Latest articles
History in the Making
by Nozomi Hayase / June 26th, 2013
After the largest leak in NSA history, the unprecedented scale of the PRISM global spying program sparked a global controversy. Whistle-blower Edward Snowden, responsible for the release, has been at the eye of the storm of international attention as he left Hong Kong to find sanctuary.
The tired drumbeat of government rhetoric grew louder, with officials calling Snowden a ‘traitor’ and ‘villain’, while Hong Kong citizens and others around the world rallied in support of him. Apparently the idea that anyone virtually anywhere in the world has a huge unaccountable government constantly spying on them didn’t sit well …
by Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers / June 26th, 2013
The reaction to Ben Bernanke suggestion that it may be time to wind down the easy money policies which have been injecting $85 billion into the hands of Wall Street each month show that the ‘recovery’ has been a fraud.
In the weeks since the Fed chairman first indicated that the central bank might start to pare back its support for the economy, markets in Asia, Europe and Latin America have fallen more than 6 percent while in the United States, they have fallen 4 percent.
There is a lot of opposition to this plan to end easy access to money. …
by Bill Annett / June 25th, 2013
I strove with none, for none was worth the strife…
— Walter Savage Landor
In the aftermath (sometimes known as algebra) of World War II, there followed a strange period known as “the cold war.” Nobody knows exactly why it was called “cold;” perhaps it was because most of the threats and counter threats took place in the Canadian Arctic, which was considered by both sides as the logical place to duel with nuclear ICBMs.
From 1946 through the 1980s, the Cold War cast a shadow over every facet of American life. Yet, paradoxically, it also created possibilities. In an arms race that …
by Roger Copple / June 25th, 2013
Having the longest-lasting constitution that is the hardest to change is a negative, not a positive. Personally I advocate radical egalitarianism, democratic world government, and nuclear disarmament. The constitutional convention process that I propose maximizes democracy, and it will completely level the playing field by removing the influence of money. But what can people like me do if the American people under a new constitution desire laissez-faire capitalism, a flat tax, and a neo-conservative foreign policy? We can try a new approach in popularizing our preferences, but our plight will be less dismal than it is now because future constitutions …
by Yves Engler / June 25th, 2013
Myths can hurt.
Adulation of Lester Pearson’s supposed “peacekeeping” is an obstacle to building a genuinely progressive Canadian foreign policy.
In a recent article titled “What is the meaning of ‘defence’ in the 21st Century?” Green Party of Canada leader Elizabeth May wrote: “Sadly, under Stephen Harper, the role of our diplomatic corps has been de-emphasized with embassies closing, diplomats treated as irrelevant, and Canada’s respect for multilateralism itself called into question. Our role as peacemakers, a role invented by former Prime Minister Lester Pearson, has also fallen.”
Days earlier the president of the Rideau Institute, Steven Staples, co-authored a column in the …
by David Zirin / June 25th, 2013
Sepp Blatter, the all-powerful don of FIFA, Dilma Rousseff, the president of Brazil, and Pelé, the legendary soccer star are three extremely different people. But they all share the same perspective about the demonstrations rocking every major city in Brazil: Don’t even think about blaming the World Cup.
As Dilma said in her nationally televised address, “Brazil, the only country to have participated in every World Cup and a five-time world champion, has always been very well received everywhere. We must give our friends the same generous welcome we have received from them—with respect, love and joy. This is how …
by Bill Fletcher Jr. / June 25th, 2013
My first response to the Supreme Court’s decision in the University of Texas case was to breathe a sigh of relief. I had been expecting affirmative action to be ruled illegal. Instead the Court, in effect, said that the University had to prove that non-racial methods were ineffective in creating greater diversity.
We should, however, not be truly relieved by the decision. Affirmative action has been under attack since the 1970s. And since then, the objective of the political Right has been to steadily weaken it, in part through an ideological assault suggesting that it is really not necessary. The results …
What is "the majority -of-the-majority"?
by Rebecca Theodore / June 25th, 2013
Here, again, an essential drama is unfolding in Washington. As the Senate commences consideration of immigration legislation that includes a pathway to citizenship for millions of illegal immigrants, the Conservative vision is again blurred. A rebellious faction of Republicans backed by Conservative groups are pushing to change house GOP rules to ban the party leadership from bringing legislation to the house floor that does not have ‘majority of the majority support.’ Yes! Their realism of life is now outweighed by a political credence they call the ‘Hastert Rule.’
