We have been here many times before. However, on this occasion even the principal actors understand that the Palestinian Authority is not crying wolf as it warns of imminent collapse.
The crisis is entirely of Israel and Washington’s making. Keen to pander to hawkish public opinion in the run-up to last month’s election, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu struck a severe blow against Mahmoud Abbas and his government-in-permanent-waiting.
He announced that Israel would withhold a portion of the taxes it collects on behalf of the Palestinians, and which it is obligated under the Oslo accords to pass on to the PA, based …
Gregory Barrett’s rant against childbearing in Dissident Voice repeats a similar admonition by the author a year before in the same publication. Barrett, who now regrets having his two daughters, finds 2019 to be just as bad as 2018 to have offspring.
Unsustainable production models and wasteful lifestyles
While Barrett’s article includes repeated references to his own thought, there is only one hyperlink to evidence purporting to support his view about “near-term human extinction” caused by the fertility of women. The cited report does not, in fact, support Barrett’s argument, but rather supports this response to his essay. The report …
by J. Michael Springmann and Edward C. Corrigan / May 5th, 2019
What?
On April 19, 2019 (the date of the original Patriots’ Day in New England), American tech giant Google disabled the accounts of Press TV, an Iranian news service, and its sister channel Hispan TV, an outlet in Spain. Google denied their access to all its services, including its popular video streaming platform YouTube and its E-mail service Gmail. The company’s move took place without prior notice or subsequent explanation.
The action’s date is particularly significant to Americans. That day marked the beginning of the American Revolution. It saw the first armed engagement between British soldiers and colonial militiamen at the Battles …
Is it not curious, that so vast a being as the whale should see the world through so small an eye, and hear the thunder through an ear which is smaller than a hare’s? But if his eyes were broad as the lens of Herschel’s great telescope; and his ears capacious as the porches of cathedrals; would that make him any longer of sight, or sharper of hearing? Not at all. Why then do you try to ‘enlarge’ your mind? Subtilize it.
Only a few years ago this geo-political portmanteau would have seemed fanciful to farcical. Saudi Arabia, that theocratic monarchy, and Israel, a Western-styled democracy? But times have changed, and all signs point to a confluence of interest between these two ideologically opposed, Middle Eastern states. Moreover, this curious confluence flows through the Mesopotomac swamp of Washington, D.C.
As a sign of things to kingdom come, President Trump’s first foreign foray was to Riyadh (not Moscow), for some symbolic sword-dancing and weird orb-touching. From there, Trump dutifully flew to Tel Aviv. Trump’s trip was a tip of the hat to what his …
We need food, clothing, and shelter to secure our existence. It gives us the basic pleasure of living. People are also social beings. Joined in society, they improve their lives significantly and get more pleasure. The most substantial progress comes from the cooperation between free people which may bring the greatest power to satisfy their needs. It may also bring the highest level of personal satisfaction, harmony and love among the people. Cooperation among free people brings a bright future of humankind.
The problem begins when individuals start comparing themselves with other individuals. Subjective opinion of individuals may increase self-importance and …
Capitalism is broken. It is like a gun pointed at the heart of the planet. And it’s got these characteristics which mean that it will essentially, necessarily destroy our life support systems. Among those characteristics are the drive for perpetual economic growth on a finite planet. You just can’t support that ecologically. Things fall apart. It also says, well, anyone has got a right to buy as much natural wealth as their money allows, which means that people are just grabbing far more natural wealth than either the population as a whole or the planet itself can support.
In a previous article on the World Socialist Party of the United States reference was made to Impossibilism. Students of America’s left history will recognise it as an outlook represented by the now defunct Socialist Labor Party, the extinct Proletarian Party and the still (only just) going Socialist Party of Canada which Larry Gambone describes in a brief history of the SPC. Also considered part of the Impossibilist movement were Jules Guesde (at least up to 1914) and the French Workers Party.
According to Wikipedia, Impossibilists may be characterised as presenting a political theory …
Examining whiteness is of utmost importance if Americans truly wish to live in a just and peaceful society. To realize this possibility, self-identified ‘whites’ – and their collaborators from among the racially oppressed – must reckon with their attachment to whiteness. Whiteness was the central concern of sociologist W. E. B. Du Bois in his book Black Reconstruction in America published in 1935. Du Bois argued that whiteness serves as a “public and psychological wage,” delivering to poor self-identified ‘whites’ in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries higher social status than people socially defined as black. He further claimed that: …
Recently I wrote of the failure of white liberals to realize the consequences of their good intentions toward preferred minorities.
The cost of this miscalculation rises by the day. Now white people in America are to be stripped of their history, because white history traumatizes preferred minorities. At George Washington High School in northern California an historic mural depicting the school’s namesake has been declared offensive.
