The subterranean flow of love and affection exists in all hearts alike

Human society comprises various races. There is no reason whatever to recognize one race as superior to another race. The external differences in constitutions among these human groups cannot alter their basic human traits – love and affection, pleasure and pain, hunger and thirst. These basic biological instincts and mental propensities equally predominate in human beings of all complexions in all countries and in all ages. A mere rustic, illiterate, half-naked tribal mother of an unknown hamlet of Chotanagpur hills in India bears deep maternal affections for her young children; in the same way, a well-educated mother of a locality of New York pours out of her heart a great love for her own children. The subterranean flow of love and affection exists in all hearts alike. Every person cries out in pain, everyone feels pleasure when there are occasions of joy and happiness. Maybe in different geographical, cultural, social and other environments, the lifestyle of different human groups may vary; maybe, a few special psychic traits in those groups may assert themselves, but fundamentally, their mental existences flow along the same channels of ideas and consciousness. Containing the same cosmic momentum and under the same cosmic inspiration, they all have set out for a tryst with the same Destiny.

Shrii Prabhat R. Sarkar

Sweet one

Singur and Nandigram: Tales of Eviction in Bengal

Ladly Mukhopadhyay and his crew filming conversations with locals. Free Bird Productions, a Kolkata-based documentary unit that makes cultural, ethnographic and documentary films, has made two of the more noteworthy films about the recent events in Singur and Nandigram. Shoma Chatterji notes the unanswered questions the films raise. - Shoma Chatterji

First class, against all odds

Children keeping a watch over 'their' forest (Picture by Ranjan K Panda)

A remote school with no electricity, in an area full of other institutions that don't fare well. Why does the Swastik school in Godbhanga village in Orissa perform so much better than others in the district? Ranjan K Panda observes that it is led by someone who perseveres, and all its achievements can be traced to this simple fact.

A dedicated headmaster and his pupils (Picture by Ranjan K Panda)

Behind Venezuela's 'Student Rebellion'

Let's go over this again, slowly: the students' withdrawal from the National Assembly was scripted. This isn't all that surprising. But that it was scripted by an organization owned by the opposition press is quite revealing. It makes transparent not merely the political nature of the opposition students and the fact that they don't represent the totality of Venezuelan students, but more importantly it reveals the fact that the opposition media has played an active role in planning and structuring this wave of student protests that they themselves have painted as a "spontaneous" rebellion. - Georege Ciccariello-Maher

The Missing Links In The Debate On Disappearances And Torture

The goal of the war of terrorism was to terrorize "terrorists" –- the occupied nations -- and force them into submission? Would you agree, Mr. Cheney and Mr. Mush? May be their lips will remain well-sealed until the unlikely day both of them face indictment along with their colleagues for their crimes against humanity. Until then, most of us seem to have submitted to the argument that the debate of disappearance and torture should be limited to questioning the technique alone. Whereas The question of illegal detentions and torture is not a question of technique alone. - Abid Ullah Jan

Expulsion Of Malalai Joya From Afghan Parliament

In April of this year, Joya was in Los Angeles to interviewing the newspapers say;
"The U.S. government removed the ultra-reactionary and brutal regime of Taliban, but instead of relying on Afghan people, pushed us from the frying pan into the fire and selected its friends from among the most dirty and infamous criminals of the "Northern Alliance," which is made up of the sworn enemies of democracy and human rights, and are as dark-minded, evil, and cruel as the Taliban."……. The Western media talks about democracy and the liberation of Afghanistan, but the U.S. and its allies are engaged in the warlordization, criminalization and drug-lordization of our wounded land."

Genetically Modified Food - Panacea or poison

A very interesting documentary on genetically engineered food or GE, GMO. GE food raises serious concerns about its safety because it is not all properly regulated in North America yet. Primary research on rats fed with GE food show modifications to their internal organs. Here is a quick few-minute education about Genetically Modified food. Maybe we need to re-organize our daily schedule and make some time for a home vegetable garden and fill our back yard with home-grown blackberries, raspberries, rhubarb, asparagus and other crops. - WPA

Please watch this video.

Does the United States Have an Opposition Media?