Much anxiety abounds for the ‘Hastert Rule’ will describe what will happen on …
by Peter Rugh / June 25th, 2013
Those passing through New York’s Union Square on June 16 witnessed a spectacle that to an outside observer might have seemed incongruous. Approximately 100 people stood on steps leading to a steed-mounted George Washington cast in bronze. They were chanting and waving Turkish and Mexican flags. At their feet someone had scrawled “DEMOCRACY NOW” in large chalk letters.
The Turkish flags fluttered in the grip of activists in solidarity with protesters occupying public spaces across Turkey; those waving Mexican flags were supporters of the Yo Soy 132 movement, which arose in the lead up to a disputed election last summer but …
by Tom Burghardt / June 24th, 2013
Despite a stream of mendacious twaddle from President Obama, congressional grifters and spook agency mouthpieces like Office of the Director of National Intelligence head James Clapper, FBI Director Robert Mueller and NSA chief General Keith Alexander, it turns out our guardians are listening in to America’s, and most of the world’s, telephone conversations after all.
In the wake of the Boston Marathon bombing, former FBI counterterrorism agent Tim Clemente was asked by CNN whether there’s a way that investigators “can get the phone companies” to cough up audio of a particular conversation.
Clemente responded: “No, there is a way. We certainly …
by Robert Hunziker / June 24th, 2013
Robert Hunziker looks at recent street protests across the world, especially in Brazil, where the middle class is protesting en masse. The same is happening in Europe, in Asia, but not in America. This is the result of several economic forces at work that go back 30 years and only now come to surface amongst the middle class. In turn, nation-states are nearly helpless to help the downtrodden because of the ways and means of globalization and the free market domination as capitalism merges into a non-state ruling class, similar to the monarchs of a couple hundred years ago. It …
by David Macaray / June 24th, 2013
Dad: “What do you want to be when you grow up, Jimmy?”
Jimmy: “A lobbyist.”
On June 1, 2013, the New York Times published the names of the top-twelve biggest spending lobbyists of 2012. It’s a fascinating list. Despite all the propaganda, disinformation and outright lies about organized labor that have been circulated by right-wing groups, there’s not a single labor union listed among them—not even the estimable AFL-CIO, the largest labor federation in history.
The reason there are no unions included is because, as any labor aficionado will tell you, organized labor doesn’t have anywhere near the …
Snowden’s Grand Escape
by Binoy Kampmark / June 24th, 2013
By trying to crush these young whistleblowers with espionage charges, the U.S. government is taking on a generation, and that is a battle it is going to lose.
Julian Assange, quoted in New York Times, Jun 23, 2013
There is no mores striking anger than that which comes from impotence. This is well illustrated by the bullying line being taken by Washington regarding countries granting passage to Edward Snowden as he veers his way to Ecuador. Cooperate with us, or else. Precisely – and what of it?
The case of Snowden is becoming a cornucopia of diplomatic ferment and dazzling …
God Contacts Rome, Christ Holds Press Conference
by John Stanton / June 24th, 2013
Christ held an Apostle’s Conference (White House Press Corps) at the White House Rose Garden recently in Washington, DC, the Capital of the Holy American Judeo-Christian Empire.
Before taking questions, Christ opened with a brief statement.
“He knows when you are sleeping. He knows when you’re awake. He knows if you have been bad or good. So be good for goodness’ sake. He makes a list and checks it twice. You had better not cry or pout. He knows who has been naughty and nice.”
Christ’s statement went on.
“I am pleased to report that God is thrilled with the National Security …
by Harry J. Bentham / June 24th, 2013
Are nations encapsulated by borders still legitimate, in a world that is increasingly interconnected and porous in such a way that our concerns and ideas are easy to spread beyond borders? Why should modern people, especially the youth of today, identify with the nation when they are bound so much more by things other than the nation?