Should journalism ever have a deity worth His, Her or Its salt, looking down upon the recent proceedings against Julian Assange will provide endless choking fits of confusion and dismay. The prosecution continues in the twisted logic that engaging a source to disclose something secret while also protecting anonymity is somehow unnatural in the world of journalism. Most prosecutions in this regard tend to be ignorant of history and its various contortions; theirs is to simply fulfil the brief of a vengeful employer, in the now, in the falsely clear present. If their reasoning could be extended, the likes of …
In 1975 just 46 countries were considered to be electoral democracies; forty years later, according to The Global State of Democracy report 2017, the number had risen to 132, accounting for 68% of nations. The bulk of the increase occurred after 1989 following the collapse of the Soviet Union and what was to be the beginning of the global protest movement. While staging general elections every five years or so is an important step away from the autocratic alternative, unless democratic values are embraced and introduced, true democracy remains little more than a slogan, social injustice and suppression in various …
Charter schools have always attracted criticism due to the serious problems inherent to them, but it is no secret that in recent months charter schools have been taking it on the chin a little more than usual.
This is not unexpected.
More detailed reports, articles, and investigations are exposing with greater regularity the multi-faceted corruption and endless Jerry Springer-style scandals long plaguing nonprofit and for-profit charter schools, especially so-called “no-excuses” charter schools, virtual charter schools, and “miracle” charter schools.
Bizarre student enrollment management practices, coupled with poor transparency, shady real estate deals, inflated administrator pay, inaccurate waiting lists, high teacher turnover rates, almost …
The Rev. Joy Powell says she was “raped, railroaded and bamboozled” by police. Her crime? Being a poor black woman who faced off against the police—protesting their violent brutality against black people in Rochester, NY. Once she defied them, she was warned, then targeted and framed for serious crimes. A few weeks ago, Australian Julian Assange was forcibly dragged from his political asylum to face the American police state. His crime? Like Rev. Powell, he dared to tell the truth about the violence and brutality that defines the American state. Scottish political analyst Jon Wight, citing the treatment of American …
by Alicia Jrapko and Bill Hackwell / May 3rd, 2019
Plaza of the Revolution (Photo by Bill Hackwell)
Considering the level of belligerence and hostility coming from the empire of the North one might expect that the powerful May Day march through the Plaza of the Revolution might take on a defensive military overtone. But Cuba is never that way and instead they show their resolution and defiance cloaked within their humanity.
Just as the sun started to rise the march to celebrate the International Day of the Workers began and behind the banner that read Unity,Commitment and …
Labor around the world is facing a hostile situation to the extent and intensity unprecedented in labor’s history. At the same time, labor in the Global South and Global North is theoretically, organizationally and politically unarmed. In this perspective, Timir Basu, a revolutionary once organizing the poor peasantry, and after passing hard time behind bars, organizing the labor, and delivering his tasks as editor of Frontier, the radical weekly from Kolkata, for decades, focuses on labor in India, a large economy in the Global South, in the following interview. The interview was taken in April 2019 by Farooque Chowdhury….
Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and Witch Doctors of Terrorism
by Binoy Kampmark / May 2nd, 2019
Nothing turns on the charlatan class of terrorism expertise than a video from an elusive, unknown destination, adjusted, modified and giving all the speculative trimmings. In reading, E.B. White suggested the presence of two participants: the author as impregnator; the reader as respondent. In the terrorism video, the maker consciously penetrates the shallow mind of the recipient, leaving its gurgling DNA to grow and mutate.
When Islamic State began its gruesome foray into the world of terrorist snuff videos, experts resembled overly keen cinephiles seeking the underlying message of a new wave. The burning of Jordanian pilot Muath al-Kasaesbeh in a …
In the early morning hours of 30 April, 2019, the self-declared “Interim President”, Juan Guaidó, launched what at first sight appeared to be a military coup – Guaidó calls it “Operation Freedom” (sounds very much like a Washington-invented title) – against the democratically elected, legitimate government of Nicolas Maduro. With two dozen of defected armed military from the Carlota military base east of Caracas (not hundreds, or even thousands, as reported by the mainstream media), Guaidó went to free Leopoldo Lopez, the opposition leader, who was under house arrest, after his 13-year prison sentence for his role in the deadly …
In 2017, Sociology Professor Rachel Sherman wrote Uneasy Street: The Anxiety of Affluence, a book which drew upon 50 in-depth interviews with Uber-wealthy New Yorkers in order to obtain a picture of just how they perceived their status.
Sherman found that her interviewees, all in the top 1-2 percent of income or wealth or both, had thoroughly imbibed the narrative of meritocracy to rationalize their affluence and immense privileges. That is, they believed they deserved all their money because of hard work and individual effort. Most identified themselves as socially and political liberal and took pains to distinguish themselves from “bad” …
A recent statement made by the outgoing French Ambassador to the US regarding the nature of Israeli apartheid accentuates a larger ailment that has afflicted the European Union foreign policy.
The EU is simply gutless when it comes to confronting Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine.
