by Uri Avnery / May 17th, 2013
There was this Israeli man who from time to time put a slip of paper in the cracks between the stones of the Western Wall, asking God for favors – as Jews have been doing for centuries. They believe that the gates of heaven are located directly above the Wall, making it easy for their missives to arrive quickly.
The man always wondered what all the other petitioners were requesting from the Almighty. One night his curiosity got the better of him. In the wee hours of the morning he stole to the Wall, extracted all the pieces of paper …
by Christy Rodgers / May 17th, 2013
Good afternoon, and welcome to all of you. It is an honor and a privilege to be standing before you today. As I look out on your avid faces, on the sea of eyes which glitters before me, I can only think back along the long road that has led us to this momentous occasion, to my presence on this podium and yours in this great hall, and remember the terrible trials we had to overcome to make this golden and glorious day possible. I hope you will bear with me as I reminisce—not at too much length, I promise—about …
by William Manson / May 17th, 2013
As a mere human being, I guess I’m sort-of—out-of-date. You see, so many of the activities I used to do—can be performed better by…well, you know. It’s getting so that I wonder what I’m supposed to do?
I’ve heard that, as humans, we evolved over millions of years—so I guess our bodies and senses must be pretty fine-tuned to the “environment” (I mean “nature,” I guess). We can perceive “information,” you see, and then “process” it in our human brains. Didn’t our cerebral cortex, especially, evolve over hundreds of thousands of years? So I guess it’s pretty good at processing, analyzing, …
The Prospects of an Enduring Democracy
by Robert DePaolo / May 17th, 2013
This article discusses the evolution of democratic society and the impact of the information environment on human cognition and the decisions and behavior of citizens. It is an integrative discussion weaving information science, psychology, and sociopolitics into a predictive view of the future of the United States.
by Bill Annett / May 17th, 2013
I’m lucky to live here in British Columbia where the waters are free from oil rigs and pipelines.
– Carin Bondar, lucky Vancouver writer
Carin Bondar, a worried but reconciled Vancouver writer, supports the view of the David Suzuki Foundation, from whence the founder and namesake has recently retired, presumably to spend more time with non-GMOs. And sick and tired, I understand, of banging his head against the conservative, anti-tree-hugging establishment.
For my vast international readership, I’ll explain that David Suzuki is one of those rare CBC emeriti, luminaries of the stature of Max Ferguson, Lorne Green (Pa Cartwright to American audiences) and …
by Gilad Atzmon / May 17th, 2013
Every so often we come across a secular Jewish ‘anti’ Zionist’ who argues that Zionism is not Judaism and vice versa. Interestingly enough, I have just come across an invaluable text that illuminates this question from a rabbinical perspective. Apparently back in 1942, 757 American Rabbis added their names to a public pronouncement titled ‘Zionism an Affirmation of Judaism’. This Rabbinical rally for Zionism was declared at the time “the largest public pronouncement in all Jewish history.”
Today, we tend to believe that world Jewry’s transition towards support for Israel followed the 1967 war though some might argue that already in …
by Yitzhak Maplebury / May 17th, 2013
Blue Velvet is run by an all-women’s collective of what Mayor Michael Bloomberg called “some of the most talented female-impersonators on the New York Club scene.”
The ghosts of William Burroughs and J. Edgar Hoover will read from their new book, No Small Change: Gender Bending for National Security and Profit.
Discussion to follow.
It was the fictionalized postulate of Mr. Burroughs that “with the right chemicals and gadgets, women could be easily replaced by men,” which inspired Mr. Hoover to initiate Operation Switcheroo, initially to enable him to become the woman he’d always wanted to become so Jack Kennedy would finally love …
by Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers / May 17th, 2013
Every week we are inspired by the many people throughout the country who are doing excellent work to challenge the power structure and put forward a new path for the country. The popular resistance to plutocracy, concentrated wealth and corporatism is decentralized, creative and growing.
One growing series of protests has been the “Moral Monday” demonstrations in North Carolina. They do not have ‘one demand’ but rather are challenging the systemic corruption, undermining of democracy and misdirection of a state government that puts human needs second to corporate profits – which they have dubbed ‘Robin Hood in Reverse’. This week 49 of …
The Case of Libya
by Ludwig Watzal / May 16th, 2013
In Destroying Libya and World Order: The Three-Decade U.S. Campaign to Terminate the Qaddafi Revolution Francis A. Boyle tells the story of what happened, why it happened, and what went wrong between the United States and Libya from a perspective of a professor of international law. Among the U.S. Empire’s serving international law professors, Francis A. Boyle is an exception among American international law professors, because he offers his legal advice for government of states that are the victims of Western aggression. He has been opposing unlawful policies of states with his only available “weapon”: international law. …
by Mazin Al Nahawi / May 16th, 2013
It is a shame that John Baird and his boss Stephen Harper haven’t learned yet from Canada’s colonial past.
For over a century, the Palestine question has been described as the most complex political issue of our modern time. A very “complicated” equation that after a half of a century of Zionist colonization to set up and establish a colonial “Jewish state” in Palestine, a mathematician, none other than Einstein himself, had something to say about the crimes committed in his name as a Jew, and in the name of Judaism.
In a letter by Einstein to the Zionist, Shepard Rifkin, executive …
by Fran Quigley / May 16th, 2013
In just ten months, the United States managed to transform an 82 year-old Catholic nun and two pacifists from non-violent anti-nuclear peace protestors accused of misdemeanor trespassing into federal felons convicted of violent crimes of terrorism. Now in jail awaiting sentencing for their acts at an Oak Ridge, TN nuclear weapons production facility, their story should chill every person concerned about dissent in the US.
