Australia Has $16 Minimum Wage and is the Only Rich Country to Dodge the Global Recession
Australia has twice the minimum wage as the US and hamburgers cost roughly the same.
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Raghead the Fiendly Neighborhood Terrorist: Squeals on Wheels
If you’re gonna blow up yourself and god knows how many others with a car bomb, play it safe and buy American. Chances are, the car will breakdown before you reach the target area. Or if you happen to be an American yourself, chances are you bought it on credit, fell behind on the payments, and the repo-man will snatch the vehicle from under your eyes, bomb, hostages and all. Hey, it ain’t rocket science…
CIA Gun-running: Qatar-Libya-Syria
A report from CNN’s Jake Tapper has reintroduced “Benghazi-Gate” to the US media spotlight. The report claims that “dozens” of CIA operatives were on the ground in Benghazi on the night of the attack, and the CIA is going to great lengths to suppress details of them and their whereabouts being released. The report alleges that the CIA is engaged in “unprecedented” attempts to stifle employee leaks, and “intimidation” to keep the secrets of Benghazi hidden, allegedly going as far as changing the names of CIA operatives and “dispersing” them around the country.
One suspects this has a single and defined …
Food Security and Agriculture
A Dialogue on Sharing Food
Today, the principle of sharing is increasingly being discussed as a solution to the manifold social, economic and political problems of humanity. There are many people and organisations that now talk about the importance of sharing as a way forward for society in terms of reducing consumption, conserving resources, preventing wastage or addressing poverty. And one notable recent development is a conversation on sharing in relation to food. This may concern the sharing of food through a charity, the salvaging of surplus produce from farms or supermarkets, the free distribution of food at some event or gathering, or even the …
One Man’s View of the World and a Thousand Faceless Men
Singapore's cadre system
The ‘modern father’ of Singapore Lew Kuan Yew, who is also the father of the current prime minister Lee Hsien Loong, launched his latest book One Man’s View of the World recently. In this forthright and frank book, Lee gave his views on major powers and regions of the world, often with scathing remarks about Singapore’s neighbors and past Chinese leaders. What’s more, this book has been endorsed by former US Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and George Schultz.
The book is full of interviews made by Lee’s editorial team. They were defensive of his past actions and policies, yet very …
Amnesty International, War Propaganda, and Human Rights Terrorism
In Jaramana on the outskirts of Damascus on 7 August, 18 civilians were blown to bits. Among the dead were children. The Russian government condemned the crime against humanity. The crime was hardly even reported in the Western press, not to mention the silence of Western governments who are supplying the terrorists with arms. Perhaps the babies murdered in the attack were supporters of Bashar al-Assad and were therefore guilty.
Meanwhile in the “land of human rights”, Parisians sipped coffee reading France’s “journal sérieux” Le monde. The French daily published a story from an organization internationally recognized for its role in defending …
Fast-food Strikes Fight the Slide into Junk Wages — For All of Us
While President Obama continues his economic speaking tour, walkouts at fast-food restaurants rippled across cities nationwide last week, calling attention to the nation’s growing wealth gap. At the franchise stores of McDonald’s, Taco Bell, Burger King and KFC and other grease-slinging corporations, thousands of people protested the low wages dished out by the biggest names in the industry and raised a common demand: $15 an hour and the right to unionize.
“We are all going through the same thing,” said Naquasia LeGrand, who works at a Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise in Brooklyn and has emerged as one of the most outspoken …
Cars Drive Inequality
A recent study looking at how social mobility varies across US cities found that the poor are less likely to rise the socio-economic ladder the more residents are geographically segregated. In other words, the further apart different social classes live the more entrenched inequality becomes.
