The press has echoed for days with admiration for Nelson Mandela and his genuinely heroic fight against the apartheid government of South Africa. There have been many recollections of the brutal quality of that government, all perhaps carrying an unstated sense of how could people live that way?
As I listened on the radio, I couldn’t help thinking of the common human frailty which sees us caught up in gasping over and memorializing what is past while ignoring much the same thing that is present, as on what is called Remembrance or Armistice Day, we’ve recalled for the best part …
In the first part of this exposé, I examined the origins and recent history of the Group of Thirty as a highly influential institution in the arena of global financial governance, bringing together top central bankers, financiers, policymakers and academics in the world of economic and monetary affairs.
More than three decades since it was founded in 1978, the Group of Thirty has maintained its reputation as a prominent institution in the financial world, continuing to produce influential reports and advocate for policies which are largely accepted and implemented across the globe.
Nelson Mandela died peacefully at 8:50pm last Thursday, December 5, 2013, in his Johannesburg home. The South African President called him a son of Africa and father to the new nation of South Africa. Tributes are pouring in particularly from the western world so it is easy to forget what it thought of him even thirty years ago. He was the first Commander-in-Chief of ANC’s military wing, forced into this role by the South African government’s savage attacks on unarmed demonstrators engaged in peaceful acts of civil disobedience.
Long labeled a terrorist and his African National Congress outlawed, …
The recent interim accord between the six world powers and Iran has been hailed as an “historic breakthrough”, a “significant accomplishment” by most leading politicians, editorialists and columnists (Financial Times, (FT) 11/26/13, p. 2), the exceptions being notably Israeli leaders and the Zionist power brokers in North America and Western Europe (FT 11/26/13, p. 3).
What constitutes this “historic breakthrough”? Who got what? Did the agreement provide for symmetrical concessions? Does the interim agreement strengthen or weaken the prospects for peace and prosperity in the Gulf and …
I was born without teeth — and there Richard III had the advantage of me; but I was born without a humpback, likewise, and there I had the advantage of him.
In his recent best-seller, David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants, Malcolm Gladwell covers the subject — and the frequent success — of ordinary people who tilt at extraordinary opponents or forces. In other words, instances where a disadvantage become an advantage. Gladwell’s point is that it happens quite frequently …
by The Real News Network (TRNN) / December 8th, 2013
Jesse Freeston is a filmmaker and video-journalist based in Montréal, Québec: In the absence of a trustworthy process, those who took power by force in 2009 will stay in power.
by The Real News Network (TRNN) / December 8th, 2013
Chris Hedges says that while people are disgusted with the centers of power, unless there is a constructive alternative, any eruption will be nihilistic and could be fascist.
“Some people continue to defend trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world. This opinion, which has never been confirmed by the facts, expresses a crude and naive trust in those wielding economic power and the sacralized workings of the prevailing economic system.”
a.) Sen. Bernie Sanders
b.) Karl Marx
c.) Archbishop Desmond Tutu
d.) Pope Francis
e.) Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Each answer is plausible but Pope Francis penned these words. He’s also written that “In this …
Of the many, many crimes for which our trusted leaders should be doing serious jail time arguably the most egregious of them all is theft – from those who trust them most. After all, it’s not as if they need the money.
To a young person there’s not a lot of difference between a sixty-year-old and a seventy-year-old: they’re both ancient. So when it was casually announced that young people will now have to work until they’re seventy years old before they can retire, it wasn’t too surprising that some young people reacted with a shrug of the shoulders. …
What are the Regional Foreign Policy Consequences?
by Murray Hunter / December 7th, 2013
The largely Anglophile Singapore is an anomaly in South-East Asia. It has staunch connections with the US and Israel, and a network of varied corporate interests all around the world. Singapore is a small primarily non-Muslim city-state surrounded predominantly by much larger Muslim countries. Sovereignty disputes upon the South China Sea are ongoing, and unpredictable events like Sulu militants invading Lahad Datu in Sabah continue to occur. Singapore’s security is of prime importance to the nation.
December 23 marks the 100th anniversary of the Federal Reserve. Dissatisfaction with its track record has prompted calls to audit the Fed and end the Fed. At the least, Congress needs to amend the Fed, modifying the Federal Reserve Act to give the central bank the tools necessary to carry out its mandates.
