If the spineless Obama will not do it, we must do it—even unilaterally.
— Sir Gerald Kaufman, Manchester, Gorton (Lab)
I’d like to share, especially with American readers, a great moment in the British Parliament on 5 February when the MP for Gorton, Manchester, Sir Gerald Kaufman rose to speak in a debate on the humanitarian situation in Gaza. Here is what he said word for word so that you get the full flavour:
I once led a delegation of 60 parliamentarians from 13 European Parliaments to Gaza. I could no longer do that today because Gaza is practically inaccessible. The …
Foreign Mining, State Corruption, and Genocide in Mongolia
by Keith Harmon Snow / February 6th, 2014
Packed with distortions and outright lies, Mongolia’s privatized former state media called them the ‘enemies of Mongolia’. On 16 September 2013, the leaders of Mongolia’s Fire Nation (Gal Undesten in Mongolian), an environment and human rights coalition, organized a mass protest in front of the Mongolian Parliament. Decades of grassroots organizing to establish environmental protections were at risk: on September 16 the Great State Khural (State Parliament) gathered with intentions to dismantle the so-called ‘Law With A Long Name’ (LLN).
To fine or ticket or not to? THAT is the Question!
by Paul Haeder / February 6th, 2014
[Note: Again, real national-level news from a small town, Spokane, in a small state, Washington. This is published now at Spokane Living Magazine. Great photos by my daughter, Makenna. A community college student in Spokane. What more does the world want than a radical revolutionary who write kick-ass better-than-that-Hunter/freak/Thompson AND also does straight ahead journalism?]
More Bang for the Public Safety Buck: Criminal Justice Commission Pushes a No New Jail Thesis
Leaner and smarter, rather than lean and mean, seems to be the mantra around Spokane and the region when talking about incarceration. Smarter: holding offenders …
by The Real News Network (TRNN) / February 6th, 2014
Kirsten Sandberg, chairperson of the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child, discusses the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child report outlining massive allegations of child abuse coverups and its demands The Vatican take action to hold guilty parties accountable.
A leading Uncle Tom Tamil, Tamara Kunanayakam, will perhaps be once again heading the Sri Lankan government’s case for itself at the 25th session of the United Nations Human Rights Council (HRC), March 3-28, when a resolution critical of the government for human rights abuses against Tamils will be introduced.
Kunanayakam’s article in Colombo Telegraph is filled with internal governmental intrigue, which makes it difficult to determine her exact status Regardless of her current government position she is a splitting figure in the international geo-political scene.
The Permanent Peoples Tribunal (PPT), the successor of the Bertrand Russell war crimes tribunal …
Most of us have our guard up when it comes to direct-to-consumer drug advertising. We know the butterflies, sunsets and puppies in the TV ads are designed to distract us from words like “blood clot”, “heart attack”, “stroke”, “seizure”, “life-threatening allergic reaction” and “death.” We are aware that more than half the ads tells us why we don’t want to ask our doctor about the new wonder drug.
Unbranded advertising, however, is much more insidious. Instead of selling a drug, it sells the disease driving the drug sales and sometimes doesn’t mention the drug at all.
Note: As we always do here at DV, we open up intellectual and revolutionary space to keen eyes and sharp wits and wicked thinkers. Here, let’s look at a critique of the reactionary Nation magazine’s Feb. 17, 2014 cover “work.” Or rather, cover hack job! Written by M R Klein
The most recent issue of The Nation features a cover story by Bill and Melinda Gates’ foundation booster Michelle Goldberg bemoaning “Feminism’s Toxic Twitter Wars”. Unaccountably chosen for such a place of prominence in progressive left US media, the astonishingly petty article consists mainly of trivial gossip and kvetching by …
Last month the Guardian reported that a team of scientists studying early Homo sapiens in Europe had extracted DNA from the tooth of a male hunter-gatherer who’d lived in what is now the Asturias region of northern Spain around 7000 years ago. They drew some surprising conclusions from the analysis. The man was dark-skinned but blue-eyed. His nearest DNA matches with contemporary ethnicities are with Swedes and Finns, among the palest of peoples.
Scholars had earlier argued that blue eyes had appeared as the result of a genetic mutation somewhere between 10,000 and 6000 years ago. (Before that all humans had …
It is a point of historical controversy whether or not when told that French peasants did not have bread to eat, Marie Antoinette uttered the phrase “Let them eat cake,” an even more inaccessible and scarce food for poor people. But what is certain and should be beyond controversy is that in response to the capitalist implosion that shattered so many lives, Obama and the corporate democrats have demonstrated a policy attitude as cavalier as the French queen. Over the last five years, they have offered neither bread nor cake or anything other than false hope and empty symbols.
(IPS) — When Western intelligence agencies began in the early 1990s to intercept telexes from an Iranian university to foreign high technology firms, intelligence analysts believed they saw the first signs of military involvement in Iran’s nuclear programme. That suspicion led to U.S. intelligence assessments over the next decade that Iran was secretly pursuing nuclear weapons.
