In 1945, the British agreed to renegotiate the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty of 1936, with the British seeking to protect their large military presence with their base at the Suez Canal. The negotiations had become frustrated with the Egyptians demanding the unconditional removal of all British troops, a prospect that was reviled by both the British and Americans, who were first and foremost interested in maintaining their imperial hegemony over the region. ((Peter L. Hahn, “Containment and Egyptian Nationalism: The Unsuccessful Effort to Establish the Middle East Command, 1950-53,” Diplomatic History (Vol. 11, No. 1, January 1987), pages 25-26.)) One of the …
Netanyahu, Abbas to Resume "Peace Process" that Never Was
by Ramzy Baroud / July 23rd, 2013
The political peddlers, think-tank experts and media professionals are all back in full force. They want us to believe that US Secretary of State John Kerry has done what others have failed to do. On his sixth trip to the Middle East during his post, and following intense shuttle diplomacy likened to that of Henry Kissinger, Kerry managed to create a modest common space between the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority (PA), thus securing their agreement to resume the so-called peace process.
The media is focusing a great deal on how the ‘breakthrough’ happened, not on why or whether or …
Rather than expanding the money supply, quantitative easing (QE) has actually caused it to shrink by sucking up the collateral needed by the shadow banking system to create credit. The “failure” of QE has prompted the Bank for International Settlements to urge the Fed to shirk its mandate to pursue full employment, but the sort of QE that could fulfill that mandate has not yet been tried.
Ben Bernanke’s May 29th speech signaling the beginning of the end of QE3 provoked a “taper tantrum” that wiped about $3 trillion from global equity markets – this from the mere suggestion that the …
Shir Hever, an Israeli economist and commentator who researches the economic aspects of the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories: Europe Union declares Hezbollah a terrorist organization but does not give similar designation to Israel.
Brazil has witnessed one of the world’s most striking socio-economic reversals in modern history: from a dynamic nationalist industrializing to a primary export economy. Between the mid 1930’s to the mid 1980’s, Brazil averaged nearly 10% growth in its manufacturing sector largely based on state interventionist policies, subsidizing, protecting and regulating the growth of national public and private enterprises. Changes in the ‘balance’ between national and foreign (imperial) capital began to take place following the military coup of 1964 and accelerated after the return of electoral politics in the mid-1980’s. The election of neo-liberal politicians, especially …
Families came with their children, and police showed up with their riot gear. This was in Oakland on July 15th, the third day of protests over the death of teenager Trayvon Martin, whose killer had just been found “Not Guilty.”
I arrived at 6:21 p.m. There were about five hundred people gathered in the plaza at 14th and Broadway, and more were arriving. The rally was already in progress. “The whole damn system is guilty,” a speaker was saying. That’s clearly the way people felt. This is a city where young blacks have been murdered by police.
Sergei Morozov talks about the ways in which mass society’s information awareness has changed in recent decades, the global repercussions of that and how that has affected the future prospects of society which often referred as the Information society.
Prosecutors’ Performance Might Be More Questionable Than the Jury’s
by William Boardman / July 23rd, 2013
Listening to the lead prosecutor’s final argument in the Zimmerman case, it’s hard to believe he really wanted a conviction.
Lead prosecutor Bernie de la Rionda lost focus from the moment he opened his mouth and began: “A teenager is dead. He is dead through no fault of his own. He is dead because another man made assumptions….”
Not only is de la Rionda’s voice flat, his tone subdued and resigned, he begins by presenting the victim as an abstraction, characterizing him in a neutral, almost dismissive way as “a teenager,” who also happens to …
I read the notion, on some scientifically correct web site (so many stack this Library of Babel; who can recall? it’s book-marked, some-place, on one browser or other), that a comet emerges from the cold black Greater Than. Expected to punch out Gaea’s lights in June, 2085.
“Why must you kick me down, grasping?” she cried. “You promised peanut butter cookies and chocolate cream cheese. And chill hugs – better than nothing…”
“Oh, please. I’ve never laid a hand – or foot – on you and never would. Ok? Quiet.”
Canada recently took over the leadership of the Arctic Council and will be succeeded by the U.S. in 2015. With back-to-back chairmanships, it gives both countries an opportunity to increase cooperation on initiatives that could enhance the development of a shared North American vision for the Arctic. The U.S. has significant geopolitical and economic interests in the high north and have released a new national strategy which seeks to advance their Arctic ambitions. While the region has thus far been peaceful, stable and free of conflict, there is a danger of the militarization of the Arctic. It has the potential …
The grounds for Zimmerman’s acquittal were that he shot someone, and killed him. Pure and simple.
