So that settles it!
by Gary Leupp / July 17th, 2017
Monday morning. David Chalian, CNN Political Director, on CNN’s “New Day” program. News ticker: “How do Trump-Russia and DNC-Ukraine compare?
New Day co-anchor Alysin Camerota (former Fox anchor) puts the question to her Political Director.
Chalian’s mechanical reply: “Russia is an adversary, Ukraine is not.”
Camerota, as always exuding wisdom, follows up: “Thanks so much for sifting through this with us.” (Good, so that’s settled! There had been so much sifting there, in those few precious boilerplate minutes.)
But wait, Mr. Political Director! (And by the way, Dave, what’s your job description? How exactly do you direct CNN’s politics? The responsibility must rest heavily …
by Media Lens / July 17th, 2017
When Russian and Syrian forces were bombarding ‘rebel’-held East Aleppo last year, newspapers and television screens were full of anguished reporting about the plight of civilians killed, injured, trapped, traumatised or desperately fleeing. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Russian leader Vladimir Putin, both Official Enemies, were denounced and demonised, in accordance with the usual propaganda script. One piece in the Evening Standard described Assad as a ‘monster’ and a Boris Johnson column in the Telegraph referred to both Putin and Assad as ‘the Devil’.
As the respected veteran reporter Patrick Cockburn …
by James O'Neill / July 17th, 2017
On 4 July 2017 North Korea fired a missile from their territory that landed in the Sea of Japan. Western commentators immediately labeled it an ICBM with the capability of reaching Alaska, and by implication, the north of Australia.
The “threat” posed by North Korea’s missile test has dominated the strategic commentaries ever since. It was personified by a major article in the Sydney Morning Herald on 8 July 2017 by political editor Peter Hartcher. Hartcher quoted a number of defence “experts”, all of whom assumed:
That it was, in fact, an ICBM;
That North Korea had, or would shortly …
An interview with F. William Engdahl
by Ludwig Watzal / July 17th, 2017
The Ancient Greeks knew: “Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.” No less a figure than the late Zbigniew Brzezinski and the CIA made use of this saying by recruiting the Muslim Brotherhood to fight a proxy war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, which led to the withdrawal of the Soviets from the Hindu Kush. Since then, the CIA used the mercenaries to fight more proxy wars in the Balkans, Chechnya, and Azerbaijan. Due to the wars of aggression against Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen the US …
by Nima Zahedi Nameghi / July 16th, 2017
In January 2004, Giorgio Agamben, an Italian philosopher, refused to travel to the United States to teach at New York University after biometric security measures such as retina scans and fingerprints were introduced to U.S. visas in the wake of the September 11 attack. Agamben’s account of biometric identification stated that gathering biological data to track citizens all but epitomizes the same sense of identifying Jewish inmates with their tattooed numbers during the Holocaust. In fact, only the form of that loathsome aggression has changed in time, not its repellent character.
In his insightful book Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and …
by Yves Engler / July 14th, 2017
Sometimes silence in politics speaks louder than words.
Israel lobby groups’ response (or lack thereof) to NDP leadership candidate Niki Ashton’s recent support of Palestinian rights suggests they believe previous criticisms backfired.
Two months ago B’nai B’rith attacked Ashton for attending a rally in support of Palestinian prisoners on hunger strike and a subsequent Facebook post commemorating the Nakba, which saw 750,000 Palestinians driven from their homes by Zionist forces in 1947/’48. The self-declared ‘human rights’ organization published a press release titled “B’nai Brith Denounces MP Niki Ashton for Standing in ‘Solidarity’ with Terrorists.” Rather than harming Ashton, the attack …
by Gary Leupp / July 14th, 2017
The failure of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, in four-day talks with the Qatari emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani and a Kuwaiti official, to mediate an end to the inter-Arab dispute over Qatar, suggests that U.S. influence in the Middle East is waning. Even in the wake of the most recent massive Saudi arms deal announced during Trump’s visit to Riyadh on June 5, and the president’s receipt of the King Abdulaziz al Saud Collar, Washington is unable to dissuade its “enduring partner” from its highly rash course of action.
