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 …
The late writer, broadcaster and wit Clive James formulated what he called the ‘Barry Manilow Law’:
‘Everyone you know thinks Barry Manilow is absolutely terrible. But everyone you don’t know thinks he’s great.’ (James, cited Martin Amis, Inside Story, Vintage, 2020, e-book, p.74)
A Media Lens version of this might read:
‘Everyone you know thinks BBC News is absolutely terrible. But everyone you don’t know thinks it’s great.’
The BBC wasn’t always quite this bad. When we started out in 2001, people like Director of News Richard Sambrook and Newsnight editor Peter Barron sent …
Devastation in Ukraine Stokes Fear Among Taiwanese
by John V. Walsh / June 15th, 2023
Bi-khim Hsiao, Taiwan’s Representative in the United States, is a familiar figure in the halls of power but she does not often make public speeches. So a recent talk and press conference by Ms. Hsiao deserve some attention.
The One China Policy, endorsed by the US and UN, does not recognize Taiwan Island as an independent country but as part of China, with the government in Beijing providing the official ambassadors to the US and UN. Hence Hsiao is not an “ambassador” but a “representative,” and her organization is known as the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office (TECRO). Her presence and …
by Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East / June 15th, 2023
CJPME is proud to publish its latest analysis, “Heartbreaking Disparity: Child Detainees in Canada vs. Israel.” The report exposes the cruel and discriminatory treatment that Palestinian child detainees face in Israel’s military court system, and provides a call for action to protect and uphold their rights.
The report is unique in how it compares Canada’s treatment of child detainees to Israel’s treatment of Palestinian child detainees – the first-ever report to do so. In this way, CJPME hopes to make Israel’s abuses even more evident and tangible to Canadians.
Henry A. Murray has much to answer for. Between 1959 and 1961, the Harvard psychology academic, as the leader of a team of equally unprincipled academics, was responsible for conducting an CIA-funded experiment most unethical on twenty-two undergraduates. The individuals in question were pseudonymised. One particularly youthful figure, named “Lawful”, was the mathematically gifted Theodore John Kaczynski.
A central theme of the experiments was examining the effects of stress, characterised by what Murray called “vehement, sweeping, and personally abusive” attacks. Ideals and beliefs were assailed; egos pulverised. For Murray, this came naturally. He had cut his teeth …
Though Western ‘news’ media have gotten their ‘explanation’ of this event from Ukraine’s Government, it never made sense that Russia would have wanted to flood, harm, and weaken, the entire western half of the territory that Russia now controls in the former Ukraine, including in Crimea (which was getting its water-supply from that dam).
The anonymous author of the “Moon of Alabama” website has a long and almost flawless record of accurately exposing realities that mainstream U.S.-and-allied ‘news’-media had been hiding, and the latest such is his June 13 “Did Russia Destroy The Nova Kakhovka Dam?” His …
by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead / June 14th, 2023
The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable.
— H.L. Mencken, “Le Contrat Social” in: Prejudices: Third Series (1922)
And so it continues.
This entire fiasco—indicting Donald Trump for allegedly violating both the Espionage Act and obstructing justice by improperly handling classified records—is merely the latest in a never-ending series of distractions, distortions, and political theater aimed …
New book shows how the U.S. hides the human toll of its military machine
by Kathy Kelly / June 14th, 2023
Following a string of U.S. “forever wars,” a profusion of well-written, often riveting novels, memoirs, and analyses have been published. Talented authors have aimed to promote understanding about the human cost of war.
In the same period, mainstream media sources have continually developed ways to make war appear normal –something necessary, justifiable, or in some cases, “humane.”
The Ukrainian blonde had the smell of trouble. She had perched herself, along with her mute friend, in a restaurant across from the famed South Melbourne Market. On arriving at the modish, glorious bit of real estate known as Tipsy Village, a Polish establishment famed for accented French cuisine, she shrieked: “Why do you have Ruskie dumplings on your menu?”
The Polish host, a man of butter mild manner and infinite tolerance, covered in stout glory, took it in his stride. “That is what they are called where I come from and that is what we serve,” Peter Barnatt stated …
I think it is generally accepted that the practice of medicine has changed radically over the past fifty or so years. The medicalization and corporatization of life have “progressed” simultaneously as most doctors have become obedient servants of the corporate state.
But wait, one may object, and with some justification.
The development of micro-surgical techniques has significantly improved the methods of many operations that were formally very invasive and posed a great risk to the elderly and chronically sick. Many people have had knee, hip, and heart surgeries – to name a few – that would have been problematic or impossible in …
The NDP is supporting the intelligence agencies/arms industry/US empire faction of Canada’s ruling class that is stoking tensions with China. The historically left-wing party has amplified childish Conservative attacks, ignored the views of party backers and supported provocative naval missions.
The NDP responded to the Liberals’ special rapporteur on foreign interference report by amplifying Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre’s attacks against the former Governor General David Johnston. (When Stephen Harper appointed Johnson to lead a public inquiry in 2007 Poilievre called him “very credible” and “very qualified”.) The party presented a motion in the House of Commons urging …
