Yesterday was International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. You might have seen it on Google. If so, that would probably be the end of the coverage you saw.
Didn’t hear about it? You’re certainly not alone. Unsurprisingly, the U.S. corporate media was virtually completely silent. We’re talking a remarkably unvariegated silence. I scoured the homepage of every prominent Western corporate news source. There wasn’t a single story about the day. I searched “International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women” on their websites. Nothing.
If one really digs, one can find a few buried stories scattered …
When Barack Obama became president, there were 32,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan. He escalated to over 100,000 troops, plus contractors. Now there are 47,000 troops these five years later. Measured in financial cost, or death and destruction, Afghanistan is more President Obama’s war than President Bush’s. Now the White House is trying to keep troops in Afghanistan until “2024 and beyond.”
Afghan President Hamid Karzai is refusing to sign the deal. Here is his list of concerns. He’d like the U.S. to stop killing civilians and stop kicking in people’s doors at night. He’d like the U.S. to engage in peace …
What’s the logic behind using terrorism as a response to terrorism?
American foreign policy as a state sponsor of terrorism in response to terrorism operates now with a decidedly genocidal logic. Perhaps that logic has been there all along, but with increased American use of drone assassinations in tribal areas on two continents, the logic has become inescapably real, albeit not officially acknowledged or, perhaps, consciously accepted.
Americans are used to hearing their leaders demonize whole populations thought to produce terrorists because “they hate our freedoms” (Pres. Bush, September 20, 2001) or that they are “fueled by a common …
“We will put pressure on America, and our protest will continue if drone attacks are not stopped,” said an angry Imran Khan, leader of Pakistan’s third largest political party, the PTI (the Pakistan Tehrik-i-Insaaf). He was speaking on Saturday, November 23, to a crowd of over 10,000 protesters who blocked the highway used by NATO supply trucks taking goods in and out of Afghanistan. The latest protests in Pakistan show that even when the US hits its mark, as in the case of the last two strikes in Pakistan that killed key leaders of two extremist cells, they’re still counterproductive.
Refuting the mere lies spread by “Israel’s” Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Danny Ayalon in a video titled “Israel Palestinian Conflict: The Truth about the West Bank.” These two Palestinian young ladies were really awesome to compelling refute the deception of this liar regarding historical facts about the history of Palestine and the struggle with the Zionist occupation.
Single Florida male, 30, wants to meet caring female. Must like guns — a new Zimmerman ad?
Ladies — do you recognize this guy? He is volatile, possessive, moody and prone to adult temper tantrums. He plays the tough guy but reserves his ire for women, children and even pets. When you’re through with his huffing and puffing and bullying and try to leave him — he turns violent and you need to get an order of protection.
George Zimmerman is the classic domestic batterer whose brushes with the law become more frequent and extreme until he is stopped. Partners of batterers …
The Photographer exhibited downtown. Galleries, museums. Big hit in the art community, but not in the infallible system that measures the worth of all things, from culture to fruit salad: The Market. Did it, is it, or will it make/be making money? If so, Artist + Sales = Success, anywhere from up-and-coming novice to assiduous craftsman to Genius, depending on The Market’s sober assessment.
Thus far, The Photographer had merited barely a “fresh new face,” but her first book of photographs, Bad Seeds, published several years earlier, to great praise, many awards and dismal sales, was “discovered” by the wife of …
Another Elephant in the room, and it's getting crowded in here!
by Kevin Coleman / November 25th, 2013
Arctic ice may be melting. The methane levels may be rising, ice shelves breaking off with every news bulletin.
Here is one thing that some of those obscene profits of the greedy climate changing corporations could be seized for through taxation. Remedying the damage done in the rainforests of Peru, South America through the extraction of gold.
It may not seem like it’s our problem or something that is potentially life threatening to us but right now the levels of methyl mercury produced from this destructive practice are increasing and spreading all around the world on the wind, killing as it goes. …
As with many of those who express a view in the continuing debate about the wisdom of launching yet another “humanitarian intervention” in Syria, I have found myself under attack from those calling for more war. The charge against me and many like me is one of hypocrisy.
So where are my double standards? I have consistently objected to all western efforts to interfere militarily in the Middle East over the past decade. I have argued that all states in the Middle East, including Syria, are seen by western governments simply as chess pieces in a great game called the Battle …
The principal benefit of the negotiations between Iran and the P5+1 nations on November 23 is that Iran and the United States were able to down to talk and reach an agreement on something. Given 33 years of estrangement and non-communication, this is an extraordinarily important development — nearly equivalent to the U.S. breakthrough to China — perhaps the signal achievement of the Nixon administration.
