B lost both her legs in a subway accident. When I met her, she was living in a medical homeless shelter and panhandling daily in a wheelchair. B has four kids who, for a while, were living with her ex. It was not a good scenario. Very long story short: The State eventually took the kids away from him and …
Ron DeSantis was there watching us. We were crying, screaming. We were tied to the feeding chair. And he was watching. He was laughing. Our stomachs could not hold this amount of Ensure. They poured one can after another. So when he approached me, I said, “This is the way we are treated!” He said, “You should eat.” I threw up in his face. Literally on his face.”
– Mansoor Adayfi, held without charge at Guantanamo Bay, 2002-2016, describing force feeding used by guards to break hunger strike
Tax time is coming around for the year, 2022, April 15 in the U$A = The Year of Water Tiger, and that Zodiac went completey 180 degrees the other way:
The 2022 year of the water tiger promises a 15 year of positive changes. Your business will be stable, and finances will flow smoothly throughout the year. This year is favorable for new love and relationships. However, you are advised to make savings that might be needed in the future.
You might know where I am going with this. My spouse and I will pay through the nose …
What are workers? Are they human beings? Do they have only a bundle of muscles but, no brains? How do they feel and how do they think? Do they think at all? What do they face in their life – in factories, in foundries and other shops, in assembly lines, in unions?
Workers’ answers to the questions above differ from the response the workers’ masters present. The factor that draws the delineating line is, in short, class position, which is often blurred while discussing issues of life and work, be it related …
What would happen if the media and intelligence agencies applied the same standard used regarding China to the Israel lobby?
In the Globe and Mail Andrew Coyne has written two columns in recent days arguing that the discussion over Chinese interference should focus on “domestic accomplices.” “What we need a public inquiry to look into is domestic complicity in foreign interference,” noted the regular CBC commentator.
In a similar vein Justin Trudeau responded to criticism regarding purported Chinese interference by noting, “We know that Chinese Canadian parliamentarians, …
February 24 marked one year since Russian troops crossed the border with Ukraine and began its overt military intervention in what was a de facto civil war. From 2014 and the Western intervention resulting in that year’s coup against President Yanukovych, Ukraine has been a divided country engaged in a bitter, violent struggle over its future alignment. Indeed, that struggle had been simmering since Ukraine left the Soviet Union, with roots going back even further. Ukrainian nationalism has almost always sought to link independence with the protection of one powerful sponsor or another.
The Two Sessions, or Lianghui in Mandarin, are the simultaneous meetings of the National People’s Congress and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference. The National People’s Congress is a legislative body and the highest authority of the Chinese state. The Consultative Conference is a united front political advisory and consultation organization with no legislative or executive functions. During the Two Sessions, the state goals for the rest of the year are established.
What is our very nature as human beings? Philosophers, poets, psychologists and other human beings ad nauseam down through the ages have addressed that question. Is it presumptuous or arrogant of me to chime in with my two cents? Or make it three cents since I will “only” tackle three attributes of human nature; thinking, believing, and seeing. To be sure, though, they comprise a big chunk of our human nature.
Before continuing to read the rest of this article ask yourself what you think or believe you will see. The more knowledge you have about the subjects of human nature, …
A battle over how to protect the planet from overheating is heating up.
Academics are coming out of the woodwork, forming coalitions, issuing declarations. A subdued debate over the merits versus demerits of solar geoengineering (SRM) has been ongoing for years. Now battle lines are forming.
The SRM controversy is coming to a head, in part, because of a small two-person startup company named Make Sunsets launching weather balloons filled with reflective sulfur particles off the coast of Baja, California with the bold idea of testing whether it is realistic to reflect sun radiation back to outer space and thus help …
Questions From a Worker Who Reads (Bertolt Brecht 1935)
Who built Thebes of the 7 gates?
In the books you will read the names of kings.
Did the kings haul up the lumps of rock?
And Babylon, many times demolished,
Who raised it up so many times?
