• China condemns “heinous attack” on Gaza hospital
• 3rd Belt and Road Forum
• Record number of state visits to China
• Young people go to community kitchens
Where? Everywhere the few live! But there is one land that is the most lawless ever in favor of the few from the beginning of time and evermore, the United States of America (US)! The few, of course, are the few thousand, the power elite of America’s corpocracy, its industry chieftains and subordinate poohbahs in government.[efn_note]Brumback, G.B. The Devil’s Marriage: Break Up the Corpocracy or Leave Democracy in the Lurch. Bloomington, IN, Author House, 2011.[/efn_note] The miniscule few rule and ruin the world and are slowly taking the billions of human beings to extinction later this century, so predict over …
As people got off work on Thursday evening, October 19, the street in front of the Federal Building in San Francisco swelled with a spirited crowd chanting, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” An ocean of demonstrators had stopped traffic as Homeland Security police looked on and a helicopter hovered overhead….
If President Joe Biden were a pony, instead of a perennial warhorse (e.g., gung-ho for Bush/Cheney’s criminal destruction of Iraq), he would have his tail between his legs on his return from a one-day trip to Israel. He failed to achieve any immediate, critical objectives while the ongoing destruction of Gaza and the defenseless Palestinians continues.
Did Biden get Israel and Egypt to allow the exit of hundreds of American citizens fleeing the Gazan firestorm? No!
Did Biden open up corridors for humanitarian aid to the babies, children, women, elderly and other civilians in Gaza who had nothing to do with the October …
Clio, Muse of History, Charles Meynier (1768–1832)
Peter Turchin, author of End Times: Elites, Counter-elites, and the Path of Political Disintegration, (2023), is one of the founders of the new ‘science’ of cliodynamics, a discipline which coalesced in the 1990s, statistical juggling ‘facts’ from the past, stitched together from bare bones (literally) of archeology, climate, geopolitics, crimes, arrests/ executions, wine imports, lots and lots of numbers. There’s probably even a case for kitchen sinks. Think: weather forecasting. My favourite historian, Arnold Toynbee, when asked by a critic what …
Corporate media’s dehumanization of Palestinians, lack of historical context, and repeating hearsay as fact make the current tragedy unintelligible to Americans
by Robin Andersen / October 21st, 2023
On October 6, 2023, Hamas broke out of Gaza, lobbed rockets, and sent fighters into Israeli territory. The attacks killed hundreds of Israeli soldiers and civilians. Images of violence and brutality were recorded and distributed widely over broadcast news over and over again, repeatedly showing abused, bloodied, and crying women and children. The violence was presented with voices of US and Israeli officials asserting that the attack was “unprecedented.” Israel retaliated immediately and bombed the Gaza Strip, one of the most densely populated places on the globe. Photographs of death and destruction ran side …
There has always been something impressive, if slightly idiosyncratic, about political ideas emanating from Pacific states. In recent years, on the world’s largest body of water, the various island states seeing themselves as part of the Blue Pacific have tried to identify a set of principles by which to abide, forming an understanding of the environment that threatens to submerge them. Some sixteen states and territories in the Pacific became the second grouping to establish a nuclear free zone in 1985 via the Treaty of Rarotonga, first proposed by New Zealand at the South Pacific Forum meeting in Tonga in …
Everyone wants peace don’t they, don’t we, and yet our world is beset with violence and conflict.
The latest expression of hate and intolerance is once again in the Palestinian territory of Gaza. Enraged (and somewhat embarrassed) by the barbaric attack on 7 October by Hamas (or the Islamic Resistance Movement), the far right Israeli government, led by chief warmonger Benjamin Netanyahu, predictably, and tragically, launched a ruthless retaliation on the people of Gaza. A brutal response that should be condemned, as the vicious attack by Hamas should also be condemned.
Hamas has governed the Gaza Strip since 2007, it is a …
France’s new Education Minister, Gabriel Attal, launched the 2023 school year with a thunderous announcement: “I decided it will no longer be possible to wear an abaya at school,” he said, in the name of a preposterous conception of secularism (or laïcité) adopted by President Emmanuel Macron.
