by The Real News Network (TRNN) / April 16th, 2014
Nicolai Petro, professor of politics at the University of Rhode Island: Ukrainian officials are using this first military move as political tool to garner more public support, as groups labeled pro-Russian truly want federalism, not succession, in order to protect eastern Ukraine’s autonomy.
Not two months into the reign of Pope Francis did the media begin its musings over the possibility that the Pontiff would revitalize a church in decline—and it’s clear now that transformation of a kind is on the agenda.
He’s been called progressive, but a step short of reformist—so far. Without budging much from Catholic doctrine, his position on abortion and LGBT rights seems to some optimistically ambiguous—enough so that speculation has prompted some observers to call him a radical. “If a person is gay and seeks God and has good will,” he says, “who am I to judge?” These words—famously …
Egypt is forming an economic dependence on funds from Saudi Arabia and the UAE that spells economic disaster for the vast majority of ordinary Egyptians who will be left paying the price.
As Egypt inches towards the first anniversary of the July 3 overthrow of president Mohamed Morsi, the economy continues to flounder. The military-backed government promised stability, but it won’t deliver this through reverting to failed Mubarak-era policies and relying on handouts from Gulf Security Council (GCC) states.
Despite loud media support for the military government, discontent is high. Ongoing gas shortages and power outages, as well as anger over a …
Taxation for what, for whom, for them, for gutted and eviscerated communities via nihilism vis-a-vis the entire casino capitalism and its banksters …?
NPR rarely hits it right, but while working at my “other” job with developmentally disabled adults, I heard this piece on a singer-doctor-multilingual social justice thinker. It was okay, for NPR, but the interview accidentally culled a piece around new urbanism, the poor, the greenie weenie, Coder creeps I rail against ALL the time.
Note that Rupa Marya is one of those special individuals who sees the world from a generous view. Something apropos now since it is …
There is an argument for not politically splitting the territory of a small island. But when the advantages are examined, as some of them are here, it becomes clear that the proposed independence for Scotland will bring about a win-win situation. A win for Scottish citizens and a win for English citizens.
On September 18th, 2014 the Scottish people will vote on achieving independence from the government of Westminster. If successful, a Scottish government will be free to honour the wishes of the people. It will be able to rid itself of the appalling risks from the retention of nuclear weapons …
Fifteen years ago, it was possible to pretend the U.S. government opposed torture. Then it became widely known that the government tortured. And it was believed (with whatever accuracy) that officials had tried to keep the torturing secret. Next it became clear that nobody would be punished, that, in fact, top officials responsible …
The darkness to which I refer is something largely unanticipated in political studies and even in science fiction, a field which definitely enters this discussion, as readers will see. There have been many examples of national tyrannies and even stories of global autocracies, but the Hitler-Stalin-Mussolini type of tyranny is an antiquated model for advanced states despite its applying still to many third-world places. A unique set of circumstances now works towards a dystopian future in advanced states with no need for jackboots or brutal faces on posters.
Ironically, one of the key forces which brought Europe and North America over …
It has been a long, meandering migration — and, of course, many, many have died and much has been destroyed along the way. But when chickens finally come home to roost, they don’t do so one at a time. Rather, it is a massive, simultaneous event, like swallows to Capistrano or Monarchs to Mexico. A cataclysm has erupted over Ukraine, a thundering eclat of global import, and there is no stopping it now. Sure, the dust has yet to settle, and it is still difficult to see the forest for the trees. But my eyes need a break from following …
I’ve been meaning to fix up the bio-sketch below. Certainly, fix the age 56, since I hit 57 two months ago. Born in 1957, now 57 witnessing another lunar eclipse, and the great eclipsing of humanity by algorithmic putzes and their masters: too-big-to-fail multinationals and transfinancials and a media that are so whore-fied, that, well, the new Black is Orange.
Today the 3,000 richest Americans make more than the poorest 23 million. The average McDonald’s employee takes seven months to earn what McDonald’s CEO makes in an hour. Ninety percent of …
There must be something in the water at No 10 Downing Street, currently inhabited by Prime Minister David Cameron.
When Tony Blair was in residence, according to the diaries of his former communications director, Alastair Campbell, before the illegal invasion of Iraq, for which Blair’s Downing Street offices produced fantasy, fictional, false justifications, the then Prime Minister was guided by his faith and regularly spoke to “his Maker.” Blair may have “spoken” – but, as ever, he clearly didn’t listen.
Proverbs (6:16-19) rules on six personality traits his “Maker” abhors and seven that are an abomination to Him: “Haughty eyes, a lying …
Taxpayers are paying billions of dollars for a swindle pulled off by the world’s biggest banks, using a form of derivative called interest-rate swaps; and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation has now joined a chorus of litigants suing over it.
