Latest articles
by Eric Walberg / August 5th, 2013
Already the early enthusiasm for Egypt’s 3 July coup is waning, as EU leaders demand President Morsi’s release and US President Obama prevaricates. Senator John McCain, who soon after the coup called for an end to US military funding as stipulated by law, arrived in Cairo Monday to mediate. As a kind of cruel joke, the new ‘president’ Adly Mansour, who is also president of the Supreme Constitutional Court, has scheduled a trial 25 August of Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohammed Badie and his deputies, including Khairat el-Shater, who are accused of killing protesters, though it is the Egyptian coupmakers who …
by Binoy Kampmark / August 4th, 2013
The pro-refugee groups are milling about along Swanston Street, Melbourne, the arterial route of the city centre in what apparently qualifies as Australia’s “cultural” capital. The actions of protest took place over the weekend to respond to the first group of individuals destined for Manus Island, Papua New Guinea. Then, there was the call: Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd will be going to the polls on September 7, hoping that his campaigning will hoodwink voters about his autistic governing skills. The ballot will take place a day after his ego-puffing escapade at St. Petersburg (G-20, and all …
by Paul Haeder / August 4th, 2013
One Little Smear of Peanut Butter, One Giant Nanoparticle for Mankind
Oh, how we’ve become the victims of the modern bait and switch Joseph Mengele of the very modern despicable kind. Not just sinister scientists, the triumphant technologists and the corrupt corporations and their massive on-going Petri dish experiment on human kind. Not just some latent harkening back to syphilis put into the human biochemistry of Alabama blacks or incarcerated Guatemalans.
We are nanoparticle plagued, and by 2015, the market for nanoproducts is going to hit $2.4 trillion according to Global Industry Analysts, Inc. From air, to soil, to roots, to grains, …
by David Swanson / August 3rd, 2013
If John Kerry were beating his children and promising to stop “very very soon” and then explaining that he meant “very very soon” in a geological sense, he’d be forced to resign his office.
If we even discovered that John Kerry had once beaten one of his children, even many years ago, perhaps shortly after he returned from killing people in Vietnam, he’d be forced to resign.
Imagine if we were to discover that John Kerry was actually murdering children, and women, and men, using missiles shot out of flying robots and promising to stop “very very soon” and explaining that what …
by Andre Vltchek / August 3rd, 2013
As the plane – Russian-built Tupolev-204 – was taking off from Pyongyang Airport, I felt nothing, absolutely nothing. The morning fog was at first covering the runway, and then it began to lift. The engines roared. Right after the takeoff I could clearly distinguish green fields, neat villages and ribbons of ample and lazy rivers below the wing. It was undeniably a beautiful sight: melancholic, poetic, and truly dramatic. And yet I felt numb. I was feeling nothing, absolutely nothing.
Overhead monitors were beaming endless images of one parade after another, of endless celebrations and bombastic concerts. The volume was up, …
Part 4 of 6: Avaaz - Be the Change the Global Elite Want
by Gearóid Ó Colmáin / August 3rd, 2013
In 2006 another ‘democracy’ project made its debut throughout the world. The organization is called Aavaz. According to its website:
Avaaz—meaning “voice” in several European, Middle Eastern and Asian languages—launched in 2007 with a simple democratic mission: organize citizens of all nations to close the gap between the world we have and the world most people everywhere want.
Avaaz empowers millions of people from all walks of life to take action on pressing global, regional and national issues, from corruption and poverty to conflict and climate change. Our model of internet organising allows thousands of individual efforts, however small, to be …
by Jason Hirthler / August 3rd, 2013
Four freedoms have always formed the bedrock of American liberty. The freedom of speech, the freedom of assembly, the rights to privacy and to a fair trial, largely covered in the first, fourth, and sixth Amendments. It is astonishing that a single president has so thoroughly undermined all four. With the conviction of Bradley Manning Tuesday on 20 criminal charges carrying a potential sentence of 136 years in prison, the verdict on the muckraking aspect of free speech is clear—state crimes must be hidden, and those who expose them must be destroyed. That the Obama administration so vigorously …
by Tamerishe / August 3rd, 2013
“Once Upon a Palestine” began in the spring of 2011; a few lines and the title, swiftly followed by a cascade of verse, then put to one side for a previous work barging in out of nowhere, demanding to be written. Going through my own dark night of the soul at the time, “Once Upon a Palestine” continued to gather dust in a drawer until the summer of 2012, when the words came back to haunt me. So here it is. My humble contribution to the betrayed, abandoned, shunned, vilified, outstandingly brave Palestinians of Palestine. I don’t know about the …
by Felicity Arbuthnot / August 3rd, 2013
The public cannot be too curious concerning the characters of public men.
