Latest articles
by Paul Haeder / January 30th, 2014
Note — Many requests have come around, one my way, to have this re-posted. I think DV readers will be enlightened.
BY Flavia Dzodan
My name is Flavia Dzodan, I am a writer, public speaker, media maker, ideas instigator, content creator and facilitator living in Amsterdam. This blog is about the spaces and intersections between politics, culture, race and gender matters with some humor and pop culture thrown in the mix. I also blog at Tiger Beatdow
Yesterday social media was ablaze with a post making the rounds in feminist/ woman centered spaces. The post in question …
GCHQ, Privacy, and Murder
by Binoy Kampmark / January 30th, 2014
It will only get worse, but the last few days have been interesting in the accumulating annals of massive surveillance. Britain’s equivalent of the National Security Agency, GCHQ, has been placed under the legal microscope, and found wanting.
The legal briefs who have been advising 46 members of the all-party parliamentary group on drones has handed down a sobering assessment of the GCHQ mass surveillance program: It is, for the most part, illegal. In some cases, it may well patently criminal.
According to barristers Jemima Stratford QC and Tom Johnston, the behaviour of GCHQ staffers, in many instances, …
by Ludwig Watzal / January 30th, 2014
Edward Snowden’s revelations have given the public insights into a world that leads a shadowy existence. He has opened a vista to a shadow world that threatens humanity with a new form of totalitarianism, all-encompassing and therefore unique. Compared with this new totalitarianism, the German Stasi and the Soviet KGB were amateurs.
Although Michael Quilligan’s book, Understanding Shadows: The Corrupt Use of Intelligence (Atlanta: Clarity Press, 2013), came out before Snowden revealed the criminal machinations of the NSA and its British servant, it gives the readers “a glimpse of …
by Ellen Brown / January 30th, 2014
“Epic in scale, unprecedented in world history.” That is how William K. Black, professor of law and economics and former bank fraud investigator, describes the frauds in which JPMorgan Chase (JPM) has now been implicated. They involve more than a dozen felonies, including bid-rigging on municipal bond debt; colluding to rig interest rates on hundreds of trillions of dollars in mortgages, derivatives and other contracts; exposing investors to excessive risk; failing to disclose known risks, including those in the Bernie Madoff scandal; and engaging in multiple forms of mortgage fraud.
So why, asks Chicago Alderwoman Leslie Hairston, are we …
by Gary Brumback / January 30th, 2014
The powerless voices for the common good of America are ignored. Congress, through its decisions and actions, betray the very idea of public service for the common good. And the American people know it. Congress’ reputation has continued to nosedive, with only 10-15% of the populace currently approving its conduct.
The aim of this essay is to take an honest look at a dishonest assembly and then will close by proposing that the corporate escort service on Capitol Hill be replaced with honest and knowledgeable people dedicated to providing public service.
The Campaign Trail to the Chambers of Ill Repute
To get elected …
by Ramzy Baroud / January 30th, 2014
In a recent radio interview with a National Public Radio affiliate in Juneau, Alaska, I was asked if I had advice for a 16-year-old Palestinian student, Haitham. He had just arrived in the US as part of a school exchange program, and, admirably began reaching out to his peers in his and other schools to teach them about Palestine, its people and its ongoing struggle for freedom and rights.
There was not enough time to convey much to Haitham, whose voice expressed the personality of a gentle, smart and driven young man. And since I have been asked that question on …
by Robert S. Becker / January 30th, 2014
How Demonizing Foes Subverts Progressivism
Consciously or not, every pundit or blogger begins with a simple choice: do we address our converted, raring to raise consciousness and ignite protest while disregarding resistant challengers, even opponents? Or do we frame essays for the choir while embracing the less affiliated and the less informed – say, Democratic moderates – even the stray independent?
