CORRECTION: During the production of this episode we were working with the most up to date information at the time when we had said nobody had died at the May Day protests in Chile. Unfortunately we have since learned that Francisca Sandoval, a journalist age 29 died several days later in the hospital. Our condolences go out to her family and loved ones.
Welcome to another episode of System Fail. In the news this week we do a quick rundown of May Day celebrations around the world. Although there were other May Day festivities we focused on Montreal Santiago de Chile, …
According to the Fermi Paradox, the failure to date to achieve radio communication between Earth and extraterrestrial civilizations can be attributed to their inevitable short-term self-destruction, a consequence of uncontrolled dispersion of toxic substances, contamination of air, water and land, and construction of deadly weapons. On Earth this includes saturation of the atmosphere by greenhouse gases and production of nuclear weapons. The most extensive mass extinction event in the history of Earth, represented by the Permian-Triassic boundary 251 million years-ago, involved warming, acidification and oxygen depletion of the oceans, with consequent emanations of toxic H2S and CH4, leading to …
Bram Büscher and Robert Fletcher point to the need for profound systemic change if we are to ensure the integrity of our natural world and its ability to regenerate so that future generations may thrive. The ecological emergency is now; further delay only intensifies the crisis. The core question for all our efforts at protecting biodiversity is how to create a virtuous feedback loop that (1) supports nature’s regeneration and (2) generates stronger political will.
Clearly social transformation can take years of preparation, building solidarity among the constituency advocating for …
In episode 100, News on China tells of China developing an oral dose of vaccine, prioritizing urban employment, and defending against colonialism by the pirate queen Zheng Yi Sao.
Posted on streetlamps all over Germany are stickers showing fleeing silhouettes with the caption, “Refugees welcome – bring your families”. Some have been blacked out with felt markers or ripped partially away. The Germans have mixed feelings about refugees, as demonstrated in the earlier waves from the Mideast and the current one from the Ukraine.
Germany took in over two million refugees from the Mideast wars, far more than any other country. The equivalent for the US population would be eight million.
This has created an enormous financial and cultural strain in a …
Australia’s federal election May 18th turned left with a new power broker named climate change. Major networks refer to the election as: “Australia’s Climate Election,” with newly elected Prime Minister Anthony Albanese vowing to turn Australia into a “renewable energy superpower.”
The incumbent PM Scott Morrison led the Coalition opposed by the Labor party behind the candidacy of Anthony Albanese. At the end of the day, Labor overwhelmed by capturing the two most significant burning issues: (1) climate change (2) political integrity (What a gorgeous setup for US Dems).
According to NBC News, polling in the lead-up to the election showed that …
Crimes without criminals was not a subject for study when I was in law school. The two were seen as part of the same illegal package. That was before notorious corporate lawyers and a cash register Congress combined to separate economic, health and safety crimes from corporate accountability, incarceration and deterrence.
Lawlessness is now so rampant that a group of realistic law professors, led by Professor Mihailis E. Diamantis of the University of Iowa Law School, claim there is no corporate criminal law. I say “realistic” because their assertion that corporate criminal law, does not in fact, exist is not widely acknowledged by …
This article shows how media uses computer modeling and “virtual crime scenes” to assign blame for some extremely important international events. In these examples from Nicaragua, Ukraine and Syria, many people died in complex circumstances. The deaths at the “Mother’s March” in Managua, Nicaragua precipitated an attempted coup. The Maidan Massacre in Kyiv led to an actual coup. The claims of a chemical attack in Douma led to the US, France and the UK bombing Syria.
The three incidents are in different continents but share some key characteristics: each is to some degree emblematic of the conflict of which it is …
Bisa Butler (USA), I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, 2019.
Empire denies its own existence. It does not exist as an empire but only as benevolence, with its mission to spread human rights and sustainable development across the world. However, that perspective means nothing in Havana nor in Caracas, where ‘human rights’ has come to mean regime change, and where ‘sustainable development’ has come to mean the throttling of their people through sanctions and blockades. It is from the standpoint of the victims of empire that clarity comes.
