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.
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
