by Ajamu Nangwaya / April 9th, 2017
Why is the reparations movement in the Anglophone Caribbean not putting capitalism on trial in its campaign to force British imperialism to provide financial compensation for its industrial and agricultural capitalists’ enslavement of Africans? To what extent is capitalism such a sacred spirit or god whose name should not be publicly called in order to avoid attracting its vindictive and punishing rebuke? Are the advocates of reparations truly convinced that British imperialism’s payment of financial compensation for the enslavement of Africans would end the economic marginalization of the labouring classes who are toiling under capitalist regimes throughout the region? Why …
by Paul Haeder / April 9th, 2017
The tears of the world are a constant quantity. For each one who begins to weep somewhere else another stops. The same is true of the laugh. Let us not then speak ill of our generation, it is not any unhappier than its predecessors. Let us not speak well of it either. Let us not speak of it at all. It is true the population has increased.
— Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot
At the rounded tune of $1.0 million each. Times 59 missiles shot from the belly of American beasts of war — that is, as of Saturday April …
by Andre Vltchek / April 8th, 2017
Ask anyone on the streets of Kabul about the revolutions that in recent years transformed huge parts of Latin America, and the chances are you’ll encounter a blank stare. Perhaps mentioning Cuba could evoke at least some recognition, but definitely not Venezuela, Ecuador or Bolivia. I know because I tried on several occasions, and I failed.
Ask in the marvelous historic city of Herat, with its huge minarets and Italian military contingent, about Western imperialism, or about NATO and its murderous campaigns all over the world, and chances are that your question won’t even be understood.
“Chances are that those Afghan people …
by Rosemarie Jackowski / April 8th, 2017
The attack on Syria is a violation of the U.S. Constitution, International Law, and the Geneva Convention. Why did President Trump make this disastrous decision? We may never know why. BUT we do know that the decision was not made to protect those ‘beautiful little babies’. No U.S. president in recent history has ever placed any value on the lives of babies, children, or any other civilians. Remember Madeleine Albright saying that the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children were “worth it”. U.S. Policy is so devoid of any compassion that it dehumanizes those we kill and refers to them as “collateral damage”.
When Trump …
by Kim Petersen / April 8th, 2017
One might well expect the corporate/state media to twice be complicit for the gas attack perpetrated by the Syrian regime scenario. One would hope, however, that media independent of the state and corporate sponsors would apply a higher journalistic standard. Yet Democracy Now! has been pushing the imperialist agenda for regime change in Syria. Tendentious recent reports from DN make this abundantly clear. The so-called independent ((As the whistleblowing former FBI contractor Sibel Edmonds, among others, has pointed out DN receives large foundation grants:
Serious questions have arisen about how Democracy Now!, begun and developed with the …
by John Steppling / April 7th, 2017
Only the liberation of the natural capacity for love in human beings can master their sadistic destructiveness.
— Wilhelm Reich, The Function of the Orgasm (1927) (Ch. V: The Development of the Character-Analytic Technique)
It is fascinating to watch mainstream media, the corporate owned news outlets like CNN, or MSNBC, or even FOX — because whatever their disagreements, the one thing that is never open for discussion is the questioning of Capitalism itself. Trump predictably came in with a budget torn from the frontal lobes of the Koch Brothers, but one that is also essentially in line with the sensibility of a …
by Rick Sterling / April 7th, 2017
On Tuesday 4 April there were reports of children and other civilians killed by chemical poisoning in the town of Khan Sheikhoun, Syria. There were contradictory reports, some saying they smelled the gas; others claiming it caused immediate death like odorless sarin.
On Wednesday 5 April, President Trump blamed the Syrian government despite conflicting reports and contradictory information and accusations. He said, “Yesterday’s chemical attack in Syria [was] against innocent people including women, small children and even beautiful little babies. Their deaths was an affront to humanity. These heinous actions by the Assad regime cannot be tolerated … my attitude toward …
by Kathy Kelly / April 7th, 2017
Fifty years ago, Dr. Martin Luther King gave his boldest and perhaps most defining speech. It alienated liberal allies in the North and the Northern press, plus many in King’s own civil rights movement, and prompted President Johnson to withdraw King’s secret service detail. Exactly one year later, forty-nine years ago on April 4, he was assassinated. He said, “As I have walked among the desperate, rejected, and angry young men, I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems … Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my …
by Adnan Al-Daini / April 7th, 2017
So President Trump wants America to pollute its way to prosperity. I refer, of course, to the latest executive presidential orders. The first is to allow the TransCanada corporation to build the Keystone XL Pipeline facilitating the transfer of tar sands oil from Alberta, Canada, to Illinois and Texas in the US.
Tar sands oil is the dirtiest most polluting oil on the planet; it requires considerably more energy to extract and process than conventional oil, which makes the economics of using it precarious, to say the least.
The second executive order is to rescind a moratorium on the …
Part 3: Readings in the Jewish Zionist Control of the United States: Interviews with Francis Boyle, James Petras, and Kim Petersen
by B.J. Sabri / April 6th, 2017
Is the belligerent U.S. enmity toward Islam an expression of the Jewish Zionist control of the United States? The second question is equally as pertinent as the title’s question. Recalling the Crusades, is it not legitimate to question whether we are witnessing a replay of Pope Urban II and over two centuries of pillaging European wars on the people of the Eastern Mediterranean under the pretext of liberating the “holy land” from Muslims? Is the analogy of a replay true or false?
