Days before Imran Khan’s ouster on April 10 as prime minister in a no-trust motion in the parliament orchestrated by foreign powers, two impersonators were arrested in Washington for posing as US federal security officials and cultivating access to the Secret Service, which protects President Joe Biden, one of whom claimed ties to Pakistani intelligence.
Justice department assistant attorney Joshua Rothstein asked a judge not to release Arian Taherzadeh and Haider Ali, the men arrested on April 6 for posing as Department of Homeland Security investigators for two years before the arrest, the Guardian reported on April 8.
A long time ago in the Milky Way galaxy on a planet named Earth the trees died. It only happened once in the planet’s history. It was during the Permian-Triassic 252 million years ago.
Henk Visscher, PhD, Department of Earth Sciences, Utrecht University makes a living studying exposed fossil beds of the transitional period of the Permian to Triassic era, aka: “The Great Dying.” Significantly, layers of fossils prior to the great extinction event contain lots of pollen, typical of a healthy conifer forest. But, in the Permo-Triassic boundary the pollen is replaced by strands of fossilized fungi, representing an exploding …
Kamila Valieva
As one who has followed Olympic women’s figure skating, especially since Michelle Kwan (ironically a Chinese-American), I was—as an egalitarian feminist when it comes to sports—excited to learn that there was a 15-year-old Russian woman skater, Kamila Valieva, who could do effortless quad jumps. Waiting in anticipation of her first Olympic performance, I listened to commentators and former US skaters Tara Lipinsky and Johnny Weir rave about her spectacular talent. They told the audience that we were about to see “the best skating in the world”…that “a …
In one of the most remarkable labor organizing victories in decades, the Amazon workers in Staten Island voted to unionize with the independent Amazon Labor Union (ALU). This is the first organizing victory for any union at any of Amazon’s 110 warehouses across the USA, the nation’s second largest employer with over a million employees.
Amazon Labor Union worker-organizers celebrated their 2,654-2,131 win today. Photo: AP Photo/Eduardo Munoz Alvarez
This was a real bottom-up organizing effort potentially highlighting an effective way forward for the rest of labor – a victory …
I remember when we first came to this small Mexican island in the Caribbean. The pace of life was very slow and time seemed to spiral, not chug straight ahead. It seemed as if local people far outnumbered visitors, most of whom came for the off-beat rhythm of life. The days floated by as did the people along the narrow streets, in and out of the little cafes and aqua water as if everyone were a sea bird soaring on the up notes and dancing down with the swaying palms. Celestial music filled the air.
Imperial proprietorship over the small Caribbean Island of Cuba, from the United States’ perspective, has been from its earliest founding understood as a foredrawn conclusion, a predetermined inexorable; a geographical inevitable. Heads of State, from Thomas Jefferson to James Monroe to John Quincy Adams et al. shared a similar conviction, “[that Cuba’s] proximity did indeed seem to suggest destiny, a destiny unanimously assumed to be manifest.”i Through the mid 19th century, US opinion toward Cuba was made jingoistically evident by Secretary of State John Clayton, “This Government,” he advised, …
The meeting between Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, in the Chinese eastern city of Huangshan on March 30, is likely to go down in history as a decisive meeting in the relations between the two Asian giants.
The meeting was not only important due to its timing or the fact that it reaffirmed the growing ties between Moscow and Beijing, but because of the resolute political discourse articulated by the two top diplomats.
In Huangshan, there was no place for ambiguity. Lavrov spoke of a new ‘world order’, arguing that the world is now …
China increases its food security; Chinese university graduates experience diminished employment prospects; the contributions of Chinese elders to society are welcomed
Karen DeYoung reported for the Washington Post Thursday that Russia sent a formal diplomatic note to the United States on Tuesday, accusing Washington and its NATO clients of insidiously subverting peace process with Ukraine initiated at the Istanbul talks on March 29, and the subsequent withdrawal of Russian forces from the outskirts of Kyiv, Chernihiv and Sumy, thus ending the month-long offensive in Ukraine.
The document, titled “On Russia’s concerns in the context of massive supplies of weapons and military equipment to the Kiev regime,” was forwarded to the State Department by the Russian Embassy in Washington, in which …
Insanity has often been defined as trying the same thing over and over and receiving the same result.
Case in point, Ukraine was seeking NATO membership to bolster its security. This membership would have come at the expense of Russian security, as Russian president Vladimir Putin made clear. To thwart NATO’s (i.e., the US’s) hegemonic ambitions and preserve its own security, Russia felt compelled to address its security concerns. When these Russian security concerns were treated with contempt by the US and Ukraine, Russia took action to protect itself.
