“… Public Health administrators [are] being obscenely compensated for their efforts in purportedly fighting Covid.” See “Public Health Officials Cash in on Covid”
Palestinians and their supporters are justified in celebrating the election victory of the leftist presidential candidate, Luis Inacio Lula da Silva, in Brazil’s runoff elections on October 30. But Lula’s victory is incomplete and could ultimately prove ineffectual if not followed by a concrete and centralized Palestinian strategy.
Lula has proven, throughout the years, to be a genuine friend of Palestine and Arab countries.
For example, in 2010, as a president, he spoke of his dream of seeing “an independent and free Palestine” during a visit to the occupied West Bank. He also refused to visit the grave of Theodor …
Through a series of events, a friend of mine who is VERY awake recently ended up having dinner in a mainstream restaurant that featured dozens of massive televisions. When she told me about it, I reflected on how all gyms today are like this, too.
Here’s my local Planet Fitness:
This line of thought drove home a point that I feel is critical:
You might be woke. You might be MAGA.
But most Americans now live eerily similar, highly programmed lives.
Rain Forest Trust (Photo Credit)
The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) issued a new Living Amazon Report, 2022 at COP27 in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt. The eye-opening report defines a horror story of human destruction of the world’s largest rainforest. There’s no other way to look at it.
Commercialization of the Amazon Rainforest is rampant in a pattern of ignorance amidst reckless abandon with a level of stupidity that’s nearly beyond comprehension, as the iconic nature reserve has been pushed to the edge of ruin. It is hard to believe that pure ignorance …
Last month, the United Nation’s environment agency issued arguably its starkest warning yet about the climate crisis. The failure by governments around the world to cut carbon emissions means there is ‘no credible pathway to 1.5C in place’. Limiting the rise of global warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels was the international agreement at COP21, the UN Climate Summit in Paris in 2015.
Inger Andersen, the executive director of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), said:
‘We had our chance to make incremental changes, but that …
To get to where they are, imperial powers will deceive, dissimulate and distort. The US imperium, that most awesome of devilish powers, has tentacled itself across the globe, often unbeknownst to its own citizens.
In a report released by the New York University School of Law’s Brennan Center of Justice titled Secret War: How the US Uses Partnerships and Proxy Forces to Wage War Under the Radar, there is little to shock, though much to be concerned about. The author of the report contends that the list of countries supplied by the Pentagon on US military partnerships is a savagely …
Well, the reviews are pretty much in on President Joe “Malarkey’s” crazy stunning speech at Independence Hall in Philadelphia on September 1, and they are quite breathless with descriptors like: “Authoritarian, fascist, creepy, Satanic, dystopian, occult, Orwellian, and ‘What the Fuck?'” One wonders: was the band playing “Hail to the Chief” or “Hail Satan,” instead?
Indeed, it seems as if Team Biden had summoned up the ghost of Leni Reifenstahl to design the lurid look of the performance, with a technocratic shade of hell-fire Red being the dominant tone back-lighting Biden, a curious color choice for Team Blue. One wonders how …
How Monotheism and Capitalism Create Disenchantment
by Bruce Lerro / November 13th, 2022
Orientation: the politics of the sacred
The word “pagan” is one of those words that has been worked over by monotheists and secular rulers so that it has many meanings, mostly negative. This has been the case except for the past fifty years when Neopaganism has made a comeback, thanks mostly to the women’s movement. In his book Being Pagan, Rhyd Wildermuth writes that:
Being pagan means being of the land, rural villager, rustic. In modern terms, being a peasant or being a country bumpkin as opposed to the city (39) …
It’s a grotesque, ceremonial observance, marked by a degree of unpardonable acceptance. The First World War, which killed millions, extirpated classes in Europe, and destroyed monarchies, established a mawkish ritual that serves to continue, rather than prevent war. The more one grieves for the slaughtered and the brain frozen folly, the more one hopes for the next round of bloodletting, criminal stupidity.
No surprise, then, that the occasion of commemorations are now filled with the anticipation for another war waged by the enfeebled of thought. There is the horrendous bloody unfolding of the Ukraine conflict, but other powers would also like …
Peter Kuznick is currently Professor of History and Director of the Nuclear Studies Institute at American University. His acclaim and popularity are certainly deserved. In addition to his contributions in academic circles, he is in constant demand as a policy analyst and commentator across the globe. He is author of Beyond the Laboratory: Scientists As Political Activists in 1930s America, and many other important volumes. Peter is best known by the general public for his highly controversial, landmark documentary created with director Oliver Stone, The Untold History of the United States, which has been …
The U.S. military has launched 469 foreign interventions since 1798, including 251 since the end of the first cold war in 1991, according to official Congressional Research Service data.
Please take 16 minutes to watch this:
As MLK once said: “The greatest purveyor of violence in the world: My own government, I cannot be silent.”
(thank you to Joe from Maine for the military interventions link)
If “we” are to forgive elitist individuals and structures for alleged mistakes, then by all that is fair, shouldn’t individuals among the masses be forgiven for their honest mistakes?
• German Chancellor Olaf Scholz visits China
• Renowned biologist’s returns to launch medical research institution
• Reemergence of rural cooperatives
• New plan for integrated communities
Heloisa Hariadne (Brazil), Com uma gota já se faz oceano pra sede se matar em mergulho (‘A drop of water becomes an ocean to quench a diver’s thirst’), 2021.
In the last week of October, João Pedro Stedile, a leader of the Landless Workers’ Movement (MST) in Brazil and the global peasants’ organisation La Via Campesina, went to the Vatican to attend the International Meeting of Prayer for Peace, organised by the Community of Sant’Egídio. On 30 October, Brazil held a presidential election, which …
My title comes from a song sung by soldiers as they marched to hell in the trenches of World War I and the same song my sisters and I sang in the car as our parents drove us to our summer vacation in paradise at Edgewater Farm.
