A Somewhat Incendiary Reply to a Ludicrous Question
by T.P. Wilkinson / May 19th, 2014
This question is asked repeatedly in the English-language media—probably the most heavily censored data streams in the world (a point to which I will return). Why should anyone worry about a new “cold war”? Perhaps it would be more relevant to worry about the extent of current and future “hot” ones?
The “old cold war” was an invention of the US regime. Bernard Baruch, one of two prominent South Carolina banksters (the other being James Byrnes) introduced the term into American political discourse with inter alia the aid of the dean of political propaganda, Walter Lippman, as the US Empire was …
Occupy activist Cecily McMillan, convicted on May 5 of second-degree felony assault of a New York cop whom she and witnesses claimed had grabbed her breast from behind, bruising it, stood her ground before her sentence was rendered, refusing the judge’s insistence that she should “take responsibility for her conduct.”
Risking the possibility that Judge Ronald Zwiebel might sentence her to the maximum seven years for the charge she was convicted of, McMillan would only apologize for what she termed “the accident” of involuntarily throwing back her elbow when grabbed by behind from someone she could not even see. Insisting to …
Public banks, on the other hand, pose no problem with the Constitution.
by Ellen Brown / May 19th, 2014
The movement to break away from Wall Street and form publicly-owned banks continues to gain momentum. But enthusiasts are deterred by claims that a state-owned bank would violate constitutional prohibitions against “lending the credit of the state.”
California’s constitution is typical. It states in Section 17: “The State shall not in any manner loan its credit, nor shall it subscribe to, or be interested in the stock of any company, association, or corporation . . . .”
The language sounds prohibitive, but what does it mean? Hundreds of state and local government entities extend the credit of the state. State agencies make …
In its German inaugural edition, this novel was titled September: Fata Morgana. Wonderfully translated by Mike Mitchell, the novel adapts the concept of a fata morgana (an unusual and complex form of superior mirage that is seen in a narrow band right above the horizon that distorts the view) to describe the world we live in after the events of 9-11, the attack on Afghanistan and the Bush-Blair war on Iraq. A Fata Morgana comprises several inverted and erect images that are stacked on top of one another. Told through the eyes of two men and their …
Think about the last time you reached the top of a mountain one mile high. Now think about descending that distance below the surface of the earth, foot by dark foot, far below all life, light or oxygen. You go down there to dig.
What you’re digging for, deep in the hot, fetid bowels of the earth is carbonized life forms, millions of years in the making, turned to a type of rock that ignites and burns; one that your prime minister and energy analysts tell you will help the economic future of your country.
Stop the War Against the Poor
— Sydney resident’s placard, May 18, 2014
The Australian voter, as a political species, remains alien to ideology. There is a certain cavalier ruthlessness with which governments can be dispatched at the ballot box. Being one of the most electioneered, if not over-electioneered, countries on the planet, there is much room for such removals ‘down under’. These are not necessarily done on the basis of cerebral revelations or snappy policies. The chat here is always structural and mechanical – budget cuts, and more budget cuts; the fantasy of a “bottom line”; commodities markets; interest rates; mortgage …
As the West’s assault on Ukraine gets ever bloodier, the “news” on National Public Radio (NPR) is teeming with anti-Russian propaganda, interspersed with the usual pieces declaiming on one’s senior prom and other matters of equal import. All in all it is a pretty dismal substitute for news and analysis.
But even at the Diane Rehm Show, very near the bottom of the dung heap that is NPR, a few scraps of truth can be scavenged on occasion – usually uncovered by a caller’s question. Such was the case on March 27 when Rehm’s guests were Richard Haass, president of …
Thursday, May 15 marked Nakba Day, Yawm an-Nakba, “Day of Catastrophe”, the onset of the displacement of up to 800,000 Palestinians, at the time 67% of the population, followed by the destruction of over 500 villages since the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, under the commitment agreed to by the then British Foreign Secretary, Lord Arthur Balfour, in November 1917.
This week: “Figures released by the Ramallah-based Central Bureau of Statistics … put the number of registered Palestinian refugees at 5.3 million. Those refugees live in 58 United Nations-run camps in Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, the West …
by Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers / May 18th, 2014
The campaign has pushed the door open, now we all have to go through it and raise our voices louder than Comcast’s lobbyists to save the people’s internet.
