Latest articles
by Brenda Heard / May 30th, 2014
On 28 May 2014, expatriated Syrian nationals in numerous countries flocked to Syrian embassies to begin the voting process in a presidential election. With all its potential flaws, perhaps even inherent flaws, this quintessential element of democracy is still the most effective means of finding consensus. As the saying goes, you can’t please all the people all the time. Thus elections provide an opportunity for peaceful compromise. But to work, democracy requires participation.
President Bashar al Assad is being challenged by Maher Hajjar and Hassan Nouri, even if sneered at by those who label them as merely symbolic candidates. …
Up Yours!
by John Stanton / May 30th, 2014
The Howard P. “Buck” McKeon National Defense Authorization Act for FY 2015 (Defense Authorization Act) should be renamed the Howard P. “Buck” McKeon Global Manifest Destiny Act of FY2015. The Defense Authorization Act reads like something that the Biffer-Baum Birds in Dr. Seuss’ Sleep Book might have written. And the image that most accurately depicts the collective efforts of President Obama, the Pentagon and the US Congress in the design of American national security strategy is Dr. Seuss’ illustration of the Biffer-Baum Birds constructing their nest out of bricks and threads: a precarious construction indeed.
The Defense Authorization Act, and …
by Mateo Pimentel / May 30th, 2014
As billions from around the globe await the World Cup in advent, the social and political situation is sure to grow more polemic for the Brazilian people. Untold amounts of money will change hands; untold numbers of unassuming foreigners will trickle into and saturate Brazil. But who will benefit from the economic boom wrought by this year’s soccer circuses?
Possibly, one of two realities will emerge. Either people from around the world will witness the curious amount of civil unrest that couples the looming soccer celebration, scratching their heads about the mix, or, by peering into the history that will …
People Power and the New Cooperative Movement
by Lamont Lilly / May 30th, 2014
Once home to some of the most violent racists in the U.S., Jackson, Mississippi is now a key training ground for self-determination and organized “people power” throughout the U.S. South. From May 2 through May 4, 2014 activists, organizers and fellow revolutionaries from all over the world gathered at the Jackson Rising: New Economies Conference at Jackson State University. An estimated 500 people participated in some or all of the conference.
The primary objective of such an assembly was “to educate and mobilize the people of Jackson to meet the economic and sustainability needs of their community,” and to share …
by Chris Time Steele / May 30th, 2014
This is the premiere of my new music video.
The song is entitled “Brittle Action Figures” and features Chris Barron from DeVotchKa on trumpet.
The song is about my parent’s home, which was foreclosed on by Bank of America last year. The house was built by my grandpa and is where my dad grew up as well as me.
http://youtu.be/_NxglRF7QmQ
For full album stream of Newstalgia click here.
by James Petras / May 30th, 2014
The European parliamentary elections witnessed a major breakthrough for the right-wing parties throughout the region. The rise of the Right runs from the Nordic countries, the United Kingdom, the Baltic and Low countries, France, Central and Eastern Europe to the Mediterranean.
Most, if not all, of these emerging right-wing parties mark a sharp break with the ruling neo-liberal, Christian and Social Democratic parties who have presided over a decade of crisis.
The ‘new Right’ cannot be understood …
by Jan Oberg / May 29th, 2014
In a speech by the President of the United States of America – read by millions in all corners of our world in minutes – rest assured that every single word has been weighed with utmost care.
With this in mind, Obama’s speech can be analysed as both offending to the rest of us and – exceptionally – weak.
It caused no enthusiasm among the future army officers he spoke to and no enthusiasm among leading Western media.
I will argue that:
• Intellectually and morally the speech doesn’t have the basics – full of contradictions and imbued with unbearable self-praise.
• While there is …
by Kim Petersen / May 29th, 2014
A reader reacted to my recent article, “The Left,” which calls for the dissolution of borders (and hence the state) and “the rights of people everywhere to move about freely, peacefully, respectfully, and contribute to communities wherever they might find themselves in the world.” The reader demurred:
Opening the borders for unrestricted immigration and the free movement of labor will harm the working class tremendously with the current and continuous scarcity of jobs. The working class has the full right to resent unrestricted immigration.
