Latest articles
Apostle of Autonomy
by William Manson / March 18th, 2014
One may without exaggeration now speak of technological compulsiveness: a condition under which society meekly submits to every new technological demand and utilizes without question every new product….
— Lewis Mumford (1970)
Over several decades, I’ve managed to hold on to my worn, battered copies of Lewis Mumford’s The Myth of the Machine (two volumes: 1967, 1970). And a few nights ago, haunted by the wide-awake nightmares we are now forced to “live,” I found myself fascinated once again by his monumental, tragic vision of the technologically-enabled “power-systems” called civilizations.
How did Mumford differ from other major critics of technology? First and foremost, …
by Kim Petersen / March 18th, 2014
Peter Gelderloos is an anarchist and author from Virginia. His books include How Nonviolence Protects the State, Consensus, Anarchy Works, The Failure of Nonviolence, the travel narrative To Get to the Other Side, and the collection of short stories Sousa in the Echo Chamber. He currently lives in Barcelona, where he takes part in ongoing social struggles.
In his book Anarchy Works (Ardent Press, 2010) Gelderloss argues that “free societies are not possible so long as governments try to crush any pocket of independence, corporations fund genocide in order to manufacture cell phones, and supposedly sympathetic people are more interested …
by Jan Oberg / March 17th, 2014
Of course, it is illegal and, of course, it will be rigged, that referendum in Crimea today. And, of course, it is a ploy and comes only in the wake of Russia’s (read Putin’s) unprovoked aggression, used as a pretext to build a new Greater Russia.
That is, if you browse the mainstream Western media the last week and on this Sunday morning.
Referendum means referring an issue back to the people. It is – or should be – an important instrument in democracies. And it’s a much better instrument than war and other violence to settle complex conflicts.
Generally, citizens-decided conflict-resolution is likely …
by Burkely Hermann / March 17th, 2014
The progressive media is abuzz about New York City’s new mayor, Bill de Blasio, who is seen by some as the new front of the American left. This idea is misguided, however, and should be discarded to the dust bin. I write here as a concerned citizen who wants to peel back the truth for everyone to examine themselves.
Deconstructing de Blasio’s progressive perception
Before providing constructive criticism and a critique of Bill de Blasio, it is important to discuss his “progressive” perception. Democratic blogger and writer Brent Budowsky opined in The Hill that de Blasio was “the FDR mayor of …
by Ron Jacobs / March 17th, 2014
The infrastructure of surveillance present in decades past was never dismantled. Indeed, that infrastructure is enhanced, modernized, insidious and more intrusive than ever. The targets of the agencies doing the eavesdropping have expanded beyond their original focus but the intent remains the same—to infiltrate, intimidate and disrupt those elements in the nation opposed to government and corporate plans. Given the open-endedness of this intention, the net cast by the surveillance machinery and its operators is broad and not very discriminatory. When left unchecked, it becomes a threat to democracy as great as any potential threat it claims to be protecting …
by Martha Rosenberg / March 17th, 2014
Got milk allergy? Many people including Native Americans and people of Asian, African and South American descent are lactose intolerant and can’t and don’t drink milk. That is the way nature made them over epochs and no one ever died of a dairy deficiency.
But there is money in dairy. That is why American fast food companies try to bring the love of dairy to cultures where it traditionally hasn’t existed. And that is why the National Dairy Promotion and Research Board and the National Fluid Milk Processor Promotion Board in the US disseminate “educational” materials that address “misconceptions about …
by Allen W. Smith / March 17th, 2014
Most Americans have supported Social Security ever since it was enacted into law in 1935. Republican presidential nominee, Alf Landon, made the repeal of Social Security the main issue in the 1936 election, thus making the election a referendum on whether the American people wanted to keep or repeal Social Security. The response of the electorate was a massive vote in favor of keeping Social Security.
In 1983, conservatives launched a two-front war against Social Security, which has proven far more successful than anyone anticipated. The code name of the first assault was “Achieving a Leninist Strategy.” The co-authors of the …
by Paul Craig Roberts / March 16th, 2014
In an unprecedented turnout unmatched by any Western election, Crimeans voted 95.7% to join Russia. As I pointed out earlier today, under the twisted logic of Washington Crimea has never been a part of Ukraine as Russians were not allowed to vote when the Soviet dictator Khrushchev stuck the Russian province of Crimea into Ukraine in 1954.
While Crimeans celebrate in the streets and international observers declare the referendum to be totally fair and free of all interference and threat, the neo-Nazi White House declared that “we don’t recognize no stinking vote.” The moronic White House spokesperson said that the White …
by Paul Craig Roberts / March 16th, 2014
In his March 6 Executive Order, “Blocking Property of Certain Persons Contributing to the Situation in Ukraine,” Obama declares that support for Crimean self-determination constitutes “an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States, and I hereby declare a national emergency to deal with that threat.”
