Latest articles
by Bill Annett / November 20th, 2013
Coursing through the trackless wastes between Toronto and Winnipeg, our intrepid reporter Rap (short for “rapporteur,” just to add a touch of class), taking a leaf from Stephen Colbert (Col-bear) and his Report (pronouced Re-poor), checked in recently. In fact the paper trail of his expense account items continued, meandering across Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania, notably hovering in Camden, N.J. with an item for $139.50 datelined Moe’s Jazz Society. But no matter. He’s now in Atlantic city and has updated us with a full report.
Unfortunately, Rap has recently uncovered a breaking news item that …
by David Macaray / November 20th, 2013
With the 50th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination just around the corner, we can expect the media to be inundated with solemn remembrances, first-person recollections, and extravagant revisionism. Alas, every heavy-duty plot and whacked-out account of the Kennedy administration will demand and very likely be given its moment in the sun.
The next time you’re at a social gathering and, masochistically, wish to have the guests pelt you with cheese balls, announce to everyone that you not only believe it was the hapless, 24-year-old Lee Harvey Oswald who killed Kennedy, but that he acted alone. Then sit back and prepare to …
Bernard Henri Levy and the Destruction of Libya
by Ramzy Baroud / November 20th, 2013
While Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is “the world’s most influential Jew”, Bernard Henri Levy is number 45, according to an article published in the Israeli rightwing newspaper, the Jerusalem Post, on May 21, 2010.
Levy, per the Post’s standards, came only two spots behind Irving Moskowitz, a “Florida-based tycoon (who) is considered the leading supporter of Jewish construction in east Jerusalem and hands out a prize for Zionism to settler leaders.”
To claim that at best Levy is an intellectual fraud is to miss a clear logic that seems to unite much of the man’s activities, work and writings. He seems …
Time To Change Course On Obamacare
by Margaret Flowers / November 19th, 2013
Dear MoveOn,
It is with great sadness that I watch you making last-gasp desperate attempts to save Obamacare and Obama’s reputation. You look foolish when you say that “Of course, it’s a good law” at the same time as your constituents see through the Obamacare illusion. The law is becoming less popular because people are beginning to see through the false partisan claims of Democrats. And worse, you are actually playing right into the Republican’s trap, really the trap of Wall Street and big business interests.
It’s time for honesty. Obamacare is policy that has roots in the Nixon administration, was …
Lectures Sri Lanka on Crimes Against Humanity.
by Felicity Arbuthnot / November 19th, 2013
Hypocrisy, the most protected of vices.
— Moliere, Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, 1622-1673
Last week a little more was learned as to the circumventions in Whitehall and Washington delaying the publication of the findings of Sir John Chilcot’s marathon Inquiry into the background of the Iraq invasion.
The UK’s Chilcot Inquiry was convened under then Prime Minister Gordon Brown to establish the decisions taken by the UK government and military, pre and post invasion. It ran from 24th November 2009 until 2nd February 2011 and cost an estimated £7.5 million. The as yet unpublished Report is believed to run to 1,000,000 words.
The stumbling block – …
by Gary Brumback / November 19th, 2013
Never have I urged impeachment of Supreme Court justices. I do so now, for the sake of ending the Supreme Court’s corporate-judicial dictatorship that is not accountableunder our system of checks and balance in any other way.
— Ralph Nader ((Nader, R. Time for Impeachment? The Corporate Supreme Court, Counterpunch, November 18, 2013))
Lady Justice isn’t blindfolded and her scales aren’t balanced.
Neither is the U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS hereafter) a separate or equal branch of the federal government as originally intended. How on earth could it be? It’s not separate because its members are appointed by one of the other branches …
by Paul Haeder / November 19th, 2013
Just what are we teaching young people, society at large, in and out of school? Just what is it to be an American today, awash in consumer madness? The Last One with the Most Toys Wins bumper sticker, or is it this little chant: You’ll have to peel this i-thing Apple appendage from my cold dead mind, err, hand?
