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Women Now Run the Military-Industrial Complex. That’s Nothing To Celebrate.
Dean Spade and Sarah Lazare: Major media outlets are fawning over the fact that women are taking over top positions in the country’s largest weapons companies and in U.S. defense and intelligence agencies. ... Feminism ... is increasingly being co-opted to promote and sell the U.S. military-industrial complex: a profoundly violent institution that will never bring liberation to women—whether they are within its own ranks or in the countries bearing the greatest brunt of its brutality. ... “Sure, it's great that you have a woman at the head of Raytheon, but what about the women who those bombs are being dropped on?” ... The impacts of war—such as reduction in basic services, electricity, and access to food and water, loss of family members, and increased rates of illness and disability—all increase women’s vulnerability to assault and worsen the conditions of women’s labor...
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Jan 19, 2019, 12:32pm
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4 Reasons Corporate Media Refuse to Talk About What Matters
Thom Hartmann: Ever since the media began, in a big way in the 1980s, to ignore actual news and go for highly dumbed-down or even salacious stories, many of us who work in the media have been astonished by this behavior by the network and cable news organizations and the major newspapers. ... They used to report the details of policy proposals in great detail ... But since the Reagan era, the networks have largely kept their coverage exclusively to personality, scandal, and horse race. ... Reasons - 1. The End of the Fairness Doctrine ... In 1987, Ronald Reagan ordered his FCC to cease enforcing the Fairness Doctrine. This much-misunderstood regulation required radio and TV stations, in order to keep their licenses, to “pay” for their use of the public airwaves (the property of We the People) with actual news. It was called “broadcasting in the public interest.”...
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Jan 10, 2019, 4:18pm
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Beauty—The Forgotten Recipe For Happiness
John de Graaf: Harvard philosopher Elaine Scarry contends that beauty awakens generosity, gratitude, tolerance, a passion for justice and many other positive traits. Our sense of beauty seems connected to harmony and what we consider beautiful may be an evolutionary development—we are attracted to landscapes and designs that seem life supporting or life affirming, while those—like oil spills, strip mines, etc. appear life threatening, in a visceral way—as wounds on the body of the earth. ... As with people, physically attractive landscapes can be deceiving—that lovely golf course may be a non-native monoculture, kept alive by high concentrations of fertilizer, pesticides and precious water. That’s why ecologist Aldo Leopold said things are right when, along with beauty, they preserve and enhance the integrity and stability of the environment...
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Jan 7, 2019, 11:09am
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An Elephant's Personhood on Trial
Brandon Keim: Forty-seven years ago, the Asian elephant now known as Happy was one of seven calves captured—probably in Thailand, but details are hazy—and sent to the United States. She spent five years at a safari park in Florida, time that in the wild would have been spent by her mother’s side. Then she was moved to the Bronx Zoo in New York City. There Happy remains today, and since the death of an elephant companion in 2006, she has lived alone, her days alternating between a 1.15-acre yard and an indoor stall. ... Should Happy be considered, in legal terms, a person? ... Making that case is an advocacy group called the Nonhuman Rights Project. ... and in October petitioned a New York state court to order Happy’s release. She wouldn’t be returned to the wild, but would be transferred to a sanctuary in California with more space and the company of other elephants ... Elephants, attest scientists who filed affidavits in Happy’s case, are highly self-aware, are emotional, make choices, and have a rich sense of both past and future...
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Dec 29, 2018, 3:51pm
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The Postal Worker’s Christmas
Sarah Anderson: Every year on Christmas Eve, my extended family gathers for a meal that can be served at the last minute, whenever we’re ready to eat. This tradition of cold salads, ham balls and cookies goes back to my mom’s childhood. ... My mother’s father was a North Dakota postal employee, so on Christmas Eve, she never knew when he would get home. He was determined to keep working, my mom would tell us, “until every Christmas package that could be delivered would be delivered.” ... On Dec. 4, a Trump task force on the postal system followed up with recommendations for partial privatization and other changes that would reduce services and raise delivery prices, particularly for rural communities. ... Rural communities would also be more likely to lose their local post offices. The task force wants to get rid of a law prohibiting the closing of rural post offices solely because they’re running a deficit....
