The transformation of Ukraine into untarnished, saintly victim, symbol of democracy and civil society savaged by brutish Russia, has been nothing less than remarkable. The endemic corruption of a state captured by oligarchic tendencies and its own breed of kleptocrats has somehow gone by the wayside, only interrupted by the occasional symbolic purge by the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Lo, before us, the Athenian project writ large in eastern Europe, deserving of protection.
Each arms shipment is made and justified on the basis of Ukraine’s civilizational imperative, proclaimed as not merely European but global. It is a spectacular refit verging on …
Striking Frame Group workers meet for a report back on negotiations with management in Bolton Hall in 1973.
Credit: David Hemson Collection, University of Cape Town Libraries
Democracy has a dream-like character. It sweeps into the world, carried forward by an immense desire by humans to overcome the barriers of indignity and social suffering. When confronted by hunger or the death of their children, earlier communities might have reflexively blamed nature or divinity, and indeed those explanations remain with us today. But the ability of human beings to generate …
On January 18th, Tortuguita, a brave and beloved Weelaunee Forest Defender, was killed by Atlanta Police. As people of conscience, as breathers of air, as anti-imperialists, as feminists, pacifists, activists – we condemn this state-sanctioned murder.
Manuel Esteban Paez Terán, AKA Tortuguita, is the victim of an expanding and increasingly militarized machine of state violence, suppression, racist policing, and environmental destruction. Activists in the Stop Cop City movement have put their bodies on the line to protect the Weelaunee Forest from the development of a monster urban policing training center. If constructed, it will equip thousands of police units …
Captured Black Soldier’s Saga Highlights Racism in Israel
by Ramzy Baroud / January 26th, 2023
“For how long will I be in captivity? After so many years, where are the state and the people of Israel?” These were the words, uttered in Hebrew, of a person believed to be Avera Mengistu, an Israeli soldier of Ethiopian origin who was captured and held in Gaza in 2014.
Footage of Mengistu, looking nervous but also somewhat defiant, calling on his countrymen to end his 9-year incarceration, mostly ended speculation in Israel on whether the soldier was alive or dead.
People in power get nervous when the population’s trust in national institutions plummets. It has often been a precursor of significant social unrest, even revolutions.
This is an underlying reason why UK prime minister Rishi Sunak proclaimed, in the face of mounting pressure over the tax affairs of Nadhim Zahawi, chairman of the Conservative Party and former Chancellor of the Exchequer, that: ‘Integrity and accountability are really important to me.’
Of course, it was a tragicomic assertion given that the Tory party has been …
The mainstream media has long made it seem like parents from coast to coast are frantically clamoring to get their kids into a “limited” number of charter schools. And because there is supposedly not enough space in these charter schools, students are put on a waiting list to get into the school.
This neoliberal disinformation is meant to reinforce the prejudice that public schools are “dreadful,” that they must be escaped at all costs, that only charter schools can save the day, and that the number of charter schools in the country should increase immediately to accommodate more kids.
Crafting Linguistic Propaganda by Boiling, Freezing and Muddying Language
by Bruce Lerro / January 25th, 2023
Orientation
Can language limit thought?
If a dogmatic belief system can narrow the kind of vocabulary used, can language itself limit the kind of thinking that is going on? How free are people to think their own thoughts independently of language? My answer in this article is that language can trap thought. In his book The New Doublespeak, William Lutz points out that instead of being an instrument for expressing thought, language became a means for concealing or even preventing thought. We will examine how language doublespeak applies …
by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies / January 25th, 2023
The 2023 Doomsday Clock statement – Image credit: the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has just issued its 2023 Doomsday Clock statement, calling this “a time of unprecedented danger.” It has advanced the hands of the clock to 90 seconds to midnight, meaning that the world is closer to global catastrophe than ever before, mainly because the conflict in Ukraine has gravely increased the risk of nuclear war. This scientific assessment should wake up the world’s leaders to the urgent necessity …
An important article just published in Inside Climate News revealed good news from a new federal government report, Short Term Energy Outlook. That study stated that: “Renewable energy is poised to reach a milestone as a new government report projects that wind, solar and other renewable sources will exceed one-fourth of the country’s electricity generation for the first time, in 2024. The report’s authors in the Energy Information Administration are expecting renewables to increase in market share, while natural gas and coal would both decrease.”
Two decades ago in the early days of my active work on the climate …
“It makes me sick that they were heralded as ‘heroes’ while they allowed people to suffer and die alone.”
(I didn’t realize it was “part 1” but I posted this last week. It’s short so please give it a look before continuing.)
Part 2 was inspired by comments that appeared after the first post. A nurse named Laura V. laid out the details of life in an inhuman digital healthcare state. Here’s some of what Laura said:
“I’m a nurse and there has been a steady progression to automated, patient-directed, convenience …
When all the science provided no support for the prophylaxis of mask wearing (in fact, even pointed out the health hazards of mask wearing) or social distancing, and the vaccines were still in testing phase, people were being ordered to mask up, stay inside, and when outside the home to keep their distance from others, get vaxxed, boosted, boosted again and again. Each time the science was cited and never presented.
You didn’t need to hear it from me that the USA is subjected to some of the most insane and inhumane policies tied to the criminal injustice system; tied to mass public K12 education; and corporate overlording; or anti-union activities; also to taxation; or finance; and health care; tied to infrastructure care; or tied to retirement protection. I’ve written about social work and social services many times, and the terrible outcomes of those I have served: just released from prison; pregnant teenagers; foster youth, 16 to 21 years old; veterans and their families deemed homeless and medically fragile; folks with …
I was struck by an article in Counterpunch late last year: Scott Tucker wrote a piece centred around war and peace and to further enlighten his readers he provided links to two other articles: “I am including links to two articles readers may find useful. The first article was just published at World Socialist Website (WSWS). They are Trotskyists and I am not, but in this case I pretty much agree with their views.”