The New York Times reports that Tillerson flew out …
by Felicity Arbuthnot / July 14th, 2017
On Monday 10th July, a ruling was handed down by London’s High Court, which should, in a sane world, exclude the UK government ever again judging other nations’ leaders human rights records or passing judgment on their possession or use of weapons.
The Campaign Against the Arms Trade (CAAT) lost their case to halt the UK selling arms to Saudi Arabia, the case based on the claim that they may have been used to kill civilians in Yemen.
Anyone following the cataclysmic devastation of Yemen would think it was a million to one that the £3.3 Billion worth of arms sold by …
by Robert Hunziker / July 14th, 2017
David Wallace-Wells’ article “The Uninhabitable Earth,” has created a furor of criticism, people bouncing off walls from coast to coast. Consider – the title of the article says it all!
The critics, including prominent climate scientists, claim Wallace-Wells’ conclusions are dangerously exaggerated, but are they really? Additional criticism is leveled by some of the first-rate news sources on climate change, like Grist: “Stop scaring people about climate change. It doesn’t work.”
For sure, Wallace-Welles’ opening in his New York Mag article describes Armageddon. In one paragraph, the reader finds “terrors” beyond anything ever imagined, “even within …
by Binoy Kampmark / July 13th, 2017
The Catholic Church, much in the manner of a modern corporation, is a sprawling edifice of operations and functions. To hold part of it accountable for abuses – against human, bank account, or country – has presented a formidable legal obstacle.
This nightmare has taken place amidst a broader question: the extent Church officials believe they are accountable to secular justice, or those ordained by the Church itself. St. Augustine’s point was clear enough: of the two sovereignties – that of the City of Man, or that of God – the latter would prevail.
Apologies for the specific issue of clerical child …
by Paul Haeder / July 13th, 2017
Indeed, the young are tethered to a slumber land of no ideas or ideals. Shackled to the beasts of debt and endless consumer-rent-mortgage-fee-levy-tax-fine-surcharge-hidden add on Capitalism. They amble to the nearest Starbucks and find the plastic putrid world and shitty coffee essence safe, conformist, the place to snuggle in with Twitter-Snapchat-Instagram-Facebook-Spotify.
Add to that the general malaise of wanting nothing to do with politics, and everything to do with hipster joker-a-second crap they have downloading and meandering through their apps, and we have a country of no serious thinking. Tapped into the spine of the controllers, the brain centers micro-processing the …
by Graham Peebles / July 13th, 2017
Every day we are faced with numerous choices, some relating to practical issues and others based on more complex psychological demands – how to react, what to say and do. Whilst on the face of it choices appear to have been made, in the main we react habitually; many, if not all, of our decisions proceed from the past, and are, in fact, unconscious, conditioned responses to the challenges of the day.
The world is beset with a series of unprecedented inter-related crises: the urgent need to establish peace and the environmental catastrophe are the two most pressing issues facing humanity, …
(And never mind the slaughter in Yemen)
by Stuart Littlewood / July 13th, 2017
Campaigners are furious with a High Court decision in London allowing the UK Government to carry on exporting arms to Saudi Arabia for use against Yemenis.
The Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) brought the legal action against the Secretary of State for International Trade for continuing to grant export licences for arms to Saudi Arabia, arguing that this was against UK policy, which states that the government must refuse such licences if there’s a clear risk that the arms might be used to commit serious violations of International Humanitarian Law.
It is undeniable that Saudi forces have used UK-supplied weaponry to violate …
by Binoy Kampmark / July 12th, 2017
The momentum against the Trump administration is building, and it should come as no surprise that it comes via the least original of avenues: the Russians did it, and someone must pay. For decades, the feared Russian has played a vital role in shaping US paranoia and a domestic landscape famous for its reactionary bursts and fearful lurches.
