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by John W. Whitehead / October 16th, 2018
If the freedom of speech be taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.
— George Washington, Address to the Officers of the Army, Saturday, March 15, 1783
Living in a representative republic means that each person has the right to take a stand for what they think is right, whether that means marching outside the halls of government, wearing clothing with provocative statements, or simply holding up a sign.
That’s what the First Amendment is supposed to be about.
Yet through a series of carefully crafted legislative steps and politically expedient court rulings, government officials have managed to …
by Andre Vltchek / October 16th, 2018
As I was reading, on board an Air Canada flight from Mexico City to Vancouver, The Globe and Mail coverage of the horrors that have been unraveling for several days on the island of Sulawesi, I felt two powerful and contradictory emotions: I wanted to be there, immediately, ‘on the ground’, in the city of Palu, filming, talking to people, doing everything possible to help… and at the same time, I sensed that I was ‘already there’, so many times before, whenever the nightmares like those in Sulawesi were taking place all over the Indonesian archipelago.
And I wrote about them, …
by Mathew Maavak / October 16th, 2018
Two Artificial Intelligence-driven Internet paradigms may emerge in the near future. One will be based on logic, smart enterprises and human merit while the other may morph into an Orwellian control tool. Even former Google CEO Eric Schmidt has foreseen a bifurcation of the Internet by 2028 and China’s eventual triumph in the AI race by 2030.
In the meantime, the US seems more interested in deflecting the smart questions of today than in building the smart factories of tomorrow. Nothing embodies this better than the recent attempt by MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL) and the …
by C. J. Hopkins / October 15th, 2018
So, it’s three weeks before the US midterm elections, and it looks like we have got ourselves a horse race! That’s right, folks, once again, it’s time to start playing with those forecast maps on Real Clear Politics and FiveThirtyEight, and obsessively following the fluctuating poll numbers of congressional candidates you have never heard of competing in districts you couldn’t locate if someone held a gun to your head. You need to start doing this immediately, if not sooner, as the stakes in these midterms could not be higher. Nothing less than the continued existence of “American democracy” hangs in …
by Jonathan Cook / October 15th, 2018
An American student of Palestinian descent detained in Israel’s airport for nearly a fortnight has become an unexpected cause celebre. Lara Alqasem was refused entry under legislation passed last year against boycott activists, and Israeli courts are now deciding whether allowing her to study human rights at an Israeli university threatens public order.
Usually those held at the border are swiftly deported, but Ms Alqasem appealed against the decision, becoming in the process an improbable “prisoner of conscience” for the boycott cause.
The Israeli government, led by strategic affairs minister Gilad Erdan, claims that the 22-year-old is a leader of the growing …
by Binoy Kampmark / October 15th, 2018
It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their selfish purposes.
— President Andrew Jackson, Washington, July 10, 1832
They are three players, all problematic in their own way. They are the creatures of inconvenient chaos. Donald Trump was born into the role, a misfit of misrule who found his baffling way to the White House on a grievance. Wall Street, with its various agglomerations of vice and ambition constitute the spear of global instability while the US Federal Reserve, long seen as a gentlemanly symbol of stability, has done its fair …
by Max Parry / October 15th, 2018
As the 2018 U.S. midterm elections approach, there is still no evidence of ‘collusion’ between the campaign of President Donald J. Trump and the Russian government after nearly two years of inquiry. Thus far in the Department of Justice’s investigation led by Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III, only a trail of corruption involving Trump associates has been discovered. None of their wrongdoings connect to the Russian nationals also indicted in the probe, including the illicit lobbying by former campaign chairman Paul Manafort in Ukraine which actually went against Russia’s interests on behalf of the EU. One can anticipate that …
by Colin Todhunter / October 15th, 2018
Food and environment campaigner Dr Rosemary Mason has just produced the report ‘Shockingly high levels of weedkiller found in popular breakfast cereals marketed for British children’. In this 68-page document, she draws from new research in the UK that mirrors findings from the US about the dangerous levels of glyphosate found in food, especially products aimed at children (glyphosate is the active ingredient in Monsanto’s weedicide Roundup). Readers can access this report here (which contains all relevant references).
