Projects the Afghan Peace Volunteers have sustained for the past four years.
by Carolyn Coe / September 18th, 2017
Bearing quilted bedcovers Afghans walk through the cemetery to their mountainside homes
They have descended from homes built on the mountainside. Women sit together in the cemetery not to mourn but to wait for the duvet distribution to begin. When I approach them, each woman extends a hand in greeting. Some have the needed small stamped pieces of paper to receive two duvets but most don’t. One of the women tells me about the pain in her chest, her legs. She talks about the war. I listen to …
by Jonathan Cook / September 18th, 2017
The eldest son of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has found himself an unlikely poster boy for David Duke, a former Ku Klux Klan leader, and neo-Nazi website Daily Stormer.
Last week, these cheerleaders for Jew hatred described 27-year-old Yair Netanyahu as “awesome” and “a total bro” for posting a grossly anti-Semitic image on social media.
It depicts an Illuminati-like figure and a reptilian creature controlling the world through money and dark arts. Alongside them are a cabal of conspirators, their faces altered to show Mr Netanyahu’s main opponents. They include George Soros, a Holocaust survivor who has invested billions in pro-democracy …
(An Abstract of the Principles of Anarcho-Historical-Relativism)
by Michel Luc Bellemare / September 18th, 2017
With all its emphasis on materiality, physicality and corporeality as the prime origin of all conceptualities, dialectical-historical-materialism is, first and foremost, a concept, that is, a philosophy. No matter how much it claims otherwise and continuously stresses the importance and objectivity of materiality as a priori and prima causa for all ideas, perceptions and consciousness, dialectical-historical-materialism always resorts to language, philosophy and concepts in order to elucidate its principles, its conclusions, and, in addition, in order to validate its fundamental premise. Namely, to quote Marx, that “the mode of production of material life conditions the social, political and intellectual life …
by Andre Vltchek / September 18th, 2017
It is hard to calculate the cost of the stubborn refusal of the Thai population to learn foreign languages. Some daring estimates, however, calculate that the losses could be in tens of billions of dollars, annually. And the situation is not getting any better.
Bangkok wants to be the center of Southeast Asia, and by many standards it has already achieved this goal.
Foreign Correspondent Club of Thailand, Hive of Western Opinion Makers (Photo: Andre Vltchek)
Suvarnabhumi International Airport is the second busiest in the region. Almost all of the …
by Zarefah Baroud / September 17th, 2017
Most women will agree that female representation in the media is incredibly important for a plethora of reasons, not only in media but as well as politics, and other platforms lacking opportunity for female participants. Providing women of all ages a strong and positive role model could break a toxic habit and pattern of accepting and expecting degrading societal roles and standards that have been appointed to us. A struggle that many women face, especially women of color, members of minority faiths, or members of the LGBTQ community, is the women presented in the media for the sake of progressiveness …
by Gary Leupp / September 17th, 2017
A new Gallup poll indicates that 58% of U.S. residents polled say they favor U.S. military action against North Korea if the U.S. “cannot accomplish its goals by more peaceful means first.” Like most polls it is tendentiously worded.
What are “its goals”? U.S. goals? What national, discussed and decided, “goals” do we have (as a nation) as regards the Korean peninsula?
I’m actually a U.S. citizen and a specialist in East Asian history. Frankly, I know a lot about Korea. But I was never consulted about those “goals.”
In the past the goals have included “defeating” North Korea; remember how Dick Cheney …
by Janet Contursi / September 16th, 2017
The “Battle of Cable Street” is a key event in the “creation myth” of the anti-fascist movement. It goes like this:
On Sunday, October 4, 1936, about 5,000 members of the British Union of Fascists (BUF), led by Sir Oswald Mosley, planned to march in full Blackshirt regalia through several Jewish neighborhoods in London’s East End. Six thousand police were assigned to protect them from about 100,000 anti-fascist protesters. The anti-fascists fought the police and erected barricades to block the marchers. When the fascists saw there was no possibility of moving beyond the barricades, they abandoned the march and dispersed. ((Daniel …
by Hasnat Sheikh / September 16th, 2017
Arbitrary detentions, torture, mass graves and mass rapes. No, you are not reading about a rogue third world authoritarian dictatorship. Instead these are words that describe matters recurrent in the “world’s largest democracy”, India. The country, over time, has developed a mechanism to extend and tighten its hold on disturbed regions, specifically those states that carry visible secessionist sentiments. This apparatus of oppression is pillared through draconian legislation, which is painted and repainted from time to time.
The development of such legislation in India seems to exhibit a specific pattern, which is marked by evasive moves in the face of public …
by Binoy Kampmark / September 16th, 2017
It all began with an announcement, made public on the website of the Kennedy School’s Institute of Politics at Harvard University. Chelsea Manning would be joining a curious array of Visiting Fellows, including Mr Disaster, Robby Mook, and Sean Bumbling Spicer. (Manning, Spicer and Mook has a curious ring to it, the name, perhaps, of an error-prone debt recovery agency.)
Mook will have something to tell members of the Kennedy School, being credited with directing one of the worst electoral campaigns in US electoral history. His fanatical insistence on statistical determinations had its own role to play in sinking Hillary Clinton, …
by Graham Peebles / September 15th, 2017
Scan the mainstream media for news about Ethiopia and discover headline after headline describing the country’s economic successes: double-digit economic growth, foreign investment and aspirations to become a middle-income country by 2030. Ethiopia, we are told, is a functioning democracy, an African tiger economy and an important ally of Western governments.
