Free speech has a shallow grounding in Australian jurisprudence. There are no express provisions for it in the Australian Constitution. It is striking that, for a country considered liberal democratic in character, suspicion of much in the manner of speech, of those who buck the trend of the thin-lipped conformists, remains rampant.
The debate on free speech is itself so polarised, the purpose is lost. Free speech, it seems, is only as free as long as it is appropriate, tasteful and of good standing. But the strength of any free speech provision, or protection, is not that it facilitates the good, …
If there was ever an anachronistic government body waiting to be placed in mothballs, it’s the Waterfront Commission of New York Harbor. Established way back in 1953, the WCNYH was tasked with keeping mobsters from infiltrating the docks. That was its sole responsibility.
But that was 60 long years ago. Ike was president. The House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) was still destroying lives. The Dodgers were still in Brooklyn. Elvis Presley hadn’t cut a record yet. Admittedly, a different era.
Surprisingly, the WCNYH is still alive and kicking. In fact, the ILA and New York Shipping Association (NYSA, representing port employers) are …
Back in the 1990s, security researchers and privacy watchdogs were alarmed by government demands that hardware and software firms build “backdoors” into their products, the millions of personal computers and cell phones propelling communication flows along the now-quaint “information superhighway.”
Never mind that the same factory-installed kit that allowed secret state agencies to troll through private communications also served as a discrete portal for criminal gangs to loot your bank account or steal your identity.
To make matters worse, instead of the accountability promised the American people by Congress in the wake of the Watergate scandal, successive US administrations have worked assiduously …
Not many people doubt that Israel was behind Arafat’s death, especially now, when it became immanently clear that it was radioactive Polonium 210 that was responsible for the late leader’s lethal symptoms.
It has been already established that just a few countries could produce Polonium let alone deliver it to the besieged Arafat’s Headquarters in Ramallah. The Palestinian committee investigating the death of Yasser Arafat in 2004 confirmed today that Israel is actually the “only suspect” in this murder case.
Yet, one question puzzles me. What did Israeli leaders had in mind when they decided to poison …
People should oppose GMOs for a myriad of reasons based on:
1) the precautionary principle
Before a product is released to the market, it should be independently tested and verified to the utmost standards as posing no untoward risks to the public, in particular, the elderly, children, and pregnant mothers. This would seem a no-brainer. The precautionary principle requires, however, that one must look beyond immediate consumption by humans. For example, what effect will GMO crops have on the soil? On the water? What effect on creatures that feed on the crops? On pests and creatures that feed on the pests? In …
Annually, a near-ritual unfolds in the Fall Session of the United Nations General Assembly: the assembled states and governments dutifully, in near-unanimous consensus, vote in favor of a Resolution on the “Necessity of Ending the Economic, Commercial, and Financial Embargo by the United States of America Against Cuba.”
It was in 1991 that the revolutionary socialist Cuban government first attempted to bring such a Resolution before the United Nations as a whole. A furious US campaign of threats and blackmail, directed primarily against Latin American governments and other countries who were members of the Movement of Non-Aligned Nations, succeeded that year …
Israel has committed repeated acts of war against countries that opposed its Zionist policies of colonization and annexation of Palestinian territory in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. Israeli leaders have secured arms and diplomatic support for their attacks through their Zionist proxies in the United States Congress and the Executive Branch.
The current series of Israeli bombing raids and missile strikes against Syria are designed to strengthen the armed Syrian opposition and Islamist mercenaries seeking to destroy the government in Damascus. Israel intends to sabotage the upcoming …
Somebody once said — it was either S.J. Perelman or me, since I’ve been known to steal from him — that history is best if it’s constantly re-written. Rooting in my archives for inspiration, I came up with this chef d’oeuvre from two years ago. It illustrates how far we’ve regressed.
For the benefit of our American, British, Australian and European readers, The RCMP Musical Ride is an internationally recognized mounted troop precision drill, complete with full dress uniforms, immaculately groomed horses, couched lances and magnificent musical accompaniment, performed at all manner of formal or special public occasions, for some reason …
Economic, financial and social commentators from all directions and persuasion are obsessed with the prospect of recovery. The world remains mired in a deep, prolonged crisis, and the key question seems to be how to get out of it. The purpose of our paper is to ask a very different question that few if any seem concerned with: can capitalists afford recovery in the first place?