Karl Marx’s thought is justifiably characterized as “materialist.” In his doctoral dissertation, he had contrasted the theories of Democritus and Epicurus, both of whom rejected Pythagorean-Platonic notions of a separate world of the “spirit” (i.e., of eternal “patterns” from which transient, this-world things supposedly derived). Like many radical humanists of the mid-19th century, Marx was profoundly influenced by Feuerbach’s dismissal of an illusory “God” as in actuality a projection of the potential powers of humanity. Not only Christianity but virtually all world religions had insisted on an after-worldly disposition of the immortal “soul” — transmigration, inferior reincarnation (bad karma), infernal …
I’m often asked whether consumers are better or worse off since the modern consumer movement took hold in the nineteen sixties.
Let’s look at the record. Motor vehicles are much safer, less polluting, and more fuel efficient now, but not nearly what they should be. Today, consumers have warranty rights, recall rights, equal credit opportunity rights they did not have back then. Labeling has also improved. There is no more lead in gasoline and paint, though lead water pipes still contaminate some drinking water systems.
From being King tobacco over 50 years ago, cigarette companies are more regulated and daily tobacco smoking …
I encountered a relatively new piece of graffiti art in my neighborhood (above) and — as I shot the photo — thought to myself: You know you live in a monopoly capitalist culture when living human beings are regularly compared to pieces of green paper we agree (for now) to be worth something.
Thanks to more than a century of conditioning, our personal dreams have been co-opted and replaced with the American Dream of wealth, material possessions, sexual conquests, being on TV, etc. …
President Biden and the Bi-Partisan Effort to Destroy Planet Earth
by Max Wilbert and Elisabeth Robson / April 15th, 2022
In 2015, former President Barack Obama said “If we’re going to prevent large parts of this Earth from becoming not only inhospitable but uninhabitable in our lifetimes, we’re going to have to keep some fossil fuels in the ground rather than burn them.” Despite this, Obama’s energy policy was called “All of the Above,” and his administration supported and subsidized drilling for oil, fracking for gas, coal mining, damming rivers, building nuclear power plants, erecting wind turbines on mountaintops, capping hot springs for geothermal energy, and covering sunny regions with solar panels.
It was a climate of unquestioned moral righteousness. The enemy was Fascism. The brutalities of Fascism were undisguised by pretense: the concentration camps, the murder of opponents, the tortures by secret police, the burning of books, the total control of information, the roving gangs of thugs in the streets, the designation of “inferior” races deserving extermination, the infallible leader, the mass hysteria, the glorification of war, the invasion of other countries, the bombing of civilians. No literary work of imagination could create a more monstrous evil… But it is precisely that situation—where the enemy is undebatably evil—that produces a righteousness …
There is a reason why Israel is insistent on linking the series of attacks carried out by Palestinians recently to a specific location, namely the Jenin refugee camp in the northern West Bank. By doing so, the embattled Naftali Bennett’s government can simply order another deadly military operation in Jenin to reassure its citizens that the situation is under control.
Indeed, on April 9, the Israeli army has stormed the Jenin refugee camp, killing a Palestinian and wounding ten others. However, Israel’s problem is much bigger than Jenin.
If we examine the events starting with the March 22 stabbing attack …
Ever Fonseca (Cuba), Homenaje a la paz (‘Homage to Peace’), 1970.
While the United States began its illegal war against Iraq in 2003, Cuba’s President Fidel Castro spoke in Buenos Aires, Argentina. ‘Our country does not drop bombs on other peoples’, he said, ‘nor does it send thousands of planes to bomb cities … Our country’s tens of thousands of scientists and doctors have been educated on the idea of saving lives’. Cuba had an army, yes, but not an army for war; Castro called …
Rarely has the Solomon Islands had as much attention as this. Despite being in caretaker mode as it battles the federal election, the government of Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison still had room to politicise its anti-China twitch. The person given the task of doing so was the Minister for International Development and the Pacific, Senator Zed Seselja.
In a quick visit to Honiara to have discussions with Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare, Seselja stated that Australia remained dedicated to supporting the security needs of the Solomon Islands, and would do so “swiftly, transparently and with full respect for its sovereignty”. …
The ongoing gender-related disputes about who should be allowed to participate in sports competitions can be solved very simply. The process of creating sensible competitive guidelines has evolved over decades, and will continue to evolve. The “trans” crisis in sports can be easily handled with no further blood spilled, jaw grinding, or panties in a twist.
There usually is some logic to what sports categories we create. We have various games for people in wheelchairs. You’re either bound to a wheelchair or not. Being on a Harley doesn’t pass the test. There are basketball leagues for those under 6’. If you’re …
California Assembly Bill #2098 was introduced on February 14, 2022. If passed, the bill would “designate the dissemination or promotion of misinformation or disinformation related to the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, or ‘COVID-19,’ as unprofessional conduct.”
Translation: It’s corporate-sponsored censorship aimed at taking away power from health professionals who see through the COVID bullshit.
Section 1 of the bill declares the following:
(a) The global spread of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, or COVID-19, has claimed the lives of over 5,000,000 people worldwide, including nearly 75,000 Californians.
