By now you’ve probably seen the viral video of Brand vs. Paxman, the call for revolution vs. the status quo. You may have even read the commentary ((For an analysis of such commentary.)) why many – particularly feminists – should be hesitant to jump on the so-called ‘Brandwagon’. But I, like many others, can set my skepticism about Brand’s dubious remarks about women aside (for a moment – and only a moment) and appreciate a mainstream character, on a mass medium, calling for an ‘outside of the box’ solution for the problems that currently plague society.
Salon writer Natasha Lennard writes of Russell Brand, “I love much of what the boisterous comedian says, but this Great Man narrative lets sexism slide and has to go.” ((Natasha Lennard, “I don’t stand with Russell Brand, and neither should you,” Salon, 25 October 2013.)) Great Man? Who is the great man? Presumably she refers to Russell Brand. Prior to his articulate skewering of capitalism in a recent BBC interview, I knew little of Brand other than he was an actor and ex-husband of Katy Perry.
I, like Lennard, “felt an immense affinity with comedian and would-be revolutionary vanguardist Russell …
For all the enervating political tumult and shouting emanating from Washington these days, there is remarkably little to show for it except what has become virtually routine political paralysis.
None of the key differences that are fought over by the politicians seem to directly relate to these five most crucial and threatening specific issues confronting the American people:
1. The erosion of American democracy by a political system flagrantly dominated by great wealth, the big corporations, Wall Street and the major banks. One person may have one vote, but a billionaire — by virtue of funding certain candidates — has the equivalent …
Six or eight months ago, back in the winter of practically everybody’s discontent, Jamie Dimon, superchief of superbank JPMorgan Chase, pulled the plug, renouncing Wall Street and perhaps unbridled greed, saying: – but let’s defer to the official news story, as reported in these grubby online pages:
In a modest executive suite in New York, Jamie Dimon, Chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase, was announcing his own about-face and condemnation of Wall Street banks and the 1% he rode in on. Often mentioned by JPM’s PR department as the most responsible Master of The Wall Street Universe, Dimon has long been …
Another child has been killed. Andy Lopez was playing with a toy on October 22 near his home in a Latino community in Santa Rosa, Sonoma County, Northern California. A sheriff’s deputy pulled the trigger and hit the 13-year-old seven times, fearing that his toy assault rifle might be real. His partner, sitting next to him in the car, held his fire. That patience was a better approach. Who is responsible for this death?
“The shots were fired within 10 seconds of the deputies’ first report of a suspicious person,” according to the daily Press Democrat. Why was he suspicious? …
An Angel Song for peace and an end to violence against children.
“War violates every right of a child — the right to life, the right to be with family and community, the right to health, the right to the development of the personality and the right to be nurtured and protected.”
“… modern wars are exploiting, maiming and killing children more callously and more systematically than ever”
— Graca Machel 1996 and 2000.
Verse 1
I watched the sun go down
On this hallowed ground
An angels choir sang higher and higher
They were singing for freedom
As people lay bleeding
They were singing for peace
But the guns didn’t …
During the period between the 1988 Uprising in Burma and the 2007 Saffron uprising, thousands of Burmese children, men and women were imprisoned. Among them was the quite famous core group of political prisoners known to all as the leaders of the 1988 Uprising. At the time, they were not really the leaders of the uprising, but they were surreptitiously thrust into the limelight by virtue of having virtue – they stood on stage at the height of the protests and announced to all who they were.
While imprisoned they became more famous and their hopes and dreams were uplifted upon …
by Paul Larudee and Beth Daoud / October 25th, 2013
On April 8, 2009, ten billboards went up in the Albuquerque area saying “Tell Congress: Stop Killing Children. No More Military Aid to Israel.” On April 28, Lamar Advertising, with whom the ads had been placed by the Coalition to stop $30 Billion, tore down the ads due to pressure, presumably from other clients with larger accounts.
In June, 2012, twenty-three billboards went up in the Los Angeles area, also calling for an end to US aid to Israel. One week later, the billboard company, CBS Outdoor, also took down the ads.
Let’s give the snarling, three-pointed Devils their due. Tea Party backers and insurgents found in Ted Cruz a slick, shiny face to dish out its latest rendition of raising Cain, that is, elevating gasbag demagoguery. I suspect this perverse 20% minority, thrilled at the duration of its chokehold, remains flummoxed such valor didn’t crack Obamacare wide open. You know, just like those intrepid Texans who defeated Santa Ana at the Alamo. Oh, few Texans and a massacre.
Yet let us dwell not in easy gloating that patriotic right wingers didn’t just fail (though the sequester holds) but fell on their smug …
On October 3, 2013, the International Programme on the State of the Ocean (IPSO) released its most recent State of the Ocean Report to the public. The report said its latest review of the oceans revealed the ocean to be in a “critical state.”
The IPSO report, as bad fortune may have it, could be an understatement based upon a revealing first-hand true story of an extensive ocean trip by Newcastle yachtsman Ivan Macfadyen. ((Greg Ray, The Ocean is Broken, Newcastle Herald, Oct. 18, 2013.))
