by Jonathan Cook / June 29th, 2015
Israel is seeking to bring dozens of church-run schools under government control, a move that community leaders have warned will curb the last vestiges of educational freedom for the country’s large Palestinian minority.
Most of the 47 schools, which are among the highest-achieving in Israel, were established by Christian orders more than 100 years ago, before Israel’s creation in 1948.
Today, they are among the few independent schools catering to Israel’s community of 1.5 million Palestinian citizens, who make up one-fifth of the population. The schools are attended by about 33,000 children – some 5 percent of the Palestinian school-age population – …
by James Hoover / June 29th, 2015
Paul Samuelson, serving as advisor to Presidents Kennedy and LBJ, was the first American to win the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. He said the ultimate goal of economic science is to improve the living conditions of people in their everyday life. That goal should be an easy one to put into practice in a modern economy, but it is immediately beset with problems in the twenty-first century.
I’m sure, given a more nation-centric era, Samuelson envisioned the context of his goal to be national in scope. But currently, how would you separate the national versus the global, considering …
by Kathy Kelly / June 29th, 2015
Each year, throughout the Muslim world, believers participate in the month-long Ramadan fast. Here in Kabul, where I’m a guest of the Afghan Peace Volunteers, our household awakens at 2:15 a.m. to prepare a simple meal before the fast begins at about 3:00 a.m. I like the easy companionship we feel, seated on the floor, sharing our food. Friday, the day off, is household clean-up day, and it seemed a bit odd, to be sweeping and washing floors in the pre-dawn hours, but we tended to various tasks and then caught a nap before heading over to meet the early bird …
by William Boardman / June 29th, 2015
Racism, we are not cured of it. And, and, and it’s not just a matter of, uh, it not being polite to say nigger in public. That’s not the measure of whether racism still exists or not. It’s not just a matter of overt discrimination. Societies don’t, overnight, completely erase everything that happened two to three hundred years prior.
— President Obama, June 22, on Marc Maron podcast
This piece will end with a brief personal experience I had recently, an experience that illuminates what the President is saying and raises the question …
by Robert Hunziker / June 28th, 2015
The Fukushima multiple nuclear disasters continue spewing out hot stuff like there’s no tomorrow. By all appearances, it is getting worse, out-of-control nuclear meltdowns.
On June 19th TEPCO reported the highest-ever readings of strontium-90 outside of the Fukushima plant ports. The readings were 1,000,000 Bq/m3 of strontium-90 at two locations near water intakes for Reactors 3 and 4. TEPCO has not been able to explain the spike up in readings. The prior highest readings were 700,000 Bq/m3.
Strontium-90 is a byproduct of nuclear reactors or during the explosion of nuclear weapons; e.g., it is considered the most dangerous component of radioactive …
by Gilad Atzmon / June 28th, 2015
Following my expose of the JVP campaign against the great American patriot Alison Weir, I was approached by Berta Schwartz, an American JVP activist. Berta is obviously a pseudo name. As with Ned Rozenberg, our dissident Liberal Jews are fearful of their ‘progressive’ synagogues. Expressing their thoughts in the open may lead to their social exclusion and even excommunication. While orthodox Jews are fearful of God, our Liberal Jewish are actually terrorised by their friends. Before publishing this interview Berta asked me to hide her name and disguise the location of her JVP chapter. I followed her request.
Berta Schwartz: …
by Cat Zavis / June 27th, 2015
Wow. For a brief moment I am feeling such gratitude for our Supreme Court—well, at least for five justices of the court! This is a time to celebrate. Gay and lesbian couples are finally recognized for their commitment to love their partners just as any heterosexual couple does. What an amazing moment of honoring and respecting people who choose love and commitment. What an amazing moment of honoring the sanctity of marriage. I am overcome with joy and celebration.
With this decision, the Supreme Court made it clear once and for all that anyone who loves another person can marry …
by Media Lens / June 26th, 2015
George Orwell once wrote:
I really don’t know which is more stinking, the Sunday Times or The Observer. I go from one to the other like an invalid turning from side to side in bed and getting no comfort which ever way he turns.
The competition remains fierce, but the Sunday Times edged marginally ahead with a recent front-page exclusive that stank to truly celestial heights. As we noted in our previous alert, the Sunday Times dramatically claimed that Russia and China had ‘cracked …
The Perps on the Jury
by Bill Annett / June 26th, 2015
Once upon a time – along about 1889 – in far-off Canada, the Federal Government enlisted the support of the three major church organizations, Catholic, Anglican and plain vanilla Protestant (later known as the United Church of Canada), in the Christian endeavor of bringing 150,000 Indian kiddies out of the darkness of their pagan life and into the joys of Christendom. They (the kids) were transported lovingly by the RCMP as truant officers, placed in 140 brand new schools run by kindly nuns, priests and tender loving pastors and members of the Ladies Aid, who taught …
by Pedro Aibeo / June 26th, 2015
From all the countries in the world I have lived, in 2014 I chose Finland as my permanent residence for the sole reason of its high level of social welfare politics. A country, that became famous for its egalitarian society, where every citizen enjoys a good life quality.
Everyday more, Finland is succumbing to the worldwide trend of trickledown economics, allowing private wealthy individuals to take over our society, transforming the welfare into a “corporate-fare”, misleading with the white collar people’s promise.
Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation is at the top of the list with its schemes, conveniently labeled as a non …
by Manuel Garcia Jr. / June 26th, 2015
Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote an article about the Confederate flag, “What This Cruel War Was Over,” that was recently published in The Atlantic. Mr. Coates explains exactly what the Confederate flag stands for by quoting from the original documents of and proclamations by the people who first wrapped themselves in that flag, and he continues with similar statements by Confederate flag adherents up to modern times. These quotes make for powerful reading.
The Confederate flag is an emblem of white supremacy bigotry, and its continued use along with all Confederate monuments and names of public places and facilities is …
When it involves Australia's Abbott Government
by Binoy Kampmark / June 26th, 2015
Let’s get a few things straight. Australia, thin-lipped conformist society that it is, possesses minimal freedoms on that marked concept of liberal democracy called freedom of speech. For those who laud the Racial Discrimination Act, free speech is more than a racial matter. For those who think there is some implied right to communicate on political matters, free speech is more than politics. At its core is the value, not of tolerance, but tolerating intolerance. At best, Australian free speech is an bite size entrée dressed up as a weighty main meal.
Nasty, unpleasant and vicious …
by Moti Nissani / June 26th, 2015
Given the many known and unknown threats that humanity already poses to the biosphere, given the likelihood that, thanks to unforeseen technological advances, the number of these threats is sure to grow, and given the fact that humanity is for the most part governed by fools, ignoramuses, swindlers, and irresponsible psychopaths, the probability of human extinction within the next 200 years is worrisomely high. Our only hope is a least-cost revolution aimed at establishing a genuinely democratic political system.
Paul Robeson was right to say fighting against American imperialism is as just as the resistance fighting against Hitler
by Paul Kirk / June 26th, 2015
How is it that the states are burning and bankrupting while bankrolling the elite, the Mafioso thugs of the One-One Percent and their Merchants of Death Facilitators? We talk about the confederate flag and how many millions more will be homeless and near penniless in this country, thanks to USA of Corporate Inc.? I’ve seen this message in the state of Washington many times since moving here in 2001. How many times did these pig politicians fail to pass a budget? Dozens!
Dear Caregivers:
As many of you have heard in the news the Washington State Legislature has not yet completed its
…
An Interview With Law Professor Angela A. Allen-Bell
by Angola 3 News / June 25th, 2015
On Monday, June 8, 2015, US District Court Judge James Brady ruled that the Angola 3’s Albert Woodfox be both immediately released and barred from a retrial. The next day, at the request of the Louisiana Attorney General, the US Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a temporary stay of release set to expire on Friday, June 12.
As the week intensified following Judge Brady’s ruling, both Albert Woodfox and his family, friends and supporters wondered if he would finally be released over 43 years after first being placed in solitary confinement. Amnesty International USA launched …
by James Hoover / June 25th, 2015
We might ask ourselves what grotesque culture causes a young white man to figuratively wrap himself in a Confederate flag and point-blank murder nine gracious, welcoming black people. Pondering this question, I was inspired by the Jon Stewart, Daily Show, this one, last Monday, regarding the Charleston massacre of nine black church members by a white supremacist, Dylann Roof.
Since the massacre, Fox News has released a torrent of invective vilifying those who might dare to suggest a contributory culture of guns, racism, and hatred.
The sad tenor of President Obama’s statement shortly after the massacre centered on America’s uniqueness …
by Walter Brasch / June 25th, 2015
Judge A. Joseph Antanavage, with shotgun in hand, stood before a modified Confederate battle flag, and looked as if he had planned to defend whatever it is that the Confederate flag stands for.
But, this wasn’t in the South. This was at a pigeon shoot near Hamburg, Pa. Pennsylvania is not only where the only legal organized pigeon shoots still exist, but where it’s not unusual to see shooters waving the Confederate flag or wearing clothing that features the flag.
Pennsylvania is the Keystone state, the state where the Declaration of Independence was written, and the Articles of Confederation approved. It is …
by Thomas Smith / June 25th, 2015
In the wake of the Pope’s recent encyclical, Laudato Si, in which he calls for action on climate change and other environmental challenges, Mike Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus of the Oakland-based energy and environment think-tank The Breakthrough Institute, along with Mark Lynas, campaigner and author of The God Species, have put together a response entitled “A Pope Against Progress.” Herein, I want to focus on this piece as a means of broader response to the general project of ‘ecomodernism’, recently outlined, for example, in their previous publication, “An Ecomodernist Manifesto.”
…
by Jan Oberg / June 25th, 2015
Internal elite power games in Washington are now putting Middle Eastern and global stability and peace at stake.
Here is the latest attempt at killing a deal with Iran that, to the sensitive reader with a minimum of knowledge of foreign policy and of the Iranian civilization, is little but one long argument for warfare on Iran in nobody’s interest – certainly also not in the interest of the citizens of Israel.
Is it just because it is summer time that intellectuals, media commentators and diplomats as well as friends and allies of the US conveniently have generally …
Nowhere to hide
by Mick Meaney / June 25th, 2015
RINF — Terrifying new research shows Facebook’s ambitions to track users has gone far beyond the company’s ‘old’ technology that recognises users faces, which in itself poses a dizzying array of privacy concerns.
The new development, dubbed Pose Invariant PErson Recognition (PIPER), gathers information about your clothing, hairstyles and body shapes and currently holds a 83% accuracy rate, already incredibly high and is expected to increase even further.
Yann LeCun, head of artificial intelligence at Facebook explained how it works:
There are a lot of cues we use. People have characteristic aspects, even if you look at them from the back.
…