Mason begins by reporting on research that significant levels of weedkiller were found in 43 out of 45 popular breakfast cereals marketed to US …
The Return to Sovereign Nations
by Peter Koenig / October 15th, 2018
As key representatives of the three chief villains of international finance and trade, the IMF, World Bank (WB) and the World Trade Organization (WTO) met on the lush resort island of Bali, Indonesia, they warned the world of dire consequences in terms of reduced international investments and decline of economic growth as a result of the ever-widening trade wars initiated and instigated by the Trump Administration. They criticized protectionism that might draw countries into decline of prosperity. The IMF cuts its global economic growth forecast for the current year and for 2019.
This is pure scaremongering based on nothing. In fact, …
by Binoy Kampmark / October 15th, 2018
It is an organisation not without its problems. Conceived in the heat of idealism, and promoted as the vanguard of medical rescue and human rights advocacy, Médecins Sans Frontières has had its faults. Its co-founder Bernard Kouchner went a bit awry when he turned such advocacy into full blown interventionism. As Nicolas Sarkozy’s foreign minister, his conversion to politicised interventionism in places of crisis went full circle. He notably split from MSF to create Doctors of the World, where he felt imbued by the spirit of droit d’ingerence, subsequently given the gloss of “humanitarian intervention”. With its mischief making properties, …
by Yves Engler / October 15th, 2018
Few are aware that Canada’s aid agency has spent tens of millions of dollars on media projects designed in part to draw journalists into its orbit and shape perceptions of Ottawa’s international policies.
For example, “Find Out How Canada is Back!” was the title of Journalists for Human Rights’ (JHR) Night for Rights fundraiser at the start of October. The keynote speaker at the Toronto Hilton was Minister of International Development Marie-Claude Bibeau.
The minister almost certainly chose not to discuss her government’s arms sales to Saudi Arabia, backing for brutal mining companies, NATO deployments, antagonism towards …
Part 1 of 2 Part Series
by Andre Vltchek / October 15th, 2018
After decades of stagnation, corruption and deadly dependency on the United States, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is considered by many ordinary people, as well as by intellectuals, to be the last chance for Mexico.
His only hope is Obrador
Two important news developments are circulating all over North America: US President Donald Trump will not attend the inauguration of the Mexican left-wing President elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO). And, yes, despite all tensions and disagreements, the new deal to replace NAFTA has been reached. It is called the USMCA – …
The order of the new southern star
by T.P. Wilkinson / October 14th, 2018
The apparent victory of Jair Bolsonaro in the 2018 Brazilian presidential elections has been analysed as the return of some kind of fascism to Brazil: electing dictators where they previously had to enter office in tanks. However, Brazilians, unlike Portuguese, did not remove their dictators from power. The Brazilian military gave way to its civilian counterparts. A governing structure was created in 1986, which permitted the discrete withdrawal of uniformed personnel from public offices and public liability for the consequences of their acts. However, it did not end the role of the military in ruling Brazil. For both historical and …
Restricting Our Right To Protest Shows We Are Winning
by Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers / October 13th, 2018
The radical attack on our constitutional right to protest in Washington, DC needs to be stopped. The National Park Service (NPS) has published proposed rules that would curtail First Amendment rights to assemble, petition the government and exercise free speech in the nation’s capital. Together, we can stop this proposal from going forward.
Popular Resistance submitted comments to the National Park Service and is working in coalition with numerous organizations in Washington, DC to protect our constitutional rights. …
by Graham Peebles / October 13th, 2018
In order to meet the colossal challenges of the time, fundamental change to the socio-economic order is needed. The environmental catastrophe is the major issue, together with armed conflict, potentially nuclear. Both threaten the survival of humanity and the planet, and both are widely ignored by the men and women of power, whose short-term approach, obsession with ‘the economy’, and a nationalistic introspective view of the world is leading us to the precipice of disaster.
If humanity is to survive these interconnected crises and overcome other crucial challenges, including poverty, social injustice and the displacement of people, a totally new vision …
by James Petras / October 12th, 2018
The decisive electoral victory of far-right Brazilian presidential candidate, Jair Bolsonaro startled politicians and analysts of the traditional parties of the left and right.