Obama and the lawyers who drafted his executive order did not notice that the way the order is drafted it applies to Obama, to the unelected coup government in Kiev, and to the Washington and EU regimes. The order says that any person “responsible for or …
by Tanner Stening / March 16th, 2014
An article appeared in the The Nation not long ago offering a defense of the so-called “sex industry”—which includes, as the author notes, a number of services ranging “escorting, street hustling, hostessing, stripping, preforming sex for videos and webcams.” Rather fortuitously, there’s no mention of sex trafficking, which is a substantial part of the industry. Nevertheless, ostensibly the article endorses the view that we ought to dignify sex workers without “sanitizing or elevating” the work itself by simply acknowledging that sex workers are out for a check in much the same way we all are, hence we should promote …
by Bill Purkayastha / March 16th, 2014
Raghead identifies the connection with Ukraine.
Feinstein and the CIA
by Binoy Kampmark / March 15th, 2014
Senator Dianne Feinstein’s blistering attack on the CIA’s conduct in searching the computers used by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence was deemed a remarkable salvo. The search was engendered by the Committee’s official request for a final version of the named “Internal Panetta Review”. The Review had been created for internal use by the CIA as a record of assessing what documents should be turned over to the Committee in connection with its investigation of the torture program. Once the CIA got wind that their precious internal documentation was finding its way into the hands of the committee, the …
by Stuart Jeanne Bramhall / March 15th, 2014
The subject of Craig Rosebraugh’s new documentary Greedy Lying Bastards is the billion dollar climate denial industry, which he blames for the failure of the global community to agree a new international climate treaty. The title roles are played by Rex Tillerson, CEO of Exxon Mobil; David and Charles Koch, who run Koch Energy; APCO, the same public relations firm that tried to convince us that championed smoking as a perfectly healthy activity; and Bonner and Associates, the astroturf ((The late senator Lloyd Bentson is credited with coining the term “astroturf lobbying” to describe the synthetic grassroots movements created …
by Walter C. Uhler / March 15th, 2014
During the mid-1980s, right-wing Americans loved to invoke President Reagan’s observation about the Soviet Union: “They reserve unto themselves the right to commit any crime, to lie, to cheat,” in order to attain a one-word Socialist or Communist state. The Soviet Union was the “Evil Empire.”
But, it was the Reagan Administration, you’ll recall, that ordered the execution of Operation Urgent Fury, the invasion of Grenada in October 1983. Eleven of the twelve members of the United Nations Security Council called the invasion a “flagrant violation of international law.” The only Security Council member to veto the condemnation was the very …
Allies in the Medieval-Modern Struggle
by Harry Clark / March 15th, 2014
In his farewell address in 1796, George Washington warned the nation he had served as its first president against a “passionate attachment” or “inveterate hatred” toward any nation. Some Americans were impassioned about revolutionary France. Within a few years, agents of foreign minister Talleyrand would boast to American diplomats of French power within the United States, and demand large bribes and loans to advance relations. The correspondence was eventually published in the US, in the XYZ Affair, which embarrassed France and the French party in the US, and incited US opinion against France. The rupture was not permanent, and relations …
by Susan Rosenthal / March 15th, 2014
Marxist theories have stood the test of time: human beings create their own history, but not in conditions of their own choosing; the history of class societies is shaped by class struggle; and labor creates all wealth. In her preface to Marxism and the Oppression of Women: Toward a Unitary Theory (Haymarket Books, 2014), Lise Vogel acknowledges the value of Marxist theory:
I remain convinced that the revival of Marxist theory, not the construction of some socialist-feminist synthesis, offers the best chance to provide theoretical guidance in the coming battles for the liberation of women. (p.ix)
At the same …
Exemplar or Bad Example?
by Arshad M. Khan / March 15th, 2014
This week Glenn Ford, the 144th person on death row to be exonerated, was released from Louisiana’s infamous Angola prison after spending almost 30 years in the shadow of death — staggering numbers in both the number of innocents released from death row and in the years spent in jail for a crime a man did not commit. Yes, a justice system can fail and it failed Mr. Ford; yet in his case it self-corrected. The real worry is: in how many instances was it unable to correct itself? To put it more bluntly: how …
by Bill Purkayastha / March 15th, 2014
by Ralph Nader / March 15th, 2014
Wall Street’s big banks and their financial networks that collapsed the U.S. economy in 2008-2009, were saved with huge bailouts by the taxpayers, but these Wall Street Gamblers are still paid huge money and are again creeping toward reckless misbehavior. Their corporate crime wave strip-mined the economy for young workers, threw them on the unemployment rolls and helped make possible a low-wage economy that is draining away their ability to afford basic housing, goods, and services.
Meanwhile, Wall Street is declaring huge bonuses for their executive plutocrats, none of whom have been prosecuted and sent to jail for these systemic devastations …
Spying on East Timor
by Binoy Kampmark / March 14th, 2014
The Australians are the underdressed Viceroys of the pacific, a vestige of past power. They are happy to be retained for various tasks – doing the bidding of the US, most of the time, and playing that rather distasteful game of bullying smaller neighbours when required. In 2013, the East Timorese government found that their cabinet rooms had been bugged by the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS). The incident itself had happened nine years previously.