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Dec 23, 2018, 11:39am
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Google’s Earth: how the tech giant is helping the state spy on us
Yasha Levine, The Guardian, UK: We knew that being connected had a price – our data. But we didn’t care. Then it turned out that Google’s main clients included the military and intelligence agencies. ... Uber, Amazon, Facebook, eBay, Tinder, Apple, Lyft, Foursquare, Airbnb, Spotify, Instagram, Twitter, Angry Birds – if you zoom out and look at the bigger picture, you can see that, taken together, these companies have turned our computers and phones into bugs that are plugged in to a vast corporate-owned surveillance net-work. Where we go, what we do, what we talk about, who we talk to, and who we see – everything is recorded and, at some point, leveraged for value. ... As it turns out, the same platforms and services that Google deploys to monitor people’s lives and grab their data could be put to use running huge swaths of the US government, including the military, spy agencies, police departments and schools...
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Dec 20, 2018, 12:07pm
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Can Socialism Save Democracy?
Theo Horesh: A consensus is emerging on the left that capitalism produces inequality, which leads to oligarchy, which undermines democracy, and paves the way to fascism; and only socialism can save democracy, because it can break the oligarchy, which will restore equality, so democracy can function effectively. ... It is a simple argument that is easily over applied, for modern democracy has always come coupled with markets. But it is an important argument that needs to be taken seriously, for inequality has threatened democracy, by fracturing the citizenry and producing oligarchy, since at least the time of Aristotle. ... If socialism is going to save democracy, it needs to bring about equality without snuffing out freedom, and it needs to respect the role of markets without letting them dominate society...
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Dec 14, 2018, 12:23pm
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In Defense of ‘Conspiracy Theories’: From ‘Fake News’ to the Art World
Max Parry: To remain innocent may also be to remain ignorant. (John Berger, Ways of Seeing) ... This November 22nd marked fifty-five years since the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Perhaps no other major incident in U.S. history has generated more uncertainty and skepticism towards its official account than his Dallas killing in 1963. ... Perhaps its only rival would be September 11th, which surveys have similarly indicated a trend of doubt towards the 9/11 Commission Report’s version of events leading up to the attacks in 2001. ... An examination of the media‘s systemic failure would draw attention to its actual role in society as a tool of mass persuasion on behalf of the ruling elite. ... The term ‘conspiracy theory’ itself is a weapon. ... Coincidentally, currently on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Breuer satellite location in New York is the exhibition Everything is Connected: Art and Conspiracy. ... As the exhibit aptly points out, often what are designated as conspiracy theories in bygone times become indisputable facts years later...
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Dec 3, 2018, 11:42am
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Children: Civilization’s Future, Victims of Western Brutality
Peter Koenig: The United Nations Universal Children’s Day – 20 November – has come and gone and nothing has changed. No action that would now protect children any more than before, no move even by the UN to call on nations at war to take special care to protect children if for nothing else but the fact that children are our planet’s future. ... The culture of greed and instant profit has no space for children, for their rights, for their up-bringing within a frame of human rights, fair education, access to shelter and health services everywhere. ... the western driven killing and war machine indiscriminately slaughters children, by famine, by drones, by bombs, by disease, by abuse. Collateral damage? I doubt it. Children could be protected, even in illegal wars...
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Dec 1, 2018, 10:17am
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The Famine Facing Yemen Is a War Crime - It Must Be Investigated
Emily Thornberry, Guardian UK: Today the UN security council will debate a UK-drafted resolution containing a rather gentle entreaty to the warring parties in Yemen. It will ask them to take “constant care to spare civilian objects, including those necessary for food production, distribution, processing and storage”. ... If that sounds like the safety instructions for a new vacuum cleaner, then welcome to the world of UN resolutions. But what it actually reveals is a far darker, more shameful truth. ... The truth of a Saudi-led coalition, armed by Britain and the United States, which from the very start of the conflict in 2015 has sought to use starvation as a weapon of war ... So now is the time to act. It may be too late for the minimum of 85,000 children who are estimated to have died from malnutrition and disease since the war in Yemen began, in addition to the several hundred killed by Saudi air strikes....
