U.S. hopes of winning more influence over Syria’s divided rebel movement faded Wednesday after 11 of the biggest armed factions repudiated the Western-backed political opposition coalition and announced the formation of an alliance dedicated to creating an Islamist state. The al-Qaeda-affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra, designated a terrorist organization by the United States, is the lead signatory of the new group. ((Washington Post, September 26, 2013.))
Pity the poor American who wants to be a good citizen, wants to understand the world and his country’s role in it, wants to believe in the War on Terrorism, wants to believe that his government …
How important is it to Japan’s economy to continue selling Toyotas, Hondas and Nissans? How crucial is it to its job market? How many primary and secondary jobs in the manufacturing sector has the auto industry created? Are the rewards of sustaining and expanding the Japanese auto industry worth the risk of occasionally getting caught cheating?…
Netanyahu’s speech at the UN General Assembly was a political impudence. He showed the world that he has not understood the signs of the times. He seemed out of place with diplomacy and still caught up in aggressive rhetoric. He threatened Iran with an attack. If no other country wants to participate in a raid, Israel will do it alone, he said. President Obama should be forewarned and make clear that the U. S. would not help Israel in a war of aggression. The U. S. should not accept any longer to be jerked around by a politically deranged leader …
Having endured an unreal week of “checks” — more like unhinged minority checkmates, defenders of majority rule must yearn for those legendary “balances” that save us from rightwing extortion. What felt first like a mugging escalated into a national home invasion, like a marathon House filibuster mercifully absent non-stop talking on Cruz control. Thank goodness, the president banned domestic torture.
If nothing breaks, thuggish House rubes trump the Senate, the White House, federal agencies, and a growing majority aghast at leaps off the cliff solely to dramatize one’s purity. Who let the howling dogs in? Behind colorful depictions for this new …
Reports are that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is engaged in a massive, covert military buildup.An article in the Associated Press in February confirmed an open purchase order by DHS for 1.6 billion rounds of ammunition. According to an op-ed in Forbes, that’s enough to sustain an Iraq-sized war for over twenty years. DHS has also acquired heavily armored tanks, which have been seen roaming the streets. Evidently somebody in government is expecting some serious civil unrest. The question is, why?
Recently revealed statements by former UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown at the height of the banking …
As They Get Sick, Age, and Die, Will Downwinders Tell The Story of Nuclear Dread
. . . a history of tribes, farmers, workers, downwinders & the powerful push to make Tri-Cities a community rising from the ashes of WW II, the Cold War and an atomic mess now called, “The Hanford Clean-up”
There are over 40 miles of unlined trenches with radioactive and chemical wastes – picture I-90 as a trench fifty feet deep filled with radioactive wastes from Spokane to Ritzville, or I-5 from Seattle to Marysville. Then picture your federal government refusing to do anything to clean it …
One of the best things in life is feeling like you are accomplishing something bigger, more enlightening and grander in the scheme of all busted-usury based interchanges with fellow humans and all the other species and geomorphic things that make this planet, a, pretty darn unique, and, b, the water planet. Hmm, wonder why Lovelock developed that single bio-organism theory, Gaia Theory?
Nothing big, hanging out at Terrain, Saturday, Oct. 5, in Spokane …. Except, after leaving Spokane Summer of 2011, I still run into people I know, I have taught, I have agitated against and agitated, for their own damned …
Recently, Richard Stallman published an article in Wired about Free and Open Source Software and its alternative, “Proprietary Software”. As he has for 30 years now, he vigorously called for the use and defense of FOSS and warned about the nefarious nature of Proprietary.
As if the worthy Stallman needed an illustration to dramatize his point, the Adobe Corporation last week announced that hackers had stolen from its servers the password and credit card information, of almost three million of its users as well as a huge amount of code from some of its programs — probably ColdFusion and Adobe Acrobat. That theft …
The Government will neither propose nor implement measures which may infringe the rules on the free movement of capital. Neither the State nor other public bodies will conclude shareholder agreements with the intention or effect of hindering the free movement of capital or influence the management or control of companies. The Government will neither initiate nor introduce any voting or acquisition caps, and it will not establish any disproportionate and non-justifiable veto rights or any other form of special rights in privatized companies. No further special rights will be introduced in the course of future privatization projects.
