The furore over the recent chemical weapons attack in Syria has overshadowed disturbing events to the south, as Egypt’s generals wage a quiet war of attrition against the Hamas leadership in Gaza.
Hamas has found itself increasingly isolated, politically and geographically, since the Egyptian army ousted the country’s first democratically elected president, Mohammed Morsi, in early July.
Hamas is paying the price for its close ties to Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamic movement that briefly took power through the ballot box following the revolutionary protests that toppled dictator Hosni Mubarak in 2011.
Since the army launched its coup three months ago, jailing the …
Egypt’s new ruler, General Abdul Fatah al-Sisi, may not realize that the bond between Egypt, Palestine and especially Gaza is beyond historic, and simply cannot be severed with border restrictions, albeit they have caused immense suffering for many Palestinians.
Gaza is being ‘collectively punished’, and is now facing economic hardship and a severe fuel shortage as a result of the Egyptian army’s destroying of underground tunnels. This is nothing particularly new. In fact, such ‘collective punishment’ has defined Gaza’s relationship to Israel for the last 65 years. Successive sieges and wars have left Gaza with deep scars, but left its people …
On October 11, we’ll learn whether the Norwegian Nobel Committee is interested in reviving the Nobel Peace Prize or putting another nail in its coffin.
Alfred Nobel’s vision for the Nobel Peace Prize created in his will was a good one and, one might have thought, a legally binding one as well.
The peace prize is not supposed to be awarded to proponents of war, such as Barack Obama or the European Union.
It is not supposed to be awarded to good humanitarians whose work has little or nothing to do with peace, such as most other recent recipients. As with the …
Now that our President has handed over the resolution of the Syrian debacle to the United Nations, perhaps justice demands that he hand over resolution of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict to that international body as well. One can turn to the reality of the illegal machinations of the Israeli Zionist government any day of the week and see and know and feel the terror that exists for the occupied people who are defenseless before the impunity granted to the state of Israel for crimes that any other member nation of the UN would, as is true of Syria, be brought for …
Vanessa Gezari wrote The Tender Soldier: A True Story of War and Sacrifice. I was intrigued to read a true story of war and sacrifice. The main title, The Tender Solider, struck me as oxymoronic. I do not usually think of trained killers as tender.
There are three main protagonists, as described on the inside jacket: “an intrepid Texas blonde, a former bodyguard for Afghan president Hamid Karzai, and an ex-military intelligence sergeant.” Some might consider that quite sexist, the woman being a function of her hair color while the men are described by their occupational history.
by The Real News Network (TRNN) / October 1st, 2013
Trillions in dollars to clean up Fukushima while the Land of the Rising Radioactive Sun — Nippon (??) — wants those 50 nuclear electrical generating plants back up. Solution: Get rid of Tokyo Electric. Japan needs to raise the money (not the Olympic flag and all those hundreds of billions in taxpayer yen for bizarre architecture and gizmos for the 2020 Olympic Villages) and to have citizen oversight. — Paul Haeder, Ed.
August 29 was a typically cool, wet summer day in downtown Seattle. “We support you!” cried the crowd of 30 or so gathered outside Specialty’s Café, their voices reverberating off the glass facades of adjacent downtown buildings. To remain open, the restaurant had been forced to call in extra staff. Six of its workers had joined the national fast-food workers’ strike that day to demand $15 per hour and a union.
The crowd in front of Specialty’s was distinctly of the type able to attend an anti-corporate demonstration in the middle of a workday — young and mostly white, trying to …
Backgrounder to press release: Anyone who has watched either of the Gasland documentaries is well aware of the devastating environmental consequences of fracking. Earlier this summer warriors of Elsipogtog First Nation opposed seismic testing for shale gas by SWN Resource Canada. ((See Miles Howe, “SWN rebuffed in New Brunswick back woods,” The Dominion, 24 June 2013.)) Mi’kmaq united with environmentalists and locals opposed to fracking.
SWN Resources is still attempting to carry out seismic testing on land deemed belonging to the Crown, so the resistance to the frackers continues. ((Miles Howe, “Return of the Frack,” …
Evil — no other word has a history of causing such malevolence and death.
Is there an evil, malevolent force in the universe known as the devil or Satan? Does this negative force delight in causing human chaos and wholesale destruction on earth? Are people who commit acts counter to the tenets of their respective philosophies—acts known as sins—transported to a place of unspeakable, eternal torment after death, and are such people in hell right now, prisoners to perpetual damnation? More than a billion people would answer yes to these questions because the teachings of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, all monotheistic …
In America today we are seeing a race to the bottom, the middle class is collapsing, poverty is increasing. What I saw in Immokalee is the bottom in the race to the bottom.
