The Center of Your Life?
It is an omnipresent device that manages to fixate the attention of its owners.
Latest articles
Background Checks, Algorithms, and the Re-making of the Abnormal
A great deal of attention has been paid to the problems of carceral injustice and the increasing use of AI for things such as predictive policing. Much of this research has revealed that these digital technologies serve to recreate economic disparities, racism, and other forms of social discrimination while removing the stain of human agency toward a flawed ideal of objectivity. Less attention has been paid to the use of these digital technologies in pre-employment background checks. This essay examines the use of AI and algorithmic data analysis and the ways …
Miniature Gulags: Native American Boarding Schools in the United States
In May 2022, the Assistant Secretary of Indian Affairs, Bryan Newland, released the first volume of an investigative report examining the complicity of hundreds of federal boarding schools in the destruction of indigenous nations. This is the perfect occasion to revisit and shed a light on one of the most shameful episodes in American history.
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz argues that after nearly a century of uninterrupted westward expansion and incremental genocide, the US government tried to assimilate rather than exterminate rebellious Indians clinging on to dwindling reservations in the late 1800s. The man who led the charge was General Richard Henry Pratt, …
Renewed TPLF Terror War Against the Ethiopian People
After a fragile ceasefire lasting just five months, the TPLF (Tigray People’s Liberation Front) have once again initiated violent conflict with federal forces in Northern Ethiopia.
They started the war in November 2020, were forced to retreat just over a year later, but not content with the level of human suffering resulting from their initial barbarism, they are, it seems, determined to kill and kill again; to rape and beat their Ethiopian brethren; to once more destroy property, burn farmland, slaughter livestock, sending fear through communities, deepening the pain of a nation in their frenzied quest for power.
This latest offensive was …
The Harlot’s Score: Blood Money and the LIV Golf Tournament
It has been a hobbyhorse of Greg Norman for years: a threatening, alternative golf tournament to draw the stars and undermine the musty establishment. Realising a most dubious project, the LIV Tournament has become blood money’s greatest symbol. Funded by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, it is a most noisy statement of sportswashing.
Some aspects of this are also a touch sinister. Last month, the Wall Street Journal revealed the details of a draft LIV contract that has been offered to players. Provisions of the contract include requirements for the players to don LIV apparel when playing both LIV and …
The Meaning of Happiness
An unelected grouping of elitists has determined what happiness means for the rest of “us.”
Why Didn’t KPFA Defend its Journalist?
Some newspapers defend their journalists, at least once in a while. When the charming prince of Saudi Arabia had Journalist Jamal Khashoggi sawed up into little pieces, the Washington Post expressed outrage, and the bad press cost the Saudis some embarrassment; for a while it even looked like they might not get to bomb Yemen any more.
The Post is, of course, every inch an establishment newspaper which houses neocons, neoliberals, warmongers, regime changers and more. It does not support Julian Assange, though it used and printed information he made available. Nevertheless, the Post did speak out for Khashoggi.…
The Helsingin Sanomat Case: Prosecuting Journalists in Finland
On December 16, 2017, the Finnish daily newspaper Helsingin Sanomat published an investigative report on the activities of the Finnish Intelligence Research Centre. Titled “Finland’s Most Secret Place,” the report focused on the military intelligence agency’s tasks and noted its rough location.
The article was particularly pertinent, given debates at the time on whether the powers of the seemingly innocuous body in question should be expanded to monitor private data in digital networks while discussing an overall expansion of surveillance powers.
As the paper noted in scathing tone, the MPs debating the matter in Parliament seemed ignorant about what was …
The Simpson-Goldman Saga
Reexamining a double murder in which ex-football star OJ Simpson was tried and found to be not guilty.
How About a Civic Group to Oppose a Cashless Society?
The most perceptive ancient historians and philosophers could not have foreseen a time when a certain type of mass convenience and abundance becomes a threat to democracy, justice and dispersed power. Welcome to the incarcerations of the credit card payment systems Gulag and the corporate state’s drive to stop consumers from paying with cash.
So long as you have a credit card and a credit score, you’re in a world of easy credit (no down payments, etc.), and high interest rates, especially on unpaid monthly balances. All it takes is swiping your card and pushing buttons at retail establishments or online …
Mobilizing to Fight Chongqing Wildfires
News on China No. 114
This week’s News on China in 2 minutes.
• CPC’s 20th Congress date announced
• 234 arrested in Henan fraud case
• Mobilizing to fight Chongqing wildfires
• China’s rural “toilet revolution”
How to Green Our Parched Farmlands and Finance Critical Infrastructure
There are work-arounds the U.S. can use to fund affordable housing, drought responses, and other urgently-needed infrastructure that was left out of the two recent spending bills.
Congress has passed two major infrastructure bills in the last year, but imminent needs remain. The 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law chiefly focused on conventional highway programs, and the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (IRA) mainly centered on energy security and combating climate change. According to the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), over $2 trillion in much-needed infrastructure is still unfunded, including projects to address drought, affordable housing, high-speed rail, and power transmission lines. By 2039, …
How Bad Can It Get?
