The Anglo-Australian legal system has much to answer for. While robed lawyers and solemn justices proclaim an adherence to the rule of law, the rule remains a creature in state, more fetish than reality. Had the farcical prosecution of former ACT Attorney General Bernard Collaery gone on, all suspicions about a legal system slanted in favour of the national security state would have been answered.
Collaery, a sagacious and well-practiced legal figure, has been the subject of interest under section 39 of the Australian Intelligence Services Act 2001 (Cth), which covers conspiracies to reveal classified information. It all began when …
It was, all and all, an odd spectacle. The Ladies’ Singles victor for Wimbledon 2022 had all the credentials that would have otherwise guaranteed her barring. Being Russian-born, news outlets in Britain walked gingerly around The All England Club’s decision to ban Russian players yet permit Elena Rybakina to play. Sky News noted that, “Moscow-born Elena Rybakina, who represents Kazakhstan, has won the Wimbledon women’s singles title in a year that Russians are banned from the tournament.”
The April decision by The All England Club to ban both Russian and Belarussian players in response to the Ukraine war did not …
The fourth filter of Ed Herman and Noam Chomsky’s Propaganda Model is flak (organized criticism of negative statements). When lobbies, corporations, and government entities dislike media statements they organize to criticize the statements.
“No War 2022, July 8-10,” hosted by World BEYOND War, will consider major and growing threats faced in today’s world. Emphasizing “Resistance and Regeneration,” the conference will feature practitioners of permaculture who work to heal scarred lands as well as abolish all war.
The gate to Sachsenhausen with the chilling camp motto.[/caption]Listening to various friends speak of the environmental impact of war, we recalled testimony from survivors of a Nazi concentration camp on the outskirts of Berlin, Sachsenhausen, where over 200,000 prisoners were interned from 1936-1945.
Thirty years ago I organized an International Congress on Environmental Consciousness and Mass Media, held in Dresden at the Deutsche Hygiene Museum. ((See Gerhard de Haan, (Ed.) Umweltbewußtsein und Massenmedien: Perspektiven ökologische Kommunikation, Berlin, 1995.)) The central concern of that conference attended by journalists, PR and advertising experts, corporate communications officers and artists from more than 23 countries, was what does the mass media do to shape our awareness of issues and the importance we assign to them? (It took several years after the 1991 Gulf War for people to realize that what they thought was live combat reporting was …
And thus it renders more and more evident the great central fact that the cause of the miserable condition of the working class is to be sought, not in these minor grievances, but in the capitalistic system itself.
The IMF and World Bank have for decades pushed a policy agenda based on cuts to public services, increases in taxes paid by the poorest and moves to undermine labour rights and protections.
IMF ‘structural adjustment’ policies have resulted in 52% of Africans lacking access …
Like the political equivalent of a cockroach, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson survived and endured one strike after another. His credibility was shot, his mendacity second to none. He lost the confidence of a party that delighted in his buffoonish performances and appeal. Fearing electoral punishment, senior ministers and aides have left his side. Labour opposition leader, Sir Keir Starmer, found himself making a witticism, calling this the first instance in history of the ship leaving the sinking rat.
No chronology on this would be sufficient. But the recent turn of events has been something verging on spectacular. There was partygate, …
15 years have passed since Israel imposed a total siege on the Gaza Strip, subjecting nearly two million Palestinians to one of the longest and most cruel politically-motivated blockades in history.
The Israeli government had then justified its siege as the only way to protect Israel from Palestinian “terrorism and rocket attacks”. This remains the official Israeli line until this day. Not many Israelis – certainly not in government, media or even ordinary people – would argue that Israel today is safer than it was prior to June 2007.
It is widely understood that Israel has imposed the siege as …
The stunning Borg character Seven of Nine would often demand, “You must comply.” Some people might refuse to comply, but as the axiom reveals: actions speak louder than words.
A CDC study in February 2022 concluded that 75.2 percent of children under age 11 already have natural immunity to COVID 19. Marty Makary MD, MPH — a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine — wrote in Newsweek (“Why America Doesn’t Trust the CDC,” 10 June 2022): “Two weeks ago, with no outcomes data on COVID-19 booster shots for 5-to-11-year-olds, the [CDC] vigorously recommended the booster for all 24 million American children in that age group.” The CDC cited a small study of 140 children that a Pfizer spokesperson said did not determine the efficacy of the booster.
The single most irrigated crop in the United States is (drum roll, please) lawn.
Yep, 40 million acres of lawn exist across the Land of Denial — and Americans collectively spend about $40 billion on seed, sod, and chemicals each year.
And then there’s all that water. Lawns in America require nearly 9 billion gallons of (usually drinking-quality) water per day. Nearly a third of all residential water use in the U.S. goes toward what is euphemistically known as “landscaping.”
We have become a robotic nation of pawns with lawns.
Max Ernst (Germany), Europe After the Rain, 1940–42.
Over the course of the past fifteen years, European countries have found themselves with both great opportunities to seize and complex choices to make. Unsustainable reliance on the United States for trade and investment, as well as the curious distraction of Brexit, led to the steady integration of European countries with Russian energy markets and more uptake of Chinese investment opportunities and its manufacturing prowess.
