Latest articles
by William Hawes / March 10th, 2018
My own little world
Is what I deserve
‘Cause I am the only child there is.
A king of it all
The belle of the ball
I promise I’ve always been like this.
Forever the first
My bubble can’t burst
It’s almost like only I exist.
Where everything’s mine
If I can keep my mouth shut tight, tight, tight.
— Guster, “Center of Attention”, Lost and Gone Forever Live, 2014
So much for the city on the hill. Narcissism has changed to nihilism and solipsism: “climate change isn’t real”, and the ravages of history continue down the rabbit hole of memory.
Take another look. Genocide and chattel slavery. The war against Mexico, the …
Espionage Claims and the Failed Tory Campaign
by Binoy Kampmark / March 9th, 2018
It was public, expressive and demanded. The apology by Ben Bradley, a social media hazard but also Tory member of the UK House of Commons, is something that will put detractors of Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn on notice. While accusations have been made about the emerging cult of the Corbynista ringed by the steel of Momentum, Corbyn has weathered his fair share of accusations from espionage turn coat to terrorist sympathiser.
On the milder end of the spectrum come suggestions that Corbyn the Prime Minister would disable Britain as a nuclear power. To have Corbyn at Number 10, for instance, would be …
by John Seed / March 9th, 2018
The tropical Andes of Ecuador are at the top of the world list of biodiversity hotspots in terms of vertebrate species, endemic vertebrates, and endemic plants. Ecuador has more orchid and hummingbird species than Brazil, which is 32 times larger, and more diversity than the entire USA.
In the last year, the Ecuadorean government has quietly granted mining concessions to over 1.7 million hectares (4.25 million acres) of forest reserves and indigenous territories. These were awarded to transnational corporations in closed-door deals without public knowledge or consent.
This is in direct violation of Ecuadorean law and international treaties, and will decimate headwater …
by Andre Vltchek / March 8th, 2018
When it comes to Russia or the Soviet Union, reports and historical accounts do get blurry; in the West they do, and consequently in all of its ‘client states’.
Fairy tales get intermingled with reality, while fabrications are masterfully injected into the subconsciousness of billions of people worldwide. Russia is an enormous country, in fact, the largest country on Earth in terms of territory. It is scarcely inhabited. It is deep, and as a classic once wrote: “It is impossible to understand Russia with one’s brain. One could only believe in it.”
The Western mind generally doesn’t like things unknown, spiritual and …
by Binoy Kampmark / March 8th, 2018
The Commission instead opted for the easiest way out, which is a shame as in my perception it reveals a lack of impartiality on your behalf!
— Xanana Gusmão, Chief East Timorese negotiator, February 28, 2018
In the scheme of things, Australia has deputised as regional bully for imperial powers since it became an outpost of the British empire. Neighbouring states have been ridiculed, mocked and derided as sub-human and incapable. The term “failed state” is still used in Canberra’s circles of presupposing power over desperate basket cases. Little wonder that China smells a wounded reputation.
It is in that spirit that …
by Stuart Littlewood / March 7th, 2018
Prince William, second in line to the throne, is being sent to the Holy Land by the UK Government “to promote diplomatic and cultural ties”. In effect he’ll be helping to normalise 70 years of Israeli occupation and sanitise the unimaginable cruelty that has gone with it. His trip cuts across the Boycott Divestment & Sanctions movement’s efforts to bring pressure for justice.
*****
Kensington Palace has announced in a tweet that “the Duke of Cambridge will visit Israel, Jordan and the Occupied Palestinian territories in the summer.”
The visit “is at the request of Her Majesty’s Government.”
The Jerusalem Post reports …
by Media Lens / March 7th, 2018
‘I have tried trade, but I found that it would take ten years to get under way in that, and that then I should probably be on my way to the devil.’
Noam Chomsky once emailed us:
Am really impressed with what you are doing, though it’s like trying to move a ten-ton truck with a toothpick. They’re not going to allow themselves to be exposed.
These were kind words from Chomsky. But, in fact, ‘they’ – corporate journalists – often do an excellent job of exposing themselves.
Consider that, last week, one of …
by Kim Petersen / March 7th, 2018
On 2 March, the Real News interviewed Steve Cohn, author of Competing Economic Paradigms in China (Routledge, 2017). Host Sharmini Peries began by asking:
Professor Cohn, in your book you analyze the transition of the Chinese economy from Maoist to ‘iron rice bowl’ policy to a neoliberal policy. What kind of domestic factors contributed to this transition?
