …
by Luke Eastwood / July 15th, 2014
To much trumpeting the IMF have kindly agreed to help out desperate and war torn Ukraine. How wonderful they are we are all meant to think, but the truth couldn’t be more opposite.
The International Monetary Fund was set up in 1945, describing itself as an “organization of 188 countries, working to foster global monetary cooperation, secure financial stability, facilitate international trade, promote high employment and sustainable economic growth, and reduce poverty around the world.”
This all sounds very laudable, but in reality the IMF has a very different purpose from that which is stated. If you look at the history of …
by Matt Reichel / July 15th, 2014
It has been 10 years of dormancy for the peace movement: a full decade since the thriving demonstrations of the early Bush years gave way to liberal demands that the focus shift to defeating the president at the ballot box. This fixation remained through the two ensuing presidential elections, which have demonstrated, beyond a reasonable doubt, the futility of this approach to altering American foreign policy. The vibrant and young foot soldiers of Obama’s first election are now seven years older, jaded and frustrated. Most of them are underemployed, over-indebted, and increasingly hopeless about their lot in life. Meanwhile, the …
Another U.S. Foreign Policy Debacle
by William Boardman / July 15th, 2014
Seeing through the tear-jerking to the guilty U.S. Government
The pictures of thousands of children huddled in shelters are upsetting, and the tales some tell are horrifying, and that is all a real but sentimental distraction from the entrenched American power that created these conditions. American power uses these children and their families and their countries for its own ends. American power is not likely to make any meaningful changes to solve what is essentially a permanent crisis. Whatever official alleviation there is will be just enough to get those heart-rending images off the front pages so that the …
