Imagine universities all across the United States paying employees millions of dollars a year to expose their students to potential brain damage and dementia.
Imagine millions of people, parked in front of their financed 56″ flat screens, in the comfort of their heavily mortgaged homes, screaming for joy as children slowly turn each other’s gray matter to mush.
Imagine thousands of adults gleefully encouraging these spectacles, knowing full well they are sacrificing the futures of thousands of teenagers, in order pocket the profits.
Is football child abuse? Probably. Twelve year old boys have no idea about the potential brain damage full contact football …
Doha — The warm waters of the Gulf look quiet from where I am sitting, but such tranquility hardly reflects the conflicts this region continues to generate. The euphoria of the so-called Arab Spring is long gone, but what remains is a region that is rich with resources and burdened with easily manipulated history that is in a state of reckless transition. No one can see what the future will look like, but the possibilities are ample, and possibly tragic.
In my many visits to the region, I have never encountered such a lack of clarity regarding the future, despite the …
This must-see short documentary by David Sheen and Max Blumenthal is about the appalling treatment of African migrants in Israel.
The film reveals a most ugly manifestation of Jewish ethnocentrism, exclusivism and bigotry, but you may notice that none of the Israeli racists in the film identifies as a ‘Zionist’ or showed any concern for the Zionist nature of Israel. Instead they, and without exception, express their deep concern with the ‘Jewish State’ its ‘Jewish character’ and matters pertaining to the Jewish religion and Jewish ‘purity’.
We see MK Ben Ari on camera saying “We are not an immigration State, … our …
The Palestinian Government stressed that the Palestinian people and resistance have the right to defend themselves by all possible means against Israel’s undeterred war crimes and aggressions.
Spokesman for the Palestinian Government, Ihab AL-Ghusain, stated on his facebook page “No one can deny the Palestinians thinking of new ways to confront the high-tech military apparatus of the Israeli occupation.”
The Gaza Strip citizens had been subjected to two wars and thus entitled to defend themselves, Ghusain said, adding that “digging tunnels is a defensive tactic innovated by the Palestinian resistance.”
AL-Ghusain found odd the UN Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs Jeffrey Feltman’s statement that …
Modern thought control is dependent on subliminal communication. Messages influencing key perceptions are delivered unseen, unnoticed, with minimal public awareness of what is happening or why.
For example, journalists tell us that Hugo Chavez was “divisive”, that Julian Assange and Edward Snowden are “narcissistic”, that George Galloway is “controversial”. But beneath their literal meaning, these adjectives communicate a hidden message: that these individuals are acceptable targets for negative media judgement; they are fair game.
By contrast, Barack Obama is never described as “controversial” or “divisive”. David Cameron is not a “rightist prime minister”. Why? Because the rules of …
It was recently announced that a royal charter is about to be created which will supposedly regulate the press. According to an article in The Times, “Industry representatives said that a royal charter agreed by the three major parties yesterday… was unacceptable.”
There’s much in this story to consider.
This charter came about as the result of an inquiry into the “culture, practice and ethics of the press”, chaired by Lord Leveson and which took place during 2011/12. Dubbed The Leveson Inquiry, it was the result of revelations in 2011 of some of the deeply reprehensible methods used …
There’s a dark side to the flurry of reports and testimony on drones, helpful as they are in many ways. When we read that Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch oppose drone strikes that violate international law, some of us may be inclined to interpret that as a declaration that, in fact, drone strikes violate international law. On the contrary, what these human rights groups mean is that some drone strikes violate the law and some do not, and they want to oppose the ones that do.
Which are which? Even their best researchers can’t tell you. Human Rights Watch looked …
One of the things I’ve noticed over the last decade has been the rise of a certain fan culture and fan perspective that has replaced critical analysis of culture and artworks. It is the valorizing of commercial corporate “entertainment” in a language of cute post gonzo self referential infantilism. It is, usually anyway, the erasing of any analysis of ideology. Art is entertainment and hence, somehow, political analysis is just buzz kill.
Essentially this new progressive critic is more a reviewer, a consumer advocate. Like a restaurant reviewer. There is little that goes beyond a discussion of plot, and rarely, if …
Jovanka Broz is dead. Her legacy, like so much in the former Yugoslavia, was a troubled one. It is mournful, heavy with a blanket of nostalgia. “With Broz’s death,” cited Serbian Prime Minister Ivica Da?i?, “we are left without one of the most reliable witnesses of our former country’s history.” He also acknowledged the other side of the matter: the vengeful “historical injustice” done to Broz (Blic Online, October 21).
Broz was one of those extraordinary creatures made extraordinary by history. She was born Jovanka Budisavljevi? in December 1924 in Lika, Croatia. She joined the partisans at the age of 17, …
In some parts of Israel, voters in Tuesday’s elections will be casting a ballot not on how well their municipality is run but on how to stop “Arabs” moving in next door, how to prevent mosques being built in their community, or how to “save” Jewish women from the clutches of Arab men.
