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“For one thing, major world and European powers are often reluctant to engage less prominent stakeholders (nationality, class or generation). Their academic circles tend to follow about the same pattern: What matters – far too often – is WHO, not WHAT is to be published. This discouraging climate makes it increasingly difficult to generate or balance new ideas, to even participate or to steam up new visions, as well as to forge common approaches, and to secure broad consensus over the vital issues of our shared concern.” – was stated in the cover letter I recently got along with …

This Week:

1. ReReRepeat
2. Akira was right
3. Colombianarquía
4. Brazil Black Bloc
5. Mescal Molotovs
6. Olmeca
7. Colombia’s farmers revolt!

What would it look like if a government really knew what it was doing?

Lacking a comprehensive, coherent account of rational beings acting in rational ways to work towards peaceful and reliable solutions to difficult questions, we offer here a fragmentary highlight reel of one day in the life of an American government  spinning in all directions toward no known goal in Syria.

But first a note about the context of the current public debate about Syria: we’re getting conned by the White House on intelligence assessments. Again. As reported by Gareth Porter for IPS on September 9:

Contrary to the general impression …

(Full article …)

The distance between Gaza and Ramallah in sheer miles is hardly significant. But in actuality, both cities represent two different political realities, with inescapable cultural and socio-economic dimensions. Their geopolitical horizons are vastly different as well – Gaza is situated within its immediate Arab surroundings and turmoil, while Ramallah is westernized in too many aspects to count. In recent years, the gap has widened like never before.

Of course, Gaza and Ramallah were always, in some ways, unalike. Demographics, size, topography and geographic proximity to Arab countries with different political priorities have always made them separate and distinctive. But the Israeli …

Leafing through The Economist can be a disorienting journey for the garden variety leftist. As you enter the sanctified space of the week’s leaders, you are confronted with a pastiche of fulminant one-pagers by anonymous staffers exasperated with either the Western world’s reluctance to bomb somebody, or the Eastern world’s reluctance to immediately relinquish all forms of economic protectionism. This week’s spotlight was devoted to the former. But first, a word from our sponsor. Across the two-page spread from the leader is an image of Liam Neeson, the tenured international actor who has lately reinvented himself rather convincingly as a …

John Gray is a British social philosopher who, in the words of David Hawkes, puts forward an “uncompromising challenge to the myth of progress.” Hawkes (an English professor at Arizona State) has recently published an essay, “Backwards into the future” in the TLS (8-30-2013) which is a sympathetic presentation of Gray’s views and a review of his latest book, The Silence of Animals: On progress and other modern myths. What is Gray’s challenge all about?

Gray’s new book is an attack on “meliorism” — which Hawkes explains as the view “that the moral and material condition of humanity will improve over …

We are at a point where we try so hard to shunt our human stupidity, forgo any foresight, embrace and honor our consumer plague and believe the stories in our heads that somehow this point of methane explosion – a world without ICE —  human population blight, economic and ecological divisions and degradations somehow are just blips in the scheme of things.

A good movie, an in-your-face iron chef cooking show, some silly jive about I Have a Dream is So Coming True lol, and a few milliseconds of philanthropy in between a billion waking hours surfing and porning and blathering on the Internet and listening or reading (do …

Lanny Cotler and I lived the 60s.  He was involved in the Berkeley Free Speech dust-up and I was Bobby Kennedy’s film crew director to the end in L.A.  We were both in Vietnam, he in State and I for CARE, and saw that debacle in all its hideous depth. We were radicalized then, and it only deepened and matured over the decades of Nixon, Reagan, Clinton et al.  The insane response to 911 under Bush and the congealing of Congress into an American Reichstag pushed us both into a sense that whatever we could do, however slight, we simply …

If there was ever any doubt about the purpose of intervention in Syria, it has been dispelled as hoards of lobbyists from AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, including 250 Jewish leaders, descend upon Capitol Hill.  Their mission is to make sure that each and every member of Congress knows how important it is to vote in favor of American military intervention in Syria.

With apologies to the original quote, “It is better to remain silent and be thought a traitor than to speak and remove all doubt.”  The Israel lobby pushed the U.S. into wars with Iraq and …

IPS – Contrary to the general impression in Congress and the news media, the Syria chemical warfare intelligence summary released by the Barack Obama administration August 30 did not represent an intelligence community assessment, an IPS analysis and interviews with former intelligence officials reveals.

Contrary to the general impression in Congress and the news media, the Syria chemical warfare intelligence summary released by the Barack Obama administration August 30 did not represent an intelligence community assessment, an IPS analysis and interviews with former intelligence officials reveals.

The evidence indicates that Director of National Intelligence James Clapper culled intelligence analyses from various agencies …

In a bold and surprising move to expand union brotherhood, Richard Trumka, president of the 11.5-million member AFL-CIO, announced that his Federation would consider inviting non-union workers to join up. And in an equally surprising move, Trumka also suggested inviting progressive environmental and civil rights groups (e.g., the Sierra Club, the NAACP, the National Council of La Raza, etc.) to form partnerships or quasi-coalitions with the House of Labor.

This announcement was made on the eve of the AFL-CIO’s convention, which began on Sunday, September 8, in Los Angeles. Although Trumka and his advisors deserve enormous credit for …

“This,” cried the mayor, “is your town’s darkest hour!
The time for all Whos who have blood that is red
to come to the aid of their country!” he said.
“We’ve GOT to make noises in greater amounts!
So, open your mouth, lad! For every voice counts!”
Thus he spoke as he climbed. When they got to the top,
the lad cleared his throat and he shouted out, “Yopp!”
And that Yopp… That one small extra Yopp put it over!
Finally, at last! From that speck on that clover
their voices were heard!

— Horton Hears a Who, by Dr. Seuss

The American people are rejecting war with …

The Obama administration is looking to attack Syria. If they go forward without UN approval, the US would once again be violating international law and would likely inflame a conflict that’s already left 100,000 dead and displaced millions more.

For its part, Ottawa seems to want military action. Last week Prime Minister Stephen Harper said, “We do support our allies who are contemplating forceful action [in Syria]” and on Friday he added “we are simply not prepared to accept the idea that there is a Russian veto [at the UN Security Council] over all of our actions.”

At the same …

Ellen Hodgson Brown, a West Coast writer with a law degree, or perhaps more accurately, an attorney who likes to write in order to right, is one of the few people around who talks sense about banksters in general, central banking in particular, and the international excuse for both that prevails these days.

Ms Brown talks about the leveraged buyout of America, how giant “bancorps,” as they like to style themselves, perhaps because it sounds so new-worldy cool, have gluttonized to the point where they own just about everything private and public: airports and other ports, acres of green plants and …

Historical analogies can be effective tools to command attention. They can also be grotesque fabrications and dangerous distortions. Each historical event has its own locale of development, its own forces, and distinctiveness. Analogy, for that reasons, can only be suggestive, never conclusive.

The Munich Analogy is one such object of abuse. In 1938, Czechoslovakia was effectively surrendered to Nazi Germany by agreement at Munich, part of Western Europe’s appeasement strategy in the wake of a rampant Adolf Hitler. This was a crude version of land for peace – give the land to Nazi Germany, and keep the …