The possible implications for the present and near future raises a number of fundamental questions whether it represents a ‘model’ for other countries or is the result of the specific circumstances of Brazil.
We shall proceed by outlining the socio-economic events and policies of Brazil which led up to rise of the highly authoritarian, …
A Quasi Review
by Edward Curtin / October 12th, 2018
The making of a journalist: no ideas and the ability to express them.
— Karl Kraus, Half-Truths & One-and-a-Half Truths
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
— Mark Twain
All cats die. Socrates is dead. Socrates is a cat.
— Eugene Ionesco, Rhinoceros
If believability is your gauge for discerning truth, you are living in a fantasy world. But that is the reality of life in the United States today. This is the land of make-believe in which actors and audiences are engaged in a vast folie à deux full of sound and …
by Robert Hunziker / October 12th, 2018
World greenhouse gas emissions must peak by 2020, or it’s lights out!
That’s the message from the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), which has come out from under the shadows of Paris 2015 swinging like a heavyweight champion boxer, and, in fact, they’ve taken the gloves off in preparation for bare-knuckled fisticuffs.
The world’s leading scientists met at the Forty-Eighth Session of the IPCC and First Joint Session of Working Groups I, II, and III, 1-5 October 2018 in Incheon, Republic of Korea and openly declared that civilization is on track for collapse because of reckless use of fossil fuels, unless …
by Yves Engler / October 12th, 2018
How do you feel about taxpayer-funded organizations using your tax dollars to lobby elected politicians for more of your tax dollars?
Welcome to the Canadian military.
Last week Anju Dhillon told the House of Commons “I saw first-hand the sacrifices that our men and women in the navy have made to protect our country.” The Liberal MP recently participated in the Canadian Leaders at Sea Program, which takes influential individuals on “action-packed” multi-day navy operations. Conducted on both coasts numerous times annually, nine Parliamentarians from all parties participated in a Spring 2017 excursion and a number more …
by Binoy Kampmark / October 12th, 2018
Universities have become bastions of sessional torment, feeding grounds for despair. The term “sessional” is merely a euphemised way of describing an academic employee who has no ongoing employment other than what is offered, a person ever at the mercy of the subject or course coordinator of a department. They are the toiling poor, the barrel scrapers, the trudged upon and demanded.
The problem here is loathsomely international. In 2014, CBC News noted the increasing use of contracted sessionals in the university curriculum in Canada. The case of Kimberley Ellis Hale was cited, an instructor in sociology at Wilfrid Laurier …
by Adam W. Parsons / October 12th, 2018
When the global financial crisis resurfaces, we the people will have to fill the vacuum in political leadership. It will call for a monumental mobilisation of citizens from below, focused on a single and unifying demand for a people’s bailout across the world.
*****
A full decade since the great crash of 2008, many progressive thinkers have recently reflected on the consequences of that fateful day when the investment bank Lehman Brothers collapsed, foreshadowing the worst international financial crisis of the post-war period. What seems obvious to everyone …
by Survival International / October 11th, 2018
A video about Prince William’s recent conservation trip to Africa has been criticised for only including non-Africans’ perspectives on conservation and promoting a “white saviour” stereotype.
Prince William’s video has been accused of perpetuating “white saviour” stereotypes. © Kensington Palace
The video was released on Twitter on October 11, 2018 by Kensington Palace.
Dr. Mordecai Ogada, Kenyan ecologist and author of The Big Conservation Lie, said today:
This is a diagram of the new British Colonial paradigm. The kingdom of “conservation”. This is the only arena where the heir to
…
by Ramzy Baroud / October 10th, 2018
As the frail body of 12-year-old Nassir Al-Mosabeh fell to the ground on Friday, September 28, history was repeating itself in a most tragic way.
Little Nassir was not just another number, a ‘martyr’ to be exalted by equally poor refugees in Gaza, or vilified by Israel and its tireless hasbara machine. He was much more than that.
The stream of blood that poured out from his head wound on that terrible afternoon drew a line in time that travelled back 18 years.