Humankind has been struggling for centuries to tame its worst behaviors; ridding itself of the affliction of torture is high on that list. Finally, an historic first step was taken by the United Nations General Assembly in 1984 with the drafting of the "Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment" (came into force in 1987, ratified by the United States in 1994). Article 2, section 2 of the Convention states: "No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture." Such marvelously clear, unambiguous and principled language, to set a single standard for a world that makes it increasingly difficult to feel proud of humanity. We cannot slide back. If torture is broached as a possibility, it will become a reality. If today it's deemed acceptable to torture the person who has the vital information, tomorrow it will be acceptable to torture his colleague who — it's suspected — may know almost as much. Would we allow slavery to resume for just a short while to serve some "national emergency" or some other "higher purpose"? - William Blum

Bush in 'Fantasyland'

"This is a crisis of our own making," Cirincione says. "President Bush so fervently believes in something that doesn't exist that he jeopardizes – again – our real security interests. The fact is the Czechs don't want the radar, the Europeans don't trust his explanations and deplore his unilateralism, the Congress has already cut the funds on purely programmatic grounds. This was a dumb idea before, now it is yet another foreign policy disaster." All of this for a system Cirincione says isn't important to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who view these programs as "expensive pet rocks."

Reading The Pictures: Have We Just Seen The Last Combat Injury In Iraq?

What you're looking at, I'm afraid, is a potentially historic image. Specifically, the photo above -- taken by embedded photojournalist Michael Kamber two weeks ago during a fateful patrol in search of missing American soldiers -- could well become the last visual evidence of U.S. casualties in the Iraq war.

Lies, Sighs and Politics

Look, debates involving 10 people are, inevitably, short on extended discussion. But news organizations should fight the shallowness of the format by providing the facts — not embrace it by reporting on a presidential race as if it were a high-school popularity contest. For if there's one thing I hope we've learned from the calamity of the last six and a half years, it's that it matters who becomes president — and that listening to what candidates say about substantive issues offers a much better way to judge potential presidents than superficial character judgments. Mr. Bush's tax lies, not his surface amiability, were the true guide to how he would govern. And I don't know if this country can survive another four years of Bush-quality leadership. - Paul Krugman

Our problem is civil obedience

"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is that numbers of people all over the world have obeyed the dictates of the leaders of their government and have gone to war, and millions have been killed because of this obedience. Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war, and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves, and all the while the grand thieves are running and robbing the country. That's our problem."

Howard Zinn

Internet Doomsday Creeps Closer

The EU data retention bill, passed last year after much controversy and with implementation tabled for late 2007, obliges telephone operators and internet service providers to store information on who called who and who emailed who for at least six months. Under this law, investigators in any EU country, and most bizarrely even in the US , can access EU citizens' data on phone calls, sms', emails and instant messaging services. The EU also recently proposed legislation that would prevent users from uploading any form of video without a license. The US government is also funding research into social networking sites and how to gather and store personal data published on them, according to the New Scientist magazine . "At the same time, US lawmakers are attempting to force the social networking sites themselves to control the amount and kind of information that people, particularly children, can put on the sites." - Steve Watson

CIA running black propaganda operation against Iran, Syria and Lebanon, officials say

A recent ABC News report revealed that President George W. Bush had signed a presidential finding giving the CIA the authority to conduct "non-lethal" covert operations against Iran. Former and current intelligence sources tell RAW STORY, however, that there have been "at least two" presidential findings over the past few years which have empowered the agency to run an "open-secret" information war against Iranian interests, mainly leveraging resources and assets "within the United States and France."

The Origin of Rent

In every country there is a demand for as much grain as is sufficient to maintain all its inhabitants; and as that grain cannot be brought from other countries but at a considerable expence, on some occasions at a most exorbitant charge, it usually happens, that the inhabitants find it most for their interest to be fed by the produce of their own soil. But the price at which that produce can be afforded by the farmer varies considerably in different circumstances. - J. Anderson  - An account from 1777.

Relegated to the status of domestic cattle and sheep

As in the societies of most other species, in human society also females are physically weaker than males. Because their nervous systems are weaker, their minds are also slightly weak. Nevertheless women have no less value in human society than men. Selfish men, however, have disregarded the value of women; they have taken full advantage, and are continuing to take full advantage, of their weakness. Although men have publicly declared that women should be respected as the mothers of society, they have actually relegated them to the status of domestic cattle and sheep. In every sphere of life men have either substantially limited the rights of women, or made the ability of women to exercise their rights subject to the whims and caprices of men. Such an attitude never existed among the primitive human beings who lived at the dawn of human history. Nor had primitive men conceived of the deceitful practice of establishing their supremacy by keeping women in bondage in the name of social purity. Even today among primitive races we do not find significant lack of magnanimity concerning the freedom of women.

