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The Myth of ‘Value-Free’ Social Science Or The Value of Political Commitments to Social Science
James Petras
Introduction
For many decades, mainstream social scientists, mostly conservative, have argued that political commitments and scientific research are incompatible. Against this current of opinion, others, mostly politically engaged social scientists, have argued that scientific research and political commitment are not contradictory.
In this essay I will argue in favor of the latter position by demonstrating that scientific work is embedded in a socio-political universe, which its practioners can deny but cannot avoid. I will further suggest that the social scientist who is not aware of the social determinants of their work, are likely to fall prey to the least rigorous procedures in their work – the unquestioning of their assumptions, which direct the objectives and consequences of their research.
We will proceed by addressing the relationship between social scientific work and political commitment and examining the political-institutional universe in which social scientific research occurs. We will recall the historical experience of social science research centers and, in particular, the relationship between social science and its financial sponsors as well as the beneficiaries of its work.
Former NATO Chief Targets Russia Irresponsibly
by Stephen Lendman
Washington installed former NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen to serve as a convenient US stooge.
His predecessors operated the same way. So does his successor, Jens Stoltenberg.
Irresponsible Russia bashing is part of the job. Rasmussen took full advantage.
He calls NATO an organization responsible for "an unprecedented period of peace."
It's a US-dominated imperial tool - a global killing machine prioritizing war, deploring peace.
Raping Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Libya are three of its high crimes. Some of its member countries ravaged and destroyed Iraq.
NATO's existence threatens world peace. Saving humanity from the scourge of war depends on slaying this monster - putting it out of business once and for all.
Nine US Warships Threaten Yemen
by Stephen Lendman
Obama is escalating his war on Yemen. He bears full responsibility for genocidal slaughter - mostly affecting civilian men, women and children.
He's waging premeditated naked aggression using Saudis and other regional rogue states as proxy partners against a nonthreatening nation.
US orchestrated hostilities violate core international law. No nation may attack another without Security Council approval. None exists.
Nine US warships were sent to Yemeni waters. The aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt and escort cruiser USS Normandy joined seven others.
US-Sponsored Yemeni Terror-Bombing Continues
by Stephen Lendman
US-planned and orchestrated/Saudi-led terror-bombing continues into its 24th day - more intensively than earlier.
Another Obama atrocity is unfolding in plain sight. Civilians are being deliberately murdered in cold blood.
Some estimates put the death toll at over 2,700 - many thousands more injured. An appalling humanitarian crisis worsens daily.
Iranian President Hassan Rohani condemned aggressor crimes - against "children, elderly women and men in Yemen," he said.
"Why do the aggressors not extend a hand of friendship and reconciliation to other nations," he asked?
"What is the point in sending financial and arms aid to terrorists in Syria, Lebanon and Iraq?"
Priority Saudi Targets in Yemen: Civilian Men, Women, Children and Infants
by Stephen Lendman
Saudi Arabia is a ruthless dictatorship. It's a rogue terror state. It brutalizes its own people.
It punishes anyone challenging its rule with arbitrary arrests and imprisonment under horrific gulag conditions.
Torture and physical abuse are commonplace. So are public whippings and beheadings.
Fair public trials, due process and judicial fairness don't exist. Anyone charged by state authorities is automatically guilty by accusation. Harsh treatment follows.
Most Saudi prisoners are political ones or for offenses too minor to matter. Human and civil rights are nonexistent. Despotic rule governs virtually all aspects of daily life.
After Israel, Saudi Arabia is Washington's main Middle East ally. Three rogue states partner in each other's high crimes - notably against Palestine, Syria, Iraq and Yemen.
US Foreign Policy: Permanent Wars on Humanity
by Stephen Lendman
Throughout its entire history, America waged endless wars at home and abroad.
From the Halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli to battleground US streets and neighborhoods.
US policy reduced its indigenous population to a tiny fraction of its original numbers. How the West was won involved exterminating millions in cold blood.
In the mid-19th century, half of Mexico was stolen. America's killing machine knows no limits.
One state-sponsored genocide follows others. US imperial policy is responsible for tens of millions of lost lives - horrific conditions for surviving millions.
Democracy promotion is pure fantasy. America tolerates its nowhere. None exists domestically.
One party rule with two wings runs things. Monied interests alone are served. They have final say. Voters have none.
State-sponsored high crimes are rewarded. Corporate ones are ignored. Popular needs increasingly go begging. America is a let 'em eat cake society. War-making is prioritized.
Waging them has nothing to do with external or internal threats. So-called "war on terror" is phony. State-sponsored war OF terror is real - waged ruthlessly on humanity.
Has the putative "Palestinian state" become a pipe dream?
By Khalid Amayreh in Occupied Palestine
With the passage of every day, the goal of establishing a viable and credible Palestinian state in the West Bank becomes more elusive and more distant.
There are several outstanding reasons corroborating this perspective.
Israeli (Jewish) settlements have metastasized all over the West Bank, especially in East Jerusalem, leaving virtually no room for a credible and territorially contiguous Palestinian entity worthy of the name. Today, any traveler in the occupied territory would have to think- not just twice- but a hundred times, before giving polite audience to the empty rhetoric about Palestinian statehood, still coming from the dispirited headquarters of the PLO in Ramallah.
NYT Gives Former Peruvian Strongman/Human Rights Abuser Feature Op-Ed Space
by Stephen Lendman
Alejandro Toledo served as Peruvian President from 2001 - 2006. He led opposition against former despot Alberto Fujimori (1990 - 2000).
He was elected on populist promises to create more jobs, alleviate dire poverty, deliver social justice, and end years of corrupted hardline rule including serious human rights abuses.
As president, he continued business as usual Washington Consensus policies - same old, same old neoliberal harshness.
They include obeying IMF/World Bank diktats, paying bankers first, privatization of state enterprises, deregulation, ignoring social needs, and cracking down hard on nonbelievers.
He targeted anyone challenging his agenda. Independent journalists were harassed, threatened and attacked. So were human rights worker.
How America’s Aristocracy Extends Its Global Control
Eric Zuesse
As has been well documented even by the BBC, in their 1992 classic documentary about the CIA’s (still-ongoing) Gladio Operation, America’s CIA basically took control of the international racist-fascist (i.e., ideologically nazi) movement after World War II, by protecting and hiring Hitler’s Nazis and their key aristocratic eastern European supporters undercover. The Gladio Operation was just one branch of a broader CIA strategy, developed by Allen Dulles and originally carried out by his protégé James Angleton, to use, for the purposes of America’s aristocracy, nazis’ intense racism, by retargeting it away from Jews and toward Russians, so as to weaken first the Soviet Union, and, then, after the end of that, Russia itself. (U.S. President Barack Obama’s involvement with Ukraine is very much a result of this post-WW-II pro-nazi Dulles-Angleton program.)
Gunslinger US General Readies for War with Russia
by Stephen Lendman
America is run by neocon lunatics and gunslinger generals. Together they threaten world peace.
Washington’s only enemies are ones it invents to wage endless wars of aggression - premeditated ones against one country after another posing no threat to anyone.
Rogue states operate this way. Readers familiar with Orwell's 1984 understand. America exceeds the worst of what he envisioned.
World peace hangs by a thread. Humanity's survival is up for grabs.
General Ben Hodges heads US Army Europe (USAREUR). On April 18, he lied telling London's Telegraph NATO must stay united against a "real threat" from Russia.
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