Latest articles
by Linh Dinh / January 28th, 2014
Though Thomas Paine galvanized this country into being and gave it its very name, The United States of America, there is almost no trace of him here. In Philadelphia, where he spent his most significant years, there is a Thomas Paine Plaza, but it is barely marked as such, with no statue of the man. Instead, one finds a bronze likeness of Frank Rizzo, of all people, and a Jacques Lipchitz sculpture that Rizzo once compared to a dropped load of plaster. Composed of torturous human forms holding up some insufferable burden, it’s titled “Government of the People,” though walking …
by Harry J. Bentham / January 28th, 2014
As a futurist, one of my aims has been to bring forward some of the more challenging and insightful predictions of the political future. Of these, the most important is the idea that the Nineteenth Century nation-state model, currently accepted as sovereign, must go.
Bad politics, or politics of the future?
With the inevitable doom of borders and the ever greater flows of information across the world, there must be a different kind of sovereignty imagined altogether – sovereignty by and for the whole of humanity. Withdrawal of recognition for every nation-state in favor of the human family is a long term …
by Gilad Atzmon / January 28th, 2014
A mass protest in Paris on Sunday against French President François Hollande turned into an anti-Jewish demonstration and ended in clashes between police and protesters.
Seemingly, Jewish organisations around the world are scared by the recent developments in France. Once again, they clearly failed to appreciate the growing mass fatigue of Shoah indoctrination and belligerent lobby politics. However, I would contend that instead of whining about the “rise of anti-Semitism”, Jews better, once and for all, learn to ask why? Why the Jews again? Why are they hated? What is it in Jewish politics that evokes so much resentment? Why does …
by Media Lens / January 28th, 2014
‘Propaganda’ sounds like an old-fashioned word from a bygone era. It evokes images of the Nazis in WW2, particularly Reich Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda Joseph Goebbels, or Soviet leaders in the Cold War and dictators in ‘Third World’ countries. Propaganda is something spewed out by official enemies of the West, and surely not a vile practice indulged by ‘our’ politicians and business leaders. This is a convenient illusion that serves powerful Western elites very well indeed.
The Russian-born filmmaker Andre Vltchek, who has travelled the world extensively in making his documentaries, relates his experience of appearing in the media in …
by Dana Gabriel / January 27th, 2014
In preparation for the upcoming North American Leaders Summit which will be held in Toluca, Mexico on February 19, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry recently held a meeting with his Canadian and Mexican counterparts. Over the last number of years, not as much attention has been given to the trilateral relationship. Instead, the U.S. has essentially pursued a dual-bilateral approach with both Canada and Mexico on key issues including border and continental perimeter security, as well as regulatory and energy cooperation. On the heels of its 20th anniversary, there once again appears to be renewed interest in broadening and …
by Rebecca Theodore / January 27th, 2014
“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”
It now seems that more than anything else, the freedom of migration is again a meaningful facet as resolutions are turning a new tide towards immigration reform in Washington.
Although the Senate has already passed a broad overhaul of the immigration laws, including a path to citizenship for the more than 11 million illegal immigrants; the legislation still continues to be mired with obstacles in the Republican controlled House of Representatives.
But whether or not House Republicans piece meal approach to immigration reform will favor the Democrats comprehensive hard line …
by Media Lens / January 27th, 2014
Readers will recall the famous perceptual illusion in which the brain switches between seeing a young girl and an image intended to represent an ‘old crone’. The picture of course remains the same, but our minds flick between the two interpretations, unable to perceive both images at the same time.
