by Phoebe Sorgen, Jennifer Sullivan, and Dianne Blais / March 7th, 2023
The Alliance for Global Justice sent out an invitation to apply for “Women In Nicaragua: Power & Protagonism” Jan. 7-16, 2023. How did this nation close the gender gap by 80% in just 15 years? Three women who had met in the Green Party decided to find out. We were accepted as delegates on the brigade and flew in from California, Florida, and Virginia.
From the Sandino International Airport, it’s a short ride to Casa Benjamin Linder, a charming retreat graced with hammocks, a hot tub, and inspiring murals. Linder …
Even before the attack on the homeland of the weather balloons,
the Havana Syndrome tested America’s mettle.
The Havana Syndrome was first reported in Cuba in 2016. The mysterious malady initially afflicted US embassy staff in Havana, especially those attached to intelligence missions. It then spread to Canadian embassy officials. The sudden headaches, debilitating dizziness, and hearing excruciatingly painful sounds struck both at work and at home. Oddly, the Cubans themselves appeared immune to the pathology.
Soon other cases of what the US Defense Department called “anomalous health incidents” (AHIs) were reported in Russia, China, Colombia, Uzbekistan, …
My colleague Rachel Yehuda studied rates of PTSD in adult New Yorkers who had been assaulted or rapes. Those whose mothers were Holocaust survivors with PTSD had a significantly higher rate of developing serious psychological problems after these traumatic experiences. The most reasonable explanation is that their upbringing had left them with a vulnerable physiology, making it difficult for them to regain their equilibrium after being violated. Yehuda found a similar vulnerability in the children of pregnant women who were in the World Trade Center that fatal day in 2001. Similarly, the reactions of children to painful events are …
Following the January mobilization to protest the removal from office of Peru’s Indigenous President Pedro Castillo, unofficial reports indicate continuing resistance to the Dina Boluarte assumed Presidency.
The Boluarte government is backed by an extreme right Parliament and the country’s military. As well as the U.S. and Canada alone among countries of the Americas. It represents the multinational corporate resource stripping interests (in Peru this includes China’s copper mining and U.S. gold mining) of an elite. The Boluarte government has murdered over sixty protesters, placed roadblocks throughout the country and regions under …
On Saturday, March 4, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, at the G20 meeting in Delhi, announced that because the EU has refused to comply with its side of the U.N.-brokered 27 July 2022 “Grain [and fertilizer] Deal” that the U.N. brokered in Istanbul on 27 July 2022, Russia will likewise not comply with it, starting on March 18.
On February 8, Reuters had headlined “Russia: EU not fulfilling promises on grain deal,” and reported that the deal was in jeopardy because of the EU’s continued violations of it that were supplying super-inexpensive food to the EU …
Why the latest chapter of the forever war only fools the usual suspects
by Daniel Patrick Welch / March 6th, 2023
This is a US war on Russia. Period.
We have to be very clear, even to the point of being blunt. By ‘we’ I mean those of us involved who are conscious of being part of an Information War–the propaganda war that we are recipients of—on the receiving end of this tsunami of crap. We have to say things flat without fear and without compromise. This is a US war on Russia. Period. Now why do we have to say this? Why should we say it so bluntly?
The propaganda matrix is so powerful that people, especially within the bubble–that is, within …
The scene is unforgettable and unforgivable: an elected official, the deputy prime minister of Australia, cutting loose about a fish species introduced into the country by his ancestors, and demanding their annihilation. During the near-lunatic display by Barnaby Joyce, even his own colleagues betrayed embarrassment and alarm at the full-throated shrieks of “carp, carp”. With crazed eyes and crimson face, Joyce went on to assure fellow parliamentarians that viral weapons will be deployed against the common carp, otherwise known as Cyprinus carpio. The cannonade of ecological warfare had been announced, though preparations for the war had long been …
The sooner the war in Ukraine is over, the sooner the U.S. and Russia can get down to the business of preserving arms control as a viable part of the relationship between the two nations.