The Equality of Opportunity Project study shows that relatively compact cities such as San Francisco, New York and Boston have greater social mobility than their more sprawling counterparts Memphis, Detroit and Atlanta. In relatively transit and pedestrian oriented San Francisco, for instance, someone born into the poorest fifth of income distribution has an 11 per cent chance of reaching the top …
Dancing Between Dictatorship and Democracy
Egypt Under Empire, Part 4
America’s Mambo with Mubarak
America’s ruling elites – and those of the Western world more generally – are comfortable dealing with ruthless tyrants and dictators all over the world, partly because they’ve just had more practice with it than dealing with ‘democratic’ governments in so-called ‘Third World’ nations. This is especially true when it comes to the Arab world, where the West has only ever dealt with dictatorships, and often by arming them and supporting them to repress their own populations, and in return, they support US and Western geopolitical, strategic and economic interests in the region. America’s relationship with Egypt …
Indictment of Iran for ’94 Terror Bombing Relied on MEK
IPS — Argentine prosecutor Alberto Nisman based his 2006 warrant for the arrest of top Iranian officials in the bombing of a Jewish community centre in Buenos Aires in 1994 on the claims of representatives of the armed Iranian opposition Mujahedin E Khalq (MEK), the full text of the document reveals.
The central piece of evidence cited in Nisman’s original 900-page arrest warrant against seven senior Iranian leaders is an alleged Aug. 14, 1993 meeting of top Iranian leaders, including both Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and then president Hashemi Rafsanjani, at which Nisman claims the official decision was made to go …
Whither Egypt?
Revolutionary Egypt: Part 4
In “Revolutionary Egypt” Parts 1, 2, and 3, BJ Sabri detailed the background to the “revolutions” in Egypt. Now Sabri discusses what the outcome will be for Egypt.
KP: The revolutionary events are still unfolding. Whether it becomes a fully-fledged revolution or not remains to be seen. The US refuses to acknowledge a military coup has happened. The Egyptian military is using lethal violence against the Muslim Brotherhood. ElBaradei deplored the violence, but he didn’t resign. What does this indicate about ElBaradei and also about the military? How should progressivist revolutionaries respond? Should the intervention of the military …
A Parliament of Leakers
WikiLeaks and the New Vision
It sounds like a plumbing deficiency with a moral purpose: one leaks at times because one just has to. The condition is biological, innate. The suggestion in the case of politics is that a party that specialises about this will be formidable, and, in the scheme of things, unprecedented.
In an interview with the Australian network SBS, Julian Assange promised that his role in parliament would be one of cheeky uplift and exposure. The skirts on the political establishment are going to be lifted, baring all. Australian politicians will be given an open cheque to leak. Leak with secure channels via …
Newspaper Workers Denied Benefits
With a daily circulation of approximately 17,000, the traditionally right-wing Antelope Valley Press has proudly served the Palmdale high desert community (about 60 miles northeast of Los Angeles) since its founding, way back in 1915. The AVP is the largest selling daily newspaper in the Valley.
But on August 1, AVP management informed its copy desk employees that their workload would be reduced to a maximum of 39 hours …
Life Could Be a Dream: Relax and Rolex
Film critique of “The Act of Killing,” directed by Joshua Oppenheimer
The death squad captain swaggers out of his local bar still humming ‘My Way’, while his victims rot in the river and the cleaning ladies toil through the night mopping up the blood. Subtract the victims and the stench, the toil and the blood from the scenario: the killing and the killer remain. Filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer’s The Act of Killing recasts the Indonesian mass killings of the mid 1960’s as a personal narrative told in lush dramatic reenactments conceived and directed, ostensibly, by the perpetrators. It’s a film that quotes Bollywood gleefully. It also may seem to owe much to …
Snowden’s National Conversation
We Have The Basics Of A Police State – How Much Farther Should We Go?
Two Senators Keep Security State Debate In A Narrow Frame
With much of the country aware of the extent of government spying on and lying to American citizens, there is now a limited public discussion of what kind of country we want ours to be. The limits of that discussion are illustrated by recent public utterances of two Democratic Senators, Diane Feinstein of California and Ron Wyden of Oregon.