The next four months are going to determine the future of the Internet. Will it remain free and open with equal access to all? There are powerful corporate interests that want to profit even more than they already do from the Internet at the expense of …
In 1947, the first Levittown was built in New York State, then in 1952, an even bigger one was erected in Pennsylvania. Marketed as “THE MOST PERFECTLY PLANNED COMMUNITY IN AMERICA,” Levittown was the prototypical American suburb. For only $10,990, or $100 down then $67 a month, you could own three bedrooms, two bathrooms, front lawn, back yard and garage, plus access to five Olympic-sized pools, with free swimming and diving lessons thrown in. Most soothingly, you no longer had to deal with strangers above, below or abutting you, or dark skinned neighbors who may alarm or irk you …
Internationally ignored, life in Eritrea is brutal and shrouded in secrecy. The world is indifferent. The regime trusts nobody – even the UN’s special rapporteur on Eritrea, Sheila Keetharuth, has been denied a visa. Last year she stated: “basic tenets of the rule of law are not respected.” Following this, the Council “strongly condemned” Eritrea’s “continued widespread and systematic violations of human rights and fundamental freedoms.” ((Report: Eritrea Human Rights Watch.)) Violations include forced and child labor, “arbitrary detention, and severe restrictions on freedoms of expression, association, and religion,” also violence against women, gender inequality, gender-based violence, female …
What would you expect from powerful people, personal courage?
The American Condoleezza 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 …
Early results from the largest election in the world show India’s opposition leader Narendra Modi has won a landslide victory to become the country’s new prime minister. Modi is the leader of the BJP, a Hindu nationalist party. “This is the result that the corporations in India wanted,” says Siddhartha Deb, Indian author and journalist, noting that Modi “is very a pro-development politician, which basically means pro-business.” Deb adds that Modi served as the chief minister of Gujarat, where anti-Muslim riots in 2002 left at least a thousand people dead. After the bloodshed, the U.S. State Department revoked Modi’s visa. …
Indonesians are no amateurs when it comes to mass murder and genocides. They managed to slaughter with their bare hands, between 1 and 3 million people in 1965/66, mainly those who belonged to the educated class, and of course the Communists, teachers, artists and members of the Chinese minority.
They butchered and tortured to death around 30 percent of the inhabitants of what is now Timor-Leste. And they have already exterminated at least 150,000 men, women and children in Papua, in an ongoing and totally hushed up genocide that allows Western countries to access its natural resources. 150,000 corpses is, of …
The information provided below was obtained from an insider in one of Ukraine’s law-enforcement agencies, who wished to remain anonymous for obvious reasons. It is clear that there are people even within the interim administration in Kiev who are against what happened in Odessa on May 2 and throughout the whole country.
Scheming
After the loss of Crimea and the popular uprising in Mariupol, Odessa is now Ukraine’s only gateway to the sea, thus making it the most important city in the country after Kiev.
Ten days before the tragedy a secret meeting was held in Kiev, chaired by the …
Now that the Obama administration has publicized their report, 2014 National Climate Assessment, about the dangers of global warming with concomitant climate change, the Republicans have decided to informally declare war on the planet.
As such, the thesis herein is that global warming and climate change are now so widely recognized and so well defined by science that opposition to the problem is tantamount to an act of war. Furthermore, as a matter of principle, purposeful acts that serve to perpetuate global warming are acts against all of humanity.
It’s worth noting that recent declarations of war by the Republicans have been …
Photo op below says it all, this Obama cretin amongst these elitists, superficial elite women, yammering away, yammering away. It’s chilling. The face of Obama the Demon, the faces of those white women, and then, Whoopi? OMG — Oh Mother Gaia!
Then, that National Jewish Radio, again, this morning, with Steve “Prozac Foolish Laugher on the Planet and Somebody No One Wants in their Foxhole When the Bullets Start Flying” Inskeep with his yammering against that other yammerer, Barbara Walters, about her career, about her significance to human and woman-kind. Silly story after silly story, and the breaking news of Barbara …
There are always convenient news-hooks on which corporate journalists can hang their power-friendly prejudices about the West being ‘the good guys’ in world affairs. Channel 4 News is not immune from this chauvinism. For example, Matt Frei introduced a report about last month’s elections in Iraq with this propaganda bullet:
Now, America once invaded Iraq so that, in large part, Iraqis could do what they did today – go to the polls. (Channel 4 News, April 30, 2014)
Frei was, in fact, diligently reading out the first line of a blog piece by his colleague Jonathan Rugman, C4 News foreign …
battle-weary soldiers get a mixed welcome back to the Inland Northwest
It’s always the things they carry into war: not just the survival gear and non-combat items they stuff into rucksacks, but also the fears, hopes, family narratives, broken and supposed whole selves they hold to when looking at themselves in the mirror at 4 a.m. right before heading out for a patrol . . . fire-fight . . . Apache helicopter run … or drone session. The really heavy things they haul into war aren’t M-60 machine guns and RPGs but memories and pasts, and for some, a big blank …
“In Yemen today, the US embassy is closed to the public. Officials telling CNN there is credible information of a threat against Western interests there,” a CNN news anchor read the news bulletin on May 08.
