Latest articles
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 …
by Igor Alexeev / April 11th, 2014
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.
Whether German industry …
by Gareth Porter / April 11th, 2014
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 …
by Mohammed Mesbahi / April 11th, 2014
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 …
by Dave Lindorff / April 11th, 2014
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 …
by Alton C. Thompson / April 11th, 2014
Bishop Desmond Tutu, in a recent Guardian essay, 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.
The event was organized by …
by Keith Harmon Snow / April 11th, 2014
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 …
by David Connor / April 11th, 2014
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. …
by William Boardman / April 11th, 2014
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 …
by Paul Haeder / April 10th, 2014
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 …
by Stuart Jeanne Bramhall / April 10th, 2014
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 …
by Alton C. Thompson / April 10th, 2014
A most succinct description—in the form of a parable—of our current situation is contained in a passage—suitably modified—in Everett Knight’s 1960 The Objective Society, (p. 32). The passage itself pertains solely to intellectuals:
How are they to justify their position in our society[,] which is that of a man seated on the rear of a lorry examining the road behind while an incompetent driver moves on at a reckless speed in what is perhaps the wrong direction?
However, a restatement of this passage relevant for 2014 might read:
Most of us are riding down a steep, curvy road, in a bus driven …
It will be one or the other
by Paul Craig Roberts / April 10th, 2014
2014 is shaping up as a year of reckoning for the United States.
Two pressures are building on the US dollar. One pressure comes from the Federal Reserve’s declining ability to rig the price of gold as Western gold supplies shrivel and market knowledge of the Fed’s illegal price rigging spreads. The evidence of massive amounts of naked shorts being dumped into the paper gold futures market at times of day when trading is thin is unequivocal. It has become obvious that the price of gold is being rigged in the futures market in order to protect the dollar’s value from …
New American Reality
by Ramzy Baroud / April 9th, 2014
US Secretary of State John Kerry couldn’t hide his frustration anymore as the US-sponsored peace process continued to falter. After 8 months of wrangling to push talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority forward, he admitted while in a visit to Morocco on April 04 that the latest setback had served as a ‘reality check’ for the peace process. But confining that reality check to the peace process is hardly representative of the painful reality through which the United States has been forced to subsist in during the last few years.
The state of US foreign policy in the Middle …
Syria, Blair’s Plans and an Archbishop’s Son
by Felicity Arbuthnot / April 9th, 2014
Not only is Middle East “Peace Envoy”, Catholic convert and Butcher of Baghdad, Tony Blair gunning for another overthrow and mass destruction in Syria, he has recruited the son of an Archbishop to help him.
Not any old Archbishop either. Blair’s latest recruit is son of Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Primate of All England, who heads both the Church of England and the eighty million member Anglican Communion worldwide.
Blair has given Peter Welby “a key role” in his mega-funded Faith Foundation as “a researcher for a new website … that will analyse the role of religion in conflicts …
by Ron Jacobs / April 9th, 2014
Working people around the world are in worse straits than they have been for decades. Unemployment is rampant and real wages are stagnant. Young people entering the job market face an uncertain future and a lack of understanding on how to change that. In the most capitalist nation of them all – the United States — the future only looks bright if one is a member of the shrinking but ever-richer ruling elite. Education is being attacked on all levels by the privateers and those who invest in their economy built on destruction and despair. Claiming to be held hostage …
by Andrey Fomine / April 9th, 2014
The flywheel of political repressions in Ukraine is gaining momentum these days. In sharp contrast with the liberal approach by president Yanukovych to the “Euromaidan” rout, the interim Kievan administration did not hesitate much about cracking down the public uprising against the “neo-Nazi regime” on the rise in the East and South of Ukraine. Today in Kharkov at least 70 activists have been arrested during the so-called “anti-terrorist operation”. According to the reports, foreign mercenaries presumably from the US Greystone Ltd private military contractor firm were participating in the operation along with the National Guard (majorly consisting of …
by Tanner Stening / April 9th, 2014
Charles Koch wrote an op-ed that appeared in the Wall Street Journal last week excoriating the left and invoking concepts that have long since held any modicum of meaning in the current discourse. Wrapped opportunistically in an assault on “collectivists” is an unabashed defense of his company—Koch Industries—in which he boasts of employment figures and of various government awards for their alleged “health and safety excellence” and “commitment to a cleaner environment.”
But the record is conspicuous and speaks for itself. Commentators were quick to dig—which they needn’t do for long—to reveal the evidence of massive federal lobbying, funding of …
The Savage Sorting
by John Stanton / April 9th, 2014
There is a de facto redefinition of “the economy” when sharp contractions are gradually lost to standard measures. The unemployed who lose everything…easily fall off the edge of what is defined as “the economy” and counted as such. So do small shop and factory owners who lose everything and commit suicide. And so do the growing number of well-educated students and professionals who leave…all together. These trends redefine the space of the economy. They make it smaller and expel a good share of the unemployed and poor from standard measures. Such a redefinition makes “the economy” presentable, so to speak, …
by Lesley Docksey / April 8th, 2014
“I’ve looked at science and policies a lot in my career, and I think this is one of the worst policies I have ever seen.”
