nous les 99%

Published on ZNet (also on counterpunch, and on Pretoria News), by Patrick Bond, Aug 15, 2014.

What, ultimately, was the importance of the Africa-US leadership summit at the White House last week? It came at a very decisive moment for geopolitical relations in the axis linking Washington, Pretoria and Tel Aviv. And surprising US-China economic connections were also revealed, potentially reaching deep into Africa. Mega-corporations of both US and African parentage revelled in the attention and repeated blasts of public subsidies, with deals alleged to have reached $37 billion over the three days.     Continuer la lecture de « Obama, Zuma and the Washington-Pretoria-Tel Aviv Relay »

Published on Huffington Post/The Blog, by Paul Brandeis Raushenbush, Aug 13, 2014.

… I spoke to Rev. Tony Lee who is an African-American pastor at Community of Hope AME Church in Prince George’s County, Maryland. Rev. Tony and I went to seminary together and he has been a colleague I trust to speak the truth to me about race in America. He called the recent deaths ‘disturbing but not surprising.’

« The reason people are responding so strongly is that these are examples of daily antagonisms felt by black people on the street. This is part of a wider school-to-prison pipeline and the ghettoization and de-humanization of black bodies. Social media gets the word out much quicker and people are responding to dead black men on the streets in LA, Ferguson and NYC by saying ‘wait, that is going on in our streets too.' »   Continuer la lecture de « What White People Can Do About the Killing of Black Men in America »

Published on TomDispatch, by Matthew Harwood, Aug 14, 2014.

Think of it as a different kind of blowback. Even when you fight wars in countries thousands of miles distant, they still have an eerie way of making the long trip home.

Take the latest news from Bergen County, New Jersey, one of the richest counties in the country. Its sheriff’s department is getting two mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicles, or MRAPs — 15 tons of protective equipment — for a song from the Pentagon. And there’s nothing special in that. The Pentagon has handed out 600 of them for nothing since 2013, with plenty more to come. They’re surplus equipment, mostly from our recent wars, and perhaps they will indeed prove handy for a sheriff fretting about insurgent IEDs (roadside bombs) in New Jersey or elsewhere in the country. Continuer la lecture de « One Nation Under SWAT »

Published on Dissident Voice, by Ellen Hodgson Brown, August 12th, 2014.

Argentina has now taken the US to The Hague for blocking the country’s 2005 settlement with the bulk of its creditors. The issue underscores the need for an international mechanism for nations to go bankrupt. Better yet would be a sustainable global monetary scheme that avoids the need for sovereign bankruptcy. Continuer la lecture de « Cry for Argentina: Fiscal Mismanagement, Odious Debt or Pillage? »

(my comment: not only, but I agree with the rest – Heidi) – Published on Left Foot Forward, by KUNWAR SHAHID, August 11, 2014.

While it would be ridiculous to allow the West the moral high ground, it is even more absurd for the Muslim world to transfer the responsibility for ISIS on to the West.

The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is emulating al Qaeda, Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), Boko Haram and pretty much every single Sunni Islamist militant organisation in the world by taking up arms vying to establish a regional – and eventually global – caliphate.   Continuer la lecture de « The responsibility for ISIS doesn’t lie with the West »