Other News

It’s time for the environment secretary to fall on his sword

Environment secretary Owen Patterson should no longer be in his post. His contempt for climate science is well known. It is absurd to leave someone in charge of a department whose role is to protect the country from a growing climate crisis who himself believes that “people get very emotional about this subject, and I think we should just accept that the climate has been changing for centuries”. If we’re to have an integrated and credible national strategy to deal with the flooding crisis, we must start by having someone in charge who is prepared to acknowledge the reality of the growing climate threat that we face.

Continue Reading →

US-France’s new terror tango

French illegal intervention in Africa has led to more instability and violence for the ulterior purpose of gaining a neo-imperialist foothold on the world’s richest continent for natural resources. Under the cynical guise of “upholding security and humanitarian peace”, the real motive is securing rich natural resources for Western capital, while trying to block China’s legitimate economic advances gained right across Africa over the past decade.

Continue Reading →

News Coverage of U.S. Foreign Policy. Media Bias by Omission

The ideology of the American mainstream media is the belief that they don’t have any ideology; that they are instead what they call “objective”. I submit that there is something more important in journalism than objectivity. It is capturing the essence, or the truth, if you will, with the proper context and history. This can, as well, serve as “enlightenment”.

Continue Reading →

Despite escalating government intimidation, Greenwald will “force the issue” and visit U.S.

Today [Greenwald] remains defiant — “I’m going to go back to the U.S. for many reasons, but just the fucking principle is enough … On principle I’m going to force the issue” — but recent comments by Mike Rogers, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee; James Clapper, the director of national intelligence; and others have intensified his doubts.

Continue Reading →

An Open Letter From Dylan Farrow

What’s your favorite Woody Allen movie? Before you answer, you should know: when I was seven years old, Woody Allen took me by the hand and led me into a dim, closet-like attic on the second floor of our house. He told me to lay on my stomach and play with my brother’s electric train set. Then he sexually assaulted me. He talked to me while he did it, whispering that I was a good girl, that this was our secret, promising that we’d go to Paris and I’d be a star in his movies.

Continue Reading →

Military Metaphysics: How Militarism Mangles the Mind

Clapper and many others who have come out of the military discern no difference between terrorists and reporters, and by reporters I am not referring to the boot-licking courtiers on television and in Washington who masquerade as reporters. Carry out an interview with a member of al-Qaida, as I have, and you become in the eyes of generals like Clapper a member of al-Qaida. Most generals I know recognize no need for an independent press. The munchkins who dutifully sit through their press briefings or follow them around in preapproved press pools and publish their lies are the generals’ idea of journalism.

Continue Reading →

Roger Waters takes Neil Young and Scarlett Johansson to task on Facebook

Noting he had written each one privately, the pro-BDS rock star lamented that he was “confused” about Young, who was “always one of my heroes,” coming to Israel to give a concert, and that Johansson, who “was a young woman of strength and integrity” had made an “about face” in choosing to be a spokesperson for Israeli company SodaStream.

Continue Reading →

It’s the other Oscars – and yet again the winner slips away

It’s celebrity time again. The Golden Globes have been, and the Oscars are coming. This is a “vintage year”, say Hollywood’s hagiographers on cue. It isn’t. Most movies are made to a formula for the highest return, money-fuelled by marketing and something called celebrity. This is different from fame, which can come with talent. True celebrities are spared that burden.

Continue Reading →

American Crisis

In Paine’s time, the enemy was a distant and easily identifiable king, but in ours, the enemy is within and mostly invisible. Our public officials are only the cabana boys and girls, or waiters, of this sick system, and they’re certainly not serving us. In fact, we can’t even press our noses against the glass to see who are dining within. Standing out back, we fight among ourselves for the discarded scraps and that, for now, is our only battle. We’re sad.

Continue Reading →

Cut Off the NSA’s Juice

Serving the warfare state and overall agendas for U.S. global dominance to the benefit of corporate elites, the NSA persists in doing violence to the Constitution’s civil-liberties amendments — chilling the First, smashing the Fourth and end-running the Fifth.

Meanwhile, a nascent constellation of movements is striving to thwart the surveillance state, the shadowy companion of perpetual war.

This is a struggle for power over what kind of future can be created for humanity.

It’s time to stop giving juice to Big Brother.

Continue Reading →

Is Netanyahu Certifiable?

IF Netanyahu was of sound mind he would not only have given Rouhani’s Davos speech the consideration it deserved, he would take full account of Israel’s growing isolation in the world and, also, the fact that an increasing number of American Jews are no longer sympathetic to what one Jewish-American has called “the blood-and-soil nationalism of Zionism”.

Continue Reading →
1 … 40 41 42 43 44 … 77