Latest articles
by Robert Hunziker / February 14th, 2024
What if Arctic sea ice melts?
All of it… during the summer!
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), over the past three decades the oldest, thickest ice (13-20 feet thick) has declined by a stunning 95 percent and 70 percent of Arctic sea ice is now thin “seasonal ice” that quickly melts in the Arctic summer.
Based upon scientific analyses, loss of sea ice impacts the planet’s biggest thermostat, i.e., the Arctic sea ice itself, into a wacky climate monster that dims/diminishes one of the biggest reflectors of solar radiation, thereby exposing Earth to excessive solar heat quickly absorbed in …
by E.R. Bills / February 14th, 2024
An undated photo of members of the Childress County Daughters of the Confederacy. Courtesy of the Childress County Heritage Museum in partnership with The Portal to Texas History, a digital repository hosted by the University of North Texas Libraries.
In 2022, a 15-year-old Virginia Beach girl named Simone Nied began a modest campaign to get the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) removed from the list of nonprofit organizations afforded exemption from real estate, deed recordation, and personal property taxes in the state of Virginia. The “White House” of the Confederacy is …
by Binoy Kampmark / February 14th, 2024
Legal challenges regarding the Israel-Gaza War are starting to bulk lawyers’ briefs and courtroom proceedings. South Africa got matters underway with its December application before the International Court of Justice accusing Israel of genocide in its campaign against the Palestinians. While determining whether genocide has taken place, the ICJ issued an interim order warning Israel to prevent genocidal acts, preserve evidence relevant to the prosecution of any such acts, and ease the crushing restrictions on humanitarian aid.
In the United States, a valiant effort was made in the US District Court for the Northern District of California to restrain the …
by Philip A. Farruggio / February 14th, 2024
Just watched a 2020 documentary entitled Dirty Money that covered a slew of scams perpetrated on American consumers. The segment on Scott Tucker really got my goat. Here’s a bit of a background on this character and his disgusting shenanigans:
In 1991, Tucker was convicted for his illegal activities, including mail fraud, associated with a bogus lending company he operated, Chase, Morgan, Stearns & Lloyd, which he falsely claimed was associated with each of the four major banks whose names he included in the name of the company. He served one year in prison.
In 2001, Tucker founded an online business, AMG …
Funded by the American Taxpayer
by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead / February 14th, 2024
The madmen are in power.
— Philip K. Dick, The Man in the High Castle
The debate over U.S. foreign aid is a distraction.
That’s not to say that the amount of taxpayer money flowing to foreign countries in the form of military and economic assistance is insignificant. Even at less than 1% of the federal budget, the United States still spends more on foreign aid than any other nation.
The latest foreign aid spending bill includes $95 billion for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan.
Since World War II, the U.S. has given more foreign aid to Israel than any other country …
by B.J. Sabri / February 13th, 2024
The relentless campaign promoting the inevitability of a direct war with Russia is proceeding without challenge. That does not mean that war could erupt at any moment, or it could never happen. First, war is not based on a timetable. Second, war has no deterministic quality of any sort—it can be avoided. Third, but most important, war is contingent upon deliberation and subsequent decision—without decision, there is no war. For the record, neither the United States nor Russia has ever publically declared that they intend to go to war at some point in the future. So far, we only hear …
by Alexandria Shaner / February 13th, 2024
Photo credit: El Payo/Flickr | “All the great movements for social justice in our society have emphasized a love ethic.” – bell hooks
Does getting involved in social change work help you meet people, make friends and even find love? And would it matter if it did?
If the goal is to grow resilient people-powered movements, then it is essential that participation improves …
Who gets left behind when layoffs and mergers undermine inclusivity
by Shealeigh Voitl / February 13th, 2024
When Condé Nast bought the online music publication Pitchfork in 2015, Condé’s Chief Digital Officer Fred Santarpia told the New York Times that the acquisition brought “a very passionate audience of Millennial males into our roster.”
Three years before, in 2012, roughly 88 percent of respondents to Pitchfork’s People’s List, a record of reader-ranked albums from the last fifteen years, identified as male. Pitchfork clarified later that this figure was not “indicative of Pitchfork’s overall demographics.” (To be fair, the characterization was technically accurate, but some …
by Binoy Kampmark / February 13th, 2024
Animals have, at times, been given the same dismissively nasty treatment humans love giving themselves. Be it detention, torture, trial, and execution, the unwitting creatures can be found in the oddest situations, anthropomorphised with all the characteristics of will, thought and intention. By way of ghastly example, the Norman city of Falaise hosted the execution of a pig in 1386 for having “indulged in the evil propensity of eating infants on the streets”, and sentenced to maiming in the heat and forelegs prior to hanging.