In the first part of this essay series on ‘Empire Under Obama,’ I will aim to establish some fundamental premises of modern imperialism, or what is often referred to as ‘international relations,’ ‘geopolitics’, or ‘foreign policy.’ Specifically, I will refer to George Orwell’s writing on ‘political language’ in order to provide a context in which the discourse of imperialism may take place out in the open with very little comprehension on the part of the public which consumes the information; and further, to draw upon Noam Chomsky’s suggestion of understanding international relations as the application of ‘Mafia Principles’ to foreign …
Since the general election last May, UMNO has been redefining it’s electoral base as ‘Malay’ and native groups across the country, merging them under the umbrella of ‘bumiputra’. If UMNO can successfully capture this constituency, it would garner enough votes across the nation for the party to continue governing Malaysia into the foreseeable future.
A recent statement by Sabah Mulfti Bungsu @Aziz Jaafar calling for the government to classify all Muslim indigenous people as “Malays” seems to support this view. This has attracted criticism from some local components of the ruling state Barisan Nasional coalition, as it ignores the differing …
RT — Recent outbursts of violence in Kenya and Nigeria shocked the world, but with the influx of guns from destabilized countries, and instability, which is a direct result of Western neo-colonialism, the situation could get much worst.
The African continent is being ravished as it was in the darkest days of direct colonialism.
There are no exact statistics available, but at least 6 million people have died in war-ravaged DR Congo since 1995. But some say that 10 million is a much more precise figure. There, Rwanda and Uganda, two staunch allies of the West, are plundering with absolute impunity, and …
On October 6, 2013, the Israeli Government decided to scrap the Haifa Chemicals Ammonia Tank near Haifa, and instead to build a new tank and probably also an ammonia production plant near the Negev Nuclear Research Center in Dimona.
Haifa Chemicals Ammonia TankThe laconic announcement stated also that this will happen until 2017. Yet, the importance of the step was signaled by its being promoted directly by the Prime Minister Bureau together with the Ministry of Environmental Protection. This is a quite unusual level of involvement …
Google and YouTube Suppress Controversial 9/11 Truth?
by Elizabeth Woodworth / October 6th, 2013
With polls consistently showing that approximately 50% of Canadians and Americans doubt the official story of 9/11, the feat of keeping the lid on a public debate for over 12 years has been nothing short of miraculous.
This article presents a simple case study showing that this miracle is being performed with the assistance of Google and YouTube search engine interference.
On September 8, 2013, the popular Russia Today “Truthseeker” program, with over a million subscribers on YouTube, ((The number of subscribers may be seen on any episode of “Truthseeker” — by searching YouTube for “RT Truthseeker.” Russia Today’s television outlets are available …
Wandering around so much, I’m constantly among strangers, in completely unfamiliar neighborhoods. Though these novel situations have opened my eyes much, it would take but a single unfortunate encounter to blacken or close them, even for good, and in Norristown this week, I had to call 911 as I quickly ducked into a store to wait for the cops to save my ass.
Having prowled around Gary, Camden, Newark, Detroit, Oakland and North Philly, all on foot, I still don’t think of Norristown as all that menacing, though, all over town, there are unmistakable signs …
In enlightened Toronto, the National Post, that leading Canadian broadsheet, ever on the alert to report on bad stuff, particularly about foreigners, not long ago struck a blow for freedom, humanity and motherhood, of a sort. Commodore Nadarajah Kuruparan, a Sri Lankan naval officer, had arrived at the Canadian border in August about four years ago with his wife and two children, and made a claim for refugee status.
With typical dispatch, the Canadian Federal border officials and the Federal Court took only three years to review the case, during which time, the …
Minority Government At Work –Why don’t we call these people nihilists?
by William Boardman / October 6th, 2013
Is the phrase “government shutdown” actually an oxymoron?
By the time you read this, the government shutdown may or may not be over, and it may or may not matter to you personally, and it may or may not matter to the country – depending on the criteria you use to assess it. Those who say it’s not actually a “government shutdown” are correct in an obvious way – it’s actually only a partial executive and judicial branch shutdown, with Congress very much alive, well, and dysfunctional as ever.
A real government shutdown would bring the troops home from their dozens (hundreds?) …
Only last month a military strike on Syria looked likely; today it appears that diplomacy has stalled any strike and opened up a potential space for dialogue. It was a moment that changed, if only slightly, the dynamics of the war in Syria.
A little over 200km from Damascus lies a city that is crying out for a similar change in political dynamics, yet Jerusalem currently hosting direct peace talks between Israeli and Palestinian negotiators, will not see any change in conversational space. Twenty years since the Oslo accords were signed, a fair and viable peace agreement appears to have dissipated. …
I became aware of Mr. Hammond’s case through the 2012 defining Rolling Stonearticle on him. I saw a young person full of idealism and a sense for justice, which are admirable qualities in anyone. The ending remark of the article summarizes how I see him. It reads: “[Hammond] was an idealist who even after being jailed, kept fighting at every occasion, and he never betrayed himself.” This statement captures the essence of why I support leniency for Mr. Hammond.