Here is how it happened.
In the early morning hours of Saturday June 28, 2012, long-time peace activists Sr. Megan Rice, 82, Greg Boertje-Obed, 57, and Michael Walli, 63, cut through the chain link fence surrounding the …
by Ramzy Baroud / May 15th, 2013
It is an event “of cosmic proportions”, said one Palestinian academic, a befitting description regarding Stephen Hawking’s decision to boycott an Israeli academic conference slated for next June. It was also a decisive moral call which was communicated on May 8 by Cambridge University, where Hawking is a professor.
Hawking is a world-renowned cosmologist and physicist. His scientific work had the kind of impact that redefined or challenged entire areas of research from the theory of relativity, to quantum mechanics and other fields of study. This towering figure is also wheelchair-bound – suffering from complete physical paralyses caused by amyotrophic lateral …
by Democracy Now! / May 15th, 2013
Days after Guatemala’s former U.S.-backed dictator, Efraín Ríos Montt, was convicted of genocide, we’re joined by a woman largely responsible for making sure he was brought to justice. Rigoberta Menchú began the process over a decade ago with legal cases filed against Guatemalan generals for atrocities committed in the Mayan region. Her lawsuits helped culminate last week in Ríos Montt’s landmark guilty verdict and 80-year sentence for his role in the killings of more than 1,700 Ixil Mayan people. Menchú lost her father, mother and brother during the Guatemalan genocide, later winning the Nobel Peace Prize for her campaigning on …
by Stuart Jeanne Bramhall / May 15th, 2013
According to Michael Ableman, author of Fields of Plenty, 25% of Americans make the conscious choice to eat organic food. Those who make the switch from corporate, industrially produced food do so for a variety of reasons. The main ones are cost, health and ethical concerns. Cost is a big consideration for low income families. In an economic depression accompanied by spiking food prices, growing your own fruits and vegetables or purchasing them from a grower at a farmers’ market can save families literally thousands of dollars a year.
Ironically the economic crisis has one silver lining in inner cities, as …
by John Stanton / May 15th, 2013
Most Americans are ignorant of Russia’s incredible contribution to the defeat of Nazi Germany and Japan. Americans can barely remember the details of World War II and worse still they do not want to be bothered with more than a cursory review of the details, subtleties and chance that WWII was. What the US populace knows of Russia’s efforts in WWII is viewed through the lopsided American narrative of that war and the equally discolored American tale of the Cold War that would run from 1947 to 1991. The latter pitted the two former allies in long, ideological and violent …
by Rebecca Theodore / May 15th, 2013
For all the rhetoric associated with a naval base, there’s something absurd about Guantánamo. It’s an absurdity so perpetual that it reads like fiction. Yet, it’s the perceptible horror of wasted and infirm men imprisoned without trial for more than a decade that interweaves a concrete dreadfulness so convincing that it now spawns a wave of disgust around the world.
In this infamous detention center, a hunger strike has grown in strength as more than 100 detainees are suffering a rebellion of unprecedented measure. Violating the central principles of medical ethics, 23 more are being force-fed through their noses and five have been …
by Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers / May 15th, 2013
The weekly news is like a recurring bad dream that is becoming an even worse nightmare. While the investor class cheers a rising stock market, the rest of us sink.
The headline that jumped out at us this week came from Bloomberg News, CEO Pay 1,795-to-1 Multiple of Wages Skirts U.S. Law. Is that possible? Can they have gotten that outrageous? Bloomberg reports that it’s true.
One example of where that big income is coming from is the health care profiteers, those that treat our health like it is a commodity from which they can profit rather than a human right. …
by Gabi Weber / May 14th, 2013
University of Freiburg’s refusal to let lecture hall to “Cafe Palestine” has been found to be illegal.
We are happy to announce that last Friday, Cafe Palestine Freiburg won a landmark victory in the Administrative Court when the refusal by the University of Freiburg to make available to “Cafe Palestine” a lecture hall for a presentation by Prof. Christophe Oberlin of Paris on the topic “Plastic Surgery in Gaza” was found to be illegal.
The Court, consisting of three professional and two lay judges determined that the leeway granted to the University in the practice of its authority is limited by the …
Steps Obama and the public should take to close Guantanamo
by Kevin Zeese / May 14th, 2013
As the hunger strikers at Guantanamo Bay approach their 100th day of refusing to eat this Friday, May 17, we urge President Obama to take specific steps now to release or transfer prisoners and close the prison.
More than 100 of the 166 prisoners at Guantanamo are participating in a hunger strike. More than two-dozen are being brutally force fed. We join with those throughout the United States and world calling for their release or transfer and ending the injustice of indefinite detention without trial. We also call for the closing of the Guantanamo Bay prison which has become a human rights …
by David Macaray / May 14th, 2013
If you happen to follow the American and international labor scene, and want to kill a leisurely hour, an entertaining way of doing that is to visit the Department of Labor’s (DOL) official website. It offers a wide selection of labor tidbits, explanations of bureaucratic procedures, helpful tips, advice for retirees and disabled workers, and summaries of the DOL’s most recent compliance victories.
Ever since Hilda Solis (President Obama’s first-term Secretary of Labor) resigned the position, Seth Harris has been filling in as acting Secretary, pending confirmation of Thomas Perez, President Obama’s hand-picked nominee. If this were the 1970s, Perez’s confirmation …