A field where such a matter has, and continues to crop up, is espionage. Espionage, …
by Gerald E. Scorse / February 13th, 2024
Social Security has been a financial rock for seniors ever since benefits first began flowing in 1940. For decades though, for those above an income threshold, pieces of that rock have been chiseled away: a 1983 law makes up to 50 percent of benefits subject to federal income taxes.
Levying a tax on benefits was a new idea at the time, promoted as one of the ways to help save Social Security for future generations. The system’s trust fund was only months away from running out of money, and revenue from the tax would be dedicated to keeping the …
by Gary Brumback / February 12th, 2024
Hell is probably one of the most universal concepts of our species. In this article I describe “Hell at Home” and “Hell Away.”
Hell at Home
Gazette Sampler
Beware of Your Medicine Cabinet
Several years ago, I collected many descriptions of incidents of wrongdoing in industry and government. Here is a small sample of wrongdoing in “Big Pharma:”
Big Pharma gouges prices in the absence of Government’s price controls. Uses improper techniques to test drugs. Intimidates and threatens their in-house scientists. Fabricates drug safety data and lies to the FDA. Routinely bribes doctors with luxury vacations and paid speaking gigs. Provides drugs to …
by Abahlali baseMjondolo / February 12th, 2024
The Lindokuhle Mnguni Occupation in Rosherville, Johannesburg, organised strikes on Monday and Wednesday last week. On Monday South Rand Road was blockaded the whole day, from 3:00 am till 4:00 pm. On Wednesday it was blockaded from 5:00 am till 12:30 am.
The police were not violent to the protestors but some taxi drivers did assault comrades on the blockade.
This press statement is to explain the demands that led us to strike and will lead us to continue striking until they are met.
The Lindokuhle Mnguni Occupation is now one year old. The land was occupied in early February last year. Most …
by Roger D. Harris / February 12th, 2024
Despite continuous US-led hybrid warfare to overthrow the socialist project, this month marks the 25th anniversary of the Bolivarian Revolution. The Venezuelan government of President Nicolás Maduro has successfully forced the US to de facto engage with it, although Washington still maintains the fiction that the defunct 2015 National Assembly is the “last remaining democratic institution” there.
While still egregiously interventionist, the imperial power has been relegated to vetting candidates for the upcoming Venezuelan presidential election, having failed to achieve outright regime change. The appearance of Venezuelan politician Maria Corina Machado before a US congressional committee is …
by Allen Forrest / February 12th, 2024
by Binoy Kampmark / February 12th, 2024
Statistics are often given lanky legs that take their user far. But how they are used, and how they are received, is striking. The current figure of 27,500 dead is a blighting, grotesque fact. But as they are Palestinians, the issue is less significant to certain parties than, say, 140 Israeli hostages being held in Gaza.
As with much in the noisy clatter of Middle Eastern violence, the value attributed to numbers alters in the shade of ideology and self-interest. Massacres become acts of self-defence; acts of self-defence become unconscionable inflictions of murder. It also follows that an organisation of 30,000 …
Pyongyang considers Seoul to be its “most harmful and unchangeable enemy,” the leader has said
by RT / February 11th, 2024
by Allen Forrest / February 10th, 2024
by Allen Forrest / February 9th, 2024
Should one choice from among the puppets thrown into the ring?
A group of Middle Eastern soccer associations has reportedly demanded that FIFA bar Israeli teams from competition
by RT / February 9th, 2024
by T.P. Wilkinson / February 9th, 2024
Some people are still complaining –rightly — about the penetration of women’s competitive sports (along with prisons and school lavatories). There is a strong temptation to see this merely as some bizarre fashion against which too many officials lack the courage to resist. In fact I do not believe this is cowardice. There are cowards up front but they don’t make policy. Look what happened at Penn and Harvard. Normally immune CEOs at these elite kindergartens were sacked for failure to behave like “trannies” toward students who dared to protest the mass murder in Palestine. The mass murder and population …
by Andrew Laverdiere / February 9th, 2024
A brief note from the author on the accelerated border crisis: In the few months that I was putting together the information for this article, things have spiraled out of control in Texas which is getting the majority of refugees. Texas Governor Greg Abbott in addition to bussing tens of thousands of refugees to sanctuary cities like New York and Chicago has deployed the state National Guard and other state employees to police the border. In revenge for making a mockery of the Democrats ‘lets make President Trump look like a racist’ sanctuary city gimmick, the Biden Administration has used the …
by Binoy Kampmark / February 8th, 2024
Times were supposedly better in 2022. That is, if you were a lawmaker in the Australian state of Victoria, a busy Israeli arms manufacturer, or cash counting corporate middleman keen to make a stash along the way between the two. That view is premised on the notion that what happened on October 7, 2023 in Israel was stunningly remarkable, a historical blot dripped and dribbled from nothingness, leaving the Jewish state vengeful and yearning to avenge 1200 deaths and the taking of 240 hostages. All things prior were dandy and uncontroversial.
