Latest articles
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 …
by Ludwig Watzal / January 25th, 2014
All the wars and attacks, which were started by the U.S. and its so-called allies in the wake of 9/11, have wreaked havoc. You name it, you got it: Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, and perhaps even Iran. The Islamic Republic is not yet off the hook. There are strong forces in the U.S. and in the Middle East that prefer war to peace at the expense of the U.S. Right now, there is a war going on in Libya against the Western installed puppet government, without notice of the corporate media.
…
by Michael Gillespie / January 25th, 2014
Why would US leaders, lawmakers, intelligence and law enforcement agency administrators allow foreign intelligence and espionage agencies and their front companies unfettered, unexamined, long-term access to vast audiences of American children and young adults? And does not that question represent legitimate and vital concerns regarding privacy, public health, public safety, and national security?
It is a matter of public record that, through its intelligence agencies and their spin-offs and many front companies, Israel is actively and deeply involved with the NSA in collecting and organizing data on Americans. The information thus collected by the NSA is shared with …
by Felicity Arbuthnot / January 24th, 2014
The United States Marine Corps … its hallowed rituals, and its unbending code of honor…
— Thomas E. Ricks, Making the Corps, 1997
As the US-unleashed Grim Reaper continues to cull Iraqis in ever rising numbers, this month of the 23rd anniversary of the 1991 US-led onslaught on Iraq and just weeks away from the 11th woeful wake for the 2003 illegal invasion, yet another atrocity in a litany of those under the illegal US-UK occupation has come to light.
Fallujah, now under attack from US installed tyrant Nuri al Maliki’s sectarian militia, armed with US supplied weapons, with the US also “… …
by Walter Brasch / January 24th, 2014
The derailment of a 101-car CSX freight train on a bridge in a densely-populated part of Philadelphia this past week should be yet another warning to politicians who have become cheerleaders for oil and gas fracking.
The train had been hauling crude oil from the Bakken Shale in North Dakota. A severe snow storm delayed by several days removing the derailed cars and 80,000 gallons of crude oil from the decades-old bridge over I-76 and the Schuylkill River, which flows into the Delaware River. Oil and gas companies using horizontal fracking have made the Bakken the most productive oil shale in …
by Robert Hunziker / January 24th, 2014
Climate change news is mostly negative, in fact, downright depressing, as glaciers melt away, torrential storms hit coastlines, and embedded droughts scorch countrysides.
But, behind all of the gloom and doom, an upsurge of solar energy is quietly flourishing from California to Queensland to Pretoria. Here’s why: Solar energy is experiencing remarkable technological breakthroughs that will likely lead to a world powered by solar energy at the expense of fossil fuels. And, it could be happening sooner rather than later.
The biggest question is whether it comes soon enough to avoid the risks of abrupt climate change events, like cascading glaciers in …
by Ralph Nader / January 24th, 2014
Last month, the ruling Japanese coalition parties quickly rammed through Parliament a state secrets law. We Americans better take notice.
Under its provisions the government alone decides what are state secrets and any civil servants who divulge any “secrets” can be jailed for up to 10 years. Journalists caught in the web of this vaguely defined law can be jailed for up to 5 years.
Government officials have been upset at the constant disclosures of their laxity by regulatory officials before and after the Fukushima nuclear power disaster in 2011, operated by Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO).
Week after week, reports appear in …
by Ismail Salami / January 24th, 2014
A five-minute audio message by al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri went viral on the internet in which he enjoins the rebels in Syria to end their infighting and focus their energies on battling against President Bashar al-Assad’s forces.
A veritable testimony to the fact that the militants fighting against Bashar al-Assad are affiliated to the terrorist al-Qaeda and as a result, they are stripped of any cloak of legitimacy, it further reinforces the notion that there is more than meets the eye in Syria.
Interestingly, the warring factions decided to patch up their differences and sit down at the negotiating table once …
by Paul Haeder / January 23rd, 2014
“I’m telling you, this place is the most racist place I’ve ever been to. September 10, it was Latinos and Blacks. And then September 11 came, and it’s Muslims. It’s a list. I top the list.” That’s Vera, student in the USA, in the film, If These Halls Could Talk.
She’s Palestinian, Israeli, not accepted by the racist Zionists, not accepted by the racist Americans, and not accepted by racist Arabs who see her passport is stamped Israel. Vera, like the other youth of color, is a powerful voice for the persistent racism of America, the white power-privilege of Americans …
by David Swanson / January 23rd, 2014
Three remarkable items in Thursday’s Charlottesville Daily Progress. First, a football player explaining that when he proclaimed his superiority to his opponent after a game he was caught up in the game’s passion, and that the overblown reaction to his obnoxious comments seems racist. Indeed it does, but it seems to reflect another type of willful ignorance as well.