— Samuel Adams, 1722-1803, (letter 1775)
This will surely have you falling down with surprise. According to documents released under the Freedom of Information Act and obtained by the (UK) Sunday Telegraph, the August 2009 release from Scotland’s Barlinnie jail of Libyan Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, accused of the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland in December 1988, hinged on an oil and arms deal, allegedly brokered by roving war monger (sorry, roving “Peace Ambassador”) Tony Blair.
At this point it should be said that anyone who has read John …
by Paul Haeder / August 2nd, 2013
We have reality TV, rednecks and shit-kickers, overweight housewives, blue-fin tuna machos, endless drones of these white things with pencil-neck logic declaring war on art, people, freedoms, and self-engagement. That’s what those guys and gals have given us — 18-wheelers delivering our wants, the entire race of men and women trading chemicals for dollars, the belly of the beast rotten from the end-trail out.
You have to read to the very end, and get some of that People’s wisdom, quotations from great tribal elders and others declaring their humanity in the face of hustlers and blanket-seeders, those great powerful cancers that …
by The Toe / August 2nd, 2013
Declared a “Young adult” at eighteen, though still a resident of Father’s home, I matured admirably toward twenty.
Across the water stretched the shore of my nineteenth year, Summer of sun, sand, song. Girls young to love – not as daughters, lovers, then, – as lovers then, and wine and song and moving toward, looking toward, confident, impatient, forward toward never look back.
At forty I turned twenty-one, and they were dead, all of them, the ones I was going to impress.
Deceased. Gone.
The Old Man too. Da. Da. Gone.
What sharp torsion wrenched the spine of my Time crooked; maimed the Smithy of …
by Linh Dinh / August 2nd, 2013
Traveling by train to Philadelphia, going North, you will pass by Chester, PA, a city that has been in decline for more than half a century. Founded in 1682, the same year as Philadelphia, Chester was a major manufacturer of US Navy ships from the Civil War until World War II. It also made ammunitions and automobile parts. Despite its relative small size, with a peak population of 66,039 in 1950, Chester was an industrial powerhouse.
In 1926, Mrs. Marin Garvey won a $160 washing machine for coming up with an enduring slogan for her city, “What Chester Makes …
Part 3 of 6: Washington’s Response - Protests
by Gearóid Ó Colmáin / August 2nd, 2013
These are some of the reasons why Washington and its allies are attempting to carry out a vast, coordinated and covert regime change strategy in Brazil, in cahoots with Brazil’s ultra-reactionary comprador elites who detest the centre-left orientation of the Brazilian government and long for a return to the good old days of fascist dictatorship from 1964 to 1985.
The class of people who will lose most in this game are the very people protesting, the new petite-bourgeoisie, a credit-bubble class who will default on their debts, thus falling back into proletarian and lumpen-proletarian classes.
As already stated, there are very real …
by David Macaray / August 2nd, 2013
Besides superior wages and benefits, one of the advantages of belonging to a union is that you can perform your job with dignity. Under a union contract, the boss can’t harass you, he can’t arbitrarily mess with your hours or seniority, and he can’t alter your pay. After fighting with his wife, your boss can’t show up for work and make you the unfair target of his foul mood. Your rights are laid out in the contract, and when those rights are violated, you have the means to fight back.
In the 1990s, I had a friend who was a low-level …
by Al Engler / August 2nd, 2013
Most political parties, central banks and the corporate media insist that public debt is the most pressing problem facing governments. Meanwhile, real wages in the U.S., UK and Canada, and much of the EU continue to fall. Disparities widen. Rates of chronic unemployment are rising. Unemployment levels for young people are at historic highs, over fifty per cent in Greece, Spain and Portugal. But capitalists—whose income comes from profits, dividends, interest, rent and capital gains—are preoccupied with public debt.
For centuries, public debt has been a driver of capitalist growth. By increasing financial reserves, government bonds and treasury bills add to …
by Peter Hollings / August 2nd, 2013
General Buchanan,
You have it within your power to set the sentence for Bradley Manning.
