Palestinian Authority Foreign Minister Riyad al-Malki delivers a speech on Oct. 31 at the headquarters of UNESCO in Paris. (AFP/Miguel Medina) WASHINGTON (Reuters) — The United States said on Monday it had stopped funding UNESCO, the UN cultural agency, following its vote to grant Palestine full membership. US State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told [...]
OCCUPY WALL STREET: NEW POLITICS AND NEW MILESTONES There seems to be a perception that the Occupy movement is a bunch of middle class people who are trying to gain notice for share prices going badly under corrupt practices in Wall Street. However, there is a lot more to it than that. [...]
Senior Hamas leader Ahmad Bahar (MaanImages/Stringer, File) GAZA CITY (Ma’an) — Senior Hamas leader Ahmad Bahar said Sunday no Palestinian would be scared by the Israeli prime minister’s threats to hit back at Gaza militants. In a statement received by Ma’an, the parliamentary speaker affirmed that Palestinian resistance groups were capable of defending the [...]
Palestinians mourn at Nasser hospital in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip after an Israeli air strike October 31, 2011. (REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa) GAZA CITY (Ma’an) — Two militants were killed overnight Sunday as Israeli forces targeted the Gaza Strip, bringing the death toll in the coastal enclave to 12 since Saturday. Palestinian [...]
Younng protesters in Japan are upset with the “hopeless” employment situation [REUTERS] Inspired by the ongoing Occupy Wall Street demonstrations in the United States, thousands of Japanese youth and workers, dissatisfied with growing unemployment and harsh working conditions in the world’s third largest economy, have taken to the streets to demand stable jobs and government [...]
Thailand‘s worst floods in half a century have killed nearly 400 people since mid-July [Reuters] The people of Thailand are being let down by their leaders during the ongoing flood disaster. Much criticism is being directed at Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra for the government’s handling of the crisis, but she cannot be held [...]
India has a gender ratio at birth of about 110 boys for every 100 girls with large regional variations [AFP] According to the United Nations’ Population Division, the world’s human population hits seven billion on October 31. As always happens whenever we approach such a milestone, this one has produced a spike in conferences, seminars, [...]
Author examines how political leaders in Washington and Beijing are interpreting the future [EPA] Inquiring minds scattered across the world have been pondering whether Washington elites are sneakily slouching towards Beijing – as in eventually focusing on China as the ultimate bogeyman and catalyst of the Pentagon-denominated Long War. It’s as if Iraq and Afghanistan, not to mention Libya [...]
The Unesco executive meets in Paris. It decided on Monday to accept Palestinian membership. Photograph: Benoit Tessier/Reuters Controversial move endorsed in UN cultural agency vote despite US threat of withholding £50m in funds reddit this Associated Press in Paris guardian.co.uk, Monday 31 October 2011 13.11 GMT Article history Palestine has become a full member [...]
Engelhardt, Wall Street by the Book Posted by Tom Engelhardt at 8:00pm, October 30, 2011. OWS at Valley Forge A (Self-)Graduation Speech for the Occupiers of Zuccotti Park By Tom Engelhardt Once the Arab Spring broke loose, people began asking me why this country was still so quiet. I would always point out that no one ever [...]
Kenya’s army chief said his troops will withdraw when Kenyans ‘feel that they are safe enough from al-Shabab‘ [AFP] A Kenyan air strike on a camp packed with displaced women and children has killed at least five and wounded 45, mostly women and children, Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), an aid agency, said. “I can confirm five dead and [...]
by Jason Ditz, October 30, 2011 | Print This | Share This | Antiwar Forum Yesterday’s suicide bombing attack on a NATO convoy killed at least 12 Americans, but they weren’t US soldiers. Instead, at least eight were members of the massive force of US government contractors fighting alongside the military in the occupation effort. The number of [...]
