For more terrestrially grounded people, writing about cricket can be seen as an exercise in distant planetary speculation. The Nobel laureate Harold Pinter did not think so, calling this old English game “the greatest thing that God ever created on earth.” Others might disagree with mild disgust, finding it archaic, jargon heavy and slow.
In the early 1990s, one figure broke through the stuffiness of willow bats, pads, leather balls and white flannel. When life left the overly worked body of Australia’s Shane Warne, who expired in Thailand at 52, the …
Louisiana HB 568 has been proposed to avoid those seeking to adopt from being scammed, a very worthwhile and needed goal. Having your hopes and dreams – not to mention thousands of dollars – stolen from you, at a vulnerable time, is devastating and should never happen.
However, the solution proposed by House Bill 568, sponsored by Rep. Rick Edmonds, R-Baton Rouge, which has cleared the House, does address or rectify the root of the problem.
Adam Pertman, adoptive father, former Exec. Dir. Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute, president of the National Center on Adoption and Permanency, and author of Adoption Nation …
“We Know They Lied” tackles the devastation wrought by a corporate duopoly disguised as political parties in the U.S. – false wars driven by greed and avarice; a decimated middle class; and, a justice system that is of, by and for elites. A system that is racist, regressive and punitive for nothing more than profit and control! We must #StopTheAbuse of the American people, and in turn the world – the struggle begins at home!…
“We Know They Lied”
Words & Music by Steve Scott
Shadows stalk the cross
Crescent moon’s on fire
Victims of lies
Angels come to die
Families blown to …
Whatever our differences, beliefs and prejudices we can all agree that peace is a good thing, can’t we, don’t we? All rational decent human beings would, I’m sure, nod enthusiastically, and who among us would admit to not being rational or decent…..even the despots believe they are – rational, just misunderstood. So why are human beings in constant conflict, why are there wars and the like at all, whether it’s in Ukraine, Ethiopia, Syria, Palestine, Afghanistan etc., etc.?
Fighting, violent conflict, heated arguments, all bad, harmony and peace good; it’s simple, obvious, right? Up to the point when someone somewhere attacks …
Alex Saab’s April 6 hearing takes place in the setting of a mercurial world situation, where events in Ukraine may have indirect bearing on his case and on the larger US economic war against Venezuela.
*****
In a world where the US believes it makes the rules and the rest of humanity must follow its orders – what President Biden euphemistically calls the “rules-based order” – Washington has now even appropriated the prerogative to tell other countries who they may appoint as their ambassadors. As a consequence, Venezuelan diplomat Alex Saab is fighting for his freedom before the 11th …
The timing of the March 2022 release of this digital streaming documentary could not be more auspicious. For anyone wanting to understand how we arrived at a new Cold War with the second Irish-Catholic Democratic president in U.S. history, Joseph Biden, spewing belligerent absurdities about Ukraine, Russia, and Vladimir Putin, and leading a charge toward a World War III that could easily turn nuclear, the aggregated factual details in this series of why President John F. Kennedy was assassinated by the CIA and its minions is essential history that illuminates current events.
While Kennedy was the last U.S. president to genuinely …
“The water is back,” one family member would announce in a mix of excitement and panic, often very late at night. The moment such an announcement was made, my whole family would start running in all directions to fill every tank, container or bottle that could possibly be filled. Quite often, the water would last for a few minutes, leaving us with a collective sense of defeat, worrying about the very possibility of surviving.
This was our life under Israeli military occupation in Gaza. The tactic of holding Palestinians hostage to Israel’s water charity was so widespread during the First Palestinian …
On 16 March 2022, as Russia’s war on Ukraine entered its second month, Kazakhstan’s President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev warned his people that ‘uncertainty and turbulence in the world markets are growing, and production and trade chains are collapsing’. A week later, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) released a brief study on the immense shock that will be felt around the world due to this war. ‘Soaring food …
Since I arrived with my family in the UK last summer, I have been repeatedly asked: “Why choose Bristol as your new home?”
