June 10 bore witness to a valiant effort on the part of refugee groups and a trade union to stop what promises to be the first journey of many as part of the UK-Rwanda plan. Their attempt to seek an injunction failed to convince the High Court. Next Tuesday, the first flight from the UK to Rwanda filled with asylum seekers will, unless the Court of Appeal rules otherwise, take off. Some 31 people of Iraqi and Syrian background have been told they will be on board with one-way tickets.
Rolling Stone
Ted Scambos, a polar scientist with 20 trips to Antarctica under his belt, makes a living trekking across glaciers, measuring the speed, thickness, and structure of ice. Dr. Scambos (University of Colorado/Boulder) recently penned an article: “Ice World: Antarctica’s Riskiest Glacier is Under Assault From Below and Losing Its Grip”.The Conversation, June 7, 2022.
Scambos is a lead principal investigator for the Science Coordination Office of the International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration (SCO project). How many glaciers in the world have a team of scientists dedicated to an …
The debate [sic] related to student loan forgiveness is almost always based on media lies and carved-in-stone ideological identities. For example, if you see yourself as left or liberal, you salivate each time Bernie Sanders evokes the specter of 100 percent forgiveness. Conservatives reflexively grumble about “big government” and/or “work ethic” without doing any real investigation.
Hey, who needs facts when we have our [sic] manufactured opinions?
As is my style, I’m here to fill in a few of the blanks. Once again, the goal is not to change your mind. I’m just …
Once upon a time over the portals of the fabled Library of Alexandria were chiseled these words: “The Hospital for the Soul.” This majestic phrase captured for all times the eternal dream of the pure and unfettered pursuit of knowledge and our need for quiet places like schools and libraries to find repose in renewing the spirit.
Amidst the confusions of this distracted world, the Greeks never lost sight of thinking about the larger issues of life and its ultimate meaning. We must not lose our way amidst the obsessions of the …
“Mixed in with Chomsky’s criticism of US foreign policy … he has the anti-Communism,” says Caleb Maupin. Maupin also refutes Chomsky’s “bullshit” criticism of Lenin.
The Empire went to assert its position in the Latin America. But it has flopped. CNN headlined: “Snubs, from key leaders at Summit of the Americas reveal Biden’s struggle to assert US leadership in its neighborhood”. It’s a setback for the Empire!
Today, it’s not an unimaginable development in the region.
The IX Summit of the Americas has kicked off in Los Angeles on June 6, 2022; and US President Mr. Biden has formally inaugurated the summit on June 9, 2022.
“Yet”, CNN said, “the absences of the presidents of Mexico, El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala are still notable since the United States …
Sbongile Tabhethe works in the food garden at eKhenana land occupation in Cato Manor, Durban, 9 June 2020. Credit: New Frame / Mlungisi Mbele
In March 2022, United Nations (UN) Secretary-General António Guterres warned of a ‘hurricane of hunger’ due to the war in Ukraine. Forty-five developing countries, most of them on the African continent, he said, ‘import at least a third of their wheat from Ukraine or Russia, with 18 of those import[ing] at least 50 percent’. Russia and Ukraine …
While the global food systems we depend on come under increasing strain, there’s a solution to the growing crisis that most Americans can find in their own backyards–or front lawns.
A confluence of crises—lockdowns and business closures, mandates and worker shortages, supply chain disruptions and inflation, sanctions and war—have compounded to trigger food shortages; and we have been warned that they may last longer than the food stored in our pantries. What to do?
The Summit of the Americas is not the property of the host nation. The U.S. has no right to exclude, Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela, but has done so in disregard of their sovereignty. The U.S. is not fit to judge others or to be responsible for bringing nations together. Every leader in the hemisphere should boycott what has become a farcical event.
I applaud the decision by Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador not to attend this week’s so-called Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles and hope that by Wednesday a majority of the nations in our region would have joined him. …
In learning more about the Poor People’s Campaign Moral March on Washington set for June 18th, I came across this statement by Bishop William Barber, the campaign’s national co-chair:
Republicans say poverty is just a personal failure. And Democrats too often talk about the working class and those trying to make it into the middle class but refuse to talk expressly about poverty. Our debates are locked in struggles around and about trickle-down concepts of neoliberalism, and middle-class considerations.