Things got rather spicier when the domestic Australian intelligence service, ASIO, raided the office and house of lawyer Bernard Collaery, a lawyer acting for the East …
by Alexander Mezyaev / March 14th, 2014
On March 16 Crimea is to hold a referendum to define its fate. The decision has evoked an extremely nervous reaction in the West. US President Barack Obama said it violated international law but never adduced any legal arguments to support the statement. The same applies to other statements on this account; they all lack legal substantiations.
The United Nations International Court of Justice handed down an advisory opinion in 2010 saying unambiguously that the unilateral declaration of independence is in accordance with the international law.
A referendum based decision is not a “unilateral declaration of independence”. The Court’s …
by Todd Miller / March 14th, 2014
In desert camouflage and combat helmets, the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents kneel behind a white truck. One agent has his pistol aimed at an unseen enemy. Another has a semi-automatic assault rifle. In the distance stretches the brown desert landscape, the mountains, the expansive sky.
(Flickr/Creative Commons)
At first glance, the agents are alert and ready as if in combat theater in the Middle-East. At the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, and in the context of the persistent 30-year push of Mexico-U.S. border militarization, maybe this isn’t …
by Joel S. Hirschhorn / March 14th, 2014
Tuck away the many horror stories of the wrong limbs being amputated, things being left in surgery patients, terrible infections picked up in hospitals and totally wrong diagnoses. More relevant is a bureaucratic hospitalization horror that far too few Americans covered by Medicare are aware of.
Odds are that you do not know a key question to ask if you ever find yourself in a hospital for an overnight stay that could last from one or two days, or perhaps much more. What you and anyone accompanying you want to know is whether you are being classified as “under observation.” This …
by Bill Purkayastha / March 14th, 2014
Escape of the Cold War Warriors
by Dan Lieberman / March 13th, 2014
U.S. foreign policy from Vietnam to Afghanistan has mostly been counter-productive – enabling the happening of what policies were intended to prevent. The disturbing manner in which the crisis in Ukraine is unfolding — more and more provocative — demonstrates once again that U.S. policy is doomed to be counter-productive.
Because healthy thought opposes senseless speculation, analyzing the statements of the “movers” and “shakers” of the United States provides awareness to the U.S. agenda on the situation in Ukraine. If comments by U.S. government officials and media actors represent the thoughts that are guiding U.S. policy toward Ukraine, then its time …
Palast Aims at the Wrong Target
by Ellen Brown / March 13th, 2014
Investigative reporter Greg Palast is usually pretty good at peering behind the rhetoric and seeing what is really going on. But in tearing into Senator Elizabeth Warren’s support of postal financial services, he has done a serious disservice to the underdogs – both the underbanked and the US Postal Service itself.
In his February 27 article “Liz Warren Goes Postal,” Palast attacked her support of the USPS Inspector General’s proposal to add “non-bank” financial services to the US Postal Service, calling it “cruel, stupid and frightening” and equating it with the unethical payday lending practices it seeks to eliminate.
After “several …
by Medea Benjamin / March 13th, 2014
When I boarded the plane to Cairo, Egypt, to make sure everything was in place for the women’s delegation headed to Gaza, I had no reason to think I’d end up in a jail cell at the Cairo airport and then violently deported.
The trip was in response to a call from women in Gaza to CODEPINK and other groups asking us to bring 100 women from around the world to Gaza for March 8, International Women’s Day. They wanted us to see, first-hand, how the seven-year Israeli blockade had made their situation intolerable. They talked about being unable to …
by Felicity Arbuthnot / March 13th, 2014
Less than a month before the 11th anniversary of the illegal US-led invasion of Iraq, the near destruction of much of the country, heritage, culture, secularism, education, health services and all State institutions, the country is poised to revert “two thousand years” say campaigners.
On February 25th, Iraq’s Cabinet approved a draft law lowering the age of legal marriage for females to nine years old.
Iraq was, prior to the invasion, a fiercely secular country, with a broadly equal male, female workforce and with women benefiting from a National Personal Status Law, introduced in 1959, which remained “one of the …
by Robert Hunziker / March 12th, 2014
Recent developments up North are cause for concern. The Arctic “sea ice area” registered a record low on March 9, 2014 at 12.88 million square kilometers. ((Sam Carana, “Has the Descent Begun?” Arctic News, March 12, 2014.))
Further confirmation, according to reports from NSIDC (National Snow & Ice Data Center, Boulder) and Cryosphere Today (Department of Atmospheric Sciences, University or Illinois), Arctic sea ice area dropped to a record low of 12.95 million square kilometers on March 10 of 2014. It is a measure smaller than that seen during the late 1970s and breaking the previous record low, set just three years …
A Tale of the Internet Age
by Matt Reichel / March 12th, 2014
In one of a series of significant talks over the weekend by the world’s foremost Internet freedom activists, Julian Assange spoke on MSNBC about the central “battle” of the Information Age:
On the one hand, we are in many ways heading towards a transnational dystopian total surveillance society the likes of which the world has never seen . . . and on the other, people are coming together. Whenever people can communicate, they develop new values and a new consensus and a new polity. That is something that all young people are exposed to.
In other words, the Internet is the …