The supposed evidence of military efforts to procure uranium enrichment equipment shown in the telexes was also the main premise of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s investigation of Iran’s nuclear programme from 2003 through 2007.
But the interpretation of the intercepted telexes on which later assessments were …
As U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry hurried to his helicopter ready to take off at the end of a visit to Iraq last year, it was becoming clearer that the Americans have lost control of a country they wished to mold to their liking. His departure on March 24, 2013 was the conclusion of a ‘surprise’ visit meant to mark the 10th anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq. Ten years prior, the US had stormed Baghdad, unleashing one of the 20th century’s most brutal and longest conflicts. Since then, Iraq has not ceased to bleed.
The question is no longer what, the question is when.
Very soon, income inequality in the United States will reach such a critical level it is likely violence will be viewed as an acceptable response to America’s social ills.
Unlike Depression Era bank robbers, assaults will be aimed at soft human targets. After all, who uses cash anymore?
Extortion. Kidnapping. Arsons. A crime wave of epic proportions might well be the only way those running America will come to their senses and realize that no democracy can continue to exist where so much is controlled by so few. The present system of representative …
If an attack were to be launched on America in the very near future, it is my belief that America would not know that attack were about to be launched.
— Otis G. Pike, New York Times, Oct 18, 1975
History is by some marvels of anti-institutional warriors. Now, the names of Julian Assange and Edward Snowden tend to find copy and coverage, leakers and soldiers against tight lipped secrecy. But last month, when former New York Congressman Otis G. Pike died, there was barely a murmur. Obituaries proved few in number. Most were colourless and unreflective.
A new report in Science News magazine (1-25-2014) by Bruce Bower details a re-evaluation of the view that the Rapa Nuians, the native inhabitants of Easter Island (Rapa Nui), were responsible for the collapse of their population and society due to over exploitation of natural resources and the destruction of the rain forest on their island, a view recently popularized by Jared Diamond in his book Collapse (2005).
As Bower reports, the anthropologist Maria Mulrooney has published the results of her studies of the Rapa Nui culture (Journal of Archeological Science, December 2013) based on new radiocarbon dates from archeological …
In light of ongoing global negotiations on pressing environmental issues, it’s time for efforts to curtail the excessive influence of multinational corporations over public policy to be strengthened and scaled up at all levels – especially at the United Nations.
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The corporate capture of policy making has dire implications for how we achieve sustainable development in the 21st century, and it must be strongly opposed in the coming years as deliberations on climate change and sustainable development reach important conclusions. Private sector influence over politics at the national level is already widely recognised, but the extent to which …
Bias in favor of the orthodox is frequently mistaken for ‘objectivity’. Departures from this ideological orthodoxy are themselves dismissed as ideological.
– Michael Parenti
An exchange in January with Paul Farhi, Washington Post columnist, about coverage of US foreign policy:
Dear Mr. Farhi,
Now that you’ve done a study of al-Jazeera’s political bias in supporting Mohamed Morsi in Egypt, is it perhaps now time for a study of the US mass media’s bias on US foreign policy? And if you doubt the extent and depth of this bias, consider this:
There are more than 1,400 daily newspapers in the United States. Can you name a …
When West Bromwich Albion’s star player Anelka performed the Quenelle after scoring a goal in a match on 28 December he was immediately lashed by a frenzied storm in a Zionists’ teacup.
The Quenelle is a gesture, some claim, made famous by the French comic Dieudonné M’bala M’bala. As explained by the BBC it involves touching or gripping your shoulder with one hand while holding the palm of your other hand outstretched and pointing to the ground. “Some describe it as a combination of the bras d’honneur with a bent arm (which means ‘up yours’) and the Nazi salute”.
Two weeks ago in a room in Kabul, Afghanistan, I joined several dozen people, working seamstresses, some college students, socially engaged teenagers and a few visiting internationals like myself, to discuss world hunger. Our emphasis was not exclusively on their own country’s worsening hunger problems. The Afghan Peace Volunteers, in whose home we were meeting, draw strength from looking beyond their own very real struggles.
With us was Hakim, a medical doctor who spent six years working as a public health specialist in the central highlands of Afghanistan and, prior to that, among refugees in Quetta, Pakistan. He helped us understand …
At the black heart of Israel’s 65-year destruction of Palestine is the Jewish National Fund (JNF) which once went by the more germane, Jewish COLONIAL Trust; an opportunistic real-estate jackal that has aggressively engaged in Zionist chicanery throughout the ancestral land of Palestine.
From its inception in 1901, JNF’s mission of the theft of Palestinian land for the Jews-only Greater (Eretz) Israel is racist, colonial, criminal (colonial expansion is a war crime under Article 8.2(b)(viii) of the Rome Statute) and bloody.
Most western Middle East experts see Islam as a problem for the West — a source of terrorism, religious fanaticism, unwanted immigrants — and they see their job as helping to change the Middle East so it’s no longer a problem for us. Eric Walberg, however, recognizes that this is another instance of the Big Lie.
