Israel is not suddenly a more racist state. It is simply growing more confident about admitting its racism to the world
by Jonathan Cook / November 7th, 2022
The most disturbing outcome of Israel’s general election this week was not the fact that an openly fascist party won the third-biggest tally of seats, or that it is about to become the lynchpin of the next government. It is how little will change, in Israel or abroad, as a result.
Having Religious Zionism at the heart of government will alter the tone in which Israeli politics is conducted, making it even coarser, more thuggish and uncompromising. But it will make no difference to the ethnic supremacism that has driven Israeli policy for decades.
A novel coronavirus, deadly and unnecessary lockdowns, civil unrest, political division, economic crises, a rise in mental health issues — the list goes on and on and on.
Since March 2020, most of the world has suffered immensely in one way or another. But, amidst the madness, there is room for gratitude. More specifically, I’m suggesting we should be grateful for what and who has been exposed over the past 32 months or so.
It must be excruciatingly difficult having to decide whether to put some of one’s hundreds-of-billions of dollars, along with potential future profit, at risk to affirm one’s previous public declaration of support for the freedom of speech principle. That is the dilemma that Musk has before him.
Musk finds Twitter threatened with an advertiser boycott. As I previously alluded to, the boycotters of free speech on Twitter could well find themselves boycotted by free-speech supporters. Two can play the boycott game. Musk seems to realize that now. He warned …
Soon, the US government may be making waves regarding another extradition request for a figure connected with that oft exaggerated notion of national security. While the high profile and insidious effort to extradite Julian Assange from the United Kingdom continues, the case of former US pilot, Marine Corps major and flight instructor Daniel Edmund Duggan has crossed the radar of reporters and international lawyers.
On October 21, Duggan was arrested by Australian authorities in the New South Wales town of Orange at the request of Washington. He appeared in Orange Local Court and was refused bail.
The Religious Right’s War on Sex and the Inevitable Ban on Birth Control
by Michael Gurnow / November 6th, 2022
With the overturning of Roe v. Wade, and as residents in the first state to officially ban abortion, sexually active Missourians are f*cked or, rather, will be literally unf*cked in the near future once state legislators succumb to a targeted pressure campaign to criminalize contraceptives. Historically and politically, all roads lead to Missouri’s small, but powerful, evangelical lobby winning the war it has, and continues, to wage against sex, beginning with Roe and ending when Griswold v. Connecticut is overturned by the Supreme Court, which will allow state lawmakers to outlaw birth control. The only remaining variable is when … …
Regardless of the outcome of the latest Israeli elections, Arab parties will not reap meaningful political benefits, even if they collectively achieve their highest representation ever. The reason is not about the parties themselves, but in Israel’s skewed political system which is predicated on racism and marginalization of non-Jews.
Israel was established on a problematic premise of being a homeland of all Jews, everywhere – not of Palestine’s own native inhabitants – and on a bloody foundation, that of the Nakba and the destruction of historic Palestine and the expulsion of its people.
Such beginnings were hardly conducive to the establishment of …
For some, worrying about things out of their control is futile, but does worrying ever help? Worrying is inaction, and dire situations, such as a world on the precipice of WWIII, usually require action for prevention.
• Lula’s victory and China-Brazil relations
• New study on global perceptions of China
• China passed a law to protect the Yellow River
• China’s 93-year-old woman conductor
Chai?bia Talal (Morocco), Mon Village, Chtouka, 1990.
On 17 October, the head of US Africa Command (AFRICOM), US Marine Corps General Michael Langley visited Morocco. Langley met with senior Moroccan military leaders, including Inspector General of the Moroccan Armed Forces Belkhir El Farouk. Since 2004, AFRICOM has held its ‘largest and premier annual exercise’, African Lion, partly on Moroccan soil. This past June, ten countries participated in the African Lion 2022, with observers from Israel (for …
Governments around the world including the Canadian government are working in conjunction with the World Economic Forum (WEF) to eliminate cash and implement a new financial payment system called Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC).
Unlike Bitcoin and other digital currencies not controlled by a central authority, CBDC would involve complete control of our money via constant surveillance and monitoring of our every move.