— Senator Bernie Saunders
Imagine getting up at 4.30 am and walking to a pick up site to begin looking for work. Over an hour later contractors turn up in pick up trucks to begin the daily selection of workers who will be lucky enough to work for ten hours in 90 degree heat. If you are picked, the contractor’s converted school bus will take you to the fields …
I’m rushing to make a deadline for a collection of writings around the intersection of climate change and race-culture-class. Sure, they accepted my initial propositions and ideas way back in May. And, while this might be a great little feather in my cap if they go with my stuff, again, it’s yet another “free” thing I undertake, this time for the tenured faculty editing and coordinating this. I am not wholly confident that my culture and class fit into any group’s schema of the concepts of class and culture tied to working class doers and multi-contextual thinkers and actors. Some …
The destruction of Syria, in many forms, is proceeding according to plan and on time. When the Western powers and their pals, the oil oligarchs, target your country, it’s time to run just as fast as you can.
I wrote “Welcome to the New Syria” on August 27, 2012. Based on known events and outcomes from the UN-NATO military action against Libya, I offered a number of predictions about the governance of the New Syria presuming a victory by Syrian rebels. At that time, the United States, Turkey, the United Kingdom, France and Gulf oligarchies, Qatar in particular, were full of …
Now that the entire population can go online and shovel even more money into the anti-human rights money pits which is the for-profit health industry, it might be nice to see who really benefits from this new “entitlement”.
Previously uninsurable. Yeah. Now they can give Wall Street cash out of their own pocket.
Previously unaffordable. Now the government can pay Wall Street directly, instead expanding Medicaid and cutting bankers out of the loop.
More of the new poor on Medicaid. See above.
Cocktail napkin numbers: 50 million uninsured today. Estimated that 25 million will become insured under Obamacare.
Putting the US on trial for genocide against the peoples of Korea, Laos, Viet Nam, Cambodia, Iraq, and elsewhere
by Kieran Kelly / September 30th, 2013
The United States of America was built on a foundation of genocide against the Indigenous peoples of North America. In fact, all successful settler colonial societies are founded in genocide. The process is one of dispossession – the erasure of one group identity and the imposition of another on the people and/or on the land. But genocide is not merely the foundation of the US nation state, it is also the foundation of the US empire. The US habit of genocide has not died, but has transformed. The US has become a serial perpetrator of genocide with the blood of …
A couple weeks ago I wrote about a Pentagon contingency that would place a ground based missile defense site in Jericho, Vermont. Meanwhile, another weapons system basing is already being hotly contested in the state. Unlike the missile site, which is currently opposed by all of Vermont’s elected representatives in Washington, this weapons system-the F-35, enjoys the support of Vermont’s entire congressional delegation, along with that of the Democratic governor, Peter Shumlin. Despite this support, the movement against what the Pentagon euphemistically calls the “bedding down” of the fighter planes is broad and certainly a player in the debate.
Just when you thought Obama might be the best ever rope-a-dope President this country has ever had, he still has the knack of making cabinet selections that irk the Democratic base to no end. Although comparisons to the Energizer Bunny might be more appropriate — given his ability to keep on ticking, Obama’s latest flirtation – and now fatal, prospective pick of Larry Summers as the next Federal Reserve Chairman is only the latest heresy. Here’s the rap sheet on Larry:
1. Summers rubs a lot of people the wrong way (and Bernanke doesn’t/didn’t). People want dependable and …
by The Real News Network (TRNN) / September 29th, 2013
Kevin Zeese is co-director of It’s Our Economy, an organization that advocates for democratizing the economy: The Trans-Pacific Partnership has nothing to do with trade or freedom, and ongoing demonstrations could encourage those on the inside to speak up.
Op-Edge RT — It is rich, stunningly beautiful, and it has the highest UN Human Development Index of the entire continent of Africa.
Its streets and roads are perfectly paved, and its gardens are blooming with local and imported flowers; its primary and secondary education (10 years of schooling) is compulsory and free, and so is the medical care, including all treatments and medicine.And Seychelles is what could be described as a welfare state, with a guaranteed survival minimum wage, much higher than the average wage in most of the “star capitalist countries” (if one adopts the terminology of the Western …
There are no shades of grey, no nuance or even cause and effect in the simplistic world view proclaimed by the current Canadian government.
The Conservatives response to the horrific attack in Nairobi’s Westgate Mall has been to thump their chests and proclaim their anti-terror bona fides.
“The fight against international terrorism is the great struggle of our generation, and we need to continue with the resolve to fight this,” bellowed Foreign Minister John Baird. For his part, Stephen Harper boasted that “our government is the government that listed al-Shabab as a terrorist entity.”
But the prime minister has ignored the fact that …
After reviewing Julian Assange’s 2012 book, Cypherpunks: Freedom and the Future of the Internet for h+ Magazine, I feel compelled to swim against the tide by illustrating an optimistic alternative to the techno-dystopia identified by Assange. The idea of the death of “modern states” may elicit dread in some, and delight in others. For some thinkers, it is a necessity of history, to be neither embraced nor protested. For me, it is a sign of social progress like the end of de jure racial segregation.