Shrii Prabhat R. Sarkar

Formula for success

"There will always be social inequality, because that increases profits; winners win more because losers lose more. Keeping the Third World in dependence and poverty is not an accident or a failure of the world capitalist system, but part of its formula for success."

Dr. J.W. Smith

Jordanian Journalist Breaks Taboos Campaigning Against Violence

Activists have also joined Husseini's calls for judicial and legislative reform. In a country where the maximum penalty for murder is death, Husseini discovered that "honor" killers tended to be sentenced to only 3 months to 2 years in prison. "If you rob a house you get a higher sentence than for killing a woman!" she notes. Much of this leniency hinges on legal provisions such as Article 98 of the penal code, which allows for reduced sentences when a person kills in a "fit of fury." Killers who planned their crime would turn themselves in, some confessing with a degree of pride, then later, in court, claim sudden rage over a sister's or niece's allegedly bad behavior. - Milon Nagi

Stalling, Stealing, Civilization...

You have neither any inkling of what civilization means...Nor do you have any notion of what human civility means. All a veneered facade of niceties and the right use of words. Endless masks superimposed one on top of the other. And I keep peeling off one by one... And at each layer, another monster rears its head. Uglier than the previous one. And you come to me, preaching. Preaching love and forgiveness. Preaching and more preaching. You make heaps out of preaching. - Layla Anwar

Beyond PTSD: the Moral Casualties of War

To correctly identify and adequately treat the injuries suffered by our servicemen and women in Iraq, we must appreciate the relevancy of moral values and norms to defining ourselves as persons, structuring our world, and rendering our relationship to it, and to other human beings, comprehensible. We must understand that these values and norms provide the parameters of our being - - what I term our "moral identity." Most importantly, we must recognize that combat behavior often violates our moral identity and negatively impacts our self-esteem, self-image, and integrity causing debilitating remorse, guilt, shame, disorientation, and alienation from the remainder of the moral community – moral injury. - Camillo 'Mac' Bica

The Real Reason for Bush's Invasion of Iraq is a National Security Secret

For six and one-half years the Bush Regime has relied on coercion, intimidation, war, and threats of war. Diplomacy and good will have been shunned. The regime's blatant warmongering has resurrected the nuclear arms race. China and Russia regard America's drive for world hegemony with great alarm. China has put nuclear ICBMs on mobile platforms to increase their survivability in event of an American attack. Russia has developed new multi-warhead ICBMs, which can penetrate any known missile defense, and new cruise missiles that Putin says will be targeted on Europe if the US persists in its aggressive military encirclement of Russia. An administration that resurrects the threat of nuclear Armageddon so that its cronies in the military-security complex can become still richer is evil beyond compare. - Paul Craig Roberts

Never Shall We Forget - Lament for Iraq

ghostofzappa
June 8, 2007

Slide show and original music dedicated to the people of Iraq.

The chord changes for this tune I had in my head for over a year and when I played it on guitar I kept thinking of Iraq and the suffering of the people over there.

A picture paints a thousand words. The tune took 3 days to record...

Please watch this video.

Green blasts biofuels plan for Latin America

He described visiting Venezuela during last year's World Social Forum and being impressed by the radical ecology lessons that he witnessed at a newly built state school. "Even worm bins are on the syllabus!" he exclaimed. "The government's idea is that you teach the kids and, then, they teach their parents."

Female War Reporters Hide Sexual Abuse To Continue Getting Assignments

The only attempt to quantify this problem has been a slim survey of female war reporters published two years ago by the International News Safety Institute, based in Brussels. Of the 29 respondents who took part, more than half reported sexual harassment on the job. Two said they had experienced sexual abuse. But even when the abuse is rape, few correspondents tell anyone, even friends. The shame runs so deep, and the fear of being pulled off an assignment, especially in a time of shrinking budgets, is so strong that no one wants intimate violations to resound in a newsroom. - Judith Matloff

Bush's 'Magic' Economic Formula: The Rich Get Richer; Regular People Lose Ground

The joke about average income is: Bill Gates walks into a bar. The average income of every person in the room immediately goes up 10,000 percent. But median income, the amount that people in the middle of the group earn, barely budges. So let's look at that figure. Median income is down. The average person makes less now than when Bush came into office. Not only that, the downward pressure on wages is no longer just a blue-collar issue, it's moved up to white-collar workers, the educated classes, even doctors. How do you have a recovery when people are making less than before the recovery? - Larry Beinhart

Economics of Scale vs. the Scale of Economics: Towards Basic Principles of a Bioregional Economy