He concluded that the country’s refusal to address poverty is “the basic moral contradiction” of our time.
What took place between May 2021 and May 2022 is nothing less than a paradigm shift in Palestinian resistance. Thanks to the popular and inclusive nature of Palestinian mobilization against the Israeli occupation, resistance in Palestine is no longer an ideological, political or regional preference.
In the period between the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993 and only a few years ago, Palestinian muqawama – or resistance – was constantly put in the dock, often criticized and condemned, as if an oppressed nation had a moral responsibility in selecting the type of resistance to suit the needs and interests …
Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state.
—Noam Chomsky, Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda, April 1, 1997
Propaganda isn’t a euphemism for how the other side controls information. Nor is it simply about jailing journalists or shuttering media outlets. A serious discussion of the matter must look at the broader forces shaping information dissemination and suppression.
On May 22 I spoke on a panel at the Canadian Association of Journalists conference titled Censorship, Journalism and War. The Ukraine-focused exchange climaxed with journalist Justin Ling asking if I was “ashamed” for having been interviewed by RT. …
The U.S. Government Is Waging Psychological Warfare on the Nation
by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead / June 8th, 2022
Have you ever wondered who’s pulling the strings? … Anything we touch is a weapon. We can deceive, persuade, change, influence, inspire. We come in many forms. We are everywhere.
— U.S. Army Psychological Operations recruitment video
Psychological warfare, according to the Rand Corporation, “involves the planned use of propaganda and other psychological operations to influence the opinions, emotions, attitudes, and behavior of opposition groups.”
For years now, the government has been bombarding the …
But victory is a cruel NATO fantasy, staged for, and promoted by, our war-loving corporate infotainment media
by Dave Clennon / June 8th, 2022
Let our bleeding proxy negotiate a settlement, NOW.
Since early January, the corporate media have been proving their loyalty and their usefulness to the US foreign policy establishment. With faultless show-business efficiency, they manufactured an international political superstar, at least in Europe and the English speaking world. Vladimir Zelensky appeared on media screens, seemingly everywhere, including a turn on the 2022 Grammy Awards extravaganza.
Sad but resolute Ukrainian refugees became fodder for a blend of news and entertainment that firmly established, in our hearts and minds, who were the Good Guys and who were the Evil Monsters.
The war in Ukraine is a propaganda war, with all of the belligerents, sponsors, and their allies churning out — through an abjectly subservient media — masses of lies and disinformation. In this regard, they resemble other wars, but with an added dose of shamelessness.
For that reason, it is difficult to discern how the war is being conducted or who has the military advantage at any time. Like all modern wars, atrocity stories abound and losses are wildly exaggerated.
But what separates this war from wars in the recent and not-so-recent past is the near-absence of an organized anti-war movement. It …
Mickey Z.: Recently, Cindy Sheehan and I appeared on each other’s podcasts (Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox Newsletter and Post-Woke). While talking off-air, Cindy suggested we collaborate on an article related to our experiences with the Left — particularly since March 2020. To follow is the first part of that conversation.
MZ: About a month or two ago, a subscriber to my Substack described it as a “conservative blog.” She did so while pointing out how “unexpected” it is that someone running a conservative blog also runs a …
The current repression of dissent in Germany is startlingly similar to that in North America. In 2019 as the virus started to spread, the government ordered drastic measures against it. Several distinguished doctors and professors, including an MD who was a former member of parliament, asked the government for evidence and explanations justifying these measures. When they were ignored, they called a rally and gave speeches again asking the government for answers. The government ignored this too, but their press launched a smear campaign labeling these people as unscientific and incompetent. When several current members of parliament spoke out against …
On June 3, Judge Santiago Pedraz of Spain’s national court, the Audienca Nacional, issued a summons for former CIA director and US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to testify in an ongoing investigation into the conduct of private security firm UC Global and its founder, David Morales.
