Latest articles

1. Any article listing the top 10 of anything will be widely read.

2. A poll of people in 65 countries, including the United States, finds that the United States is overwhelmingly considered the greatest threat to peace in the world. The consensus would have been even stronger had the United States itself not been polled, because the 5 percent of humanity living here is largely convinced that the other 95% of humanity — that group with experience being threatened or attacked by the United States — is wrong. After all, our government in the U.S. tells us it’s …

On the same day North American Free Trade Agreement went into effect on January 1, 1994, the Zapatista National Liberation Army and people of Chiapas declared war on the Mexican government, saying that NAFTA meant death to indigenous peoples. They took over five major towns in Chiapas with fully armed women and men. The uprising was a shock, even for those who for years worked in the very communities where the rebel army had been secretly organizing. To learn about the impact of the uprising 20 years later and the challenges they continue to face, we speak with Peter Rosset, …

For days, the Kenyan capital of Nairobi has been on edge over the carnage in South Sudan.

Both of its major newspapers, Daily Nation and Standard, are running cover stories concentrating on the plight of thousands of Kenyan citizens who are stranded in Juba and other cities inside the ‘youngest nation on earth,’ often in desperate conditions.

Foreign countries — including Uganda, Kenya, and the United States — are now sending military aircrafts to the juvenile Frankenstein nation they were recently so busy creating. But this time, the aircrafts are there to rescue; to airlift their citizens to safety.

As always, there are …

The USA and European Union (EU) continue on their downward trajectory in the 14th year of 21st Century. The perpetual state of war against terror, drugs, immigrants, the press and whistle-blowers moves on uninhibited. Another war, this time named Austerity, is being waged by USA and EU leaders against the middle and lower classes. Youth are particularly hard hit with the average unemployment rate in the EU at 23 percent. In the USA the figure is 17 percent according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But never mind that.

Cutting benefits, or, rather, throwing people away, will reduce the unemployment …

Awake night suddenly not night four AM. Three figures bedside: Short Man; Tall Surly Man, aka “Mr. Personality;” Thin Woman. Long white lab coats aqua scrubs. Young.

“This is him. Here’s his chart,” Mr. Personality.

“Amazing,” Short Man.

“Freak me out,” Thin Woman.

“I’ve never heard of anyone born with The Condition. I thought it just happens. Toxic exposure or something like that. They see it in kids on the Enemy side,” Mr. Personality.

“Which Enemy? I forgot which Enemy of the Nation we’re out to get this week,” Short Man.

“Very funny, Mr. Patriot,” Mr. Personality.

“Report me to the ‘authorities.’ …

The ideological chains that bind and subdue us are stronger and more effective than any chain forged from steel. These manacles are more freedom inhibiting than a prison cell or solitary confinement. Belief, faith, and hope can imprison as well as liberate us. By the power of suggestion, a thin cotton string can effectively tether an elephant.

Politicians and their associates in the corporate media are master manipulators of language and images. Anytime you hear them speak, think of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. Virtually everything that we see and hear, nearly everything we have been told, is an …

2013 was a year in which the so-called peace process charade was allowed to continue, leading Palestinians on yet another futile journey of broken promises. Meanwhile, the Israeli colonial project in the West Bank and East Jerusalem carried on unabated. But it was not entirely a year of doom and gloom either, for the global boycott campaign (BDS) has taken off like never before, surpassing the capricious Palestinian leadership and its confined political platforms.

Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas is an unsuccessful leader, to say the least. But a much harsher judgment can arguably be made. When he out rightly …

Now that he is safely dead let us praise him,
build monuments to his glory,
sing hosannas to his name.

Dead men make such convenient heroes.
They cannot rise to challenge the images
we would fashion from their lives.

And besides,
it is easier to build monuments
than to make a better world.,
— Carl Wendell Hines

“Now That He Is Safely Dead” is the poignant poem that was written by black poet/musician Carl Wendell Hines soon after Malcolm X was assassinated in 1965. The poem has since then been appropriately associated with the death of Martin Luther King and his legacy of nonviolent struggle for black liberation, freedom, …

From Sherif in Egypt

My dear enemy, I kill you with love…

As my mind was growing, by reading and opening my eyes, my enemy took different shapes. At first, I thought he was the guy who beat the teenager pride out of me in a train fight over a girl, but that went by, forgotten and forgiven, leaving no scars, but rather a smile.

Then there was my neighbour on the farm land who was moving the border between us towards my land about five centimetres every year. He had the determination of an ant, but with time he couldn’t drive …

Ten days ago some 200 asylum seekers from Sudan and Eritrea marched to Jerusalem to protest against their mistreatment by the Israeli government. They had left a new ‘open’ detention facility in the Negev desert, where they are obliged to spend the night and attend three role calls during the day. They walked for about six hours to the nearest city, Beer-Sheva, my hometown. After spending the night at the bus station, they marched on to Nachshon, a kibbutz that had agreed to put them up for the night. The following day, they continued to the Knesset by bus.

There …

Since the Harper Conservative’s have come to power one of the areas which have attracted much of their legislative attention is the Citizenship and Immigration file. In an interview, which has attracted almost no national media attention at time of writing, ((December 31, 2013.)) published in the conservative National Post on December 27, 2013 the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, Chris Alexander, discussed dramatic changes to Canada’s Citizenship laws and which were being considered by the Conservative Government.

In what has been described as the “first comprehensive reforms to the Citizenship Act in more than a generation” the …

Kabul, Afghanistan is “home” to hundreds of thousands of children who have no home. Many of them live in squalid refugee camps with families that have been displaced by violence and war. Bereft of any income in a city already burdened by high rates of unemployment, families struggle to survive without adequate shelter, clothing, food or fuel. Winter is especially hard for refugee families. Survival sometimes means sending their children to work on the streets, as vendors, where they often become vulnerable to well organized gangs that lure them into drug and other criminal rings.

Last year, the Afghan Peace Volunteers …

The current social movement that exploded onto the national scene with the 2011 Occupy Movement is following the path of successful movements so far. The social movement in 2014 is poised to begin an exciting era of broadening and deepening the growing consensus for social and economic justice.

This week, our article for the end of 2013 focuses on where we are, i.e. at what stage of the progression of social movements do we find ourselves; and broadly outlines the next steps. Next week, our article for the new year will look more specifically at the tasks ahead for the movement …

Fawaz Gerges is a Professor and Director of the Middle East Center at the London School of Economics. Nominally a Christian commentator on the Arab world, more importantly he is widely sought and respected for his balanced view and assessment of the American Middle Eastern dominant presence and the view thereof of hundreds of millions of people from Morocco to Tehran. Professor Gerges several months ago released a book, Obama and the Middle East, of which the sub-title, The End of America’s Moment? is posed as a question, but in fact makes the statement: the sunset is …

Mao Zedong, the leader of the Chinese revolution and long-time Chairman of the Communist Party who died in 1976, would have been 120 years old this past December 26.

Despite the fact that his successors in the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) made what Mao would have viewed as the spectacular error of “taking the capitalist road,” the masses of people in China still venerate their old leader.

The influential Chinese newspaper Global Times published a new opinion poll on the late leader’s birthday that revealed that more than 85% of respondents see the merits of Mao Zedong …