There are only two essentials to consider in coming at the problem of the optimum scale for an economy to produce and distribute goods and services: the natural ecosystem and the human community. An economy that does harm to the natural world—depleting resources, extincting species, maltreating animals, producing pollution, piling up wastes—has grown too large; an economy that is out of democratic and humanitarian human control—where decisions are made by a few distant corporate individuals and a polity whose choices are beyond individual influence—has grown too large. - Krikpatrick Sale

Fascist Exploitation

The final and most dangerous form of economic exploitation is fascist exploitation. In order to canvass national support to justify their exploitation, the imperialists popularize the theory of nationalism. They portray their exploitation as rational and constitutional and based on the national interest. The British imperialists, in order to legitimize their exploitation, embraced nationalist theory. Following the example of the British, Mussolini of Italy and Hitler of Germany moved along the same path. When communist imperialism was established after the Second World War, the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin propagated the concept of the Slavic supremacy. Likewise, the Chinese leader Mao Zedong built up Chinese superiority. As soon as an imperialist power is transformed into a fascist power, it spreads out its tentacles to psychically and culturally oppress a vanquished people. To perpetuate unhindered economic exploitation, psychic exploitation starts almost simultaneously. Where psychic exploitation is used to further economic exploitation, it is called "psycho-economic exploitation". At the very outset, the fascist exploiters select a weak community which inhabits a region rich in natural resources. The fascists socially and culturally uproot the victimized community by imposing a foreign language and culture on them. Because the local people cannot easily express their individual and collective feelings and sentiments in a foreign language, they develop a defeatist psychology and inferiority complex with respect to the exploiters. This defeatist psychology destroys the natural spiritedness and will to fight of the local people, and the fascists skillfully utilize this golden opportunity. The primary interest of the fascist exploiters is to gradually suck the vitality of the local community so that they can pillage and plunder their natural resources, but if necessary they will even obliterate the local community from the face of the earth.

Shrii Prabhat R. Sarkar

Wall Street Journal's Looking Glass World

In Venezuela, it's the real thing, although still a work in progress undoing generations of governments of, by and for the rich and well-off alone. No longer, and people like O'Grady denounce it because it works so well shaming the state of things in America she won't reveal. She can keep railing, but facts, in the end, trump rhetoric, and Venezuelans have them. They need only cite their daily lives in socially democratic Venezuela compared to how things were in the past. They're not about to go quietly into the night letting that be lost. They fought for it once. If threatened, they'll do it again, sending a message to others - you, too, can have this. Just go for it, including in America where the need is greater than ever under George Bush. - Stephen Lendman

IRAQ: Broken Lives and Broken Hearts

"The country of the 'Arabian Nights' and the wonderful poetry is no longer good for love," Maki al-Nazzal, a political analyst and poet, told IPS. "All Iraqi poetry under occupation is now about death and separation. Love stories are full of agonies and despair marking the darkest period of violence and hatred." To date, there are no accurate figures available for how many men and women have lost wives and husbands in Iraq. "Baghdad became the city of smoke, blood, and death, instead of being the shrine of love and beauty," added al-Nazzal. - Ali al-Fadhily

The World's Most Dangerous Terror Organization

To the world public opinion: we hope that you will help us … We need fair treatment, a fair investigation and finally, a fair trial. Please help us. We have been (text not clear) for a long time and we have been cut out of our families, no contacts or phones, no letters, even no parcels sent to us by our families and not one given to us. - Tariq Aziz - Terrorism is rampant today in the world. Never have their been so many terrorist activities; daily and worldwide. The headquarters for the largest, most efficient, most well-armed and most dangerous terrorist organization in the world are located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, in Washington, D.C., U.S.A. - Malcolm Lagauche

Midwest Residents Clean Up Storm Damage

In this citizen journalism photo acquired by the AP via NowPublic.com, a citizen journalism web site, a tornado funnel cloud looms on the horizon in Shannon County, S.D., Wednesday, June 6, 2007. (AP Photo/Reed Timmer,TornadoVideos)

A Direct Stake in Economic Life: Worker-Owned Firms

One factor which has contributed to the rise of employee-owned firms is that multinational corporations often must seek the very highest profit they can make on invested capital–whereas workers living in a community are happy with substantial profits (rather than the highest possible) since the other benefits of keeping a plant in town far outweigh differences in profit rates. (Often, of course, when employees take ownership, the change produces greater efficiency–and greater profits than those which the multinational registered.) - Dr. Gar Alperwitz