Hammond has helped the public become aware of the insidious surveillance network that has been conducted in the dark by …
First, the good news. American hegemony is over. The bully has been subdued. We cleared the Cape of Good Hope, symbolically speaking, in September 2013. With the Syrian crisis, the world has passed a key forking of modern history. It was touch and go, just as risky as the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. The chances for total war were high, as the steely wills of America and Eurasia had crossed in the Eastern Mediterranean. It will take some time until the realisation of what we’ve gone through seeps in: it is normal for events of such magnitude. The turmoil …
“The next mass extinction may have already begun.” — IPSO
The International Programme on the State of the Ocean (IPSO) State of the Ocean Report d/d October 3, 2013 was released this week. The accompanying IPSO press release states: “Latest Review of Science Reveals Ocean in Critical State from Cumulative Impacts.”
Considering the conservative bias of scientists, who require nearly 100% proof before making definitive statements, “Critical State” is not good news, and as stated in the report, the bad news extends across all spectrum of marine life, starting at the base of the food chain, marine phytoplankton.
I remember reading the New York Times review of Bill Ayers’ first book Fugitive Days while sitting on a curb in Greenwich Village on September 11, 2001. The haze from the demolished towers hung on the air as thick as the fear felt by almost every person in the city that day. After reading the review, I thought to myself about how the book’s release could not have come at a worse time. The destruction of the Twin Towers and the media hullabaloo around that destruction was already overriding any shred of common sense. It would be …
Till kicked and torn and beaten out he lies
And leaves his hold and cackles, groans, and dies.
— John Clare – The Badger
The lanes of Somerset and Gloucestershire are being haunted by people from all walks of life but they all have one thing in common – they want to bring a halt to the killing of badgers. It takes dedication to turn out, night after night, being stopped and questioned by police and, on occasion harassed by those carrying out the highly unpopular badger cull. And other people in other parts of Britain are preparing to do the same if …
Imagine a small country, the size of Massachusetts, with no arable land, irrigation, or permanent crops, nor any forests. The rocky desert is everywhere, falling all the way to the sea.
To ‘cheer one up’, there is the lowest point on land, in Africa (and the third lowest on earth); an eerie crater lake called ‘Lac Assal’ (?155 m). And there are countless rock formations, bare, hostile, and frightening.
This tiny country has one of the most strategic locations on earth, at least from the West’s geopolitical interest’s point of view. It lies between Somalia, Ethiopia and what is often called the …
Just a year ago, near The Hague in Holland, where history has been made more than once in the realm of international justice, a very unusual event took place.
As of this day, a Public International Court of Justice is hereby convened to consider evidence related to charges of crimes against humanity and criminal conspiracy by institutions of church and state, and their fiduciary officers… These crimes occurred not randomly by isolated individuals, but historically, systematically, deliberately, and officially, by express command of heads of church and state according to their laws and customs… This Court is a unique experiment, in …
Lower classes strengthen social but chauvinist opposition
by Wilhelm Langthaler / October 4th, 2013
First: the ruling system has been confirmed though losing consensus. Second: the electoral protest remains within systemic forms. Third: an anti-systemic, let alone social revolutionary momentum continues to be a mere desiderate.
For decades Austria has been ruled by what is called “Big Coalition” between the Social Democrats (SPOe) and the Christian Democrat People’s Party (OeVP) with only few exceptions. Both regime components attempted to claim Merkel’s sweeping electoral victory for themselves. In a certain sense both were right – and nonetheless failed to achieve the same victory.
The SPOe, for two generations the strongest party, is the anchor of (alleged) stability. …
On the evening of Saturday, September 21, 2013, Dr. Prabhjot Singh was attacked in Harlem, New York, by what is estimated to have been around 20 males riding bicycles. The event has been publically labeled a violent hate crime, as Singh described his attackers yelling words such as “terrorist” and “Osama.” Particularly notable is the emergent discourse that has come out of Singh’s attack, as the conversation harkens back to other more noticeable moments of racist violence against Sikhs. These include the murder of Balbir Singh Sodhi in the days following 9/11, as well as the attack of the Oak …
Lest we muddle the matter further, let us define precisely what we mean by the term “Armageddon” because for some, the preposterous has become credulous. It is not in the Christian sense, that is, the coming of apocalyptic destruction of an evil world to be followed by the messiah and his reign over the “kingdom of heaven.” God will not send a monstrous flood to wash away the evil in this world and leave planet Earth to the chosen people (whoever they are, or believe themselves to be,) nor will the “meek inherit the earth.” It is also not what …