Derivatives . . . have turned into a windfall for banks and a nightmare for taxpayers. . . . While banks are still collecting fixed rates of 3 to 6 percent, they are now regularly paying public entities as little as a tenth of one percent on the outstanding bonds, with rates expected to remain low …
In a 1971 memo, Lewis Powell, then a corporate lawyer and soon to be a Supreme Court Justice, stressed the need for change in how the business community participated in politics. That memo was in response to numerous successful efforts that advanced the public interest in many areas.
Since Powell’s memo, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers, and other wealthy and powerful groups and individuals have staged a slow-motion takeover of our government. These oligarchs, through their money, have corrupted all branches of government as well as many of the regulatory agencies. This corruption has led to …
UK's Ed Miliband the latest Western politician "taken in"
by Stuart Littlewood / April 12th, 2014
Ed Miliband, UK Labour Party leader and younger brother of former British Foreign Secretary David Miliband David Miliband, has just been on a visit to Israel and occupied Palestine. Ed, who is Jewish, is a wannabe prime minister. And he may succeed in taking the top job next year if Agent Cameron continues annoying the voting public.
A BBC report tells us that Miliband and his wife Justine “were shown where the rockets are fired which rain down on this Israeli town of Sderot.
“They visited a playgroup which looks like many you would see in the UK, until …
Edward Snowden’s revelations on the voracious appetite of spying on all and sundry by the National Security Agency and allied agencies should not give pause for too much comment, other than to affirm a general premise: activists and non-government groups are to be feared. Non-profits are seen as potential threats, though what to is sometimes unclear. Any government worth its salt should be afraid of its citizens – the latter must make the former accountable; the former must hold to the contractual bargain with citizens.
Earlier this week, Snowden revealed to members of the Council …
Troy: [a “gay,” played by Dave Foley]: You know, I asked him [Adam, played by Brendan Fraser] about that. He said, good manners are just a way of showing other people we have respect for them. See, I didn’t know that, I thought it was just a way of acting all superior. Oh and you know what else he told me?
Eve: [played by Alicia Silverstone] What?
Troy: He thinks I’m a gentleman and you’re a lady.
Eve: (disgusted) Well, consider the source! I don’t even know what a lady is.
Marxist aesthetics has yet to ask: What are the qualities of art which transcend the specific social content and form and give art its universality?
—Herbert Marcuse ((All cited quotations in this essay are from: Herbert Marcuse, The Aesthetic Dimension: Toward a Critique of Marxist Aesthetics (Boston: Beacon Press, 1978).))
Is there any role for classic-humanist literature in the moral/spiritual outlook of 21st century socialists? There certainly was for the leading 19th century socialist: Marx constantly reread and studied such authors as Aeschylus, Shakespeare, and Balzac, and his writings are sprinkled with forceful quotations ranging from Homer to Jonathan Swift. …
Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger’s op-ed “Global Warming Scare Tactics” was published in the New York Times on April 8. Participants in recent debates over climate change may recognize their names. They’re the guys who run the Breakthrough Institute, a pseudo-contrarian “environmental research organization.”
Nordhaus and Shellenberger co-founded the Apollo Alliance in 2003, a worthy effort to unite organized labor, social justice advocates, civil rights activists, and environmentalists behind increased public spending on renewable energy. They followed up a year later with “The Death of Environmentalism” (initially, and importantly, presented to a gathering of environmental organization funders).
I doubt where the official numbers come from, those that say that Ukraine is evenly divided between those who support the West, and those who feel their identity is closely linked with Russia.
Maybe this might be the case in western Ukraine, in Lvov, or even in the capital, Kiev. But western Ukraine has only a few key cities. The majority of people in this country of around 44 million are concentrated in the south, east and southeast, around the enormous industrial and mining centers of Donetsk, Dnepropetrovsk and Krivoi Rog.
There is Odessa in the south, and Kharkov, “the second capital,” …
by Mariana Assis and Ana Carolina Ogando / April 12th, 2014
“I don’t deserve to be raped! No one deserves to be.” These are the words printed on the signs made by thousands of Brazilian women who decided to join a massive online campaign launched through facebook last week. The campaign was organized after the Institute of Applied Research and Statistics (IPEA) made public the results of a survey which showed that 58% of the interviewed either completely or partially agreed that if women knew how to behave, there would be fewer cases of rape; and 65.1% agreed with the phrase “women wearing clothes that show off their bodies deserve to …
After a series of headline-grabbing statements about the possibility of “switching” European consumers over to American gas, the US media hastened to announce the launch of Obama’s oil and gas offensive against Russia. In reality the EU is not currently prepared, neither technically nor in terms of price, to buy its energy resources from the US. It would take at least ten years to adapt even the technically advanced German energy system to work with American gas supply. In a crisis, when it is particularly urgent to see a quick return on an investment, such projects are unrealistic.
IPS — When U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts Carmen M. Ortiz unsealed the indictment of a Chinese citizen in the UK for violating the embargo against Iran, she made what appeared to be a new U.S. accusation of an Iran nuclear weapons programme.