In the essay, I wrote:
It is easily understood that the presence of many immigrants expands …
by Thomas Riggins / May 29th, 2014
Proemium
In “The Philosophy of Bertrand Russell” volume in the Library of Living Philosophers (1944) V.J. McGill (1897-1977) published a detailed critique of Russell’s political and economic philosophy. Russell was not pleased and made short shrift of professor McGill’s efforts in his “Replies to Criticisms”. Russell dismisses McGill’s contribution as dealing with material “lying wholly outside philosophy” and says, in effect, he won’t even bother to argue against McGill’s positions as it would be “futile.” Seventy years later in retrospect we might agree with Russell that his efforts to refute McGill would have been “futile.” But why would they have been? …
by Kieran Kelly / May 29th, 2014
Recently I wrote an article objecting to labeling a false Left as Left — in effect erecting a strawman to criticize the Left. In his essay, Kieran Kelly elaborates on what is Left and how it differs from ideologies toward the Right. — DV coeditor
*****
The term “left-wing” is seldom defined and is often grossly misapplied. Some point at Stalinist repression and say that that is an example of how bad the left can be, but such authoritarianism contravenes the defining left-wing principle of anti-authoritarianism. Others have tried to characterise Nazism and Fascism as being half-left and half-right simply because …
Selling the Never-Ending War on Terror
by Steve Breyman / May 29th, 2014
Mark Landler’s “US Troops to Leave Afghanistan by End of 2016” was the lead story in the New York Times on Wednesday, May 28. Landler reports President Obama’s decision to reduce troop levels from the present 32,000 to 9,800 by the end of 2014 to half that by the end of 2015 to “a vestigial force” by the end of 2016. There are several reasons why one ought to be skeptical of these numbers (not least of which are that that Obama for years referred to Afghanistan as “a war of necessity,” he ordered two troop surges during his …
The Financial Sector Fights Back
by Binoy Kampmark / May 29th, 2014
The industry still prizes short-term profit over long-term prudence, today’s bonus over tomorrow’s relationship.
— Christine Lagarde, IMF Chief, May 27, 2014
Capitalism has always had an image problem. A public relations make-over had to be done of its rather dark image during the Cold War. The term “free enterprise” was preferred, giving the impression that accumulating capital and chasing it was a matter of initiative and creative impulse. With the end of the Cold War, the chest thumping began. De-regulation became de rigueur. The 1990s was the Greenspan-Clinton era, one where the very idea of institutional control over capitalist excesses was …
by Jim McCluskey / May 29th, 2014
The first sentence in Steve Taylor’s book, The Fall: The Insanity of the Ego in Human History and the Dawning of a New Era, reads:
For the last 6,000 years, human beings have been suffering from a kind of collective psychosis. For almost all of recorded history human beings have been – at least to some degree – insane.
Through much of recorded history it has been accepted as normal that, periodically, large groups of men should meet and hack each other to pieces. This was the method of choice for resolving disputes. In the last few hundred years, with the …
by Charles Orloski / May 29th, 2014
Holidays in Northeast Pennsylvania towns typically include parades, an assembly of high school bands, fire trucks, National Guard, bagpipers, local politicians, vintage cars, dogs adorned in patriotic garb. On special holidays, for example, Saint Patrick’s Day and Veterans Day, the Scranton Times-Tribune provides anxious citizens with vivid street maps, indicating the parade’s planned route. At 7:00 a.m. Saturday, May 24, 2014, after “hard boiling” an egg and toasting Augustine’s Italian Bread, I sat alone at our kitchen table, lazily turned the pages of a PA Commercial Driver’s License Manual, section “Pre-trip vehicle inspection,” and removed the rubber band which surrounded …
by Frank Scott / May 28th, 2014
Each day another culturally reduced group is stricken with abuse, panic, anger and driven to what seem fresh new demands for justice.
Black youths killed by police or vigilante bullets? Check. Women raped or physically abused? Check. Workers left jobless with no hope for the future? Check. Students wondering how to pay for an education that produced low paying work? Check. Immigrants supplying the economy with profitable cheap labor and treated as sub-humans? Check. Another crazed person imitating an army and killing many people? Check.
The latest murders committed by a tortured and demented person and media labeled a “rampage” or a …
A General’s Odd War on the Muslim Brotherhood
by Ramzy Baroud / May 28th, 2014
On 16 May, Libya’s rogue general Khalifa Haftar staged several bloody attacks against other Libyan militias in the name of eradicating terrorism by leading a paramilitary force evasively named the Libyan National Army. His well-equipped brigades were rapidly joined by officers from national army bases in the eastern parts of the country.
