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Another great thing about living in New Zealand is the ease of bringing a private prosecution against wealthy and powerful sociopaths that the police decline to prosecute. ((The New Zealand police, which are employed by central government, are responsible for prosecuting most lawbreakers)) A particular odious scumbag named John Banks recently resigned from Parliament after being found guilty of electoral fraud. As Commissioner of Police in the 1990s, Banks became extremely cozy with the New Zealand police when he helped cover up a series of gang rapes, by police officers, of women in their custody.

Thus in 2012, it was …

For more than a month Israel sought to wriggle off a hook that should have snared it from the start. Two children, 17 and 16, were shot dead during Nakba Day protests near Ramallah, in which youths threw stones ineffectually at well-protected and distant Israeli military position.

Hundreds of Palestinian children have lost their lives over the years at the end of a sharpshooter’s sights, but the deaths of Nadim Nuwara and Mohammed Abu Al Thahir in Beitunia were not easily forgotten. Israel was quickly cornered by an accumulation of physical and visual evidence.

Israel’s usual denials – the deaths were faked, …

The climate change/global warming issue has been in the mainstream for decades, but it still lacks the resonance required to turn heads. Maybe, in part, because it is doubtful the average American could name more than one climate change advocate (it’s all about leadership) other than Al Gore, and in large measure that’s because of his academy award winning film, An Inconvenient Truth (Paramount, 2006).

The climate change issue, even though ubiquitous, does not carry enough pizzazz to sufficiently influence public perception to tackle the problem. The issue needs national leadership, with charisma, not charts, not graphs, not scientific lingo. Climate …

Resistance to the global corporate education reform movement gained momentum last month as nearly 200 educators, students, and community allies from Mexico, Canada, and the US gathered in Chicago for the 11th Trinational Conference in Defense of Public Education. The conference was primarily attended by delegates from some of the most militant teacher unions from each of the three countries – all of whom have been fighting similar battles to defend against attacks on public education – but conference organizers also invited student leaders from each country to participate in the conference, as well as teacher union leaders from Puerto …

The Department of State also warns U.S. citizens to defer all travel to the Crimean Peninsula…Russian forces have occupied the Crimean Peninsula in support of the Russian Federation’s claim of Crimean annexation and these forces are likely to continue to take further actions in the Crimean Peninsula consistent with its claim. The United States and Ukraine do not recognize this claimed annexation. The Russian Federation maintains an extensive military presence in Crimea and along the border of eastern Ukraine…Additionally, groups advocating closer ties to Russia have taken on a more strident anti-American tone, especially in eastern Ukraine and Crimea. U.S. …

(Full article …)

Pro-Palestinian campaigners are cock-a-hoop over the Presbyterian Church USA’s vote to divest from Caterpillar Inc., Hewlett-Packard and Motorola Solutions. Hailed as amazing, brave and miraculous in some quarters, it was actually a very close-run thing: 310 to 303 against, with no abstentions.

Excuse me if I don’t join the celebrations. Nearly half of Presbyterian delegates, apparently, still wish to continue investing in companies that profit from the Israelis’ brutal and illegal occupation of the Holy Land. And that’s not good enough.

The narrow victory, if we can call it that, was only won thanks to great efforts from outsider campaigners including …

In the last week, there has been a rapid march toward military action in Iraq despite widespread opposition to more war among the US population for a variety of reasons. One concern is that it would require more military spending despite immense and unmet needs for funding in a broad array of areas at home. Unlike any other policy area, there never seems to be a lack of funds for a military attack or even a war. The military-industrial complex has a powerful hold on US lawmakers.