How bad can it (climate change) get?
The sky’s the limit! No pun intended.
Still, the general public is tired of negative articles about climate change. It turns them off. Climate change is impossible to deal with. It’s too much; it’s too negative!
As a result, baffling emails come with loud and clear messages, some subtle but some not so subtle. Yet, these same people want access to scientific facts and data that describes just how challenging things really are. They even admit to that while complaining about too much doom and gloom. Nobody is satisfied.
All of which serves as an ideal segue …
Innocence of Mahmoud Abbas
Duplicity of Olaf Schulz
Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, demonstrated political naiveté when replying to an intimidating question, “As a Palestinian leader, did he plan to apologize to Israel and Germany for the 1972 Munich Olympics 1972 attack by Black September ahead of its 50th anniversary next month?” Something chilling in memorializing a terrorist attack, making it unique among the thousands of terrorist attacks committed on helpless people, many of them done by the Zionists and the Israeli government.
Not knowing the question was being used to provoke and use him to publicize apartheid Israel as a constant victim, President Abbas responded, “From 1947 to the present …
Capitalism Created the Climate Catastrophe; Socialism Can Avert Disaster
George Bahgoury (Egypt), Untitled, 2015.
In November 2022, most member states of the United Nations (UN) will gather in the Egyptian resort city of Sharm El Sheikh for the annual UN Climate Change Conference. This is the 27th conference of the parties to assess the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, commonly referred to as COP 27. The international environmental treaty was established in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, with the first conference held in Berlin in 1995; the agreements were extended in the Kyoto Protocol of 2005 …
Interview: Paul Craig Roberts
An objective look at U.S. foreign policy
Events continue to unfold at a quickening pace. Facing an alarming escalation in tensions around the world, we asked Paul Craig Roberts for his current thoughts.
Paul Craig Roberts is a widely renowned political analyst. He was Ass. Secretary for Economic Policy under President Ronald Reagan, associate editor and columnist with the Wall Street Journal, and columnist for Business Week and the Scripps Howard News Ser vice. His awe-inspiring insights, astute analysis, and developing views can be accessed at his Institute For Political Economy website.
We focus here on the realities …
Tens of Millions of Vials of Bioweapons on the Wall . . . Or Zelenksy’s Labs!
Forget about the fact these Pharma Felons have a long rap sheet going way back on the injuries and deaths created by their so-called approved products. They can’t even get vials of their bioweapon off the assembly line without metal bits in millions of batches.
Contaminant in Moderna COVID-19 vaccine vials found in Japan was metallic particles: report
That’s Pfizer and the billionaire CEO, the Greek Jewish, boosted up twice after mRNA double jab, who is now hot with SARS-CoV2, …
The Politics of Anti-Trumpism
The Inadequacy of the Left-Liberal Critique of the Threat of Fascism
Chris Butters warns: “A specter is haunting America, the specter of middle-class leftists turning to the right.” Writing on the official website of the Communist Party USA, he attacks certain social media personalities for not being sufficiently fearful of the “Trumpist Republican power grab” and by implication for their failure to embrace the succor of the Democratic Party.
My intention is not to defend the people that Butters regards as “disembodied spirits” or to criticize the CPUSA. Rather, Butters is used to illustrate a broader phenomenon in the left-of-center blogosphere. Specifically, his narrow focus on the binary choice (“lesser evilism”) …
Supporters of Palestinian Rights Should praise NDP’s Dramatic Policy Shift
Has a leading Canadian politician ever shifted so dramatically on a major policy issue?
Eighteen months ago, Jagmeet Singh refused to utter the word “Palestine” but on August 26 he sent out an email announcing the New Democrats’ position on Israel. It says: “We believe Israel’s illegal occupation of the Palestinian territories is at the centre of the challenges facing the Palestinian and Israeli people.” It makes 13 demands of the minority Liberal government that the NDP supports in Parliament. These are:
Respond to reports from Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Israeli human rights NGOs and the United Nations …
“Race Reductionism” Threatens to Doom the Left
The reparations debate is getting old. But it shows little sign of abating. Academic papers continue to parse the idea of reparations for slavery; books continue to be written on the subject, adding to the mountain of material that already exists; celebrated journalists give speeches to the UN advocating reparations. Democratic candidates in 2020 prominently and sympathetically discussed the issue on the campaign trail. The debate is not going away anytime soon. It is the more unfortunate, then, that much of it is conducted in an unserious way.
The recent “national conversation” about reparations is usually traced to Ta-Nehisi …
Investigating the Victim: On Abbas’ “Holocaust” and the Depravity of Israeli Hasbara
“There was no Massacre in Jenin” was the title of a Haaretz editorial on April 19, 2002, one week after Israel ended its deadly onslaught on the besieged Palestinian refugee camp in the northern West Bank.