For more that two years, Sen. Wyden has been warning that the National Security Agency (NSA) has been operating outside the law for more than seven years. His warnings have been limited …
Egypt’s Coup: Progressive or Regressive
What is really happening in Egypt? Are the latest developments a progressive step forward or a regressive step backward for the millions of Egyptians seeking political change primarily through prolonged mass mobilizations in the streets?
It’s been over a month since a military coup d’état, with popular support, ousted the country’s first democratically elected government July 3 after only one year in office, following an earlier military coup with popular support that brought down dictator Hosni Mubarak.
There are diametrically opposed interpretations about what is taking place in Egypt. One fact remains certain, however. In 1952 during the overthrow of the monarchy, …
Schulman’s Transformation
Israel/Palestine and the Queer International, a new book by writer/professor Sarah Schulman, tells the story of Schulman’s transformation from a “Jewish, lesbian New Yorker” into a “Cosmopolitan queer and avid BDS advocate.” Her book is a must read—and not because it offers original ideological or political outlook, not at all. Schulman actually provides us with a unique and invaluable window into Jewish secular progressive thought. It unveils the structure of LGBT politics and its operation within the Palestinian solidarity movement. Schulman also provides the reader some crucial and juicy references to the direct involvement of Georg Soros’ …
Should an Honest Narrative be Sacrificed for a Potential Peace?
Code PINK activist Medea Benjamin deserves plenty of accolades because she puts herself out there on the frontline of social justice issues, in particular speaking for victims of the wars of US empire. However, her narrative that criticizes American imperialism is itself criticize-able for its rhetoric and omissions. Recently Benjamin appealed to frightened Americans in an essay, “10 Ways to Reduce the Threat of Terrorist Attacks on Americans.”
Benjamin calls for a “a moratorium on drone strikes.” But why not call for an outright ban on drone strikes and have them declared war crimes? The call for a moratorium suggests …
Brazil’s Vinegar Revolution: Left in Form, Right in Content
Part 5 of 6: Waking a Sleeping Giant with the “Youth Industry”
Writing in the New York Times in 2008, former US National Security Advisor Zbigniew Bzrezinski stated:
Though U.S. leadership has been essential to global stability and development, the cumulative effects of national self indulgence, financial irresponsibility, an unnecessary war and ethical transgressions have discredited that leadership. Making matters worse is the global economic crisis.
The resulting challenge is compounded by issues such as climate, health and social inequality – issues that are becoming more contentious because they have surfaced in the context of what I call “the global political awakening”.
For the first time in history almost all of humanity is politically …
Freeway Flying — Educational Model for an Un-Modern Age
skipping stones in the big pond where the One Percent bury their dead . . . US!
Again, mining the mighty independence and harmony of philosophical thought that can be the Internet, the web, these blogs like DV. Since I’ve opened up my posts — including poetry — to open comments from around the globe, I have been pleasantly pleased by the few focused, targeted comments around my sometimes looping vascular pieces, which many have found intriguing and exhausting to read. Such is life, as I personally tell those that email me.
I’ve lived the life of a daily small-town and medium-sized …
Harry Truman and Memory of Mass Murder
Harry Truman spoke in the U.S. Senate on June 23, 1941: “If we see that Germany is winning,” he said, “we ought to help Russia, and if Russia is winning we ought to help Germany, and that way let them kill as many as possible.”
Did Truman value Japanese lives above Russian and German? There is nothing anywhere to suggest that he did. Yet we debate, every August 6th or so, whether Truman was willing to unnecessarily sacrifice Japanese lives in order to scare Russians with his nuclear bombs. He was willing; he was not willing; he was willing. Left out …
Muslim Brotherhood and Egyptian Military Enter the Abyss
Revolutionary Egypt: Part 3
In Part 2 Middle East observer BJ Sabri analyzed the actions of the Muslim Brotherhood vis-à-vis Gaza and the struggle against Zionist violence and oppression. The interview continues with analysis of how the Muslim Brotherhood have responded to western imperialism in the Middle East, particularly regarding Syria. (See also Part 1.)