The hawks in Congress are exerting tremendous pressure for military action in Iraq to …

The recent article by Robert Jensen, “Some Basic Propositions about Sex, Gender, and Patriarchy,” espouses concepts that both reflect and perpetuate cissexism and transphobia. Jensen correctly anticipates that readers will recognize much of his article as unabashedly transphobic. He reacts by preemptively dismissing any such observations as mere “tactics.” In the third to last paragraph he writes, “Labeling a radical feminist position on these public policy issues as inherently “transphobic” or describing radical feminist arguments on the issues as “hate speech” are diversionary tactics that undermine productive intellectual and political discussion. A critique of an idea is not a …

A loud, crashing sound startles my young farm-hand Emily Danler awake in the dark of the night. She camps out in order to start picking berries at sun-up. My dog, inside, barks. I sleep through it all. Looking down the boysenberry field to the bottom of Kokopelli Farm that morning, tears come to my eyes.

The tall, old black oak had split right down the middle of its deep, wide trunk. Though on my neighbor’s farm, it anchored my farm. It now lay slit down its center, broken, crashing across the fence. It evoked fear of my own death. Being …

Finance is the new form of warfare – without the expense of a military overhead and an occupation against unwilling hosts. It is a competition in credit creation to buy foreign resources, real estate, public and privatized infrastructure, bonds and corporate stock ownership. Who needs an army when you can obtain the usual objective (monetary wealth and asset appropriation) simply by financial means?  

— Dr. Michael Hudson ((Counterpunch, October 2010.))

When the US Federal Reserve bought an 80% stake in American International Group (AIG) in September 2008, the unprecedented $85 billion outlay was justified as necessary to bail …

Residents of New England and the Mid-Atlantic states will experience increased rainfall and floods if data analysis by a Penn State meteorologist and long-term projections by a fisheries biologist, with a specialty in surface water pollution, are accurate.

Paul Knight, senior lecturer in meteorology at Penn State, compiled rainfall data for Pennsylvania from 1895—when recordings were first made—to this year. He says there has been an increase of 10 percent of rainfall during the past century. Until the 1970s, the average rainfall throughout the state was about 42 inches. Beginning in the 1970s, the average began creeping up. “By the 1990s, …

If there is a God, he surely has a sense of humor. The career of Shimon Peres, who is about to finish his term as President of Israel, is clear evidence.

Here is a life-long politician, who has never won an election. Here is the world-renowned Man of Peace, who has started several wars and never done anything for peace. Here is the most popular political figure in Israel who for most of his life was hated and despised.

Once, several decades ago, I wrote an article about him with the title “Mr. Sisyphus”. Sisyphus, it will be remembered, was condemned for …

Walter White, the main protagonist in the hugely popular Breaking Bad (AMC 2008-13) cable TV series, starts as a struggling high school chemistry teacher who is diagnosed with lung cancer. As such, Walter turns to the fast money lane of methamphetamine formulation to secure a financial future for his family before he dies, leading to a lifestyle conversion from protagonist to antagonist, an evolving metamorphosis from sympathetic to callous, brutal, and hardnosed.

The TV series is emblematic of neoliberalism’s unfolding over these past few decades during which the innocence of the 1950s Leave it to Beaver socio-economic era transformed into… well, …

The landslide election earlier this month of Narendra Modi does not bode well for the 800 million or so Indians living in destitution, or the 120 million minority Muslims in the country, or the Adivasi (indigenous) people and Dalit groups sitting on resource-rich land in Orissa, Jharkhand and elsewhere. He may well come from a humble background, but Mr. Modi’s loyalties lie firmly with the corporations of India, not the chai wallahs working the train station at Vadnagar in Gujarat State like his father once did. And certainly not the Adivasi families being forced from their homes to make way …

War is a bastard but the bitch that bore him is in heat again.
— Berthold Brecht

The destruction of Iraq, which began under the conservatively emotional Bush regime, continues under the liberally placid Obama administration. There are differences in style when an intelligent landscaper replaces a slack jawed gardener but the plantation they serve differs only in the cosmetic facade it sells the public, not the diseased crop it produces. The present political opposition is led by people who make pinheads and maniacs seem thoughtful, but our current CEO still acts the sibilant bully talking tough and selling weapons to stop …