(b) Data from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) …
I hope that my email finds you and Bruce in good health and doing fine.
I will try to answer your interesting questions, please note that my answers are from my personal point of view, it is built on daily observations, readings, talking to different people, and even watching tv now and then, with no pretenses whatsoever.
How would you characterize the class structure in Russia in terms of upper class, upper-middle class, middle class, and working class?
The super-rich and oligarchs: This thin social layer is an entity by itself, it owns …
That a figure like Scott Morrison comes across as competent, able and free of imbecility after a day of electioneering in Australia suggests a broader sickness in politics. This is not to say that the incumbent will not be skewered and bayoneted at the ballot box on May 21 by Australia’s burghers. But this is a man who has made supreme vacuity an essential feature of governance. His opponent, Labor’s Anthony Albanese, finds mendacity and controlling the narrative virtually impossible, but struggles to convey an air of well-informed competence.
The Morrison government has done wonders to bankrupt Australian politics. (Reserves were …
A proposed tax reform—left for dead in the ruins of Build Back Better—isn’t dead after all. In fact, it could still happen, in two separate ways.
Both would curb the stepped-up basis, a giveaway that allows capital gains to pass untaxed from generation to generation. Its elimination would bring tens of billions into the Treasury, give a huge boost to tax fairness, and take a huge bite out of pass-along fortunes.
Taxing the unrealized capital gains of the ultra-wealthy has taken center stage as one of the possible methods. The Biden Administration’s 2023 budget would “establish …
US arms and advisers mean more death over there and higher prices at the pump and supermarket right here
by John V. Walsh / April 12th, 2022
“Harris Tells Americans They Will Have to Pay More for Gas To Punish Russia,” proclaimed the New York Timesheadline recently. So spoke no less an authority on economics than the Vice President of the United States. Harris was on a visit to Poland to reassure a nervous NATO member and to egg on the war in Ukraine at the cost of ever more Ukrainian and Russian lives and higher inflation in the US and the world.
Inflation, Already Bad, Will be Worsened by the War in Ukraine.
The Times’s report on Harris’s declaration, however, concluded with this sobering reminder:
Interesting Teach-in, well, discussion, with the speakers below. You will hear Scott Ritter divert from some of these speakers saying that the actions by Russia in Ukraine are legal, ethical and necessary.
Here is Ritter, just interviewed, Strategic Culture. Note that Ritter is called a traitor (for looking at the Russian military and political angles) and a Putin Stooge (this is it for Western Woke Culture) and he’s been banned on Twitter for a day, and then back up, and the seesaw of social media continues (more McCarthy: The New Democratic Opperative). You do not have to agree with militarism, …
Greg Pulles is a retired attorney in Minnesota. As anyone with the capacity for critical thought would be, Pulles is skeptical about the pandemic narrative. Unlike most, however, he’s set out to do something about it.
Pulles and his team analyzed 10,984 Minnesota death certificates that bear the ICD code (International Classification of Diseases) U071 as assigned by the CDC for COVID-19.
US’s Flaunting of Diplomatic Immunity Challenged in Court:
by Roger D. Harris / April 11th, 2022
Venezuelan diplomat Alex Saab’s case took a dramatic turn as his legal defense team denounced the US government’s flagrant failure to respect long-standing diplomatic immunity conventions. Saab’s lawyer, David Rivkin, called the US government’s arguments before the 11th Circuit Court in Miami “utterly dangerous.” “The implication,” he added is that “because you are a disfavored regime, because you’re Venezuela under Maduro…we’re going to treat you as somehow you lost the Westphalian entitlement to sovereignty.” And with that, Rivkin pretty much summed up the US imperial view of the world.
At issue at the April 6 hearing was Saab’s claim …
The leaders of a bevy of NATO-aligned countries have appeared in a collage that reads “Stand up for Ukraine.” It comes across blatantly as propaganda cooked by a corporate PR firm as part of the information war being waged against Russia.
My question to these upstanding, er … these people standing up, is: When have you stood up for, in no particular order:
Palestine
Syria
Libya
Iraq
Afghanistan
Yemen
Iran
Democratic Republic of Congo
Somalia
Haiti
Serbia
Venezuela
Bolivia
Honduras
Nicaragua
This is, of course, an inexhaustive list. What follows is an analysis of what NATO types standing up for signifies for the first …
Every single Woke dude, or Democratic Party darling, or Republican Party rouge, or Randian libertarian, well, heck, sell your stocks, reverse mortgage your properties, dump your assets and get your asses to Ukraine, then.
“Find a way to be against the war in Ukraine, please.” That was the subject line of one of my recent hate emails. “If you look through Mr. Rall’s cartoons for the past month, there isn’t a single one condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine,” an anonymous online commenter chided. “There’s plenty of ones based around whataboutism condemning us for condemning them but not a single one that just comes right out and says what Russia is doing now is wrong.”