The press release on the indictment announced that between in November 2005 and 2012, Sihai Cheng had supplied parts that have nuclear applications, including U.S.-made goods, to an Iranian company, Eyvaz Technic Manufacturing, which it described as “involved in the development and procurement of parts for Iran’s nuclear weapons program.”
The text of the indictment … was yet another iteration …
The danger is not commercialisation per se but our constant identification with its inner and outer manifestation, in which humanity’s intelligence is led in the opposite direction from nature and spiritual evolution.
What is evil, anyway, if not our identification with it?
*****
‘Sharing is the key to solving the world’s problems’. Such a statement is so simple that it may fail to make an appeal, so we must go much deeper into this subject if we want to comprehend what this means. In order to understand how sharing is the surest guide to justice, peace and right human relations, we need to …
One thing that the FBI does really well is exonerate itself. As I wrote earlier, the bureau’s agents have shot 151 people over the course of the last two decades, killing more than half of them, yet in its own internal reviews, the FBI has exonerated those agents all 151 times — a perfect record of blamelessness that even some of the country’s most gun-happy police departments (even in Albuquerque, NM) can’t claim.
Now another internal review, not by the FBI but by the Office of Intelligence Committee, an obscure unit which supposedly internally “oversees” the work of 17 intelligence …
Bishop Desmond Tutu, in a recent Guardianessay, asserted: “There are many ways that all of us can fight against climate change: by not wasting energy, for instance.” Bishop Tutu then went on to “recognize” that “these individual measures will not make a big enough difference in the available time.” The solution to the problem of “climate change,” Bishop Tutu, continued, is for people to
break their ties with corporations financing the injustice of climate change. We can, for instance, boycott events, sports teams and media programming sponsored by fossil-fuel energy companies. We can demand that the advertisements of energy …
Denver Gathering Seeks to Galvanize Corporate Education Reform Resistance
by Roshan Bliss / April 11th, 2014
Late last month, over 100 teachers, students, and parents from across the country gathered in Denver for the United Opt Out National Spring Action, a conference aimed at growing the resistance to corporate education reform and high stakes standardized testing across the nation. Throughout the weekend, the education activists brainstormed and planned in area-focused work groups, interspersed with talks from, among others, a Finnish teacher and education scholar, a parent turned education activist, and a high school senior. All of it revolved around one central theme: organizing resistance to the global corporate education reform movement.
Every year in the first week of April Western media venues are flooded with stories that begin with statements about the anniversary of the Rwandan genocide, “where at least 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus died at the hands of Hutu extremists.”
Such stories recount the official narrative about the ‘Genocide in Rwanda’, a narrative that has five or six key elements that have been almost canonized and are repeated robotically by Western English-speaking news consumers from all walks of life, economic classes, and political leanings.
1. At least 800,000 people killed;
2. Mostly ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus;
3. Slaughtered with machetes (and …
Back in 1945, Dr. Walter Freeman struck out across America on a mission to save the mentally ill by selling his unique prescription door-to-door: transorbital lobotomy.
Over his life, he executed some 2,900 of them. The scientific community latched onto his initial success with the procedure – which consisted of an ice pick inserted into the brain through the eye socket and stirred about – deeming it “soul saving”.
Until then, psychiatric practice had relied upon grotesque and humiliating treatments: seizure-inducing injections of insulin, ECT (electroconvulsive therapy), and hydrotherapy where the patient soaked in hot or cold water for hours. …
What I am opposed to is a dumb war.
What I am opposed to is a rash war.
What I am opposed to is the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other armchair, weekend warriors in this administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne.
Barack Obama said that at an anti-war rally in Chicago on October 2, 2002, when he was still an Illinois state senator. Obama told the gathering that he favored going after al Qaeda in Afghanistan, but opposed going to …
so why aren’t we listening, shaping policy around what the downtrodden know and see?
I’m receiving the All-American love channels. You know, corporate rule, the Zionist Zest, GM killing people with a smile and $25 million ad campaign . . . the endless trial of humanity in the climate barrel sights of the earth churners, the boilers of bones, hydrocarbon petrol in their mothers’ wombs. Jeb Rot-Gut Bush in 2016. Hillary “Scrap Metal” Clinton (another driveling Clinton with lifeless belly laugh and thumb so accurately placed on the heartbeat of Amerika . . . NOT) : “Was that a bat?…Is that …
Snake Oil: How Fracking’s False Promise of Plenty Imperils Our Future by Richard Heinberg (Post Carbon Institute, 2013) is about the economics of fracking. Also known as hydraulic fracturing, fracking refers to using pressurized water and chemicals to release oil or natural gas trapped in underground rock formations. Heinberg’s new book describes the behind-the-scenes role of Goldman Sachs and other investment banks in driving the present fracking boom.
Technology to extract oil and gas deposits trapped in rock formations was first developed in 1866. Because the process is extremely capital intensive, fracking for oil only became economically …
