Author: jimmy

Why Iran Nuclear Talks Failed and Why They Will Get Tougher

The chance for a first preliminary agreement between Iran and the six powers (US, UK, France, Germany, Russia and China) to resolve the decade-long conflict over Iran’s nuclear program was lost during the weekend because of a deliberate French policy of preventing agreement at the behest of Israel and the Obama administration’s lack of commitment to reaching a comprehensive settlement of the issue.

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Why France is Playing ‘Stupid’ on Iran

Hollande is a joke. This week he’s on the cover of the Courrier International weekly (headline: “The Art of the Fall”), with pan-European media judging him “incoherent”, “paralyzed” and “incompetent” (and these are the merciful epithets). On the weekend edition of the establishment Le Figaro daily, he was being destroyed because of France’s (latest) credit rating downgrade by Standard & Poor’s.

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Corporate power and demand culture – rushing us towards oblivion

Corporations now call all the key shots, with the political class acting as gun-toting bodyguards. Despite the fig-leaf of parliamentary appearances, corporations have a malleable political elite in their boardroom-suited pockets. Political ‘participation’ is a wholesale pretence, the cartel of political parties just more corporate-type brands, And, while a corporate media helps keep the whole charade ideologically intact, corporate surveillance maintains a beady panoptic over the entire social and cultural landscape.

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The Birth of a Police State: UK Police To Be Granted Sweeping New Powers

The UK Government is about to pass legislation which will make any behaviour perceived to potentially ‘cause nuisance or annoyance’ a criminal offence. The Anti-Social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill also grants local authorities, police and even private security firms sweeping powers to bar citizens from assembling lawfully in public spaces. The Bill has successfully passed through the House of Commons without issue, and is now in the latter stages of review by the House of Lords, after which it will receive Royal Assent and become Law. Those who refuse orders under the new rules will face arrest, fines and even prison time.

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It’s business that really rules us now

It’s the reason for the collapse of democratic choice. It’s the source of our growing disillusionment with politics. It’s the great unmentionable. Corporate power. The media will scarcely whisper its name. It is howlingly absent from parliamentary debates. Until we name it and confront it, politics is a waste of time.

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The Revolutionaries in Our Midst

“I saw what Chelsea Manning did,” Hammond said when we spoke last Wednesday, seated at a metal table. “Through her hacking she became a contender, a world changer. She took tremendous risks to show the ugly truth about war. I asked myself, if she could make that risk shouldn’t I make that risk? Wasn’t it wrong to sit comfortably by, working on the websites of Food Not Bombs, while I had the skills to do something similar? I too could make a difference. It was her courage that prompted me to act.”

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The Greatest Generation?

They said they were liberating Peoples in Foreign Lands
Then why did The Greatest Generation send their Sons
To fight and die
In that God-forsaken Land?
And to murder millions living in their own Land?

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I Believe There Will Not Be a United Ireland

Our peace process will be only as strong and safe as long as we all, particularly our political leaders, refuse to play politics with our volatile emotions, and use rhetoric that can move others to kill, and as long as we together continue to build a nonviolent truly democratic Northern Irish society for every one of us, and our children.

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