Forget 24-hour news cycles. We have daily dumping of history, facts, human narratives, and ecological realities. Sort of the Googlization of Everything. Aggregate it, baby. Screen it all out to the common marketable thing. Information is about selling, and too many unkempt …
by Kim Petersen / November 19th, 2013
I lived a couple of years in Aqaba — a tranquil, conservative desert town in Jordan where the falafels were delicious and the diving was superb. Islam was predominant, but only minor friction was expressed between Shi’a and Sunnis or between Palestinians and Bedouins. The small Christian society lived peacefully among the Muslims. Aqaba is a town where the people were, in my experience, the most welcoming and kindly disposed to me a foreigner in their midst.
What does kindness mean? Among the kind people I knew was a university student who told me when his little sister turned 13 she …
by Andre Vltchek / November 19th, 2013
The ‘Defeat of M23’ is perhaps orchestrated. The group is returning home to Rwanda only because it is most likely needed there.
by Alan Wieder / November 19th, 2013
“They just don’t get it.” Yes, the phrase is overused, yet, all too appropriate when addressing the continuing critiques, from both the left and the right, of Bill Ayers. The recent publication of the second phase of his memoir, Public Enemy: Confessions of An American Dissident (Beacon, 2013), was followed on the “SDS and ‘60s Leftists” page of Facebook by an un-thoughtful conversation on Ayers, his comrade and wife Bernardine Dohrn, and the Weather Underground (WO). Facilitated by George Fish and responding to a negative book review by Jon Wiener, 43 comments followed Fish’s post. Mostly sour, bitter, and …
Badgers by Numbers
by Lesley Docksey / November 19th, 2013
“Come on, old Badger!” shouted the Rat. The Badger trotted forward a pace or two: then grunted, “H’m! Company,” and turned his back and disappeared from view.
— Kenneth Graham, Wind in the Willows
It became clear during October just how badly planned Defra’s badger culls were. Any reports of things going wrong were so quickly and inaccurately denied as to appear both defensive and silly. The case of the badger found by a wounded badger patrol comes to mind. Having claimed the cull was to test whether free-running badgers could be killed humanely – which means instantly with a single shot …
by Boris Kazantsev / November 19th, 2013
Edward Snowden’s recent revelations about American intelligence agencies’ wiretapping of European leaders, as well as their collection of the personal data of European citizens, will apparently have far-reaching implications which go beyond a simple diplomatic scandal.
This was demonstrated by the EU summit which was held October 24-25, 2013. A measure of the degree the Europeans’ indignation over the revealed surveillance is the fact that instead of discussing burning economic issues, almost the entire summit was devoted to the tapping of the telephones of A. Merkel, F. Hollande and other European leaders. The joint statement of the …
by Yves Engler / November 19th, 2013
Will Supertyphoon Haiyan serve as a wake-up call for Canadians? Will people connect the dots between Harper’s climate crimes and the death and destruction caused by the most powerful storm ever recorded?
In response to the thousands who have died and hundreds of thousands who have been left without shelter on a number of islands in the Philippines, aid agencies, rescue services and many countries’ militaries have been mobilized, while many Canadians are making donations. But rather than simply provide aid after a disaster occurs, doesn’t it make sense to also deal with root causes?
At the UN climate talks currently taking …
The First Volume of The People’s Book Project
by Andrew Gavin Marshall / November 19th, 2013
The following is a little teaser to some of the ideas, approach and perspective being pursued through the research and writing of the first volume of The People’s Book Project, The Empire of Poverty.
It’s important to try to understand the global economic and financial system – the banks, corporations, central banks, economic policies (and effects) of governments, trade agreements, the creation and value of currencies, the function of the oft-heard ‘markets’ – as daunting as the task may seem. One might think that they need a degree in Economics in order to understand the complexities of the global economy, …
by Walter Contrite / November 18th, 2013
Americana dream a step away from flesh-candy; shocked me from sleep, naked, shivering with touch of mortal, sensitive to the slightest things: unable to bear even routine decay; no longer firm, nor young, nor fit to profit from exchange.
