The Scream Updated
If Edvard Munch was painting during COVID.
Latest articles
Fiddling with National, DC, Beltway Crap while we Burn in our Local Yokel Tracks!
Never will the small things, those beautiful small things like OUR communities’ vibrancy and resilience, be discussed by big wigs
[Photo: Area mayors pleading for state help to plug funding gaps included, left to right, Rod Cross of Toledo, Susan Wahlke of Lincoln City and Dean Sawyer of, Newport.]
Amazing, no, that in Newport, part of Lincoln County, Oregon, having this big confab, of people, citizens and “stakeholders” alike wondering what the state of the state of decay is as it plays out in Salem (OR capitol) and the blue-red divide — Portlandia gets the votes, while the eastern part of Oregon is vying to break-away into Greater Idaho. …
Being a Radical Has Led Me to Sometimes Live a Double Life
Is that a good thing?
Throughout the 2000s, you’d find me regularly riding NYC’s subways during the very early morning hours — specifically from Queens into Manhattan — to work with personal training clients in gyms. In fact, right up to the plandemic, I was still training a couple of clients in their homes.
On those subway rides, I’d sometimes grab a copy of Metro — one of NYC’s free newspapers delivering a daily dose of corporate media propaganda. However, there was a brief period of time when Metro would allow some subversive voices into …
Cancelling Facts That Challenge Establishment Power
"It May Be in No One’s Interest to Reveal More"
As we have noted before, a systemic feature of state-corporate media is propaganda by omission. Missing out salient facts, informed commentary and context about the machinations of government and big business means that the public is less able to:
Understand the world around us;
Challenge state-corporate power; and
Bring about the fundamental changes in society that have never been more necessary.
Current examples are legion, as we will see in the selection that follows.
1. Journalists Pushing For Less Transparency
Last week, 21-year-old US airman …
The Danish Broadcasting Company Cancelled Seymour Hersh with Arguments Revealing its Conveniently Ignorant Role as the US Master’s Voice
Or fake à la Falbe: Public service choosing "US intelligence" to protect both the US and Denmark?
Ages ago, I was born in Denmark, and I still hold a Danish passport. Quite often, I visit the homepage of the Danish Broadcasting Company – Danmarks Radio (DR). It is public service, regulated by laws passed by the Danish People’s Parliament – “Folketinget.”
I sadly admit that there is an element of masochism in …
The Death of over a Thousand Garment Workers in Bangladesh
The mother of an 18-year-old missing worker, Rina, waits for her lost daughter in front of a barricade in Savar, Dhaka, Bangladesh, 24 July 2013.
Credit: Taslima Akhter
In memory of Dr Zafrullah Chowdhury (1941–2023)
On Wednesday 24 April 2013, 3,000 workers entered Rana Plaza, an eight-story building in the Dhaka suburb of Savar in Bangladesh. They produced garments for the transnational commodity chain that stretches from the cotton fields of South Asia, through Bangladesh’s machines and workers, and on to retail houses in the Western world. Garments for famous brands …
Hesitancy
Some people won’t pull the trigger.
Whither Multipolarity in a Changing World Order
The Italian political theorist Antonio Gramsci presciently observed: “The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.”
This period that we live in is arguably shaped by three elements: two moribund (the implosion of the USSR and the centrality of US imperialism) and one vital (the promise of multipolarity). The camp associated with the US is consolidating at the same time that a countervailing multipolar tendency is emerging. Major changes are reshaping the world order, I contend, but the …
Hunger Profiteers, Granny Killers, and Skin-Deep Morality
Today, a fifth (278 million) of the African population are undernourished, and 55 million of that continent’s children under the age of five are stunted due to severe malnutrition.
In 2021, an Oxfam review of IMF COVID-19 loans showed that 33 African countries were encouraged to pursue austerity policies. Oxfam and Development Finance International also revealed that 43 out of 55 African Union member states face public expenditure cuts totalling $183 billion over the next few years.
As a result, almost three-quarters of Africa’s governments have reduced their agricultural budgets since 2019, and more than 20 million people have been pushed into …
Libelled by the Bot: Reputation, Defamation, and AI
Cometh the new platform, cometh new actions in law, the fragile litigant ever ready to dash off a writ to those with (preferably) deep pockets. And so, it transpires that artificial intelligence (AI) platforms, for all the genius behind their creation, are up for legal scrutiny and judicial redress. Certainly, some private citizens are getting rather ticked off about what such bots as ChatGPT are generating about them.
