We’ve had plenty of those. We weren’t told the Taliban was willing to turn bin Laden over to a neutral nation to stand trial. We weren’t told the Taliban was a reluctant tolerator of al Qaeda, and a completely distinct group. We weren’t told the 911 attacks had also been planned in Germany and Maryland and various other places not marked for bombing. We weren’t told that most of the people who would die in Afghanistan, many more than died on 911, not only didn’t support 911 but never heard of it. We …
April 25, 2014 was the 99th Anniversary of the Disastrous Battle of Gallipoli
by Gary G. Kohls / May 10th, 2014
A number of years ago I read portions of a book entitled The First Casualty: From the Crimea to Vietnam: The War Correspondent as Hero, Propagandist and Myth Maker by Phillip Knightley.
Knightley points out in that book that in order to start (and then perpetuate) a war, a nation’s leaders have to lie, and the lies usually start with the war correspondents or “embedded” journalists who obediently only tell pre-approved sugar-coated, heavily censored versions of what is really happening in the war zone. Conservative editors, who are sensitive to the demands of patriotic advertisers, typically edit out the unpleasantness that …
CJFE has an almost 30 year history of carrying out vital press freedom work throughout the developing world with its own programs and, in particular, through the creation and operation of the International Freedom of Expression eXchange (IFEX), a worldwide network of 88 groups. Working with other groups, lives have been saved and entire nations of people …
At this time of economic turmoil it can be difficult to perceive for oneself how the principle of sharing is a solution to world problems, and this is especially true for many intellectuals. There are libraries of books and reports that analyse what is wrong with society, the majority of which are trying to reach the impossible – which is to propose new ideas and alternative policies to the government. A government that represents and upholds the disastrous commercialisation of our political, economic and social structures.
The more intellectual and thorough our analysis, the more we become entangled in an endless …
On April 17, 2014 Algeria held its presidential election. As expected, the incumbent Abdelaziz Boutiflika won the election with 81.53 percent of the vote against the leading opposition candidate Ali Benflis, who received 12.18 percent of the vote.
Benflis was widely proclaimed in the French press as being the candidate of ‘change’ and ‘democratic reform.’ It is clear that Benflis was the preferred candidate for the French corporate and political elite. The French media launched a concerted campaign to discredit Boutiflika before the election, while there was much talk about the anti-government youth movement ‘barakat,’ as well as the separatist claims …
Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.
— from “The Sermon on the Mount”
Footfalls echo in the memory/ Down the passage which we did not take/
Towards the door we never opened/ Into the rose-garden.
— T. S. Eliot, “Four Quartets”
… all that is seething below is an ever-present potentiality of consciousness.
— Carl Jung ((From the “Foreword” to D.T. Suzuki’s An Introduction to Zen Buddhism))
About 20 months ago, I accompanied my Japanese wife on a business trip she made to Kiev. My interests were touristic and a bit genealogical. My mother’s parents were Ukrainian Jews who …
“Any government with both the power and the will to remedy the major defects of the capitalist system would have the power and the will to abolish it altogether” said economist Joan Robinson analyzing the situation a generation ago. But her words are a call to create such a government now. Our global problem is not only a perpetually war making empire but also the economic basis of its imperial system. The evidence seemed clear to only some scholars in the past, but it is becoming more obvious to anyone who notes the signs of breakdown in the present. They …
Western corporate media and the White House have dissimulated Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland’s boast of a $5 Billion contribution to the illegal overthrow of Ukraine’s elected government, blaming Russian aggression rather than Western duplicity and illegality. However, correspondence has come to light which demonstrates that the US Administration was aware to the last detail exactly what the ramifications of their actions would be in Ukraine.
The author of the minutely detailed cable outlining the complexities and dangers of US-EU-NATO meddling in Ukraine is William Burns, currently Deputy Secretary of State. From November 2005 to May 2008, he …
It is no secret that in the war against meat pathogens in commercial U.S. meat production, the pathogens are winning. The logical result of the tons of antibiotics that Big Meat gives livestock (not because they are sick but to fatten them) is clear: antibiotics that no longer work against antibiotic-resistant diseases like staph (MRSA), enterococci (VRE) and C.difficile. Antibiotic resistant infections, once limited to hospitals and nursing homes, are now in the community and have been found on Florida public beaches and on the highway behind a poultry truck. Big Meat has found some novel ways to retard …
“The Russians are coming … again … and they’re still ten feet tall!”
