by Mateo Pimentel / March 23rd, 2015
Coopting Development’s History and Power
The North-centric and Western version of development history begins in 19th century Europe, the mythic seedbed of global development itself. Sandra Halperin describes some of the historians in her book, Re-Envisioning Global Development: A Horizontal Perspective, who tout Europe’s “dynamic developments” as the impetus for “world-historical ‘revolutions’ in science and technology, agricultural and commercial practices, intellectual life, and social and political institutions.” Yet, there is a glaring problem with this approach: Long before Europe was a blip on the global economic map, the world already had a robust, global, and cultural system of trade. This Asian-rooted …
by William T. Hathaway / March 23rd, 2015
“I’m getting hot,” croaked the frog as he floated in a pot of water from which steam was beginning to rise.
“Me too,” croaked the other frog as she paddled listlessly. “This water used to be warm. Now it’s too hot.”
“Oh well…nothing we can do about it. Maybe it’ll get better.”
“Let’s enjoy what we can,” she croaked. “We’ll listen to the music and watch the pictures on the ceiling that keep changing. They’re pretty.”
“OK…I’m feeling dreamy.”
As the water simmered, the frogs slipped into a stupor; they were unconscious as they began to boil.
Like the frogs, we are provided with pictures, music, …
by Walter Brasch / March 23rd, 2015
In Saudi Arabia, the Mutaween are 3,500 public officials and thousands of volunteers who work for the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice. They are responsible for enforcing strict religious laws. Among the many laws are those that require all women to wear head scarves and black gowns when in public.
The “Morality Police” also exist in Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and several fundamentalist Arab countries.
It isn’t only in Arab countries that morals are regimented and institutionalized.
In France, the minister of health, a physician, believes there should be laws to prohibit companies and advertisers from using anorexic …
by Barbara G. Ellis / March 23rd, 2015
An overheated planet doesn’t just mean an extraordinarily early blooming of cherry trees and daffodils. It means rising sea levels all along our coasts from melting glaciers inundating East and West coasts and all Gulf states. Atmospheric clashes of hot and cold air from now on will be spawning super-sized hurricanes and tornados for the Gulf and Midwest. Killer heat waves—not just 18 days of 90+ºF in New York City, but 76 days. As for the near-waterless Southwest and California, they’ll be exploding in historic, widespread, ferocious forest fires.
Add to this reality the creation of millions …
by Gilad Atzmon / March 23rd, 2015
I have never met Jeff Halper. What I know about him is that he is an American Jew who settled on Palestinian land but opposes Israeli house demolition. Halper appears to be a participant in the Zionist project while at the same time opposing the measures that have been implemented to sustain that plunderous project.
Halper’s moral discrepancy shouldn’t take us by surprise; he is far from alone. This behavioural mode is symptomatic of Jewish Left thinking in general and the Jewish anti-Zionist call in particular. Instead of presenting a genuine ethical argument, the Jewish Left is a desperate attempt to …
The Next Phase
by Binoy Kampmark / March 23rd, 2015
Q: When is a lie not a lie? A: When it’s an excuse.
Charlie Brooker, Dawn of the Dumb (2007), 66.
March 19 should be scratched down in the diary of police state antics, if only because it was one when Australia’s non-service providing politicians decided, fairly broadly, that data retention would be a fine thing indeed. Telecommunication companies will be required by law to keep encrypted information on email, phone calls and text messages to enable access by concerned authorities for up to two years.
In the words of Prime Minister Tony Abbott, speaking during Question Time, “The Australian …
The Politics of Self Destruction
by James Petras / March 22nd, 2015
Over the past year, what appeared as hopeful signs, that Left governments were emerging as powerful alternatives to right-wing pro-US regimes, is turning into a historic rout, which will relegate them to the dustbin of history for many years to come. The rise and rapid decay of left-wing governments in France, Greece, and Brazil is not the result of a military coup, nor is it due to the machinations of the CIA. The debacle of left governments is a result of deliberate political decisions, which break decisively with the progressive programs, promises and commitments that political leaders …
by James Hoover / March 21st, 2015
Loretta Lynch’s confirmation for Attorney General has been held up by Republicans in the Senate for 117 days, the third longest in America’s history. They are demanding ransom before confirming her appointment, part of an overall bunker mentality that has worsened since Obama became President. Republican, Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, is saying, in effect, “We will hold up the vote for Loretta Lynch’s confirmation unless Democrats provide the ransom of a yes vote for a stalled human trafficking bill.”
Believe it or not, the human trafficking bill got stalled because appearing-to-be lethargic Democrats (and their aides) were tardy …
by Paul Eisen / March 21st, 2015
It’s now well known that the Royal Northern College of Music (RNCM) was pressured by Zionist lobbyists North West Friends of Israel (NWFOI) to cancel a concert by internationally acclaimed jazz saxophonist Gilad Atzmon. What is less well known is that the co-chair and spokesperson for NWFOI is one Anthony Dennison (Mr Dennison’s name and role in the organisation may be confirmed here). These machinations by the NWFOI and the leading role played by Mr Dennison were duly reported by the Jewish Chronicle.
So far, so… well, if not exactly good, certainly understandable.
Less understandable is the fact (not …
by Adam Engel / March 21st, 2015
Failing to extract intelligence from me, they went after my next of kin. My sister was away on business, making the rich and famous more so, or helping flash-in-the-pan short-timers maximize celebrity-market-value before the inevitable Shoe dropped. Public Relations. She was good, very good, a myth-maker/purveyor with a future in the pantheon of major leaguers: Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Howard Cosell.
My father came up from Florida.
“Hey, kid.”
He looked a bit rumpled in his suit. Very unlike him. He looked drawn – not as in ‘cartoon’ drawn, though he was always that as well, but tired. Spent.
