Latest articles
by Ellen Brown / February 16th, 2024
The “protected class” is granted “safe harbor” only because their bets are so risky that to let them fail could crash the economy. But why let them bet at all?
This is a sequel to a January 15 article titled “Casino Capitalism and the Derivatives Market: Time for Another ‘Lehman Moment’?”, discussing the threat of a 2024 “black swan” event that could pop the derivatives bubble. That bubble is now over ten times the GDP of the world and is so interconnected and fragile that an unanticipated crisis could trigger the collapse not just of the bubble but of the …
by Robert Hunziker / February 16th, 2024
Sixty-seven (67) countries have banned paraquat, a toxic chemical used to control weeds that was discovered in the 1950s subsequently widely used throughout the world in agriculture. Despite a deadly toxic reputation, it’s still used throughout America. Moreover, it’s a cheap effective product used as a common pesticide by third-world countries that do not proactively regulate chemical products.
As of 2024, the US EPA, once again, reapproved paraquat in the face of stiff public opposition and criticism via a slew of negative scientific studies. With more than 60 major developed countries banning the product, why is the United States still onboard?
Syngenta …
by Paul Larudee / February 16th, 2024
Hospitals are prime strategic targets of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza. The Nasser hospital in Rafah is the only major one still standing, along with a handful of smaller ones. All the rest have been destroyed, along with many of the patients and medical staff. Many have been slaughtered, while the helpless have been left to die, like the premature babies in their incubators, simply abandoned to the inevitable. Doctors and other personnel have been taken captive for an unknown length of time. Even the Nasser hospital is no longer functioning, having been taken over by Israeli soldiers, and all …
by Roger D. Harris / February 15th, 2024
Upon assuming the US presidency, Joe Biden asserted in his first major foreign policy address, “America is back!” For Latin America and the Caribbean, this has meant an “aggressive expansion” of the US military in the region.
In just the last year, US Marines and special forces landed in Peru in May 2023, brought in by the unelected rightwing government to address internal unrest. In October, the US got the UN Security Council to approve the military occupation of Haiti using proxy troops from Kenya. Also in October, the rightwing government of Ecuador resorted to …
by Binoy Kampmark / February 15th, 2024
There are few surprises regarding the final episode of Nemesis, the three-part account on how the Australian Liberal Party, in partnership with the dozy Nationals, psychotically and convulsively disembowelled themselves from the time Tony Abbott won office in 2013. Over the muddy gore and violence concluding the tenures of Abbott and Malcolm Turnbull, one plotter rose, knife bloodied and brimming with confidence: Scott Morrison. As always, he claims to have done so without a trace. That, dear readers, is the way of all advertising men.
The inconspicuous rise of Morrison heralded a bankrupt political culture, one of smeary gloss, smug …
by Roger D. Harris / February 15th, 2024
Even the US business magazine Forbes expressed surprise at the reimposition of US sanctions on Venezuela’s gold sales and its threat to do the same with oil. The oil sanctions especially, if reinstated, would precipitate higher gas prices and further debilitate the Venezuelan economy, forcing more people to leave the country out of economic necessity.
The Venezuelan government, for its part, has not been contrite. Vice President Delcy Rodríguez protested “the wrong step of intensifying economic aggression against Venezuela.” She warned that if Washington takes the threatened measures, Venezuela will cancel repatriation flights returning Venezuelan immigrants back from …
by Edward Curtin / February 14th, 2024
Despite calendars and clocks and all the mental gymnastics we use to control life and time, surprises are at the heart of existence. This may seem like a truism, but if so, it is one of those truths we often avoid in our desire for stability and the quelling of anxiety. Our expectations, a form of knowledge based on the past, are efforts to avoid pain and the joy of the new. They are often scarecrows to frighten away reality, as Ortega y Gassett put it. Habits of mind meant to forget that life is an experiment yet to be …
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 …