Some of this is indulgent, narcissistic craving – you deserve what you get if you plug your name into an AI generator, hoping for sweet things to be said about you. Things …
The Latest NYT’s Hit Piece on China Is from Thomas Friedman
Thanks to Thomas Friedman’s relentless service as a mouthpiece for US empire and capital, he’s permitted to continuously churn out his pseudo-thought piece every week.
— Belen Fernandez, The Imperial Messenger: Thomas Friedman at Work
Thomas Friedman, a self-professed “liberal,” is the New York Times most widely read columnist and its most influential flak for corporate interests at home and abroad. He exhibits all the self-assumed hubris of American elites.
Friedman’s latest piece is “America, China and a Crisis of Trust” (NY Times 4/14/23). Wading through his vacuous, self-serving prose, smug certainties, side-tracking anecdotes and off-putting verbosity is a chore but in essence, …
Penny Wong’s World View: AUKUS All the Way
If anyone was expecting a new tilt, a shine of novelty, a flash of independence from Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong’s address to the National Press Club on April 17, they were bound to be disappointed. The anti-China hawks, talons polished, got their fill. The US State Department would not be disturbed. The Pentagon could rest easy. The toadyish musings of the Canberra establishment would continue to circulate in reliable staleness.
In reading (and hearing) Wong’s speech, one must always assume the opposite, or something close to it. Whatever is said about strategic balance, don’t believe a word of …
Don’t Let the Government Criminalize Free Speech
If freedom of speech is taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.
— George Washington
What the police state wants is a silent, compliant, oblivious citizenry.
What the First Amendment affirms is an engaged citizenry that speaks truth to power using whatever peaceful means are available to us.
Speaking one’s truth doesn’t have to be the same for each person, and that truth doesn’t have to be palatable or pleasant or even factual.
We can be loud.
We can be obnoxious.
We can be politically incorrect.
We can be conspiratorial or mean or offensive.
We can be all these things because …
Indictment of African People’s Socialist Party Is a Racist Assault on the Black Liberation Movement
The Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) unequivocally condemns and opposes the recent indictment of four members of the African People’s Socialist Party (APSP), alongside three Russian nationals.
The unsealed indictment states that on Tuesday, April 18, 2023, a federal grand jury in Tampa, Florida, levied charges of “conspiring to covertly sow discord in U.S. society, spread Russian propaganda and interfere illegally in U.S. elections.” While no evidence of conspiracy, propagandizing, or interference has been presented, the APSP and its members have the right, as all U.S. citizens do, to freely criticize U.S. domestic and foreign policy.
Not since the …
Leaks Reveal Reality behind U.S. Propaganda in Ukraine
Leaked document predicts a “protracted war beyond 2023.” Image credit: Newsweek
The U.S. corporate media’s first response to the leaking of secret documents about the war in Ukraine was to throw some mud in the water, declare “nothing to see here,” and cover it as a depoliticized crime story about a 21-year-old Air National Guardsman who published secret documents to impress his friends. President Biden dismissed the leaks as revealing nothing of “great consequence.”
What these documents reveal, however, is that the war is going worse for Ukraine than our political leaders have admitted to us, while …
U.S. Nuclear-War Strategy
America’s nuclear-war strategy is to win a nuclear war, not merely to deter one. This has been especially the case since 2006. But it did not start in 2006 to become that way. A 1981 PhD thesis by William C. Martel, at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, one of America’s leading universities, was titled “A nuclear war-fighting strategy for the United States.” It stated that such “war involves first-strike attacks against ICBMs, SLBMs and strategic bombers” but not against cities because: “It is …
VAERS
When will the facts surrounding COVID-19 and the safety of so-called vaccinations reach the wider public consciousness?
The Nightly News Cycle
The nightly rewind and play.
A Road Paved with Irritations
Macron’s Strategic Third Way
Emmanuel Macron’s recent visit to China did not quite go according to plan, though much depends on what was planned to begin with. In one sense, the French President was consistent, riding the hobbyhorse of Europe’s strategic autonomy, one hived off from the US imperium and free of Chinese influence.
Europe’s third-way autonomy would be a mighty thing for the Elysée Palace, especially given French pretensions in steering it. After all, Frau “Mutti” Merkel is no longer de facto European chief, presiding over the bloc with matronly care. Her successor, Chancellor Olaf Scholz, is finding himself caught in undergrowth, a …
Forests, Fires, and Biomass
A huge climate/environmental justice issue is looming over Sonoma County and the rest of California. A hungry monster is currently chomping up our trees and forests and burning them for power generation, converting them into fuel pellets for shipping overseas to European and Asian markets for burning, or turning them into biofuels for aviation. Exported fuel pellets are also burned for energy generation. Biomass energy (“bioenergy”) is being called “renewable energy.” It is taking away critical funds for real renewables like solar and wind energy.