I am a former military officer having served two tours of duty in Vietnam. I recall my oath of office to uphold the Constitution. It is not an oath to support any particular group of people, or a gang of criminals exercising authority outside Constitutional boundaries. What kind of country would we live in if political and military leaders could do what they wished while suppressing public information and without legal restraint? Bradley Manning has, in my opinion, bravely risked his life and freedom as a …
Once more into the peace process dead end
by Jonathan Cook / August 2nd, 2013
It may not have reached the level of fevered expectation unleashed by that famous handshake between Israeli and Palestinian leaders on the White House lawn in 1993, but the sense of hope inspired by the long-awaited revival of peace talks is both tangible and deeply misplaced.
The talks, which it was agreed this week, will begin in earnest in the region in mid-August, are taking place not because either Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, or the Palestnian president, Mahmoud Abbas, believe a deal is in reach. The two sides are talking each to avoid being blamed for embarrassing John Kerry, the …
by Robert S. Becker / August 1st, 2013
What enduring image bespeaks hallowed American exceptionalism – greatness fortified by immigrant labor – than Melting Pot? “Come, you poor, tired, huddled masses: acclimate, pitch in, and enjoy your share of Yankee treasure.” And scattered voyagers en masse exploited New World opportunities, by choice (fabled settlers, immigrants), indenture (poor whites), slavery (black, Native American, others) or conquest (southwest Hispanics).
Who said functional melting pots need volition or equivalence in transport or starting gates? Drafted armies coalesce just like musicians at a jam session. Prosperity did (and does) bless scores of immigrants, some fat cats commanding wealth beyond dreams of avarice (a …
by Peter Rugh / August 1st, 2013
As more and more Americans are beginning to share scientists’ long expressed concerns over climate change, revelations of big bank energy market manipulations highlight Wall Street’s entrenched stake in the fossil fuel economy that is heating up the planet.
In what critics are calling Enron 2.0, JPMorgan Chase is facing a reported fine in the range of $500 million from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) for manipulating energy markets in California and Michigan. Chase acquired a slew of aging power plants from Bear Stearns when the firm tanked in the 2008 market meltdown.
Under pressure to reap significant returns, the bank …
by Murray Hunter / August 1st, 2013
With the Australian Department of Immigration and Citizenship already under siege over the treatment of refugees in detention camps, deaths in custody, and the abandonment of the principals of the UN Convention on refugees in regards to boat people, another disturbing aspect of the department’s handling of its portfolio is emerging with the recent appointment of VFS Global as the sole processing partner of visa applications for entry into Australia.
This appointment process of VFS appears to have been undertaken very quietly without the usual press releases accompanying a major policy decision. The lack of transparency in this agreement is dubious …
by Andrew Gavin Marshall / August 1st, 2013
CANADIANS: Be ashamed that this newspaper column is what passes for the “public discourse” in this country: a raving, ignorant, arrogant, idiotic and racist rant telling Indigenous people to “get over it” – referring to the state-sanctioned racism, genocide, and imperialism – all of which is still taking place.
Naomi Lakritz wrote in a syndicated column for the Calgary Herald on July 31 that First Nations people “need to quit blaming the past” for the circumstances in which they live because they “have nobody to blame but themselves.” First Nations people, suggested Lakritz, need to drop “the victimization mantle” …
by Sue Warrior / July 31st, 2013
Papers arrived: The Law. Prose of imperative be-ribboned in fey grammar. Trickle-down discourse barked in the language of command; written, copied, distributed as far and wide as the global jurisdiction of Their rockets. Even the same old same is not the same as it was – or seemed.
Watch the News. See Their SWAT teams bust erstwhile “hard-working, law-abiding” citizens — who still assume, poor saps, that as “citizens” crammed into the warped belly of this Trojan Horse, they’re “entitled” to some godforsaken damn thing or other — America! America! America! (said with a straight face).
Shoot ‘em and abuse ‘em unto …
by Kevin Zeese / July 31st, 2013
The verdict in the Bradley Manning trial has already begun to create reverberations as people start to understand its impact, beyond the impact on Manning. While the greatest threat to Manning, Aiding the Enemy, was defeated, another threat, The Espionage Act, was not. The crimes Manning was convicted of mean he is risking 136 years in prison. For a whistleblower who exposed war crimes and unethical behavior in U.S. foreign policy to be facing a lengthy prison term, while the people exposed by government documents are not even investigated, shows how confused the United States has become.