Almost 18-years to the day separates Nassir’s recent murder and the Israeli army killing of Mohammed Al-Durrah, also 12, …
A review of Revolutionary Optimism, Western Nihilism by Andre Vltchek
by Reem Wasay / October 10th, 2018
Andre Vltchek is tired. He is tired of the cunning complexities in modern society’s fight for the human soul. In his new book, Revolutionary Optimism, Western Nihilism, he takes on a new revolution: today’s foe – a counter culture of vulgarity, war and brutality where his battlefield isn’t the romance of radical zeal but the rotted, festering carcass of capitalism’s war on the human spirit.
Revolutionary Optimism, Western Nihilism might just be Vltchek’s most heartfelt book to date, a memoir of his own struggles with the reality western society doesn’t know it faces: a Machiavellian pact between regulation …
by Robert J. Burrowes / October 10th, 2018
When I despair, I remember that all through history the ways of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants, and murderers, and for a time they can seem invincible, but in the end they always fall. Think of it – always.
— M.K. Gandhi
As we remembered Gandhi Jayanti on 2 October, the Mahatma’s 149th birthday and the International Day of Nonviolence, there is plenty of room for despair.
Never before has the Earth and its many inhabitants been under siege as they are now, more than 100 years after Gandhi started warning us of the predicament in which we …
by Manuel Garcia Jr. / October 10th, 2018
San Francisco Dusk, 14 March 2018 (Photo by Manuel Garcia Jr. taken from a ridge crest due east of the Golden Gate Bridge)
Climate Change / Energy Transformation is a great challenge for us all. Approached with gusto, solidarity and creativity, it could be an exhilarating rebirth of everything and everyone we know – we can create Paradise if we choose to. If, instead, we shrink from this challenge, in denial, fear, timidly, submissiveness, without any spirit or confidence, then, yes, this formidable Earth-changing realty could drift into …
Is this where the fight-back begins?
by Stuart Littlewood / October 10th, 2018
What is the matter with the Palestine solidarity movement? Since 1948 (and before that, even) the Palestinians have been viciously abused and dispossessed while the perpetrators and their supporters have continually played the anti-Semitism card.
Bemused spectators have been bored witless by the long and ludicrous propaganda campaign to vilify Jeremy Corbyn, bully the Labour Party into accepting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism as a cornerstone in their code of conduct and stifle discussion of Israel’s crimes against the Palestinian people. The expected riposte never came.
Anti-Palestinian Racism
Now Jewish Voice For Labour, of all people, have struck back …
Democrats abound with internal contradictions
by Jason Hirthler / October 10th, 2018
In his lesser known novel, A Small Town in Germany, John Le Carré skewers the diplomatic class in the old West German capital of Bonn. An investigator sent to the drizzly town on the banks of the Rhine discovers a fog of misdirection as he tries to track down a fled spy. At one point, comfortably resigned to his frustration, a glib diplomat tells the investigator, himself at wit’s end, unable to capitalize on an array of clues, “There’s always something; there’s never enough.” This is largely the story of the socialist “opportunists” that the Russian Bolsheviks themselves skewered in …
by C. J. Hopkins / October 10th, 2018
If there is one thing that still unites Americans across the ever more intellectually suffocating and bitterly polarized political spectrum our imaginations have been crammed into like rush hour commuters on the Tokyo Metro, it’s our undying love of identity politics.
Who doesn’t love identity politics? Liberals love identity politics. Conservatives love identity politics. Political parties love identity politics. Corporations love identity politics. Advertisers, anarchists, white supremacists, Wall Street bankers, Hollywood producers, Twitter celebrities, the media, academia … everybody loves identity politics.
Why do we love identity politics? We love them for many different reasons.
The ruling classes love …
by Robert Hunziker / October 10th, 2018
Eureka! The Vavilov Ice Cap set unheard of speed records a couple of years ago in a massive “surge” and left climate scientists… well, speechless!
The Vavilov Ice Cap, located in the Russian High Arctic has, for years, cruised along at a speed of about 2 inches per day. But, along the way it was the recipient of an anthropogenic turbo-charged-CO2 infusion (scientists didn’t say that), setting all-time world speed records of 82 feet per day in a massive “surge.”
Hand-wringing scientists were aghast, confused. After all, ice caps are supposed to move by “inches,” not by 82 feet per day! Especially …