The ‘mainstream media’ — that curious collection of elite-run, profit-maximising business interests sometimes known as ‘the free press’ — performs a similar perceptual trick. In reviewing comparable crimes by the West and its official enemies, it is able to flick between perceiving virtue in ‘our’ criminality where only wickedness is …
by Alan Hart / January 27th, 2014
The expanded and most explicit form of my headline question is this. Is Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu of sound mind and knowingly talking propaganda nonsense about threats to Israel’s security in order to fool the world including most of its Jews, or, is he unbalanced, mentally disturbed, even clinically insane? I ask because his rubbishing in Davos of the most important speech any Iranian leader has made since the revolution which brought the mullahs to power 35 years ago sent me to bed recalling something my father said to me when I was a very young boy. “There are none …
by Sherif Samir and Hakim / January 27th, 2014
Sherif Samir, writing from Egypt
In the past year, during the rule of the Muslim Brotherhood, when the darkness of fanatical Muslims beset Egypt, and when it seemed that the spirit of resistance was fading, and people were giving up, I was observing women, wondering how the new situation was affecting their looks, their clothes, and their make-up, and I kept hope as long as women kept wearing tight pants, and lipstick, as long as I saw girls and boys walking together and laughing out loud “Fanatical groups will never own the heart of Egypt,” I thought to myself, “as long …
by Edward S. Herman / January 26th, 2014
Maximilian Forte’s book on the Libyan war, Slouching Towards Sirte: NATO’s War on Libya and Africa (Montreal: Baraka Books, 2012), is another powerful (and hence marginalized) study of the imperial powers in violent action, and with painful results, but supported by the UN, media, NGOs and a significant body of liberals and leftists who had persuaded themselves that this was a humanitarian enterprise. Forte shows compellingly that it wasn’t the least little bit humanitarian, either in the intent of its principals (the United States, France, and Great Britain) or in its results. As in the earlier cases …
by Jack A. Smith / January 26th, 2014
When he ran for the presidency in 2007-08, Sen. Barack Obama pledged to dismantle the most intrusive aspects of President George W. Bush’s post-9/11 surveillance programs. Instead, since taking office in January 2009, President Obama has secretly (until a few month ago) allowed those programs to expand as well as adding a number of his own measures that increasingly jeopardize American civil liberties.
Ever since whistle-blowing NSA contractor Edward Snowden revealed the elephantine extent of the Bush-Obama Surveillance State’s domestic and foreign spying last summer, White House and NSA officials have sought through obfuscation and fabrication to minimize the impact of …
by Paul Haeder / January 26th, 2014
“Are Adjunct Professors the Fast-Food Workers of the Academic World?” Is this provocative, evocative, adversarial, or emblematic of an age of casino capitalism, corrupted Admin Class, and a see/ hear/speak no evil compliant groups of people who are in the 20 percent? Not One Percenters, for sure, these destroyers of community, of sanity, of democracy, culture, our futures, but still, VPs and provosts and HR personnel and Presidents and others in the pencil neck-data-software-bean counter class who make more than $120 K a year, and have with the flick of their mouse wrists, people’s lives in the balance.
Too bad they …
by Ron Jacobs / January 26th, 2014
May 1, 2006 seems a long time ago. In one of the most hopeful manifestations of this century so far, on that day millions of US residents stayed home from work and school, and took to the streets to rally in favor of legalizing all undocumented workers and democratizing Washington’s immigration policy. Since, that day, over two million undocumented US workers have been deported; thousands more languish in detention centers where they are denied access to relatives and subject to brutality at the hands of guards and other detainees, and millions of others live in constant fear of La Migra. …
by John Steppling / January 26th, 2014
What I am noticing, increasingly, on social media, Facebook in particular, I guess, is the that people too lazy to think, or take the time to write out two or three sentences, will resort to posting “memes”. This seems to be a cottage industry now. The second part of the meme phenomenon has to do with moral relativism, and psychic disconnect. Erasure of empathy, really.
“Meme “was a word coined by Richard Dawkins I believe, back in the ’80s, to describe how ideas spread or metastasized through societies, or sub categories of society. I’m not here to write a history of …
America's Biggest Crises Are Rooted in the Fact That the Economy Is Rigged for the Wealthiest
by Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers / January 26th, 2014
A paradigm shift is taking place. It is coming from the awareness that all of our crises are connected to an economy rigged for the wealthiest. The symptoms of big finance capitalism create the poverty, low wages, economic insecurity and environmental destruction so a handful can profit. While these facts have been hidden by political leaders and corporate mass media, now people are seeing them and understand the task we have before us.
