When it suits its purposes, Russia seems to have the same propensity as the US to thumb its nose at international law. Two weeks ago, Putin acquired immense international stature and prestige by halting the imminent threat of US missile strikes in Syria. Now he seems to have squandered it all by illegally seizing a Greenpeace vessel in international waters.
On September 18, Russian FSB agents illegally boarded the Arctic Sunrise (by rappelling down from a helicopter) and seized, at gunpoint, the boat and all its occupants. The Greenpeace ship was in Arctic waters to protest hazardous oil drilling by the Russian company Gazprom. Earlier in the week …
Living in the Pacific Northwest, I have had the good fortune to see killer whales on several occasions from shore or boats. My dream is to view them underwater while scuba diving. Once after having surfaced from a dive in Saanich Inlet, I was told a pod of killer whales had swam past behind me. I was upset at the dive instructor who explained that he hadn’t informed me because he was afraid the other diver in our group might panic.
So I was particularly keen to watch the documentary on captive killer whales, Blackfish, which reminded me of La Planète …
In Part 1, Williams explores the chasm between environmentalists of the leftist and rightist persuasions, in particular the role NGOs play in the environmental movement. In Part 2, Williams explores further the direction of the environmental movement.
*****
No genuine environmental organization can back carbon trading or other market-based schemes. Dozens of social justice and environmental and indigenous organizations have unequivocally called for the scrapping of ETS before it does more damage and further locks in the very fossil-fueled energy production system we’re trying so urgently to dismantle.
However, Klein, due to her being a board member of Bill Mckibben’s organization, 350.org;, …
I was somewhat shocked by your article, which to most readers would appear as an advertisement for PM Harper’s upcoming JNF Fundraiser. There are several important pieces of information which you and The Star have a moral and ethical obligation to present to readers who might otherwise be prompted by your article to donate to the JNF. Indeed one …
Real alternative to EU exports is born during recent talks in Moscow. Representatives of Chinese National Petroleum Company and Russia’s oil and gas giants Gazprom and Novatek have inked the agreement to sell abundant Siberian resources to the fast-growing Eastern market. The Chinese are investing billions to Russia’s fuel energy complex diversification program. Positive Fitch report on the historic deal indicates that both parties are planning to reach synergies and profit from cooperation.
Since the adoption of “third energy package” in 2009 Moscow has been deeply disappointed by European red tape in the sphere of energy policy. Step by step Brussels …
The train of history is an unpredictable one. The less well-oiled gears may be wonky. The driver may be asleep or dosing off. How one influences that train is a matter of some conjecture. Great figures of history have attempted to control their role in it. The error often lies in assuming that history is made at the time, when it is actually made after the time. As a keen Winston Churchill quipped about the architect of appeasement Neville Chamberlain, history would treat him poorly for the simple reason that he would write it.
Saving Syria from Chemical Weapons by “Punishing” With Chemical Weapons?
by Felicity Arbuthnot / September 20th, 2013
Two centuries ago, a former European colony decided to catch up with Europe. It succeeded so well that the United States of America became a monster, in which the taints, the sickness and the inhumanity of Europe have grown to appalling dimensions.
Frantz Fanon, (1925-1961)
Against all odds, given the circumstances, the Syrian government has, of Friday (20th September) sent an “initial declaration” of the country’s (arguably defensive) weapons to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons in The Hague. “The organization is looking at ways to fast-track moves to secure and destroy Syria’s chemical weapons stockpiles and production facilities.”
Bolivian President Evo Morales will file a lawsuit against the US government for crimes against humanity. He has decried the US for its intimidation tactics and fear-mongering after the Venezuelan presidential jet was blocked from entering US airspace.
“I would like to announce that we are preparing a lawsuit against Barack Obama to condemn him for crimes against humanity,” said President Morales at a press conference in the Bolivian city of Santa Cruz. He branded the US president as a “criminal” who violates international law.
In solidarity with Venezuela, Bolivia will begin preparing a lawsuit against the US head of state to be taken to …
Tactics: the science and art of using a fighting force to the best advantage having regard to the immediate situation of combat.
Strategy: the science and art of conducting a military campaign in its large-scale and long-term aspects.
— The New Webster’s Comprehensive Dictionary of the English Language
Naomi Klein, in a recent interview, Green Group’s May be More Damaging than Climate Change Deniers, has sparked a furious debate amongst activists on the right and left of the North American environmental movement. Thanks to Klein’s article, the flames of controversy have been fanned and brought forth some fiery rhetoric around a dispute …
The stage is set. By now it’s established Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei has given full authority to the new administration of President Hassan Rouhani to talk directly to Washington about Iran’s nuclear program.
This happened only a few days after US President Barack Obama leaked that letters had been exchanged between himself and Rouhani.