The grounds for Trayvon Martin’s having been killed is that he decided to defend himself against someone stalking him.
Does it make sense? No. Is it true? Yes.
There’s nothing to understand. That’s just the way it is. But if we do want to understand it, we have to look at the “role model.” Or rather, at The Role Model.
The eye-grabbing cover of Jodi Dean’s The Communist Horizon (Verso, 2012) depicts what could be the dawn of a new day. A red sun, half in view, arcs across the volume’s bottom edge. From this solid red spot, dozens of thin but widening beams fan out; crossing the background, the sunlight splits the sky itself into stripes of red and white.
Though Dean had no direct hand in selecting this cover image, ((In a personal email, Dean indicated to me that while she had no input into the cover, …
“The Indian Uprising” by Donald Barthelme is an iconic short story of the 1960s heralding the defeat of the US empire and the end of white male dominance. Written as the USA was mired in a hopeless war, as Indigenous peoples and African-Americans were rebelling against oppression, and as women were breaking out of the traditional roles they had been confined to, the story predicted the victory of these insurgents over the feeble old order. Its experimental style full of dislocations and dissolutions captured the postmodern zeitgeist.
As with many icons of the 1960s, the story and the unpatriotic tone it …
With the apparent stall in negotiations between the Thai Government and Barisan Revolusi Patani (BRN [the Patani independence movement in Patani, southern Thailand]) over the violence of the Deep South, one must start considering how long before a solution to this lingering insurgency problem can be found.
With roughly 5,300 people being killed since 2004, with 45 killed and 75 injured since the negotiations between the Thai Government and BRN began negotiations with Malaysia mediating, there have been calls by opposition leader Abhisit Vejjajiva to suspend negotiations with the BRN until the level of violence is lowered. The recent …
— Jeff Danziger, Political cartoonist, August 2, 2006
The words of Nasser al-Aulaqi have a measured, dignified determination, shadowed by bewilderment and the betrayal by a country for which he had had respect, happy memories and which had provided aspects of the basis for his considerable achievements.
Nasser al-Aulaqi is the father of Anwar al-Aulaqi and the grandfather of sixteen year old Abdulrahman al-Aulaqi, both killed in American drone strikes in Yemen, within two weeks of each other, in September and October 2011, respectively. Both were American citizens.
For roughly five hundred years, Indigenous peoples have been struggling against the dominant institutions of society, against imperialism, colonialism, exploitation, impoverishment, segregation, racism, and genocide. The struggle continues today under the present world social order and against the dominant institutions of ‘neoliberalism’ and globalization: the state, corporations, financial institutions and international organizations. Indigenous communities continue to struggle to preserve their cultural identities, languages, histories, and the continuing theft and exploitation of their land. Indigenous resistance against environmental degradation and resource extraction represents the most direct source of resistance against a global environmental crisis which threatens to lead the species to …
Welcome to the Mother of all Birthday Parties. Raghead has been shooting his way to glory for a full year. Raise your glass to Mars, kick the lead out — and the DU. It’ll be a blast…
Last month, we were devastated to learn that the Angola 3’s Herman Wallace had been diagnosed with liver cancer, and that he was continuing to be held in isolation in a locked room at Hunt Correctional Center’s prison infirmary. Reflecting on his confinement while battling cancer, Herman said: “My own body has now become a tool of torture against me.”
On July 10, Amnesty International launched a campaign directed at Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, calling for Herman’s immediate release on humanitarian grounds (take action here). “After decades of cruel conditions and a conviction that continues to be …
The broad case establishes a precedent that publishing national security related information about the United States is espionage.
— Julian Assange, on Russia Today, June 2013.
The Manning Trial, with all its state-like ghastliness, the prosecution pawing and bruising those who disagree with it into submission, has thrown up a few distinct and disturbing trends. Ecclesiastes 1:9 claims there is nothing new under the sun, and we have been greeted to the predictable prosecution seeking to paint WikiLeaks as the spectre haunting global security. This is backhanded flattery of sorts – the organisation has to be seen by the security …
According to many cultures, breathing is the essence of being. It is the only bodily function that we do both voluntarily and involuntarily. In yoga, the breath is known as prana or a universal energy that can be utilized to find balance between body and mind. Pranayama is the yoga practice that means control of life or energy, and it is used to change energies within the body for health purposes… unless… you live in Beijing, where regular breathing is hazardous to your health, as such, the balance between body and mind is a real challenge.
Consumerism will cross any cultural boundary in search of the everlasting coin.