Nations are getting weaker, borders are getting more porous, international communication is getting easier because of technology, and the state as we know it is beginning to lose legitimacy. The state role is not being delegitimized, but the existing sort of state is being …
by Felicity Arbuthnot / June 24th, 2013
Any time bombs are used to target innocent civilians it is an act of terrorism.
— President Barack Obama 15th February 2013 (re Boston bombings)
Having learned nothing from the catastrophes of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, it seems President Obama, the equally clueless UK Prime Minister Cameron and his culturally challenged Foreign Secretary William Hague are cheerleading another bloodbath in formerly peaceful, secular, outward looking Syria.
Having covertly provided arms and equipment to insurgents from numerous different countries for over two years, they have now moved to the overt stage, a move over which even arch hawks such as former National Security Advisor Zbigniew …
by Andre Vltchek / June 23rd, 2013
Red color, red paint splashed over white background, against which is a photo of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. Underneath it says: “Chavez from his heart.”
“Chavez died, had fallen…” A man, an acquaintance, who is driving me around Caracas, tells me. “But this is not the end. Maduro was his adopted son… Not his real son, but his ideological child, his hare. This red color symbolizes blood. Chavez spilled his blood for his people. Foreign imperialists murdered him, maybe with the help of local elites. And now Maduro will carry on.”
There is an Argentinean food festival at the hotel where I …
Obama, the Master Con-man
by James Petras / June 23rd, 2013
In an electoral system, run by and for a corporate oligarchy, deception and demagoguery are essential elements – entertaining the people while working for the wealthy.
Every US President has engaged, in one fashion or another, in ‘play acting’ to secure popular approval, neutralize hostility and distract voters from the reactionary substance of their foreign and domestic policies.
Every substantive policy is accompanied by a ‘down home’ folksy message to win public approval. This happened with President …
by RT / June 23rd, 2013
The plane carrying whistleblower Edward Snowden has landed at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport. The former CIA contractor, who left Hong Kong in a bid to elude US extradition on espionage charges, is on his way to a ‘third country’ via Russia.
Ecuador’s Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino announced via twitter that Snowden had applied for asylum.
Interfax news agency is citing an unnamed source in Sheremetyevo airport management, saying that Snowden …
by The Real News Network (TRNN) / June 23rd, 2013
Indigenous families in Paraguay have been living precariously on the side of a highway in Paraguay’s remote Chaco region for more than 20 years, ever since a German cattle rancher and the Paraguayan state illegally kicked them off of their ancestral lands. A 2006 Inter-American Human Rights Court ruling held the Paraguayan state responsible for returning roughly 14,000 hectares to the community Sawhoyamaxa, a small fraction of their original territories. After pursuing every legal means possible and even blocking the highway in protest to no avail, the community decided in March 2013 to take matters into their own hands and …
by Paul Haeder / June 23rd, 2013
It’s been hard to get my arms around a book review I have been working on. The No-Growth Imperative, by a friend and former professor. A big book, academic but not really that cutting edge, for sure. Some of the same old saws around sustainability, tragedy of the commons, Peak Everything, population bombs, urban-rural carrying capacities going at hyper speed beyond limitations, the finite planet treated as infinite consumer and plowing-mining-burning sphere.
It’s not that the book doesn’t have its pluses; it’s just that sustainability is something I’ve studied and taken seriously and fought to reappropriate as a …
by Lesley Docksey / June 23rd, 2013
Will the biotech companies ever give up on trying to sell Europe their genetically modified crops? Their latest PR man is the UK’s Minister for the Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), Owen Paterson. His website (very bland and uninformative apart from his list of engagements) says he is “a passionate supporter of localism, free enterprise and less interference in people’s lives”. But he also loudly supports Monsanto et al, and wants all of Europe to grow and eat GM foods. I would say that thoroughly destroys any localism, interferes in the most basic way with …
by Stephanie Low and Tom Keough / June 23rd, 2013
Have you heard? The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) “free trade” agreement is a stealthy policy being pressed by corporate America, a dream of the 1 percent, that in one blow could: offshore millions of American and Canadian jobs, free the banksters from oversight, undo all labor laws in at least 11 nations, ban Buy America policies needed to create green jobs and rebuild our economy, decrease access to medicine, flood countries like the U.S., Canada, and Peru with unsafe food and products, and empower corporations to abolish our environmental, safety, and health protection laws.
