On 21 February 2023, climate scientist Professor Bill McGuire issued a stark warning:
‘Remember this date. First rationing of food in UK due to extreme weather. Things will only get worse as climate breakdown bites ever harder.’
This was in response to the news that British supermarkets are rationing fresh produce, including tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers. Rationing could last weeks. The shortages were caused by ‘poor weather’, as the Guardian put it, in southern Europe and north Africa. In fact, in June and July …
These days there is a lot of discussion in the media about Chinese aggression in a wide range of areas, and the assumption is that this has huge implications for global security. Such a one-sided discussion can only lead to heightened tension and a greater possibility of misunderstandings leading to a devastating war. In order to solve global problems in a sensible, long-term way it is important to look at the situation from the perspective of all concerned. This essay will highlight some of the issues that have mostly been ignored, both in the media and in academia.
Teamwork, physical activity, positive reinforcement and community recognition and participation.
This year’s Lincoln County Special Olympics basketball teams will be hitting Turner, Oregon for state wide championship games.
Getting there has been a team effort: state level Special Olympics staff and administrators; our local Lincoln County directors, Donna and Eric Thorpe; family and friends; volunteers; and the players.
From 2020 up to part of 2022, the face-to-face S.O. games and practices were put on hold. This year, the basketball participants in Lincoln County number more than 20. Our Saturday practices have …
Aboriginal People’s Advocate Lidia Thorpe
Resigns From the Greens
by Trotskyist Platform / February 22nd, 2023
DjabWurrung Gunnai Gunditjmara woman and prominent voice for Aboriginal rights, Lidia Thorpe today quit the Greens. The federal senator, who had been the Greens First Nations spokesperson, will now sit as an independent. Announcing her resignation from the Greens, Lidia Thorpe stated that: “This country has a strong grassroots blak sovereign movement, full of staunch and committed warriors, and I want to represent that movement fully”, “It has become clear to me that I can’t do that within the Greens.”
Earlier, targeted for her strong advocacy of Aboriginal rights and her refusal …
One might as well state the matter clearly: given the realities of global warming, rampant environmental destruction, escalating imperialistic clashes, and a crisis-prone global economy, there is no hope for the world unless an international left can be resurrected. A left at least as powerful as the one that created social democracy in the wake of World War II. As complex in their origins as the world’s ills are, they can be expressed and explained in a single sentence: internationally, there is a political right, a proto-fascist far-right, and a stagnant though tenacious center, but, in effect, no left. That …
Former president Jimmy Carter is back in the news. His ongoing illness has surely caused him and his loved ones much distress and grief. For that, I wish them peace as the 39th president nears the end of his life.
However, this is also an important opportunity to recognize that corporate media whitewashing is yet again in full effect — painting Carter as a peace-loving saint who deserved a Nobel Peace Prize.
As with all U.S. politicians — regardless of party — it …
by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead / February 22nd, 2023
Autocrats only understand one word: no, no, no. No you will not take my country, no you will not take my freedom, no you will not take my future… A dictator bent on rebuilding an empire will never be able to ease the people’s love of liberty. Brutality will never grind down the will of the free.
— President Biden
Oh, the hypocrisy.
To hear President Biden talk about Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, you might imagine that Putin is the only dictator bent on expanding his military empire through the use of …
by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies / February 21st, 2023
Half a million tons of methane rise from the sabotaged Nord Stream pipeline. Photo: Swedish Coast Guard
On the other hand, Ukraine’s economy has shrunk by 35% or more, despite $46 billion in economic aid from generous U.S. taxpayers, on top of $67 billion in military aid.
European economies are also taking a hit. After growing by 3.5% in 2022, the Euro area economy is expected to stagnate and grow only 0.7% in 2023, while the British economy is projected to actually contract by 0.6%. Germany was more …
On February 7, a funeral was held in the northern Syrian town of Jinderis. It was one of numerous such funerals to be held on that day across Syria and Türkiye, following a devastating earthquake that killed and injured thousands.
Each one of these funerals represented two seemingly opposite notions: collective grief and collective hope. The Jinderis funeral was a stark representation of this dichotomy.
Earlier, rescue workers found a baby in the rubble of a destroyed home. Her umbilical cord was still connected to her mother. Quickly, they cut the cord and …
When news first emerged over explosions endured by the Nord Stream pipelines, known collectively as Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2, an army of guessers was mobilised. The accusation that Russia had done it seemed counterintuitive, given that the Russian state company Gazprom is a majority shareholder of Nord Stream 1 and sole owner of Nord Stream 2. But this less than convenient fact did not discourage those from the Moscow-is-behind everything School of Thinking. “It’s pretty predictable and predictably stupid to express such versions,” snarled Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov.
It is understood by all that at least two sides are required in a war scenario. One side must be waging war on another side. It is not required that the aggressed side fight back. To surrender to a warmaker, however, means coming under the suzerainty of the warmaker. That is almost always anathema to a people since people cherish their freedom. Therefore, succumbing to a warmaker is likened to the indignity of living on one’s knees as opposed to the dignity of dying on one’s feet.
Karl Marx famously said in the Eighteenth Brumaire that history repeats itself, “the first time as tragedy, the second as farce.” While there are many examples of this insight from history, Marx could not foresee how farce would become the staple of the US ruling class, how elites would defend what they see as their interests with a web of calculated deception extending beyond the limits of the absurd.