While the far-right’s rise in Israeli national politics has made headlines, less attention has been paid to how this has played out in day-to-day relations between Israeli Jews and the country’s Palestinian-Arab minority, comprising a fifth of the population.
According to analysts and residents, Israel’s local elections have brought …
by Paul Gottinger and Ken Klippenstein / October 21st, 2013
Captain Phillips is a movie about the 2009 hijacking of the Maersk Alabama commercial container ship by Somali pirates. Pirates, one of Americans’ most beloved figures—consider the popularity of the recent Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy—are loathsome savages in this film. They kill their own, abandon their own, don’t aid their own when they are injured, and are portrayed as generally lacking in even the most rudimentary forms of human compassion. By contrast, Tom Hanks, who plays the eponymous Captain Phillips, urges the Somali pirates to treat their wounded; expresses paternal concern for his captors—“What are you, sixteen, seventeen? You’re …
Recently I read On Western Terrorism: from Hiroshima to Drone Warfare, published in 2013 by Pluto Press here in London, and consisting of a series of conversations between Chomsky and the Czech filmmaker, journalist, and author, Andre Vltchek, who is now a naturalized American citizen. Vltchek in an illuminating Preface describes his long and close friendship with Chomsky, and explains that these fascinating conversations took place over the course of two days, and was filmed with the intention of producing a documentary. The book is engaging throughout, with my only …
The Nobel Peace Prize brings another surprise — or farce — depending on your view. In relatively recent history, there has been Henry Kissinger (1973) architect supreme of murderous assaults on sovereign nations; the United Nations (2001) whose active warmongering or passive, silent holocausts (think UN embargoes) make shameful mockery of the aspirational founding words.
In 2002 it was Jimmy Carter, whose poisonous “Carter Doctrine” of 1980 included declaring the aim of American control of the Persian Gulf as a “US vital interest”, justified “by any means necessary.” 2005 saw the Award go to the International Atomic Energy Agency, which promotes …
Two unions—SEIU (Service Employees International Union) Local 1021 and ATU (Amalgamated Transit Union) Local 1555—went on strike against BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) on Friday, October 18, after a week of marathon bargaining sessions broke down without a settlement.
There was a point in negotiations, before the SEIU and ATU were reluctantly forced to pull the plug, when it looked like a compromise was possible. But BART management, like so many predatory companies in the U.S., insisted on doing its “copy-cat” number, demanding severe and unacceptable give-backs from the union.
The conventional wisdom governing these tactics is …
Life is good if you’re a member of the Gulf Counter-revolution Club, officially known as Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). You can crush the Arab Spring at will. You can hire goons all across dar-al-Islam to advance a sectarian Sunni-Shi’ite divide. You can be deeply implicated in the destruction of Syria. You can treat a significant part of your own population as third-class citizens.
Not only you get away with it; you get rewarded with expensive toys. And in one particular case – Saudi Arabia – even with a two-year seat at the UN Security Council.
US relations with Venezuela illustrate the specific mechanisms with which an imperial power seeks to sustain client states and overthrow independent nationalist governments. By examining US strategic goals and its tactical measures, we can set forth several propositions about (1) the nature and instruments of imperial politics, (2) the shifting context and contingencies influencing the successes and failures of specific policies, and (3) the importance of regional and global political alignments and priorities. ((James Petras and Henry Veltmeyer, Imperialism and Capitalism in the 21st Century (Ashgate: London 2013).))
Developing divisions
Participation is a cornerstone of the democratic ideal. It sits alongside those other marginalized tenets: social justice, freedom, and equality. Forgotten principles in a world of corporate politics driven by the quest for endless economic growth and maximum market share. Hailed as the world’s largest democracy and touted as ‘an emerging economic powerhouse’, India’s economy is beginning to cough and splutter with the rupee trading at an all time low, and the ‘current account’ showing an $88 billion deficit.
A decade of 9% growth has created 55 US$ billionaires, a new and burgeoning middle class and a vast …
[Note: Since the lifting of the federal court gag order on October 2, Ladar Levison and his company, Lavabit, have been getting some media attention (including a somewhat snide and incomplete story on page one of the New York Times). What follows in an effort to reconstruct at least the outline of a personal nightmare inflicted by our government on a small business owner who had done no wrong, even in the government’s eyes – at least until he started taking his constitutional rights seriously.]