Spectators at gladiator matches don’t want to see too deeply into the minds of the gladiators. We want to watch violent sports without peering inside the helmets. Do they have to tell themselves the other team is dirt? Are they scared? Are …
US Senate Await Israeli Instructions
by Ramzy Baroud / January 22nd, 2014
Israel is often viewed by Washington politicians as the most ‘stable’ ally in the Middle East. But stability from the American perspective can mean many things. Lead amongst them is that the ‘ally’ must be unconditionally loyal to the diktats of the US administration. This rule has proven to be true since the United States claimed a position of ascendency, if not complete hegemony, over many regions of the world since World War II. Israel, however, remained an exception.
The rules by which US-Israeli relations are governed are perhaps the most bewildering of all foreign policies of any two countries.
An illustration …
by Steve Horn / January 22nd, 2014
by Stuart Jeanne Bramhall / January 22nd, 2014
Population control is a taboo topic in most sustainability circles. It shouldn’t be. According to a University of Oregon study, childbearing is the number one carbon intensive activity. Having just one has twenty times the impact of a lifetime of carbon frugality.
How Many People Can the Earth Support?
The human species lives on a finite planet with finite resources. Growing evidence suggests we have already exceeded the earth’s carrying capacity. WHO and World Hunger data reveal our current system of industrial agriculture only feeds 84% of the global population. At present nearly a billion people (out of 7 billion) …
by Robert S. Becker / January 22nd, 2014
Ever reckon how future earthlings will sum up our whirling, unhinged, hyper-partisan dervish of an era? Nix on “Golden Age,” though even worse times ahead will inflate this era with a nostalgic glow. Forget “Renaissance” as one-third of our country considers classical, liberal humanism the menace. Too much fundamentalist shaking goin’ on, let alone the onrushing Rapture. Even so, no “Age of Faith” either as church membership plummets and god-fearing fret over impious children.
Surely “Age of Enlightenment” is out, first because the 18th C. bagged it, and second, today’s merciless scorn for evolution and climate change, let alone Birtherism, passion …
by Peter Rugh / January 22nd, 2014
Seven of Canada’s most prized scientific libraries are being shut down and some of their contents have already been burned, thrown away or carted off by fossil fuel consultancy firms. This development is part of a Harper administration plan to slash more than $160 million in the coming years from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, or DFO — an agency charged with protecting the country’s vast waterways.
The Harper government has portrayed the move as necessary in order to reduce the country’s deficit and provide Canadians with greater access to scientific information through the Internet. But alongside the cuts, the …
African Americans More Pro-NSA, Anti-Snowden Than Whites and Hispanics
by Glen Ford / January 22nd, 2014
In yet another example of African American moral and political deterioration in the Age of Obama, a new Pew Research poll shows Blacks are more in favor of NSA spying on Americans than are whites or Hispanics. Moreover, the data indicate that Blacks are probably more likely to favor prosecution of Edward Snowden for his NSA spying revelations, than are other ethnic groups.
Back in September, polling history was made when Black Americans were more in favor of air strikes against Syria than whites and Hispanics – the first time, ever, that African Americans were ranked as the …
by William James Martin / January 22nd, 2014
January 20, 2014
President Wallace Loh
Office of the President
University of Maryland
College Park, Md 20742
Dear President Loh;
I have read your response to the ASA boycott of Israeli academic institutions. In fact, if reports are correct, you said:
We firmly oppose the call by some academic associations—American Studies Association; Asian-American Studies Association—to boycott Israeli academic institutions. Any such boycott is a breach of the principle of academic freedom that undergirds the University of Maryland and, indeed, all of American higher education.
Faculty, students, and staff on our campus must remain free to study, do research, and participate in meetings with colleagues from around the globe. …
by Binoy Kampmark / January 22nd, 2014
It shows a distinct lack of imagination. Therein lies a paradox of technology, and its specific application to human needs or wants: the more sophisticated it becomes, the less sophisticated it assumes humans are. If Google Glass is anything to go by, we are not merely a few sandwiches short of a picnic, but short of the picnic altogether.