The bah-sheep shorn again, poor fleeced multitudes, dead weight on my conscience, their fate burdens my soul.
Heaviness of chest and gut (doom-coronary? gas-bloat?) then stabbing pain. I’m usually too numb to fear, but verily we’re facing nasty shit, horrifying scene.
All news all the time all bad. Apocalypse not now, it’s never now; Apocalypse impending. Everywhere always. Forever-days merge to years, decades. Accumulated …
by The Real News Network (TRNN) / November 18th, 2013
Historic conflict remains a dangerous source of tension between nuclear armed neighbors India and Pakistan.
by Walter Brasch / November 18th, 2013
At the time New Jersey established a ban on fracking, it seemed symbolic, much like the moratorium in Vermont, which has no economically recoverable natural gas; the Marcellus Shale, primarily in New York and Pennsylvania, doesn’t extend into New Jersey. New York has a moratorium on fracking until a health impact statement is completed. Pennsylvania. rushing to compete with groundhogs in digging up the state, has no such moratorium. Nor does the state have any plans to conduct extensive research into the health effects of fracking—Gov. Tom Corbett, the gas industry’s cheerleader, cut $2 million from the Department of Health …
by Chris Hedges / November 18th, 2013
I was in federal court here Friday for the sentencing of Jeremy Hammond to 10 years in prison for hacking into the computers of a private security firm that works on behalf of the government, including the Department of Homeland Security, and corporations such as Dow Chemical. In 2011 Hammond, now 28, released to the website WikiLeaks and Rolling Stone and other publications some 3 million emails from the Texas-based company Strategic Forecasting Inc., or Stratfor.
The sentence was one of the longest in U.S. history for hacking and the maximum the judge could impose under a plea agreement in the …
by Jonathan Cook / November 18th, 2013
Israel is again at the centre of moves to challenge key agencies at the United Nations, as it lobbies to prevent the Palestinian leadership from gaining more of a foothold in global forums.
Israel ended a 20-month boycott of the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in Geneva last month, under pressure from Western allies that it should return to a review process designed to monitor the human rights situation in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories.
However, Israel did so only after securing promises of reforms that human rights groups fear will further weaken international efforts to hold Israel accountable for its …
by Bill Quigley / November 18th, 2013
In the thirty six-years I have been a lawyer, I have seen many people take brave moral actions. I have represented hundreds in Louisiana and across our country who have been arrested for protesting for peace, civil rights, economic justice, and human rights for all. It is amazing to see people put their freedom on the line when they risk jail for justice.
None are braver than the seventeen immigrant workers arrested in New Orleans at the office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). These mothers and fathers, members of the Congress of Day Laborers at the New Orleans Workers’ Center …
by Burkely Hermann / November 18th, 2013
Recently, one of the most worthless legislative bodies, the US Senate, passed the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), the civil rights bill of our day, which prohibits gender ID and sexual orientation in the workplace. Amnesty International, ACLU, one of the biggest business unions in the country, the AFL-CIO and many others were gleeful that the Senate had passed ENDA. ((See the tweets of SEIU, Amnesty International, Feminist Majority, ACLU, AFL-CIO, OFA, and NOH8 Campaign)) From the beginning, individuals, myself included, and several organizations were troubled by …
by Ko Tha Dja / November 18th, 2013
Today I’m lazing at Sedona in Mandalay enjoying the fast Internet (for Myanmar) and a perfect coffee for the afternoon buzz. I’ve been in Burma since March 2009 with a few earlier visits and some brief living on the border near the town of Mae Sot in Thailand.