This “abaya ban” is a serious violation of the fundamental rights of presumed Muslim (i.e., racialized) pupils, who are unfairly stigmatized and discriminated against.
Though he is the youngest Minister of the Fifth Republic, 34-year-old Attal used the oldest and dirtiest trick in the book, namely the politics of scapegoating an oppressed, defenseless minority. Just …
Corporate Capture of India’s Agri Sector Continues
by Colin Todhunter / October 20th, 2023
Bayer, which profits from various environmentally harmful and disease-causing chemicals like glyphosate, has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) “to develop resource-efficient, climate-resilient solutions for crops, varieties, crop protection, weed and mechanization”.
The ICAR, an apex public sector institution, is responsible for co-ordinating agricultural education and research in India. Predatory corporations like Bayer attempt to co-opt government agencies that can provide access to extensive networks in order to wield influence and market products. It’s a key business strategy.
Global warming is consuming vast portions of the planet with a swagger that defies all expectations. Rivers in the Amazon rainforest are drying up. This is not supposed to be happening to such an extent, even during the dry season. After all, it’s a “rainforest” famous for sparkling dew, thick, wet fog with moisture dripping in midair surrounded by an eerie stillness that’s occasionally interrupted by a caw, buzz, shriek, scuttle or click.
“Despite still being in winter, Brazil is expected to record one of the highest temperatures in the world this weekend, comparable to places such as Iran and Iraq. …
Is the West losing their grip on Africa? Africans around the world are rising against neocolonialism and asserting their right to sovereignty and self-determination. Across the Sahel, the African masses have taken to the streets, calling for French troops to leave their lands. BAP not only emphasizes the importance of the liberation of “Francophone Africa” but advocates for the U.S. and NATO to exit Africa.
From the highly militarized U.S. presence through AFRICOM and CIA bases in Niger and throughout other Sahelian states such as Burkina Faso, Mali, Chad, etc, we cannot forget to include them as the hegemonic …
by Cale Holmes and Lawson Adams / October 19th, 2023
From racist tweets to rising hate crimes, the media’s anti-China propaganda has created a climate of aggression. Two weeks ago, a man drove a car into the Chinese consulate in San Francisco, yelling “Where’s the CCP?” Arab Americans have been targeted during the Persian Gulf War, the War on Terror, and U.S.-backed atrocities in Palestine. It’s no surprise that Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders are in the crosshairs of white supremacy as the U.S. targets China. Back in April, a Columbia University found that three in four Chinese Americans said they’d suffered racial discrimination in the past 12 months.
Wounded transferred to the already overwhelmed Al-Shifa Hospital where doctors are performing surgery on the floor and in the halls, mostly without anaesthetics
by Stuart Littlewood / October 19th, 2023
The appalling loss of civilian life at the bombed Ahli Hospital has provoked worldwide outrage accompanied by Israel and Islamic Jihad trading accusations of blame.
Somebody who knows the hospital well is Ang Swee Chai, the orthopaedic surgeon and author. She became the first female consultant orthopaedic surgeon at St Bartholomew’s Hospital in London and is co-founder of the charity Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP).
Responding to an appeal for medical personnel from Christian Aid to treat war casualties in Lebanon, Ang Swee went to work at a hospital near the Sabra and Shatila refugee camp in Beirut where she witnessed the …
It is one thing to read a review of this important and compelling film – a tour de force – and another to watch it. The former fades into insignificance when one takes an hour-and-a-half to immerse oneself in its tragic yet revelatory story. For in it we see and hear a dying man speak eloquently of how he accepted the role that life brought him – a 9/11 truthteller and peace apostle – and now, as he departs the stage, hopes this last effort will ease his exit and help fulfill his mission as a man of peace.
Malak Mattar (Palestine), Last Painting Before the 2021 War, 2021.
This week, from 14–18 October, the Dilemmas of Humanity conference brought together political leaders, activists, and organic intellectuals from around the world to discuss the central problems facing humanity today and strengthen proposals to address them. Gathered in Johannesburg (South Africa), participants watched in horror as Israel escalated its genocidal war against the Palestinian people. On 17 October, the eleventh consecutive day of its bombardment, Israel stunned the world by bombing the …
Is the idea of a “highly organized Israel lobby” antisemitic? An apartheid-promoting Globe and Mail columnist claims as much.
