Recently we heard that the Australian government plans on destroying and burning protected remnant old growth forests to make electricity and woodchips; and before that we discovered the US government’s open secret of founding and supporting ISIL in Syria after failing to gather public support for a war against Assad! Every day we have been watching the Palm-Oil Mafia commit …
Karl Marx Was Right By Chris Hedges
On Saturday at the Left Forumin New York City, Chris Hedges joined professors Richard WolffandGail Dinesto discuss why Karl Marx is essential at a time when global capitalism is collapsing. These are the remarks Hedges made to open the discussion. Karl Marx exposed the peculiar dynamics of capitalism, or what he called “the bourgeois mode of production.” He foresaw that capitalism had …
Kaplan’s Cure for the Middle East: Imperialism By Amitabh Pal
The solution to the current mess in the Middle East is to bring back imperialism—that’s what an influential foreign policy thinker is straight-facedly claiming. Robert Kaplan has been dispensing advice for decades on how to manage the world, and his words have often been heeded. In the mid-1990s, his book Balkan Ghosts apparently helped convince President Clinton that not much could be …
A Critique of the U.S. “Grand Strategy toward China” By Prof. James Petras
“We will have a very strong (military) presence, very strong continued posture throughout the region to back our commitments to our allies, to protect and work with our partners and to continue ensuring peace and stability in the region, as well as back our diplomacy vis-à-vis China on the South China Sea”. -David Shear, US Department of Defense’s Assistant Secretary for …
Is US Trade Rep a Wall Street Crony? Groups Demand Transparency. – Deirdre Fulton
Noting deep ties between the country’s top trade negotiator and Wall Street banks, ten groups representing millions of Americans are calling on the White House to make public all communications between U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman and the massive financial institutions that stand to benefit from proposed trade deals. In a letter (pdf) addressed to Froman—lead champion of President Barack Obama’s corporate-friendly …
Obesity Rate Lowest in Hawaii, Highest in Mississippi by Justin McCarthy and Diana Liu
Nationally, obesity rate rises to 27.7% in 2014 Obesity rates highest in Southern and Midwestern states Higher obesity rates linked to lower well-being WASHINGTON, D.C. — Hawaii residents were the least likely to be obese in 2014, and Hawaii was the only state where fewer than one in five residents are obese. Mississippi had the highest obesity rate in the …
The End of Monsanto By Julie Lévesque
An increasing number of countries are banning Monsanto’s cancer-linked Roundup herbicide, a.k.a. glyphosate. Others are banning Monsanto’s GMOs. Meanwhile, Monsanto-funded U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton thinks “(t)here is a big gap between what the facts are, and what the perceptions are.” Actually the facts are established: Monsanto’s herbicides and GMOs are harmful to humans and animals. Several studies have demonstrated …
Letting Corporations Sue Governments Protecting the Environment is No Way to Solve the Water Crisis – Maude Barlow, Meera Karunananthan
As the world looks for innovative solutions to solve the rapidly worsening water crisis, two Salvadoran experts toured Canada this month to promote a simple strategy that could save the public billions of dollars. Yanira Cortez, Deputy Attorney for the Environment for El Salvador’s Human Rights Ombudsperson’s Office and Marcos Gálvez, President of the Association for the Development of …
Neoliberalism Has Created New System of Dual Citizenship for the Poor and the 1% By Bill Fletcher Jr.
I In a lecture at Harvard during my freshman year, a professor—who may have been Martin Peretz—offered an insight that left a profound impact upon me. “Citizen,” the professor noted, was a unique and quite revolutionary concept. Different from many other terms, e.g., “comrade,” the notion of citizen implied a specific relationship between an individual and the polity. It specifically …
Thousands of teenage girls enduring debilitating illnesses after routine school cancer vaccination – PAUL GALLAGHER
When Caron Ryalls was asked to sign consent forms so that her then 13-year-old daughter, Emily, could be vaccinated against cervical cancer, she assumed it was the best way to protect Emily’s long-term health. Yet the past four years have turned into a nightmare for the family as Emily soon suffered side effects. Only two weeks after her first HPV …