According to such eminent sources as the BBC, CNN, the World Bank and the US State Department, Ethiopia is an African success story; a beacon of stability and growing prosperity in a region of dysfunctional states. Dig a little deeper, speak to Ethiopians inside the country or within the diaspora …
by Kieran Kelly / September 14th, 2017
Aotearoa (New Zealand) has a lot of serious problems. Neoliberal reforms have been imposed against the will of the people here and it is only our pride and our racially informed sense of kinship with imperial power that keeps us from recognising that we are a neocolony – a privileged neocolony perhaps, but a neocolony nonetheless.
Recent decades have been an affront to our sovereignty and our progressive and socialist history. We were the first country with a 40 hour working week, the first to allow women to vote, the second to have a comprehensive public health system, and …
by Binoy Kampmark / September 13th, 2017
Rarely does the virus speak so formidably to the condition he is a product of. The soiling, devastating strategist Steve Bannon, despite exiting the Trump administration, remains within it (symbolically at least), moving about with effect and influence. But it is a legacy of mixed curses that bodes ill for the Republican Party.
The one call he repeats with truncheon carrying persistence is one of division. This is not a man who believes, let alone tolerates, unified fronts. Disunity is his bread, butter and caviar. Where a front of consensus appears, his shock methods seek to disrupt it. And nothing, for …
by William O. Beeman / September 13th, 2017
With a looming deadline on whether to continue the suspension of sanctions on Iran, the Trump administration is frantically working to demonstrate Tehran’s non-compliance under the so-called Iran Deal and thereby fulfill an ill-conceived campaign promise.
The problem is that, according to the watchdog International Atomic Energy Commission, Iran has been in full compliance with the agreement, and only non-compliance could legitimately provide President Trump the excuse he needs to withdraw.
On September 15, Trump must decide whether to renew the suspension of sanctions put …
by Media Lens / September 13th, 2017
As the late media activist Danny Schechter wrote, when it comes to the corporate broadcast media: ‘The more you watch, the less you know.’
Schechter’s observation only fails in one key respect: ‘mainstream’ output does tell us a lot about which foreign governments are being lined up for regime change.
In 2013, it was remarkable to see the BBC reporting claims from Syria on a daily basis in a way that almost always blamed the Syrian government, and President Assad personally, for horrendous war crimes. But as the New York Times …
by Yves Engler / September 13th, 2017
A house built on an imaginary foundation may be a “dream home” but it can never be lived in. The same holds true in politics.
One need not mythologize Canadian foreign policy history to oppose the Trudeau government’s egregious position on nuclear arms. In fact, ‘benevolent Canada’ dogma weakens the critical consciousness needed to reject the policies of our foreign policy establishment.
In “Canada abandons proud history as ‘nuclear nag’ when most needed” prominent leftist author Linda McQuaig writes:
There have been impressive moments in our history when Canada, under previous Liberal governments, asserted itself as a feisty middle power by supporting,
…
Maybe it's not all about us?
by Elizabeth West / September 13th, 2017
It is crystal clear—unlike the smoky skies where I live–to most of us who are willing to consider the facts: this summer’s ‘natural’ disasters have been seeded anthropogenically. Wildfires in the northwestern United States and Canada, in Greenland, and in Europe are often referred to in the media as ‘unprecedented’ in size and fury. Hurricanes and monsoons, with their attendant floods and destruction, are routinely described as having a multitude of ‘record-breaking’ attributes. No one reading this is likely to need convincing that humans –our sheer numbers as well as our habits—have contributed significantly to rising planetary temperatures and thus, …
by Anna Jaunger / September 13th, 2017
Last week the Syrian Army (SAA) backed by allied forces broke years-long ISIS siege of Deir Ezzor. Residents of the city were sincerely greeting liberators of the city. According to many experts, the SAA’s success is an important step towards total elimination of ISIS.
This, of course, can be considered as a defeat of the West and its ‘partners’, who had worked with the Syrian armed opposition and radical groups including ISIS hoping to oust Assad.
The real prospect of the SAA would retake control over the oil-rich territories has made the U.S.-led Coalition launch a new military operation in Deir Ezzor. …
by Shawgi Tell / September 13th, 2017
As the failures of charter schools across the country multiply, and as more people become aware of these failures, the rich and their media have intensified their relentless disinformation campaign about charter schools. They are deeply dismayed that exposure of charter school problems and criticism of charter schools is becoming more mainstream and common place. Fewer people seem to be buying the charter school hype.
On September 6, 2017 New York Magazine chimed into the news fray with a short article on charter schools with the confused title: “Charter Schools Are Losing the Narrative But Winning the Data.” New York Magazine …
Big Oil, Failed Democracy and False Prophets
by Ramzy Baroud / September 13th, 2017
To a certain extent, Aung San Suu Kyi is a false prophet. Glorified by the west for many years, she was made a ‘democracy icon’ because she opposed the same forces in her country, Burma, at the time that the US-led western coalition isolated Rangoon for its alliance with China.
Aung San Suu Kyi played her role as expected, winning the approval of the Right and the admiration of the Left. And for that, she won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1991; she joined the elevated group of ‘The Elders’ and was promoted by many in the media and various …
by Edward Curtin / September 12th, 2017
The spectacle is the nightmare of imprisoned modern society which ultimately expresses nothing more than its desire to sleep. The spectacle is the guardian of sleep.
— Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle
It is generally accepted that sports, especially spectator sports, serve many social purposes, good and bad, and that they function to distract people from the cares and worries of everyday life, or the “real world.” No doubt this is true. The etymology of the word sport, derived as it is from the word “disport” – divert, amuse, carry away – tells us that. But often a distraction can …
