contributions

PENETRATING THE DARKNESS COVERING TWO MALAYSIAN AIRLINE DISASTERS
In each case, there appears to be only one explanation consistent with known facts
John Chuckman
I wrote previously of a second great mystery surrounding the disappearance over the Indian Ocean of Malaysian Airlines Flight 370, and that second great mystery is the United States’ utter silence surrounding its disappearance, despite its being the very nation able to offer the best information from the world’s most (…)

UK Prime Minister David Cameron came out swinging this morning; not only at ISIS but in calling for European leaders to block Russia from the SWIFT banking transaction system. European leaders have already (via unnamed sources) denied any actual new sanctions will take place (though they will be discussing them at the NATO Summit) but - as we have noted previously - this is yet another unintended consequence-driven nail in the coffin of USD hegemony...
Bloomberg reports that the U.K. Said (…)

THINGS MY MOTHER NEVER TOLD ME John Chuckman
Despite my title, this is not a memoir, dealing as it does with some of the most deadly serious subjects on the planet.
I was brought up by a hard-working, fiercely honest woman. She was brave in the most profound way, not the momentary, over-hyped stuff of soldiers and sports stars, but the unsung stuff of facing great odds and painful situations and doing her duty, not for moments or days, but for year after year. She was unusual for the (…)

Mr. President Obama The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue N.W.
Washington DC 20500
Mr. President,
When you receive this letter, we will be not far from September 12th, the date of the sixteenth anniversary of the arrest, in Miami, of the five Cubans – Gerardo Hernandez, Antonio Guerrero, Ramon Labañino, Fernando Gonzalez and René Gonzalez.
The last two have served their sentence; the first (…)

Iraq has now suffered 100 years of Anglo invasion and hegemony. 2014 is the 100th anniversary of the British invasion of Iraq in November 1914 and the commencement of a century of Anglo devastation and ongoing ethnic cleansing in Iraq. The Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZACs) assisted the British invasion of Iraq in 1915 and its soldiers unwittingly commenced the Palestinian Genocide with the Surafend Massacre in 1918. Australia was involved in the US-led 1990-2003 Sanctions (…)

Iran’s oil minister Bijan Zanganeh accused the previous Iran government officials of handing out oil and loans to businessmen without any repayment demand or schedule.
Zanganeh says $2.7 billion are missing from official coffers, and he has no prospect or reclaiming this money. The oil was sold by businessmen, in particular billionaire Babak Zanjani, against sanctions imposed by the US and the EU, and the businessmen were allowed to keep all of the revenue, despite the desperate situation (…)

Europe has served as the birthplace of innumerable artistic icons over the centuries, from Mozart to Flaubert to Picasso. Many of these and other artists’ lasting works were funded, subsidized, made possible by public, government funding. But times have changed says Swiss banker Christophe Mazurier.
Unlike the United States, in Europe, the governments’ sponsorship of the arts is just as widespread and entrenched as other social programs, like universal healthcare and social security. In (…)

A recent poll purported to have found 57 or so percent of US voters would now vote for Mitt Romney if they had the chance, whereas only 26 or so percent would vote for Barack Obama. Assuming these percentages are representative of the actual percentages among the population, so what? Who cares whether voters would now vote for Romney or Obama. Such percentages tell you little or nothing about the relevant underlying issue: how well Obama has performed and how well Romney would have (…)

Our world is acutely threatened by nuclear weapons, poverty and man climate change. A comprehensive Nuclear Weapons Ban is needed to avoid an accidental full-scale nuclear catastrophe and a consequent Nuclear Winter that will wipe out most of Humanity and the Biosphere. Every person must stand up for Humanity and the Biosphere in the One Percenter War on Terra.
This week saw the 69th anniversary of the war criminal American nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6 August and 9 (…)

The world has been horrified by Apartheid Israel’s latest Gaza Massacre that has killed 1,900 Occupied Palestinians and wounded 10,000. Even the unrepentant war criminal Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu looks chastened by the reality that 7 billion human beings now regard him with his predecessor PM Ehud Olmert as the “Butchers of Gaza” over successive Gaza Massacres, just as former Israeli PM Ariel Sharon is forever known as the “Butcher of Beirut” over the Sabra and Shatila Massacre. (…)