In what houses of gold glittering Lima did its builders live?
Sheikh Zayed Road, Dubai, UAE (Photo: Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin)
Maybe the closest we can get to Elon Musk’s vision of Mars is a visit to Dubai. Imagine an alien planet where you can only live in the base settlement with a …
What the Dominion Voting System Tells Us About How the Media Sacrificed their Credibility to Partisan Falsehoods
by Nolan Higdon / March 10th, 2023
“This is direct evidence of knowing falsity” exclaimed RonNell Anderson Jones, Professor of Law at the University of Utah, in a February 2023 interview with Jon Stewart. Jones noted that in most defamation cases “the likelihood that you will find evidence of them [news outlets] saying, ‘We know this is a lie and we would like to move forward with it anyway is deeply unlikely.’” However, in the case of Dominion Voting Systems v. Fox News, “the filing contains just this trove of evidence of emails and text messages and internal memos that are ‘rare’ both in terms of …
What does it mean to think dogmatically about something? On the surface, dogmatism seems associated with religious beliefs. While most world religions can be dogmatic, this implies there is no dogmatism outside of religion. We know that is not true. Many people accuse socialists of being dogmatic. In fact, socialists accuse each other of the same thing. Instead of looking at dogmatism as connected to content, to a particular set of beliefs, suppose we treat dogmatism as a process that can be applied to any …
With each crossing of the street, with the tempo and multiplicity of economic, occupational and social life, the city sets up a deep contrast with small town and rural life with reference to the sensory foundations of psychic life.
— Georg Simmel ((Georg Simmel. “The Metropolis and Mental Life” (1903). Anthologized in many sociology article-texts.))
Five thousand years ago, the first cities emerged as, and remain today, marketplaces–concentrated centers of trade, commerce, finance. Qualitative values–sentimental, aesthetic, empathic–are replaced by quantitative ones, which could be summed up in the phrase: “How much?” In the beginning, monumental architecture symbolized the awe-inspiring omnipotence of …
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has now moved the Doomsday Clock to 90 seconds to midnight, the closest it has been to the symbolic time of the annihilation of humanity and the Earth since 1947. This is alarming, which is why leaders in the Global South have been making the case to halt the warmongering over Ukraine and against China. As Namibia’s Prime Minister Saara Kuugongelwa-Amadhila …
Most people,who are interested in world politics have some knowledge of the 1953 coup in Iran by the CIA and the British Intelligence Service that ended up overthrowing the democratic Prime Minister, Mohammad Mossadeq, restoring the Shah, the dictator, who had escaped to Europe, back to power.
Well, the bad blood between the US and Iran has not stopped. I dare say most people are not aware that, SEVENTY years later, the CIA, and other Western powers, using over sixty TV/radio stations, mostly in the Los Angeles area, broadcast their lies and propaganda day after day while they attempt to poison …
Ten years ago on March 5, 2013, Hugo Chávez, president of Venezuela, died. A piece I wrote 10 years ago called “Ten Things I Learned from Hugo Chávez” is below.
Presente! is a word used in Latin America to affirm that those who have passed are still a part of the living, and remain in our hearts and minds. Presente certainly applies to Hugo Chávez.
Section 3 below describes how the old Venezuelan oligarchy suffered backfire effects. That just might be happening these days in the US. There are ways in which life …
Corrientes Avenue, Buenos Aires Photo: Bill Hackwell
As the sun was setting in Buenos Aires this past Saturday, the vibrant Corrientes Avenue that goes through the center of the city was shut down. Corrientes is closely connected to Argentine culture; lined with theaters and bookstores and on this occasion it was dedicated to The Night of the Libraries and honoring 40 years of democracy since the bloody dictatorship. Reading, educating and never forgetting those dark years of the 1970s when the US backed Argentine military killed, or disappeared, over 30,000 people is …
No, I am not a surgeon. I am an organizational not a clinical psychologist. What, you might wonder, then, gives me any authority on this subject. Having written probably thousands of words about it over the decades probably gives me sufficient cache. Readers, you be the judge of whether I have overstepped my limits at the end of this short article.
