Selected Articles: Syria’s Continued Resistance, US Role in India’s Demonetization, Demystifying Climate Change
On Syria’s Continued Resistance, Russia and the Threat to Western Power
By Ghada Chehade, January 03 2017
As a new year begins I wish to reflect on the Syrian government’s continued resistance and impending victory—with the help of the Russian military—against western backed terrorist forces. The defense of Syria, after an almost six-year-long proxy offensive against it, has served a blow to the western imperial agenda while greatly strengthening Russia’s position globally.
The Democratic Party Line That Could Torch Civil Liberties… and Maybe Help Blow Up the World
By Norman Solomon, January 03 2017
Many top Democrats are stoking a political firestorm. We keep hearing that Russia attacked democracy by hacking into Democratic officials’ emails and undermining Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Instead of candidly assessing key factors such as longtime fealty to Wall Street that made it impossible for her to ride a populist wave, the party line has increasingly circled around blaming Vladimir Putin for her defeat.
A Well-Kept Open Secret: Washington Is Behind India’s Brutal Demonetization Project
By Norbert Haering, January 03 2017
In early November, without warning, the Indian government declared the two largest denomination bills invalid, abolishing over 80 percent of circulating cash by value. Amidst all the commotion and outrage this caused, nobody seems to have taken note of the decisive role that Washington played in this. That is surprising, as Washington’s role has been disguised only very superficially.
Demystifying the Climate Change Debate
By Wayne Hall, January 03 2017
President Obama, just a few weeks before leaving office and handing over to his despised (by leftists, ecologists, liberals) successor Donald Trump, made a much publicized gesture of banning drilling for new oil and gas reserves in US waters in the Atlantic and Arctic Oceans. His presidency thus ended on a grandiloquent note comparable to the way it had started, when he made equally widely publicized (and in practice totally ignored, by himself) gestures of nuclear disarmament. Left-wing supporters of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) typically criticize this kind of hypocrisy, and indeed the related hypocrisy of “greenwash”, but how many of them appreciate how truly deep the hypocrisy goes?
Medical Communication Companies and America’s Medical Propaganda Machine
By Dr. Gary G. Kohls, January 03 2017
I recently ran across an important 2013 JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association) article, the content of which is printed below. It is about a new form of medical propaganda, physician conflicts of interest, the cunning of Big Pharma’s advertising and how most physicians are at risk of being mis-informed and mis-educated at a time when they are being pressured to spend less and less time with their patients and to rely on the over-prescribing of Big Pharma’s synthetic chemical drugs. As I often told my patients, it only takes 2 minutes to write a prescription but it takes 20 minutes to NOT write a prescription.
By John Kozy, January 03 2017
America’s college graduates, even those who graduate from America’s elite institutions, graduate while believing the same dogmas and holding the same attitudes they held when they matriculated. Ted Cruz, the Koch brothers, and Franklin Graham are obvious examples but others are easy to cite. Apparently professors no longer (perhaps never did) make any attempt to teach students how to evaluate ideas or even the importance of doing so. Education has become merely vocational training. Any ideas taught are those which are conventionally believed. The result is that no new ideas can emerge from this culture, and human progress is impossible.