Well, it certainly wasn’t for the weather. Now more than ever I miss Nazareth’s warmth and sunshine.
It wasn’t for the food either.
My family do have a minor connection to Bristol. My great-grandparents on my mother’s side (one from Cornwall, the other from South Wales) apparently met in Bristol – a coincidental stopping point on their separate journeys to …
Obscenities occupy the annals of State behaviour, revolting reminders about what governments can do. One of Australia’s most pronounced and undeniable obscenities is its continuing effort to gut and empty international refugee law of its relevant foundations. Instead of being treated as a scandal, populists and governments the world over have expressed admiration, even envy: If they can get away with that, what might we do?
Along the way, Australia has also made its greatest contribution to deterring unwanted arrivals, creating the most ruthless, tropical detention network for individuals who, unblessed by paperwork, arrive by boat with the aid of people …
The Great Upheaval grew out of their intuitive sense that they needed each other, had the support of each other, and together were powerful. This sense of unity was not embodied in any centralized plan or leadership, but in the feelings and action of each participant.
— Jeremy Brecher, Strike! 1972
Although Critical Race Theory is now at the forefront of political debate, American history has often been about forgetting the events of its valiant labor past.
Following the crash of 1873, by July 1877 America was still deep in the depression. The previous year the total revenues of America’s railroads fell by $5.8 million. But they still raised …
On 18 March 2022, I received a letter in my e-mail box from a certain Edward O’Reilly, an analyst for NewsGuard, a sort of international Decodex (which awards green or red stickers to news sites, i.e. justifies the censorship of such and such a site), linked to the CIA, NATO and the White House, concerning their analysis of the Donbass Insider site. After having sent them packing when they saw the obvious bias of this site, they insisted and sent me a week later a series of questions, which contradict each …
I could write a book on why I believe poetry can heal, engage our inner soul and give young and old a voice from which to sing ourselves into being. Even out here on the coast, we have poets gathering at dawn after a long day and night catching fish.
It’s not just another month. National Poetry Month (first organized in 1996) celebrates poetry to increase awareness and appreciation of poetry.
It’s not just a Carl Sandburg, Walt Whitman or Maya Angelou time of remembrance of past laureates. Poetry is for …
In a bizarre turn of events Tuesday, Russian and Ukrainian delegations taking part in peace negotiations in Istanbul appeared to have reached a breakthrough. But following a tepid response by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, contemptuously dismissing Russian peace overtures as nothing more than “delaying tactics” meant to “deceive people and deflect attention,” head of the Russian delegation Vladimir Medinsky walked back the earlier optimistic remarks, saying “a gradual military de-escalation does not necessarily mean an immediate ceasefire.”
Hours later on Tuesday evening, in what appeared to be …
by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead / March 30th, 2022
Big Brother does not watch us, by his choice. We watch him, by ours…. When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby-talk, when, in short, a people become an audience, and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk; culture-death is a clear possibility.
—Professor Neil Postman
Once again, the programming has changed.
Like clockwork, the wall-to-wall news coverage of the latest crisis has shifted gears.
Hewn in to human rights legislation borne of fascism’s decline in the mid twentieth century is a pool of glorious protections of civil liberties and press freedoms. It is deep, but it is not entirely immune from attack. Political opportunists undermine it in regular waves, repressing dissidence in their states and satellite states, even and especially in the West. Victims pile up, the criminalisation of journalism gathering steam, the propaganda to justify this awful retrenchment of civil liberties rising in the background. This is fascism resurgent.
The Totten glacier, East Antarctica. Photograph: Esmee van Wijk/Australian Antarctic Division
East Antarctica, often times referred to as “the final frontier of global warming,” is making headlines once again.
A few weeks ago East Antarctica’s temperatures soared by 50F to 90F above normal. ((“Antarctica Crushes Records“, Dissident Voice, March 23, 2022.))