The Four Parts of Life: The Human Equation
I conceived the human equation decades ago. It could just be the most important non-mathematical equation in human life. Here is what it looks like:
Person + Context = Behavior and Consequences.
Broad Coalition Drew Thousands in First National Antiwar Protest
by John V. Walsh / March 8th, 2023
Thousands of people assembled at the Lincoln Memorial on February 19 to protest the US proxy war using Ukrainians as cannon fodder to bring down Russia. It took as its name “Rage Against The War Machine.” And it sought to bring together people of all political persuasions in opposing the war. “Everyone in; no one out,” an invitation might have been framed.
Not only was it the first national demonstration against Joe Biden’s cruel proxy war; it was the first to be live streamed and is now archived …
The following text tells the whole story of what pro-Palestinian communities around the world are fighting for, and what pro-Israelis are fighting against: “We are delighted to report that Chelsea and Westminster Hospital has removed a display of artwork designed by children from Gaza.”
That was the summary of a news report published on the homepage of the pro-Israel group, UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI). The group is credited for being the party that managed to successfully persuade the administration of a hospital in West London to take down a few pieces of …
In 1998, the United Nation’s humanitarian coordinator in Iraq, Denis Halliday, resigned in protest against UN Security Council sanctions on Iraq, using the term ‘genocide’ when he explained reasons for his resignation.
Before Halliday’s resignation, the US ambassador to the UN, Madeleine Albright had been asked if she thought the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children from US sanctions were worth it. She replied: ”I think that is a very hard choice, but the price, we think, the price is worth it.”
Australia’s strategic allies in the UNSC – America and Britain – had voted for the sanctions on Iraq, while …
by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead / March 7th, 2023
Experience teaches us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government’s purposes are beneficent.
—Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis
There was a time when the census was just a head count.
That is no longer the case.
The American Community Survey (ACS), sent to about 3.5 million homes every year, is the byproduct of a government that believes it has the right to know all of your personal business.
If you haven’t already received an ACS, it’s just a matter of time.
The purpose of this article is to explore the making of choices, a subject that is not nearly as simple or commonplace as it may seem.
Choice and Power, You, My Liberty Quotient and the Corpocracy’s Power Elite
Choice and Power. To state the obvious, more powerful people can make and have implemented monumental choices whenever they choose to do so. In stark contrast, how many different choices can a homeless person make?
You. Now, think of yourself. You chose to read this article. How many choices did you make, say, yesterday? Probably a lot without even you’re recognizing you were …
The story is not about Irwin Cotler lying. It’s about the media embracing a biographical detail because they support the US empire and Zionism.
Seven years ago, the South African ambassador to Venezuela Pandit Thaninga Shope-Linney stated plainly that “Irwin Cotler was not Nelson Mandela’s lawyer.” Three years later Max Blumenthal pointed out that “in Nelson Mandela’s memoir, The Long March to Freedom, there is no mention of Irwin Cotler.” Recently Davide Mastracci demolished the claim that the establishment’s human rights darling was a lawyer …
Diligently, obediently and with a degree of dangerous imbecility, a number of Australian media outlets are manufacturing a consensus for war with a country that has never been a natural, historical enemy, nor sought to be. But as Australia remains the satellite of a Sino-suspicious US imperium, its officials and their dutiful advocates in the press seem obligated to pave the way for conflict.
The latest example of this came in articles run in the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age of Melbourne. The premise is already clear from the columnists, Peter Hartcher and Matthew Knott. Australia faces a “Red Alert”, …
The result is that Europeans are experiencing an energy crisis, and Germany in particular faces deindustrialisation. The Ukraine situation is not just a NATO proxy war with Russia. It is also a trade and energy war inflicted by the US on Europe.