The Radical Dr. King
This past Monday, we celebrated Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday. History books and the new Memorial in DC commemorate Dr. King for his 1963 …
On Extinction Level Events, and other abstractions
by Kevin Annett / January 26th, 2014
Nobody can think globally, anymore than one can seriously imagine one’s own death. And so when Fukushima exploded three years ago and as our skies and oceans became laced with toxicity, none of it seemed as real as the trivialities of my life.
Basically, I tried not to think about what lay across the waters. And so even now, as we are being slowly radiated to death in what has become an obvious Extinction Level Event, our planetary fate remains abstract to ourselves: more important than the trivialities, of course, but not more real. And being human, I guess I’m not …
by Vacy Vlazna / January 25th, 2014
Imperialism after all is an act of geographical violence .
— Edward Said
Is it just me, or do you also see a thread of colonial superiority and racism binding US, Australia, Canada to Israel?
Think about it. All are ex-British colonies and like Israel, have a shameful history of genocide committed against their respective Indigenous Peoples and all continue to treat their First Peoples as third class citizens.
I can’t speak for the US and Canada, but, apart from realpolitik and arms trade, an underlying colonial arrogance goes a long way to explain why my ‘civilised’ ‘democratic’ Australian government is complicit in granting …
by Gareth Porter / January 25th, 2014
(IPS) — Iran’s pushback against statements by Secretary of State John Kerry and the White House that Tehran must “dismantle” some of its nuclear programme, and the resulting political uproar over it, indicates that tough U.S. rhetoric may be adding new obstacles to the search for a comprehensive nuclear agreement.
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said in an interview with CNN’s Jim Sciutto Wednesday, “We are not dismantling any centrifuges, we’re not dismantling any equipment, we’re simply not producing, not enriching over five percent.”
When CNN’s Fareed Zakaria asked President Hassan Rouhani, “So there would be no destruction of centrifuges?” Rouhani responded, …
by Andre Vltchek / January 25th, 2014
And here we go again! It is January 2014, but somehow it all feels like last year, or the year before last… or ten years ago. Jakarta is under water; people are trying to save all they can, but their houses are being ruined… some men, women and children are dying… Tens of thousands are sick, suffering from typhoid, and diarrhea.
As I plunged into flooded areas, my friend, a medical expert from Yogyakarta, sent me a text message: “Please be careful in Jakarta… Leptospirosis, typhoid and other infectious diseases…”
Dozens had already died in the capital city alone, or at least …
by Ludwig Watzal / January 25th, 2014
All the wars and attacks, which were started by the U.S. and its so-called allies in the wake of 9/11, have wreaked havoc. You name it, you got it: Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, and perhaps even Iran. The Islamic Republic is not yet off the hook. There are strong forces in the U.S. and in the Middle East that prefer war to peace at the expense of the U.S. Right now, there is a war going on in Libya against the Western installed puppet government, without notice of the corporate media.
…
by Michael Gillespie / January 25th, 2014
Why would US leaders, lawmakers, intelligence and law enforcement agency administrators allow foreign intelligence and espionage agencies and their front companies unfettered, unexamined, long-term access to vast audiences of American children and young adults? And does not that question represent legitimate and vital concerns regarding privacy, public health, public safety, and national security?
It is a matter of public record that, through its intelligence agencies and their spin-offs and many front companies, Israel is actively and deeply involved with the NSA in collecting and organizing data on Americans. The information thus collected by the NSA is shared with …
by Felicity Arbuthnot / January 24th, 2014
The United States Marine Corps … its hallowed rituals, and its unbending code of honor…
— Thomas E. Ricks, Making the Corps, 1997
As the US-unleashed Grim Reaper continues to cull Iraqis in ever rising numbers, this month of the 23rd anniversary of the 1991 US-led onslaught on Iraq and just weeks away from the 11th woeful wake for the 2003 illegal invasion, yet another atrocity in a litany of those under the illegal US-UK occupation has come to light.