This question does not come out of the blue. Over the past …
A couple weeks ago I went “home” to Maryland to help my father and siblings pack up the house he and my mother bought in 1959. I place the word home in quotation marks because I haven’t considered the place my home since 1977 when a woman friend and I bought a Greyhound ticket a couple days after Thanksgiving and headed west. The ticket took us as far as we could get for twenty-five dollars. That happened to be Mobile, Alabama, where we ate some catfish, drank some Dixie Beer, and stuck out our thumbs for California. …
The book Open Secrets: Israeli Nuclear and Foreign Policies (Pluto Press, 1997) by Israel Shahak explains why the Israeli political elite agitate against Iran’s non-existent nuclear program. Large parts of the U.S. political establishment with the Fawning Corporate Media (FCM) in the United States of America are still promoting war against Iran. This majority Muslim country and its leadership have been demonised by some Zionist public interest groups as the embodiment of the ultimate evil. Like in the case of Iraq, the Americans have a distorted picture of reality due to a selective information policy by the FCM. According …
In her recent book, Juridical Humanity: A Colonial History, postcolonial thinker Samera Esmeir examines the liberal, humanitarian, positive legal project of British colonial rule in Egypt, and its ability to construct the category of humanity, to provide the framework that constitutes what is good or bad for the colonized, and what bodies and behaviors are cast as (in)human. Esmeir argues that the colonial forces of interpellation in Egypt led to the positions of humans being increasingly framed by law.
Speaking about the transformation of bodies into a category of juridical humanness, Esmeir suggests that: “The end of …
Ladies und gentlemen, willkommen to the Kit Kat Klub in beautiful Los Angeles, California where even za hood has palm trees! As you know, three weeks ago it was windy for two straight days and last week it was overcast and sprinkled briefly but we’ve talked it out, we’ve recovered and we’re ready to party again! Don’t let the sports on the giant plasma screens or the live dancers distract you from this book review. Stop texting for a moment and let me pour you a Tony Montana, a line of Whole Fools gluten-free, organic, totally vegan, absolutely fair-traded Bolivian marching powder. Vhere are your troubles …
Drone attacks are raw terror tactics that terrorize civilian populations
ow we know exactly how many members of the U.S. House of Representatives care enough about American terrorism to attend a Congressional briefing about a U.S. drone attack that followed a classic terrorist pattern in killing a grandmother and wounding nine children in Pakistan. Five.
Five members of “the people’s house” came to the briefing, and one of them was there for the full 90 minutes.
When one of the witnesses expressed disappointment at the turnout, a congressman reassured him: this was better than we expected. They were all Democrats.
A video just posted online by Rolling Stone shows a hogtied prisoner being whipped by Afghan security forces, as what appears to be two unidentified American military officers look on. According to investigative reporter Matthieu Aikins, the Army’s Criminal Investigation Command confirmed an ongoing investigation into the incident. Aikins says the video fits with a general pattern of recurring abuse of detainees in U.S. and Afghan custody.
The western propaganda system is again trotting out the refrain that “rebels in Congo have been defeated.” The latest so-called “rebels” — the M23 forces — are actually Rwandan government troops, not rebels. (True Congolese “rebels” — such as the Mai Mai [also spelled Mayi-Mayi] are always denigrated by the international corporate media system.)
Reports now appearing in the western mass media are that the “M23 rebels” have “surrendered in Uganda”, or “turned themselves in” in Rwanda. This is nonsense, since these are Rwandan Defense Forces, most of them formerly National Congress for the Defense of the People (CNDP) …
National Security Agency – The only part of the government that really listens to what you have to say
The New York Times (November 2) ran a long article based on NSA documents released by Edward Snowden. One of the lines that most caught my attention concerned “Sigint” – Signals intelligence, the term used for electronic intercepts. The document stated:
Sigint professionals must hold the moral high ground, even as terrorists or dictators seek to exploit our freedoms. Some of our adversaries will say or do anything to advance their cause; we will not.
SANTA ROSA, CA — The October 22 killing here of 13-year-old Andy Lopez by a hail of bullets from sheriff’s deputy Erick Gelhaus has resulted in daily peaceful marches, prayer vigils and speaking events honoring Lopez and calling for justice, as thousands in the northern California community continue to mourn and express outrage.
The killing has also this week led to a federal civil rights lawsuit being filed on behalf of the Lopez family. “There is a practice of using deadly force and covering it up by investigations that are superficial,” attorney Arnoldo Casillas said at a November 4 press …
I am not sure what is the right term in Australian terminology. I guess it’s not cricket.
— Marty Natalegawa, The Guardian, November 3, 2013
Everyone is doing it to everybody else. A norm, perhaps, or something like a misguided custom that evolves over time. The test in international law as to what the comity of nations accepts is often one of persistent usage over time. Repeated acts of espionage by countries against others has been accepted as a custom in the negative – one to be stamped out, to be controlled or deterred with the harshest penalties. The traditional disposition by …
The elevated train rumbles above Kensington Avenue, so riding on it, you can see all of these desolate windows on the upper floors, many of which are boarded up, bricked over or hollow. Ruins of factories loom nearby. Until recently, there was an open coffin in the yard of The Last Stop recovery center. Lying inside it, a wide eyed, pink faced dummy stared up. At ground level, you can shuffle pass these cheap hoagie joints, Chinese take outs (with bullet-proof order windows), pawn shops, bodegas, discount clothing stores, used appliance dealers and a church of the Black Israelites, who …
(IPS) — After a drone strike had reportedly killed Pakistani Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud November 1, the spokesperson for the U.S. National Security Council declared that, if true, it would be “a serious loss” for the terrorist organisation.