Rouhani’s empowerment was first confirmed later last week by extremely credible former nuclear negotiator ambassador Seyed Hossein Mousavian in this op-ed published in Japan. Mousavian was Rouhani’s deputy in Iran’s Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) from 1997 to 2005. Then Rouhani himself expanded on it …
Sand’s latest book, How I Ceased To Be A Jew, (translated from Hebrew) is a tragic testimony made by a morally awakened Israeli Jew who comes to realise that his spiritual, cultural and political existence is contaminated with Judeo-centric exclusivism and is fuelled by ethno-centric racism. Shlomo Sand decides to stop being a Jew – but has he succeeded?
Sand, as we all know, is a wonderful writer; witty, innovative, poetic and fluent, his voice is personal, at times funny, occasionally sarcastic and always genuinely pessimistic.
A plan to inspect and destroy Syria’s chemical weapons has focused new attention on Israel’s undeclared WMDs
by Jonathan Cook / September 20th, 2013
Israeli officials are reported to be increasingly nervous that international efforts to destroy Syria’s chemical weapons might serve as a prelude to demands on Israel to eliminate its own, undeclared weapons of mass destruction.
Israel maintains a posture it terms ‘ambiguity’ on the question of whether it possesses either nuclear or chemical weapons. But Israel is widely believed to have a large arsenal of nuclear bombs, concealed from international scrutiny, and there are strong suspicions that it has secretly developed a chemical weapons programme.
Those concerns intensified following the disclosure this month of a confidential CIA report suggesting that Israel had created …
Waiting for the pipeline shuffle (rhymes with hustle)...
by Bill Annett / September 20th, 2013
Recently a sober CBC report (aren’t they all?) indicated that a corporal’s guard of Federal cabinet ministers, bolstered by “senior bureaucrats,” are deploying to British Columbia in a concerted effort to sell the natives on the China-or-bust oil pipeline initiative. By “native” of course we mean the original residents, who apparently are the only ones with a common sense concern for the environment. White British Columbians, as usual, are either lulled into sleep by their dead-ass media, or else transfixed by riveting news items such as visiting guitar artists or hockey scores. Unfortunately, decades ago, the Crown deked the originals …
Harper’s Conservatives have a thing for monarchy, the more absolute the better, it seems.
At home they’ve put up portraits of Queen Elizabeth II and added the moniker “royal” to the Canadian Navy and Air Force while in the Middle East they’ve strengthened Canada’s ties to kingdoms from Morocco to Saudi Arabia.
Jordan’s pro-US/pro-Israel King Abdullah II has been the focus of significant attention with the Conservatives signing a free trade and military cooperation agreement with that country last year. Now the Conservatives are strengthening Canada’s ties to a monarchy confronted by an influx of Syrian refugees, volatile regional geopolitics and popular …
A good propaganda system aims at controlling the public dialogue, and in the marketing of war one technique that has proven very successful in recent years has been to encourage public debate about a proposed war, but to do so within a framework that already assumes the basic dogmas that you are trying to sell.
So, for instance, in preparation for the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, healthy debate was encouraged over the question of whether the ‘liberation of Iraq’ would cost the US too much and whether it would solve all the problems for Iraq and for the …
Half a year into Obama’s second term, it has become clear what has been done under his watch. He brought to the world massive banking fraud, drone attacks, indefinite detention, assassination of US citizens and an unprecedented war on whistleblowers. The rhetoric of hope and change has finally and undeniably revealed its true colors. Prominent dissident intellectual Noam Chomsky remarked how Obama’s assault on civil liberties has progressed beyond anything he could have imagined. All of these telltale signs mark the slippery slide toward totalitarianism that seems to now be escalating.
Edward Snowden’s NSA files unveiled to the world mass global …
This city peaked nearly a century ago, when it billed itself as “The World’s Playground.” Hyperboles and false hopes are its currencies. Trudging into glitzy casinos, badly dressed schmucks dream of instant wealth, yet leave with barely enough nickels and dimes for McDonald’s dollar menu. I know of a Chinatown waitress who shows up twice a year. In Philly, she’d hop on the bus in her vermillion blouse, crimson shoes and blazing underwear, all for luck, but by evening, she’d be crumpled outside Bally’s, lamenting her fate, in Cantonese mostly, and even sobbingly demanding a partial refund so she could …
by Dr. Hakim and the Afghan Peace Volunteers / September 19th, 2013
We, the Afghan Peace Volunteers, are finding strength amidst our dark nights because, in the daylight of a global awakening, we see people throughout the world refusing to comply with oppressive systems. We see that we aren’t alone in rejecting governments and militant groups that wage wars and make deals at the expense of ordinary people.
Artificial borders may attempt to divide us, but through connections with ordinary people worldwide, we are affirmed as free human beings, free to nurture ways of living that aren’t monopolized by a few.
