As Iraq stands on the verge of a complete breakdown into mini sectarian states, former leading neoconservative and Iraq war advocate Richard Perle made a sudden appearance on Newsmax TV. His statements in the interview were yet another testament to the intellectual degeneration of a group that had once promised a ‘new Middle East’, only to destabilize the region with violent consequences that continue to reverberate until this day.
The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), which didn’t exist at the time of the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, has seized large swathes of Syria and, along with …
The book’s introduction and 24 chapters are uneven in quality; ranging from rants to hurried sketches to documented scholarship. Although some writers contradict others, the chapters are uniformly liberal in their point of view; which is to say that the neo-Nazis and oligarchs in Ukraine, the neoconservatives, liberal interventionists and predatory capitalists in the United States, as well …
Shock and anger have engulfed Israeli and Palestinian societies since they learnt last week of the barbarous murder of children from their communities. Hours after three Israeli teenagers’ bodies were located, long after their abduction, a Palestinian youth, Mohammed Abu Khdeir, was kidnapped, beaten and burnt to death, apparently as revenge.
These horrifying events should serve as a lesson in the obscene futility of vengeance. As a relative of one of the murdered children observed: “There is no difference between blood and blood.”
Sadly, that was not the message implicit in much of last week’s coverage. On social media, a juxtaposition of …
During my recent visit to Gangjeong, on Jeju Island, South Korea, where a protest community has struggled for years to block construction of a U.S. military base, conversations over delicious meals in the community kitchen were a delightful daily event. At lunchtime on my first day there I met Emily and Dongwon, a young and recently married couple, both protesters, who had met each other in Gangjeong. Emily recalled that when her parents finally travelled from Taiwan to meet her partner, they had to visit him in prison.
Dongwon, who is from a rural area of South Korea, had visited Gangjeong …
Kill People, Kill the planet – Whatever Makes a Big Profit is Cool
by William Boardman / July 8th, 2014
John Kasich is a smart guy who knows better than to be an overt serial killer, so, as Governor of Ohio, he joins with others who prefer to do their mass killing by stealth, maybe spread the carnage out over future generations, who will be unable to hold the Kasiches and the ALECS of this world to account. Ever. However long that turns out to be.
This is not to single out Republican Gov. Kasich as the worst environmental monster in office (current term 2011-2015). On the contrary, his behavior seems rather centrist in the context of contemporary American …
This is the continuation of an interview (see Part 1) with filmmaker Scott Noble based on his documentary series Counter-Intelligence. Noble’s films can be viewed for free online at metanoia-films.org.
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Kim Petersen: Part III of the series, “Strategy of Tension” gives an extensive listing of false flags from Israel’s Susannah, Gladio in Italy, and Phoenix in Viet Nam. False flags serve the function of allowing aggressor states to portray themselves as victims. Explain the false flag.
Scott Noble: “False flag” has basically come to mean any event in which group A poses as group B in order to …
Snowden Should Refuse to Play “Alice in Wonderland”
by Kevin Zeese / July 8th, 2014
Edward Snowden submitting to prosecution in the United States, would be like Alice going into the courtroom in Wonderland.
Alice stood before the King and Queen of Hearts who served as the judges. Knaves were chained on the ground before them. The jurors, Alice realizes are ‘stupid things.’ The first witness against her was the Mad Hatter who is as mad as the culture he represents. The guinea pigs who protest are immediately “suppressed” by having the mouths tied up and being put into a bag and sat on by the King so their protests cannot be heard. The most important …
Last month the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) released a report titled “War Comes Home: The Excessive Militarization of American Policing,” shedding much-needed light on the emergence of a militarist ethos in policing across the nation. In a review of public records, such as incident reports, requested from more than 260 law enforcement agencies in 25 states and the District of Columbia, the ACLU found that, from the responses received, 818 SWAT operations from 20 local law enforcement agencies located in 11 states fully met their research criteria, which took geographic diversity into account, among other factors. The SWAT …
In his latest article in The Nation, Noam Chomsky selectively cherry picks the facts that fit his preferred narrative, while ignoring and disguising relevant details that contradict his thesis. One would expect an academic of Chomsky’s stature to perform at a much higher standard of intellectual integrity.
Reviewing Chomsky’s latest criticism of the BDS reveals that the MIT linguist borders on deception. It is especially fascinating to examine Chomsky’s tactics in light of the current violent events in Israel/Palestine.
Chomsky writes, “The opening call of the BDS movement, by a group of Palestinian intellectuals in 2005, demanded that Israel …
Despite the July 4 tributes, millions of US soldiers and veterans are in serious trouble.
Twenty two veterans kill themselves every day according to the Veterans Administration. A study by the Los Angeles Times found veterans are more than twice as likely as other civilians to commit suicide. Suicides among full-time soldiers, especially among male soldiers, are also well above the national civilian rate. USA Today reported a suicide rate of 19.9 per 100,000 for civilian men compared to rates of 31.8 per 100,000 for male soldiers and 34.2 per 100,000 for men in the National Guard.
