On July 4, 1776, over fifty people signed the Declaration of Independence. They were openly resisting the legal authority of the King of England. Thousands joined them. They were outlaws. They were breaking the laws of England and risked capture, prison and even death for their belief in independence, equality, unalienable rights, and liberty. They were far from perfect as slavery, the slaughter and removal of Native Americans and the exclusion of women demonstrated. But they did resist their globally powerful government.
Who are the true patriots of today? Not the flag-wrapped politicians who send other people’s children off to be …
With the Obama administration in full damage control mode over revelations of blanket surveillance of global electronic communications, new documents published by The Guardian, including the draft of a 2009 report by the NSA’s Inspector General marked Top Secret and a Secret 2007 Justice Department memo prepared for then US Attorney General Michael Mukasey, show that “a federal judge sitting on the secret surveillance panel called the Fisa court would approve a bulk collection order for internet metadata ‘every 90 days’.”
An unnamed “senior administration official” confirmed the existence of a Bush-era surveillance program which gobbled-up “vast amounts …
Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as the exploited proletariat, but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.
— John Steinbeck
A union official I correspond with (the International Vice-President of a West Coast labor union) recently shared an interesting anecdote. He said that whenever he meets someone for the first time and they casually ask what he does for a living, he answers by saying he’s a “workers’ rights activist.”
Because people are, typically, intrigued by his reply and want to hear more, he goes on to explain that his job consists of doing things like making sure retired …
Jonathan Israel's Take on Pagden's "The Enlightenment"
by Thomas Riggins / July 1st, 2013
The world today is in the grips of the irrational and anarchic system of global capitalism dominated by the United States and characterized by international economic and political disorders, wars, poverty and environmental destruction.
In order to arrive at solutions to the problems facing humanity we will have to devise methods to overcome the capitalist system of irrationality and replace it by a rational international order based on the principles of democratic control rooted in a rational approach to solving the problems of war, economic inequality and environmental degradation by means of reason (logic and science).
Universal education in the United States is under attack. A battle between private and public education has waged for centuries but in the last few decades what had been a reasonable stalemate has turned into a rout, with the forces seeking a way to monetize the education system winning major victories on all fronts. Soulless money grubbers are utilizing the public/private debate in order to line their pockets at the expense of us all, while at the same time not caring one whit about the education of future generations.
A corporate mind set which sets no value on the rights of …
Some mountaineers climb Everest simply because it’s there. And some scientists play God simply because they can. Then other independent and less well-funded scientists have to spend years doing the research that proves playing God was the wrong thing to do, only by then it is often too late. Time and again man’s actions have had disastrous and irreversible effects
His name was Ron. In the 1950s he joined the Navy. In October 1956 he found himself on a vessel sailing towards the Monte Bello Islands, off the northwest coast of Australia. There were other ships making for the same destination …
Lina Attalah, the Managing Editor at Egypt Independent: Millions expected to protest across Egypt demanding new elections as pro-Morsi forces stage counter demonstrations — fear that army may intervene and re-establish direct control.
It’s a tough day in the neighborhood. Slip-streaming through the great big rot of the century. Cities are burning. Youth and pensioners are rebelling. The elite and media prostitutes are flailing away. Blame-blame-blame truth tellers, whistle blowers, the people in pain. Collective PTSD. False dichotomies like Ebola. Spreading mistruths, empty visions, and one more million scams by the Chamber of Commerce-Political Mafia Group of One Thousand. Lies about the forward progression or grand world saving vision of IT, the value of on-line schools, the death of inequality.
It sounds like we are a pugnacious society, but it’s all smoke and mirrors …
America has a secret. It is not discussed in polite company or at the dinner tables of the powerful, rich and famous.
Parents do not teach it to their children. Best-selling authors do not write about it. Politicians and government officials ignore it. Intellectuals avoid it. High school and college textbooks do not refer to it. TV pundits do not comment on it. Teachers do not teach it. Journalists from the nation’s most highly regarded TV news shows, newspapers and magazines, do not report it. Columnists do not opine about it. Editorial writers do not editorialize about it. Religious …
Uncovering documented instances of torture is a challenge. That challenge grows even greater when the torture one is investigating is undertaken by agencies whose definition demands secrecy and cover up. Therefore, when I began this article by looking for instances of torture committed by the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Israel’s Shin Bet, I met nothing but dead ends and cul de sacs. It was only after I discovered documents unearthed by Wikileaks and various Israeli human rights agencies that I was able to proceed. The process involved is comparable to going back in time. A certain instance …
A Local Community Currency Battles the Central Bank of Kenya
by Ellen Brown / June 28th, 2013
Former Peace Corps volunteer Will Ruddick and several residents of Bangladesh, Kenya, face a potential seven years in prison after developing a cost-effective way to alleviate poverty in Africa’s poorest slums. Their solution: a complementary currency issued and backed by the local community. The Central Bank of Kenya has now initiated charges of forgery.
