Latest articles
But kids can learn to fight back
by Claire Nader / January 4th, 2023
When children realize how big businesses are controlling their childhood, their rebellious sense of being exploited connects with their instinct for safety and self-respect.
The commercial pressures descending on our children through relentless direct marketing, radically bypassing parental authority, are at a fever pitch.
It will take more than studies by nutritionists and health specialists, more than congressional hearings, more than repeated findings about harm to physical and mental health to make real changes.
Companies with children’s marketing divisions treat these alarms as so much water off a duck’s back. They continue to pitch junk food, sugary …
by Binoy Kampmark / January 4th, 2023
It just keeps getting darker and darker. For the professionally ignorant, things are only getting better. With one of history’s great events of sportswashing concluded – the 2022 Qatar World Cup – another state famed for its cosmetic distractions and moneyed seductions made a splash. Cristiano Ronaldo of Portugal, his sun setting and his prospects diminishing among Europe’s top clubs, was signed to play in Saudi Arabia.
He had been seething and fuming at Manchester United, increasingly cast into peripheral, bench warming roles. The …
Or is it reality?
by Allen Forrest / January 4th, 2023
In 2067 one man is on journey to the future to save a dying Earth. Or is it Elysium where Matt Damon as the hero Max is on a mission save the dystopic Earth and the 1%-ers world, Elysium?
How fascism has become an acceptable part of American politics
by Bill Scheuerman and Sid Plotkin / January 4th, 2023
Migrants traveling from Texas arrived by bus outside Vice President Kamala Harris’ official residence in Washington, DC. Fox News
Migrants traveling from Texas arrived by bus outside Vice President Kamala Harris’ official residence in Washington, DC, on Thursday. Fox News[/caption]Texas Governor Greg Abbot’s Christmas Eve political stunt of sending busloads of desperate immigrants, including women and children, to Vice President Harris’ home in Washington is another sign that Trumpism exists without Trump. To many modern-day pundits, the wide-spread acceptance of Trumpism suggests that the seeds of fascism are already taking root in …
Even Before NATO Expansion, the West Sought to Strangle Russia Economically
by John V. Walsh / January 3rd, 2023
The first post-cold war assault on Russia by the West began in the early 1990s well before the expansion of NATO. It took the form of a U.S.-induced economic depression in Russia that was deeper and more disastrous than the Great Depression that devastated the U.S. in the 1930s. And it came at a time when Russians were naively talking of a “Common European Home” and a common European security structure that would include Russia.
The Disastrous Russian Depression Resulting from Western supervised “Shock Therapy.”
The magnitude of this economic catastrophe was spelled out tersely in a recent essay by Paul …
by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies / January 3rd, 2023
Photo credit: Economic Club of New York
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, known for his staunch support for Ukraine, recently revealed his greatest fear for this winter to a TV interviewer in his native Norway: that the fighting in Ukraine could spin out of control and become a major war between NATO and Russia. “If things go wrong,” he cautioned solemnly, “they can go horribly wrong.”
It was a rare admission from someone so involved in the war, and reflects the dichotomy in recent statements between …
Palestine's Supporters Can Gain Control of the Narrative
by Dan Lieberman / January 3rd, 2023
In community devastation, destruction of the Palestinian people ranks with the most severe. A group of foreign people invaded a land, seized property and resources from native people, expelled a mass of the population, and oppressed and controlled the remaining inhabitants. After decades of suffering under extreme oppression, with no end in sight, with oppressors who could live as well in other places, the destruction of the Palestinian people has unique qualities that defy rational thought. Only those who are inattentive to the situation, are genocide deniers, or have agendas that preclude recognition, cannot realize that the willful destruction of …
by Allen Forrest / January 3rd, 2023
by Edward Curtin / January 3rd, 2023
On December 15, the night that the Biden administration released some of the remaining JFK files while withholding others with another half-assed excuse, Tucker Carlson, the most-watched cable news television host, delivered a monologue about the JFK assassination. It garnered a great deal of attention.
Although I don’t watch Carlson’s television show, I received messages from many friends and colleagues, people I highly respect, about his monologue’s great significance, so I watched that episode. And then I watched it many …
by Ramzy Baroud / January 2nd, 2023
Another critical year for Palestine has folded. While 2022 has wrought much of the same in terms of Israeli military occupation and increasing violence, it also introduced new variables to the Palestinian struggle – nationally, regionally and internationally.
Palestine, the War and the Arabs
The Russia-Ukraine war starting in February pressured many political entities, including Palestinians, to take sides or, at least, to declare a position. Though the Palestinian Authority (PA) and various Palestinian political parties insisted on their neutrality, Russia’s deviation from the US-led political paradigm in the …
by Binoy Kampmark / January 2nd, 2023
Metaphor consists in giving the thing a name that belongs to something else.