Fallujah, now under attack from US installed tyrant Nuri al Maliki’s sectarian militia, armed with US supplied weapons, with the US also “… …
by Walter Brasch / January 24th, 2014
The derailment of a 101-car CSX freight train on a bridge in a densely-populated part of Philadelphia this past week should be yet another warning to politicians who have become cheerleaders for oil and gas fracking.
The train had been hauling crude oil from the Bakken Shale in North Dakota. A severe snow storm delayed by several days removing the derailed cars and 80,000 gallons of crude oil from the decades-old bridge over I-76 and the Schuylkill River, which flows into the Delaware River. Oil and gas companies using horizontal fracking have made the Bakken the most productive oil shale in …
by Robert Hunziker / January 24th, 2014
Climate change news is mostly negative, in fact, downright depressing, as glaciers melt away, torrential storms hit coastlines, and embedded droughts scorch countrysides.
But, behind all of the gloom and doom, an upsurge of solar energy is quietly flourishing from California to Queensland to Pretoria. Here’s why: Solar energy is experiencing remarkable technological breakthroughs that will likely lead to a world powered by solar energy at the expense of fossil fuels. And, it could be happening sooner rather than later.
The biggest question is whether it comes soon enough to avoid the risks of abrupt climate change events, like cascading glaciers in …
by Ralph Nader / January 24th, 2014
Last month, the ruling Japanese coalition parties quickly rammed through Parliament a state secrets law. We Americans better take notice.
Under its provisions the government alone decides what are state secrets and any civil servants who divulge any “secrets” can be jailed for up to 10 years. Journalists caught in the web of this vaguely defined law can be jailed for up to 5 years.
Government officials have been upset at the constant disclosures of their laxity by regulatory officials before and after the Fukushima nuclear power disaster in 2011, operated by Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO).
Week after week, reports appear in …
by Ismail Salami / January 24th, 2014
A five-minute audio message by al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri went viral on the internet in which he enjoins the rebels in Syria to end their infighting and focus their energies on battling against President Bashar al-Assad’s forces.
A veritable testimony to the fact that the militants fighting against Bashar al-Assad are affiliated to the terrorist al-Qaeda and as a result, they are stripped of any cloak of legitimacy, it further reinforces the notion that there is more than meets the eye in Syria.
Interestingly, the warring factions decided to patch up their differences and sit down at the negotiating table once …
by Paul Haeder / January 23rd, 2014
“I’m telling you, this place is the most racist place I’ve ever been to. September 10, it was Latinos and Blacks. And then September 11 came, and it’s Muslims. It’s a list. I top the list.” That’s Vera, student in the USA, in the film, If These Halls Could Talk.
She’s Palestinian, Israeli, not accepted by the racist Zionists, not accepted by the racist Americans, and not accepted by racist Arabs who see her passport is stamped Israel. Vera, like the other youth of color, is a powerful voice for the persistent racism of America, the white power-privilege of Americans …
by David Swanson / January 23rd, 2014
Three remarkable items in Thursday’s Charlottesville Daily Progress. First, a football player explaining that when he proclaimed his superiority to his opponent after a game he was caught up in the game’s passion, and that the overblown reaction to his obnoxious comments seems racist. Indeed it does, but it seems to reflect another type of willful ignorance as well.
Spectators at gladiator matches don’t want to see too deeply into the minds of the gladiators. We want to watch violent sports without peering inside the helmets. Do they have to tell themselves the other team is dirt? Are they scared? Are …
US Senate Await Israeli Instructions
by Ramzy Baroud / January 22nd, 2014
Israel is often viewed by Washington politicians as the most ‘stable’ ally in the Middle East. But stability from the American perspective can mean many things. Lead amongst them is that the ‘ally’ must be unconditionally loyal to the diktats of the US administration. This rule has proven to be true since the United States claimed a position of ascendency, if not complete hegemony, over many regions of the world since World War II. Israel, however, remained an exception.
The rules by which US-Israeli relations are governed are perhaps the most bewildering of all foreign policies of any two countries.
An illustration …
by Steve Horn / January 22nd, 2014