This is CNN’s Yemen. It is a Yemen that seems to exist for one single purpose, and nothing else: maintain Western, and by extension, US interests in that part of the world. When these interests are threatened, only then does Yemen matter.
Yemen of ‘Western Interests’
Every reference in that specifically-tailored discourse serves a purpose. It is as if al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) exists to …
The Republican Party establishment – read the corporatist U.S. Chamber of Commerce and their incumbent toadies controlling the Party in Congress – is in the process of vanquishing the Tea Party. Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican minority leader, predicted as much when he told the New York Times in March that his brand of corporate Republicanism is going to “crush” challengers that Republican incumbents will face in their primaries.
The plan to “crush” the Tea Party candidates is detailed, very well-funded and working. During the early primaries in North Carolina, big Republican money gave state legislator, Thom Tillis, a big victory …
If you think that as a United States citizen you’re entitled to a trial by jury before the government can decide to kill you–– you’re wrong. During his stint as a lawyer at the Department of Justice, David Barron was able to manipulate constitutional law so as to legally justify killing American citizens with drone strikes. If you’re wondering what the justification for that is, that’s just too bad – the legal memos are classified. Sounds a little suspicious, doesn’t it? What’s even more suspicious is that now the Obama Administration wants to appoint the lawyer who wrote the legal …
IPS — As diplomats began drafting a comprehensive agreement on the Iranian nuclear programme and Western sanctions in Vienna Tuesday, U.S. officials were poised to demand a drastic cut in Iran’s enrichment capabilities that is widely expected to deadlock the negotiations.
Iran is almost certain to reject the basic concept that it should reduce the number of its centrifuges to a fraction of its present total, and the resulting collapse of the talks could lead to a much higher level of tensions between the United States and Iran.
The Obama administration’s highly risky diplomatic gambit rests on the concept of “breakout time”, …
The double Greek elections of May 18th and 25th – municipal and regional on 18th and the European Parliament elections together with the second round of municipal and regional ones where necessary on the 25th – will undoubtedly influence decisively the course of the country. They will reflect the evident as well as underground trends in Greek social and political life developed in the period after the elections of May and June 2012.
Given the specificity of the situation in Greece, which became during the last few years the workshop and test field for the most brutal neoliberal policies, forged by …
For 66 years Israel’s founding generation has lived with the guilt of a secret, one it successfully concealed from the generations that followed. Forests were planted to hide war crimes. School textbooks mythologised the events surrounding Israel’s creation. The army was blindly venerated as the most moral in the world.
Once, “Nakba” – Arabic for “Catastrophe”, referring to the dispossession of the Palestinian homeland in 1948 – would have failed to register with any but a small number of Israeli Jews. Today, only those who never watch television or read a newspaper can plead ignorance.
President José Mujica of Uruguay, a 78-year-old former Marxist guerrilla who spent 14 years in prison, mostly in solitary confinement, recently visited the United States to meet with President Obama and speak at a variety of venues. He told Obama that Americans should smoke less and learn more languages. He lectured a roomful of businessmen at the US Chamber of Commerce about the benefits of redistributing wealth and raising workers’ salaries. He told students at American University that there are no “just wars.” Whatever the audience, he spoke extemporaneously and with such brutal honesty that it was hard not to …
Last week, in Part 1 of the Global Power Project’s investigations into the machinery behind the International Monetary Conference, I examined the history and evolution of the IMC from its founding by the American Bankers Association in 1954 to the global financial and monetary disruptions of the late 1970s.
The IMC, happening June 1-3 in Munich, brings together hundreds of top bankers with leading finance officials and central bankers from the world’s industrial powers to discuss major economic, financial and monetary issues of the day – and to form a consensus on policies for managing the world economic order. In part 2 of …