The profound symbolism of the moment more than outweighs the lighter substantive elements of the temporary agreement. The United States and its partners appeared tough and got very little. Iran appeared tough and gave up very little. …
by The Real News Network (TRNN) / November 24th, 2013
Jesse Freeston: Violence and political repression by western-backed Honduran military raises questions if Sunday’s presidential election will be open and fair.
President Obama should have made sure that his staff checked out the performance credentials of CGI Federal before awarding it millions of dollars to push out a key element of the President’s signature healthcare initiative. The Washington Post, Daily Caller, New York Times, Probublica, Wall Street Journal and, well, hell!, all of the legacy and non-legacy media, have now reported widely on the flaky technical work of CGI Federal and the journey that led to the healthcare’s website flop. That of course refers to the debacle that is Obama’s Affordable Care Act web portal which was to have …
The world political economy is a mosaic of cross currents: Domestic decay and elite enrichment, new sources for greater profits and deepening political disenchantment, declining living standards for many and extravagant luxury for a few, military losses in some regions with imperial recovery in others. There are claims of a unipolar, a multi-polar and even a non-polar configuration of world power. Where, when, to what extent and under what contingencies do these claims have validity?
Bubbles and busts come and go, but let us talk of ‘beneficiaries’: …
Outrageous US bullying by US Trade Rep Stan McCoy on intellectual property and health putting profits of pharmaceuticals ahead of the lives of people
by Popular Resistance Staff / November 23rd, 2013
A key dispute in the TPP negotiations is the patents on pharmaceutical drugs and medical procedures. Long patents inflate the profits of the pharmaceutical industry by not allowing less expensive generic drugs on the market. This means that people around the world will not be able to afford critical, often life-saving, drugs and medical procedures. It also means that countries like Japan, Australia and New Zealand that have national health care systems will see the cost of healthcare rise to a breaking point, undermining some of the best health systems in the world.
In October 1864 the Colony of British Columbia martyred five “Chilcotin Chiefs.” One hour before sunrise on October 26, with a crowd of 250 gathered to pay witness, the Crown hung these defenders of the Indigenous laws on a scaffold provocatively placed in a native graveyard. This event remains one of the most dramatic moments in the history of Canada’s relationship with the Indigenous Peoples.
October 26 is now a national day of remembrance for the Tsilhqot’in People. This year’s formal ceremony will be held at Puntzi Lake, near a key site …
On 21 November, BBC Panorama screened a documentary titled “Britain’s Secret Terror Force”. It was about a small unit of murderers that were operating in Northern Ireland in the 1970s that were part of the British army. Amongst several strange points about this programme was the timing of it, following as it did just a day after it was reported that John Larkin, attorney-general for Northern Ireland, has called for no further prosecutions to take place for atrocities committed during The Troubles.
The Troubles is a euphemism for that phase of the murderous foreign policy employed by Britain …
If the end of the world hasn’t started yet, maybe it will start soon
Soon enough, if it hasn’t started already, the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) will begin removing the first of more than 1,500 fuel assemblies from the Fukushima Unit 4 fuel pool that sits about 100 feet above the ground. Each assembly contains 50-70 radioactive fuel rods. If this removal procedure goes seriously awry or the plant is hit by another major earthquake, some scientists say, “It’s bye-bye Japan and everyone on the west coast of North America should evacuate.”
Fukushima is a continuing disaster, and the Japanese haven’t …
The Jack the Ripper murders that plagued late 19th century London were the work of the first modern serial killer. They have also been the subject of many a literary investigation and speculation, both fictional and otherwise. The basic ingredients of most succeeding serial killing sprees are present in the Jack the Ripper case; dead women, many of them prostitutes; a twisted killer who mutilates his victims; a police investigation that sputters and starts without an apparent understanding of the nature of the perpetrator; and the potential for so-called copycat crimes. Author Greg Guma turns these murders and their context …
During ostensible…when rights…before they bombed better than ourselves for lesser crimes than being angry, outraged, disgusted and appalled. Too long now, this far-wheedling has gone, too far. Too long now it’s been too long for yet another generation.
It is the moral fashion of our time to be lifeless, shit-less, sex-less, diseased creatures — “beasts” is far too elegant a word.
“What is, is what is, like, you know? Anyway, a new election’s coming up. They promised us peanut-butter and freedom. Or was that peanuts and free butter? Either way, it’s the lesser of evils.”
The Sacred Vehemence of Imagination in a Soulless Age
by Phil Rockstroh / November 22nd, 2013
From the picture window of our family’s eighth floor apartment, at the intersection of 23rd Street and Avenue C, we have a view of the inhuman currents of the East River and the dehumanizing, vehicular currents of the FDR expressway. The tenor of the river is timeless while the FDR’s voice is mindlessly urgent…an addict on a dope run — evincing the urgency of an errand undertaken to relieve distress but trajectory hurtles towards annihilation.