By seeking to extend the Ukraine conflict, however, the U.S. is in effect engaging in an act of self-immolation that threatens to engulf the world in a nuclear holocaust.
— former United States Marine Corps intelligence officer Scott Ritter
It is an imperative, and it must be a universal principle of all …
Over the last week or so, Australian politicians and representatives of the university sector got busy pressing flesh in India, hoping to open avenues that have largely remained aspirational. It was timed to coincide with G20 talks in New Delhi, which has seen a flurry of contentious meetings traversing security, economics and education, all taking place in the shadow of the Ukraine War.
A starring outcome of the various discussions was an agreement between Canberra and New Delhi to ensure the mutual recognition of qualifications. On March 3, the Australian Minister for Education, Jason Clare, stated in a media …
Certainty closes the minds of those possessing the Truth from on High. These darlings of the gods may even feel sorry for those benighted Unfortunates with the temerity of disagreeing with them and try to persuade them to see reason to save them from themselves.
As the blood-stained pages of history amply attest, dogmatists may try to convert, persecute, torture, or even burn their victims at the stake for their own good. Dogmatic certainty can be a very dangerous thing and turn the powerful of this world into monsters about a difference of opinion.
There’s a disturbing dynamic that occurs on every Manhattan street corner — virtually every minute of every day. By simply watching the typical New York City pedestrian as they reach the corner at a red light, you get a pretty good idea of what it’s like to deal with an overcrowded, rancorous metropolitan area on a daily basis. No one waits on the sidewalk.
Even if a thousand cars are racing by, practically every single New Yorker insists on stepping a few steps out into the street while waiting for …
I was calling it many variations on the theme, greenwashing, many many propagandistic things, like green-scamming, green-sheening, and eco-porn. Here, a 1992 article, man, so long long ago, almost forgotten :
Eco-pornography is the advertising of a product as “environmentally friendly,” when in fact, some unmentioned aspect of the product (or its production and distribution) has notably deleterious effects on the environment. Ecological impact is …
by Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East / March 4th, 2023
During a cross-cultural activity, a Park West School in Halifax forced Palestinian-Canadian students to remove the Kufiyahs they had worn as part of the activity. The principle justified banning the kufiyah (Palestinian scarf) saying it represented “war colors.” Students who did not comply were sent to the principal’s office. Such anti-Palestinian racism must be rejected: the school and the school board must publicly apologize and adopt a zero-tolerance policy on anti-Palestinian racism through their equity frameworks.
• Local officials become influencers
• Schools strengthen digital education
• Expanding GM soybean and corn areas
• Iraq will use yuan in oil trade with China
If you believe the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and Conservatives, the Chinese own a backbench Liberal MP, which has been front page news recently. But no one mentions Washington’s possession of our military.
According to a leak reportedly from CSIS, the Chinese consulate in Toronto assisted Han Dong win the Liberal party nomination for the riding of Don Valley North. A source in the intelligence agency claims the consulate bused Chinese international students and seniors to vote for Han during a tightly contested Liberal party vote in 2019. Conservative MP Blaine Calkins, National Post columnist Terry Glavin and others have openly …
On 28 October 2005, a special event was held in Caracas at the National Assembly of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. At this gathering, held on the birthday of Simón Rodríguez (Simón Bolívar’s teacher), the Venezuelan government announced that nearly 1.5 million adults had learned to read through Mission Robinson, a mass literacy programme that it initiated two years earlier. The mission was named after Rodríguez (who was also known by the pseudonym Samuel Robinson).
One of those adults, María Eugenia Túa (age 70), stood beside President Hugo Chávez Frías and …
Under international law, “aggression” (or “aggressive war”) has never yet been defined so as to separate it clearly from “defensive war” (or “defense”), and this murkiness is the U.N.’s most fundamental failure to-date, because the U.N. was supposed to have been formed in order to prevent a World War Three (WW III), which is impossible to do unless the meaning of “defense” is clear and defense is clearly legal, and the meaning of “aggression” is clear and aggression is clearly illegal; but, a definition is here employed in which “aggression” is anything that endangers a country’s existence or sovereignty over …
“Not rational” is how Biden described the plan that calls for de-escalation toward a ceasefire, respect for national sovereignty, establishment of humanitarian corridors and resumption of peace talks.