Most people do not know …
Canada's PM caught in impeachable misconduct
by Greg Felton / June 23rd, 2013
In the wee hours of June 17, 1972, a security guard at the Watergate Hotel found some door latches taped over to prevent them from locking. He removed the tape but later found it had been replaced. He called Washington D.C. police, who proceeded to catch five “burglars” conducting an illegal surveillance operation inside the office of the Democratic National Committee. As it happened, the name of President Richard Nixon’s White House security consultant E. Howard Hunt was in the address book of two of the burglars.
Ultimately, the burglars along with two White House functionaries, were convicted of conspiracy, burglary, …
by Julian Assange / June 22nd, 2013
It has now been a year since I entered this embassy and sought refuge from persecution.
As a result of that decision, I have been able to work in relative safety from a US espionage investigation.
But today, Edward Snowden’s ordeal is just beginning.
Two dangerous runaway processes have taken root in the last decade, with fatal consequences for democracy.
Government secrecy has been expanding on a terrific scale.
Simultaneously, human privacy has been secretly eradicated.
A few weeks ago, Edward Snowden blew the whistle on an ongoing program — involving the Obama administration, the intelligence community and the internet services giants — to spy on …
by William T. Hathaway / June 22nd, 2013
The US Special Forces is a bizarrely gendered world, as I found out when I joined it to write a book about war. This all-male bastion is sexualized in a truly perverted way, particularly in its methods for turning young men into killers on command.
Being the epitome of patriarchy, the military creates soldiers by forcing them into the role of the lowliest creatures in patriarchy: women. The recruits’ sense of personal power is stripped away, and they are required to obey commands from the men higher in the hierarchy and do the military’s “housework”: scrubbing and waxing floors, dusting windowsills, …
Public Largely Unaware
by Martha Rosenberg / June 22nd, 2013
Was Jose Navarro, a federal poultry inspector who died two years ago at the age of 37, a victim of increasingly noxious chemicals used in poultry and meat production? Chemicals like ammonia, chlorine and peracetic acid that are frequently employed to kill aggressive bacteria in meat and poultry?
Navarro coughed up blood several months before his death, the Washington Post reported last week and died in November 2011 of lung and kidney failure, according to the autopsy report. An OSHA inspector during a subsequent investigation said “the combination of disinfectants and other chemicals” in addition to pathogens such as salmonella “could …
by Ron Jacobs / June 22nd, 2013
The world waits. Washington and other western capitals ponder war. Tehran and Moscow assume their positions, wary of their flanks and the rear. Syria suffers. Groups within and without Syria’s borders position themselves as representatives of the Syrian people, almost every one of them hoping for some kind of Western support now that Obama and his White House have decided to publicly join the fray. The question remains. How much military aid and of what nature? Does the White House honestly think it can get away with providing small arms and ammunition to the rebels in Syria? Or is it …
by John Stanton / June 22nd, 2013
At one time, it seems decades ago now, the general thinking in the USA was that President Barack Obama would jolt the American political system into actually doing something beneficial for its citizens rather than spying on them, building F-35 aircraft, upgrading nuclear weapons, spending trillions of dollars (US) on national security, cutting unemployment benefits/food stamps, fomenting war with Iran, Syria, China and Russia; and dragging out the war in Afghanistan.
It is a damn shame!! Why? Why?
Sadly, Barack Obama’s legacy will be one of ashes. The destruction of America’s social fabric; the implementation of a surveillance corporate-state; assassination and …
by Pepe Escobar / June 21st, 2013
Sun Tzu, the ancient author of The Art of War, must be throwing a rice wine party in his heavenly tomb in the wake of the shirtsleeves California love-in between President Barack Obama and President Xi Jinping. “Know your enemy” was, it seems, the theme of the meeting. Beijing was very much aware of — and had furiously protested — Washington’s deep plunge into China’s computer networks over the past 15 years via a secretive unit of the National Security Agency, the Office of Tailored Access Operations (with the apt acronym TAO). Yet Xi merrily allowed Obama to pontificate on …