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Nov 24, 2018, 2:02pm
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PG&E: Don’t Break it Up. Take it Over.
Johanna Bozuwa: There is strong evidence that the wildfires raging through California right now—killing at least 80 people, with at least an additional 1,000 missing as of November 18—have been sparked at least in part by the large investor-owned monopoly utility, PG&E. ... Further, PG&E’s apparent negligence and its consequences aren’t new. Cal Fire found that three separate wildfires across the state in 2017 were caused by PG&E, and the utility could be liable for up to $12 billion in damages from more than 800 civil lawsuits. ... With that backdrop, PG&E teeters on the brink of bankruptcy, and the California Public Utility Commission is now thinking of breaking up the utility. But the commission shouldn’t stop at breaking up PG&E. The public should take it over....
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Nov 20, 2018, 12:46pm
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Snowden: Israeli Spyware Used By Governments to Pursue Journalists Targeted for Assassination
Whitney Webb: Snowden also noted that in addition to its role in the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, the NSO Group’s most notorious software product was regularly used by the government of Mexico to target journalists. ... Snowden, speaking to a Tel Aviv conference hosted by Israeli public relations firm OH! Orenstein Hoshen via video feed, stated that secretive Israeli cyberwarfare firm NSO Group Technologies has been “selling a digital burglary tool” that has been used by governments to spy on citizens and journalists in particular. ... He explained that even if some “good actors” use NSO’s surveillance software, known as Pegasus, “it is not just being used for catching criminals and stopping terrorist attacks ... not just for saving lives, but for making money ... such a level of recklessness ... actually starts costing lives.”...
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Nov 9, 2018, 2:22pm
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WHO’S THE MIGRANT?
Mohawk Nation News: Our brothers and sisters to the south are not migrant farm workers. They are farm workers working for a migrant! They come to do an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay. They have every right to visit their families anywhere on turtle island without hindrance. The white man’s delusional demarkation lines are economic borders and have nothing to do with us. Nature has bound us together as one people with all life on turtle island. ... The invaders are rich from murdering our people and stealing our land and resources, in Canada, United States, Mexico, Guadamala, Honduras, el Salvador, Nicaraugua, Panama and throughout the Western Hemisphere. ... If the intruders refuse to live by the kaianerekowa, great peace, they have to leave...
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Nov 6, 2018, 10:51am
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'I'm Ecstatic': Black Liberation Prisoner Mike Africa Sr Released After 40 Years
Ed Pilkington: Mike Africa Sr has become the second member of the Philadelphia-based group of black radicals known as the Move 9 to be released from prison, more than 40 years after they were arrested for the death of a police officer in one of the most dramatic shootouts of the black liberation era ... The siege that led to the incarceration of five Move men and four women occurred on 8 August 1978. Tension had mounted for months between the commune and Philadelphia police following complaints from neighbors and fears that the group was stockpiling weapons. ... The order was given for hundreds of police officers to go in and evict the residents by the notoriously hardline then mayor of Philadelphia, the city’s former police commissioner Frank Rizzo. In the melee, Ramp was killed. ... All nine adult members of Move living in the house were held responsible for the shooting and sentenced to 30 to 100 years. At trial they told the jury that they had no working firearms in the house...
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Oct 23, 2018, 2:51pm
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Indigenous Suicide in Canada
Greg Macdougall: “Capitalism causes alienation; alienation causes oppression; oppression causes suicide.” ... But Indigenous peoples also face a “double alienation,” ... The imposition of capitalism requires an obliteration of traditional forms of life, which may still be in living memory but for the most part are not currently re-attainable. ... “Indigenous peoples in Canada … are systematically mis-informed about the nature of the forces arrayed against us as individual human beings,” ... “Does the mass of Indians who ‘commit suicide’ understand that this is a murder? Do they understand that their murder is being carried out by people under a façade of helping them?”...
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Oct 16, 2018, 5:38pm
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