The actual problem is the multifaceted aggression the West has been inflicting on the Middle East for decades and is determined to continue, no matter what the cost to them and us will be. His books and articles present the empirical evidence for this with …
An interview with Cynthia Kaufman on Getting Past Capitalism: History, Vision, Hope
by Robert Jensen / February 4th, 2014
I’m fond of books that don’t claim to have The Answer but instead are useful guides in our search for answers.
Such a volume is Cynthia Kaufman’s Getting Past Capitalism: History, Vision, Hope, which expresses in clear, concise language thoughts that likely have been bumping around in the minds of many of us who reject capitalism. The book is particularly powerful because of its modesty; Kaufman promises no new grand theory and instead offers insights that we all can use in our daily lives.
The only thing I didn’t like about the book when I first read it …
Here’s a question: if you had to choose, what’s more important to you, your personal wealth or the welfare of your country?
For the overwhelming majority of us — the 99% — the question is pretty much one and the same, because what little wealth we have is entirely tied up in our country one way or another. So most of us would answer, the welfare of our country. But what about the 1%? How might they respond?
I was inspired to ask this question and write this piece by an article that recently appeared in something called Money Week, which I’d …
The Associated Press called it, “The Budweiser Ad That Made You Cry During The Super Bowl.” There was Lieutenant Chuck Nadd returning home from Afghanistan only to be thrown a surprise “welcome home” parade by the good people at Budweiser. He and his wife even traveled through the celebration pulled by Clydesdales “aboard the famously-red Budweiser beer wagon.”
Then, after the ad ended, there was Lt. Chuck Nadd, in the stands at Met Life Stadium watching the Super Bowl. (Hopefully, he did not have to take public transportation there. The Clydesdales would have been a faster ride.)
National Guard Poised to Attack from Des Moines Airport
by Brian Terrell / February 3rd, 2014
The F-16 jets of the Iowa Air National Guard that formerly buzzed the city of Des Moines have disappeared and we are told that their base at the Des Moines International Airport is in the process of refitting into a command center for unmanned aerial vehicles, UAVs, commonly called drones. The MQ-9 Reaper drones themselves will not be coming to Iowa but will be based in and launched overseas. When airborne, these unmanned planes will be flown by remote control via satellite link from Des Moines. Classified by the military as a “Hunter-Killer platform,” the MQ-9 Reaper is armed with …
After centuries of Indigenous resistance, a breakthrough in obtaining justice for Indigenous peoples may be edging closer. A human rights organ of the Organization of American States — The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) — has adopted as a case the petition brought by a Lil’wat mother, Loni Edmonds, against Canada.
The seeking of legal redress for/by Original Peoples for the genocide, dispossession, and assorted injustices wreaked upon them has proven up to now, for the greatest part, of little or no avail. Given that the Original Peoples are struggling within the system set up and enforced by the genocidaires/dispossessors …
Do world leaders today even know the underlying causes of the Holy Land’s misery?
Hansard is the official verbatim report of proceedings in the UK Parliament. You’d expect powerful intellectual stimulation, especially from the House of Lords, but too often the record reads like pulp fiction, punctuated as always with antique language, flowery manners and a pinch of pompous poppycock. But from behind it all emerge some uncomfortable truths.
For example, in the House of Lords on 27 January we were presented with this:
Baroness Falkner of Margravine: To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assistance they have given to the people of …
David Cronin’s book Corporate Europe: How Big Business Sets Policies on Food, Climate and War (Pluto Press) is based on his years as a journalist in Brussels looking at the way in which the European Union’s institutions really work. I also spent thirteen years in Brussels, working at the European Parliament and, before that, five years working as an advisor to the late Tom Megahy, an EU-critical left Labour Euro-MP, back in the North of England. Cronin and I have come to very much the same conclusions. The European Community may have been founded, in …
From Egypt, Ukraine, the Turkish-Syrian border, Cuba and Thailand
by Andre Vltchek / February 3rd, 2014
Government buildings are being trashed, ransacked. It is happening in Kiev and Bangkok, and in both cities, the governments appear to be toothless, too scared to intervene.
What is going on? Are popularly elected administrations all over the world becoming irrelevant; as the Western regime creates and then supports thuggish ‘opposition movements’ designed to destabilize any state that stands in the way of its desire to fully control the planet?
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They are shouting and intimidating those who want to vote for the moderately progressive government that is presently leading Thailand. There is no dispute over the electoral process – voting is generally …
“The premise of democracy, if it’s to be taken seriously, has to focus on youth, which become the ultimate symbol of the future.” H. Giroux
A tale of two destinies. I ran into a fellow, around 28 or 30, in the man-made wetlands in our housing development north of Vancouver. We were forced to buy the place here because the state-of- shit-on-all-of-us usury America has turned a blind eye against people who want to live, rent, and have security without putting down loads of money into the financial services zombie hole or add to the Koch Brothers a la …
