The servant or home helper is the fodder of gossip, a point of permanent distraction for their hirers. A common assumption in those circles: When the help abscond or accuse, it must be because they have wronged their employers, rather than the other way around. The old excuse among those employing Indonesian maids in Malaysia was that they were obviously flirting with the young man at the grocers, or simply lazy. Half the fun of such employ is engaging in permanent complaint. Servants in the home economy have provided rich pickings for the upper tables for centuries.
These pilots are not on our land, but the ways the culls are being carried out is increasingly worrying and we are now concerned for the credibility and usefulness of the exercise. This sense of shifting scientific sands is a real issue for us, particularly if faced with any future proposition for wider culling.
— Patrick Begg, National Trust rural enterprise director
The beach-loads of sand that the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra) and Natural England have shifted in pursuit of killing badgers over the last year or two (and in the case of the National Farmers Union (NFU), …
It’s that Ebeneezer and Grinch time of year. Hooverville. The great American fat crocodile tear with stories of legless troops getting a bag of groceries and free big screen TV and compact car. All those bags under our collective eyes watching brute felon sports professionals (sic) run by their brutish Mafiosa coaches and owners. We are ready for that extra 15 pounds, those romps in those wonderlands of Consumopithecus Anthropocene union-busting box stores, those nanoseconds looking at the homeless, pennies for their crimes. We will feel good about Tis the Season. America is back on track falling off …
but they still believe the Sun revolves around the Earth . . . and, well, that US of Amerika is the best country since, well, Eden!
“Of all our studies, history is best qualified to reward all research.”
-Malcolm X [el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz]
“If you don’t know history, it is as if you were born yesterday.”
-Howard Zinn
The new hyper rich — the IT-AI-Robotics-Virtual-Info/Data/Surveillance Jammers with their Tweeter IPO orgasm and bit-coin realm of worthless junk trading …
In desperation, in December a campaign was launched appealing to you to help release the suffering people of Gaza from the genocidal strangulation of the Israeli seven year blockade.
There is no world leader other than yourself who possesses the moral strength, the political freedom and the spiritual imperative to help Gaza. There is no one of global influence to whom the Gazans can turn except Your Holiness.
Through your words and actions, we see the same star that heralded the advent of Gandhi, of Mandela, of Jesus. It’s light — the spiritual simplicity of love for the human …
On December 17, 2013, the ambassador of Saudi Arabia to Great Britain published an op-ed in the New York Times accusing the West of not having confronted Syria and Iran head-on. An ambassador is traditionally the mouthpiece of his government. But the used political rhetoric indicates that he even acts as a megaphone of the neocons, certain Zionist circles and their rubber stamps in the US Congress, which are very critical of Obama’s policy towards Syria and Iran. Finally, the US and its Western allies should know what the Saudi Arabian regime thinks about Obama and what it …
There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class – the rich class – that’s making war, and we’re winning.
– Warren Buffett (2006)
In the spring of 2004, amid the thaw of a frigid New York City winter, a brave group of Starbucks baristas began organizing. Like most service-sector employees in the United States, they were faced with the daunting task of trying to live on less-than-livable wages. Inconsistent hours, inadequate or non-existent health insurance, and less-than-dignified working conditions paled in comparison to their inability to obtain the most basic necessities. Apartment meetings, backroom discussions, and after-hours pep talks – all …
One of the most meaningful Christmas stories that I have ever heard came from my Vancouver, Canada friend, Reverend Kevin Annett. His story is titled “Nativity” and is printed further below.
Kevin spent a week at my home in Duluth, Minnesota a couple of years ago. The week was spent giving scheduled radio and film interviews, giving informal talks over meals, delivering a major speech to the Lake Superior Freethinkers, conducting forums at churches and answering questions following a Zinema 2 screening of his award-winning documentary, Unrepenant. It was a productive week, although local media chose not to cover any …
It’s been over two years since I wrote this Manifesto. The Occupy movement was in full swing; they had Wall Street occupied and America hypnotized. It hadn’t yet branched out into all areas of American life, as it has done since, in an attempt to rehumanize the way society, business, health-care, and pretty much everything else works.
Occupy everything. And this was what I was trying to prove, through theory — that not only is it correct, from all points of view, to occupy everything, but it also required of us. That just as capitalism (or corporatism, if we must …
The intellectual dishonesty of Israel’s supporters is appalling. But in some odd way, it is also understandable. How else could they respond to the massively growing Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign?
