This is a very dangerous drift in our American thinking. Kristallnacht was unthinkable in 1930; is its descendant ‘progressive’ radicalism unthinkable now?
– Tom Perkins, January 24, 2014, in the Wall Street Journal
Thomas James Perkins was born in 1932, a year before Adolf Hitler came to Power in Germany and six years before the Nazis escalated their persecution of the Jews to mass murder during Kristallnacht (Crystal Night, the Night of Broken Glass, so-called after the array of broken glass from Jewish synagogues, storefronts, and homes), November 9-10, 1938.
Let him be. Give him a cigarette if he comes to. So he’s dying of lung-cancer, so what? It’s a terminal case. Dose him with morphine whenever he asks for it, whether for analgesic or recreational satisfaction. I know, I know: “We’re gonna do something, something serious and huge, we’re gonna fix stuff.” No yer not. You’re just gonna talk about stuff on the Information-overloaded Dirt Road of Surveillance and Road Pizza.
Everything you say — and write — will be held against you. Not that that matters either. What are They …
by The Real News Network (TRNN) / February 2nd, 2014
Michael Ratner: President Obama and New York mayor de Blasio’s statements in blanket support of Israel enables it’s violations of Palestinians’ rights.
If you really want to understand the world we are living in, you better stick with the Zionist media. The Jerusalem Post will provide you with the names of the Jews who own the planet. The British Jewish Chronicle will teach you about arch pedophile Jimmy Seville’s ties with Israel. Haaretz will even let me speak about all those topics The Guardian (Of Zion) is there to shamelessly suppress.
Yesterday I came across a text by Dave Rich, a Hasbara mouthpiece operating within the UK ultra-Zionist Community Security Trust. Rich suggested that making a common cause “between Holocaust deniers, neo-fascists, the pro-Palestinian …
Pathetic heartbreaking photos of tiny Afghani children in rags freezing without enough food to survive, every winter of US occupation. Sports distracted Americans pay no mind, as they didn’t to photos of dead Korean babies or Vietnamese napalmed children running naked down burning village streets, or piles of Iraqi dead — children’s cadavers without heads arms.
Ignorant criminal patriotism is displayed at these sporting events.
Over the last thirteen years, the New York Times, though supporting the US occupation of Afghanistan, has headlined, nearly every year, usually with pathetic heartbreaking photos of tiny children in rags freezing without enough food to survive, …
Last November I wrote a piece entitled “Is a new revolution quietly brewing in France?” in which I described the struggle which was taking place between the French people and the Zionist plutocracy which has ruled France over the past decades (roughly since 1969) and today I am returning to this topic as events have rapidly accelerated and taken a sharp turn for the worse. A number of most interesting things have happened and the French “Resistance” (I will use this collective designator when speaking of the entire Dieudonné/Soral movement) is now being attacked on three levels.
A recurrent theme in this administration is often spellbinding rhetoric followed by … well, very little in the way of follow-through programs. Lately, there has been the inequality issue. Taken up once more in the State of the Union (SOTU) address, the remedy proposed was an increase in the minimum wage. Yes, it needs to be raised but to focus on it alone simply evades the complexities to be navigated to confront the challenges of inequality.
One major cause is the export of well-paid manufacturing jobs and with them proprietary technology and skills. Higher and higher level …
I have wondered this over the past few years as the government of the United States has stumbled, bumbled and fumbled legislation on everything from healthcare to immigration. They have disrupted scientific progress, hamstringed our military and stunted the growth of entire economic sectors because of the complaints of a few. They have completely ignored the long term growth, security and stability of our nation for the short term gain they personally could abuse. So, why do we need representatives?
Historically the founders of this nation instituted a Constitutional Republic because of the legal protection afforded citizens, the necessity of …
The greatest crime since World War II has been U.S. foreign policy.
— Former US Attorney General, Ramsey Clark, 1927 – Present
On February 10th, 2003, German Green MP Joschka Fischer, then Foreign Minister and Vice Chancellor, stunned an international security conference that was discussing the proposed invasion of Iraq in Munich’s opulent 19th century Bayerischer Hof hotel, by banging on the table, switching to English to guarantee Donald Rumsfeld understood, and shouted of the US arguments for war: “… I am not convinced.” As he spoke, he gazed at the then US Defence Secretary over his silver, half framed spectacles, concluding: …
Salah Sawaid remembers when this huddle of shacks was surrounded by open fields. Today, his views from the grassy uplands of the central Galilee are blocked on all sides by luxury apartments – a new neighbourhood of the ever-expanding city of Karmiel, here in northern Israel.
