Latest articles

 When it comes to war, isn’t our account overdrawn? 

When the president asks Congress for a blank check for war, why does the Congress fret about setting a limit on war powers instead of just saying “NO” to any check? What happened to checks and balances (as if we all didn’t know)?

Already quislings of both parties in the Senate – Democrat Patrick Leahy of Vermont and Republican Pat Roberts of Kansas – are staking out the “compromise” position of a limited war in response to President Obama’s proposal for an open-ended war authorization.  According to Leahy, Democratic senate staffers are …

The powers of financial capitalism had another far reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole.

— Prof. Caroll Quigley, Georgetown University, Tragedy and Hope (1966)

Iraq and Libya have been taken out, and Iran has been heavily boycotted. Syria is now in the cross-hairs. Why? Here is one overlooked scenario. 

In an August 2013 article titled “Larry Summers and the Secret ‘End-game’ Memo,” Greg Palast posted evidence of a secret late-1990s plan devised by Wall Street and U.S. …

WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange, who is also running as Senate candidate for the Australian elections this coming weekend, has shown himself to be relentless in the face of the information imperium. Seeing that it was about time he turn the tables on the intelligence services that had been monitoring him, an affidavit claiming theft of WikiLeaks property was bound to appear.

Assange is pressing the very Swedish authorities who have proven reluctant in assuaging him that an interview is far better than an extradition.  The 186-page document urges a criminal investigation into a series of alleged abuses stretching years. It is …

The material I will present to you comes from a variety of sources. Some are U.S. sources and some are those of other countries. Some of the sources are technical, such as intercepted telephone conversations and photos taken by satellites. Other sources are people who have risked their lives to let the world know what Saddam Hussein is really up to.

— Colin L. Powell, George W. Bush’s Secretary of State, remarks to the United Nations Security Council (on February 5, 2003)

We don’t know what the chain of custody is. This could’ve been an Israeli false flag operation, it could’ve been …

(Full article …)

In a stern tone, Russian President Vladimir Putin warned the West on Wednesday not to indulge in any one-sided military action against Syria amid increasing fears that Washington is preparing to put this sinister idea into practical shape in cahoots with regional puppet regimes.

In an interview with Channel One television, Putin clarified his stance on the issue, saying that only the “UN Security Council can give approval for the use of force against another state,” and warned against any such move which would be considered as an act of “aggression.”

“Any other ways to justify the use of force against another …

Found at last! After searching for 10 years, the Iraqi weapons of mass destruction have finally been found – in Syria!

Secretary of State John Kerry: “There is no doubt that Saddam al-Assad has crossed the red line. … Sorry, did I just say ‘Saddam’?”

A US drone has just taken a photo of Mullah Omar riding on a motorcycle through the streets of Damascus. ((The three preceding jokes are courtesy of my friend Viktor Dedaj of Paris.))

So what do we have as the United States refuses to rule out an attack on Syria and keeps five warships loaded with missiles …

There has been an epidemic of outrage in the United Kingdom over the last few days, most of it coming from the great and not so good.  The original cause was the alleged chemical weapons attack in Syria.  With no hard evidence as to what the attack involved and who was actually responsible, our leaders had no hesitation in blaming President Assad, and suddenly we were awash with …

Why is there so much attention paid to people as consumers, but so little to people as workers?

Is it because the mere mention of our rights as workers brings up all kinds of uncomfortable truths that threaten the very ideological foundations of the current economic system?

The vast majority of us are wageworkers. Wages are our primary source of income. Or we collect a pension because we and/or our spouse were once workers. Or we are dependents of workers.

In fact, a huge proportion of the money spent by consumers in our economy comes directly or indirectly from our wages as workers.

Despite …

Police states quaffing the blood of victims have an excuse: they wish to oppress in order to justify the status quo, keeping the fires burning, their subjects scared.  They deceive because they know that truth is another country.  States that possess some constitutional worth, those that front a democratic chamber, elected by an enfranchised electorate prefer more subtle techniques, resorting to indefinite detention, without charge.

The breakdown of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s confinement for 1000 days reads as a resume on how authorities can dilute legal obligations with corrosive effect.  10 days were spent in solitary confinement in Wandsworth prison; 550 …

The first two essays were about corporations’ pretenses of being ethical and of being socially responsible respectively by having programs bearing those names, all the while their normal corporate behavior is unethical and socially irresponsible. This third and last essay in the series shines a brief “slime light” on all the rest of the charades corporations have in their bag of dirty tricks. They are in this order: philanthropy, general counsel, governance, investor relations, public relations, advertising and marketing, customer relations and service, human resources and employee relations, and finally, the biggest charade of them all, corporate personhood.

Philanthropy

“Philanthrôpía,” to …

We are now at a critical stage, where each minute that passes is extremely taxing mentally and physically. Many of us participating since day one are suffering what may be irreversible damage, and are facing a very real possibility of death.

— Pelican Bay hunger striker and Short Corridor representative Aurturo Castellano 55 Days on Hunger Strike

California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s (CDCR) refuses to negotiate with prison hunger strikers as they enter day 56 of the protest at solitary confinement and inhumane conditions. The hunger strikers are in increasing danger from heart attacks but maintain their resolve to continue their resistance …

Barack Obama’s decision to go crawling to Congress for permission to launch a gratuitous attack on Syria is more than a humiliating climb-down. It could well signal the beginning of the end of the zionist imperial presidency.

This might seem like a bold claim—Congress is, after all, still Israeli occupied territory, as Pat Buchanan famously said—but the fact that a “president” found it necessary to respect Congressional authority in matters of declaring war reverses the imperial foundation of the U.S. police state.

Tension between the executive and legislative branches over the power to declare war had been a long-standing feature of U.S. …

Political language… is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.

— George Orwell, “Politics and the English language.”

US secretary of state John Kerry has just delivered what may turn out to be his most shameful moment in history. Kerry has been handed the baton of sabre-rattler-in-Chief by a President that has much vested interest in upholding his facade of “reluctant warmonger”. Since President Obama declared his now infamous “red-line” over the use of chemical weapons in Syria; it has invariably been White House underlings and members of the State …

“I have no interest in any open-ended conflict in Syria, but we do have to make sure that when countries break international norms on weapons like chemical weapons that could threaten us, that they are held accountable,” President Barack Obama said in a PBS interview earlier this week.

With allegations of a horrific chemical weapons attack outside Damascus and new reports of a “napalm” bomb being dropped on a school playground in northern Syria, this statement, made by an American Commander-in-Chief, would certainly come as a surprise to many of Obama’s predecessors, considering the use of chemical …

It was the forty-eighth day of the Prisoners’ Hunger Strike. Thirty thousand inmates of prisons throughout California had launched a mass hunger strike, probably the largest in history, to oppose cruel and unusual punishments, such as the very common practice of locking people in solitary confinement for extended periods of time, for years and even decades. At this time, several hundred were still refusing food. People we normally think of as criminals were taking a heroic stand in the face of oppression. Here in Oakland, on the Saturday afternoon of August 24th, we were gathering to …