— Aristotle, Poetics (1457b)
It all seemed familiar. Anthropomorphised Mother Nature in vengeful mood; humans wondering if they might meet a frozen demise in trapped vehicles; the planners taking stock as to how best to cope with grim circumstances. The New York State governor Kathy Hochul was happy to stick her head out in declaring the latest lethal winter storm in Buffalo to be nothing less than a “war with Mother Nature, and she has been hitting us with everything she has.”
Having found her less than imaginative …
China eliminated absolute poverty; it now works toward common prosperity for all
by Kim Petersen / January 2nd, 2023
Yellowknife, Boxing Day 2022
Can you imagine walking downtown in Seattle, Vancouver, New York, Toronto, or any other burg in Canada or the United States and not seeing any panhandlers? This homelessness, begging, and dumpster diving is not confined to major urban centers. Last week, I was in Yellowknife, the capital of Denedeh (Home of the People; colonially designated as Northwest Territories), home to about 20,000 souls, where the temperatures ranged from -30° Celsius to -40° Celsius. Despite this, the homeless were out in the …
by William Manson / January 2nd, 2023
If you are dehumanized, I am dehumanized.
— Archbishop Desmond Tutu
How to explain, psychologically, such a bizarre group-fantasy as QAnon–which is believed in by countless millions of Americans? We are witnessing a massive regression to a pre-logical, paranoid delusional system about a secret cabal of evil, devil-worshipping, pedophilic, cannibalistic Democrats. (The scathing irony is that leading Democrats, in complicity with President Bush, were implicated in the very real crimes, of immense consequences, of making war against Iraq.) But, as to QAnon, one is shocked to realize how similar such mass delusions are to the 17th century witch-hunts, …
by Allen Forrest / January 2nd, 2023
Open-minded skepticism is using one’s smarts. One keeps one’s mind open to possibilities, but remains skeptical until solid evidence is forthcoming. In the case of COVID-19, the authorities told people to follow the science. “Follow the science” was an oft heard refrain of Canada’s prime minister Justin Trudeau, but when did he ever lay out the science for people? To tell people to follow the science and not back it up with the science is unscientific. This is faith. The question is whether people will put faith …
by Karnig Kerkonian / January 2nd, 2023
For seventeen days, Azerbaijani special forces and military personnel—masquerading as “environmentalists”—have blocked the only road connecting Artsakh to Armenia. They have effectively severed the only lifeline the Artsakh Armenians have to the outside world—a lifeline guaranteed by the Trilateral Statement of November 10, 2020. With 120,000 Artsakh Armenians now completely encircled and isolated, Azerbaijan is poised to rid itself of the entire Armenian population this holiday season, and it will try to do so while Europe sips hot chocolate and watches.
Frankly, it is rare to have the opportunity to witness mass …
by Colin Todhunter / January 2nd, 2023
In a fair world, Aruna Rodrigues would be heralded as an incredible individual for her ongoing struggle to protect the socio-economic and environmental integrity of India. So says respected environmentalist, author and campaigner Leo Saldanha.
He adds:
Since 2005, she has tirelessly pursued a public interest litigation before the Supreme Court of India, in which she has made a case why India should not yield to pressures from mega agri-transnational corporations and certain sections of the Indian agricultural sector who are keen on promoting genetically modified organisms in farming.
India’s apex regulatory body, the Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee, recently sanctioned genetically modified (GM) …
by Binoy Kampmark / January 2nd, 2023
There was the punk scene, Malcolm McLaren, their racy clothes shop at 430 King’s Road that started out as Let it Rock, the creation of a look, and the gathering of the earth rumbling Sex Pistols. In fact, the late Dame Vivienne Westwood was already a proven stirrer, suggesting that she, not Sex Pistols frontman John Lydon, a.k.a Johnny Rotten, came up with the title for the barnstorming “Anarchy in the UK”. Boldly, she claimed that prior to McLaren and herself, there was no punk.
The Westwood look became ubiquitous with enthusiastic …
Transformation of language (part 4)
by T.P. Wilkinson / December 31st, 2022
In another 50 years China will be stronger, and by that time the Chinese Communist Party will be a hundred years old. The United States will surely be envious and ill-intentioned, but it doesn’t dare attack China, not even with a single bullet. It will research germ contamination. That is immoral. After it finishes with this unconscionable deed, imperialism will self-destruct.
— Mao Zedong, ???50????? (Chairman Mao’s 50 Years Ago Prophecy), 1 July 1971, p 520
In Britain, 26 December is Boxing Day. However far more importantly it is the birthday of Mao Zedong, who would have been 129 years old. Mao …
by Allen Forrest / December 31st, 2022
What happens if you awaken a sleepwalker?
by Binoy Kampmark / December 31st, 2022
The true résumé is rarely honest. The entire document is based on a stream of twisting embellishments, fanciful achievements, and, in some cases, pure fiction. Read it, as you would, an autobiography, which could only interest audiences by what it omits, what it underlines, and what it pretends to celebrate. The wrinkles vanish, the wounding sores patched; the skin moisturised, the face lifted by delicate textual surgery. Its writing, and its acceptance by any relevant audience, is a mutual conceit, a pact against veracity.
