So, how do I say this? I went to Vacations International last night with my special education partner. She just got off work at 7 p.m., a day that, well, started at 7 a.m. You know, children, abused some of them, bad homes, bad things in their lives, and the developmental delays, the challenges of autism, etc. I got that goofy American huckster phone call that I had won a prize. I tracked it down — the total surveillance and sharing all personal information part — to the Clark County Fair when I took some of my clients there two …
As a rule the discussions related to what has been revealed by Edward Snowden about US global electronic surveillance boil down to violations of human rights and illegal interference into the private lives of millions in different parts of the world. If it were all about it, then the White House would not set so much store by the case and raise the issue of Snowden’s extradition to the top level of interstate discussions and even go as far as to cancel summits. Barack Obama was scared enough to cancel his appearance at international forums, which was the …
The new film Unmanned: America’s Drone Wars should be required viewing in all schools and homes in the United States, including the home of the U.S. president who could not be bothered to meet with the child victims of his drones who spoke in Congress this week.
One could even speculate what the appropriate fantasized outcome might be if, Clockwork Orange-style, Obama were compelled to view Unmanned. But fantasies are what got us into this. Former drone pilot Brandon Bryant opens this beautifully made, fast-moving film by describing his childhood comic book-induced fantasies …
One week we learn the stricken Fukushima nuclear plant has contaminated the entire North Pacific with via the daily discharge of 300 tons of radioactive water into the ocean. The following week we learn that Britain has approved the first new, “totally safe” nuclear power plant in 35 years, at Hinkley Point in Somerset. The snow job being perpetrated on the unsuspecting British public is that nuclear energy creates electricity without emitting carbon dioxide and that it’s cheaper than renewable energy. Neither is true.
Where Do You Put the Nuclear Waste?
Nuclear energy only looks cheap and carbon neutral if …
You don’t have to search the internet for the truth. Sometimes it is right in front of you… inside the mainstream newspapers:
The Friday, October 18, USA Today main section, page 4A ran this story: “Army warns of trouble handling even a single war”.It goes on to say that “budget restrictions could render the Army at high risk to meet even one major war, a warning the Army is sounding because it sees another war as inevitable before long.” Did you catch that last part? The masters of this Military Industrial Empire are not only doing their best to scare the …
Whatever happened to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process? You could be forgiven for thinking everyone packed up shop a while ago and forgot to inform you. There’s been barely a peep about it since the revival of talks was greeted with great fanfare back in July.
The negotiations, which have been conducted in a fug of secrecy, flitted briefly back on the radar last week when the US secretary of state, John Kerry, met Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu for what the media called an “unusually long”, seven-hour meeting in Rome.
Much of the conversation was held in private, with not even officials …
If you are a minority, the Republican Party would really rather you didn’t vote. Last week, Don Yelton, precinct chair in the Buncombe County, North Carolina Republican Party revealed on the Daily Show that voter suppression laws are meant to “kick the Democrats in the butt.” Said Yelton, “If it hurts a bunch of lazy blacks that wants the government to give them everything, so be it.”
My painting “Voter Fraud” — a 40″ x 30″ oil painting depicting a sign painter finishing up a sign reading “Whites Only!” hanging over an e-voting machine — reflects the hard hitting reality that …
Ahh, the beauty of our screen-screed – how the world is just loving being tethered to junk, screen birds, those angry little apps, the You Tube generation, everyone is connected, nothing is more important than Tweets, Texts and Triumphant Trilogies of Self-Aggrandizement on Flickr. What a pathetic mess the world has become, and as I work on my alternative sentencing story for the magazine gig I get paid for, the real fabric being “no new jails” groups – since, in Spokane (and it’s the same in other jurisdictions) the city-county taxpayer ends up spending 70 cents of every tax dollar …
The Fukushima nuclear disaster is getting worse by the day, poisoning the Pacific Ocean and threatening a nuclear holocaust of some unknown dimension. You will not outlive this disaster.
This is a question that transcends being anti-nuclear. The fate of the earth is at stake here and the whole world must be watching every move at that site from now on. With 11,000 fuel rods scattered around the place, as a ceaseless flow of contaminated water poisoning our oceans, our very survival is on the line.
The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.
— Art. 49, Fourth Geneva Convention
American news agencies (AP, Reuters, any major news organization or outlet) in reference to Israeli settlements (which could more accurately be termed “colonies”), routinely comment that these settlements are “considered illegal by most nations.” This is dishonest, as it creates the impression that the legality of settlement activity is murky and subject to debate. When I encounter this phrase I often ask the source to identify which nations consider settlement building on occupied territory …
NDP stakes out a spot on the Right of the political continuum
by Yves Engler / October 28th, 2013
This past week may come to be seen as a watershed moment in the NDP’s capitulation to neoliberal capitalism. The nominally social democratic party effectively supported a major corporate ‘trade’ accord all the while opposing an International Monetary Fund call for a more progressive tax code.