KP: Not so long ago, Morsi severed relations with Syria and even called, indirectly, for war against the Syrian government. It is obvious that Morsi has taken sides. Was Morsi pushed by the US to take that action? In retrospect, what would have happened if Israel entered openly …
Peruvian Ministers Resign over Amazon Gas Project
At least three ministers have resigned in Peru, amidst increasing pressure to approve a controversial gas project in the Amazon.
The plan to expand the existing Camisea gas project, which is within the Nahua-Nanti Reserve for uncontacted tribes, has been widely condemned, and in March the UN called for its ‘immediate suspension’.
Peru’s Ministry of Culture, charged with protecting indigenous peoples’ rights, last week issued a report outlining the dangers the project would pose to uncontacted and isolated Indians’ lives. But the report disappeared just hours after it was published online, and both the Minister and Vice-minister of Culture have now …
What The Dead Girl Said
It was a hot day for a funeral, but not humid. The powder-blue sky was adorned with puffs of cloud, few in number and tastefully spaced wide. The landscaped flora beneath bloomed lush, aggressive, and the sun shined bright as the machines within the Greater Network that defined her life and ours.
“I broke the Internet,” confessed The Mortician to his phone.
“Are you connected?” demanded The Help Desk.
The voice of Help, tender, female, emerged from the thin gadget, loud enough for The Bereaved to hear.
“Does the little ‘hand-shake’ icon on your pad flash green, or red?”
“Uhhh…”
“Tap the icon with your stylus …
The Detroit Bail-In Template
Fleecing Pensioners to Save the Banks
The Detroit bankruptcy is looking suspiciously like the bail-in template originated by the G20’s Financial Stability Board in 2011, which exploded on the scene in Cyprus in 2013 and is now becoming the model globally. In Cyprus, the depositors were “bailed in” (stripped of a major portion of their deposits) to re-capitalize the banks. In Detroit, it is the municipal workers who are being bailed in, stripped of a major portion of their pensions to save the banks.
Bank of America Corp. and UBS AG have been given priority over other bankruptcy claimants, meaning chiefly the pensioners, for payments …
Pope Seduced Brazil, Echoes the Right
Pope Francis impressed Brazilians with his modest lifestyle and sympathy for the poor, but he did not support the mass struggle for economic justice and instead echoed the right-wing focus on corruption in government.
Finding Justifications: The NSA and Global Terror Alerts
Let us not get too worked up. Let us not even feel too conspiratorial. But is it coincidence that, after a series of exposures of such programs as PRISM, that a “global terror alert” has been announced? Taxpayers want bang for their buck; even more so, they want to see their hulks of security justified. The fact that the Obama administration has been presiding over the world’s most extensive regime of unwarranted global surveillance, both of its citizens and of others, suggests that some retort was bound to come in the face of Edward Snowden’s revelations.
In the …
Dream Defenders Florida Take Over Enters Week Four
Packed into the small reception area of the Florida Governor’s office in Tallahassee, a couple dozen determined Dream Defenders conducted a people’s hearing on racial profiling. Black and brown college and high school youth took turns giving compelling testimony of being profiled at school, in public and by the police. In one corner was a court reporter. A camera was live streaming the proceedings.
On the coffee table, a can of iced tea and a bag of skittles. On the floor were strips of tape to keep an aisle clear so the Governor’s people could find get in and out of …
Teamsters Make a Run at the Transport Workers
There are two ways to look at a so-called “raid” of one union by another. We can see it as treachery, as an unwarranted assault, as a selfish attempt to undermine already fragile working class “solidarity” in return for increased revenue or power, or we can see it simply as another rough-and-tumble aspect of organized labor’s natural evolution.
Of course, because these internecine battles usually involve boisterous, working class exchanges at union halls, and not the hushed tones of hallowed board rooms, the corporate media can be depended upon to portray them in the crudest terms possible. …