The security firm is said to have been hired by US intelligence operatives to monitor Julian Assange and his associates during his time in the Ecuadorian embassy in London. In all likelihood, if we are to take the evidence of UC Global’s former head of operations, Michel Wallemacq, seriously, Ecuador’s intelligence services …
In 1990, Tom Cruise, star of the 1986 blockbuster, ‘Top Gun’, said:
Some people felt that “Top Gun” was a right-wing film to promote the Navy. And a lot of kids loved it. But I want the kids to know that’s not the way war is – that “Top Gun” was just an amusement park ride, a fun film with a PG-13 rating that was not supposed to be reality. That’s why I didn’t go on and make “Top Gun II” and “III” and “IV” and “V.” That …
Guns don’t kill people; people kill people. Guns don’t kill people; crazy people kill people. Guns don’t kill people; transsexual leftist illegal aliens kill people. Guns don’t kill people; not enough guns kill people. Guns don’t kill people; too many doors kill people.
Or maybe try this one for a while: The only thing that stops a crazy guy with a gun is a less crazy guy with a gun.
“We need to drastically change our approach to mental health. There are always so many warning signs. Almost all of these disfigured minds share the same profile,” said Trump to the …
For a country experiencing its worst economic crisis since gaining independence in 1948, the picture of a touring team pampered and fussed over might cause consternation. But the Australian cricket tour to Sri Lanka has only been met by praise from the country’s cricket officials, where logic is inverted, and the gaze of responsibility averted. Not even a shortage of foreign currency, precipitating a dramatic fall in medicines and fuel, along with demonstrations that have left nine dead and 300 injured, prompted second thoughts.
A good deal of this crisis was helped by the coming to power of former defence minister …
In the Paradigm for Peace model, the Roots of Violence are divided into seven categories. While a few of the categories aren’t as easily divided into defensive and aggressive motivations, for the most part, we examine how each party to the conflict may be defensively motivated or aggressively motivated to inflict violence with regard to each category. For example, with regard to the category Wealth, Land, and Possessions, a person using violence to protect his home from attack has a defensive motivation to use violence. A person using violence to attack another person’s home to …
Below is part seven of the series called “Booming” Economy Leaves Millions Behind. Forty facts on U.S. and international conditions, some updated and some new, are provided below. Once again, many economic records are being broken by a crisis-prone economy dominated by big business.
Links to the first six parts of this series, which collectively contain 150 facts from the U.S. and abroad, can be found at the end of this article. ***** U.S. Conditions
Recently, as I neared my local C-Town supermarket, I saw a middle-aged man standing near a recycling redemption machine. In front of him were several massive clear garbage bags teeming full of the cans and bottles he had collected.
The man looked bloated, exhausted, defeated — his skin grayish as he went through the motions of securing a few bucks. He reached into one of the bags and pulled out an empty, crumpled liter-sized bottle of Coca-Cola.
My eyes happened to meet the man’s eyes just as he lifted the dirty bottle to …
Despite mandates dropping around the world (Canada a notable exception) many people, as is their right, continue to don masks whose prophylactic effective is dubious.
The award-winning Director’s Cut of The Ghosts of Jeju lays bare what Pax Americana is all about, focusing on the exceedingly cruel debasement of the democratic will of Koreans.
Begin then with a fracture, a cesura, a rent; opening a crack in this fallen world, a shaft of light.
— Norman O. Brown, Love’s Body
Being sick for the past few weeks has had its advantages. It has forced me to take a break from writing since I could not concentrate enough to do so. It has gifted me with a deeper sympathy for the vast numbers of the seriously ill around the world, those suffering souls without succor except for desperate prayers for relief. And it has allowed thoughts to think me as I relinquished all …
The platinum jubilee will bore and cause some to yawn. It might certainly agitate the republican spleen in the fourteen countries where Queen Elizabeth II remains a constitutional head of state. But the question remains: How does the institution this figure represents endure, if it should at all?
A rash of countries have expressed an interest in severing ties with the monarchy. In November last year, Barbados did so with some pomp, swearing in its first president, Sandra Mason, a former governor general. “Today,” Mason proclaimed, “debate and discourse have become action.”
Through 2022, the royals made visits to the Caribbean …