To debate this issue, the hating of Islam could never be separated from the political and ideological conditions that …
How Israel Understands the Arab Peace Initiative
by Ramzy Baroud / April 5th, 2017
Once more, the Arab Peace Initiative of 2002 is taking center stage. Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas insisted during his speech before the recently-concluded Arab League Summit, in Jordan that the Initiative is the only solution on the table; asserting that it will not be changed or even tweaked.
But why is this Initiative, which was put forward by Saudi Arabia 15 years ago, now infused back into the already congested Middle East’s political discourse, despite the fact that Israel has rejected it repeatedly, and the US has shown little interest in enforcing it?
In March 2002, the Initiative, …
by Paul Craig Roberts / April 5th, 2017
If you want to learn real economics instead of neoliberal junk economics, read Michael Hudson’s books.
What you will learn is that neoliberal economics is an apology for the rentier class and the large banks that have succeeded in financializing the economy, shifting consumer spending power from the purchase of goods and services that drive the real economy to the payment of interest and fees to banks.
His latest book is J is for Junk Economics. It is written in the form of a dictionary, but the definitions give …
by Andre Vltchek / April 5th, 2017
How dreadfully depressing life has become in almost all of the Western cities! How awful and sad.
It is not that these cities are not rich; they are. Of course, things are deteriorating there, the infrastructure is crumbling and there are signs of social inequality, even misery, at every corner. But if compared to almost all other parts of the world, the wealth of the Western cities still appears to be shocking, almost grotesque.
The affluence does not guarantee contentment, happiness or optimism. Spend an entire day strolling through London or Paris, and pay close attention to people. You will repeatedly stumble …
by Yves Engler / April 4th, 2017
We live in strange and dangerous times. While Toronto thugs export their violence and extremist ideology to the USA and the Jewish Defence League works with neo-fascists to bash Muslims, the dominant Canadian media has placed a cone of silence over these disturbing developments.
At the recent American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) conference in Washington, D.C., a mob organized by JDL Toronto attacked counter-protesters. In the worst incident, a 55-year-old Palestinian-American teacher was punched, kicked and hit with flagpoles. Bruised across his body, Kamal Nayfeh needed 18 stitches around his eye.
Thornhill JDL member Yosef Steynovitz was charged …
A golden opportunity for Medicare for all is at hand
by John V. Walsh / April 4th, 2017
Now that ObamaCare is “the law of the land” for the foreseeable future, as House Speaker Ryan grimly conceded after the failure of RyanCare, a new situation is upon us. The time is past for comparing ObamaCare to what preceded it. This sort of comparison has been done with fulsome praise of Obama’s health care concoction by all too many progressives; the result has been that the real shortcomings of ObamaCare were hidden or played down. But now with RyanCare lying in ruins, the GOP-hatched health plans are not the problem nor is the problem what went before ObamaCare. ObamaCare …
by Ajamu Baraka / April 4th, 2017
50 years ago, on April 4, 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King reconnected with the radical black tradition by adding his voice of opposition to the murderous U.S. war machine unleashed on the people of Vietnam. For Dr. King, his silence on the war in Vietnam had become an irreconcilable moral contradiction. He declared that it was hypocritical for him to proclaim the superior value of non-violence as a life principle in the U.S. and remain silent as the U.S. government engaged in genocidal violence against a people whose only crime was to believe that they could escape the clutches of …
by Jonathan Cook / April 3rd, 2017
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed cohorts of Israel loyalists in the United States by video link last week at the annual conference of AIPAC, the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee.
They should, he said, follow his government’s example and defend Israel on the “moral battlefield” against the growing threat of the international boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement. In Mr Netanyahu’s simple-minded language, support for Palestinian rights, and opposition to the settlements, is equivalent to “delegitimisation” of Israel.
The current obsession with BDS reflects a changing political environment for Israel.
According to an investigation by the Haaretz newspaper last month, Israeli agents subverted …
by Binoy Kampmark / April 3rd, 2017
You could send Congress to space.
— Senator Ted Cruz, March 21, 2017
The NASA authorisation bill was another Trump huff and puff show, brimming with the usual air of minted if misplaced confidence. “My fellow Americans, this week in the company of astronauts I was honoured to sign the NASA Transition Authorization Act right into law.”
The bill was meant to “renew our national commitment to NASA’s mission of exploration and discovery, and we continue a tradition that is as old as mankind. We look to the heavens with wonder and curiosity.” Ever hackneyed, always banal, and fastidiously clichéd – Trump’s touch …
by Yves Engler / April 3rd, 2017
There has yet to be a single question about foreign policy in the NDP’s first two leadership debates, but some contenders say they want the party to devote a forum to international affairs.
During a gathering organized by Courage after the recent youth issues debate in Montréal I asked Niki Ashton whether she voted in favour of bombing Libya. The NDP leadership candidate said she and a few other MPs sought to dissuade then leader Jack Layton from supporting the NATO war. Failing to convince him, Ashton said she couldn’t remember if she voted yes on Libya.
Here’s the background:
The NDP
…
How Bush Jr Quashed the Movement for Korean Reunification
by Stuart Jeanne Bramhall / April 2nd, 2017
With the Trump administration and the mainstream media gleefully beating the war drums for a military attack on North Korea, there’s crucial historical context missing from the corporate media coverage of this issue. I suspect most Americans have never heard of of Korea’s “Sunshine Policy” (1998-2008), aimed at eventual reunification of North and South Korea. We certainly heard about it here in New Zealand, thanks to the mass revolt in Bush’s diplomatic corps when he deliberately sabotaged this policy to isolate and provoke North Korea into amping up their their nuclear weapons program.
On learning of the Sunshine Policy, my …
