Rodrigue Tremblay

“The price of apathy towards public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.” --Plato, ancient Greek philosopher

“The 20th century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: The growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy.” --Alex Carey, Australian social scientist

“The most effective way to restrict democracy is to transfer decision-making from the public arena to unaccountable institutions: kings and princes, priestly castes, military juntas, party dictatorships, or modern corporations.” --Noam Chomsky, M.I.T. emeritus Professor of Linguistics

On Tuesday, January 19, the Obama administration got a kick in the pants from Massachusetts voters when they filled former Senator Ted Kennedy’s seat by electing a conservative Republican candidate. The essence of their message was stop dithering and start governing; stop trying to satisfy the bankers and please the editors of Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal, and start caring for the ordinary people.

Two days later, President Barack Obama seemed to have understood the people’s message when he announced a “Volcker rule” that will forbid large banks from owning hedge funds that make money by placing large bets against their own clients, using information that these same clients gave them. It was time. Such a policy should have been announced months ago, if not years ago.

On the same day, however, a nonelected body, the U.S. Supreme Court, threw a different challenge to the Obama administration. Indeed, on Thursday January 21, a Republican-appointed majority on the U.S. Supreme Court took it upon itself to profoundly change the U.S. Constitution and American democracy. Indeed, in what can be labeled a most reactionary decision, the Roberts U.S. Supreme Court ruled that legal entities, such as corporations and labor unions, have the same purely personal rights to free speech as living individuals. Indeed, the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution says “Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech.

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Stephen Lendman

Established in 1989, the MA'AN Development Center is "an independent Palestinian development and training institution....work(ing) towards sustainable human development in Palestine" through its various programs. On October 31, it released a publication on the Palestinian BDS campaign titled, "Boycott, Divestment, & Sanctions: Lessons learned in effective solidarity."

It's another of the many BDS initiatives multiplying to support Palestine. In July 2005, a coalition of 171 Palestinian Civil Society organizations created the global movement for "Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel Until it Complies with International Law and Universal Principles of Human Rights" for Occupied Palestine, Israeli Arabs, and Palestinian diaspora refugees.

MA'AN covers BDS history and outlines current efforts and challenges to be overcome. Past Palestinian boycotts showed they work. The 1936 six-month strike against the British Mandate demanded a representative government in Palestine, prohibition of land sales to Jews, a cessation of Jewish immigration, and immediate elections. The strike brought the economy to a halt and got the Peel Royal Commission to recommend limited Jewish immigration and plans for eventual partition.

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Chris Floyd

Bankrolling and arming Al-Qaeda offshoot part of 2007 White House direc-
tive to destabilize Iranian government: U.S. Attacks Iran Via CIA-Funded
Jundullah Terror Group

For years, the all-consuming international struggle against the scourge of terrorism has been hampered at times by the fact that no one has been able to provide us with a rock-solid, comprehensive definition of the term. What, exactly, is "terrorism?" Great minds have grappled with this question in learned journals, academic symposia, think-tank fora, government entmoots, and across the commanding heights of the media. The matter is of some moment, as any person or organization to whom this ill-defined label is applied automatically becomes a target for "the path of action," to borrow the stirring phraseology of former U.S. president George W. Bush.

Indeed, some cynics have advanced the notion that the definition of terrorism has been left vague deliberately, in order to retain the degree of elasticity necessary for the term's application where and when as needed to advance one's particular political or ideological agenda. Of course, those who lack the phrenological bump of cynicism would ascribe this confusion to the artless, inherent difficulties of semantic expression all too common to our human kind. In any case, there has been, as the saying goes, much throwing about of brains on the subject, and to little effect.

But now this intractable problem has been resolved at last. And as you might expect, the man who cut this Gordian knot is one of the towering and tireless intellects of our age: Bill Clinton.

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William Bowles

I am staggered. There are 10,000 ‘NGOs’ (Non-Governmental Organizations) in Haiti, one for every 900 inhabitants and each one of them has no doubt at least one Westerner working within, yet aside from the Cuban health workers, it seems they could do nothing until the gringos arrived with their Blackhawks and nuclear-tipped aircraft carrier and of course, the 82nd Airborne, paying yet another ‘visit’ to this benighted and super-exploited land to 'secure' the place for the locust storm of aid to come (too late for too many).

Now I’ve never been a fan of ‘NGOs’ not only because my own experience with them has been less than edifying but because they are the direct result of ‘benign neglect’ on the part of the state. In other words they initially appeared to fill a void left when states washed their hands of the mess they’d left behind or they just ditched their responsibilities.

But unlike governments who are, in theory anyway, answerable to their electorate, ‘NGOs’ are answerable to no one. They are not elected, they are not representative. In their way they are more like neo-colonial ‘stand-ins’ for the former colonizers, at least at the ‘social services’ end of things. Well, it seems many of the 10,000 have been tested and found wanting.

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Stuart Littlewood

[Stuart Littlewood highlights the BBC’s chronic pro-Israel bias, from allowing untruths about Israel’s onslaught on Gaza in 2008-09 to go unchallenged, to its failure to provide accurate context about the Israeli township of Sderot, to its routine willingness to give disproportionate airtime to Israeli spokesmen and lobbyists.]

”[The BBC] gives a disproportionate amount of air-time to pro-Israel figures such as the Israeli ambassador, the regime’s spokesman Mark Regev, the chief rabbi and assorted politicians who wave the flag for Israel...

“The BBC also adopts Israel's language and definitions. Palestinians not Israelis are the militants. Hamas, not the murdering occupiers, are the terrorists. A single captured Israeli soldier is deemed more newsworthy than the 10,000 abducted Palestinians (some of them women and children) rotting in Israeli jails.”

Its mission statement says: “Trust is the foundation of the BBC: we are independent, impartial and honest.”

However, people are complaining bitterly to the BBC about its pro-Israel stance when reporting on the situation in the Holy Land.

Once renowned as the benchmark for fairness and accuracy, the BBC nowadays is careless with the truth when handling news from the Palestinian territories illegally occupied by Israel – the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza.

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