Latest articles
by Robert S. Becker / September 18th, 2013
Though not for lack of trying, in his solo flight Obama dramatically flubbed War-making 101. This washout is all the more astonishing, considering how far he’s gone, and high political costs paid, duplicating woefully entrenched policies. Yet this president fails to appreciate the brilliant Bush-Cheney machination on Iraq: instigating a war of choice with zero direct or national security threat.
That con, mastered by that pious posse of Dubya, Cheney and Rumsfeld, not only brought us a “dumb” war but installed pre-emptive unilateralism as default foreign policy (burying negotiation). Team Bush understood Washington, Pentagon brass, the State Dept., and national media …
by Stuart Jeanne Bramhall / September 18th, 2013
The main theme of a new documentary, Trashed: No Place for Waste , directed by Candida Brady 2013, and narrated by British actor Jeremy Irons, is the major health danger posed by the 7 billion tons of garbage we discard every year. The film focuses primarily on dioxins, PCBs, phthalates, bisphenyl A, and other endocrine disruptors – particularly the role they play in a growing epidemic of cancer, autoimmune disease, infertility, and neuro-degenerative disease. Thanks to a 2005 Center for Disease Control study, there’s growing international awareness that all human beings carry an average of 148 of these toxic chemicals …
by Steve Horn / September 18th, 2013
The long-awaited Environmental Defense Fund (EDF)-sponsored hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) fugitive methane emissions study is finally out. Unfortunately, it’s another case of “frackademia” or industry-funded ‘science’ dressed up to look like objective academic analysis.
If reliable, the study – published in the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and titled, “Measurements of methane emissions at natural gas production sites in the United States” – would have severely reduced concerns about methane emissions from fracked gas.
The report concludes .42% of fracked gas – based on samples taken from 190 production sites – is emitted into the …
by David Macaray / September 18th, 2013
Hard as it may be to believe, in 1939, the University of Chicago abruptly dropped its football program, citing as its reason the astonishing fact that (according to school president, the uber-intellectual Robert Maynard Hutchins) the sport had evolved to the point where it was becoming a distraction to both students and faculty. In Hutchins’ view, the game of football was now detracting from the noble ideals the university had set for itself.
And this was no empty, purely symbolic gesture made by an otherwise ignored and lackluster football school. This was not the case of some homely, unpopular high school …
by Ramzy Baroud / September 18th, 2013
Many US media commentators were fairly accurate in labeling some of the language used by Russian President Vladimir Putin in his recent New York Times article as ‘hypocritical’. But mainstream US media should be the last to point out anyone’s hypocrisy as it has brazenly endorsed every military intervention unleashed by their country since World War II. Putin’s statement “we must stop using the language of force and return to the path of civilized diplomatic and political settlement,” merits serious scrutiny. Considering that violence has been a readily available option in Russia’s own wars from Afghanistan, to Chechnya and Georgia, …
Israel still angling for attack on Syria and Iran
by Jonathan Cook / September 18th, 2013
President Barack Obama may have drawn his seemingly regretted “red line” around Syria’s chemical weapons, but it was neither he nor the international community that turned the spotlight on their use. That task fell to Israel.
It was an Israeli general who claimed in April that Damascus had used chemical weapons, forcing Obama into an embarrassing demurral on his stated commitment to intervene should that happen.
According to the Israeli media, it was also Israel that provided the intelligence that blamed the Syrian president, Bashar Al Assad, for the latest chemical weapons attack, near Damascus on August 21, triggering the clamour for …
by Felicity Arbuthnot / September 18th, 2013
I wonder now how the foreign policies of the United States would look if we wiped out the national boundaries of the world, at least in our minds, and thought of all children everywhere as our own. Then we could never drop an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, or napalm on Vietnam, or wage war anywhere, because wars, especially in our time, are always wars against children, indeed our children.