Oh dear! A man failing to dismiss a political group on the basis of their description or political leaning! Where will it all end?
Ingsoc. The sacred principles of ingsoc. Newspeak, double-speak, the mutability of the past.
– George Orwell, 1984
As today dawned, I was looking out the window into the cold grayness with small patches of snow littering the frozen ground. As light snow began to fall, I felt a deep mourning in my soul as a memory came to me of another snowy day in 1972 when I awoke to news of Richard Nixon’s savage Christmas bombing of North Vietnam with more than a hundred B-52 bombers, in wave after wave, dropping death and destruction on Hanoi and other parts of North Vietnam. …
In December 2022, corruption revelations involving the state-owned Erdenes Tavan Tolgoi (ETT) mining company sparked enormous protests in Ulaanbaatar. What initially began as a backlash against an entrenched “coal mafia” snowballed into a trenchant critique of the government’s inability (and unwillingness) to provide a better future for Mongolia’s youth. Protestors told The Diplomat that suffocating air pollution, burdensome taxes, and humiliating unemployment are driving Mongolians to the brink of despair. Highly skilled and multilingual graduates juggle three dead-end jobs to survive as mining magnates steal millions without repercussions.
Through the course of his political life, the current US president has often been injudicious. He has stumbled, bungled and miscalculated. His electoral victory was fortuitous, aided by a number of factors, not least the conduct of his opponent and the murderous gift of a global pandemic. Along with his fellow Democrats, he has made the issue of Donald Trump a matter of pathology rather than politics.
It is precisely that pathological approach that has come back to haunt his administration. While Trump continues to …
An obliquely-written news-report in the New York Times on January 18th headlined “U.S. Warms to Helping Ukraine Target Crimea” and subheaded “The Biden administration is considering the argument that Kyiv needs the power to strike at the Ukrainian peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014.” It reported that, “the Biden administration is finally starting to concede that Kyiv may need the power to strike the Russian sanctuary, even if such a move increases the risk of escalation, according to several U.S. officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive debate. Crimea, between the Black …
The Global Firepower ranking was published on January 6. The annual report classifies the world’s strongest militaries based on over 60 factors, including size, spending and technological advancements.
The report, which placed the United States military on top, followed by Russia, China, India and the UK, raised more questions than answers, with some accusing GFP, the organization that compiled the report, of being biased, sloppy and highly politicized.
For example, while Russia maintained its former position as the second strongest military in the world, Ukraine jumped by seven spots, …
February 19, New Anti-Interventionist Coalition to March to White House from Washington Monument
by John V. Walsh / January 22nd, 2023
On February 19, Washington, DC, will witness a protest against the war in Ukraine that marks a sharp departure from past demonstrations. The lead demand is simple and direct, “Not One More Penny for war in Ukraine.” It is a demand that emphasizes what we in the US can do to end the war, not what others can do. After all, the only government we have the power to influence is our own.
Above and beyond that demand, the potential power of this unique and promising movement arises from the nature of the sponsoring organizations – The Peoples Party, a …
When the first Russian forces began entering Ukrainian territory in February 2022, the instant reaction from Europe, the UK, Canada and Australia, was one of open commitment to Ukraine’s refugees. The relentless human trains heading westwards were initially embraced by Poles, whose history with Ukraine is, at best, tense and sketchy.
Across Europe, walls came down in dispensation for this new type of refugee, tolerated and tolerable by the populists and the border security types, all summed up by comments from the Bulgarian Prime minister Kiril Petkov, who declared the fleeing Ukrainians “intelligent” and “educated people”. They were certainly “Europeans” …
Most people have heard capitalism described unerringly as the “law of the jungle” and a “dog-eat-dog world.” The pathos of capitalism is currently playing out in Vancouver, where grown-up millionaires are playing a kids’s game called hockey.
Professional sports serve as a microcosm of rampant capitalism — a, perhaps necessary, distraction for the masses.
Many Vancouverites live and die along with the fortunes of their National Hockey League team, the Vancouver Canucks. Unfortunately, the season so far has been a disappointment, as the team finds itself outside of a playoff spot. The 2021-2022 NHL season saw a mid-season coaching change …
• GDP increased 3% in 2022
• Historic population decline
• Nearly 60,000 COVID-19 related deaths in the last month
• The ‘Three Body Problem’ debuts on TV
Why is much modern food of inferior quality? Why is health suffering and smallholder farmers who feed most of the world being forced out of agriculture?
Mainly because of the mindset of the likes of Larry Fink of BlackRock – the world’s biggest asset management firm – and the economic system they profit from and promote.
In 2011, Fink said agricultural and water investments would be the best performers over the next 10 years.
Fink stated: “Go long agriculture and water and go to the beach.”
Way back in the 1830s, the brilliant Alexis de Tocqueville, visiting the American experiment of “democracy,” found a nation of persons afraid to disagree with the “tyranny of the majority.” Despite Ralph Waldo Emerson’s inspiring Self-Reliance of 1841, there remained very few free-thinking individualists to be found. Some 10 years later, when Thoreau published Walden and “Life Without Principle,” he found very few readers indeed.
The 1950s was a time of mass conformity. Americans thought, acted, and looked the same.It took another century, but post-WW2 social scientists became increasingly …