I have no delusion that words, brilliant or mundane, will overcome the profoundly alienated or cynical, nor those of fixed and polarized mindsets. Yet words are what we have, so I indulge my optimism: to articulate positions that inform an open …
by Ben Swann / January 29th, 2014
Ben Swann talks about the standing ovation given to Army Ranger Cory Remsburg during President Obama’s SOTU address. Swann points out that Congress and President may be clapping for Remsburg but are doing nothing to actually honor veterans.
http://youtu.be/NQE0oV9j_Kk
by Paul Craig Roberts / January 29th, 2014
Last week, I explained how economists and policymakers destroyed our economy for the sake of short-term corporate profits from jobs offshoring and financial deregulation.
That same week Business Week published an article, “Factory Jobs Are Gone. Get Over It,” by Charles Kenny. Kenny expresses the view of establishment economists, such as Brookings Institute economist Justin Wolfers who wants to know “What’s with the political fetish for manufacturing? Are factories really so awesome?”
“Not really,” Kenny says. Citing Eric Fisher of the Cleveland Federal Reserve Bank, Kenny reports that wages rise most rapidly in those states that most quickly abandon …
by The Real News Network (TRNN) / January 29th, 2014
David Cay Johnston renown for his exposes of tax loopholes and inequities: Put in historical context, a $10.10 minimum wage is still substantially lower than it was in the 1960s.
http://youtu.be/LGTc49VH1Z8
by Joel S. Hirschhorn / January 29th, 2014
Hate, even though justified, is not usually considered helpful. Joel Hirschhorn sees, however, a way that hate can fillip good.
by Linh Dinh / January 28th, 2014
Though Thomas Paine galvanized this country into being and gave it its very name, The United States of America, there is almost no trace of him here. In Philadelphia, where he spent his most significant years, there is a Thomas Paine Plaza, but it is barely marked as such, with no statue of the man. Instead, one finds a bronze likeness of Frank Rizzo, of all people, and a Jacques Lipchitz sculpture that Rizzo once compared to a dropped load of plaster. Composed of torturous human forms holding up some insufferable burden, it’s titled “Government of the People,” though walking …
by Harry J. Bentham / January 28th, 2014
As a futurist, one of my aims has been to bring forward some of the more challenging and insightful predictions of the political future. Of these, the most important is the idea that the Nineteenth Century nation-state model, currently accepted as sovereign, must go.
Bad politics, or politics of the future?
With the inevitable doom of borders and the ever greater flows of information across the world, there must be a different kind of sovereignty imagined altogether – sovereignty by and for the whole of humanity. Withdrawal of recognition for every nation-state in favor of the human family is a long term …
by Gilad Atzmon / January 28th, 2014
A mass protest in Paris on Sunday against French President François Hollande turned into an anti-Jewish demonstration and ended in clashes between police and protesters.
Seemingly, Jewish organisations around the world are scared by the recent developments in France. Once again, they clearly failed to appreciate the growing mass fatigue of Shoah indoctrination and belligerent lobby politics. However, I would contend that instead of whining about the “rise of anti-Semitism”, Jews better, once and for all, learn to ask why? Why the Jews again? Why are they hated? What is it in Jewish politics that evokes so much resentment? Why does …
by Media Lens / January 28th, 2014
‘Propaganda’ sounds like an old-fashioned word from a bygone era. It evokes images of the Nazis in WW2, particularly Reich Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda Joseph Goebbels, or Soviet leaders in the Cold War and dictators in ‘Third World’ countries. Propaganda is something spewed out by official enemies of the West, and surely not a vile practice indulged by ‘our’ politicians and business leaders. This is a convenient illusion that serves powerful Western elites very well indeed.
The Russian-born filmmaker Andre Vltchek, who has travelled the world extensively in making his documentaries, relates his experience of appearing in the media in …
by Dana Gabriel / January 27th, 2014
In preparation for the upcoming North American Leaders Summit which will be held in Toluca, Mexico on February 19, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry recently held a meeting with his Canadian and Mexican counterparts. Over the last number of years, not as much attention has been given to the trilateral relationship. Instead, the U.S. has essentially pursued a dual-bilateral approach with both Canada and Mexico on key issues including border and continental perimeter security, as well as regulatory and energy cooperation. On the heels of its 20th anniversary, there once again appears to be renewed interest in broadening and …
by Rebecca Theodore / January 27th, 2014
“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”
It now seems that more than anything else, the freedom of migration is again a meaningful facet as resolutions are turning a new tide towards immigration reform in Washington.