The Federal Reserve is the only central bank with a dual mandate. It is charged not only with maintaining low, stable inflation but with promoting maximum sustainable employment. Yet unemployment remains stubbornly high, despite four years of radical tinkering with interest rates and quantitative easing (creating money on …
The nostalgia of elderly veterans looking back on months or years of their youth spent in US military uniform fighting in some exotic smaller nation thousands of miles from home is certainly not uncommon. Far less common are US veterans who fully realize the suffering caused by their shooting and bombing in someone else’s beloved country; invariably, it is a country already having been made poor a century earlier by the plundering of speculative colonial investment banks which invested similar military occupation.
The warm camaraderie felt among army buddies in danger can be a fond memory of men who …
According to the tale called The Iliad, the Greek god of war, named Ares, was “The most hateful of all gods….” Indeed, his father Zeus commanded him: “Do not sit beside me and whine, you double-faced liar.” Zeus treated him like this because Ares reveled in bloodshed and his only attributes were those that are the worst in humankind. Unfortunately since, the days of Olympus, war has defined the human race as much, if not more, than any of its other, often more positive elements.
In one of his final speeches as president, retired general and US president Dwight …
We have all heard by now of the massive surveillance being conducted by the NSA and other governments across the world. China is a well-known anti-privacy country and others have decided to also spy on their citizens’ social network activities amongst other things. The Internet censorship trends are getting pretty bad.
Privacy has been dealt a severe blow with the advent of technology. Before all the high-tech stuff we use today, government agencies had to physically tap our phone lines and/or bug our homes, social gathering venues, plant moles in political groups, and this all usually happened with some …
And the Tributes of Shameful Hypocrisy from Obama, Clinton, Cameron, and Blair
by Felicity Arbuthnot / December 6th, 2013
Accusing politicians or former politicians of “breathtaking hypocrisy” is not just over used. It is inadequacy of spectacular proportions. Sadly, searches in various thesauruses fail in meaningful improvement.
The death of Nelson Mandela, however, provides tributes resembling duplicity on a mind altering substance.
President Obama, whose litany of global assassinations by Drone, from infants to octogenarians – a personal weekly decree we are told, summary executions without Judge, Jury or trial – stated of the former South African’s President’s passing:
We will not likely see the likes of Nelson Mandela again … His acts of reconciliation … set an example that all …
Both the words “environment” and “violence” have so many meanings, that they require some definition of how they can be of use in the context of a struggle for social justice. Regarding the word violence, according to Merriam Webster, one definition is “the use of brute strength to cause harm to a person or property”; a definition that doesn’t seem to have an immediately obvious connection to ecological issues associated with climate change, loss of biodiversity and various forms of pollution.
An increasing number of environmental activists, myself included, regard the word “environment” with some suspicion, generally preferring the term “ecological.” …
those who write the narrative and who win the military and marketing and financial wars . . . . give us better living through chemistry
“It’s a story with mythological resonance,” says Steven Aftergood, director of the project on government secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists and the publisher of Secrecy News, an e-mail newsletter. “It reflects the view that knowledge is power and some kinds of knowledge have destructive power. The notion that the boundaries of knowledge are defined by what is published by Science and Nature is quaint,” he said, referring to the journals. “For …
Unfortunately, Britain is gradually plunging into the depths of moral deterioration and social decadence day in and day out as it refuses to make concrete efforts to curb the escalating trend of racism and hate crimes.
A recent egregious instance of racism in Britain is the brutal murder of an Iranian man named Bijan Ebrahimi at the hands of a group of extremist thugs who beat him unconscious and set fire to his body in Brislington, Bristol while he was still alive. Bijan was a disabled Iranian national who was wrongly labeled as a pedophile by neighbors “after photographing youths …
While western media have announced that indictments against Hezbollah will be issued shortly by the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, it is the entire UN investigation that Russian magazine Odnako is calling into question. Thierry Meyssan posits that the weapon used to assassinate former Prime Minister Rafik Hairiri was supplied by Germany. Former German prosecutor and first commissioner in charge of the UN probe, Detlev Mehlis, seemingly doctored evidence to cover up his country’s involvement. These revelations embarrass the Tribunal and reverse the tide in Lebanon.
Some time ago, citing the Pebble Mine controversy in Alaska, we suggested that it constituted a perfect argument because on both sides of the debate there is a reasoned, plausible case to be made, and both arguments are clear, supportable and — regrettably — simplistic. Like most arguments, perhaps.
Another perfect storm of an altercation has been taking place for more than 65 years, over the death of the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and with them more than 200,000 people.
There is on the one hand the familiar recitation …
The U.S. has often resorted to military means as a way of settling disputes with far weaker nations during the last fifty years. Frequently these attacks have been unwarranted as well as violations of international law. U.S. attacks on Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, Serbia and Iraq (2003) are a few examples of these illegal conflicts.