Last week the NDP basically endorsed the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) the Harper Conservatives have negotiated with the European Union. The accord will greatly expand the power of multinational corporations. By extending Canada’s patent protections, CETA will drive up already high pharmaceutical drug costs. It also weakens provincial and municipal agencies ability to …
It’s all too customary for those analyzing the crises humanity faces to associate climate change, aka global warming, with whatever proximate cause they postulate for our imminent demise. John Tirman, for instance, in his book 100 Ways America Is Screwing Up the World lists as the first way “Altering the Earth’s Climate”. Richard Heinberg of the Post Carbon Institute includes Climate along with Energy and Debt as the three problem areas which threaten our future. Nafez Mossadeq Ahmed, author of A User’s Guide to the Crisis of Civilization, integrates climate change with the other crises he believes civilization faces: the …
Yes, I know. Uri Avnery has achieved many great things as a journalist and a peace activist. He has probably done more to educate people around the world about the terrible situation in the occupied Palestinian territories, and for longer, than any other single human being. And, to boot, he’s celebrating his 90th birthday this week. So best wishes to him.
Nonetheless, it is important to challenge the many fallacious claims Avnery makes to bolster the arguments in his latest article, dismissing the growing comparisons being made between Israel and apartheid South Africa.
“Guns are not toys,” my military father taught me as a youngster, as hunter parents also tend to teach their children. “Toys are not guns,” police and sheriff deputies should learn. Confusing them can be deadly.
Officers sworn to serve, protect, and keep the peace should not show off their guns to children and put them in their eager hands. This happened in August of 2011 here in Santa Rosa, Sonoma County, Northern California. The community was not happy about that, and it is even more angered now.
An article in the daily Press Democrat of 2011 shows a photo of a …
Ann Jones’ new book, They Were Soldiers: How the Wounded Return from America’s Wars: The Untold Story, is devastating, and almost incomprehensibly so when one considers that virtually all of the death and destruction in U.S. wars is on the other side. Statistically, what happens to U.S. troops is almost nothing. In human terms, it’s overwhelming.
Know a young person considering joining the military? Give them this book.
Know a person not working to end war? Give them this book.
Jones presents the choice before us in the clearest terms in the introduction:
By now you’ve probably seen the viral video of Brand vs. Paxman, the call for revolution vs. the status quo. You may have even read the commentary ((For an analysis of such commentary.)) why many – particularly feminists – should be hesitant to jump on the so-called ‘Brandwagon’. But I, like many others, can set my skepticism about Brand’s dubious remarks about women aside (for a moment – and only a moment) and appreciate a mainstream character, on a mass medium, calling for an ‘outside of the box’ solution for the problems that currently plague society.
Salon writer Natasha Lennard writes of Russell Brand, “I love much of what the boisterous comedian says, but this Great Man narrative lets sexism slide and has to go.” ((Natasha Lennard, “I don’t stand with Russell Brand, and neither should you,” Salon, 25 October 2013.)) Great Man? Who is the great man? Presumably she refers to Russell Brand. Prior to his articulate skewering of capitalism in a recent BBC interview, I knew little of Brand other than he was an actor and ex-husband of Katy Perry.
I, like Lennard, “felt an immense affinity with comedian and would-be revolutionary vanguardist Russell …
For all the enervating political tumult and shouting emanating from Washington these days, there is remarkably little to show for it except what has become virtually routine political paralysis.
None of the key differences that are fought over by the politicians seem to directly relate to these five most crucial and threatening specific issues confronting the American people:
1. The erosion of American democracy by a political system flagrantly dominated by great wealth, the big corporations, Wall Street and the major banks. One person may have one vote, but a billionaire — by virtue of funding certain candidates — has the equivalent …
Six or eight months ago, back in the winter of practically everybody’s discontent, Jamie Dimon, superchief of superbank JPMorgan Chase, pulled the plug, renouncing Wall Street and perhaps unbridled greed, saying: – but let’s defer to the official news story, as reported in these grubby online pages:
In a modest executive suite in New York, Jamie Dimon, Chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase, was announcing his own about-face and condemnation of Wall Street banks and the 1% he rode in on. Often mentioned by JPM’s PR department as the most responsible Master of The Wall Street Universe, Dimon has long been …
Another child has been killed. Andy Lopez was playing with a toy on October 22 near his home in a Latino community in Santa Rosa, Sonoma County, Northern California. A sheriff’s deputy pulled the trigger and hit the 13-year-old seven times, fearing that his toy assault rifle might be real. His partner, sitting next to him in the car, held his fire. That patience was a better approach. Who is responsible for this death?