The unwarranted conclusion by Haaretz, other Israeli media and, ultimately, numerous western outlets was not the outcome of a thorough investigation carried out by an independent commission of inquiry. In fact, on April 9, a UN convoy was prevented by Israel from reaching the Jenin camp and, on April 30, Israel officially blocked a United Nations inquiry into the killings. Haaretz’s seemingly …
Qantas, Rain Man and the Virtual Airline
The list of sins is lengthy and growing with diseased relish. Australia’s first and for decades only international airline, Qantas, is looking rather tattered of late. Its reliability is becoming something of the past, its standing diminished in an age of diminished international carriers.
There was a time when taking a Qantas flight involved experiencing clean, solid goodness, with the softening effects of regular and, for the most part, reliable service. Nothing ever too flash, but reliable before finding your feet on chaotic ground.
Its minted reputation was enough to earn it …
Beggars in Surplus: Australia’s University Gangsters
With the election of a new government in Australia in May, the begging bowls were being readied by administrators in the university sector. Bloated, ungainly, ruthless and uneven in quality, the country’s universities, for the most part, had inadvertently made their case for more public funding harder. Initially ravaged by poor investment decisions, notably in the Chinese market, COVID-19 had threatened to wipe the balance sheets of a good number of Australia’s academic institutions. Despite initial shocks, the storm has been, apart from a few institutions, weathered.
The University of Sydney registered a A$1.04 billion operating surplus between 2020 and …
What is Sociohistorical Neopaganism or Neopagan Marxism?
Gods, Goddesses and Radicals
To understand what Neopagan Marxism is, we need to compare it to other sacred and secular systems in order to understand their similarities and differences. Most Marxists know next to nothing about Neopaganism, and they like it that way. However, the inverse is not necessarily true. The Neopagan movement in Yankeedom largely came out of the feminist sacred movement, which was also political. As we will see, some Neopagans are liberal, but many are radicals. Generally, thanks to Starhawk and Z Budapest, many witches integrate their magical rituals with …
What is Reality?
How does one discern which sources are distorting reality?
Shaq Dunks the Voice
The scale was jaw dropping and amusing. There he was, the still fresh Labor Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, rendered pygmy-like by the enormity of one Shaquille O’Neal, popularly known as Shaq. No degree of expert photography at this press conference could conceal the disparity in size between the two.
Albanese has made it his crowning ambition to campaign for the Voice. By that, he means to put to Australian voters a question on constitutionally recognising Australia’s First Nations peoples (admirable and irrefutable) and enshrining a vague, as yet undetermined political forum that will represent them (problematic). He hopes to get popular …
Climate Change: Endless Words, Where’s the Action?
There is virtually no time left. Many believe we are already too late to do much to arrest climate change and the destruction of the natural world. Even climate scientists are stunned by the pace at which the climatic conditions of planet Earth are being altered, disrupted by the ignorance and deep-rooted selfishness of humanity; well, a relatively small percentage of humanity actually.
Every day, complacency – politically, individually and commercially – greed and political short-termism continue, the environmental crisis intensifies, moving systems closer to tipping points, when nothing can arrest the destruction, nothing can stop the demise. Some of the …
Deliberate Misrepresentation: Western Media Bias Makes Israeli War on Palestinians Possible
While US and western mainstream and corporate media remain biased in favor of Israel, they often behave as if they are a third, neutral party. This is simply not the case.
Take the New York Times coverage of the latest Israeli war on Gaza as an example. Its article on August 6, “Israel-Gaza Fighting Flares for a Second Day” is the typical mainstream western reporting on Israel and Palestine, but with a distinct NYT flavor.
For the uninformed reader, the article succeeds in finding a balanced language between two equal sides. This misleading moral equivalence is one of the biggest intellectual blind …
Woodstock ’99: Feeling the Heat
A poster of the miniseries Trainwreck: Woodstock ’99.
The documentary Trainwreck: Woodstock ’99 was most decidedly a depiction of a catastrophe. Watching the concert progress (or regress) from excitement to disaster was a spine-chilling experience. Over time the problems depicted in the film got unbelievably worse. The concert’s collapse into complete chaos as the hyped-up concert-goers set much of the event equipment on fire looked more like a depiction of hell on the walls of a medieval church.
The concert, designed to emulate the 30th anniversary of …
New Normal Germany’s Geisterfahrer Geist
So, it’s official. On Wednesday, August 24, New Normal Germany’s Bundestag rubber stamped the government’s latest revision to the so-called “Infection Protection Act” (i.e., New Normal Germany’s new Enabling Act), authorizing the continued persecution of “the Unvaccinated” (i.e., New Normal Germany’s new official Untermenschen), the mandatory wearing of medical-looking masks (i.e., the ideological-compliance symbol of the New Normal Reich throughout the world), the banning of protests against the New Normal (i.e., the new official ideology of Germany), and assorted other “emergency measures.”
These “emergency measures” are purportedly designed …