Although the Senate has already passed a broad overhaul of the immigration laws, including a path to citizenship for the more than 11 million illegal immigrants; the legislation still continues to be mired with obstacles in the Republican controlled House of Representatives.
But whether or not House Republicans piece meal approach to immigration reform will favor the Democrats comprehensive hard line …
by Media Lens / January 27th, 2014
Readers will recall the famous perceptual illusion in which the brain switches between seeing a young girl and an image intended to represent an ‘old crone’. The picture of course remains the same, but our minds flick between the two interpretations, unable to perceive both images at the same time.
The ‘mainstream media’ — that curious collection of elite-run, profit-maximising business interests sometimes known as ‘the free press’ — performs a similar perceptual trick. In reviewing comparable crimes by the West and its official enemies, it is able to flick between perceiving virtue in ‘our’ criminality where only wickedness is …
by Alan Hart / January 27th, 2014
The expanded and most explicit form of my headline question is this. Is Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu of sound mind and knowingly talking propaganda nonsense about threats to Israel’s security in order to fool the world including most of its Jews, or, is he unbalanced, mentally disturbed, even clinically insane? I ask because his rubbishing in Davos of the most important speech any Iranian leader has made since the revolution which brought the mullahs to power 35 years ago sent me to bed recalling something my father said to me when I was a very young boy. “There are none …
by Sherif Samir and Hakim / January 27th, 2014
Sherif Samir, writing from Egypt
In the past year, during the rule of the Muslim Brotherhood, when the darkness of fanatical Muslims beset Egypt, and when it seemed that the spirit of resistance was fading, and people were giving up, I was observing women, wondering how the new situation was affecting their looks, their clothes, and their make-up, and I kept hope as long as women kept wearing tight pants, and lipstick, as long as I saw girls and boys walking together and laughing out loud “Fanatical groups will never own the heart of Egypt,” I thought to myself, “as long …
by Edward S. Herman / January 26th, 2014
Maximilian Forte’s book on the Libyan war, Slouching Towards Sirte: NATO’s War on Libya and Africa (Montreal: Baraka Books, 2012), is another powerful (and hence marginalized) study of the imperial powers in violent action, and with painful results, but supported by the UN, media, NGOs and a significant body of liberals and leftists who had persuaded themselves that this was a humanitarian enterprise. Forte shows compellingly that it wasn’t the least little bit humanitarian, either in the intent of its principals (the United States, France, and Great Britain) or in its results. As in the earlier cases …
by Jack A. Smith / January 26th, 2014
When he ran for the presidency in 2007-08, Sen. Barack Obama pledged to dismantle the most intrusive aspects of President George W. Bush’s post-9/11 surveillance programs. Instead, since taking office in January 2009, President Obama has secretly (until a few month ago) allowed those programs to expand as well as adding a number of his own measures that increasingly jeopardize American civil liberties.
Ever since whistle-blowing NSA contractor Edward Snowden revealed the elephantine extent of the Bush-Obama Surveillance State’s domestic and foreign spying last summer, White House and NSA officials have sought through obfuscation and fabrication to minimize the impact of …
by Paul Haeder / January 26th, 2014
“Are Adjunct Professors the Fast-Food Workers of the Academic World?” Is this provocative, evocative, adversarial, or emblematic of an age of casino capitalism, corrupted Admin Class, and a see/ hear/speak no evil compliant groups of people who are in the 20 percent? Not One Percenters, for sure, these destroyers of community, of sanity, of democracy, culture, our futures, but still, VPs and provosts and HR personnel and Presidents and others in the pencil neck-data-software-bean counter class who make more than $120 K a year, and have with the flick of their mouse wrists, people’s lives in the balance.