— Howard Zinn, 1922-2010
Oh, dear! It’s the Hitler thing again. Considering the barely imaginable oceans of dollars US war departments spend on selling their newest illegal, manufactured war of aggression, they certainly …
The Looming Mass Destruction from Derivatives
by Ellen Brown / September 17th, 2013
Increased regulation and low interest rates are driving lending from the regulated commercial banking system into the unregulated shadow banking system. The shadow banks, although free of government regulation, are propped up by a hidden government guarantee in the form of safe harbor status under the 2005 Bankruptcy Reform Act pushed through by Wall Street. The result is to create perverse incentives for the financial system to self-destruct.
Five years after the financial collapse precipitated by the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy on September 15, 2008, the risk of another full-blown financial panic is still looming large, despite the Dodd Frank legislation …
by Robert Hunziker / September 17th, 2013
Leave it to the Wall Street Journal to set the stage for the much-anticipated “Fifth Assessment Report” (aka: AR5) from the illustrious Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Recently, the WSJ published an article about AR5 by none other than Viscount Matt Ridley, libertarian extraordinaire, who distinguished himself as the first chairman of a UK bank, since 1878, to suffer a ‘major run’ on his bank- Northern Rock’s total failure led to the bank falling into the ‘arms’; i.e., nationalization, of the government. Ridley’s article in the Wall Street Journal (September 13, 2013) is, as follows: Dialing Back the Alarm on …
by Peter Breschard / September 17th, 2013
Let’s begin with everyone agreeing on one point. Good prenatal care should be available to all who make the choice to avail themselves of it.
How many people in this country would never consider applying for “goddamn Welfare” even if their lives depended upon it? Quite a few American citizens were raised to believe, and still think to this day, that “goddamn Welfare” should be avoided like the plague and it might even be sinful to receive “handouts” from the government. Sound like anybody you might have met?
The way the present system is set up, if you are relatively non-affluent, you …
by Brenda Heard / September 17th, 2013
As we chase the latest headlines and grow dizzy from the daily crises of the Middle East, sometimes we overlook the persistent problems. Perhaps the element of continuance makes them frustrating, perhaps just boring. But to ignore the drip-drop of Israeli belligerence toward Lebanon is to shrug off the impunity by which it persists.
In February 2013, I published the article “Birds of Prey: the Record of Impunity for Israeli Military Aircraft,” which provides background to this growing problem. What follows is a statistical update. (original UN reports listed here)
In the 18-month period of January 2012—June 2013,* there were …
by Eve Human / September 17th, 2013
Many financial analysts agree that a financial meltdown is practically inevitable. Analyst Steve Denning writes in the prominent financial magazine Forbes in his article: “Big Banks and Derivatives: Why Another Financial Crisis Is Inevitable” that while corruption and a number of financial scandals are certainly a grave danger to the stability of the world financial system, a far worse problem is something else:
… the risk that is still staring us in the face: the lack of transparency in derivative trading that now totals in notional amount more than $700 trillion. That is more than ten times the size of the entire world …
by Greg Palast / September 17th, 2013
Joseph Stiglitz couldn’t believe his ears. Here they were in the White House, with President Bill Clinton asking the chiefs of the US Treasury for guidance on the life and death of America’s economy, when the Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Larry Summers turns to his boss, Secretary Robert Rubin, and says, “What would Goldman think of that?”
Huh?
Then, at another meeting, Summers said it again: What would Goldman think?
A shocked Stiglitz, then Chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisors, told me he’d turned to Summers, and asked if Summers thought it appropriate to decide US economic policy based on …
by Chris Time Steele / September 16th, 2013
“Break The State” (prod. by Satyre) from the album Newstalgia. The song contains working class frustrations, anarchist philosophies, and a ode to Emma Goldman.
by Douglas Valentine / September 16th, 2013
As soon as Kevin Drum at Mother Jones absolved the CIA of spewing poison gas as a provocation, many on the Liberal Left cautiously threw their weight behind Obama and the thrill of waging a punitive war on Syria.
“Perhaps regime change is a good idea,” Tom Hayden speculated in The Nation.