Google Glass is the camera of Twitter and the profane eye of Big Brother. It renders its users augmented reality cyborgs while engaging that very reality. It is considered the neat, spare, minimalist acquisition for the busy modern tech freak using “modular …
by James Petras / January 22nd, 2014
Ariel Sharon was a serial mass murderer, engaged in massacres of unarmed victims in four countries, of all ages and conditions. He was a “hero” for hundreds of thousands of Israeli Jews who settled on land and in houses seized from Palestinians in the West Bank. He was praised by Western leaders at his funeral for his violent, lifelong opposition to Arab nationalist movements throughout the Middle East. That he was a fanatical upholder of Jewish supremacist policies and practices did not go unnoticed by wealthy Zionist donors in the US. During his tenure as a senior …
A Short Introduction to its Political Evolution
by Adam W. Parsons / January 22nd, 2014
In recent years, the concept and practice of sharing resources is fast becoming a mainstream phenomenon across North America, Western Europe and other world regions. The internet is awash with articles and websites that celebrate the vast potential of sharing human and physical assets, in everything from cars and bicycles to housing, workplaces, food, household items, and even time or expertise. According to most general definitions that are widely available online, the sharing economy leverages information technology to empower individuals or organisations to distribute, share and re-use excess capacity in goods and services. The business icons of the new sharing …
Is There Finally Daylight Between Israel and the US?
by Jonathan Cook / January 22nd, 2014
Things have come to a strange state of affairs when Washington regards Avigdor Lieberman, Israel’s far-right foreign minister, as the voice of moderation in the Israeli cabinet.
While Lieberman has called the soon-to-be-unveiled US peace plan the best deal Israel is ever likely to get, and has repeatedly flattered its chief author, US secretary of state John Kerry, other ministers have preferred to pull off the diplomatic gloves.
The most egregious instance came last week when Moshe Yaalon, the Israeli defence minister, launched an unprecedented and personal attack on the man entrusted by President Barack Obama to oversee the negotiations between Israel …
by Ismail Salami / January 22nd, 2014
That Iran can play an instrumental role in helping stymie the Syrian crisis is an irrefutable reality and every politically-minded person owns to the fact but what seems bizarrely inacceptable is the UN’s decision to disinvite Iran to the Geneva-II talks.
Apparently, pressure was piling up from every corner on UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon to rescind the Iran invitation. Earlier, the National Coalition had said it would pull out if the invitation to Iran was not rescinded.
Monzer Akbik, the National Coalition’s chief of staff, told the BBC’s Newshour program that Iran’s inclusion was against the promises his group had received.
On the …
by Ernest Partridge / January 21st, 2014
Oderint Dum Metuant: “Let them hate you so long as they fear you.”
— Lucius Accius, 2nd Century, BCE).
Fear secures the rule of most despots. And when that fear erodes and hatred takes over, the despot is overthrown.
Such is likely to be the fate of Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey.
Christie is renowned as a “control freak.” Even so, as Richard Nixon learned to his sorrow, events often have a way of eventually taking control. With “Bridgegate,” events have forced the initiative from the Governor’s office into the hands of the investigating committees of the New Jersey Legislature and the …
The Radical Tradition of Martin Luther King Jr.
by Michael Caster / January 20th, 2014
There’s a scene in Lee Daniel’s The Butler when the son of Forest Whitaker’s character is sitting in the Lorraine Motel with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., shortly before his assassination. Dr. King asks those assembled, “How many of your parents support the war?” All the young men gathered in the room raise their hands, and in one sentence King summarizes that his opposition to the war is because the Vietnamese do not prejudice blacks. There is something insidious in this scene, unintentional by the director, no doubt. It is the reproduction of the simplification myth of Dr. King the …
by Takis Fotopoulos / January 20th, 2014
1. The integration of Greece into the EU is the real cause of its catastrophic crisis
The almost complete destruction of the lower classes in Greece is not due to the causes usually attributed to it by the “Left”. ((See the recent book by two members of the SYRIZA leadership, (one of them a member of Parliament representing the party), Christos Laskos and Euclid Tsakalotos, Crucible of Resistance: Greece, the Eurozone and the World Economic Crisis, (Pluto Press, Sept. 2013).)) In fact, contrary to the misleading “explanations” provided by this Left and the Right alike, the actual cause is the …
by Kathy Kelly / January 20th, 2014
Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism. … A genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies.
— Dr. Martin Luther King, April 4, 1967, Beyond Vietnam, A Time to Break the Silence
This month, from Atlanta, GA, the King Center announced its “Choose Nonviolence” campaign, …
