by Denis A. Conroy / October 17th, 2014
Is America’s folk image of itself derived from a cinematic narrative that defines its national character as one representing a ‘can-do-force’ fostering trade in the world for the common good? To date, American settler culture has tried to mould the rest of the world — unsuccessfully — into this ‘productive’ image of itself via hard power. The more the American Empire Enterprise garrisons the globe with military bases, the more skeptical the world community becomes. The time has come, it seems, for the spirit and energy of the American people to address itself more diplomatically to the world community. The task of creating a whole new soft power for the purpose of defining …
by Mark Weiser / October 16th, 2014
The average natural born citizen in any country is continuously indoctrinated into the national culture starting about the time they begin understanding the meaning of words. There’s one country in particular where reality is staring the public in the face, but the truth has been grossly distorted for decades by government, and mass media, bias and propaganda. If the citizens would suddenly see the truth, instead of what they’ve been conditioned to believe, they would find themselves in a strange and bizarre foreign land that’s contrary in many ways to their personal beliefs regarding home. For those who experience this …
by Ron Jacobs / October 16th, 2014
In 1771 in the North Carolina colony, Justice Martin Howard condemned a grand jury that refused to consider a murder charge after a white man was accused of the murder of his African slave. Apparently, the grand jury did not consider the killing by a white man of a Negro slave to be murder. In 2012, the murder of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman followed by Zimmerman’s subsequent acquittal of the crime took much of white United States by surprise. These Americans had convinced themselves that Black men were treated the same as every other resident of the United States …
by Pepe Escobar / October 15th, 2014
I’m aiming at you, lover
Cause killing you is killing myself
— Orson Welles (director), The Lady from Shanghai, 1947
He’s invincible. He beheads. He smuggles. He conquers. He’s the ultimate jack-of-all-trades. No Tomahawk or Hellfire can touch him. He always gets what he wants; in Kobani; in Anbar province; with the House of Saud (which he wants to replace) trying to make Putin (who he wants to behead) suffer because of low oil prices.
If this was a remake of Orson Welles’s noir classic The Lady from Shanghai, in the mirror sequence the lawyer (American?) and the femme fatale (Shi’ite?) …
by John V. Walsh / October 15th, 2014
There is a simple rule that is followed scrupulously by U.S. commentators of every stripe on world affairs and war – with a very few notable exceptions, Paul Craig Roberts and Pepe Escobar among them.
This rule allows strong criticism of the U.S. But major official adversaries of the U.S., Iran, Russia and China, must never, ever be presented as better than the US in any significant way. The US may be depicted as equally bad (or better) than these enemies, but never worse.
The Rule
Major Adversaries: Never better than the U.S.
U.S. (and the rest of West): Never worse than the …
by Alli McCracken / October 15th, 2014
Three years ago, during the height of the Occupy movement, I was ejected from a Congressional hearing for allegedly “assaulting” Leon Panetta, then Secretary of Defense and former Director of the CIA. He was testifying to the House Armed Services Committee about “lessons learned by the Department of Defense over the preceding decade.” I jumped out of my audience seat to tell him that young people were paying the price of those “lessons,” and we were sick of the government funding war instead of education. The baseless assault charges against me were ultimately dropped.
A few years and trillions …
by James Hoover / October 15th, 2014
When Republicans come up with environmental solutions, look for their real effectiveness and suspect that politics and greed might be involved. Some Democrats are deceptive too but the GOP functions as a complete tool of vested interests like the Koch brothers who pollute your place, then ignore your space.
Take the case of Republican Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley. In 2007, claiming a noble plan, he was a vociferous voice for Ethanol as an alternative fuel for gasoline. The problem was that Ethanol production utilized more resources, used more energy and represented an agenda that a long-term Senator from a corn state …
by Rajesh Makwana / October 15th, 2014
As businesses increasingly embrace a not-for-profit culture, an end to overconsumption on a finite planet could finally be in sight. But given the huge lobbying power of vested interests, it will remain impossible to create a truly sustainable world until the illegitimate power of corporations is held in check.
*****
Does changing the way we do business hold the key to creating a world where resources are shared more equitably and consumed within planetary limits? According to Professor Donnie Maclurcan of the Post Growth Institute, the answer is a definitive yes – but only if we can fully embrace a …
by Jonathan Cook / October 15th, 2014
There can have been few Palestinians whose hearts did not warm at least a little to the news that the British parliament voted overwhelmingly this week to recognise a Palestinian state. After all, it was a British decision to issue the Balfour Declaration – taken almost 100 years ago – that set in motion Israel’s creation and the territorial conflict that has raged ever since.The parliamentary win, as has been widely noted, was symbolic – and in more ways than one. The motion, backed by 274 votes to 12, is not binding.
Like most of the European Union, the UK government …
by Ramzy Baroud / October 15th, 2014
Consider this comical scene described by Peter Van Buren, a former US diplomat, who was deployed to Iraq on a 12-month assignment in 2009-10:
Van Buren led two Department of State teams assigned with the abstract mission of the ‘reconstruction’ of Iraq, which was destroyed in the US-led wars and sanctions. He describes the reconstruction of Iraq as such:“In practice, that meant paying for schools that would never be completed, setting up pastry shops on streets without water or electricity, and conducting endless propaganda events on Washington-generated themes of the week (“small business”, “women’s empowerment”, “democracy building”.)”
