Through a WhatsApp message from Portugal, my friend Eunice Neves asked to share a moment with me. She was with an Afghan couple, Frishta and Mohammad, and their baby son, Arsalan. The young family has resettled in Mértola, a small city in southern Portugal. They looked forward to celebrating World Refugee Day as part of a project which the Portuguese government lauds as a model for refugee resettlement.
I had first met Frishta in 2015 when she was a volunteer teacher, in Kabul, Afghanistan. At a school for “street kids” she helped …
As guilt mounts over humanity’s inaction in the face of the climate crisis, industrialized capitalists have adapted their tactics to meet the demands of a more environmentally conscious market; by selling the image of sustainability!
Touted as the green transportation of the future, demand has exploded for electric cars. This has, in turn, increased the demand for lithium and other rare earth metals, with corporations rushing to open as many new mines as possible. Indigenous elders have been at the forefront of resistance to this latest wave of extractive capitalism, particularly in Peehee Mu’huh also known as Thacker Pass, Nevada, where …
by Mike Pappas and Dimitri Mugianis / June 21st, 2023
Excitement around psychedelics continues to grow with thousands set to attend the Psychedelic Science conference in Denver this week. Proponents in the psychedelic space have promoted a strategy to focus on the “medicalization” to gain wider societal acceptance. But this could lead psychedelics to come under greater control, ensuring that they serve as profitable tools to maintain the status quo.
In 1972 Stanley K. Sheinbaum, chairman of the Pentagon Papers Fund, wrote with a hot pertinence that remains striking (at this time Julian Assange is facing grave prospects of being extradited to the United States) that both Daniel Ellsberg and Anthony Russo had “struck a blow for us all when they gave the Pentagon Papers to the press and to the Senate: against the war in Vietnam and against new adventures in Cambodia, Laos, or elsewhere”. And more besides, including striking against government secrecy in both domestic and foreign policy and directing a blow “for freedom of the …
by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead / June 20th, 2023
Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.
— Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, Aphorism 146
We’re not dealing with a government that exists to serve its people, protect their liberties and ensure their happiness.
Rather, we are the unfortunate victims of the diabolical machinations of a make-works program carried out on an epic scale whose only purpose is to keep the powers-that-be permanently (and profitably) employed.
Case in point: the FBI.
The government’s henchmen have become the embodiment of how power, once acquired, can be so easily corrupted and abused. Indeed, far from being …
The Palestinian solidarity movement must seek to disrupt the ‘school to apartheid promotion pipeline’. It’s past time to challenge private schools indoctrinating young minds into worshiping a violent faraway state that oppresses millions.
A recent visit to Canada by Israel’s minister for Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism, Amichai Chikli, highlights a subject that requires far more critical attention. The Israeli Embassy Twitter account noted, “The purpose of Minister Chikli’s visit is to study unique examples of Jewish education in Canada and how this can be replicated across North …
Amid an unprecedented wave of censorship, many of our state legislators have left no mercy for LGBTQ+ Texans. Censorious legislation like House Bill 900 and Senate Bill 13 attempt to relate queer identity with sexual obscenity. The bills target educators’ expertise and diminish students’ right to …
Dear future students wishing to come to Australia and study: don’t. The gurgling, decaying system is, on a regular basis, being exposed for what it is. If it is not students being exploited, its academics being manipulated to the point of ruinous ill-health. True, not all universities are equally rotten in the constellation of corporate manipulation, but each one is rotten in a slightly different way.
The nature of the rot starts at the top – a conventional wisdom. And that rot features workloads of an unrealistic nature (too many classes; unrecognised grading efforts; questionable budgets), all padding for the bloated …
by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies / June 19th, 2023
“Plans love silence. There’ll be no announcement of the start.” Photo credit: Ukraine Defense Ministry
As Ukraine prepared to launch its much heralded but long delayed counteroffensive, the media published a photograph of a Ukrainian soldier with his finger on his lips, symbolizing the need for secrecy to retain some element of surprise for this widely telegraphed operation.
Now that the offensive has been under way for two weeks, it is clear that the Ukrainian government and its Western allies are maintaining silence for quite a different reason: to conceal the brutal cost Ukraine’s brave young …
During the economic crisis in 2008, the United States sought China’s aid. US treasury secretary Hank Paulson conferred with Chinese officials, and China agreed to increase the value of the RMB and to stop selling US T-bills which it had been doing at that time.
Paulson said, “It is clear that China accepts its responsibility as a major world economy that …
(The name Henry Ford came up in a comment thread recently so I thought it’d be helpful to offer some lost context.)
Henry Ford, the autocratic magnate who despised unions, tyrannized workers, and fired any employee caught driving a competitor’s model, was also an outspoken anti-Semite.
In 1918, he bought and ran a newspaper, The Dearborn Independent, that became an anti-Jewish forum. The May 22, 1920 headline blared, “The International Jew: The World’s Problem,” and thus began a series of ninety-two articles, including “The Jewish Associates of Benedict Arnold” and “The Gentle …
The evidence is starting to build that all bets are off on predictions that humanity has a decade, or more, of clear sailing before global warming turns vicious enough to run roughshod over climate change deniers and the mean-spirited, anti-climate-change Republican Party. Voters better smarten up by 2024 or suffer the consequences. At least the Democrats enacted a partial baby-sized climate bill. Give’em credit.