A couple of weeks later East Antarctica’s Conger Ice Shelf (1,200 sq km) completely collapsed and two additional calving events occurred at other glaciers, all in the same week.
This prompts an interesting dilemma. According to David Spratt, research …
The impression given was that of a temple burgled by blaspheming reprobates. But Australian politicians were having none of it. A draft official document published online by an adviser to the Malaita Provincial Government of Premier Daniel Suidani suggested that China was considering some military presence in The Solomons. In its current form, Beijing would be able to send police, armed police and military personnel.
The Canberra establishment got antsy: What were those wicked freedom-hating representatives of the Middle Kingdom up to? This was, after all, part of the Australian backyard they were poking their noses in. The response …
Self-righteous spinal hatred, the inner Russophobic swine dog as well as lawlessness in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine will harm the Western world itself and hasten its decline and fall
The term “inner swine dog” means, according to the English dictionary, “Malicious, hateful drive, which hides behind a person’s apparently friendly and tolerant exterior”.
This dog, which can belong to both elites and the masses, has been let loose in recent weeks among both high and low along the political spectrum. There no longer seems to be any limit to what can be said about Russians and Russia – even without …
by Ra'ana Dilruba Yasmin and Robert H. Stiver / March 28th, 2022
I have never doubted that apartheid – because it was of itself fundamentally, intrinsically evil – was going to bite the dust eventually.
— Desmond Tutu, 2007
Along with Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, Nelson Mandela ‘Madiba,’ and Martin Luther King, Jr., the world has lost one of the greatest souls of the last two centuries or any prior — the last of the rare iconic figures who truly, genuinely cared for and spoke up with courage and conviction for the oppressed, the downtrodden, the marginalized, the humiliated, and any and all abused humankind.
The New York Times continues to selectively promote news that fits the Establishment narrative. The NYT portrays the nine-year sentence of the Russian “opposition leader” Aleksei Navalny to a high-security prison as a travesty of justice. Was it unjust? If so, justice must be demanded. What I can comment on is a factual inaccuracy by the NYT: Navalny is not the opposition leader. His party has zero seats in the State Duma. The opposition party is the Communist Party of the Russian Federation with 57 seats. Navalny’s party, Russia of the Future, has zero seats. Russia of …
The UN Condemnation of Russia is Endorsed by Countries Run by the Richest, Oldest, Whitest People on Earth But Only 41% of the World’s Population
by Roger Stoll / March 28th, 2022
On March 2 of this year the UN General Assembly met in an Emergency Session to pass a non-binding resolution condemning Russia’s February 24 intervention in Ukraine. ((The resolution “Deplores in the strongest terms the aggression by the Russian Federation against Ukraine in violation of Article 2 (4) of the Charter.” (Article 2 (4) reads: “All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of …
The September 2021 Scientific American included a description by the editors of the deplorable state of disaster relief in the US. They traced the root cause of problems with relief programs as their “focus on restoring private property,” which results in little attention to those “with the least capacity to deal with disasters.” The book Disaster Preparedness and Climate Change in Cuba: Adaptation and Management (2021) comes out the next month. It traced the highly successful source of the island nation’s efforts to …
In slightly hushed tones, of the kind so often uttered in workplaces, I conversed with a fellow civil servant the other day, one who could shed light on some of my past experiences. Over the years, we have met several times in passing, as we moved through the dank spaces of municipal life, and laughed about our mutual frustrations. Encounters of this kind are certainly not rare. In fact, one could even call our conversation ordinary or commonplace, if not for a single, defining moment.
In the half-light of dying florescence, as vending machines hummed and remnants of lunch enticed cockroaches …
Note to our readers: These are letters from a comrade of ours who currently lives in Russia. English is not the first language of HCE so please be understanding. In order to preserve the integrity of these letters, we kept the original phrasing as best we could.
March 11th
Hello Barbara,
Thank you for your message and concern. My wife and I are passing through a difficult phase in our lives. After our second vaccination in December, we, for some reason or other, went through a period of being sick, myself in a light …