“The shots were fired within 10 seconds of the deputies’ first report of a suspicious person,” according to the daily Press Democrat. Why was he suspicious? …
An Angel Song for peace and an end to violence against children.
“War violates every right of a child — the right to life, the right to be with family and community, the right to health, the right to the development of the personality and the right to be nurtured and protected.”
“… modern wars are exploiting, maiming and killing children more callously and more systematically than ever”
— Graca Machel 1996 and 2000.
Verse 1
I watched the sun go down
On this hallowed ground
An angels choir sang higher and higher
They were singing for freedom
As people lay bleeding
They were singing for peace
But the guns didn’t …
During the period between the 1988 Uprising in Burma and the 2007 Saffron uprising, thousands of Burmese children, men and women were imprisoned. Among them was the quite famous core group of political prisoners known to all as the leaders of the 1988 Uprising. At the time, they were not really the leaders of the uprising, but they were surreptitiously thrust into the limelight by virtue of having virtue – they stood on stage at the height of the protests and announced to all who they were.
While imprisoned they became more famous and their hopes and dreams were uplifted upon …
by Paul Larudee and Beth Daoud / October 25th, 2013
On April 8, 2009, ten billboards went up in the Albuquerque area saying “Tell Congress: Stop Killing Children. No More Military Aid to Israel.” On April 28, Lamar Advertising, with whom the ads had been placed by the Coalition to stop $30 Billion, tore down the ads due to pressure, presumably from other clients with larger accounts.
In June, 2012, twenty-three billboards went up in the Los Angeles area, also calling for an end to US aid to Israel. One week later, the billboard company, CBS Outdoor, also took down the ads.
Let’s give the snarling, three-pointed Devils their due. Tea Party backers and insurgents found in Ted Cruz a slick, shiny face to dish out its latest rendition of raising Cain, that is, elevating gasbag demagoguery. I suspect this perverse 20% minority, thrilled at the duration of its chokehold, remains flummoxed such valor didn’t crack Obamacare wide open. You know, just like those intrepid Texans who defeated Santa Ana at the Alamo. Oh, few Texans and a massacre.
Yet let us dwell not in easy gloating that patriotic right wingers didn’t just fail (though the sequester holds) but fell on their smug …
On October 3, 2013, the International Programme on the State of the Ocean (IPSO) released its most recent State of the Ocean Report to the public. The report said its latest review of the oceans revealed the ocean to be in a “critical state.”
The IPSO report, as bad fortune may have it, could be an understatement based upon a revealing first-hand true story of an extensive ocean trip by Newcastle yachtsman Ivan Macfadyen. ((Greg Ray, The Ocean is Broken, Newcastle Herald, Oct. 18, 2013.))
Mr. Macfadyen’s story, as told by Greg Ray, is a heartbreaking account of the …
Monday morning, Oct. 21, 2013. Vera Scroggins, a retired real estate agent and nurse’s aide, was in Common Pleas Court for Susquehanna County, Pa., to explain why a temporary injunction should not be issued against her.
Before her were four lawyers and several employees of Cabot Gas and Oil, who accused her of trespassing and causing irreparable harm to the company that had almost $1 billion in revenue in 2012. They didn’t want her on their property they owned or leased in the Marcellus Shale.
Scroggins is an anti-fracking activist, someone who not only knows what is happening in the gas fields …
IPS — The Washington Post on Thursday reported what it presented as new evidence of a secret agreement under which Pakistani officials have long been privately supporting the U.S. drone war in the country even as they publicly criticised it.
Most news outlets picked up the Post story, and the theme of public Pakistani opposition and private complicity on the drone issue framed media coverage of Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s declaration that he had called on President Barak Obama to end the drone war.
The CIA’s drone war was no longer concentrated from mid-2008 onward on foreign terrorists… Instead the CIA …
Though Riverside has successfully reinvented itself before, it is now stuck. During the middle of the 19th century, it was a resort town, a place for the well-to-do of Philadelphia to mellow during the sultry months. They chugged up the Delaware by steamboats. Some steamed into town on rails. There were summer homes here, and a grand hotel with a ballroom. When the train reached the New Jersey Shore, however, Riverside couldn’t compete with the Atlantic Ocean, and so it slumped into irrelevance, a forgotten fork in the river, but then it picked itself up and morphed into an …
While there is rightly much media attention on the US drone war in Pakistan and Yemen, there is a very different but over-looked “drone war” taking place in Europe right now. In parliamentary committee rooms, in company boardrooms, and in packed public meetings, arguments rage about whether Europe should embrace or reject the use of armed drones.
Many European armed forces already have unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), commonly known as drones, in their armories for reconnaissance, intelligence and surveillance purposes. Increasingly, however, European countries are under pressure to follow in the footsteps of the US and embrace the use of …