Left paterfamilias Noam Chomsky, who generally shows an appreciation for the subtleties of covert action, claimed that America is not supplying its Al Qaeda mercenary army with arms – even though Eric Schmidt at the New York Times reported over a year ago that CIA officers in Turkey were “helping allies decide which Syrian opposition …
by Paul Haeder / September 16th, 2013
Labels Scare the GE Crap Outta Bayer, Monsanto, et al
We had a gathering — public meeting — in Ellensburg, WA, looking at the known and projected impacts of genetically engineered crops. The Washington State supporters are looking to garner more support for an initiative on the upcoming ballot, I-522, which calls for labeling all genetically engineered food.
Sort of half the ball-game is lost. Akin to putting giant marques around big and small communities that state:
Ground water contaminated with hydraulic fracturing chemicals
Ground ozone too high — stay inside, don’t exercise, breathe easy
Beaches closed due to medical waste flotsam
Tap water must be …
by Phil Greaves / September 16th, 2013
Current events surrounding the Syrian conflict appear to be on the brink of a partial agreement toward peace. Brokered by the United States and Russia, the new quick-fire round of talks in Geneva between US Secretary of State John Kerry and his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov have been promoted as a bilateral effort to disarm Syria’s chemical weapons stockpile and move forward with talks to help end the crisis (Geneva II). Yet parallel to the alleged chemical weapons attack in eastern Ghouta – which subsequently led to the diplomatic breakthrough between Washington and Moscow – a chain of events largely …
by Yves Engler / September 16th, 2013
Somewhere in the Lester B. Pearson Building, Canada’s foreign affairs headquarters, must be a meeting room with the inscription “The World Should Do as We Say, Not As We Do” or perhaps “Hypocrites ‘R Us.”
With the Obama administration beating the war drums, Canadian officials are demanding a response to the Syrian regime’s alleged use of the chemical weapon sarin.
Last week Prime Minister Stephen Harper claimed “if it is not countered, it will constitute a precedent that we think is very dangerous for humanity in the long term” while for his part Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird declared: “If it doesn’t …
by The Real News Network (TRNN) / September 15th, 2013
by Ludwig Watzal / September 15th, 2013
Originally, I didn’t want to write anything at the 20th Anniversary of the signing of the Oslo accords, because I consider it a waste of time. But since there are still journalists and politicians who can get something positive out of this charade, I would like to show them that their thinking is illusory. Fact is: Secret negotiations take place between the fourth-largest nuclear power in the world and a brutally colonized and oppressed people, which only has international law on its side. This fact requires no further comment when it comes to a possible outcome.
At the outset, it should …
by Ron Jacobs / September 15th, 2013
This week, the Vermont news media published stories stating that the Pentagon is considering building a Ground-based Midcourse Defense base in Jericho, Vermont, a small town near Burlington and Montpelier. When people think about Vermont, Jericho is what people think of; wooded lands, dairy farms, older houses and a blend of Yankee families whose roots go back generations and newer residents looking for tranquility, beauty and a good place to raise their kids. There is no reasonable argument for a missile base in Jericho, Vermont. Indeed, there is no reasonable argument for this missile base to be built anywhere.
It was …
by Paul Haeder / September 15th, 2013
This is the debate, now, is it not, in a microcosm – many, many schools across this great Consumer-Condemned Land of Amerika are struggling BIG Time to make ends meet. Mostly those of us in the underclass, that sweeping 80 percent holding 7 percent of all wealth in the USA, have skin in the game. We are a giant majority, diverse, not organized, and, unfortunately, at each other’s necks in a dog-eat-dog world of divide and conquer, attack the weak, disperse the weakest and prey on the one-paycheck-away-from-living-in-a-van-down-by-the river-and-PhDs-on-food-stamps-and Millennials-screwed-from cradle-to-grave.
We are a sick joke of a society that can’t …
by Murray Hunter / September 14th, 2013
Most discussion about prostitution in Southeast Asia of late has been focused upon the issues of human trafficking and sex tourism across the region.
However, with the exception of those fraudulently lured into the sex trade, a surprising number of women in places like Ancol, Mabini, Clark, Pattaya, Soi Cowboy, Nana, Dannock, Betong, Sungei Golok, Batam, Wan Chai and Labuan—are there of their own free will, without force or direct coercion – except, sadly, for the economic imperatives of their poverty-stricken lives.