The dire prediction of Julian Assange is the emergence of a totalitarian surveillance regime or regimes with global scope. …
Ibon Foundation just concluded a conference to which I was invited to speak. I learned the history of the Philippine movement for independence from people who have paid the price because of their commitment to Philippine dignity, like Luis Jalandoni and Satur Ocampo For Senator (Philippines). Did you know that the Philippines was the first Republic in Asia just like Haiti was the first Republic in the Americas? Both now under occupation; both punished for their commitment to liberty.
Also discussed at the Conference, held at the European Parliament, were the situations of the Kurds, Basques, Tamils, and …
In recent decades, there has been a strongly asserted argument on African countries which are struggling economically and politically. The argument is that their way out of the vicious circle of poverty, debt and dependency is in the ‘market’ way. It is also important for their way out of political instability. ‘Privatize your state’s assets,’ they say, and make your state agencies and budgets smaller and your private sector bigger; the market will meet your development needs if you allow it to grow and take over the economy; etc. This argument is generally supported, in word and deed, by most …
Hush, all you serfs
Take this cash
Don’t do anything rash
And stay off our turfs
For over 200 years might and money have kept the powerful in power in America. Throughout her history America’s organized, powerful few have exploited the unorganized, powerless many and militarily claimed the lives of countless millions throughout the world all for the sake of ever more profit and ever more power. Her might along with her hush money in the form particularly of social welfare (which, however, is dwarfed by corporate welfare), tax exemptions for charities, government grants, foundation grants mostly derived from corporations’ vulgar (i.e., ill gotten) …
Countries’ economies are driven by an obsession, continuous growth in the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The absurdity of this becomes clear with a little bit of thought. Never-ending growth that relies on extracting resources from a finite planet is, of course, a mathematical impossibility, but well before we reach that point, this obsession will render our planet uninhabitable.
If our concern is the well-being of our citizens, is GDP the appropriate indicator of that? GDP is defined as the market value of all officially recognized final goods and services produced within a country in a given period of time.” …
They are at it again. By that, we can refer to those critics who see in Greece the basket case of all basket cases, the economic nightmare, the social dysfunction, a client who goes to a psychiatrist but evidently can’t pay the bills. The picture is dismal, made even more dismal by the critics who are hectoring Greece for what it is not.
Let us take a contribution in Haaretz by Charilaos Peitsinis which has much to recommend it, other than the warning signals about what Greek society has come to represent. “In recent months, Greek society has grown to …
During the September 23, 2013 meeting of the Bennington Select Board an order was given to pull the plug. Given the order, the CatamountAccess-TV cameraman immediately obeyed. Video and audio of the live broadcast suddenly disappeared from thousands of television screens. This occurred during an enthusiastic discussion between a citizen and a member of the Select Board.
That there was a blackout in one small Vermont town is not really important. If the blackout had been caused by a power outage, no one would care.
The important point is that government — at all levels, local, state, and federal — is out of control. Another important point …
The conventional wisdom on the world’s stock markets is that all listed reserves will be exploited and burnt.
Unburnable Carbon 2013: Are the World’s Financial Markets Carrying a Carbon Bubble, Report by Carbon Tracker Initiative
Developing new green technology, hiring workers and investing in new productive facilities involves a real risk: it may not be as profitable as purely speculative investments. With derivatives and the implicit backing of government removing the fear of failure for the world’s biggest corporations, there simply isn’t an economic incentive to make investment decisions that would help to avert climate catastrophe.
California leads the way to a fossil fuel-less world.
PRESS RELEASE: NIPTON, Calif. – Sept. 24, 2013 – “Today it was announced that the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System produced its first output of energy when unit 1 station was synchronized to the power grid for the first time (Brightsource Energy, Inc.)”
Voilà! Thinking ‘outside of the box’ turns energetic as the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System (ISEGS), owned by NRG Energy, Google, and BrightSource Energy, brightens up more than 140,000 homes in California, and momentously, shows the world how to make dry, barren desert “work for humanity.”
One thing about the ongoing crisis in Syria almost never mentioned in our media — even the alternative media — is the role of the nonviolent opposition to the Baathist regime. After the uprising began in the spring of 2011, the government engaged this opposition in discussions about reform of the Syrian political system. Out of these discussions came a new constitution, approved in February 2012 by 90% of the electorate in a popular referendum with a 57% turnout rate.
Prior to the new constitution, Syria was officially a one-party state: the Baathist party, to which the current and former president …
Democratic “Leaders” Push For “National Scandal” to Come to Vermont
by William Boardman / September 27th, 2013
Vermont city to consider protecting neighbors from Air Force F-35 attack
With Vermont’s highest elected officials still deep in Defense Dept. denial over the disaster that is the Air Force’s F-35 strike fighter, a local city council threatens to bring some military sanity to Vermont (but nowhere else) by exercising its landlord right to reject as a tenant a weapon of mass destruction that will wreak havoc on the local neighborhood.
This initiative comes from four members of Vermont’s Progressive Party on the Burlington City Council, who plan to introduce a resolution on October 7 effectively barring the F-35 from being …