Mr. Macfadyen’s story, as told by Greg Ray, is a heartbreaking account of the …
Monday morning, Oct. 21, 2013. Vera Scroggins, a retired real estate agent and nurse’s aide, was in Common Pleas Court for Susquehanna County, Pa., to explain why a temporary injunction should not be issued against her.
Before her were four lawyers and several employees of Cabot Gas and Oil, who accused her of trespassing and causing irreparable harm to the company that had almost $1 billion in revenue in 2012. They didn’t want her on their property they owned or leased in the Marcellus Shale.
Scroggins is an anti-fracking activist, someone who not only knows what is happening in the gas fields …
IPS — The Washington Post on Thursday reported what it presented as new evidence of a secret agreement under which Pakistani officials have long been privately supporting the U.S. drone war in the country even as they publicly criticised it.
Most news outlets picked up the Post story, and the theme of public Pakistani opposition and private complicity on the drone issue framed media coverage of Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s declaration that he had called on President Barak Obama to end the drone war.
The CIA’s drone war was no longer concentrated from mid-2008 onward on foreign terrorists… Instead the CIA …
Though Riverside has successfully reinvented itself before, it is now stuck. During the middle of the 19th century, it was a resort town, a place for the well-to-do of Philadelphia to mellow during the sultry months. They chugged up the Delaware by steamboats. Some steamed into town on rails. There were summer homes here, and a grand hotel with a ballroom. When the train reached the New Jersey Shore, however, Riverside couldn’t compete with the Atlantic Ocean, and so it slumped into irrelevance, a forgotten fork in the river, but then it picked itself up and morphed into an …
While there is rightly much media attention on the US drone war in Pakistan and Yemen, there is a very different but over-looked “drone war” taking place in Europe right now. In parliamentary committee rooms, in company boardrooms, and in packed public meetings, arguments rage about whether Europe should embrace or reject the use of armed drones.
Many European armed forces already have unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), commonly known as drones, in their armories for reconnaissance, intelligence and surveillance purposes. Increasingly, however, European countries are under pressure to follow in the footsteps of the US and embrace the use of …
The state has long taken foster children's disability and survivor benefits without notifying them
by Daniel Hatcher / October 25th, 2013
Try this on for size: The Maryland agency overseeing foster care has been appropriating foster children’s assets — orphaned children’s survivor benefits, for example — and handing them over to the state.
There’s more: Not only does this agency take assets from children, but Gov. Martin O’Malley and the head of the Maryland Department of Human Resources encourage the practice, going so far as to hire a private company to help obtain Social Security disability (SSI) and survivor benefits (SSDI) from foster children to use as government revenue.
Children’s Social Security benefits are intended to serve the children’s best interests, not to …
Hanford is the most tragic chapter in American Cold War history.
— Stewart Udall secretary of the interior under presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson
How many times have we heard – “Eat your veggies, fruit and cheese, and drink three glasses of milk a day. You’ll grow up strong, healthy, the picture of a gallant, robust American”?
Good advice pre-Ozzie and Harriet days. For Spokane and other cities, …
I AM thinking hard about education, about the corporate control of my state, WA, the corporate control over the pathetic NPR, the absolute pukes for politicians, the control of my own destiny because of the sham of IT, Coders, iPads instead of classrooms, teachers, face-to-face butcher paper work, facing all those people that populate the world, even the gated communities, the urban decay, the bankrupted cities (bull, Detroit, bankrupted?).
John Stanton’s piece is right on, and I write this hurriedly after a 24-hour stint as an on-call teacher and house and medicine and safety watcher over 5 adults with developmental …
Things have been busy in Florida, what with hurricane season, Rick Scott’s campaign to deny food stamps to druggies, and BP’s ad campaign extolling the vacation paradise they’ve wrought in the Gulf. So I’ve been slow to read what was actually issued months ago – a weighty 115-page tome, neither scholarly nor journalistic mais tous les deux, entitled “They Came For The Children.”
It’s the interim report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, that icon and crowning triumph of Stephen Harper’s Canadian majority government. It’s the factual vindication of Harper’s infamous utterance at a G-20 cocktail party: “Canada …
History is a story. That’s why we fight over history. We make sense of ourselves, the world and ourselves in the world through the struggle to tell the truth through stories. Facts have to be contextualised to become the truth. And that truth is a struggle that is constantly fought over. It is not given. And telling stories helps to create debate about that truth. That is why working people should tell their stories. Truth is a class issue. I would appeal to all your readers, especially to young ones, to make their own …
On May 6, 2008, twelve fraudulent voters, dressed as nuns, attempted to cast ballots in the Presidential Primary in Indiana.
Luckily, ten of them were caught, stopped cold by Indiana’s new voter photo ID law. The law had been found to be constitutional by Federal Judge Richard Posner of the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals.