Closer linkages between Europe and these two large Asian countries …
President Dwight Eisenhower gave his first major presidential speech, The Cross of Iron, on April 16, 1953. He laid out several important precepts guiding US conduct in world affairs as well pointing out the cost of military spending in very concrete terms. Eisenhower stated:
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes …
We have physicists, geometricians, chemists, astronomers, poets, musicians and painters in plenty; but no longer have a citizen among us.
Increasingly, now, we do have citizens among us: scientists – particularly, climate scientists – who are awakening from their ‘mainstream’ slumber to the reality that they are citizens of a decaying society on a dying planet.
Gone are the lofty dismissals and bemused indifference that traditionally greeted the savant guard – professors Noam Chomsky, Edward Herman, Howard Zinn and others – who challenged the supposed primacy of academic …
When faced with the option of acquiring nuclear technology, states have rarely refused. Since the splitting of the atom and the deployment of atomic weapons in war, the acquisition of a nuclear capacity has been a dream. Those who did acquire it, in turn, tried to restrict others from joining what has become, over the years, an exclusive club guarded by self-justified psychosis.
Members of the nuclear club engage in an elaborate ceremonial in claiming that their nuclear weapons inventory will eventually be emptied. Non-nuclear weapons states allied to such powers go along with appearances, taking comfort that nuclear weapons states …
A Review Essay of The Assassination and Mrs. Paine: A Film by Max Good
by Edward Curtin / July 5th, 2022
Human duplicity is a marvel to contemplate. This riveting documentary is an excellent example of such cunning in action, not on the part of the filmmaker who is eminently fair, perhaps overly so, but on the part of some of those who appear in the film. It demands that viewers use every skill in their possession to determine who is lying and who is telling the truth about the involvement of a woman named Ruth Paine (and her husband Michael) in the assassination of President Kennedy. In many ways, it is akin to sitting in a jury box, listening to …
by Erin McCarley and Birrion Sondahl / July 5th, 2022
Last week, a group of nine unelected millionaires serving lifetime terms, also known as the Supreme Court, voted to overturn Roe v. Wade, a 1973 Supreme Court decision guaranteeing the constitutional right to abortion. Since then, tens of thousands of people have been in the streets across the nation protesting this nationwide assault on human rights, civil rights, and reproductive healthcare. This is the first time in the nation’s history that the SCOTUS has taken away a fundamental constitutional right that it had previously recognized.
The overturning of Roe v. Wade is the final nail in the coffin of a decades-long …
Justin Trudeau: “Democracy never happens by accident. And, as we are reminded now, it certainly won’t continue without effort. I spoke about Canada’s commitment to standing up for democratic values – and against authoritarianism.” A Toronto Sun editorial headlined “Canadian democracy is taking a beating.” The editorial warned, “Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is slowly dismantling our democracy in real time.”
The US Supreme Court has been frantically busy of late, striking down law and legislation with an almost crazed, ideological enthusiasm. Gun laws have been invalidated; Roe v Wade and constitutional abortion rights, confined to history. And now, the Environmental Protection Agency has been clipped of its powers in a 6-3 decision.
The June 30 decision of West Virginia v Environmental Protection Agency was something of a shadow boxing act. The Clean Power Plan, which was the target of the bench, never came into effect. In 2016, the Supreme Court effectively blocked the plan, which was announced by President Barack …
Saloua Raouda Choucair (Lebanon), Chores, 1948.
The United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) reports that, every minute, a child is pushed into hunger in fifteen countries most ravaged by the global food crisis. Twelve of these fifteen countries are in Africa (from Burkina Faso to Sudan), one is in the Caribbean (Haiti), and two are in Asia (Afghanistan and Yemen). Wars without end have degraded the ability of the state institutions in these countries to manage cascading crises of debt and unemployment, inflation and poverty. …
In 1995, Umberto Eco assessed that ‘Ur-Fascism derives from individual or social frustration. That is why one of the most typical features of the historical fascism was the appeal to a frustrated middle class, a class suffering from an economic crisis or feelings of political humiliation, and frightened by the pressure of lower social groups. In our time, when the old ‘proletarians’ are becoming petty bourgeois (and the lumpen are largely excluded from the political scene), the fascism of tomorrow will find its audience in this new majority.’ (source)
America loves its military. It should because it’s the most expensive defense force of all time. $778B was allocated for defense spending in 2022. China comes in a distant second at $229B.
All of which prompts a provocative question: What if the Marine Corps publishes a landmark study that claims recipients of the US government defense budget are collectively responsible for accelerating the danger of climate change to very dangerous levels, in fact, to unlivable levels?
As of June 2022, that’s precisely what’s happened.
The world’s militaries, intelligence agencies, foreign affairs strategies, and think tanks are unwittingly advancing the hyperthreat, which is an …
When will this nonsense on familial connection between Australia and the Pacific end? In 2018, Australia’s then Pentecostal Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, drew upon a term that his predecessors had not. On November 8 that year, he announced that Australia’s engagement with the region would be taken to another level, launching a “new chapter in relations with our Pacific family.”
In an address to Asialink prior to attending the G20 Leaders’ Summit in Osaka, Morrison was again found talking about the Indo-Pacific, which “embraces our Pacific family with whom we have special relationships and duties, our close neighbours, our …
Four Nicaraguans who have recently migrated to the US from the department of Esteli, who include two peasants, and two housewives confirm they are Sandinistas and left their country because they heard from others that U.S. immigration (ICE) is actually helping Nicaraguans stay in the US to work.
Once they crossed into the US, they turned themselves in and actually were flown or sent by bus to …