By Leslie Harris The topic was the CIA’s “enhanced interrogation techniques” and detainee treatment, when John Yoo, former Department of Justice official and author of the “Torture Memos” debated Chip Pitts, Stanford University law professor and former Chairman of Amnesty International, at the Meadows Museum at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. It was not widely publicized [...]
You can view the video at http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/2011/10/20111027131838717148.html By filmmaker Arnaud Zajtman When Congolese President Laurent-Désiré Kabila was killed in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, on January 16, 2001, I was the only foreign journalist in town, which meant I covered the story night and day for many [...]
Image via Wikipedia Hamas official calls Israeli leaders ‘war criminals‘ Published yesterday 12:38 GAZA CITY (Ma’an) — The Minister of Justice in the Hamas government on Sunday denounced Israeli airstrikes against the coastal enclave and called for Israeli leaders to be tried as “war criminals,” a statement said. Al-Ghoul condemned the killing of Gaza [...]
In English ‘Til I Die filmmaker Awad Joumaa examines the rise of the English Defence League. Here he explains why the growth of the far right in Europe can no longer be ignored. For several years I have been intrigued by the rise of the far right across Europe. In England, I have watched the emergence [...]
Hamas supporters take part in a rally celebrating the release of prisoners from Israeli jails, in Khan Younis southern Gaza Strip October 21, 2011. (REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu Mustaf) GAZA CITY (Reuters) — Egypt‘s Muslim Brotherhood visited the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip for the first time on Saturday, signaling a shift in Cairo‘s posture toward the Palestinian [...]
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel is not looking for an escalation of hostilities, but operates on the principle “kill or be killed.” (AFP/Gali Tibbon, File) TEL AVIV, Israel (Ma’an) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Sunday that Israel would hit back against rocket fire, while insisting the country wants to avoid [...]
Relatives of Islamic Jihad militant Muhammad Ashour mourn during his funeral in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip on Oct. 30, 2011. (REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa) GAZA CITY (Ma’an) — A fighter from the armed wing of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine was killed, and another critically injured, as Israel launched [...]
Demonstrators and riot police have clashed as Greeks oppose austerity measures imposed by the IMF and EU. Photograph: Stefanos Rapanis/EPA Civil disobedience campaign puts pressure on Athens government as it pushes EU/IMF austerity measures reddit this Helena Smith in Athens guardian.co.uk, Sunday 30 October 2011 19.12 GMT Article history The Greek authorities are bracing for [...]
A 2009 nuclear missile test in North Korea: the country’s latest Musudan missile is capable of reaching targets in Japan and Guam. Photograph: Kcna/AFP/Getty Images US to spend £700bn in next decade while Russia and Pakistan among those assigning roles to weapons beyond deterrence reddit this Richard Norton-Taylor guardian.co.uk, Sunday 30 October 2011 20.48 GMT [...]
Kamm copied more than 2,000 military documents from army computers between 2005 and 2007 [Reuters] An Israeli court has sentenced a former soldier to four and a half years in prison for leaking classified military documents to a newspaper, which later reported allegations of a policy to assassinate Palestinian fighters. A three-judge panel handed Anat [...]
More than 500 flights had been grounded affecting about 68,000 passengers across 22 countries [AFP] An Australian labour tribunal has ended the union strikes and grounding of Qantas Airways fleet after it stranded tens of thousands of passengers. Fair Work Australia, an independent industrial umpire, on Monday ordered both the management and unions to immediately resume flights and [...]
Qantas ordered to resume flights by tribunal An indicator board shows cancelled flights at the Qantas terminal at Sydney airport. Photograph: Mick Tsikas/EPA Australian airline and unions told to terminate industrial dispute that left thousands of passengers stranded around the world reddit this Dan Milmo and Alison Rourke guardian.co.uk, Sunday 30 October 2011 16.42 GMT Article [...]
RNN Weekly Roundup October 23 – October 29 October 29, 2011 Bank of America’s Death Rattle Bill Black: BAC, has directed troubled financial derivatives from its Merrill Lynch subsidiary to federally insured bank Bank of America making private debt public Go to story | Go to homepage Low-ranking policemen demand sacking of Interior Minister The protesters [...]