Last month, word got out that the Victorian government had …
by Vijay Prashad / February 8th, 2024
Sheroanawe Hakihiiwe (Venezuela), Hema ahu (Spider Web with Dew in the Morning), 2021.
On 2 February 2024, the people of Venezuela celebrated the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Bolivarian Revolution. On that day in 1999, Hugo Chávez took office as the president of Venezuela and began a process of Latin American integration that – because of US intransigence – accelerated into an anti-imperialist process. Chávez’s government, understanding that it would not be able to govern on behalf of the people and address their needs if it remained tied …
by Allen Forrest / February 8th, 2024
by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies / February 8th, 2024
Israeli airstrike on an apartment building in Rafah, the last refuge in southern Gaza. Photo credit: MENAFN
On February 7, 2024, a U.S. drone strike assassinated an Iraqi militia leader, Abu Baqir al-Saadi, in the heart of Baghdad. This was a further U.S. escalation in a major new front in the U.S.-Israeli war on the Middle East, centered on the Israeli genocide in Gaza, but already also including ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, Israeli attacks on Lebanon and Syria, and the U.S. and U.K.’s bombing of Yemen.
This latest U.S. attack followed the U.S. …
by Gideon Polya / February 8th, 2024
The 2023-2024 Gaza Massacre has continued now for nearly 4 months while the World looks on. The Zionist-subverted and US lackey Australian Labor Government has fervently assisted Apartheid Israel diplomatically, with key arms supplies, intelligence, weapons targeting and now with cessation of support for UNRWA – racist Labor is complicit in the US-Israeli massacre of Palestinian children. Zionist-subverted Australian Mainstream media are complicit by lying for Apartheid Israel.
Set out below is a quantitative view of the Gaza Genocide from truthful reportage (notably from some prize-winning Western journalists) but which is overwhelmingly ignored by Zionist-subverted Mainstream Western and Australian media:
(1) Apartheid …
The WikiLeaks founder faces up to 175 years in prison if his extradition from Britain is approved
by RT / February 7th, 2024
by Binoy Kampmark / February 7th, 2024
Holding the foreign policy of a country accountable in court, notably when it comes to matters criminal, can be insuperably challenging. Judges traditionally shun making decisions on policy, even though they unofficially do so all the time. The Center for Constitutional Rights, a New York-based civil liberties group, was not to be discouraged, most notably regarding the Biden administration’s unflagging support for Israel and its war in Gaza.
In a filing in the US District Court for the Northern District of California last November, the CCR, representing a number of Palestinian human rights organisations including Palestinians in Gaza and the …
Julian Assange Explains
by Jay Janson / February 7th, 2024
Albert Einstein argued,
[P]rivate capital tends to become concentrated in few hands”, resulting in “an oligarchy of private capital the enormous power of which cannot be effectively checked even by a democratically organised political society.
Moreover, under existing conditions, private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information (press, radio, education).
It is thus extremely difficult, and indeed in most cases quite impossible, for the individual citizen to come to objective conclusions and to make intelligent use of his political rights. [May 1949 edition of socialist magazine Monthly Review]
Thomas Jefferson wrote of Newspapers Lies:
Nothing can now be believed which is …
by Eric Walberg / February 7th, 2024
Muslim apologists argue that, yes, the original Bible contained the apocryphal story of Jesus making and animating clay birds, and that the Quran was actually correcting a wrongful exclusion of this apocryphal from the canon. Fine. Oscar Wilde thumbed his nose at such nitpicking: talent borrows, genius steals. If ‘the Church’ had had its way, this delightful and profound story, an enduring symbol of belief, would only have appeared in the Quran. Given the plethora of gospels in circulation in the 7th century, especially in outposts like Arabia, who knows what other ‘caves of treasures’ have survived only because of …