Daylight, in our hearts and everywhere, is laying bare the abusive, authoritarian power …
You’re wrong. I mean what I say and say — I was going to say “what I mean,” but that would be false. I say what grows heavy on my tongue. Like you, I have no mind (to call my own), but plug into the:
All-mind-Every-mind, polity of “us,” invoked in apostrophe, on television, billboards, bumper-stickers, magazines as “we.”
Oh tireless, indomitable “We:”
— rebelled in the sixties, but now that we’ve grown, its time to plan our golden phases of maturity…
— are not getting older, we’re getting better.
— need to conserve — but conservatively, lest we disrupt our way of life.
Ben Swann Reality Check takes a look at three controversies surrounding food company Monsanto. Plus, is Monsanto one of the best examples of America’s crony capitalist system.
Last week, Verizon, the telephone giant, went to court to accuse the Federal Communications Commission of “overstepping its authority” and reverse the authority’s over-step. It’s a legal wrangle that, bottled and distributed, would be a safe substitute for sleeping pills.
Lurking behind the nearly unintelligible and ridiculously referential courtroom arguments, however, is a clear picture of the difference between the corporate vision of the Internet’s future and the way the rest of us want it. At this point, corporations are pouring resources into imposing their vision of the Internet and, if they do, there won’t be an Internet as we know …
Much-Delayed Report On Congenital Birth Defects In Iraq
by Media Lens / September 19th, 2013
In a 2010 alert, “Beyond Hiroshima – The Non-Reporting Of Fallujah’s Cancer Catastrophe”, we noted the almost non-existent media response to the publication of a new study that had found high rates of infant mortality, cancer and leukaemia in the Iraqi city. The dramatic increases in these rates exceeded even those found in survivors of the atomic bombs dropped by the United States on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. The Independent’s Patrick Cockburn was a lone exception in reporting these awful findings.
As many readers will recall, Fallujah was subjected to US military attacks in March 2004 and an …
we huff and we puff and we complain about wages and the quicksand death of higher and public education but all of life is a stage for the Daily Show
The funeral Mass for Margaret Mary, a devout Catholic, was held at Epiphany Church, only a few blocks from Duquesne. The priest who said Mass was from the University of Dayton, another Catholic university and my alma mater. Margaret Mary was laid out in a simple, cardboard casket devoid of any handles for pallbearers — a sad sight, but an honest symbol of what she had been reduced to by …
by Medea Benjamin and Pam Bailey / September 18th, 2013
There was a time when activist groups that focused on helping the Palestinians in Gaza reserved their harshest language and protests for Israel, which long has prohibited both air and sea traffic in and out of Gaza; tightly limited exchanges through its Erez terminal; and banned exports altogether.
While movement in and out of Gaza via the Egyptian terminal at Rafah was restricted as well, it nonetheless was a critical lifeline for Palestinians needing to travel, and for humanitarian aid. Likewise, members of the Egyptian government often played a constructive role in facilitating negotiations between the various Palestinian factions, as well …
Once upon a time, antibiotics were life-saving wonder drugs. Before the discovery of penicillin in 1928 and its first use in the 1930s and 1940s, half of all babies who died after birth succumbed to Strep (Streptococcus pyogenes) and 80 percent of Staph (Staphylococcus aureus) infected wounds were fatal.
Unfortunately, the medical, veterinary and consumer product industries have so overused antibiotics many have become worthless. Factory farmers use an estimated 70 percent of all antibiotics produced to make animals grow faster and keep infection from breaking out. Attempts by the FDA to abolish their routine use on farms are stonewalled by …
One can easily summon the image of him from memory, arrayed in a bisque-colored pheasant hunting jacket, doing his best impression of a rural hayseed, the better to sway Midwest voters likely to stump for illiterate gunslinger George Bush in the 2004 elections. That’s when many of us gave up on John Kerry. He was outed as a man who would do practically anything to be popular. A man bereft of consistent convictions. A Senatorial rogue who had traded on his slightly raffish New Englander mien to accrue his undeserved credibility. That, and a genuinely affecting appearance before the Senate …
…we must consider that we shall be as a City upon a Hill, the eyes of all people upon us; so that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken and so cause him to withdraw his present help from us, we shall be made a story and a byword through the world, we shall open the mouths of enemies to speak evil of the ways of God and all professors for Gods sake; we shall shame the faces of many of God’s worthy servants, and cause their prayers to be turned into curses …
The existence of pristine foragers has generated considerable debate and a latent controversy remains associated with this notional category of human subsistence life-ways. Scholars of traditional Siberian forager culture and Russian government officials have not yet reached a consensus for a singular definition to describe these groups. This is a taxonomic task that must be resolved for the benefit of the “numerically small peoples of the North” as they are currently defined by the Russian government and known to scholars who participated in the 1993 Seventh International Conference of Hunting and Gathering Societies. Indigenous peoples’ rights, livelihoods, environment, and physical …