Part of Cohn’s response was:
… I think the Chinese government, starting with Deng Xiaoping but has continued since then, came to the conclusion that certain capitalist-oriented policies were necessary to increase
…
by Binoy Kampmark / March 6th, 2018
Art and politics mix, often poorly. Artists are sometimes the hoodwinked emissaries of the latter, sponsored, enlisted and marshalled by the state and corporate entities. Self-proclaimed radical artists can become compliant, or at the very least mute cogs, aware of their patronage and finite sources of funding. To question is to impoverish.
In Australia, the links between security companies and the art world have come in for a recent sniping. Such episodes should be more regular, but artists in Australia have woken up from a prolonged slumber of selfish apathy to push back against companies who provide the gruesome bill for …
by Peter Crowley / March 6th, 2018
Simply ‘calling it like you see it’ doesn’t cut anymore. We now know that conscious and unconscious intuitions are socially constructed by our surroundings, with cultural, religious, social biases all included.
Hence, confirmation bias is at work when new information is gathered and quickly aligns with one’s world schema. For example, a white person may come across an African American man who is paying child support and on welfare. Many whites in America may nod their heads to this, conforming what they already think they ‘know’. However, they fail to look to the majority of African American men who do not …
by Ricardo Vaz / March 6th, 2018
Anti-imperialist mural in Caracas (Photo: Venezuelanalysis)
With presidential elections announced in Venezuela, the US State Department moved quickly to declare that the contest was illegitimate and that its results would not be recognised. But less than a year ago the tune was quite different, as a cursory look through State Department briefings and press releases will show. We also examine how political developments from the past year have led to the current scenario, and how US demands for “free and fair” elections are not …
by Robert Hunziker / March 6th, 2018
Every once in a while a climatic event hits that forces people to sit down to catch their breath. Along those lines, abnormal Arctic heat waves in the dead of winter may force scientists to revaluate downwards (or maybe upwards, depending) their most pessimistic of forecasts.
By the end of February 2018, large portions of the Arctic Ocean north of Greenland were open blue water, meaning no ice. But, it’s wintertime, no daylight 24/7, yet no ice in areas where it’s usually meters thick! In a remarkable, mindboggling turn of events, thick ice in early February by month’s end turned into …
by Gareth Porter / March 6th, 2018
The CIA’s “Operation Merlin,” which involved providing Iran with a flawed design for a nuclear weapon and resulted in an alleged whistleblower going to prison, was the perfect example of creating intelligence in order to justify operations, reports Gareth Porter.
*****
Jeffrey Sterling, the case officer for the CIA’s covert “Operation Merlin,” who was convicted in May 2015 for allegedly revealing details of that operation to James Risen of the New York Times, was released from prison in January after serving more than two years of a 42-month sentence. He had been tried and convicted on the premise that the revelation …
by Yves Engler / March 6th, 2018
The NDP leadership’s naked suppression of debate on the “Palestine Resolution” is rooted in a long pro-Israeli nationalism history.
At last month’s convention the party machine blocked any debate of the Palestine Resolution, which mostly restated official Canadian policy, except that it called for “banning settlement products from Canadian markets, and using other forms of diplomatic and economic pressure to end the occupation.”
As I detailed previously, the Palestine Resolution was confusingly renamed, deprioritized and then blocked from being debated on the convention floor. The suppression of a resolution unanimously endorsed by the NDP youth convention, many outside groups and …
by Ramzy Baroud / March 6th, 2018
As global voices continue to demand the freedom of 17-year-old teenage Palestinian girl, Ahed Tamimi, Israeli authorities have arrested nine additional members of her family.
Those who were detained on February 26 include Ahed’s 15-year-old cousin, Mohammed Tamimi.
Israeli troops had shot Mohammed in the head last December, shattering his skull. The teenager, who is awaiting reconstruction surgery, is unlikely to receive proper medical care in Israeli prisons.
Ahed’s crime was that she slapped an Israeli soldier in a video that, since then, went viral, shortly after her cousin was shot. He was then placed in a medically-induced coma.