Biofuels and biomass energy are not clean, not carbon neutral, and not sustainable. In fact, they …
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.: To Heal the Great Divide
It has been fifty-five years since Senator Robert F. Kennedy stepped onto the presidential nominating stage to try to mend the massive breach that had opened in American society. The country was torn asunder by the Vietnam War, racism, poverty, the assassination of President Kennedy and the soon-to-be assassination of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. Chaos reigned as Lyndon Johnson lied and Richard Nixon matched him in verbal and actual treachery. A war between Middle America and the elites running the government was breaking out across the country. A great divide between whites and blacks, rich and poor, the working …
Be a Capitol Hill Citizen on Your Congress
Spring, the season of renewal, is here. The ants are diligently building their little symmetrical ant hills. The robins are in their nests occupied with posterity. And the anointed members of Congress, after a long recess, aka vacation, return to work on April 17. The next day, April 18, is the deadline for filing taxes.
Congress collectively is less than the sum of its parts. That is because there are only a few dozen sterling Representatives and Senators worthy of their voter constituents back home. These lawmakers, however, are unable to accomplish as much as they would like and as much …
Submission Magazine
Kissing the boot.
The Leaking Republic: The Pentagon’s Take on Information Security
For years, US intelligence officials could hold their allies, notably the British, in contempt for leaking like sinking vessels and harbouring such espionage luminaries as the Cambridge Five. The whirligig of time has returned the favour with the latest leak from the US Department of Defense. They pose a question pregnant with relevance: Do Washington’s allies have any reason to trust their own secure channels of sharing defence information? The answer: probably not.
The spray of Pentagon documents began appearing on such platforms as Twitter, 4chan, Telegram and a Discord server that hosts video games. (How odd, go the …
Fiscal Insanity: The Government Borrows $6 Billion a Day, and We’re Stuck with the Bill
We’re not living the American dream.
We’re living a financial nightmare.
The U.S. government is funding its existence with a credit card.
The government—and that includes the current administration—is spending money it doesn’t have on programs it can’t afford, and “we the taxpayers” are the ones being forced to foot the bill for the government’s fiscal insanity.
According to the number crunchers with the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, the government is borrowing roughly $6 billion a day.
As the Editorial Board for the Washington Post warns:
The nation has reached a hazardous moment where what it owes, as a percentage of the total …
Robot Police Dogs + Fake Crime Waves
NYPD Adds ‘Spot,’ the Robot Dog, to Force
NYPD Commissioner Keechant Sewell assured the public “that the use of this technology will be transparent, consistent, and always done in collaboration with the people who we serve.” [emphasis added]
Whole Foods closes San Francisco flagship store after one year, citing worker safety
“Incidents of theft in San Francisco have gained national attention, though crime has generally fallen over the past six years.” [emphasis …
The World Economic Forum
Those of us in this movement sometimes forget that for most people, the World Economic Forum (WEF) is a meeting in Davos where the rich and famous like to hang out once a year. They have no idea of what the WEF truly is about and what it has accomplished over the course of the last 50 years. Even those of us who follow the WEF can forget what their true mission is, and how deeply they are involved in crafting the new world order, ergo: The Great Reset.
The …
Why Marxists Need Darwin
Evolutionary Mismatches Challenge the Darwinian Unconscious
Orientation
Most people who call themselves Marxists will tip their hat to Darwin and then move on. They laude his theory of natural selection for why species go extinct. They will support his gradualist theory that change is slow in the biological world. Of course, they will celebrate how humans evolved from the ape line rather than descended from the heavens. But once this is acknowledged and socio-cultural evolution for humans begins, Darwin seems not to be needed. In present time, Marxists are fine when they hear Darwinian explanations for other species …
In Chicago the Left Embraces the Democrats and Celebrates Brandon Johnson’s Victory
Brandon Johnson, a progressive black community activist, union organizer, and former teacher, won the Chicago mayoral election against Paul Vallas, the corporate Democrat opponent. Johnson’s victory expressed popular rejection of neoliberal privatization and respect for progressive unions, in particular the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU). Johnson was outspent two to one, but not out-organized, winning 52-48%. The election displayed once again the power and organizing skills of the CTU, and showed that people, when they are involved, can upend election predictions.
His campaign also showed how easily leftists can slide from opponents of the corporate rule of America with their two parties …