Most people would agree that England has a problem with bovine tuberculosis among its cattle. But many do not agree with the government’s view that badgers are to blame; that it is diseased badgers that are infecting the cattle; that the disease can be controlled by killing badgers rather than looking at farming practices; a view which ignores the science that says culling badgers will have little effect and may make matters worse.
Anyone campaigning to protect …
by subMedia / April 8th, 2014
by James Petras / April 8th, 2014
Act 1
Setting: Restaurant, where four middle-age friends, who have known each other since their university days in the early 1970’s, meet for lunch.
Professor: Should we share a bottle of wine?
Lawyer: Why not! There’s no time clock, clients or deadlines.
Social Worker: (smiles). We can afford it!
Doctor: No doubt … we’re drawing pensions, Social Security, and annuities. Medicare covers our medical bills. Mortgages are paid up.
Professor: Someone e-mailed me an announcement about a half-century anniversary of the student strike… back then and when.
Lawyer: Is it that long ago? Seems like …
Israel to extract a heavy price if Palestinians join UN bodies, says minister
by Stuart Littlewood / April 7th, 2014
US-brokered negotiations with Israel, which started on 29 July 2013 and were to last nine months, are nearing their ignominious end. And Israel, the serial defaulter that it is, has reneged on the agreed release of 104 pre-Oslo prisoners in exchange for Palestine’s postponing joining international organizations to help achieve their long-overdue freedom.
Three phases of the agreed release had taken place, and the final batch of 30 prisoners were due to be handed over on 29 March. When the Israeli government refused to release them the Palestinian embassy in London, on 2 April, announced that President Mahmoud Abbas had signed …
by Medea Benjamin and Kate Chandley / April 7th, 2014
Illegal US drone strikes continue (the Long War Journal says there have been 8 drones strikes in Yemen so far in 2014), but efforts to curb the use of killer drones have made remarkable headway this year.
While the faith-based community has taken far too long to address the moral issues posed by remote-controlled killing, on February 13, the World Council of Churches — the largest coalition of Christian churches — came out in opposition to the use of armed drones. The Council said that the use of armed drones poses a “serious threat to humanity” and condemned, in …
The Anti-Empire Report #127
by William Blum / April 7th, 2014
Is there anyone out there who still believes that Barack Obama, when he’s speaking about American foreign policy, is capable of being anything like an honest man? In a March 26 talk in Belgium to “European youth”, the president fed his audience one falsehood, half-truth, blatant omission, or hypocrisy after another. If George W. Bush had made some of these statements, Obama supporters would not hesitate to shake their head, roll their eyes, or smirk. Here’s a sample:
– In defending its actions, Russian leaders have further claimed Kosovo as a precedent – an example they say of the West interfering …
What Really Happened During the Talks
by Jonathan Cook / April 7th, 2014
There was a mad scramble by Washington last week to prevent the seemingly inevitable – an implosion of the Middle East peace talks. In a last-ditch effort to stop Israel reneging on a promise to release a final batch of Palestinian prisoners, the US briefly threw in possibly the biggest bargaining chip in its hand: the release of Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard.
With Israel still dragging its feet, an infuriated Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas submitted applications to join 15 United Nations conventions, thereby reviving a campaign to win international recognition of Palestinian statehood.
Although Washington will continue quietly arm-twisting the two sides …
Japan, Australia and the International Court of Justice
by Binoy Kampmark / April 7th, 2014
It has been a long and drawn out affair. For years, Australian environmental activists and political figures have had the Japanese whaling program in their sights. Every year, between 500 to 1000 whales are slain under a permit program ostensibly authorised by the International Whaling Convention. The IWC has been a strange creature. It regulates whale hunting, yet has effectively tried stifling commercial hunting by limiting the catch levels to zero since 1986.
Whaling countries, for that reason, have tiptoed around the commercial restrictions by embracing scientific and aboriginal subsistence arguments. Japan’s own response seemed cunning enough, legitimising the faulty scientific …
by Jack Random / April 7th, 2014
There is no right in our democracy more basic than the right to participate in electing our political leaders.
— Chief Justice John Roberts, McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission
In January 1898 Emile Zola published an impassioned defense of General Alfred Dreyfus, accusing the French government of anti-Semitic bias in convicting the general of treason. Dreyfus went to Devil’s Island and Zola fled to Great Britain to escape prosecution for libel. Both Zola and Dreyfus would ultimately be exonerated and the French government shamed in the annals of history.
The title of Zola’s article became the battle cry of the oppressed for generations …
by Gary Engler / April 6th, 2014
Who runs your workplace?
For most of us the answer is a boss, who reports to a higher boss, who reports to an even higher boss, who reports to a … all the way up to the “owner” of the enterprise. This is called a chain of command.
The words “chain” and “command” are both suggestive of a fundamental truth: Today’s rules about the power of bosses and workers evolved from a time of masters, servants and slaves. While many norms and expectations have changed over the years the fundamental truth that bosses give orders and workers are required to obey remains …