Recent reports from Copernicus, the EU Earth Observation Programme, and Dr. James Hansen, Earth Institute Columbia University, point to the risks of an earlier than expected upside breakout …
+21% Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
+9% Elon Musk
+9% Tim Scott
+8% Vivek Ramaswamy
+5% Ron DeSantis
+4% Nikki Haley
-1% Bernie Sanders
-3% Donald Trump, Doug Bergum, Ted Cruz
-6% Maryanne Williamson
-7% Kevin McCarthy, Mike Pence, Asa Hutchinson
-8% Chuck Schumer
-10% Kamala Harris, Joe Manchin, Gavin Newsom
-11% Joe Biden
-12% Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
-16% Chris Christie
-17% Hillary Clinton
-24% Mitch McConnell
Kennedy is tied with Trump for “Favorable” at 45% for each, but whereas Trump has …
Boris JohnsonThe agent of chaos is at it again. Boris Johnson, frontman of the Brexit disaster show, prime minister responsible for breaking regulations, rules and laws, and overall self-serving gross figure of indulgence, has decided to throw in the towel. He is leaving the House of Commons. The time had come for him to walk to the cricketing Pavilion, accepting the Umpire’s verdict.
Not that Johnson was exactly thrilled with the decision. The findings of the House of Commons Privileges Committee in what is known as …
Daniel Ellsberg has died at the age of 92. For those not fully familiar with his significance, I’ll reshare something I wrote six months ago:
Never forget the Pentagon Papers & the importance of brave resistance now
It should be obvious to everyone that the US left is in difficult straits. It is not even remotely clear who or what counts as left in this country.
To most — encouraged by the capitalist media — the left is the Democratic Party. But that must undoubtedly be mistaken. To be left, one surely has to be outside of the centers of power, looking in; and that certainly is not true of the Democrats and their leaders. Since the beginning of the modern two-party system, the Democrats have been the Pepsi to the Republican Coke, taking its turn in ruling. …
Will the People Counter with Ethical and Enforceable Legal Frameworks?
by Ralph Nader / June 17th, 2023
Rick Claypool is a level-headed policy analyst and number-cruncher for Public Citizen, who is known for reporting the decline in corporate crime enforcement with each succeeding Presidency. (Biden less than Trump). His latest report (with Cheyenne Hunt) clearly shows him in an unusually agitated state. Its title is “‘Sorry in Advance!’ Rapid Rush to Deploy Generative A.I. Risks a Wide Array of Automated Harms.”
Claypool is not engaging in hyperbole or horrible hypotheticals concerning Chatbots controlling humanity. He is extrapolating from what is already starting to happen in almost every sector of our society.
Time itself is neutral; it can be used either destructively or constructively. More and more I feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than have the people of good will. We have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people. Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men and women willing to be coworkers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the …
They think we are mugs – and it’s insulting. It’s all fine for politicians to be swimming, swerving and tossing about in the goo of paranoia that is surveillance, chatting to the ghost called foreign interference; but to expect the rest of the citizenry to be morons is rather poor form. But the formula has always been such: We terrify you; you vote us in, and we increase the budget of the national security state.
Regarding the business of the Russian embassy site in Canberra, this is all the more stunning. Australia’s parliamentarians rarely pass bills and motions at such speed, …
by Bill Scheuerman and Sid Plotkin / June 16th, 2023
Since the end of the Covid-19 pandemic, headlines have focused on union organizing victories at Starbucks and Amazon. But a recent New York Times story declaring “New York Delivery Workers Are Getting a Bump in Pay” reminds us that workers outside the union movement are part of the labor movement too. However important, unions are just one part of a larger labor movement that consists of all workers who collectively struggle to improve their conditions of employment, whether through union based collective bargaining or by taking to the streets for political …
For thirty years I have taken my father’s name in the vain hope that some of his exquisite writing and character would be recognized through his son’s hand. When he died in 1993, I was devastated. I was the middle child squeezed between seven sisters.
As the only son, my father and I had a very special bond, heralded by my being named after him and sealed by an intimacy exclusive to the two males in the family. When he died, I became the oldest man …
Since 1997, the U.S. is one of only two countries (the other being New Zealand) that allows direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising for health products like medications and procedures. Such DTC advertising in the U.S. increased from $2.1 billion in 1997 to $9.6 billion in 2016 — and continues to rise.
And you wonder why two-thirds of the country literally trust Big Pharma with their lives.
A new mood of defiance in the Global South has generated bewilderment in the capitals of the Triad (the United States, Europe, and Japan), where officials are struggling to answer why governments in the Global South have not accepted the Western view of the conflict in Ukraine or universally supported the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) in its efforts to ‘weaken Russia’. Governments that had long been pliant to the Triad’s wishes, …
According to the Ukrainian Minister of Defense, Kiev’s sponsors reportedly demanded that the regime eliminate as many Russians as possible as a condition for sending weapons. The case shows how the West really does not expect a Ukrainian victory on the battlefield, only seeking to weaken Russia as much as possible.
Kiev’s defense chief Aleksey Reznikov claimed during an interview to Foreign Policy that Western supporters, before establishing a policy of unlimited military aid, demanded from Ukraine that as many Russian citizens as possible be killed. Once the extermination of Russians is guaranteed, Western support will be maintained “as long …
In Part I of this article, I contrasted the differences between rising Multipolarism with a declining Anglo-American empire. Taking the side of the multipolarists of the East, I identified Lyndon LaRouche as someone who bridged the gap between East and West.
His concept of “The American system” defends the Enlightenment as the movement to look to if the west is going to join the multipolar world. I also presented Matthew Ehret’s book The Clash of the Two Americas: Volume I The Unfinished Sympathy as a concrete example of the …