A list of specious scientific achievements (sic) would be long enough to warrant a ten-part Netflix series. It includes, for example, the Tuskegee Study, mercury fillings, chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), veal crates, electroshock therapy, napalm, mustard gas, automatic weapons, sonic weaponry, directed energy weapons, weapons in general, surgical experiments (without anesthesia) on slaves, deforestation, Vioxx, DDT, eugenics, GMOs, fossil fuels, the Milgram experiments, factory farming, the medicalization of the birthing process, vivisection, mountaintop mining, MK ULTRA, conversion therapy, forced sterilizations, pre-frontal lobotomies, waterboarding, deep-sea bottom trawling, Accutane, land mines, and the electric chair— …
Societies generate their own economies of tolerable cruelties and injustices. Poverty, for instance, will be allowed, as long a sufficient number of individuals are profiting. To an extent, crime and violence can be allowed to thrive. In the United States, the economy of tolerable massacres, executed by military grade weapons, is considerable and seemingly resilient. Its participants all partake in administering it, playing their bleak roles under the sacred banner of constitutional freedom and psychobabble.
Just as prison reform tends to keep pace with the expansion of the bloated system, the gun argument in the US keeps pace, barely, with each …
For nearly three decades, Palestinians were told that the Nakba – or Catastrophe – is a thing of the past. That real peace requires compromises and sacrifices; therefore, the original sin that has led to the destruction of their historic homeland should be entirely removed from any ‘pragmatic’ political discourse. They were urged to move on.
The consequences of that shift in narrative were dire. Disowning the Nakba, the single most important event that shaped modern Palestinian history, has resulted in more than political division between the so-called radicals and the supposedly peace-loving pragmatists, …
In the 16th Century, French essayist Etienne de la Boetie, amazed at people’s obedience to perceived authority, penned Discourse On Voluntary Servitude. It wasn’t obedience per se that disturbed him, but that he saw people as “driven to servility,” when refusal to comply would end their servitude: “(I)f, without any violence [tyrants] are simply not obeyed, they become naked and undone and as nothing.”
For Boetie, being free is the natural state for humans, and he wanted to understand “…. how it happens that this obstinate willingness to submit has become so deeply rooted in a …
by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead / May 25th, 2022
Mass shootings have become routine in the United States and speak to a society that relies on violence to feed the coffers of the merchants of death. Given the profits made by arms manufacturers, the defense industry, gun dealers and the lobbyists who represent them in Congress, it comes as no surprise that the culture of violence cannot be abstracted from either the culture of business or the corruption of politics.
— Professor Henry A. Giroux
We are caught in a vicious cycle.
With alarming regularity, the nation is being subjected to a …
The former president’s confusion over the invasions of Iraq and Ukraine should lead to western soul-searching, not mirth
by Jonathan Cook / May 25th, 2022
It was apparently a “gaffe” of the kind we had forgotten since George W Bush stepped down from the US presidency in early 2009. During a speech in Dallas last week, he momentarily confused Russian President Vladimir Putin’s current war of aggression against Ukraine and his own war of aggression against Iraq in 2003.
Bush observed that a lack of checks and balances in Russia had allowed “one man to launch a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq… I mean, Ukraine. Iraq too. Anyway… …
Could it have been just another case of bumbling poor judgment, the mind softened as the mouth opened? A question was put to US President Joe Biden, visiting Tokyo and standing beside Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida: “You didn’t want to get involved in the Ukraine conflict militarily for obvious reasons. Are you willing to get involved militarily to defend Taiwan if it comes to that?” The answer: “Yes. That’s a commitment we made.”
Biden was again flatly committing the US to a conflict over Taiwan should China deploy its forces. He has done so on two previous occasions, …
While enroute to observe the presidential elections in Colombia, Teri Mattson was denied entry by Colombian authorities and had her passport seized. After arriving at 6:55 am on May 22, she was forced to spend the day and the night at the Bogotá Airport before being deported the following morning and flown out of the country.