When a non-violent campaign – empowered by thousands of committed civil society activists from South Africa to Sweden and most countries in between – leads a moral campaign to isolate and hold into account an Apartheid country like Israel, all that the supporters of the latter can do is spread lies and misinformation. There can be no other strategy, unless of course, Israel’s friends get their own moment of …
In recent days, US and European diplomats have been engaged in a frenzy of activity on the Israeli-Palestinian front, before they settle down for the usual two-week Christmas hibernation.
A sense of urgency looms because Washington is supposed to unveil next month its so-called “framework proposal” for the creation of a Palestinian state, in a last desperate effort to break the logjam in negotiations. For this reason, the outlines of the US vision of an agreement are finally coming into focus. And, as many expected, the picture looks bleak for the Palestinians.
John Kerry, the US secretary of state, who has invested …
Brother Gilad Atzmon recently wrote a piece entitled “The Sycophantic Palestinian Solidarity Movement.” The article deals with famous musician Roger Waters and his criticism of the treatment of Palestinians by Israeli Jews and the subsequent fallout.
Among the supposed crimes of Waters was using the “J word” — as Atzmon refers to it. A special rule seems to be in play whereby Jews must not be referred to as Jews, and when referring to Jews (or or non-Jews) who support the state of Israel, the the term to be used is “Zionists.” I do not recall a similar distinctive rule …
Peter O’Toole has died and I’d like to draw a little attention to three of his movies: The Ruling Class, The Stunt Man and My Favorite Year.
Take a little of the madness of his title character in Lawrence of Arabia, put a magnifying glass on it the size of the sun and you’ll be eyeball to eyeball with O’Toole’s Jack Gurney character in 1972’s The Ruling Class, a Python-esque extravaganza labeled variously as a cult classic, a devastating social satire and the blackest of black comedies. Gurney is a schizophrenic nobleman who inherits a peerage, believes he’s God, sleeps upright …
"All governments lie", the US journalist I.F. Stone once noted, with Iraq the most blatant example in modern times. But Syria is another recent criminal example of Stone’s dictum. An article in the current edition of London Review of Books by Seymour Hersh makes a strong case that US President Obama misled the world over the infamous chemical weapons attack near Damascus on August 21 this year. Hersh is the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who exposed the My Lai atrocity committed by …
“The world has forgotten Gaza, its women and children. The blockade is as bad as the war; it’s like a slow death for everyone in Gaza. We are paying the price for disputes between different powers. Isn’t that shameful? The world has lost its humanity,” said Attiyeh Abu Khousa, a resident of Gaza.
At this time of year the mainstream media abounds with stories of how ordinary people across the world are preparing for the upcoming Christmas holiday. One story people will not hear about is the desperate plight of the 2 million people trapped within the Gaza Strip where …
“This year is likely to be among the top 10 warmest on record, according to the World Meteorological Organization.” ((Roger Harrabi (environment analyst), 2013 ‘One of Warmest’ on Record, BBC News, Nov. 13, 2013.))
According to Michel Jarraud, Secretary-General of the World Meteorological Organization, “All of the warmest years have been since 1998, and this year once again continues the underlying, long-term trend. The coldest years now are warmer than the hottest years before 1998.” ((Roger Harrabi (environment analyst), 2013 ‘One of Warmest’ on Record, BBC News, Nov. 13, 2013.))
As a consequence: “The president of the World Bank, Jim …
On this date 360 years ago, Oliver Cromwell was made Lord Protector of England. What does that have to do with Christmas, you may ask? Well, the parliament of puritanical Protestants that he led tried to ban Christmas for being un-Christian.
In 1645, four years before the execution of King Charles I, which ushered in the Cromwellian republic, a group of MPs created the Directory of Public Worship to purge the calendar not only of Christmas but of all holy days, while enforcing strict observance of Sunday worship. This hard-assed animosity toward Christmas (and human revelry in general) did not arise …
Precaution. Stop shifting the baseline. Stop mucking around because you have no common sense but plenty of computer engineering ADD-ADHD or what have you, on that autism spectrum. What have you, stop enlisting these money changers and game changers to define community.
The 1998 Wingspread Declaration is typical of precaution in the sciences:
“When an activity raises threats of harm to human health or the environment, precautionary measures should be taken even if some cause and effect relationships are not fully established scientifically. In this context the proponent of an activity, rather than the public, should bear the burden …
Creeping annexation, ethnic cleansing and ‘the politics of fragmentation’ inflicted by criminals who strut the world stage and thumb their noses at international law.