The Israeli soldier …
(Highlights of The Post-Industrial, Post-Modern Theory of Value and Surplus Value)
by Michel Luc Bellemare / March 5th, 2018
One of the primary economic paradoxes that has always perked the curiosity of both bourgeois and Marxist political economists alike can be neatly encapsulated in a notorious quip uttered by the famous New York Yankee’s catcher and manager, Yogi Berra, who, once upon a time, famously pronounced: “a nickel isn’t worth a dime, anymore”.
In this simple Yogism lies one of the primary post-modern financial mechanisms by which neoliberal bourgeois-capitalists have sucked value out of the workforce/population, under the cover of western economic opulence, into their own coffers to the bewilderment and detriment of the workforce/population, which slowly sinks ever-deeper into …
by Jonathan Cook / March 5th, 2018
It is has been a very bad week for those claiming Israel has the most moral army in the world. Here’s a small sample of abuses of Palestinians in recent days in which the Israeli army was caught lying.
A child horrifically injured by soldiers was arrested and terrified into signing a false confession that he was hurt in a bicycle accident. A man who, it was claimed, had died of tear-gas inhalation was actually shot at point-blank range, then savagely beaten by a mob of soldiers and left to die. And soldiers threw a tear gas canister at a Palestinian …
by Binoy Kampmark / March 4th, 2018
While the bibliophile and aphorist Samuel Johnson claimed that people of appropriate mental discipline could avoid talking about the weather, the British have found weather an irresistible topic of conversation. Storms are recalled with nostalgic exaggeration; accounts are rendered colourful after the fact.
The Beast from the East, as this latest cold freeze has been termed, stands as a form of climactic terror, storming its way through life without care or favour. Even the language is laden with suggestiveness, a Siberian nightmare forcing its way into the lives of Europeans with refrigerating potential. Ominously, it has been working in tandem with …
by Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers / March 4th, 2018
President Trump ordered the Pentagon to start planning a military parade on Veteran’s Day this November. Trump wants to outdo the military parade he attended in France on Bastille Day. Estimates are it could cost up to $50 million. The last military parade was after the Gulf War in 1991.
A coalition of groups is organizing to oppose the parade, click here to learn more.
Military parade in dangerous times
This display of military power and glorification of war comes when the risks of nuclear conflict and wars are …
Two Rabbits, Twenty-eight Days of Testing, and a 91-Year Old Salt Called Aluminum Hydroxide captured in new documentary
by Paul Haeder / March 4th, 2018
H-o-p-e Spells Help Our People Exist
Fact One: Aluminum is present in U.S. childhood vaccines that prevent hepatitis A, hepatitis B, diphtheria-tetanuspertussis (DTaP, Tdap), Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib), human papillomavirus (HPV) and pneumococcus infection
For someone always skeptical of big money-big business tied to anything in the realm of medicine or science in general, I have lifted myself way beyond hope when it comes to any amount of efficacy in medicine or all the other nodes tied to our modern industrial-postindustrial world.
The vaccination debate is a misnomer in itself, since the debate is really an attack on anyone who dares question …
by Binoy Kampmark / March 4th, 2018
The hide of Australia’s political classes has been worn. Some members, admittedly, never had one. With tiptoeing around language ravaging, and in some cases savaging discussion, pondering policy has become nigh impossible. What matters after the Barnaby Joyce affair is rumour and private speculation.
First came the threatening malice associated with Jobs and Innovations minister Michaelia Cash. Having been pressed by Labor Senator Doug Cameron in a Senate Estimates hearing about her newly hired chief of staff, including relevant employment record, Cash went volcanic. The minister, wrote Jenna Price with tart disgruntlement, “is what you get when you hire on …
Just the UK's Theresa May and her deluded Foreign Office, and the callous death merchants of Washington and Tel Aviv.
by Stuart Littlewood / March 4th, 2018
It’s amazing what unprincipled people will admit to when goaded. A petition has been posted on the parliamentary website calling on prime minister Theresa May to withdraw her invitation to the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammad bin Salman, to visit the UK. It reads:
The Saudi Arabian regime has one of the worst human rights records in the world. Torture and arbitrary detention are widely documented. In 2017 alone, over 100 people were executed.