Prime Minister David Cameron’s Inane Efforts to Boost the “No” Vote
by Lesley Docksey / July 7th, 2014
When I wrote about the approaching Scottish Referendum on independence, I didn’t expect such a huge reaction. All I wanted was to make clear the shame and embarrassment I personally felt, caused by the heavy-handed and idiotic efforts of the “Better Together” camp to persuade, browbeat and in some cases bribe, the Scots to vote against independence. Also, as an Englishwoman I had taken no sides; I simply acknowledged how much Scotland has to be proud of, and the rest of us to be grateful for.
Readers responded in their thousands. Why? Were these people with Scottish ancestry, now living …
Scott Noble is an extraordinarily productive filmmaker who has built up an impressive treasure trove of documentaries at Metanoia Films. The films deal with topics such as the plutocracy’s determination to entrench and maintain its power and wealth through myriad means — among them psychological ops, black ops, propaganda, disinformation, and more. Last year, after watching Counter-Intelligence which relates how the tentacles of espionage agencies have permeated governments and societies, domestically and abroad, I began an email interview exchange with Noble to flesh out further points raised in the film.
Kim Petersen: What was your goal in making Counter-Intelligence?
The Regina Leader Post on July 3, 2014, published an article under the headline “African Leaders Award Themselves Immunity from Court of Justice”:
A pan-African court set up to prosecute the continent’s worst criminals will not be allowed to try sitting heads of state or their cronies after they voted to give themselves immunity.
The continent’s leaders agreed on their exemption at a closed-door session of an African Union (AU) meeting, then tried to bury the decision in an obscure paragraph of the post-summit communiqué.
The decision was a “backward step in the fight against impunity … and a betrayal of victims of …
The major issues of the world include the recovery of economies from the Great Recession and regional wars for control of territories, like Iraq. Whereas, first and foremost, the leaders of the world should really be focused like a laser on the attendant risks of a complete meltdown of the Arctic, which is the canary in the mineshaft for the entire planet.
Territorial fighting in the Middle East and the Ukraine, when compared to an Arctic meltdown, is equivalent to playing with tinker toys.
In fact, taking another simile one step further, the ultimate consequence of an ice-free Arctic; i.e. the Venus …
Sunday, June 29th was a warm sunny day which is never to be taken for granted in San Francisco, a perfect day for the annual Pride Parade. I got there at about 11 a.m. and made my way up Spear Street to the staging area of our unit, there to march in honor of our heroic WikiLeaks whistleblower Chelsea Manning.
There were about 200 of us assembled for the Chelsea Manning contingent, including people from Veterans for Peace, Iraq Veterans, and other groups and individuals. Daniel Ellsberg was also there.
One person, Henry Johnson, whom I’d known from the Lake Merritt peace …
Ever since the three Israeli teenagers went missing, police and army units have besieged Palestinian towns and villages in the area; their houses and shops have been ransacked and atrocities have been committed; Gaza has been bombed, and the death toll is still rising, yet international leaders have remained largely silent, when they all know that such reprisals amount to collective-punishment which is a War Crime.
A young Palestinian boy, 16-year-old Mohamed Abu Khdeir, was abducted and killed in a suspected revenge attack by Israelis on July 2. See how Britain’s prime minister reacted to his death.
As the Fed Runs Out of Bullets, Local Governments Are Stepping In
by Ellen Brown / July 6th, 2014
Mortgage debt overhang from the housing bust has meant lack of middle-class spending power and consumer demand, preventing the economy from growing. The problem might be fixed by a new approach from the Fed. But if the Fed won’t act, counties will, as seen in the latest developments on eminent domain and litigation over MERS.
Former Assistant Treasury Secretary Paul Craig Roberts wrote on June 25th that real US GDP growth for the first quarter of 2014 was a negative 2.9%, off by 5.5% from the positive 2.6% predicted by economists. If the second quarter also shows a decline, the …
Something Happened in February, Something is STILL Going On
by William Boardman / July 6th, 2014
Environmental radiation releases spiked again in mid-June around the surface site of the only U.S. underground nuclear weapons waste storage facility near Carlsbad, New Mexico. The facility, the Waste Isolation Pilot Project (WIPP), has been shut down since February 14, when its isolation technology failed, releasing unsafe levels of Plutonium, Americium, and other radio-nuclides into the environment around the site.
Radiation levels in the underground storage area, 2,150 feet below the surface vary from near-normal to potentially lethal. At the time of the February accident, more than 20 WIPP workers suffered low level radioactive contamination, even though none …
There is no question that over the past decade and a half, Europe, the US, and Israel have engaged in a series of bloody wars, inequalities have increased throughout the globe, economic crisis has become endemic and, more recently, right-wing military and civilian regimes have swept to power throughout Asia, North Africa, Europe and Canada.
Yet, despite this generally gloomy picture, important positive developments have emerged raising the possibility of fundamental changes to reverse the current reactionary wave. I will proceed by outlining these positive developments, taking account …
In a recent article, “On Israel-Palestine and BDS,” renowned anarchist professor Noam Chomsky describes the misery caused by Israel’s actions in the Occupied Territories. He says “the United States should also be condemned and punished for providing the decisive military, economic, diplomatic and even ideological support for these crimes. So long as it continues to do so, there is little reason to expect Israel to relent in its brutal policies.”