We are currently fighting in Afghanistan and illegally using drones to kill in Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan. After long years of fighting and losing wars in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. public is fed up with senseless conflicts. This point was made clear recently by the …
This time, instead of focusing on ALEC alone, Guardian reporters Suzanne Goldenberg and Ed Pilkington took a big swing at what Center for Media and Democracy and Progress Now have called the “stink tanks” network run by the right-wing State Policy Network (SPN). Leaked a …
Offering a dissenting opinion at this moment of a general outpouring of grief at Nelson Mandela’s death is not likely to court popularity. It is also likely to be misunderstood.
So let me start by recognising Mandela’s huge achievement in helping to bring down South African apartheid, and make clear my enormous respect for the great personal sacrifices he made, including spending so many years caged up for his part in the struggle to liberate his people. These are things impossible to forget or ignore when assessing someone’s life.
Nonetheless, it is important to pause during the widespread acclamation of his legacy, …
A few things have happened since the Guardian decided to storm the Bastille of surveillance with its cultivation of such journalists as Glenn Greenwald and the recruitment of Spencer Ackerman. (We might also place Julian Assange in that heady mix, though that relationship has proven prickly.) The Guardian had found a way of moving outside the humdrum of an often dull leftist sentiment, giving its readers a stronger brew with the assistance of such individuals as former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden. It has, in journalistic lingo, found a scoop of rich proportion.
So here comes John Kerry again, for the umpteenth time (but who is counting?) to make peace between us and the Palestinians.
It is a highly laudable effort. Unfortunately, it is based on a false premise. To wit: that the Israeli government wants peace based on the two-state solution.
Unwilling – or unable – to recognize this simple truth, Kerry looks for a way around. He tries approaches from different directions, in the hope of convincing Binyamin Netanyahu. In his imagination he hears Netanyahu exclaim: “Now, why didn’t I think of that?!”
Rose imparts the signature of respectability to all his guests—for better or worse
by Jason Hirthler / December 5th, 2013
There are few things more harmful to the public discourse than the cloak of false respectability. Especially on a nationally or globally disseminated news network or newspaper. Which is why mass media, when it broadcasts propaganda, is so effective at duping a benighted public into believing the twaddle of stark raving mad political ideologues, as though they were the very words of Socrates by satellite. The mainstream’s reach and influence is staggering, and when unchallenged, fatal. Take, for instance, the estimable Republican Representative Mike Rogers of Michigan. Let’s consider for a moment the aura of respectability that enveloped, like a …
Nelson Mandela will be eulogized as a great man and a hero. He led the resistance to apartheid and White South African rule, and he was jailed for many years. Upon his release he became president and sought reconciliation rather than vengeance. He served only one term as president before stepping aside. All this is laudable.
The sharply increasing scientific indicators of impending disastrous global climate change have failed to motivate the principal developed countries, led by the U.S., to accelerate the lackluster pace of their efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
This was the principal conclusion of several key environmental groups attending the United Nations Climate Change Conference (UNCCC) November 11-23 in Warsaw, Poland. The meeting lasted a day and a half longer than scheduled to resolve a dispute about new greenhouse emission targets. About 10,000 people attended the 19th annual meeting of the so-called Conference of Parties (COP19) that drew nearly all the UN’s 193 …
We’ll be seeing an interview of Mae-wan Ho, a 72-year-old “geneticist known for her critical views on genetic engineering and neo-Darwinism. Ho has authored or co-authored a number of publications, including 10 books, such as The Rainbow and the Worm, the Physics of Organisms (1993, 1998), Genetic Engineering: Dream or Nightmare? (1998, 1999), and Living with the Fluid Genome (2003).” [Wikipedia]. That is forthcoming. Also, get into this powerful issue of retracting a scientist’s work, because that scientist has findings AGAINST the almighty, all-Garden-of-Eden magic of genetically transferred-bombarded-fixed-engineered crops (sic) and meat (sic) industry. Retracting work so the feeding trough of chemical-oil-seed monopolies-BigAg can grow the unnatural human and other flora-faun …
In his refusal to sign the Afghan-US security pact which would enable some US troops to stay in Afghanistan after 2014, Afghan President Hamid Karzai is signaling a clear message to the United States: Afghanistan does not need US troops on its ground any more.
Unlike the US claim that the presence of its troops is meant to safeguard security and safety in the country, Karzai is manifestly no longer capable of bringing himself to envisage a safe country with American boots at its doorsteps. On the contrary, in the presence of US troops lingers an overriding sense of insecurity which …
