by Ramzy Baroud and Romana Rubeo / January 30th, 2023
On January 19, during one of its raids in the Occupied West Bank, the Israeli military arrested a Palestinian journalist, Abdul Muhsen Shalaldeh, near the town of Al-Khalil (Hebron). This is just the latest of a staggering number of violations against Palestinian journalists, and against freedom of expression.
A few days earlier, the head of the Palestinian Journalist Syndicate (PJS), Naser Abu Baker, shared some tragic numbers during a press conference in Ramallah. “Fifty-five reporters have been killed, either by Israeli fire or bombardment since 2000,” he said. …
Events continue to unfold at a quickening pace. Facing an alarming escalation in tensions around the world, we asked Lt. Col. William Astore for his current thoughts. We focus on the realities of the international power struggle unfolding in real time, specifically addressing the role of the U.S. in the tensions and its capacity to reduce them.
We are grateful to William Astore for sharing his valuable and thought-provoking views. The interview was arranged by John Rachel, Director of the Peace Dividend Project. The Peace Dividend strategy is not a meme or a bumper sticker. It …
Clarity Press recently published Joan Roelofs’ latest contribution to the movements for peace in the United States, The Trillion Dollar Silencer (TDS). She has been a peace activist all her life and a scholar who always worked to bridge the gap between activism and academia that despite that effort seems to have widened rather than narrowed, at least since the 1990s. Part of the reason for this can be found in the activity of pseudo-academic institutions in the private sector, foundations and their appendages, think tanks. Naomi …
As I was reading Norman Finkelstein’s new book, I’ll Burn That Bridge When I Get to It!: Heretical Thoughts on Identity Politics, Cancel Culture, and Academic Freedom, I thought early on of Obama’s joke at the expense of Rahm Emanuel: “he’s one of a kind, and thank god he’s one of a kind.” Finkelstein, too, is very much one of a kind. But the analogy with Emanuel fails, because in fact one Rahm Emanuel is far too many whereas one Finkelstein is not nearly enough. We need …
So, there are no other ways to look at the lab-generated, multivariant SARS-2 than through the lens of mass murdering complicit media and the charlatans of propaganda, all in the employ of billionaires, millionaires and high income folks in this Big Pharma-Big Medicine-Big Feat triage of destruction? Who the hell with a normal-functioning mind believes that?
It’s a great piece here, at Gray Zone — Amid rising reports of vaccine-related menstrual disruptions, the CDC and FDA are dismissing women’s concerns and denying them information while corporate media pathologizes them in sexist fashion….
It is showdown time. Senator Bernie Sanders, new chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee versus Big Pharma.
The self-described “democratic socialist” from a safe seat in Vermont has long been a Big Pharma nemesis. He has issued detailed critiques of what others have called a “Pay or Die” industry coddled by Congress that provides huge tax credits, free government-developed medicines, and free, with few exceptions, unbridled power to charge what their monopoly markets can’t bear.
Americans are charged the highest drug prices in the world. U.S. drug companies feed off taxpayer subsidies yet are under no reasonable price …
How is it that the people who unskeptically believe their government and engage in name calling have any credibility? The people who refuse to be vaxxed pending data from completed testing that attests to the efficacy and safety of vaccines are not anti-vaxxers because 1) they do not begrudge those people who choose to be vaxxed, and 2) others have already been vaccinated against other maladies.
The vaccine skeptics are also the people that await the science. How can one “follow the science,” …
The 26 January JTA Daily Briefing arrived in my mailbox with the subject: “Major Israeli Raid in Jenin Kills 9 Palestinians.” I was sadly dumbfounded by the imparted insensitivity and inhumanity. Would any humanity-loving organization blare such news about the killing of the Other? Supposedly, the Oslo accords were a movement toward peace, but Zionist Israel has continued to wreak violence unabated, and Palestinians of every age and gender are the victims whether they be civilians or not. Yes, the violence is not only from one side, but the violence is overwhelmingly carried out by the Israeli side. And, when …
News of January 26, 2023, from InfoDefenseEspañol channel:
Bundestag deputy Petr Bistron to Olaf Scholz about the transfer of tanks to Ukraine:
You have just said goodbye to the fundamental provisions of Germany’s post-war foreign policy, Germany’s special responsibility towards the world. The slogan ‘Never again’ meant the refusal to supply weapons to conflict zones. This has always been the core of German foreign policy. You will go down in history as the chancellor who trampled on this legacy.
It is exactly as Petr Bistron tells Olaf Scholz: he has thrown away the fundamental …
In January of every year for the past 75 years the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists publishes an updated setting of the Doomsday Clock. The clock is a metaphor for how close or far humanity is from the brink.
Coincidentally, on the heels of the resetting of the world-famous clock this year, Julian Cribb, who is one of the world’s most erudite science writers, is releasing a new book: How to Fix a Broken Planet, Cambridge University Press, 2023.
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?