As the international conspiracy to rob Palestinians of their freedom and homeland is exposed a little more each day, observers and activists still puzzle over the duplicity of the United Nations in the decades-long illegal occupation and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian Territories, not to mention the true intent of Palestinian leaders. So when Richard Falk, professor of international law at Princeton and UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in Occupied Palestine, visited Norwich recently, I took …
MEXICO CITY — Are we living in a time when ordinary people have forgotten their history, when all those who fail to remember the past will be condemned to relive its harsh reality?
I thought of this as two Canadian tourists marched with thousands along the Paseo de la Reforma last week to demonstrate opposition to the energy “reform” bill being debated by Mexican legislators. The new law would allow foreign oil giants into the country for the first time in 75 years.
Certainly the people who had come from every corner of the country to form a human chain around …
Israel ruled guilty of genocide; the nuclear elephant in that region; and the ‘armies’ recruited to doctor Wikipedia. Seek truth from facts with leading war crimes prosecutor Professor Francis Boyle, Asia Times correspondent Pepe Escobar, top saxophonist and former Israeli citizen Gilad Atzmon, and UN Human Rights Rapporteur Professor Richard Falk.
Turkey is a secular state. So claim its government and nearly all mainstream Western media. They are mistaken.
In civilized, democratic countries, secularism means not only a respectful separation between church and state but also freedom of religion. As we shall demonstrate, Turkish policies have long been the antithesis of secularism.
The Turkish government massively supports and funds Islam – specifically Sunni Islam – inside the country. Turkey simultaneously represses religions such as Alevism, and bullies and persecutes indigenous Christians, most of whom it liquidated in 20th century genocides. Moreover, it uses Islam to project Turkish political power into Europe, Asia, and …
In science, a theory is abandoned or substantially modified if it does not concur with the emerging facts, fails to predict important events, or is contradicted by experiments. That, alas, does not seem to apply to economic theories.
Free-market (neo-liberal) capitalism has been the dominant type of capitalism for the last three decades; it failed spectacularly to predict the 2008 global economic crash, the second largest economic crisis in history, after the great depression.
Many of its adherents were asserting before the crash that the market had correctly valued property, shares, derivatives and other exotic products that the “moneymen” …
There are conflicting accounts of how New Amsterdam’s Waal Straat got its name, but the generally accepted version is that the name was derived from an earthen wall on the north side of a footpath that straggled between Broad Street and the East River. The frugal Dutch settlers, with scads of experience in keeping out the Zuyder Zee, threw up the wall to keep out the English, who’d settled somewhere …
by The Real News Network (TRNN) / December 15th, 2013
Kevin Zeese: U.S. Trade Representative wants to keep the public in the dark because TPP will threaten food safety and raise drug prices, and many Asian countries involved in negotiations are also turned off by the deal.
Last week, Congressmen Walter Jones and Stephen Lynch introduced a resolution urging President Obama to declassify the legendary “28 redacted pages of the Joint Intelligence Committee Inquiry of 9/11” issued in late 2002, which point to official Saudi involvement in 9/11. After much lobbying, and under an oath of secrecy, Jones was allowed to read the censored document: “I was absolutely shocked by what I read. What was so surprising was that those whom we thought we could trust really disappointed me.”
PNAC (Project for a New American Century) published a “grand strategy” in 2000 calling for the US to maintain its …
It seems we in the west no longer believe in ourselves, and our capacity to generate prosperity for all. Is this surprising given the dismal state of the European and American economies? In other words, since the 2008 financial crash people around the world but especially in Europe and America, don’t see the future as being any better for the next generation. There is a loss of trust in the system itself it seems. In this sense 2013 is the year Globalisation has gone bust.
According to an article in the Financial Times, world wide surveys were conducted which show …
Through its provisions, Public Act 436 establishes a new form of local government, previously unknown within the United States or the State of Michigan, where the people within local municipalities may be governed by an unelected official who establishes local law by decree.
— Complaint for Injunctive Relief, Phillips et al. v. Snyder, U.S. District Court for Eastern Michigan
We are a country of law…. The government cannot just abrogate contracts.
– Obama economic adviser Larry Summers, quoted by Matt Taibbi discussing the sanctity of contracts in “Looting the Pension Funds”
With the cost of tuition at four-year colleges and universities growing out of control, it is no surprise people are more interested in two-year degrees. Let’s take a look at how popular associate degrees are and how they are paying off.