— “No Cashless Digital Prison”
Cashless society seems like an inevitable progression into an easier, faster and more convenient future. But this comes at a huge of …
Dateline: November 7-18, 2022, Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt. Dignitaries from every country will be meeting to discuss climate change at COP27. Based upon early confirmations, 90 heads of state will attend, lending an aura of importance.
“Climate change is the crisis of our lifetime. If we are not able to reverse the present trend that is leading to a catastrophe in the world, we will be doomed.” ((António Guterres UN Secretary-General, BBC interview leading to COP27.))
The Secretary-General has been beating that same drum for some time now, which prompts a thought: Should the UN stop holding annual COP “Conference of the Parties” …
The Heaviness of Imperialist Sanctions and the Lightness of the Liberal’s Lament
by Roger D. Harris / November 3rd, 2022
For the 30th consecutive United Nations vote, the US again lost. A landslide margin of 185 to 2 condemned its blockade of Cuba on November 3. Only the apartheid state of Israel voted with the US, while Brazil and Ukraine abstained.
Since 1960, the bipartisan policy of the US has been to overthrow the Cuban Revolution by fomenting “disenchantment and disaffection based on economic dissatisfaction and hardship.” According to the US State Department, punitive economic measures are imposed to deny “money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation, and the overthrow …
Photo Credit: Reuters
The global climate meeting called COP27 (the 27th Conference of Parties) will be held in the remote Egyptian desert resort of Sharm El-Sheik, Egypt from November 6-18. Given the extremely repressive nature of the Egyptian government, this gathering will likely be different from others, where there have been large, raucous protests led by civil society groups.
So as tens of thousands of delegates – from world leaders to climate activists and journalists – descend on Sharm el-Sheik from all over the world, we asked Egyptian Journalist …
A striking paradox of the history of the left is that it is full of self-defeat. From the bitter divisions between statist and anti-statist socialists in the nineteenth century to the vicious rivalries between Communists and Socialists in the 1930s, followed by many more episodes of destructive sectarianism and flawed strategy up to the present, the left has often had trouble getting its act together. It isn’t clear why this is the case, although doubtless the usual lack of resources in comparison to the right (funded by business) has played a not insignificant role. It is indisputable, however, that the …
They are falling like ninepins, and the Tories have now given the weary people of Britain yet another prime minister. And what a catch: stupendously wealthy, youthful – the youngest in two centuries – and a lawbreaker. As Chancellor of the Exchequer in the government of Boris Johnson, he was fined for breaches during the partygate scandal, despite telling the Commons that he had attended no illegal gatherings.
The statement released in response to the fine was ice cool, belying the fact that he had become the first Chancellor ever charged with an offence while in office. “I understand that …
“There is an urgent need to improve health policy to reduce corruption in the health sector during times of crisis.”
— Gonzalez-Aquines A and Kowalska-Bobko I ((Addressing health corruption during a public health crisis through anticipatory governance: Lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic. Front Public Health. 29 July 2022;10:952979. doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2022.952979. PMID: 35968489; PMCID: PMC9372614.))
COVID-19 pandemic “highlight[s] potential risks and opportunities for corruption — corruption that may undermine the response to the pandemic and deprive people of health care.”
— “Corruption and the Coronavirus,” Transparency International
Violence by Israeli settlers against Palestinians is rising at a staggering rate. We visualized this aspect of life under Israeli military occupation in collaboration with Premiere Urgence Internationale Palestine Mission, who has been monitoring Israeli settler violence since 2012, including casualties, property damage, intimidation, and harassment.
While the levels of schadenfreude will be going through the roof given the unfolding farce in British politics, the resignation of Liz Truss as UK Prime Minister was troubling in one vital respect. True, her juvenile salad understanding of economics, which involved spending billions on tax cuts and energy subsidies, was lamentable. To cope with the beast of aggressive inflation, she was advocating a policy that would feed it.