Units from the air force also joined in, along with tribal gunmen and other militias, particularly the strong and notorious Zintan militia. The well-coordinated attacks, named Operation Karama, or Dignity, resulted in heavy casualties.
When Karama is Not Dignity
Then, with unprecedented audacity, on Thursday he struck the parliament, sending Libyan …
by Paul Haeder / May 28th, 2014
Oregon voters in two counties voted against GMOs, against Monsanto. That’s 2 to 1 in favor of protecting organic farmers, communities, farmers and our health from pollan and seeds of the Frankenstein variety.
Vermont has signed the nation’s first GMO-labeling law, effective July 2016 (again, incremental, slide-side change — labels — but it’s something, nonetheless).
That’s the impetus — Oregon and Colorado are in a signature-gathering frenzy to get GMO labeling on November’s ballot. Interesting, uh? Capitalism, left of center or right of it politically. Interesting. Can you imagine a world where the corporations, the toxin purveyors, the land killers, air polluters, …
Sleepwalking among the Workless Class
by Kim Petersen / May 28th, 2014
Gilad Atzmon is a brother. He puts himself out there, and is often unfairly pilloried for it. ((Kim Petersen, “Independent News as Vehicle for Character Assassination,” Dissident Voice, 23 August 2013.)) He is an expert on the subject of Jewish personality politics, and he exposes a significant segment of Jewish mentality that speaks to tribalism and supremacism. Consequently, it explains why Zionist Jews have usurped the land of another people and wage war on their neighbors.
However, when he strays into the more generalized terrain of politics, his message may lack coherence. I sometimes become confused when Atzmon …
Globalization’s Game of Thrones: Part 2
by Andrew Gavin Marshall / May 27th, 2014
In part 1 of this series (“Globalization’s Game of Thrones”) I examined the concept of corporate and financial dynasties holding significant power in the modern world. In this, part 2 of the series, I examine the realities of the ‘wealth management’ industry in being responsible for handling the wealth and investments of the world’s richest families, and the role of a unique institution dedicated to protecting and propagating dynastic wealth: the family office.
A Family Affair
In 2010, Forbes – a major financial publication which publishes an annual list of the world’s richest people – noted that the richest of the …
Does Tom Wheeler Really Not Get It or Is He Saying One Thing and Doing Another?
by Kevin Zeese / May 27th, 2014
The path for an open Internet that functions without discrimination is evident: polls of the American people, the courts, federal communications law and reality all point to the Internet being treated as a common carrier, a public utility that operates without discrimination. The Chair of the FCC, Tom Wheeler, is saying he wants an open Internet without discrimination. Why isn’t he taking a path that leads there?
Once it became known that Tom Wheeler was going to recommend a tiered Internet with different levels of service based on fees, the negative reaction was massive and swift. The reaction included emails, petitions …
by David Macaray / May 27th, 2014
Two California state senators, Mark DeSaulnier (D-Concord) and Loni Hancock (D-Berkeley), introduced SB 1372, a landmark bill that would help bridge the gap between rich and poor. What SB 1372 would do is raise the corporate tax on any company whose CEO makes more than 100 times the median rate of its employees, and lower the tax on any company whose CEO makes less than 100 times the median rate.
California’s corporate tax rate is currently 8.84% of a company’s net income. With passage of SB 1372, that rate could drop to as low as 7% if the company’s CEO were …
by Dr. Hakim / May 26th, 2014
“Don’t you touch me!” declared Mi Ryang.
South Korean police were clamping down on a villager who was resisting the construction of a Korean/U.S. naval base at her village. Mi Ryang managed to turn the police away by taking off her blouse and, clad in her bra, walking toward them with her clear warning. Hands off! Mi Ryang is fondly referred to as “Gangjeong’s daughter” by villagers who highly regard her as the feisty descendant of legendary women sea divers. Her mother and grandmother were Haenyo divers who supported their families every day by diving for shellfish.
