The concerns drove traders to book profits on bullish positions in the dollar. The U.S. dollar hit a one-week low against a basket of major currencies on Friday after escalating geopolitical tensions led…
Category: France
An infirmity once characterizing the past century’s most severe totalitarian regimes has now taken root in Western public discourse and practice, a process akin to Orwellian “double think” acting as a form of de facto…
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization is desperate; it is itching for a war in battlefield Ukraine at any cost. Let’s start with Pentagon supremo, US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, who has waxed lyrical over the Russian Bear’s “threat”: “When you see the build-up of Russian troops and the sophistication of those troops, the training of those troops, the heavy military equipment that’s being put along that border, of course it’s a reality, it’s a threat, it’s a possibility – absolutely.” NATO spokeswoman Oana Lungescu could not elaborate if it was “threat” or “reality”, absolutely or not, but she saw it all: “We’re not going to guess what’s on Russia’s mind, but we can see what Russia is doing on the ground – and that is of great concern. Russia has amassed around 20,000 combat-ready troops on Ukraine’s eastern border.” In trademark, minutely precise NATOspeak, Lungescu then added that Russia “most probably” would send troops into eastern Ukraine under the cover of “a humanitarian or peace-keeping mission”. And that settled it.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: To talk more about the crisis in Gaza, we go now to Boston, where we are joined by Noam Chomsky, world-renowned political dissident, linguist, author, Institute Professor Emeritus at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he’s taught for more than 50 years. He has written extensively about the Israel-Palestine conflict for decades. AMY GOODMAN: Forty years ago this month, Noam Chomsky published Peace in the Middle East?: Reflections on Justice and Nationhood. His 1983 book, The Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel, and the Palestinians, is known as one of the definitive works on the Israel-Palestine conflict. Professor Chomsky joins us from Boston. Welcome back to Democracy Now!, Noam. Please first just comment, since we haven’t spoken to you throughout the Israeli assault on Gaza. Your comments on what has just taken place? NOAM CHOMSKY: It’s a hideous atrocity, sadistic, vicious, murderous, totally without any credible pretext. It’s another one of the periodic Israeli exercises in what they delicately call “mowing the lawn.” That means shooting fish in the pond, to make sure that the animals stay quiet in the cage that you’ve constructed for them, after which you go to a period of what’s called “ceasefire,” which means that Hamas observes the ceasefire, as Israel concedes, while Israel continues to violate it. Then it’s broken by an Israeli escalation, Hamas reaction. Then you have period of “mowing the lawn.” This one is, in many ways, more sadistic and vicious even than the earlier ones.
The self-immolation of a 26-year-old Tunisian fruit vendor, Mohamed Bouazizi, in December 2010, was the spark that set off the 2011 Arab Spring uprising. Do events there since prove or disprove those who see the…
WE CANNOT SAY WE DID NOT KNOW ONCE AGAIN IN SHOCK ONCE AGAIN IN SORROW ONCE AGAIN ENRAGEDWe carry the names of the dead in Gaza. In the name of decency we must act….
You know that the US intelligence establishment is in bad shape when the highest ranking American military officer publicly regurgitates unfounded «talking media points» with a view to incriminate Russia over events in Ukraine. Why…
“Recent history has repeatedly proven that nothing said by Washington and its officials should be accepted at face value. No other government in the world has been implicated in so many egregious lies…
Fifty years on we know the trigger for war with Vietnam was a fiction. Will it be another 50 before we know the truth about Iraq? But what struck me most forcefully in talking to…
Let’s not mince words. Israelis are committing genocide in Gaza. But the United Nations is loath to use the “G” word and it us using the “C” (condemn) word instead. Why? Money talks. The top…