Too bad they …
by Ron Jacobs / January 26th, 2014
May 1, 2006 seems a long time ago. In one of the most hopeful manifestations of this century so far, on that day millions of US residents stayed home from work and school, and took to the streets to rally in favor of legalizing all undocumented workers and democratizing Washington’s immigration policy. Since, that day, over two million undocumented US workers have been deported; thousands more languish in detention centers where they are denied access to relatives and subject to brutality at the hands of guards and other detainees, and millions of others live in constant fear of La Migra. …
by John Steppling / January 26th, 2014
What I am noticing, increasingly, on social media, Facebook in particular, I guess, is the that people too lazy to think, or take the time to write out two or three sentences, will resort to posting “memes”. This seems to be a cottage industry now. The second part of the meme phenomenon has to do with moral relativism, and psychic disconnect. Erasure of empathy, really.
“Meme “was a word coined by Richard Dawkins I believe, back in the ’80s, to describe how ideas spread or metastasized through societies, or sub categories of society. I’m not here to write a history of …
America's Biggest Crises Are Rooted in the Fact That the Economy Is Rigged for the Wealthiest
by Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers / January 26th, 2014
A paradigm shift is taking place. It is coming from the awareness that all of our crises are connected to an economy rigged for the wealthiest. The symptoms of big finance capitalism create the poverty, low wages, economic insecurity and environmental destruction so a handful can profit. While these facts have been hidden by political leaders and corporate mass media, now people are seeing them and understand the task we have before us.
The Radical Dr. King
This past Monday, we celebrated Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday. History books and the new Memorial in DC commemorate Dr. King for his 1963 …
On Extinction Level Events, and other abstractions
by Kevin Annett / January 26th, 2014
Nobody can think globally, anymore than one can seriously imagine one’s own death. And so when Fukushima exploded three years ago and as our skies and oceans became laced with toxicity, none of it seemed as real as the trivialities of my life.
Basically, I tried not to think about what lay across the waters. And so even now, as we are being slowly radiated to death in what has become an obvious Extinction Level Event, our planetary fate remains abstract to ourselves: more important than the trivialities, of course, but not more real. And being human, I guess I’m not …
by Vacy Vlazna / January 25th, 2014
Imperialism after all is an act of geographical violence .
— Edward Said
Is it just me, or do you also see a thread of colonial superiority and racism binding US, Australia, Canada to Israel?
Think about it. All are ex-British colonies and like Israel, have a shameful history of genocide committed against their respective Indigenous Peoples and all continue to treat their First Peoples as third class citizens.
I can’t speak for the US and Canada, but, apart from realpolitik and arms trade, an underlying colonial arrogance goes a long way to explain why my ‘civilised’ ‘democratic’ Australian government is complicit in granting …
by Gareth Porter / January 25th, 2014
(IPS) — Iran’s pushback against statements by Secretary of State John Kerry and the White House that Tehran must “dismantle” some of its nuclear programme, and the resulting political uproar over it, indicates that tough U.S. rhetoric may be adding new obstacles to the search for a comprehensive nuclear agreement.
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said in an interview with CNN’s Jim Sciutto Wednesday, “We are not dismantling any centrifuges, we’re not dismantling any equipment, we’re simply not producing, not enriching over five percent.”
When CNN’s Fareed Zakaria asked President Hassan Rouhani, “So there would be no destruction of centrifuges?” Rouhani responded, …
by Andre Vltchek / January 25th, 2014
And here we go again! It is January 2014, but somehow it all feels like last year, or the year before last… or ten years ago. Jakarta is under water; people are trying to save all they can, but their houses are being ruined… some men, women and children are dying… Tens of thousands are sick, suffering from typhoid, and diarrhea.
As I plunged into flooded areas, my friend, a medical expert from Yogyakarta, sent me a text message: “Please be careful in Jakarta… Leptospirosis, typhoid and other infectious diseases…”
Dozens had already died in the capital city alone, or at least …