Hegemony or Survival Noam Chomsky debates with Washington Post readers Washington Post, November 26, 2003 In his new book, “Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance,” intellectual activist Noam Chomskyargues that U.S. policy — the militarization of space, the ballistic-missile defense program, unilateralism, the dismantling of international agreements, and the [...]
BDS Claims Victory after Alstom Project Derails The boycott, divestment and sanctions movement has declared victory against the Alstom group after it lost a nearly $10-billion bid for part of a railway project in Saudi Arabia. On Wednesday, authorities announced that several Spanish companies beat the French rival [...]
Clemens Bilan/dapd Filmmaker Oliver Stone attends the premiere of “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps” in Berlin in October 2010. By Kasia Anderson The multimedia collaboration between director Oliver Stone and one-man political think tank Tariq Ali began not three years ago, but their creative mind-meld has already produced three projects spanning multiple continents and eras. Stone [...]
After completing his two terms, Lula, left, endorsed Dilma Rousseff, right, as his successor [EPA] Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the former Brazilian president, has been diagnosed with a tumour in his larynx and is to undergo chemotherapy in the coming days, the hospital where he is being treated has announced. Lula, as he is universally [...]
Palestinian groups call for a ceasefire as explosions are heard in Gaza early Sunday morning [Reuters] Israel launched fresh raids in the Gaza Strip, after earlier airstrikes killed nine Palestinians and retaliatory rocket fire killed one Israeli, officials have said. Palestinian groups in the Strip agreed early on Sunday to re-establish a ceasefire, sources close to [...]
The Battle for Brooklyn by BRUCE E. LEVINE Do we really accept that Big Money—through intimidation, bribery, or some other coercion—can shove us out of our homes and obliterate our communities? Eminent domain is the government’s right to seize private property, usually with compensation, for the public good. We live in a nation, however, [...]
The Seen and the Unseen: The Productive Vs. Destructive Economy John Glaser, October 27, 2011 Print This | Share This | Comment | Antiwar Forum It’s a sad day when those on the left end of the political spectrum understand Frédéric Bastiat’s simple economic lesson of the seen and the unseen better than billionaire businessmen. But something [...]
A Nuke Too Far? Jason Ditz, October 27, 2011 Print This | Share This | Comment | Antiwar Forum When you’re shilling for a war in Iran as regularly as the Washington Times does, you’re constantly making up allegations centering around what anonymous officials totally bet is the case. That and hiring artists to make caricatures of an Ayatollah [...]
A Siberian rubythroat. Photograph: David Tipling/Alamy Hurricanes and global warming bring unusual visitors as digital cameras and social networking encourage new enthusiasts reddit this Comments (0) Robin McKie The Observer, Sunday 30 October 2011 Article history Britain’s avian immigration figures are set to soar to a record level this year. Birdwatchers say hurricanes and [...]
Sir Malcolm Rifkind said the Commonwealth’s indifference to improving human rights put its relevance in question. Photograph: Rex Features/Ray Tang Heads of government slammed as disgraceful and the summit labelled a failure over indifference to recommendations reddit this Nicholas Watt in Perth guardian.co.uk, Saturday 29 October 2011 11.33 BST Article history Commonwealth leaders have been [...]
A shackled detainee is taken from a vehicle for interrogation at Camp Delta, at the Guantanamo base in Cuba in 2006. Photograph: Brennan Linsley/AP Ten years on from its creation, calls are mounting from legal and human rights experts for closure of the ‘torture’ centre on Cuba reddit this Ed Vulliamy in New York [...]
The author out on the beautiful but disappearing sea ice. Photograph: Stephen Pax Leonard Stephen Pax Leonard spent the last year studying the language of the Arctic Inugguit. He was ready for the months of darkness, brutal cold and finally the all-day light. What he didn’t anticipate was his creeping horror at the way the [...]