When I think back, I became intrigued with Burma after some young Karen men, who were also former child soldiers fighting the Burmese Army in Kayah state, asked me to appeal to the British government on their behalf to encourage the Brits to return soon to help them gain independence. Their pure, innocent …
by John Andrews / November 18th, 2013
I’m used to feelings of rage and nausea whenever I open a “news” paper – which is something I usually do only once a week; and I only do it then because The Times’ Saturday edition has a good puzzles page, and it also provides the TV listings for the following week. I most certainly do not do it for what should be the main purpose of a newspaper – providing good information about the world around me. In fact I always put-off for as long as possible the moment when I actually open up the paper to see what …
by David Kerrigon / November 18th, 2013
Erica Chenoweth, author of Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict, explains how to overthrow U.S. crony capitalism: “In raw numbers, movements generally achieve systematic change (i.e., in the +80% likelihood category) when they mobilize over 5 percent of the population. The Iranian Revolution, among the largest popular uprisings, achieved about 10 percent mobilization. In the US with 311 million people, this would mean between 15.5 million and 31.1 million people.” As far as overthrowing crony capitalism, the Occupy Movement is a promising start, but is unlikely to change public policy without attracting much …
The Sentencing of Jeremy Hammond
by Anthony Tarrant / November 17th, 2013
On Friday, November 15, 2013, extreme violence with malicious intent was meted out by Federal District Court Judge Loretta Preska in the sentencing phase of 28 year old hacktivist Jeremy Hammond before a chamber packed with friends, family, supporters and others on the 9th floor of the Daniel Patrick Moynihan Courthouse in southern Manhattan.
Devoid of the slightest detectable impulse to mercy, Judge Preska intoned a clearly preformulated maximum sentence in the antiseptic banality of institutionalized cruelty now emblematic of an unfettered neoliberal American judiciary – 120 months in jail and 3 years supervised probation. No time knocked off for 20 …
His Idealism Remains at Large
by Nozomi Hayase / November 17th, 2013
On November 15, 28-year-old political activist Jeremy Hammond was sentenced to 10 years in prison and three years of supervised release at the Federal District Court for the Southern District of New York. This was the maximum sentence he could receive after his non-cooperating plea deal. He admitted to violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act with his participation in hacking the computers of private intelligence firm Strategic Forecasting (Stratfor).
Before the sentencing hearing, an outpouring of support came from journalists, activists and other whistleblowers recognizing his act as civil disobedience and highlighting his motives of conscience and his …
by James Petras / November 16th, 2013
Revelations about the long-term global, intrusive spying by the US National Security Agency (NSA) and other allied intelligence apparatuses have provoked widespread protests and indignation and threatened ties between erstwhile imperial allies.
Allied regimes have uniformly condemned NSA espionage as a violation of trust and sovereignty, a threat to their national and economic security and to their citizens’ privacy.
In contrast, the Washington has responded in a contradictory manner: on the one hand, US officials and intelligence …
by Ron Jacobs / November 16th, 2013
I recently watched Joseph Losey’s film version of Bertolt Brecht’s play The Life of Galileo. First performed in 1943, and revised in 1955, Losey’s production was filmed in 1975. One of Brecht’s best-known dramas, The Life of Galileo addresses the oppressive nature of religion both in terms of its control of thought and its collusion with power in maintaining the status quo. It is as if within knowledge resides damnation, as if any human even has foreknowledge of such a fate should it exist. Indeed, there is a reason the tree in the Garden of Eden is called the Tree …
by Medea Benjamin / November 15th, 2013
Faisal bin Ali Gaber is a soft-spoken engineer from Yemen. After he lost his cousin and brother-in-law in a drone strike in August 2012, he published an open letter to President Obama and Yemeni President Hadi. He said his brother-in-law was an imam who had strongly and publicly opposed al-Qaeda, and that his young cousin was a policeman. “Our town was no battlefield. We had no warning. Our local police were never asked to make any arrest,” he wrote to the presidents. “Your silence in the face of these injustices only makes matters worse. If the strike was …
by Gareth Porter / November 15th, 2013
IPS — Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov revealed a crucial detail Thursday about last week’s nuclear talks with Iran in Geneva that explains much more clearly than previous reports why the meeting broke up without agreement.
Lavrov said the United States circulated a draft that had been amended in response to French demands to other members of the six-power P5+1 for approval “literally at the last moment, when we were about to leave Geneva.”
Lavrov’s revelation, which has thus far been ignored by major news outlets, came in a news conference in Cairo Thursday that was largely devoted to Egypt and Syria. …