The Fourth Amendment of the U. S. Constitution is anti-police-state
I am now hot on the trail of another story, around smart justice, those alternatives to counties and municipalities building more unconstitutional prisons for profit, prisons for putting in jail people who have very little resemblance to criminals. You know, recently houseless, or those with some big life force that has jiggered with their emotional and psychological anti-tilting qualities in their heads that sometimes take them off the “path.” You know, people in transition and people facing problems, much of them created by a society that scoffs at the very real and only-life saving philosophy and action plan: “It takes …
Reuters recently released an investigative report on the practice of “re-homing” adopted children. The five-part series reverberated throughout media outlets exposing a dirty little secret within the adoption community. The articles describe adoptive parents, who – sometimes within months, even days, of adopting – become disenchanted or overwhelmed and turn to Internet websites, social media, and discussion boards where they place ads offering up their unwanted sons and daughters to total strangers willing to take them off their hands.
Within hours or days of meeting online, trade-offs occur in hotel and MacDonald’s parking lots. Terrified, innocent children are dropped off …
From the narrow windows of New York’s Metropolitan Correctional Center, 24-year-old anarchist Jerry Koch can see the last place he stood as a free person.
The federal courthouse at 500 Pearl Street is a familiar setting where Koch spent much of his time over the past several years providing legal support to New York activists. During Occupy Wall Street, Koch gained a reputation as the go-to person for help contacting lawyers, raising bail, and organizing supporters to be there when someone had a hearing or was released. This, his supporters say, is why he now has a view of the …
In Canada it is illegal to restrict the sale of property to certain ethnic or religious groups but many of our business people and politicians promote an organization that does exactly that in Israel.
Into the 1950s restrictive land covenants in many exclusive neighbourhoods and communities across Canada made it impossible for Jews, Blacks, Chinese, Aboriginals and others deemed to be non-’white’ to buy property. It was not until after World War II that these policies began to be successfully challenged in court.
In 1948 Annie Noble decided to sell a cottage in the exclusive Beach O’ Pines subdivision on Lake Huron …
For over two weeks now, a coalition of people including local Mi’kmaq residents, and anglophone and Acadian settlers, have blockaded the road leading to an equipment compound leased to South Western Energy or SWN.
To start, click on the above video box.
SWN is a Texas based energy company, that has been attempting to conduct natural gas exploration in the area’s shale formations. It is believed that if significant deposits of gas are found, SWN would then employ the controversial extraction method of hydraulic fracturing or fracking. But since this past summer, protests, direct actions and sabotage have thwarted their work, …
US and world political and economic leaders are faced with what they describe as a ‘systemic catastrophe’: the inability to pay global creditors, including domestic and foreign banks, investors and governments, who hold $16.7 trillion in US Treasury notes. There is a related crisis: the government cannot secure passage of a budget to finance its military and civilian agencies and activities, including large-scale payments to military contractors, the financing of business, agriculture and banking operations and social programs. The raising of the debt-ceiling is central to the functioning of the financial ruling class as it extracts hundreds …
Why are greenhouse gas emissions not being drastically curtailed? As carbon dioxide levels rise, temperatures rise, oceans become more acidic, polar ice caps melt, sea levels rise, the atmosphere absorbs more water. Floods, hurricanes and droughts become more frequent and more destructive.
Science makes it clear that global warming is caused by the burning of fossil fuels—coal, oil, natural gas—and biofuels.
In September 2013 scientists on the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released their conclusion: the burning of fossil fuels at current levels will lead to devastating warming within this century. In 2012, the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Study reached the …
by Medea Benjamin and Pam Bailey / October 17th, 2013
The negotiations this week in Geneva between Iran and the “P5+1” (the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council — Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States — plus Germany) offer a promising vehicle for avoiding another destructive war. The talks came on the heels of a virtual uprising by the American people that stopped President Barack Obama’s plan to attack Syria, clearly demonstrating their desire to solve conflicts at the negotiation table rather than at the point of a gun.
However, Israel and its allies in the U.S. Congress continue to lobby against a deal that would …
When the Coders come marching home again, Hurrah! Hurrah! We’ll give them a hearty welcome then Hurrah! Hurrah! The unemployed men will cheer and the boys and girls will Tweet The ladies they will all turn on their apps And we’ll all feel gay and dead when the Coders come marching home.
Data-data-data-. Big data. How many ways to study, self-correct, study, crunch numbers, survey, monkey-around with more data, report data, white paper the things, have conferences, daily meetings on data, and new ways to collect data. Oh, the Coders are doing their job, helping the Administrative Class and the Gates Foundation and …
Is the U.S. Government working on a program to…well…program the way you view religion?
A whistleblower who has worked on that program says yes and he wants you to know exactly what has been going on.
The first step towards truth is to be informed.
http://youtu.be/19u2twNseXo
If I told you that the Defense Department was using taxpayer dollars to learn how to influence people with religious beliefs in order to control those beliefs, would it really surprise you?
Would you think that I am a tin foil hat wearing conspiracy theorist?
Would you care if I told you that the program was aimed at controlling fundamentalist …