“We are being choked to death,” said Sawaid, Ramya’s village leader. “They are building on top of us as though we don’t exist. Are we invisible to them?”
His fears for the future have grown rapidly in the past few months, after a court ruled that the Bedouin village must be bulldozed to make way for …
by The Real News Network (TRNN) / January 31st, 2014
Dr. Elizabeth Cochran, a seismologist with the US Geological Survey in Pasadena, California, discusses research showing that injection wells from fracking and gas and oil production is likely causing an uptick in U.S. earthquakes.
Recently I have rediscovered the Stone page of the New York Times editorial section where guests philosophers are invited to write on important issues of our time. That a philosopher’s opinion today would actually have importance for the public at large is somewhat of a mystery, largely because the role of the philosopher as cultural critic or “public intellectual” has largely been usurped by the technological class: individuals whose inventions have largely transformed the way in which we interact as social beings. Hence, we care more about what, for example, Mark Zuckerberg or the late Steve Jobs has had to …
After 94 years, on January 27, 2014, the world lost Pete Seeger. The world is the lesser for that loss. The accolades for this giant of folk songs and herald of all causes just, are pouring in from around the world. He is celebrated for regularly showing up at mass protests, for singing songs so transcendent (“This Land is Your Land,” “We Shall Overcome,” “Where Have All the Flowers Gone”) they are sung in many foreign languages all over the earth and for his mentoring and motivating of millions of people and children.
In the midst of bipartisan bashing of Edward Snowden in a Senate intelligence hearing on January 29, some stood up for truth in the face of repeated lies and evasion from head intelligence chiefs.
Before the hearing began, activists from CODEPINK stood up holding signs reading ‘Stop – Killing, Lying, Spying’ and called for the firing of James Clapper, Director of Central Intelligence, John Brennan, Director of the CIA, and James Comey, Director of the FBI.
A number of senators, including Barbara Mikulski (D – MD), and Susan Collins (R – ME), participated in slamming Snowden. They claimed Snowden has done “great …
Criminal trials, notably notorious ones, play themselves out beyond court rooms. Often, the court room is a tragic amphitheatre, featuring battles which involve loss and gain. The discussion about rights outside the courtroom becomes secondary to the discussion about fortune, favour and good, plain mannered prejudice.
The response to the interminably long Amanda Knox saga is one such case. Forget the lawyers there, those mere puppets of a system – they are merely background information to a press war, puffed by a good deal of vox pops, over whether Knox, along, with ex-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, were guilty …
(A speech given at the One World Week Forum at the University of Warwick on January 30, 2014 on the topic of Capitalism and Sustainability: Can We Have It All?)
Can capitalism solve the problems of global warming and growing inequality?
It seems to me this is like discussing the issue of inappropriate hypersexual imagery bombarding 11-year olds and then asking: Can Justin Bieber or Lady Gaga fix the problem?
Real capitalism, not the theoretical version taught in school, is a system of minority rule in which a few people profit at the expense of others.
Still basing himself on Engel’s Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, Lenin points out that the state is the first form of society exclusively to base itself on a given territory as opposed to tribal societies and bands which can move about and change locations while searching for food and shelter. This is the first innovation of the state.
The second is that the state sets up a source of power independent of the general population. The Roman state, for example, maintained an army as opposed to tribal societies such as the …
Valdez, Alaska carries the moniker: the “snowiest place in the United States,” receiving on average 300-to-600 inches per year. Additionally, Valdez is the end of the line for the Trans-Alaska Pipeline that carries oil from the Alaska North Slope. It’s a beautiful setting ensconced in the midst of eye-catching pristine wilderness. As, for example, the view from the Port of Valdez is richly appointed with alluring nature and nestled amongst a backdrop of snow-capped mountains reflected in the icy cold still waters of its serene seaport.
But, nowadays, wintry Valdez is different. It’s warm!
This is the first in a four part series leading up to the 10th anniversary of the February 29, 2004, overthrow of Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s government in Haiti. One aim of this series is to prod major media outlets to mark the anniversary by covering a story they’ve largely ignored.
Eleven years ago this weekend Canada organized an international gathering to discuss overthrowing Haiti’s elected government. The conference was reported in a major magazine at the time, but since the coup actually happened the dominant media has refused to investigate or even mention the meeting.