Then came the not-very-invisible hand of the market, which decided to throttle her government and its policies with petulance. While the vigilantes of the market have, depending on the occasion, burst into …
Privately-operated charter schools in the United States have a long record of failure. They have been over-promising and under-delivering for decades. Over the years, many people, especially low-income minority parents living in urban settings, have been led to believe that outsourced schools operated by unelected private persons or large for-profit corporations are vastly superior to the “dreadful” public schools they currently attend—public schools which, for decades, have been methodically starved of funds, over-tested, vilified, punished, and set up to fail so as to be privatized by neoliberals obsessed with maximizing profit as fast as possible. Neoliberals have never stopped trying …
First things first: as I write, so-called peace talks are underway between the democratically elected government of Ethiopia and The Terrorist TPLF. That in itself is a bizarre sentence, and prompts an array of related questions, and issues around law and order, justice, national governance. To be clear, the TPLF have never wanted peace, and are not in South Africa (where the talks are taking place) to find a way to end the conflict that they started and perpetuated for two long and deeply painful years. They want power, they have engaged in talks because they have been defeated, but …
Stark contradictions in West’s treatment of the Ukraine war and the occupation and siege of Palestine should serve as a wake-up call
by Jonathan Cook / November 2nd, 2022
No one took responsibility for the explosion over the weekend that ripped through a section of the Kerch Bridge that links Russia to Crimea and was built by Moscow after it annexed the peninsula back in 2014.
But it was not just Kyiv’s gleeful celebrations that indicated the main suspect. Within hours, the Ukrainian authorities had released a set of commemorative stamps depicting the destruction.
Russian President Vladimir Putin was under no illusions either. On Monday, he struck out with a torrent of missiles that hit major Ukrainian cities such as Kyiv and Lviv. It was …
Right-winger Jair Bolsonaro’s claims of election fraud reduced to sour grapes as Brazil’s bulletproof voting process shames the United States’ swiss-cheese system
by Lauren Smith / November 2nd, 2022
Workers’ Party (PT) candidate, former president Lula da Silva, won the Brazilian presidency with just over 50 percent of the vote in the runoff election held on October 30.
Incumbent Jair Bolsonaro, a right-wing nationalist, received 49.10%.
Helping Lula achieve his narrow victory was the early support of alternate party candidates that came in third and fourth place in its election held on October 2, respectively Simone Tebet and Ciro Gomes, with 4% and 3%. While Lula prevailed on October 2 with 48.4% of the votes, a victory of over 50% …
To consider the United States a wealthy and free nation, possessed of boundless ideals, one must ignore the obvious in no small measure. Even now, in the age of advancing technology, hunger quietly prevails. In urban and rural spaces, chilled by shadows of entitlement, the timeless problem of food remains with us. Who is unable to see this? Thanks to the rise of social media, and the drone of constant chatter, we are more aware than previous generations. However, endless streams of “content” leave us vulnerable to indifference, the presence of which invites hunger on many …
Aaron Copland (Photo Credit: Erich Auerbach/Getty Images 1965)
In the mid-20th century (say, 1930-1970), orchestral music played a much more prominent role in national culture–both in the U.S. and the U.S.S.R.–than it does today. In part, the advent of radio in the 1920s could bring live concerts to a mass audience. Radio networks attracted top-notch musicians and conductors; the NBC Symphony Orchestra, led at different times by super-stars such as Toscanini and Stokowski, had millions of listeners weekly–listeners who would become familiar with Copland as well as Sibelius, …
How do you bury responsibility for a decision inspired by a pilfered idea? Blame someone else, especially if that person came up with the idea to begin with. This tried method of distraction was used with invidious gusto by US President John F. Kennedy, who recast his role in reaching an agreement with the Soviet Union during the Cuban missile crisis of 1962.
The stationing of Soviet nuclear capable missiles in Cuba, and the response of the Kennedy administration, took the world to the precipice of nuclear conflict. Its avoidance, as things transpired, involved dissimulation, deception and good, old-fashioned defamation.
In my decades of doing what I do, I’ve encountered so many folks patently unwilling to accept that their beloved Land of the Free™ is capable of the horrendous criminality it openly perpetrates as policy. (Such a cultic mindset, of course, is partly responsible for such blind trust vis-a-vis the “pandemic.”)
With all this in mind, I’ll continue sharing evidence to highlight that the leaders of God’s Country™ are just as craven as any of its official enemies (read: all those labeled “the next Hitler”). For starters, here’s a dam good example……
