Posted by Dilip Simeon, 9.2., 2020 NOAM CHOMSKY: If you’ll indulge me, I’d like to start with a brief reminiscence of a period which is eerily similar to today in many unpleasant respects. I’m thinking of exactly 80 years ago, almost to the day, happened to be the moment of the first article that I remember having written on political issues. Easy to date: It was right after the fall of Barcelona in February 1939. The article was about what seemed to be the inexorable spread of fascism over the world. In 1938, Austria had been annexed by Nazi Germany. A Read More
How will they look anyone in the face….
Richard Wolffe: Republicans march over the impeachment cliff – taking their self-respect with them Posted: 31 Jan 2020 10:56 PM PST by Dilip Simeon How will the nation’s Republican senators look anyone in the face and say they have any rights to keep in check a corrupt and criminal president? How can they pretend to be Trump’s victims when they marched themselves off a constitutional cliff? And how on earth can they pretend to the world that their vision of America – where a president can happily use military aid to coerce a foreign government to smear his political rival in Read More
From TomDispatch.com, 28/12/19
Is Donald Trump the Second 9/11?Or Is He the Third?By Tom Engelhardt Here’s the question at hand — and I guarantee you that you’ll read it here first: Is Donald Trump the second or even possibly the third 9/11? Because truly, he has to be one or the other. Let me explain, and while I do, keep this in mind: as 2019 ends, thanks to Brexit and the victory of Boris Johnson in Britain’s recent election, the greatest previous imperial power on this planet is clearly headed for the sub-basement of history. Meanwhile, that other superpower of the Cold War Read More
They Hacked the Constitution –
The constitutional system only functions as a whole and when each of its branches works as intended. When all three don’t just fail, but fail deliberately and with coordination, the result is a culture of impunity. I realized that I was crazy to have imagined that the Supreme Court, or Congress, or President Obama, seeking to distance his administration from President George W. Bush’s, would ever hold the Intelligence Community responsible – for anything. It was time to face the fact that the IC believed themselves above the law, and given how broken the process was, they were right. Read More
Assange in Court, by Craig Murray, Oct. 19th, 2019
Assange in Court – Quo Vadis Uk?! UPDATE I have received scores of requests to republish and/or translate this article. It is absolutely free to use and reproduce and I should be delighted if everybody does; the world should know what is being done to Julian. So far, over 200,000 people have read it on this blogsite alone and it has already been reproduced on myriad other sites, some with much bigger readerships than my own. I have seen translations into German, Spanish and French and at least extracts in Catalan and Turkish. I only ask that you reproduce it Read More
The Assange Tragedy, (by Srecko Horvat, 12.11.,2019
“Every time we witness an injustice and do not act, we train our character to be passive in its presence and thereby eventually lose all ability to defend ourselves and those we love.” ― Julian Assange The last time I saw Julian Assange, exactly one year ago, when he was still at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, I didn’t know yet that the next time I would see him would be in a high-security prison. I didn’t visit as a journalist, as a lawyer, nor as a family member – I came as a friend. But not only as a Read More
“By Order of the People” afp.com 6 hrs ago , Nov. 4, 2019
“I’m sorry, I can’t let you through without orders,” said the Iraqi civilian manning the makeshift checkpoint, smirking at the befuddled policeman he had waved down in the capital Baghdad. After a month of defying official curfews and road closures to protest, Iraqis have flipped the rule book. One recent evening, police officers erected a row of concrete t-walls on the same street, sealing off access to Tahrir Square, ground zero for protests in the capital. Demonstrators — one riding a motorised red rickshaw known as a tuk-tuk — sprung into action, chasing down the police. The tuk-tuk came to Read More
The Land Where the Sun Sets
James Gelvin on the Kurdistan Rojava Project (cf Dilip Simeon’s Blog): James Gelvin: Turkish attack on Syria endangers a remarkable democratic experiment by the Kurds Posted: 13 Oct 2019 07:56 AM PDT Turkey’s attack on Kurdish-run territory in northern Syria will likely snuff out a radical experiment in self-government that is unlike anything I have seen in more than 30 years studying the Middle East. In a surprise Oct. 6 statement, President Donald Trump announced the U.S. would withdraw its troops from northern Syria. Approximately 1,000 American soldiers had been stationed in that region as a buffer separating Kurdish forces Read More
Gandhi’s Legacy
Posted by Dilip Simeon The Compass Posted: 03 Oct 2019 03:44 AM PDT NB: This article appeared today in the Deccan Chronicle, as part of a series commemorating Mahatma Gandhi’s 150 birth anniversary. DS The Compass Gandhi’s life-work combined a complex of ideals, concepts and practical endeavour that could inspire millions of ordinary Indians, but also irritate many sophisticated minds. His activity pointed toward an overcoming of the binary distinctions between tradition and modernity; individual and community; faith and religion; the nation and the world; Indians and humanity; ethics and politics. It is impossible to reduce Gandhi to any Read More