“I spoke to Doctor…shit, …
by Binoy Kampmark / March 20th, 2015
It lies in the ambiguity of the European Convention on Human Rights. Article 10, the provision that provides for the protection of free speech, can hardly be said to be the broad creature it purports to be. Restrictions will be tolerated, as long as they be “in accordance with law” and “necessary in a democratic society”.
Similarly, the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights (Art. 19) notes that the exercise of free speech “carries with it special duties and responsibilities.” Governments have that greatest of get out clauses in targeting those they deem a threat to “national security” or “public …
by Jonathan Cook / March 20th, 2015
There is something deeply mendacious and cowardly about this ritual leaking by European diplomats of their annual report on Jerusalem. This year they’ve chosen to deposit the “confidential” report in the hands of the Guardian.
Obviously, the Europeans – and Americans – want this information about how angry they are with Israel disseminated as widely as possible in the wake of Netanyahu’s election win. “We’re mad and we’re not going to take it any more!” they shout – yet again, as they have done over the past four or five years.
As ever, the report is being described as “hard-hitting”; as ever, it …
by Democracy Now! / March 20th, 2015
Ecuadorean Foreign Minister Ricardo Patiño responds to recent reports Swedish prosecutors will seek to question WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London. Assange has never been charged over allegations of sexual assault, yet he has been holed up in the embassy since 2012, fearing that if he steps outside, he will be arrested and extradited to Sweden, which could lead to his extradition to the United States — which is investigating Assange over WikiLeaks publishing classified documents. “We are pleased to see the Swedish prosecutors say that they now want to take the statements from Julian Assange …
by Norman Ball / March 20th, 2015
The publishing world is abuzz this morning over Zbigniew Brzezinski’s stunning confession. Apparently, his 1998 book The Grand Chessboard was a whole-cloth fabrication.
Brzezinski, it turns out, was only playing with himself. And no, not chess. Checkers. Even worse, what should have been a down-home match-up between two warring sides of a Polish-American petit-aristocrat turned into a rout for all parties.
A chastened Brzezinski offered this: “It started out as a joke. Then it just got away from me. Before I knew it, I was polishing David Rockefeller’s shoes. When you’re Polish, polish …
by Mateo Pimentel / March 20th, 2015
On Tuesday, March 17, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and the Government of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela published an “open letter” to the American public in the New York Times. For the American people, the letter is more than a genteel communiqué; it is an invitation. Venezuela’s words invite us to believe many things that our politicians and mass media purposely and regularly omit or mystify about Venezuela, its government, and its people. Additionally, the letter presents us with an opportunity to assume our international civic duty as global citizens. We can explore this letter, recognize and even adopt what …
by Andre Vltchek / March 20th, 2015
There are several machine gunners in front of the Charlie Hebdo building in Paris. These are cops, wearing bulletproof vests, carrying powerful weapons. They stare at occasional pedestrians in their special, revolting and highly intimidating way. Charlie Hedbo editors are well protected, some of them postmortem.
If you think that France is not as much a police state, as the UK or the US, think twice. Heavily armed military and police are visible at all train stations and many intersections, even at some narrow alleys. Internet providers are openly spying on their costumers. Mass media is self-censoring its reports. The regime’s …
by Adam Engel / March 20th, 2015
Three figures appeared at my bed-side around 4 AM. Short Man; Tall Surly Man, ‘Dr. Personality;’ and a Thin Woman. Long white lab coats aqua scrubs. Young doctors, I assumed. Residents.
“This is him. Here’s his chart,” Dr. Personality.
“Amazing,” said Dr. Short Man.
“Freak me out,” Dr. Thin Woman.
“Not everyone is born with anemias of this sort, like this guy…uh…Mr. Engel,” Dr. Personality perused my chart. “Sometimes it just happens. Toxic exposure or something like that. They see it in kids in war zones.”
“Which wars? I forgot which wars we’re fighting this week,” Dr. Short Man.
“Very funny,” said Dr. …
And the Twilight of Disparity
by Bill Annett / March 20th, 2015
Henry Ford was a smart fellow. As a matter of fact, he was much smarter than the current ruling junta of the much-envied and much-maligned 1%, because they still haven’t yet figured out what Henry realized in the early Twenties. In addition to inventing the assembly line, he shrewdly calculated the ratio of the worker-wage-purchaser cycle, such that he determined precisely the minimum hourly wage he could pay his workers, vis-a-vis the maximum price tag he could put on his Model T, in order for his workers to be able to buy their own product, i.e. his …
by Kathy Kelly / March 19th, 2015
By the time I leave Kentucky’s federal prison center, where I’m an inmate with a three month sentence, the world’s 12th-largest city may be without water. Estimates put the water reserve of Sao Paulo, a city of 20 million people, at sixty days. Sporadic outages have already begun, the wealthy are pooling money to receive water in tankers, and government officials are heard discussing weekly five-day shutoffs of the water supply, and the possibility of warning residents to flee.
This past year United States people watched stunned as water was cut off, household by household, to struggling people in Detroit, …
by Norman Ball / March 19th, 2015
In a recent The Daily Bell interview, Dr. Antal Fekete, who is always a compelling figure (he consistently champions thinking over doctrinaire recitations), suggested that deflation is “a pathological slowing in the velocity of money.” Even though Dr. Fekete perhaps misplaces the locus of this pathology, he deserves kudos for highlighting the overriding behavioral dimension of the current deflation. One of the greatest disservices done to a comprehensive understanding of deflation is that it is separated by mere prefix from its decidedly more monetary cousin, inflation. Convicted by language, the conversation becomes invariably monetized. Alas, the two are not …