It turns out the nuns that Posner’s ruling turned away were, in fact …nuns. All the sisters had photo drivers licenses, but they had expired (the licenses, not the nuns). The Sisters of the Holy Cross, had, mercifully, given up driving (they were pushing …
The Harper Conservatives have forcefully championed the interests of international investors and corporations, but it has not been enough for the “greed is good” business pundits who earn their living pimping the interests of the rich and powerful.
Last November a Canadian Business headline asked, “Is Canada closed to foreign investment?” while more recently there’s been a number of apoplectic commentaries about Ottawa blocking an Egyptian billionaire from acquiring Winnipeg based MTS Allstream on national security grounds. In a particularly hyperbolic column the National Post’s Andrew Coyne complained: “investors in this country should be on notice. Their assets are protected by …
With the recommencement of nuclear talks between Iran and the six world powers, hopes have been revived that more than a decade of conflict and dispute between the two sides can finally come to an end and the concerns over the possible diversion of Iran’s nuclear activities toward an atomic weapon will be completely allayed.
The international observers hailed the latest round of nuclear negotiations between Iran and the P5+1 (Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States) on October 15 and 16 in Geneva as constructive, calling it a step forward on the path of finding a conclusive and …
by Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers / October 24th, 2013
The story of Fukushima should be on the front pages of every newspaper. Instead, it is rarely mentioned. The problems at Fukushima are unprecedented in human experience and involve a high risk of radiation events larger than any that the global community has ever experienced. It is going to take the best engineering minds in the world to solve these problems and to diminish their global impact.
When we researched the realities of Fukushima in preparation for this article, words like apocalyptic, cataclysmic and Earth-threatening came to mind. But, when we say such things, people react as if we were the …
Signs point to some having prior knowledge October 17 was 'take down' day
by Miles Howe / October 24th, 2013
MONCTON, NB – Coady Stevens, the first of six Mi’kmaq Warrior to appear on charges related to the anti-shale gas encampment along Highway 134, has been denied bail.
As bail hearings today continue for the five remaining incarcerated members of the Mi’kmaq Warriors Society, enough information is beginning to surface to suggest that the vicious pre-dawn RCMP takedown of the anti-shale gas encampment on the morning of October 17 was a well known fact among some before it happened.
This is not to suggest that these people necessarily knew of the severity or magnitude of the RCMP raid, or even what it …
Recent reports on US drone strikes by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the UN have heightened international awareness about civilian casualties and have resulted in new calls for redress. The Amnesty International drone report “Will I be next?” says the US government should ensure that victims of unlawful drone strikes, including family members, have effective access to remedies, including restitution, compensation and rehabilitation. The Human Rights Watch report “Between a Drone and Al-Qaeda” calls on the US government to “implement a system of prompt and meaningful compensation for civilian loss of life, injury, and property …
Remarks at New York University forum with NYACT (New Yorkers Against the Cornell-Technion Partnership)
The primary problem with weaponized drones is that the weapons murder people. And they murder people in a way that looks more like murder to a lot of observers than other forms of military murder do — such as murder by indiscriminate bombing or artillery or infantry or dropping white phosphorous on people. When President Obama looks through a list of men, women, and children at a Tuesday terror meeting, and picks which ones to murder, and has them murdered, you can call it a war …
Vermont Progressives Aiming to Shoot Down F-35 Stealth Bomber
by William Boardman / October 23rd, 2013
Vermont Democrats remain solid military boondoggle boosters
The latest high-ranking Vermont Democrat to push for prime military pork in her state is Burlington city attorney Eileen Blackwood, who released a slippery legal memo October 17 that is as cleverly political as it is narrowly legal, leading to widespread, obtuse media coverage along the lines of Vermont Public Radio’s simply false headline: “City Report: Burlington Can’t Block F-35.”
Blackwood’s “preliminary analysis” was a memo “responding to some of the legal concerns raised” in the course of three years’ “public discussion of the Air Force’s consideration of basing the F-35 jets at the Burlington …
Obama’s global terror campaign is not only dependent upon his drone assassination program, but increasingly it has come to rely upon the deployment of Special Operations forces in countries all over the world, reportedly between 70 and 120 countries at any one time. As Obama has sought to draw down the large-scale ground invasions of countries (as Bush pursued in Afghanistan and Iraq), he has escalated the world of ‘covert warfare,’ largely outside the oversight of Congress and the public. One of the most important agencies in this global “secret war” is the Joint Special Operations Command, or JSOC for …
The month of October brings an unwelcome anniversary for Jacqueline Olonville.
A 54 year-old mother and grandmother who sells plaintains by the road that runs through the village of Bocozelle, Haiti, Olonville was one of over half a million Haitians who were sickened by the massive cholera outbreak of October, 2010. Olonville’s affliction followed cholera’s frightening, filthy pattern—severe stomach pain followed by uncontrollable diarrhea and vomiting. Fortunately, she reached a hospital in time.
When I spoke to her during a visit last year, I asked Olonville if she knew people in her community who did not survive the kolera. “Wi. Anpil!” she …