So, what do we have here? In Libya, in Syria, and elsewhere the United States has been on the same side as the al-Qaeda types. But not in Ukraine. That’s the good news. The bad news is that in Ukraine the United States is on the same side as the neo-Nazi types, who – taking time off from parading around with their swastika-like symbols and calling for the death of Jews, Russians, and Communists – on May 2 burned down a trade-union building in Odessa, killing scores of …
May is “Older Americans Month,” designated in 1963 by President John F. Kennedy, who said, “Our seniors deserve the best our country has to offer.” At the time about a third of seniors were living in poverty. In more than half a century, that hasn’t changed much. Unfortunately, seniors, like every other generation, could be celebrating the “National Short End of the Stick Month.” I can think of an even better designation, but I leave that to you.
The week beginning with Mother’s Day is “Nursing Home Week.” I see the two celebrations linked in advertising, but I don’t like it. …
Just before Israel’s 66th Independence Day, the country acquired a new national hero.
If it is true that every nation gets the national heroes it deserves, it was a rather worrying spectacle.
The video clip that turned David Adamov from an anonymous soldier into a national figure was taken with a Palestinian camera in Hebron.
Such video cameras have become the bane of the Israeli army. They have been widely distributed to young Palestinians throughout the occupied territories by Israeli peace organizations, especially B’Tselem.
The clip starts with the scene in Hebron. In the middle of Shuhada street stands a solitary soldier with a …
The New York Times vs. Russia’s “White Book": Part One
by Walter C. Uhler / May 9th, 2014
Daily examination of the online headlines and news links found on the Kyiv Post allows any disinterested observer to conclude that it is a propaganda bullhorn for the provisional government; the one installed after the duly elected President of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, was ousted in a violent anti-Russian coup. Thus, it was hardly a surprise when, on May 6, the propaganda bullhorn published an article of opinion by Oleh Tiahnybok that was riddled with rubbish.
Mr. Tiahnybok is the leader of Svoboda, a right-wing party that captured 38 seats and 10 percent of the vote in the last parliamentary elections and …
What are the signs that an institution is clinically insane? For over thirty-five years I have been trying to persuade psychological and psychiatric specialists and their professional associations to take up this serious subject for study and corrective suggestions. Alas, to no avail. They are totally occupied with the mental health of individuals.
One symptom of institutional insanity is when the mass media repeatedly goes wild covering offensive words, while ignoring systemic offensive deeds that reflect those words. In 2009, Donald Sterling, owner of the NBA Los Angeles Clippers, settled for $2.725 million with the Department of Justice for unlawfully excluding …
“Live free or die” is the motto of the state of New Hampshire. I hope the residents are prepared to die, because living free is not what they do. NH is merely a cog within the Amerikan Stasi State, but I am referring to what goes on within NH itself, not the police state existence imposed by Washington. On May 5 attorney William Baer was arrested at a school board meeting at which he went over a 2-minute speaking rule while trying to get some explanation from the Gilford, NH, school board for assigning sexually explicit reading material to …
Support Kerry and Return to Pointless Negotiations
by Stuart Littlewood / May 9th, 2014
Britain’s Foreign Office, presided over by William Hague, has come up with the most fatuous response so far to the collapse of the latest peace talks stage-managed, as always, by Israel’s partner in crime, America. Here it is……..
Foreign and Commonwealth Office
Foreign Affairs Council/General Affairs Council
The Minister for Europe (Mr David Lidington):
7 May 2014
Middle East Peace Process
My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs [Agent Hague] will attend the Foreign Affairs Council on 12 May, and I will attend the General Affairs Council on 13 May. The Foreign Affairs Council will be chaired by the …
Chris Hedges, a columnist for the Truthdig web site, recently wrote the following regarding the dismissal of a lawsuit (Hedges v. Obama) that he had brought:
The U.S. Supreme Court decision to refuse to hear our case concerning Section 1021(b)(2) of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which permits the military to seize U.S. citizens and hold them indefinitely in military detention centers without due process, means that this provision will continue to be law. It means the nation has entered a post-constitutional era. It means that extraordinary rendition of U.S. citizens on U.S. soil by our government …
Political language . . . is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.
—George Orwell
Rise to Prominence
Anne-Marie Slaughter had a successful academic career at elite institutions. After receiving degrees from Princeton, Harvard Law, and Oxford, she taught law at the University of Chicago and Harvard University. She was the first woman Dean of the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton. Slaughter is currently President of the New America Foundation, a centrist DC think tank (Google’s Eric Schmidt is chairman of the board of directors which includes Fareed Zakaria, Steven Rattner, …
Ever heard of the International Monetary Conference? No, I’m not referring to the annual meeting of the IMF and World Bank but rather to another, more secretive annual gathering – this one hosted by the American Bankers Association and bringing together chief executives from over 100 of the world’s largest banks.