Like the misnomer known as freeways, wherein one is enslaved to speed and forward motion, the spirit of our age is manic. One reacts; …
by Shimshon Bichler and Jonathan Nitzan / November 22nd, 2013
Economic, financial and social commentators from all directions and of all persuasions 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.
There is, however, a prior question that few if any bother to ask: Do capitalists want a recovery in the first place? Can they afford it?
On the face of it, the question sounds silly: of course capitalists want a recovery; how else can they prosper? According to the textbooks, both mainstream and heterodox, capital accumulation and economic growth …
Why give someone a French kiss when they’ll accept a handshake?
— a company executive quoted during contract negotiations with the union
As Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis famously said, “Labor cannot, on any terms, surrender the right to strike.” Brandeis didn’t say that because he personally rejoiced in seeing factories lying idle; rather, he said it because he knew that strikes were the only weapon union members had. Take that away, and they have nothing.
While it’s true that other tactics and strategies are available to union workers, the strike—defiantly bringing the whole operation to a screeching …
We are in the mad-mad-mad world of delusions and Pokémon. Sure, that Fukushima premature, err, glow, solved by dental lead bib over the ovaries and testes (see photo directly below). Yep, the world has gone to Type Three Diabetes. Quoting that article on radioactive proof of our dumbdowning DNA. Is it HFCS that’s eating away at our noggin? Those 10,000 newly compounded chemicals produced each year chipping away at IQ? The bio-accumulative affects of off-gassing-particulate-soot-and-steam modernity that has made us so daft? Where did all the brain cells go … is that Where did all the cowboys go …
The recent article in the New York Times by Eduardo Porter, “Unavoidable Answer for the Problem of Climate Change,” is a sad example of the faulty conclusions being reached by many people who want to think of themselves as environmentalists.
By marginalizing renewable energy and ignoring altogether conservation and efficiency, this article frames our choice for the future as one between carbon and uranium, and then by selective use of data and logic designates uranium as the lesser evil, or even as a happy alternative.
Its basic premise is that energy usage is going to continue to rise, that …
In Switzerland a petition from 100,000 people, or about 1.25% of the population, creates a public referendum. By this means, last March, Swiss voters created strict limits on executive pay.
On November 24, the Swiss will vote on whether to take a further step — limiting executive pay to no more than 12 times the lowest salary in the company. Such a maximum wage policy allows the CEO pay increases, but only if workers get at least a twelfth as much.
This is not merely a fight between Israel and the US. Nor is it only a fight between the White House and Congress. It is also a battle between intellectual titans.
On the one side there are the two renowned professors, Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer. On the other, the towering international intellectual Noam Chomsky.
It’s all about whether the dog wags the tail or the tail wags the dog.
Six years ago the two professors shocked the US (and Israel) when they published a book, The Israel lobby and US Foreign Policy, in which they asserted that the foreign policy of the …
SANTA ROSA, CA — A new, powerful coalition of Latino, social justice, green, progressive Democrats, student, civil liberties, peace, and other groups has emerged in Sonoma County, California. The killing of 13-year-old Andy Lopez by sheriff’s deputy Erick Gelhaus on October 22 unites them.
Over forty members of diverse groups met–many who had never been in a room together–on November 19 to strategize about how to keep the strong momentum going in response to the slaying of Lopez. Many of those who spoke identified themselves as mothers or fathers, who felt the pain of the parents whose son was taken …
Costly complexity is baked into Obamacare. No health insurance system is without problems but Canadian style single-payer full Medicare for all is simple, affordable, comprehensive and universal.
In the early 1960s, President Lyndon Johnson enrolled 20 million elderly Americans into Medicare in six months. There were no websites. They did it with index cards!
Below please find 21 Ways the Canadian Health Care System is Better than Obamacare.
Repeal Obamacare and replace it with the much more efficient single-payer, everybody in, nobody out, free choice of doctor and hospital.
Love, Canada
Number 21:
In Canada, everyone is covered automatically at birth – everybody in, nobody …
November 22, 2013, is the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The true story of JFK’s murder has never been officially admitted, although the conclusion that JFK was murdered by a plot involving the Secret Service, the CIA, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff has been well established by years of research, such as that provided by James W. Douglass in his book, JFK And The Unspeakable. ((James W. Douglass, JFK and the Unspeakable, Simon & Schuster, 2008)) Ignore Douglass’ interest in the Trappist monk Thomas Merton and Merton’s prediction and focus on the heavily documented …