“Dialogue and negotiation are the only viable solution to the Ukraine crisis,” reads the plan. “All efforts conducive to the peaceful settlement of the crisis must be encouraged and supported.”
Syria has been at war since 2011. The conflict is in a stalemate. US troops control nearly a third of the country. The US finances the operation and a secessionist army with oil and wheat they take from the area. It funds them and deprives the Syrian government from their own resources. In the northern province of Idlib, the Syrian version of Al Qaeda is in control, receiving the majority of aid from Europe while the 90% of Syrians who live in government controlled areas go hungry and have electricity only three hours per day.
Most citizen advocates who work with U.S. senators on a wide variety of issues probably would agree that the late South Dakota Democrat, James Abourezk, was one of a kind. It was not that he was so honest, so down to earth, or so engaging with friend and foe alike. Rather, it was his willingness to be a minority of one pressing into visibility the plight of the forgotten, the oppressed and the excluded.
During his one term in the Senate (1973 to 1978), he singlehandedly took the plight and causes of Native Americans to heights the long-complicit Congress and media …
Pádraic Súilleabháin and Colm Doherty (the fiddle player) are old friends whose meetings are as regular as a clock – literally. They meet at 2 pm in the local pub for drinks every day as the bell tolls twice.
However, Colm is getting fed up and feels time is passing. He believes that he needs to start composing to leave something to posterity and decides to end his relationship with Pádraic. Being nice and good friends will all soon be completely forgotten about. He desires to get down to composing with his newly freed-up time instead of listening …
The increasingly shabby treatment of former US marine Daniel Edmund Duggan by Australian authorities in the service of their US masters has again shown that the Australian passport is not quite worth the material it’s printed on.
In January this year, Sydney’s Downing Centre Local Court heard that Australian Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus accepted a request from the US before Christmas to extradite Duggan. Duggan is no longer an American citizen, but Canberra has often regarded this as irrelevant when it comes to the US-Australian alliance.
In a 2017 indictment unsealed on December 9, Duggan is accused by prosecutors of using …
The following warning should be affixed atop every computer in America’s schools: Proceed at your own risk. Don’t accept as true what you’re about to read. Some of it is fact; some of it is opinion masquerading as fact; and the rest is liberal, conservative, or mainstream propaganda. Make sure you know which is which before choosing to believe it.
Students are exposed to so many different viewpoints on- and off-line and are so prone to accepting whatever they read that they run the very real risk of becoming brainwashed. If it’s …
by Bill Scheuerman and Sid Plotkin / March 1st, 2023
A recent expose in the New York Times documenting how U.S. corporations exploit migrant children sheds light on a crucial issue facing the American Left. Nowadays, many left activists rightly focus on identity politics. To them, diversity is the order of the day. No argument here. Years ago, Richard Penniman, aka Little Richard, put it clearly: diversity is a beautiful bouquet of flowers. But the celebration of differences oftentimes ignores what holds us together, what we have in common. The Times article makes clear what that is: It’s about class struggle, the battle against economic subjugation and oppression of the vulnerable.
The acclaimed Palestinian writers Susan Abulhawa and Mohammed El-Kurd were invited to the Adelaide Writers’ Festival, South Australia, but have encountered a storm of false defamation from Zionists, pro-Zionist Mainstream media and pro-Zionist politicians. Susan Abulhawa has also been falsely defamed for her humane, pro-peace views on the appalling Ukraine War. The eminent anti-racist Jewish Australian Festival Director, publisher Louise Adler, is standing firm against this ferocious Zionist attack on free speech in Australia.
Palestinian writers Susan Abulhawa and Mohammed El-Kurd have been falsely defamed for alleged “anti-Semitism” and “hate speech” for criticising the century-long genocidal abuse of indigenous Palestinians by …