In attacking the Canadian Union of Public Employees for standing in solidarity with Palestinians Robyn Urback tweeted, “Points for alleging a Jewish conspiracy, but if CUPE really wanted to go full antisemitic trope, they should have mentioned something about poisoning the wells.” Below her message Urback quote tweeted a colleague stating, “CUPE Ontario says it’s targeted by ‘trolls’ – ‘a highly organized pro-Israel lobby,’ which targeted [Union president] Fred Hahn and CUPE 3906 for ‘recognition of Palestinians’ rights …
I fully understand the demands–coursing across social media–to condemn Hamas’s recent atrocities as terrorism. From my apartment in Brooklyn, I can only …
I went to the community meeting a few days ago. Around 25 people there, listening to two guests around a community bill of rights, for Lane County (Oregon). You know, the people, citizens, having the say on who and what can come into …
The $64,000 question, especially for all you baby boomers out there, is when exactly did we become a Banana Republic? One should realize that the power of money has always tainted our electoral system. This is why the Super Rich have maintained their position of controlling who rules this empire. Sadly, it seems forever it has been “money talks.” As with the continual rapid decline of our environment, so it mirrors that of our drowning of democracy. Folks, there is NO democracy here!
In 1999, a seemingly innocuous speech occurred in Chicago that unveiled a new paradigm in world affairs that was dubbed “the Blair Doctrine”. In this speech, Tony Blair asserted that the realities of the new age of terrorism had rendered the respect for sovereign nation states irrelevant and obsolete requiring a superior doctrine compatible with the need to periodically bomb sovereign nations you don’t like. This new age of humanitarian bombings would be called “the post-Westphalian age”.
I want to know their names. I want to know the names of every child, every woman, every man. I want to know exactly what they were doing the moment the bombs hit.
Was a nurse staunching a bloody wound? Was a mother leaning over her daughter stroking her forehead? Was a doctor preparing a syringe?
I want to know the stories – the loves, the fears, the memories of each and every one who was struck down so bitterly, so casually, so easily.
Is the Israeli who pushed the button burning with regret? Will he have nightmares for the rest of his …
In Wilhelm von Humboldt’s book The Limits of State Action (1792), one of the most thoughtful expressions of classical liberalism, these passages appear:
The true end of Man… is the highest and most harmonious development of his powers to a complete and consistent whole. Freedom is the first and indispensable condition which the possibility of such a development presupposes… Whatever does not spring from a man’s free choice, or is only the result of instruction and guidance, does not enter into his very being but still remains alien to his true nature; he does not perform it with truly human …
The attacks by Hamas fighters in southern Israel on 7 October, and the Israeli air attacks on Gaza that have followed, and now the unfolding humanitarian disaster there, once again expose fundamental bias in the state-corporate news media. Does news coverage really convey the impression that all lives – Palestinian and Israeli – are of equal value? After all, they surely deserve the same level of humanity and compassion. Do the news media present heart-wrenching stories of individual victims and their grieving families from both sides? And is the full …
It’s not just ‘unlikely’ that a Palestinian rocket hit the Gaza hospital. It’s impossible. The media know this, they just don’t dare say it
by Jonathan Cook / October 18th, 2023
Let’s say it again: The BIGGEST fake news comes from the establishment media. When the stakes are high, it barely bothers to hide its role as mouthpiece for Western propaganda.
This is another Iraqi WMD moment. We are being gaslit. Believe your eyes and ears, and the laws of physics, not the lies being peddled by our leaders and media about last night’s missile strike on the Baptist hospital in Gaza:
1. No Palestinian group has a rocket that can hit a hospital, killing hundreds. What they have are glorified fireworks that can …
I was “interviewed” by an Iranian journalist online (15 October) about the Hamas-Israel conflict and Iran’s involvement. My answers are below.
During the war between Hamas and Israel, some sources in America and their affiliated media reported that Iranian money was blocked in Qatar again, which was later denied. Do you think there was a message hidden in this news?
I have written about this accusation in the United States. For your readers, I want to lay out the reasoning behind the accusations in the United States. The reasons for these accusations are complex, and they have more to do with …