That paranoia has assumed galloping proportions. The US president’s approach to this assertion has been confused and varied. There is nothing surprising in this: from blanket, emphatic denial about any connections even smelling of a Russian touch, Trump has stated another variant of …
(How The Theory of Conceptual-Commodity-Value-Management Guarantees Increasing Profits With Less Workers)
by Michel Luc Bellemare / July 12th, 2017
Part One
Karl Marx has always claimed that the introduction of machinery within the capitalist labor-process was orchestrated to cheapen commodities and in the process also to cheapen labor-power. As he states, in Capital (Volume One), “the use of machinery [is] for the exclusive purpose of cheapening the product”, that is, the commodity, and labor-power being a commodity, means in turn that labor-power is as well cheapened in the process. Moreover, according to Marx, besides lowering wages via the cheapening of workers and labor-power, the introduction of machinery …
Mayhem and Changing Opinions in the UK
by Lesley Docksey / July 12th, 2017
A year ago the UK voted to leave the EU after a stupid, unnecessary referendum. And although Brexiteers pronounced this an ‘overwhelming’ result, the true facts were that, out of the total electorate, 37 per cent voted Leave, 35 per cent voted Remain, and 28 per cent didn’t bother to vote. Hardly overwhelming.
Not only that, but it has emerged that the Brexit campaign was funded by some secretive and dodgy deals. The campaigns on both sides misled the public with the result that people voted without understanding the issues. So where are we now?
The United Kingdom is …
by Tim Scott / July 12th, 2017
As an intended outcome of neoliberal doctrine and a natural stage of capitalist development, global financialization constructs a borderless nexus of power in which debt and austerity fuels a cultural, political and economic landscape bound to enduring structures of domination, and creates unprecedented wealth through the accumulation of suffering.
*****
According to economist Richard Wolff, “Capitalism has always and everywhere oscillated between two phases.” One phase is operationalized by free-market doctrine, often referenced as economic liberalism, classical economics, laissez-faire capitalism, or neoliberalism which refers to a “new” or “revived form” of liberal economics. While some economists will distinguish differences …
by Ramzy Baroud / July 12th, 2017
Two officers sought me from within a crowd at the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. They seemed to know who I was. They asked me to follow them, and I obliged. Being of Arab background, often renders one’s citizenship almost irrelevant.
In a back room, where other foreigners, mainly Muslims, were holed for ‘added security’, I was asked numerous questions about my politics, ideas, writing, children, friends and my late Palestinian parents.
Meanwhile, an officer took my bag and all of my papers, including receipts, business cards, and more. I did not protest. I am so used to this treatment and endless questioning that …
Near Future Fiction
by Othello / July 12th, 2017
Fresh off his election victory, Japanese Prime Minister Kobe as well as several of his cabinet members and top party officials, visited the Yasukuni Shrine outside Tokyo. As usual, reaction across Asia was hostile to the PM’s visit to a shrine that honored Class A war criminals that had been part of an Imperial Japanese war machine that had slaughtered and enslaved millions in the run up to and throughout World War II. Nowhere was the anger more sharply felt than in Korea, whose 1100 years as an independent kingdom had been brutally ended by the Japanese in 1910, followed …
by Ajamu Baraka / July 11th, 2017
The introduction of the Republican legislation to “repeal and replace” Obamacare is no more than latest scrimmage in the ongoing one-sided war against the poor and working class. The “Affordable Care Act” (ACA, better known as Obamacare) proved to be both unaffordable and unable to provide comprehensive care for millions. Nevertheless, with the ACA being one of the only tangible “victories” Democrats could claim for an administration with a dismal record of noteworthy accomplishments, neoliberal Democrats and the party’s liberal base led by Bernie Sanders are now coalesced around the ACA and have vowed to defend it to the bitter …