Complementary currencies can help eradicate poverty.
Proving that may be difficult in complex economies, due to the high number of factors influencing outcomes. But in an African slum with little of the national currency available, supplying residents with an alternative currency has a positive effect that is obvious, …
Reports of Washington’s anger directed at surveillance whistleblower Edward Snowden indicate a basic truth about power. Noam Chomsky has expressed it as the underlying problem for genuine democracy, even in so-called ‘free’ societies:
“Remember, any state, any state, has a primary enemy: its own population.” ((Noam Chomsky, Understanding Power, edited by Peter R. Mitchell and John Schoeffel, The New Press, 2002, p. 70.))
Anyone who steps out of line, especially if they defy authority’s attempts to apprehend them, risks severe punishment. All the more so because it is important to publicly discipline miscreants, lest the threat of a ‘bad’ example become a …
As violence continues to rage across “liberated” Iraq under America’s puppet “Prime Minister” Nuri al-Maliki, a fair amount of it at his instigation as his troops round up and shoot demonstrators (President Jalal Talabani, who had a heart attack early in the year has vanished without trace, Vice President Tarik al-Hashimi has fled to Turkey in fear of his life) one incident arguably of note, has gone unnoticed in the Western media.
Quentin Crisp, socialite, illustrator and famed curmudgeon, suggested that, if at first you don’t succeed, failure may be your only option. Are some states similarly disposed, doomed to chronic collapse, spouts of improvement only to be undermined by tin pot despots, short and even stout? The cheeky devil, as ever, hides in the obtuse detail.
The circumstances in which a state can be called one of failure are far from clear. For one thing, states are complex, variable, mind bogglingly confusing in terms of operations, targets and efficiency. Analysts evidently need to justify their funding at think tanks and journals need …
With 77,000 people, Camden has one public library left, and in a city where Walt Whitman spent 19 years and is buried, there are exactly two bookstores, a Barnes and Noble serving Rutgers Camden students, and, not too far away, La Unique African American Books and Cultural Center, with The Master Game, The New World Order, The Unseen Hand and Say It Like Obama in its window. Camden has no hotel, and only one downtown bar, The Sixth Street Lounge. Hank’s closed in 2010 after half a century in business. Now, if you can barely drink in …
The ongoing Syrian crisis will be certainly viewed by future generations as a classic example of how a completely false reality, as presented by the dominant Western political class and corporate media, has inscrutably resulted in the moral and political reinforcement of the opposing party, which was desperately defending the principles of law and justice under unprecedented pressure from a transnational party of war.
Despite the undisguised skepticism voiced on the eve of the summit in Lough-Erne by some of the G8 leaders toward the Russian stance on the Syrian crisis, the talks turned to be a diplomatic victory …
Due to National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden and his disclosure of two spy programs, PRISIM and Tempora (whether these programs focus their lenses domestically depends on who you talk to), many people are attempting to beef up their internet privacy. As individuals conduct cursory web surveys for what is available in the field of internet security, they are likely to be met with information about anonymity networks and, given its popularity, one in particular—Tor. However, not everyone is fervently downloading the free software offered by the Tor Project because some have reservations as to the ethics and uses that …
The media have been playing “cops and robbers,” trying to track down the location of Edward Snowden, who had fled to Hong Kong and said the U.S. was spying on its citizens.
The citizens are scared and paranoid; visions of Big Brother are peering into their lives.
But, the government’s knowledge of the lives of individuals is little more than the equivalent to a children’s coloring book compared to the library that private companies have on everyone.
Doubt that? Just open your mail any day; chances are good you’ll have more junk mail—the corporations prefer to call it “direct mail”—than anything else. Check …
“This must be a nation where people have a voice, [and] we don’t have a voice anymore”; so said a Brazilian protester quoted in the Guardian. This comment could so easily have been made by a European or an American.
The sentiment is clear. People’s worries are ignored, and they have no faith in their politicians. Ordinary people feel let down; they see their politicians as part of the plutocracy that governs their lives, regardless of who wins the election. Politicians have merged into the 1% who are unaffected by the austerity and hardships visited on the rest of society. …
The distance between Cairo’s Tahrir Square and Istanbul’s Taksim Square is impossibly long. There can be no road map sufficient enough to use the popular experience of the first in order to explicate the circumstances that lead to the other.