On January 31 and February 1, 2003, Jean Chrétien’s Liberal …
Note — Many requests have come around, one my way, to have this re-posted. I think DV readers will be enlightened. BY Flavia Dzodan
My name is Flavia Dzodan, I am a writer, public speaker, media maker, ideas instigator, content creator and facilitator living in Amsterdam. This blog is about the spaces and intersections between politics, culture, race and gender matters with some humor and pop culture thrown in the mix. I also blog at Tiger Beatdow
Yesterday social media was ablaze with a post making the rounds in feminist/ woman centered spaces. The post in question …
It will only get worse, but the last few days have been interesting in the accumulating annals of massive surveillance. Britain’s equivalent of the National Security Agency, GCHQ, has been placed under the legal microscope, and found wanting.
The legal briefs who have been advising 46 members of the all-party parliamentary group on drones has handed down a sobering assessment of the GCHQ mass surveillance program: It is, for the most part, illegal. In some cases, it may well patently criminal.
According to barristers Jemima Stratford QC and Tom Johnston, the behaviour of GCHQ staffers, in many instances, …
Edward Snowden’s revelations have given the public insights into a world that leads a shadowy existence. He has opened a vista to a shadow world that threatens humanity with a new form of totalitarianism, all-encompassing and therefore unique. Compared with this new totalitarianism, the German Stasi and the Soviet KGB were amateurs.
Although Michael Quilligan’s book, Understanding Shadows: The Corrupt Use of Intelligence (Atlanta: Clarity Press, 2013), came out before Snowden revealed the criminal machinations of the NSA and its British servant, it gives the readers “a glimpse of …
“Epic in scale, unprecedented in world history.” That is how William K. Black, professor of law and economics and former bank fraud investigator, describes the frauds in which JPMorgan Chase (JPM) has now been implicated. They involve more than a dozen felonies, including bid-rigging on municipal bond debt; colluding to rig interest rates on hundreds of trillions of dollars in mortgages, derivatives and other contracts; exposing investors to excessive risk; failing to disclose known risks, including those in the Bernie Madoff scandal; and engaging in multiple forms of mortgage fraud.
The powerless voices for the common good of America are ignored. Congress, through its decisions and actions, betray the very idea of public service for the common good. And the American people know it. Congress’ reputation has continued to nosedive, with only 10-15% of the populace currently approving its conduct.
The aim of this essay is to take an honest look at a dishonest assembly and then will close by proposing that the corporate escort service on Capitol Hill be replaced with honest and knowledgeable people dedicated to providing public service.
In a recent radio interview with a National Public Radio affiliate in Juneau, Alaska, I was asked if I had advice for a 16-year-old Palestinian student, Haitham. He had just arrived in the US as part of a school exchange program, and, admirably began reaching out to his peers in his and other schools to teach them about Palestine, its people and its ongoing struggle for freedom and rights.
There was not enough time to convey much to Haitham, whose voice expressed the personality of a gentle, smart and driven young man. And since I have been asked that question on …
Consciously or not, every pundit or blogger begins with a simple choice: do we address our converted, raring to raise consciousness and ignite protest while disregarding resistant challengers, even opponents? Or do we frame essays for the choir while embracing the less affiliated and the less informed – say, Democratic moderates – even the stray independent?
I have no delusion that words, brilliant or mundane, will overcome the profoundly alienated or cynical, nor those of fixed and polarized mindsets. Yet words are what we have, so I indulge my optimism: to articulate positions that inform an open …
Ben Swann talks about the standing ovation given to Army Ranger Cory Remsburg during President Obama’s SOTU address. Swann points out that Congress and President may be clapping for Remsburg but are doing nothing to actually honor veterans.
Last week, I explained how economists and policymakers destroyed our economy for the sake of short-term corporate profits from jobs offshoring and financial deregulation.
That same week Business Week published an article, “Factory Jobs Are Gone. Get Over It,” by Charles Kenny. Kenny expresses the view of establishment economists, such as Brookings Institute economist Justin Wolfers who wants to know “What’s with the political fetish for manufacturing? Are factories really so awesome?”
“Not really,” Kenny says. Citing Eric Fisher of the Cleveland Federal Reserve Bank, Kenny reports that wages rise most rapidly in those states that most quickly abandon …
by The Real News Network (TRNN) / January 29th, 2014
David Cay Johnston renown for his exposes of tax loopholes and inequities: Put in historical context, a $10.10 minimum wage is still substantially lower than it was in the 1960s.