That reaction accurately reflected the Central Intelligence Agency’s argument for the strike. But the back story of the episode is how President Barack Obama supported the parochial interests of the CIA in the drone war over the Pakistani government’s effort to try a new political approach to that country’s terrorism crisis.
The failure of both drone strikes and Pakistani military operations in the FATA tribal …
It used to be when a drug company settled illegal marketing charges that millions took its drugs under false pretenses, the news would be released on a Friday afternoon when no one would notice. That was then. Now almost all the drug companies have joined the Off label/Kickback club and the public doesn’t seem to notice or care.
On the surface, Johnson & Johnson’s $2.2 billion settlement this week for illegally marketing drugs to the elderly, children and the mentally disabled looks like a victory. J&J’s subsidiary, Janssen Pharmaceuticals, will plead guilty to illegally promoting the antipsychotic Risperdal for “controlling aggression …
No legal issue arises when the United States responds to a challenge to its power, position, and prestige.
— Dean Acheson , 1962, speaking to the American Society of International Law
Dean Acheson declared 51 years ago that power, position, and prestige are the ingredients of national security and that national security trumps law. In the United States democracy takes a back seat to “national security,” a prerogative of the executive branch of government.
National security is where the executive branch hides its crimes against law, both domestic and international, its crimes against the Constitution, its crimes against innocent citizens both at home …
The New York Times published a thought-provoking exchange last week between its former editor Bill Keller and journalist Glenn Greenwald, expositor of the infamous Snowden files. The dialogue was highly entertaining and articulate, with veiled nastiness simmering just beneath the surface. Keller played his typical hand, that of the coolly dispassionate paladin of journalism, while Greenwald was his usual feisty self, unapologetically so. The tete-a-tete revolved around the question of whether there was or could be or should be objective journalism. Keller, representing the fatally corrupted establishment, suggested it was the shining ideal to which all journalists should aspire. …
So, in Washington, the defeat of I-522, the genetically modified organisms, i.e. food, labeling initiative has been aided and abetted by, well, they call it a “war in the media” with the armies of the corporations launching frontal, rear, aerial, underground, cyber and Madison Avenue assaults. So, the “media” are the balancers and arbiters of justice. When the GMO-GE activists — armed with science and grassroots ground-truthing and logic on their side — set up a system that is precautionary principle-perfect — LABEL ingredients that are not Mother Nature’s and let the citizen eater decide — and then have the …
Early on Thursday, 7 November 2013, Greek riot police stormed the offices of Greece’s main public broadcaster, which had been under a five-month occupation by workers who opposed the government’s decision to shut down the broadcaster, firing thousands and destroying a major cultural institution. The broadcast seems to have come to an end.
The long and painful Greek tragedy continues, where society and culture are gutted, people impoverished, driven into a deep depression, with growing political and social conflicts, the rise of fascism, detention camps filled with immigrants from Africa and the Middle East, trying to escape the dictators we …
Challenging the falsehoods and simplifications that surrounded the so-called Arab Spring from the very start doesn’t necessarily mean that one is in doubt of the very notion that genuine revolutions have indeed gripped various Arab countries for nearly three years.
In fact, the revolutionary influx is still underway, and it will take many years before the achievements of these popular mobilizations be truly felt. One can understand the frustration and deep sense of disappointment resulting from the state of chaos in Libya, the political wrangling in Yemen and Tunisia, the brutal civil war in Syria, and, of course, the collective heartbreak …
Incantations of “revolution” rise from right and left choirs, reminiscent of the visionary ’60’s. That turned out well – as “the system” swallowed the great divergence, spitting out what it couldn’t digest. How easy to declare war against today’s power-hungry elites, firming up one’s credentials as insightful contrarian, even revered prophet. And yet, sweeping declarations, especially if premature or overstated, won’t likely achieve the core objective: to win over a critical mass. Pie-in-the-sky proclamations alienate, even demoralize newcomers when predictions peter out.
So pardon my skepticism, but permanent revolutions are rare birds, …
If you walk along Manhattan’s West Side Highway, upon the long strip of bike lanes and greenery between the Hudson River and the droning automobiles, you’ll come to a fresh patch of pavement that’s a stone’s throw away from the Pier 51 Playground. You can’t tell by the look of it, but beneath the new asphalt hundreds of millions of cubic feet-worth of natural gas are flowing.
While the national climate movement has focused on the transnational Keystone XL pipeline, this tiny site has been the object of a more-than-two-year local battle over the first natural gas pipeline to enter New York City …
The elections are over and while many Demo-liberals are heartened by the results the rest of us should understand that we have a long way to go.
The DiBlasio victory in New York shows hopeful signs for a city that has been run for more than twenty years exclusively by Wall Street, banking and financial interests and their upper income servant class. Of course, that’s true for the nation as a whole, so one victory for a candidate at least speaking to more humane values is a step in the right – as well as slightly left – direction. And more …