Many have tried to insist on the similarities between the two since it is fashionable these days to link news worthy events, however worlds apart, to other events. Following the popular revolt that gripped Egypt in early 2011, deemed with the ever inclusive title ‘the Arab Spring’, intellectual jugglers began envisaging ‘springs’ popping up all over the region and beyond. In …
Inequality is something the United States does well. Depending on a range of indicators – the provision of housing, income, balanced and stable infrastructure, the presence of the death penalty in many states – the motor of the free world is not as well oiled as some of its patriotic drummers claim.
When it comes to the battles over equality in the U.S. Supreme Court, the wait for great decisions has been long and sometimes disappointing. When judges are allowed room for a genuine well thought through activism, preference is given to dry legalism and obtuse reasoning. The tip-toe effect is …
The Global Power Project, an investigative series produced by Occupy.com, aims to identify and connect the worldwide institutions and individuals who comprise today’s global power oligarchy. In Part 2, which appeared last week, I discussed some of the dominant institutions that have facilitated and have in turn been supported by the development of this oligarchic class. In this third part, I examine the dynastic influence wielded by prominent corporate and financial families. This is not a study of wealth, but a study of power.
Dynastic power, embedded in the institution of “family,” has been with humanity for as long as empire: …
Six weeks ago, the University of Freiburg was defeated by Cafe Palestine (Press Release) when five judges at the Administrative Court of Freiburg rejected the university’s arguments for denying Cafe Palestine a venue for one of its speakers. Surely it is now time to delve a little more deeply into this unprecedented case which deserves close attention.
At the centre of it all we find one Dr. Heinrich Schwendemann, Freiburg University historian and a founder of one of many German Holocaust memorial sites Shoa.de.
A year ago, Cafe Palestine invited Dr. Schwendemann, …
In the course of his professional life in the world of national security Edward Snowden must have gone through numerous probing interviews, lie detector examinations, and exceedingly detailed background checks, as well as filling out endless forms carefully designed to catch any kind of falsehood or inconsistency. The Washington Post (June 10) reported that “several officials said the CIA will now undoubtedly begin reviewing the process by which Snowden may have been hired, seeking to determine whether there were any missed signs that he might one day betray national secrets.”
Yes, there was a sign they missed – Edward Snowden had …
A tear should be shed, though keep in the singular. Australia’s first female Prime Minister Julia Gillard and probably last for some time, is no more. Elected by unelected officials, she was knifed by the same individuals who encouraged the knifing of her rival, the now re-elected Kevin Rudd. Promoted by individuals an electorate would scarce recognise over an individual loathed for his personality and his dislike for factions, Australian politics stutters to its farcical climax come September.
The Australian opposition always termed them the factional bosses, the deranged nits of the Australian Labor Party who preferred favours to democracy. But …
The vast majority of people own no significant amount of stocks or other financial assets. Every single person breathes air. Every single person depends on the growing of food and the nutrition it provides to stay alive. We can’t live underwater. From these axioms, we should be able to divine a sense of what rational societal priorities reflect and emphasize.
The performance of the stock market and various associated financial services, though they hold no meaning to most people, are nevertheless referenced constantly, 24/7: rolling tickers, television programs, radio announcements and wall-to-wall newspaper coverage. Impossible to escape—my phone won’t even let …
And British banksters hooked up with murderous drug cartels and got away with it.
by Dylan Murphy / June 26th, 2013
Mexico is in the grip of a murderous drug war that has killed over 150,000 people since 2006. It is one of the most violent countries on earth. This drug war is a product of the transnational drug trade which is worth up to $400 billion a year and accounts for about 8% of all international trade.
The American government maintains that there is no alternative but to vigorously prosecute their zero tolerance policy of arresting drug users and their dealers. This has led to the incarceration of over 500,000 Americans. Meanwhile the flood of illegal drugs into America continues unabated.
The colored crepe paper we hung up has tattered and fallen. The balloons we tied to the walls and ceiling have deflated or popped. Confetti remains in bags, unthrown. The welcome party we planned for the arrival of Julian Assange has had to be postponed indefinitely. Graffiti on the city walls prophesying his advent have begun to chip and fade away.
We know Assange is safe and still active in his Ecuadorian Embassy sanctuary in London. But we can’t help feeling disappointed that he never actually landed here among us. It’s not simply that we wanted the spotlight of his celebrity …