Like the mad General Jack D. Ripper in Stanley Kubrick’s great film, Dr. Strangelove, an Air Force four-star General, Mike Minihan, “sent a memo on Friday [January 27] to the officers …
Work is easy. Work is difficult. Work shows a lot. Work hides a lot. Work creates. Work destroys. Work is painless. Work is dreadful. Work brings victory. Work is slavish. Work is like creating a poem or a picture with joy. Work is hellish.
A poet or a philosopher may define work differently than a physicist’s definition. An economist or an historian may also have different definitions of work. A person with shackles of exploitation considers and feels work in a different way than a capitalist exploiting working people. Work may appear …
Do you think that both George Soros and China represent threats to your freedom and democratic values?
Do you think that the US government suffered a regime change in 2020, but don’t understand how Anglo-American intelligence agencies orchestrated it?
Did you know that China kicked out George Soros in 1989 and purged his minions of CIA-connected fifth columnists over the ensuing decades?
Why do George Soros and Steve Bannon sound so different on so many points, except when it comes to China which both representatives of the “left” and “right” agree must be put through a regime change in order to preserve “democratic …
by Bill Scheuerman and Sid Plotkin / February 20th, 2023
Have you ever been grilled by little kids asking the question, “Why?” Why is the sky blue? Why does Heather have two moms? Why are you going to work? Why do you need money? Before you know it they have you questioning basic social values you never even thought about. That’s why right-wing Americans attack public education from kindergarten through college. They don’t want children turning into adults who have learned how to ask the question “Why?”
Conservatives have viewed America’s higher education institutions with suspicion for years. Remember Spiro Agnew’s “nattering nabobs of negativity?” But distrust of public education …
Since the COVID-19 lockdowns several politicians have stepped down, including UK prime minister Boris Johnson, Aotearoa (New Zealand) prime minister Jacinda Ardern, Scotland’s first minister Nicola Sturgeon, and RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki in Canada.
We have a long tradition in America of Separation of Church and State that prohibits government’s promotion of religion on the one hand, and interference with its free exercise on the other. In their refusal to establish a state church or to favor one religion over another, the Founding Fathers didn’t think that religion was bad but that there was something amiss in human nature, a certain tendency, a will to power and a lust for domination, that always bore watching.
It was a virus that lay dormant until its host came to power, whereupon that person or group became suddenly …
The national flags of China and Iran fly in Tiananmen Square during Iranian President Ebrahim Raeisi’s visit to Beijing, China, February 14, 2023. (Photo by Reuters)
The key takeaway of President Ebrahim Raeisi’s state visit to Beijing goes way beyond the signing of 20 bilateral cooperation agreements.
This is a crucial inflexion point in an absorbing, complex, decades-long, ongoing historical process: Eurasia integration.
Little wonder that President Raeisi, welcomed by a standing ovation at Peking University before receiving an honorary academic title, stressed “a new world order is forming and taking the place of …
With the data becoming public attesting to the poor performance and the potential for dangerous side-effects of the experimental vaccines mandated on people, is an apology required for those people who were ridiculed as anti-vaxxers for questioning the severity of COVID-19 and the efficacy of the vax?
My title comes from a 19th century author whose name does not matter nor would it mean much if I mentioned him. It’s an old truth that has not changed a bit over the centuries. I think, however, it would be more linguistically accurate to say that most people want to be deceived, for the world, the earth doesn’t give a damn, as the French poet Jacques Prévert reminds us in “Song in the Blood”:
There are great puddles of blood on the world
where’s it all going all this spilled blood
is it the earth that drinks it and gets drunk
funny …
The victims of the devastating 7.8-magnitude earthquake in Turkey and Syria need your help now. The surviving families and children and those rescued alive from the rubble are in serious danger in affected wintertime impoverished regions. Refugees in other places fleeing their war-torn homelands are also suffering. International aid agencies are grossly insufficient for these immediate humanitarian necessities.
What are you Big Business Titans doing sitting on massive pay, profits and tax escapes? Awakening your consciousness for your fellow human beings may be a modest form of redemption. Further, you have access to logistics specialists, delivery systems, communication facilities and many …
A recent report out of West Antarctica is rattling scientists.
It’s all about heat, big-time heat, encroaching upon the world’s biggest chunk of ice that locks down a couple hundred feet of sea level rise. This kind of news is enough to raise the hackles of smart well-informed people, as excessive CO2 emissions spewing like crazy ever since the turn of the 21st century are now flat-out playing with fire in a very dangerous corner of the planet.
Meanwhile, regarding this very dicey situation, what will the leading nations of the world do? A Marshall Plan operation? Or nothing? Hmm. Based upon …
The Observer, the Great Peace March, and Nord Stream
by Media Lens / February 17th, 2023
The 20th anniversary of the illegal, unprovoked US-UK war of aggression on Iraq comes at an awkward time for a UK press currently suppressing the truth of the illegal, provoked Russian invasion of Ukraine. It’s particularly awkward for our fearless watchdogs to recall the great anti-war march of 15 February 2003 when, in 2023, they are busy stifling dissent protesting America’s horrific proxy war in Ukraine.
In the Observer, Tim Adams wrote a piece under the joyous title: ‘“A beautiful outpouring of rage”: did Britain’s biggest ever …
In December 1998, Fidel Castro addressed the 7th Congress of the Young Communist League in Havana, Cuba, a year after the catastrophic ‘market failure’ in Asia, when global finance exited the region and left behind economic deserts stretching from Korea to Malaysia. ‘The world is rapidly being globalised’, Castro told the Cuban youth, and this globalisation was ‘an unsustainable and intolerable world economic order’ founded on the cannibalisation of nature and the brutalisation of social life. …
