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It involved bringing out the irregular or peculiar from society’s peripheries – at least as popularly perceived at the time. Granted a national, broadcasting stage, various persons of despair would perform, if only for a spectacular, brief moment. Cue the chants of a studio audience and the threat of physical confrontation. And the late Jerry Springer, former news reporter and Cincinnati mayor, would be there, willing to market the performance and throw these samples of humanity upon screen and audience. Before the idea of incendiary, vapid reality television, there was The Jerry Springer Show.

It all began on the fifth-floor studio …

The former Australian Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, has been somewhat of an absentee in the Federal seat of Cook. Since losing the May 2022 election, he has been aggressively chasing up contacts and deals on the consultancy circuit, bellyaching about the usual talking points: the gruesome China menace; defence matters; and, just to round it off for good measure, additional iterations of the China menace.

In March, he proved particularly jingoistic, telling Sky News Australia that Canberra needed, not only its “own capability” but “the interlocking alignments and alliances that actually provide the counterbalance to the threat.” This was …

Think “out-of-this-universe” rights (Universal Rights, my ass), hint hint, chuckle chuckle. Universal Rights Given to Us By Whom? In USA? This is a joke beyond jokes.

I was at a Chamber (local) meeting with 50 folk. Yesterday. Yeah, jolly jolly, out to a community college room, with pastries from the local bakery, and people there wondering really what the art world future of the little 2,100 populous Waldport has in store. Art? Crafts? This is delusion. Not real jobs, real community buttressing, real services, bringing in older people to live and survive in nice facilities, townhomes, what have you, with a …

“They hate our freedoms.” — US president George W Bush addresses the nation, 20 September 2001

Detail of: Birender Kumar Yadav (India), Debris of Fate, 2015.

In late 2022, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) released a fascinating report entitled Working Time and Work-Life Balance Around the World, in large part encouraged by a slew of initiatives across India to extend the workday. The report accumulated global data on the time spent at work in 2019, before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. The ILO found that ‘approximately one third of the global workforce (35.4 percent) worked more than 48 hours …

In a society built on lies, the search for truth is a game.

Consider the debate surrounding alleged ‘threats’ to the BBC’s ‘independence’, even as the BBC itself reports of its outgoing chairman:

‘As for Mr Sharp’s departure, I understand conversations between the BBC and the government have been had in recent days. You’d expect that.

‘The BBC chairman is a political appointment.’

If that doesn’t justify Twitter labelling every BBC journalist ‘UK state-affiliated media’, we don’t know what does.

Or consider how, cap in hand, the Guardian now presents itself …

It’s understandable that, when the Senate Dems need 50 of their 51 members to vote on something for it to pass, Joe Manchin and Krysten Sinema have a lot more influence than they should. But it has been maddening to see, on the one hand, corrupt coal baron Joe Manchin using that power to advance his and corporate fossil fuelers’ interests as head of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee while, on the other hand, President Joe Biden says nothing publicly to counter him.

Over a year ago Manchin effectively took over FERC, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. This happened …

In his 1987 book The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, historian Paul Kennedy reassured Americans that the decline the United States was facing after a century of international dominance was “relative and not absolute, and is therefore perfectly natural; and that the only serious threat to the real interests of the United States can come from a failure to adjust sensibly to the newer world order.”

Since Kennedy wrote those words, we have seen the end of the Cold War, the peaceful emergence of China as a leading world power, …

In Pisces Moon: The Dark Arts of Empire, Douglas Valentine descends into some of the most sinister aspects of US foreign policy. These include drug running, illegal arms sales, bribery, human and artifact trafficking, far right coups, assassinations, agitprop and disinformation, as well as fiefdoms set up by former CIA and their assets that are rife with slavery, pedophilia and sadistic sex. Pisces Moon creates a mixture of the personal and historical, an intimate Heart of Darkness, that in moments captures the poisonous fog that inhabits Coppola’s …

The world has been haunted by human violence since time immemorial. There are untold millions (billions?) of people all over the world who have been scarred by it in all its forms.  There are two basic responses: one is to try to return that violence with violence and defeat one’s enemy; the other is, in Martin Luther King, Jr.’s words, to “not seek to defeat or humiliate the opponent, but to win his friendship and understanding” through a non-violent response.  Politicians usually embrace the former, while those who are called dreamers advocate the latter.

Between these two, there are various mixed …

President Joseph Biden has done what many from his own party dreaded but dare not say. Last month, via a painful video, the aged Democrat declared his candidacy for a second term in the White House, branding himself a defender of US democracy. For a politician lacking the mettle of competence, awareness, and, at certain points, basic clarity of the world he inhabits, this was astonishing. The doddery are in; the young, or younger, are frowned upon as incapable of taking the mantle.

The result is a candidate being …

Everyone who abhors war, detests imperialism, and favors cooperation between nations on global warming, poverty reduction, protection of biodiversity, international disarmament, implementation of international law, and other left-wing priorities ought to be appalled by the escalating tensions between the U.S. and China and actively organizing against them. The new Cold War between “East” (including Russia) and “West” is more dangerous than the first one, not only in having already provoked a proxy war between great powers in Europe itself, and not only in undermining any progress toward goals that are urgent for all of humanity, but also in preparing …

Why do the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the World Bank– three of the most highly regarded international economic organizations-project a bleak road ahead for the global economy?

Ominously, the World Bank warns of the possibility of a coming “lost decade” for economic growth.

In January of this year, the World Bank dropped its global growth projection for 2023 to 1.7% from its June of 2022 projection of 3%. To put some perspective on the number, during the era of high globalization before the 2007-9 crash, global growth averaged 3.5%. Since the crisis, growth has averaged 2.8%. …

The vast majority of the U.S. Government’s purchases are for the military, and most of that is paying for weapons and for enabling America’s troops to use them.

For example, in the 3 April 2018 “OMB and Congressional Budget Office estimates of discretionary new budget authority” that “The President signed … into law on March 23, 2018”, was the “OMB TOTAL, DEFENSE APPROPRIATIONS … 654,621” billion dollars. Not included in that sum was “MILITARY CONSTRUCTION AND VETERANS AFFAIRS APPROPRIATIONS … OMB Non-Defense Category Subtotal (including CHIMPs) … 81,876,” all of which is actually military (it wouldn’t even …

When the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW aka The Wobblies) was established in 1905, their goal was to see One Big Union formed in the USA. The Wobblies came from the socialist Western Federation of Miners organization led by William D Haywood. Up to that point the major union organization at the time was the AFL (American Federation of Labor) which was a gaggle of many autonomous unions. Sadly, the AFL and its member unions only represented high skilled and high paid workers. They refused to encompass the majority of …