As for the comical …
by Alan Wieder / October 14th, 2014
In one of the blurbs for Ben Kamin’s book, Dangerous Friendship: Stanley Levison, Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Kennedy Brothers, Hamilton Sides writes “Kamin continues his keen yet loving exploration into little-known aspects of King’s life and legacy.” While the comment is certainly true, it is important to explain further that similar to his previous books, Ben Kamin provides us with the human stories that surrounded both Martin Luther King’s “life and his legacy.” In addition, Dangerous Friendship is a much more difficult book to construct than the author’s earlier ventures. In this …
The Victory of Evo Morales
by Binoy Kampmark / October 14th, 2014
It is a sometimes overly rich recipe, starched with violence and populism, but Latin American politics is something to behold. In the Americas, experiments have been run and tried with brutal consequences. Revolutions and counter-revolutions have been plotted and enacted. The good have tended to be a short time in office, while the coup d’état has had something of a long history.
Evo Morales’ victory in the Bolivian elections for a third term with just over 60 per cent of the vote is no minor achievement. Cement magnate Samuel Doria Medina received a paltry 25 per …
by Kevin Edmonds and Ajamu Nangwaya / October 14th, 2014
On October 15, the United Nations Security Council will meet to “debate” the extension of the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) which has acted as an occupying force in the country since the summer of 2004. MINUSTAH was created to put an end to the Multinational Interim Force (primarily made up of U.S., French, Canadian and Chilean troops) which occupied Haiti after an internationally backed coup d’état ousted the democratically elected president Jean Bertrand Aristide and his Fanmi Lavalas party from power on February 29, 2004.
During these ten years, MINUSTAH has compiled a horrific record of human …
by John Chuckman / October 13th, 2014
I read and heard about Hong Kong’s students putting themselves at risk demonstrating for democracy, and my first instinct was sympathy, sympathy for their passionate idealism, but sympathy in another sense too, for their sad illusions. I ask myself, and it is not a trivial question, what is it exactly that they believe they fight for? Democracy has become such a totemic word, we all are trained to revere it, unquestioningly, almost the way 16th century people were expected to behave in the presence of the Host during Communion. But just where in the West do we see countries who …
Of Israeli Crimes; the ICC Charges Kenyatta Instead of Netanyahu; and Operation Protective Edge Is Forgotten
by William Hanna / October 13th, 2014
As a consequence of the corporate mass media’s blackout of the news about Israeli crimes against humanity; as a consequence of the International Criminal Court’s cowardly disregard of crimes committed by Israeli leaders while instead charging Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta with crimes against humanity; and as a consequence of the West’s Israeli orchestrated preoccupation with the necessity to wage war against ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) — which came into being with covert encouragement and assistance from the real axis of evil of the U.S., Israel, and Saudi Arabia — Israel’s latest barbaric assault euphemistically codenamed Operation …
by Ben Norton / October 12th, 2014
Now that Malala Yousafzai has won her hard-earned and well-deserved Nobel Peace Prize, she and her amazing, tragic story is back in the spotlight. Per usual, nevertheless, the corporate media has taken this positive development and exploited it, in the service of US imperialism.
The US corporate media loves talking about the remarkable bravery and strength of Malala and the brutality of the Taliban forces that almost killed her. Such coverage fuels its racist, orientalist, neocolonialist narrative about “backward,” violent, misogynist Muslims and their need for “white saviors,” thereby legitimizing Western imperialist interests in South and West Asia. Malala’s victory …
by Stuart Littlewood / October 12th, 2014
On Monday the House of Commons in London will debate and vote on a parliamentary motion to unilaterally recognise the State of Palestine.
A positive result could have a tremendous influence on the state of play in the Palestinians’ struggle for freedom. Therefore the dark forces of Zionism are marshalling their venomous Friends of Israel and desperately piling on the the pressure to persuade the more feeble-minded MPs to vote against.
For example, The Independent reports that Conservative MP Guto Bebb has laid down a wrecking amendment stating that recognition should only come “on the conclusion of successful peace negotiations between …
by Ellen Hodgson Brown / October 12th, 2014
Financial reform didn’t work. The Wall Street banks today are bigger and more opaque than ever and they continue to trade in derivatives in many of the same ways as before the crash – but on a larger scale and with the same unknown risks.
Concerns are growing that we are heading for another banking crisis, one that could be far worse than in 2008. But this time, there will be no government bailouts. Instead, per the Dodd-Frank Act, bankrupt banks will be confiscating (or “bailing in”) their customers’ deposits.
That includes local government deposits. The fact that public funds are …
Are Covert Ops Compatible With Democracy?
by William A. Blunden / October 12th, 2014
It’s part of the public record that the NSA has engaged in an industry-wide campaign to weaken cryptographic protocols and insert back doors into hi-tech products sold by U.S. companies. We also know that NSA officials have privately congratulated each other in successfully undermining privacy and security across the Internet. Hence it’s only logical to assume that the NSA’s numerous subversion programs extend into foreign “commercial entities”. Thanks to documents recently disclosed by the Intercept we have unambiguous confirmation.
Hi-tech subversion underscores the fact that the whole tired debate regarding cryptographic keys held in escrow …
University’s exclusion of journalist Amira Hass raises questions about boycott policy
by Jonathan Cook / October 12th, 2014
A Palestinian university’s decision to bar from its campus an Israeli journalist and outspoken critic of the occupation has exposed a growing rift among Palestinian activists about the merits of contact with Jewish Israelis.
Staff at Bir Zeit University, near Ramallah in the West Bank, ordered Amira Hass, a reporter for the Israeli daily Haaretz newspaper, to leave a public conference late last month. She was told it was for her own “safety” in case students protested against her presence.
Hass, who has lived among Palestinians in the occupied territories for many years, is a rare critical voice against the …