There’s a church at the corner of Sixth Avenue and 20th Street in the Flatiron District. The solid brick edifice rises impressively into the open air like so many ancient cathedrals in New York, but it is no longer a church. It is a marketplace. A festival of commerce where worshippers once kneeled. They still come, the worshippers, but they no longer bend a knee. They have swapped the Book of Common Prayer for the Pocketbook of Common Plastic. Now they come for the brand buzz. The church …
From the Tuesday July 9 USA Today Money Section: “Big investors have poured more than $10 billion into the single family home rental market in recent years… The biggest, the Blackstone Group, has bought 29,000 homes in 13 markets, 25,000 of them in the past year.” Of the top 10 cities with the highest institutional investor purchases of rental housing three are in my state of Florida (Lakeland with 29%, Miami with 22% and Orlando with 19%). So, as the subprime and “I flip, you flip” bubble bursts, the sharks move in to become like their counterparts from hundreds of …
In her first appearance before the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, Samantha Power, Obama’s pick for next U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, made clear that she will spend her time in the role much as her predecessor Susan Rice did: acting as Israel’s consummate defender, fear-mongering about Iran, and opposing any move to champion Palestinian human rights or self-determination.
Rice, who has been appointed as Obama’s National Security Adviser, has said repeatedly that the American delegation to the UN “often works in ‘lockstep’ with the Israeli delegation” and spends “an enormous amount of time defending Israel’s …
Biologist Alexandra Morton has co-authored a journal article on a Norwegian virus entering BC; she has commissioned a film about the implications of this situation; and she has taken the Minister of Fisheries and Marine Harvest to court on this issue. Says Morton, “The unfortunate news is that from the sequence it would appear it is Norwegian, and just arrived 5-7 years ago. This means wild salmon have not felt its full impact yet. We don’t know what this virus can do to wild Pacific salmon so Twyla went to Norway to ask the experts.”
Despite being the richest country in the world, poverty remains an important social issue in the United States. All too often poverty in America is used as a political weapon by both political parties to galvanize their voting base. What is lost in the midst of such politicking is the crony connection of corporations that have positioned themselves to profit from poverty. The welfare programs we use to attempt to alleviate poverty actually play directly into the plans of companies that lobby on behalf of legislation lauded as anti-poverty programs. Rather than overcoming poverty, these programs line the pockets of …
Documents published last week by the Australian web site Crikey revealed that the US government “compelled Telstra and Hong Kong-based PCCW to give it access to their undersea cables for spying on communications traffic entering and leaving the US.”
The significance of the disclosure is obvious; today, more than 99 percent of the world’s internet and telephone traffic is now carried by undersea fiber optic cables. An interactive submarine cable map published by the Global Bandwidth Research Service is illustrative in this regard.
Since the late 1960s as part of its ECHELON spy project, the United States has been …
I expect state and corporate media to pursue elitist interests. Therefore, when a whistleblower exposes malfeasance in the system, I expect the state/corporate media will attack the person who threatens the system that privileges the elitists. The malfeasance arising from within the system will be thrust to the margins of debate and the whistleblower will be demonized.
One might, though, expect more disinterested reporting from science-focused media and academic media. The case of Edward Snowden, US-government designated demon of the moment, reveals otherwise.
The corner of Broad and Erie is the Times Square of North Philly, but instead of flashy signs pushing Kodak, Samsung, Canon or Virgin Airlines, you have stark billboards urging you to “ELIMINATE YOUR DEBT” and “REBUILD YOUR CREDIT.” On utility poles, styrofoam signs promise, “JOBS! $400-$600 PER WEEK. CALL TODAY, START TOMORROW.” Is it legit? Ring to get sucked in, or you can stock your fridge, finally, by ditching your junk wheels for “$400,” according to one flyer, or “$250-$400,” per another. The biggest billboard touts “RAND SPEAR 1-800-90-LEGAL. He Eats Insurance Companies for BREAKFAST!” …
Sometimes people hold a core belief that is very strong. When they are presented with evidence that works against that belief, the new evidence cannot be accepted. It would create a feeling that is extremely uncomfortable, called cognitive dissonance. And because it is so important to protect the core belief, they will rationalize, ignore and even deny anything that doesn’t fit in with the core belief.
— Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth
As the military in Egypt consolidates its putsch against the leadership and political structures of the Muslim Brotherhood, it should be obvious that the initial narrative rationalizing intervention …
Clutching a sheaf of newspaper clippings in one hand and a medical bag in the other, Dr. Franklin Peterson Comstock III, knocking down pregnant ladies, students, the elderly, and even two burly construction workers who were waiting for a bus, rushed past me, leaving me in a close and personal encounter with the concrete. Since he had given up medicine to invest in a string of service stations and an oil distributorship, I assumed what was in his medical bag was the morning’s take from obscene profits.