Since 2007, every day without …
by Felicity Arbuthnot / May 26th, 2014
After the attack on Iraq a frequently heard comment from those with no interest in foreign affairs or much, from activists, journalists and political observers of all hues, was: “Soon no American or British citizen will be safe anywhere on earth, for decades to come.” It was repeated after Libya, at every sabre rattling at Iran. Throughout the meddling, funding and support for terrorists in Syria the phrase has resurfaced, as again after US Under Secretary Victoria Nuland boasted of her government’s $5 billion illegal coup in Ukraine. Guantanamo, renditions, secret prisons and US drone strikes are also cited. Abu …
DePaul students don't want their tuition dollars invested in weapons manufacturers who supply the Israeli government, army and prison services
by Stuart Littlewood / May 26th, 2014
Nothing, it seems, is too ridiculous for Nick Clegg, UK Deputy Prime Minister, to contemplate. See him in this painful video ‘Nick Clegg welcomes the Jewish Manifesto‘ aimed at EU election candidates and voters.
Fortunately Clegg received a bloody nose yesterday in the EU elections. His infatuation with the EU and all its rotten works caused his party (the Liberal Democrats) to be almost wiped out at the polls. His days as leader are probably numbered.
If you’re wondering what the Jewish community’s EU Manifesto says, you can read it here. This propaganda effort is a prime example of the …
by William Boardman / May 26th, 2014
The American Condolleezza Rice, 60, Iraq War architect, and the French Christine Lagarde, 58, International Monetary Fund managing director, have little in common beyond being women of power who have contributed to the misery of millions of people they never cared to meet. And now they have another quality in common, cowardice under fire, albeit only verbal fire after they were invited to speak at college commencements.
Rutgers University invited Rice to speak (for $35,000 and an honorary degree) and Smith College invited Lagarde (compensation undisclosed).
Student and faculty objections to Rice started in February and continued to grow …
by Paul Haeder / May 26th, 2014
Oh, the elite, or the admin class, or the middling white managerial class, how they are confounding it all, and nary a real activist sees that we are cooked until we wipe them away from positions of power.
I appreciate all the work of environmentalists, for sure, and on this Memorial Day, how does that fit into the scheme of green things? How does it fit when we have liquid gas coming to Coos Bay, Oregon, or Vancouver, WA. How does it all mix when we all have given the valley of death and the valley of hope to …
by Myles Hoenig / May 26th, 2014
The state of English Language Teaching (ELT) (and teaching content, electives overall) is going through a serious, almost radical, transformation. Long gone are the days where union chapters, building reps and others who represent a teaching staff have the backing of their affiliate or parent union for support. No more do we see teachers of all areas praised for working miracles with society’s problem students/children. Forever gone are the school days filled with bright eyes, smiling faces, recess, and an obvious love of learning. What we see are bubble tests, exhausted and anxiety ridden students and teachers, and administrators and …
by Jonathan Cook / May 26th, 2014
When Pope Benedict XVI visited the Holy Land five years ago, Israel heightened its security, gladly emphasising the potential threat he supposedly faced in Israel from Muslim extremists.
As his successor, Pope Francis, arrived in Israel late on Sunday, security was no less strict. Some 9,000 police had been drafted in to protect him, Christian institutions were under round-the-clock protection, and the intelligence services were working overtime. According to a Vatican official, Israel’s preparations had turned “the holy sites into a military base”.
On this occasion Israel was less keen to publicise the source of its fears, because the most tangible threat …
by ClassWarFilms / May 26th, 2014
The Phantom says of Imperial Decay:
Brilliant. Stunning, concise synopsis, or rather, epitaph, regarding the ‘situation on the ground,’ which the Freak-Monsters-from-Planet-X who run this casino/bordello/slaughterhouse “one-stop-shop” and the flesh-eating Zombies who love them, categorically deny (fear? habit? something big and evil in the works?).
Problem is — for whatever my two-cents are worth (not much you can get with two-cents these days) — this whole land of opportunists, according to Morris Berman in Why America Failed, is exactly that. The opportunists who “discovered” this continent full of profitable goodies were an admixture of capitalist hucksters, religious zealots, psycho-killers and con-men, …
by James Petras / May 25th, 2014
The sweeping electoral victory of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in India is the latest expression of the world-wide advance of a new power bloc which promises to impose a New World Order harnessing ethno-religious fanaticism and narrowly trained technocrats to capitalist absolutism.
The far-right is no longer at the margins of western political discourse. It is center-stage. It is no longer dependent on contributions by local militants; it receives financing from the biggest global corporations. It is no longer dismissed by the mass media. …