The Crown Prince has directed the bombardment of Yemen. Tens of thousands have been killed or injured. There is widespread famine and cholera, creating the worst
…
by Alexandra Morton / March 3rd, 2018
On the pathogen front — farm salmon science has become dangerously polarized, but the difference of opinion on the impact of piscine reovirus infected in farm salmon on wild salmon is split with all the industry — authored science on one side, and everyone else on the other. I teamed up with three remarkable people to make a short film Racing a Virus on this situation. In my view, Canada’s Federal Minister of Fisheries Dominic LeBlanc should step down as he is unable to abide by the laws of Canada, in the face of industry demands to keep infected …
by Ron Forthofer / March 3rd, 2018
The U.S. mainstream media has an important role to play as the fourth estate. Sometimes it does an excellent job of informing the public on issues, particularly on many social issues. However, the mainstream media long ago abrogated its responsibility of accurately informing the public about U.S. foreign policy. Instead it has become a tool to advance the interests advocated by the U.S. establishment, particularly the goal to maintain U.S. hegemony.
U.S. Foreign Policy Rationale
George Kennan, a major foreign policy figure after WWII, wrote a policy memo for the State Department in 1948 stating:
Furthermore, we have about 50% of the world’s
…
by Kathy Kelly / March 3rd, 2018
Here in Kabul, as the rising sun begins to warm our chilly rooms, I hear excited laughter from downstairs. Rosemary Morrow, a renowned Australian permaculture expert, has begun teaching thirty-five young students in a month-long course on low-resource farming.
In war-torn Afghanistan, there’s a desperate need to rebuild agricultural infrastructure and help people grow their own food. People verging on despair feel encouraged by possibilities of replenishing and repairing their soil.
The night before, over dinner, one of the students discussed news from his home town in Afghanistan’s Wardak province about U.S. aerial attacks. “The blasts have become so frequent,” he said, …
by Jonathan Cook / March 2nd, 2018
Something quite extraordinary has been happening on Twitter. Corporate journalists have gone into meltdown after two British media analysts – known as Media Lens – tweeted some friendly advice to idealistic youngsters contemplating a career in journalism.
Twitter is a social media forum much loved by corporate journalists – probably because media training hones their skills at pithy aphorisms and putdowns, especially of those who criticise them, that work well in Twitter’s confined format. In a battle of tweetbites, the corporate journalist is king.
But the outpouring of indignation from these journalists at a little bit of advice from Media Lens must …
by Evan Jones / March 2nd, 2018
There is real antisemitism and there is ersatz antisemitism. The latter has of late been getting more press than the former. The coinage has been debased.
Israeli academic Neve Gordon, a sometime target, notes:
There is an irony here. Historically, the fight against anti-Semitism has sought to advance the equal rights and emancipation of Jews. Those who denounce the ‘new anti-Semitism’ seek to legitimate the discrimination against and subjugation of Palestinians. In the first case, someone who wishes to oppress, dominate and exterminate Jews is branded an anti-Semite; in
…
by Yves Engler / March 2nd, 2018
Hey, Maple Leafs, be careful what traditions you honour.
On Saturday the Leafs are playing an outdoor game against the Washington Capitals at Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. To mark the occasion the team created a jersey with the Royal Canadian Navy’s “Ready, Aye, Ready” motto on it. The website unveiling the sweaters includes a brief history of the RCN, and Leafs President Brendan Shanahan said the jerseys were designed to honour “the traditions of the Royal Canadian Navy” whose sailors “stand always ready to defend Canada and proudly safeguard its …
by Andre Vltchek / March 2nd, 2018
New huge wave of ‘China bashing’ is once again rolling from Europe and North America. Its water is filthy and murky. It tries to smear everything about the present Chinese system: from its own and unique democratic model, to its leadership, as well as the political, economic and social system.
I am periodically reminded that every year, just before China’s annual two sessions, there will be rising voices declaring that the People’s Congress play the role of rubber stamps, and China’s democracy can’t truly represent the people.
Criticism of the Chinese system sometimes comes from within the country, but more often it …
by Ramzy Baroud / March 1st, 2018
In an article published in Al-Monitor without a single verifiable citation, Israeli journalist, Shlomi Eldar, went to unprecedented lengths to divert attention from the corruption in his country.
He spoke of Palestinian journalists – all speaking on condition of anonymity – who ‘applauded’ and ‘admired’ Israeli media coverage of corruption scandals surrounding the country’s rightwing Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
Eldar’s approach is underhanded and journalistically unsound.
The Israeli media, which has largely supported Netanyahu’s devastating wars on Gaza, continues to relentlessly defend the illegal occupation of Palestine and to serve as a shield for Israel’s stained reputation on the international stage. …