Hailing primarily from Western Europe and North America, the banking chiefs meet for several days along with invited guests who hold prominent “public official” positions – major finance ministers and central bank governors among them. The meetings of the International Monetary Conference are notoriously private, with very little if …
On 30th April 2014, Saudi Arabia staged its largest-ever military exercises codenamed “Abdullah’s Shield” after the kingdom’s 91-year old ruler and coinciding with the ninth anniversary of his ascension to the throne. The exercises involved 130,000 Saudi troops and showcased some of the latest weapons purchased by the kingdom from the United States and China, including the Chinese CSS-2 intermediate-range ballistic missiles with a range of 2,650 kilometers (1,646 miles) which are capable of carrying nuclear warheads. The Chinese version of these missiles is already equipped with nuclear warheads. This was the first time that these missiles had …
by Clinton Kirby and Glenn Augenstein / May 8th, 2014
NOTE: This interview was conducted in late February 2014, before a sentencing hearing that was eventually postponed. Ms. McCulley was then sentenced to a year each of prison and probation on April 25, 2014. She is now requesting a Reconsideration of her sentence, and this request will be heard on May 8, 2014.
If you follow the news of foreclosure fraud and bad banks, you have certainly heard that on February 7, 2014, a Gallatin County, Montana jury awarded Ms. Mary McCulley an incredible $6 million verdict against US Bank of Montana, with $5 million of that figure being awarded for …
In Iraq there is an ongoing massacre. Below are the figures of the dead and wounded brought daily to just one hospital in the country’s largest governorate, Anbar Province, the Emergency Department of the Fallujah General Hospital, between 28th February 2014 and 7th May 2014.
They are the victims of the US-imposed Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s militias.
The UN representative in Iraq is near silent, the varying Ambassadors in Iraq are silent, including those of the US and UK, whose actions and lies about fictional “weapons of mass destruction” are responsible for the ongoing, daily …
Now come on Wall Street don’t be slow, why man this war is a-go-go. There’s plenty good money to be made, supplying the army with the tools of the trade. Now come on generals let’s move fast, your big chance is here at last. Time you got out and get those Reds, because the only good commie is one that’s dead. You know that peace can only be won, when you blow ‘em all to kingdom come.
— Vietnam Song, Country Joe and the Fish, 1969
Corruption is strangling the land. The police force is watching the people, and the people just …
Think of any period in human history when empires and imperialism were common features of society, whether from ancient Egypt, Rome, China, to the Ottomans and the rise of the European and Japanese empires. There is an institution that – with few exceptions – was prevalent across most imperial societies: the family dynasty.
In a world dominated by institutions – organized hierarchically and embedded with their own functions and ideologies – the ‘family unit’ is very often the first and most important institution in the development of individuals. For the rich and powerful, the family unit has been the principal institution …
a whole lot of writing going on, but no more shaking . . . rattling the cages
I’ll get to the school and the yard and the fights in a minute. But . . . .
Okay, a guest on the “alternative radio show” in Portland, KBOO-FM.
Hosts Celeste Carey and Cecil Prescod speak with Micah Uetricht, author of Strike for America: Chicago Teachers Against Austerity. Uetricht explains why the struggle of teachers in Chicago should matter to all of us. The Chicago Teachers Union strike was the most important domestic labor struggle so far this century—and perhaps for the last forty years—and …
Not since the US and EU took over Eastern Europe, including the Baltic countries, East Germany, Poland, and the Balkans and converted them into military outposts of NATO and economic vassals, have the Western powers moved so aggressively to seize a strategic country, such as the Ukraine, posing an existential threat to Russia.
Up until 2013 the Ukraine was a ‘buffer state’, basically a non-aligned country, with economic ties to both the EU and Russia. Ruled by a regime closely tied to local, European, Israeli and Russian based …
The British government’s policy to rid England’s cattle of bovine TB by culling badgers is unravelling, falling to pieces bit by embarrassing bit as more information is disclosed. Last year’s pilot culls were meant to test whether killing badgers by controlled shooting would be “effective, humane and safe”. Not safe for badgers but for the public trying to prevent the killing.
So ineffective has it been that the government has decided not to allow any independent monitoring of this year’s culls, a decision which may just get the British Veterinary Association off its fence and withdraw its backing for …
Shortly after the signing of the Oslo accords between Israel and the PLO in 1993, the Jerusalem Post ran a cartoon that depicted a critical aspect of those accords which has rarely been discussed much less acknowledged. In the cartoon, a smiling Yasser Arafat was sitting upright on a stretcher giving a “V” sign. The stretcher bearers were Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres.
Its message was clear: the Oslo agreement had come to the rescue of the PLO chairman whose reputation among his fellow Palestinians had sunk to the bottom of the barrel. The price …