I think of this as we march to WW III.
The soldiers, who would be slaughtered by the millions as pawns in the great game, sardonically sung it to the tune of Old Lang Syne to express their bewilderment at why they were fighting in the so-called “War to End All Wars” or …
Skidrow in Los Angeles, California (Photo: Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
The agenda was set with the Lewis Powell Memorandum in 1971. Written at the request of the United States Chamber of Commerce, probably the most influential structure of capitalist rule at the time, the concern for the Chamber was the need to find a more coherent counter-offensive to the attacks against the system over the previous years. At the center of the anti-system attacks during the 1960s was, of course, the Black Liberation Movement and the Anti-War …
dedicated to all from north america: u.s, canada, newfoundland and labrador who were killed during, or due to, service in the great war
by Paul Cech / November 10th, 2022
the bells ring out again
this time
the eleventh hour
the eleventh day
the eleventh month
their tolling symbolizes
a temporary pause in large scale inhumane events
smaller scale atrocities may continue as needed
warmongers
the great war didn’t change ‘em
the holocaust didn’t change ‘em
world war II didn’t change ‘em
the wars in asia didn’t change ‘em
the wars in the middle east didn’t change ‘em
all the world’s wars be they great
be they small didn’t change ‘em
armistice day
is a time out day
the living joyfully shout
the dead have no say
the bell rings out
the day is done
but
it will not be long
until another war
be it …
A trolley load of books, chapters and treatises have been written on the subject of sovereignty. Usually, the concept entails control and power, the latter a corollary of the former. In international law, sovereignty finds some form of expression in the Montevideo Convention of 1933 but can hardly be seen as exhaustive. In truth, the concept is a fruit-salad and medley, an “organized hypocrisy”, as Stephen D. Krasner describes it.
All of this leaves some room for the pantomime element sovereignty might allow: the eccentric who declares his own principality; the refusenik determined to avoid the taxing authorities; the …
This is a rite of passage that needs to go the way of the Dodo.
Mercenaries, and now, we have a blue blood son, grandson to Robert Kennedy, heading out to Ukraine with some sad sack ideas about what he in the name of Hell is going to do in that country?
Yep, RFK Jr., let out the news recently, on Megyn Kelly. The newspapers picked it up:
“He felt that he shouldn’t be arguing about it unless he was willing to have skin in the game and take his own risk,” Kennedy said on “The Megyn …
When Occupy Wall Street (OWS) was still in Zuccotti Park, I became close friends with a woman named Ashley. She shared a thought-provoking anecdote with me. But first, some context:
Firstly, as some of you may know, there was always a massive police presence surrounding the park at all times. The vibe was mutually confrontational and the NYPD used any pretense to exercise violence upon the occupiers.
The European Union’s Foreign Policy Chief Josep Borrell is not particularly perceived by the EU’s political elite or mainstream media as a rightwing ideologue or warmonger. But seen through a different, non-western prism, it is hard not to mistake him for one.
Borrell’s recent comments that “Europe is a garden” and that “the rest of the world is a jungle” were duly condemned as ‘racist’ by many politicians around the world, but mostly in the Global South. Borrell’s remarks, however, must also be viewed as an expression of superiority, not only of Borell personally, but of Europe’s ruling classes as …
A presentation at the 5th Hongqiao International Economic Forum on November 5-6, 2022
by Peter Koenig / November 8th, 2022
President Xi Jinping made history by opening the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC), when he announced the beginning of a New Era of socio-political development with focus on the Global South.
The initiative embarks on a path of peaceful modernization and moderate prosperity, bringing more equilibrium to a world often beset by conflicts.
He made history again by having been confirmed for his 3rd Five-Year term as China’s leader. This is good for continuity of a successful policy of growth and for the transformation of China as a moderately prosperous society – a socialism with Chinese characteristics.
… the Emissions Gap Report 2022: The Closing Window – Climate crisis calls for rapid transformation of societies finds that the international community is falling far short of the Paris goals, with no credible pathway to 1.5°C in place. Only an urgent system-wide transformation can avoid climate disaster.
— “Emissions Gap Report 2022” UN Environment Programme
The UNEP sounds the alarm, but what is the morality of cutting back sharply on fossil fuels without sufficient climate-friendly alternative energy sources in place to keep people warm and working?
Chilling to think the Palestinians may be doomed, but active and passive resistance, international protests, UN Declarations, boycotts, divestments, silent sanctions, myriad of articles, sympathetic words, and anger at Israel’s violent repression have not changed the direction of their struggle. Since 1948, the pendulum has swung in one direction, a consistent increase in repression and destruction of the Palestinian community. The Israel government now includes Religious Zionism, which won 15 seats, making it the second largest bloc in the expected ruling coalition. A Wall Street Journal report, October 23, 2022, “…
by Ramzy Baroud and Romana Rubeo / November 7th, 2022
On Monday, October 31, Palestinians in the town of Al-Eizariya, east of Occupied East Jerusalem, observed a general strike. The strike was declared to be part of the community’s mourning of 49-year-old Barakat Moussa Odeh, who was killed by Israeli forces in Jericho a day earlier.
This is not an isolated case. General strikes were observed throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territories in recent weeks as a form of civil disobedience, and protest of the Israeli attacks on the cities of Nablus, Jerusalem, Jenin, and Hebron, as well as to mourn Palestinian fighters who were killed, following shooting operations against Israeli soldiers …