Ambassador Gerard Araud was, of course, right when he told the US magazine, The Atlantic, that Israel is already an apartheid state.
Noting the “disproportion of power” between Israel and the Palestinians, Araud said, “The strongest (meaning Israel) may conclude that they have no interest to make concessions.”
And since Israel “won’t make (Palestinians) citizens of Israel … …
Sri Lanka, Easter Sunday, 21 April 2019: More than half a dozen bomb blasts shook the country killing from 250 to more than 350 people. Depending on who counts, the death toll varies. The devastation took place in several catholic churches and luxury hotels. Other explosions, including from – what they say – are suicide bombers, have since killed another several dozens of people. Many are children, women – christian worshippers. Why the luxury hotels? Western (Christian) tourists?
Yesterday, another explosion ripped through a suspicious building, killing 18, including children and women. Again, they, the ‘authorities’, say suicide bombers, who didn’t …
She deserves better
In Indonesia, both presidential candidates have declared victory, just a few days after the elections that were held on 17th April, 2019. Both of them are pro-business, both Muslim, and both insist that the Communist Party should continue to be banned. Neither of them is even thinking about stopping their country from committing one of the bloodiest genocides on earth, that in West Papua; or ending the unbridled plunder and environmental disaster on the third largest island in the world, Borneo (in Indonesia known as …
The world is in the throes of an extinction crisis unlike any throughout paleoclimate history, aka: the Sixth Mass Extinction, keeping in mind that the normal “background rate” for extinction is 1-to-5 species gone per year. But, what if it’s five (5) every 24 hours?
Answer: It’s a lot more than that.
The current worldwide extinction rate is more than 1,000xs the normal background rate, or, in the simplest of terms, instead of 1-to-5 species extinct per year, it’s alarmingly somewhere between 25-to-250 (maybe more) species of plant, insect, bird, and mammal extinct every 24 hours.
US global power in the Trump period reflects the continuities and changes which are unfolding rapidly and deeply throughout the world and which are affecting the position of Washington.
Assessing the dynamics of US global power is a complex problem which requires examining multiple dimensions.
We will proceed by:
(1) Conceptualizing the principles which dictate empire building, specifically the power bases and the dynamic changes in relations and structures which shape the present and future position of the …
If Pete Seeger were still with us, how would he be celebrating his 100th birthday? Probably by chopping wood.
On May 3rd, 1919, Pete Seeger was born. Many people in the more musical regions of my social circles are currently celebrating his life, for the occasion of what would have been his 100th birthday, had he lived past the age of 94. Among people I know, so much has already been said about Pete, that I’m hesitant to say any more. But on …
Celebrating a life well connected through the process of death, mourning, memorializing
by Paul Haeder / May 1st, 2019
It was impressive, the number of people this 66 year old fellow touched: a father figure, a friend, a guide, a mentor, a guidepost, a brother, and a giver.
The service was held in Portland Sat. 4/27 and hundreds showed up at the Quaker church. I was asked to say some things about the man, my friend, and I had already written a poem of dedication to him, but I had to let a more simple-and-unfolding-of-our-collective-emotions sort of poem lead me.
I had just spent the night before in some forest land 10 miles north of White Salmon, WA, with Mt. Hood …
May Day is one of the most important days to the exploited people. Michael D. Yates, director of Monthly Review Press and former Associate Editor of Monthly Review magazine, focuses on US labor and its movement in the following interview from April 2019 by Farooque Chowdhury. Professor Michael Yates, whose academic fields are labor economics and the relationship between capital and labor, also discusses labor’s new initiatives at grass roots level, defying and contesting “official” labor leadership. ***** Farooque Chowdhury: You have been closely associated with labor in the United States for more than 30 years. You …
A new report has uncovered 36 code-named US military operations in Africa. This comes after last year’s news that US special forces were operating in west Africa’s Niger. Maurice Carney, executive director of Friends of the Congo, joins RT America’s Manila Chan to unpack the news.
by Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers / April 30th, 2019
We are still writing to you from the Venezuelan Embassy in Washington, DC where we are here as the Embassy Protection Collective with the full permission of the Venezuelan government. We have the grave responsibility to hold this space from takeover by the opposition, which would happen with the assistance of US law enforcement, until the Venezuelan government can complete negotiations with the United States over the status of their respective embassies.
What hangs in the balance is the possibility of a peaceful and orderly resolution to the end of …
On March 7, the Inter Press Service (IPS) published my article, “Eight Years on, Fukushima Still Poses Health Risks for Children,” and I am very gratified to learn that it was the second most popular article published in IPS News that week. It also appears that many readers were surprised to learn that removal of the irradiated cores from the three crippled nuclear reactors at Fukushima would take at least forty years.
This revelation reminds me of my conversation with the late Dr. Hans-Peter Durr, former Director of the Max Plunch Institute of Germany, when the Fukushima accident occurred …