Although Mattson resides in Mexico and first flown there, her tribulations did not end there. She was then held in Mexico without passport or phone while immigration waited for the first available flight to the US, …
Ketanji Brown Jackson, Thurgood Marshall, and the Supremely Political Court
by Michael Hoover / May 24th, 2022
The treatment to which Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee subjected Ketanji Brown Jackson during her confirmation hearing was atrocious. The first ever African-American woman to be nominated to the Supreme Court, Brown Jackson faced GOP senators who were unabashedly insolent. Collectively, they ran her through a proverbial right-wing mill that included condemnations of Critical Race Theory, distortions of certain anti-racist children’s books, and allegations that she is “soft on crime.” She was also questioned about the role that race plays in her position as a federal judge, something no …
In case you have lingering doubts about the reality of human-caused global warming, hop on an airplane to parts of India or Pakistan and spend a few days. And, as long as you’re there, maybe be a good citizen and pick up a few of the dehydrated birds that drop out of the sky. Then, use the syringe you brought along to feed it some water before it dies in your hands.
And, maybe do the same for some of the people sprawled out on the roadside before they die right before your eyes. After all, people are already dying from …
The shooting in Buffalo has once again ignited an ill-informed “debate” on the topic of guns. Thus, I feel compelled to re-share some of the missing context.
Male Violence (as usual) Must Be Factored In
Please allow me to introduce some damn good reasons to consider some kind of gun control:
On average, 57 women are shot and killed by an intimate partner every month in the United States
Over half of female victims of intimate partner homicide in the U.S. are killed with a gun
Over the ten-year period between …
Ukraine must negotiate based on a “realistic assessment” and “limits” to U.S./NATO commitment, says NYT
by John V. Walsh / May 23rd, 2022
A week ago, we made note of a May 11 New York Times news article, documenting that all was not going well for the U.S. in Ukraine, and a companion opinion piece hinting that a shift in direction might be in order.
Now on May 19, “THE EDITORIAL BOARD,” the full Magisterium of the Times, has moved from hints to a clarion call for a change in direction in an editorial uninformatively titled, “The War Is Getting Complicated, and America Isn’t Ready.” From atop the Opinion page the Editorial Board has declared that “total victory” over Russia is not …
COVID affects economy in China; AI used in constructing hydroelectric power plant in Tibet; and China’s state-owned COMAC C919, a competitor to Boeing 737 and Airbus A320, has already received 815 orders.
A cartoon take on the seemingly neverending outbreak of contagious diseases and how the WHO’s director general steers the world’s nations in handling their populations.
Israel’s coalition government of right-wing Prime Minister Naftali Bennett is on the verge of collapse, which is unsurprising. Israeli politics, after all, is among the most fractious in the world, and this particular coalition was born out of the obsessive desire to dethrone Israel’s former leader, Benjamin Netanyahu.
While Netanyahu was successfully ousted in June 2021, Bennett’s coalition has been left to contend with the painful reality that its odd political components have very little in common.
On April 6, Israeli lawmaker Ildit Salman defected from the coalition, leaving Bennett and his temporary allies wrangling with the fact that their Knesset (Israel’s …
Ceaseless money printing by central banks, price-fixing in major sectors of the economy (“greedflation”), never-ending supply-chain disruptions and delays, endless pay-the-rich schemes (e.g., public-private “partnerships”), constantly-growing debt at all levels, more inequality, intensifying stock market turbulence, out-of-control inflation, widespread poverty, and lower working and living standards for millions are signs of an economy that lost historical and social relevance long ago. It is an economy in dire need of a new aim and direction under the control of the workers who actually produce the wealth in society.
The economic and social fallout from an obsolete economic and political system continues at …
Rarely in Australian history has a governing party suffered such loss in the face of an opponent unable to claim complete victory. It said much about the disillusionment, and plain disgust, from that nebulous centre of the country’s politics. That centre roared on May 21, consuming sitting government members and inflicting a bloody reckoning.
That reckoning was made in traditional inner-city seats that have never known anyone other than conservative members. It was part of a “teal” electoral tsunami, comprising candidates who would not necessarily wish to vote for Labor or the Greens, but who had found the Liberal-National government of …
As you may have heard, members of the World Health [sic] Organization (WHO) are voting on an international pandemic treaty and amendments to the International Health Regulations between May 22 and 28, 2022.
The good folks at Reclaim the Net flesh things out really well here.
To sum up, the pandemic treaty would supersede 194 member nations’ sovereignty in areas like:
International vaccine passports and contact tracing
Addressing “misinformation,” “disinformation,” and “too much information”
Global surveillance and data sharing
Increased WHO powers to …