Al-Quds Brigades and Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades fighters, at a news conference in Gaza City. (MaanImages/Wissam Nassar, File) GAZA CITY (Ma’an) — The military wing of the PFLP in Gaza on Saturday called for resistance groups to unite in order to respond to an Israeli airstrike which killed five Islamic Jihad fighters earlier in [...]
A general view shows burned cars after a rocket fired from Gaza landed in Ashdod October 29, 2011. (REUTERS/Nir Elias) BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) — An Israeli airstrike on the Gaza Strip killed two more fighters from the Islamic Jihad‘s armed wing on Saturday evening, after earlier airstrikes on the coastal enclave had killed five members [...]
Noam Chomsky on Israel-Palestine Prisoner Exchange, U.S. Assassination Campaign in Yemen MIT Professor Emeritus Noam Chomsky, the world-renowned linguist and political dissident, spoke Monday night at Barnard College in New York City about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, just hours before Israel and Hamas completed a historic prisoner exchange. “I think [Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit] should have been [...]
“Blood on the Tracks”: Brian Willson’s Memoir of Transformation from Vietnam Vet to Radical Pacifist Today we spend the hour with a man who put his life on the line twice: once when he served in the Vietnam War and again when he came back. On September 1, 1987, Brian Willson took part in a [...]
Image via Wikipedia Iraq War’s Lessons Lost on US by Ramzy Baroud, October 29, 2011 | Print This | Share This | Antiwar Forum In a White House Statement on Oct. 21, U.S. President Barack Obama pledged that his country would finally withdraw forces from Iraq. “After nearly nine years, America’s war in Iraq will be over,” he said. [...]
The US maintains permanent bases in South Korea, established in 1954, that house some 28,500 personnel [EPA] Remember the bases? As the world reeled from the sheer audacity of the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, many feared the US was seeking to establish a permanent presence in that country. The idea was plausible [...]
From the Middle East to the streets of London and cities across the US there is a discontent with the status quo. Whether it is with the iron grip of entrenched governments or the widening economic divide between the rich and those struggling to get by. But where are those so hungry for change [...]
LIKE THIS ARTICLE ? Join our mailing list: Sign up to stay up to date on the latest headlines via email. The Stunning Victory That Occupy Wall Street Has Already Achieved | Occupy Wall Street has already achieved a stunning victory – a victory that is easy to overlook, but impossible to overstate. In just [...]
President Abbas gestures during a meeting of the Fatah revolutionary council in the West Bank city of Ramallah Oct. 26, 2011. (Reuters/Mohamad Torokman) By Dan Williams JERUSALEM (Reuters) — Arabs made a “mistake” by rejecting a 1947 UN proposal that would have created a Palestinian state alongside the nascent Israel, President Mahmoud Abbas said [...]
AP / Thomas Watkins Residents hang out at the basketball court at Algin Sutton Recreation Center in South Los Angeles. The center is included in the city’s Summer Night Lights program aimed at reducing gang violence. By Bill Boyarsky While Occupy Wall Street and similar movements around the country take aim at financial institutions and their [...]
Residents of Bangkok are bracing themselves for peak tides that threaten to overwhelm Thailand‘s capital with flood water. Many have fled to beach resorts unaffected by the country’s worst flooding in half a century but those who remain face a shortage of bottled water and unconfirmed reports that crocodiles from outlying areas may [...]
Occupy By David Swanson http://warisacrime.org/content/occupy-winter-our-discontent Can occupations survive a winter of global weirding, escalated police brutality, and the corporate media‘s venom? Should they? In some parts of the country there will be no cold weather. In others, police abuses will result in larger occupations, not smaller. And it’s certainly possible that for the first time [...]
From Chomsky on Anarchism AK Press Edinburgh, Oakland and West Virginia 2005 Selected and Edited by Barry Pateman at page 238, “My feeling is that in any interaction between human beings that is more than personal-meaning that it takes institutional forms of one kind or another-in the community, or workplace, family,larger society, whatever [...]