Yes, the US is the preponderant enabler of Zionist slow-motion genocide, oppression, and dispossession. However, the US is not to be condemned alone for supporting Israel. Canada, among other …
O, let America be America again—
The land that never has been yet—
And yet must be—the land where every man is free.
The land that’s mine—the poor man’s, Indian’s, Negro’s, ME—
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.
— Langston Hughes, “Let America Be America Again,” written in 1935
I always have contradictory feelings about July 4th. On the one hand, it is the day that the 1776 Declaration of Independence was issued, an essentially anti-colonial call to action against the British Empire. It is a revolutionary …
Recently, Kyrgyzstan commemorated the fourth anniversary of the violence that shook its southern part back in 2010. Back then, over 100,000 Uzbeks had to leave Kyrgyzstan and seek refuge in Uzbekistan in the aftermath of the riots.
It all started as a simple brawl between groups of Kyrgyz and Uzbek youngsters in a casino in the city of Osh. Shortly thereafter, it took the form of a full-fledged ethnic violence. A lot many issues were highlighted by the incidents of 2010: Kyrgyzstan’s ever-subtle struggle for power and resources between the elites of Bishkek and their southern counterparts from Osh and …
Given how a new breed of corporate elites are dictating our lives, I think it is appropriate to gauge which forces act as the most effective agents of these overlords, and what relief we might find, and when.
Since agents at the state levels hold sway only over chunks of territory – though banded together they dictate terms in almost half the states, we’ll confine our attention to actions or inaction that affect the whole country. Tossing aside media sources which attack whole segments of our population, albeit indirectly through our President and Democrats, like Fox News, hate radio, and pseudo-neutral …
A few days ago, I published a comment on Dr Ilan Pappe’s performance on BBC Hardtalk. In my comment, I argued that Pappe’s struggle to make his point was not because of his opponent’s bulldozer tactics and certainly not because Dr Pappe’s lacked either scholarship or courage but simply because Ilan Pappe, in his desperation to conceal Jewish shame, is completely and utterly unable to utter the J word. In effect, this means that he was unable to give voice to the blatantly obvious fact that Israeli barbarism is, unfortunately, totally consistent with a certain yet common interpretations of …
In the United States “capitalism” is often equated with “Americanism,” so that to criticize capitalism is to be unpatriotic. One suspects that such an attitude has not arisen “naturally” but, rather, has become widespread as a result of promotional efforts by those having a vested interest in the status quo—a consequence of such promotion being that even many of those not having such a vested interest have become staunch supporters of capitalism. The fact that so many have an almost “religious” commitment to capitalism means, of course, not only that (a) few are brave enough to offer negative comments regarding …
Peter Linebaugh is an American Marxist historian who specializes in British history, Irish history, labor history, and the history of the colonial Atlantic: The rights and freedoms that we celebrate on the Fourth of July are the product of vast human struggle that remains unfinished
One $100 million Air Force plane leaks oil, another bursts into flame
Troubles never seem to end for the F-35 Strike Fighter. Not yet fully operational, the nuclear-capable fighter-bomber recently had different test versions either leak oil in flight or burst into flames on takeoff.
The F-35 is the world’s most expensive weapons system – $400 billion and counting. The estimated lifetime cost of this military-industrial project is $1.5 trillion. The F-35 is already close to a decade behind schedule and its cost is already more than twice the original estimate. The Pentagon has lowered its performance specs and it’s still years from …
On BBC’s news program Hardtalk, historian Dr Ilan Pappe answers questions from interviewer Stephen Sackur which begins with Mr Sackur describing Ilan Pappe as maintaining that the Jewish state is racist, born of a deliberate program of ethnic cleansing.
This very interesting discussion, which takes the form of an adversarial debate.
In response, Mr Gilad Atzmon, author of the book, The Wandering Who, has the following to say:
the history professor is afraid to utter the ‘J word’ [implying cowardice], he fails to analyze Zionism and Israeli’s action within the appropriate ideological, historical and cultural context and he refuses to question …
Since 2011, from the Arab Spring and Spanish Revolution to Occupy, waves of global uprisings have been erupting as never before. The crisis of representation helped spawn decentralized movements as a manifestation of people’s aspiration to take the reins of their own destinies. For many, the presumption of legitimacy of their governments has been crumbling. What triggered this widespread global crisis?
Journalist Phillip Dorling traced the impulse behind the Occupy movement back to the release of the U.S. Army helicopter gunship Collateral Murder video and noted how it was strongly based on the work of the whistleblower website Wikileaks. Amnesty International pointed to the role …
Phoenix was far worse than the things attributed to it.
— Ed Murphy, former member of the Phoenix program
There’s a reason the CIA wanted to prevent the publication of Douglas Valentine’s 1986 book, The Phoenix Program: America’s Use of Terror in Vietnam. This masterwork is more than an exposé of the US pacification program in Vietnam the book is titled after. It is an indictment of a cynical and bloody plan to kill Vietnamese. In his book The Family Jewels, author John Prado wrote, “When a (CIA) Publications Review Board lawyer checked to see whether Phoenix was …