In fact, the crimes Manning …
Global Power Project: Part 8
by Andrew Gavin Marshall / July 31st, 2013
Just recently, in late July, Wells Fargo surpassed the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) as the world’s largest bank by market capitalization. This followed Wells Fargo reporting a 19% increase in profits over the second quarter as the bank has been busy consolidating the housing market while other big banks have retreated from it. Wells Fargo had amassed a share of almost 40% of the U.S. mortgage market by early 2013.
Now, let’s put this in context with the company’s other recent activities.
Wells Fargo, which acquired Wachovia in the wake of the financial crisis, controlled roughly 28.8% of …
Revolutionary Egypt: Part 2
by Kim Petersen / July 31st, 2013
In Part 1, B.J. Sabri, observer of Middle East politics, professed skepticism to western portrayals of the Arab “springs.” Sabria said that in the case of Egypt, the “revolution” wound up in a situation where “… the Muslim Brotherhood, and the United States colluded in a massive scheme to derail the revolution and extend the military junta’s rule with the evident intent to give the Egyptian people only one choice.” After the Muslim Brotherhood came to power in Egypt one of the major failings, according to supporters of Palestinian human rights, was allowing the Rafah border crossing to remain …
An Apology For Capitalism
by Bill Annett / July 31st, 2013
A holding company is the people you give your money to while you’re being searched.
— Will Rogers
Everybody talks about capitalism but nobody has done anything about it, recently. Except maybe for Richard D. Wolff, in a long interview with David Barsamian, resulting in a book called “Occupy The Economy: Challenging Capitalism.” That may make sense because in the last couple of years we’ve occupied just about everything else.
A strange thing happened on the way out of the Great Depression. Franklin Roosevelt actually saved capitalism by trashing it. Well, not entirely. Roosevelt enacted legislation to hobble the destructive tendency of capitalism’s …
by William T. Hathaway / July 31st, 2013
Terrorists, serial killers, domestic murderers — their ghoulish deeds fill our news and popular entertainment, interspersed with wars, riots, and brutal repressions. Violence surrounds us.
Where does it come from?
The answer propagated by the mass media is that violence is human nature. It’s just the way people are.
This view ignores anthropological evidence about societies that have lived in relative peace, and it also contradicts our knowledge of ourselves as human beings. In certain situations we may feel violent impulses, but we can control them; we know they are only a small part of our make-up.
The Norwegian peace researcher Johan Galtung denies …
by Thomas Riggins / July 31st, 2013
Recently Simon Blackburn, the well known British philosopher, reviewed Knowing Right from Wrong, the new book by Kieran Setiya, in the TLS [“Taliban and Plato” TLS July 19, 2013]. The essay deals with Setiya’s attempt to defend ethical realism (objective moral knowledge is possible) which Blackburn rejects in favor of ethical pragmatism (useful moral knowledge is possible). I think neither of these positions are tenable and the best way to approach ethics is from a Marxist perspective.
Blackburn begins with Plato’s position in the Republic: the Good can only be understood by those intellectually elite philosophers who rule …
by Felicity Arbuthnot / July 31st, 2013
Let me ask you one question. Is your money that good? Will it buy you forgiveness? Do you think that it could?
— Bob Dylan
Figures just obtained by the BBC under a Freedom of Information request, show that last year the UK Home Office identified nearly one hundred suspected war criminals, the majority of cases believed to be already having been living in the UK for a number of years.
Suspects are believed to have come from a wide range of countries including Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Rwanda, Serbia and Sri Lanka.
The Home Office, which is responsible for immigration and border …
by Gareth Porter / July 31st, 2013
IPS — Newly published recollections by the former French ambassador to Iran suggest that Iran was not running a covert nuclear weapons programme that it then decided to halt in late 2003, as concluded by U.S. intelligence in 2007.
Ambassador Francois Nicoullaud recounted conversations with high-ranking Iranian officials indicating that Tehran’s then nuclear policy chief – and now president-elect – Hassan Rouhani did not know what research projects relating to nuclear weapons had been carried out over the years.
The conversations described by Nicoullaud in a July 26 New York Times op-ed also portray Rouhani as having difficulty getting individual researchers to comply …