The number of individuals who make use of this mechanism is embarrassing. Academics speak of projects they …
by Mickey Z. / December 31st, 2022
I took the photo above shortly before midnight on December 31, 2011, at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in downtown Manhattan. Please allow me to explain.
Members of Occupy Wall Street and other local “activist” groups held a “noise demo” in front of the jail to let the prisoners know they were not forgotten (or something like that). I attended these demos in both 2011 and 2012.
Here’s how it worked: We made lots of noise — chanting, singing, playing musical instruments, etc. — as a squad of cops, correction officers, and …
Facebook as Fact, Government as Truth, Big Pharma as God
by Colin Todhunter / December 31st, 2022
If events since March 2020 have shown us anything, it is that fear is a powerful weapon for securing hegemony. Any government can manipulate fear about certain things while conveniently ignoring real dangers that a population faces.
Author and researcher Robert J Burrowes says: “… if we were seriously concerned about our world, the gravest and longest-standing health crisis on the planet is the one that starves to death 100,000 people each day. No panic about that, of course.”
No panic because the controlling interests of the global food system have long profited from a ‘…
by Eric Zuesse / December 30th, 2022
When U.S. President George W. Bush, on 7 September 2002, said that the IAEA had just come out with a “new report” concluding that Saddam Hussein was only six months away from having a nuclear weapon, and the IAEA three times denied it, the President’s allegation grew into, and became the basis for, America’s ‘justification’ to invade Iraq on 20 March 2003, while the IAEA’s denial was hidden by the ‘news’-media — censored-out by them all (except for only one tiny and unclear news-story that only one …
The Price of Betraying Palestine
by Ramzy Baroud / December 30th, 2022
Two years ago, Morocco and Israel signed the US-brokered “Joint Declaration”, thus officially recognizing Israel and instating diplomatic ties. Though other Arab countries had already done the same, the Moroccan official recognition of Apartheid Israel was particularly devastating for Palestinians.
Years ago, a close Moroccan friend told me that the ‘first time’ he was arrested was during a solidarity protest for Palestine in Rabat which took place many years ago.
The reference to the ‘first time’ indicated that he was arrested again, though mostly for other political activities, suggesting …
by Allen Forrest / December 30th, 2022
by Ralph Nader / December 30th, 2022
Give the New York Times its due. Its teams of reporters produce more investigations of wrongdoing by entrenched vested interests than does the entire recess-rich, Tuesday-to-Thursday U.S. Congress with all its Committees and Subcommittees. The Times should promptly publish some of its exposes as small books. Their on-the-ground series on the burning Amazon Forest and their series on expanding sports gambling corruption and addiction exemplify great reporting.
However, in the last decade, the Times has freaked out over the decline in print subscriptions, loss of advertisements and the rise of the Internet with its many aliterate users. Though …
by Nizar Visram / December 30th, 2022
In 2010, when Qatar was awarded the right to host the 2022 World Cup tournament the Gulf kingdom became the focus of a disparaging campaign. Qatar was accused of mistreating migrant workers engaged to build World Cup projects.
The campaign against Qatar as host nation involved Britain, Germany, Denmark, the Netherlands, Israel, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia. Demonstrations took place outside the Qatari Embassy in London, with the slogan “Qatar: stop funding terrorism.” The demonstrations were reportedly run by Sussex Friends of Israel and the Israeli Forum Task Force, joined by UK Lawyers for Israel and Stand With …
by Robert Hunziker / December 30th, 2022
NASA claims that 2022 was one of the hottest years ever recorded. Furthermore, according to CareOurEarth.com, this past year experienced: “Record-Breaking Heatwaves Around the World.”
It was the year of fires (everywhere, big fires), scorching heat (globally) floods (Pakistan! Europe, China) loss of potable water (especially France and Italy) nearly impassable commercial waterways (Danube, Po, Rhine, Mississippi) sunbaked droughts (US Southwest, Chile) sputtering water reservoirs (Lake Mead). In all, a mini-biblical-scale worldwide disaster scenario that conditioned people of the world for what to expect when global warming really cranks up bigtime.
In …
by Vijay Prashad / December 29th, 2022
Pathy Tshindele (Democratic Republic of the Congo), Untitled, 2016.
The United States government held the US-Africa Leaders Summit in mid-December, prompted in large part by its fears about Chinese and Russian influence on the African continent. Rather than routine diplomacy, Washington’s approach in the summit was guided by its broader New Cold War agenda, in which a growing focus of the US has been to disrupt relations that African nations hold with China and Russia. This hawkish stance is driven …
by Allen Forrest / December 29th, 2022
A discussion featuring Sasha Latypova, an ex-pharma/biotech professional with 25 years of experience in clinical trials, clinical technologies and regulatory approvals, about the role of the Department of Defense and National Security Council in deploying biowarfare agents marketed as “vaccines” on the US and global population.