This requires another look at the Southeast Asian sex trade from the point of view of …
Framing the Debate on War by Remote Control
by Brian Terrell / September 14th, 2013
On May 23, President Obama gave a major address from the National Defense University, “On the Future of Our Fight against Terrorism,” in which he acknowledged for the first time the US government’s still officially secret program of assassination by remotely controlled drones. I was able to watch this televised speech from the privileged vantage of a federal prison on the last day of a sentence resulting from my protest of drones lethally operated from Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri over various countries around the world.
Over the previous six months in the Federal Prison Camp at Yankton, South Dakota, …
by Bill Annett / September 14th, 2013
Not long ago, financial storm clouds were still lowering on Europe; Greece was holding an election, Spain was holding its breath, and the European Central Bank and Chancellor Merkel were holding all the cards (at least concerning the future of the Euro). Meanwhile, one corporate escape artist was leaving what was perceived to be an economic sink tank.
The giant Airbus consortium, builder of the A-380, the competitor that keeps Boeing’s top brass sleepless in Seattle, decided to open a plant in sunny Alabama. Following similar moves by BMW and Mercedes-Benz, Airbus was the latest in-sourcing event, in …
by Fernando Andres Torres / September 14th, 2013
2 9/11s in 1’s life
September 11, 1973 scattered us in all directions. Barricaded in Antofagasta’s only public high school, Liceo de Hombres #2, we listened to the news which at times was contradictory and confusing until the inevitable reality of it all cut into us deeply. We couldn’t organize an armed resistance because the promised weapons never arrived and the nunchakus wouldn’t be sufficient. Instead we began to worry about the human situation. Two of my school companions were not able to return home, it was too dangerous and betrayal hovered too close. Both of them ended up as asylees …
Tangoing on the Corpse of International Law
by Binoy Kampmark / September 13th, 2013
Everybody’s mad about Russia’s President Vladimir Putin. Well, almost everybody. If his dummy is not carted about as a homophobic miscreant on comedy shows in the West then he is wagging his finger at the United States over Syria and worshiping the god of international law. And such wagging, it might be added.
What is it that stirred the blood so much? That New York Times (Sep 12) column by the president titled “A Plea for Caution from Russia”. “We must stop using the language of force and return to the path of civilized diplomatic and …
by Kim Petersen / September 13th, 2013
George W. Bush once flubbed an aphorism (granted, an easy to flub aphorism) about being fooled once, shame on the fooler, being similarly fooled twice, then the shame was on you. ((See Kim Petersen, “Public Gullibility and the Media,” Dissident Voice, 26 April 2003.)) Barack Obama has turned the scenario on its head. Obama was not fooled by Bush and the neocons pushing for an attack on Iraq. In 2002, while a United States senator, Barack Obama said, “I don’t oppose all wars. What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a …
He Don't Give a Shit
by Randy Shields / September 13th, 2013
This is a brief description of the American honey obadger, sometimes confused with the African honey badger of this famous youtube video.
See the American honey obadger running around the Middle East. Oh, my God, he looks lost, he doesn’t seem to belong there… What’s he doing now… Oh, oh, look at him, he’s taking his paw and drawing a “red line” on Syria — he’s bringing the Middle East and maybe whole world to the brink of war — he don’t care. But now he says, “Oops, never mind.” Honey obadger don’t give a shit.
Honey obadger weeps barackodile tears …
The People Against the 800 Pound Gorilla
by Jean Bricmont and Diana Johnstone / September 13th, 2013
The past ten days have seen what could be the start of an historic turning point away from endless war in the Middle East. Public opinion in the United States, in harmony with the majority of people in the world, has clearly rejected U.S. military intervention in Syria.
But for this turn away from war to be complete and lasting, greater awareness is needed of the forces that have been pushing the United States into these wars, and will surely continue to do so until they are clearly and openly rejected.
An American friend who knows Washington well recently told …
