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by Allen Forrest / February 4th, 2022
The convoy estimated to contain 10,000 to 35,000 to 50,000 trucks (depending on the source) travelled to the Canadian capital of Ottawa. The truckers said they will not leave until the mandates are lifted.
For nothing, for NO reason at all
by Mickey Z. / February 4th, 2022
It might have been that big wedding or dream vacation you had planned… but canceled. Perhaps it was your child’s first soccer match or their once-in-a-lifetime prom night. Maybe it was day trips, dances, games, or any number of potentially life-altering extra-curricular activities. Speaking of your kid, they may have lost out on a full-ride college scholarship because, suddenly, playing sports became “dangerous” and you caved in without a fight.
You didn’t get to say hello to a new baby …
by Jonathan Cook / February 3rd, 2022
It seems we may have reached the moment when it is time to say goodbye. It has been fun, educational and sometimes cathartic – for me at least. I hope you got something from our time together too.
I am not going anywhere, of course. Not for now at least. I love to write. For as long as I feasibly can, I will continue to rail against injustice, call out corporate power and its abuses, and demand a fairer and more open society.
But I have to be realistic. I have to recognise that a growing number of you will not …
by Nauman Sadiq / February 3rd, 2022
Whilst Turkish President Erdogan was in Kiev on Thursday, ostensibly brokering a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine to defuse escalating tensions following the Russian troop build-up along Ukraine’s borders and the deployment of 3,000 US forces in Poland and Romania, Biden announced that the Islamic State leader had been killed in a special-ops raid in northwest Syria along the Turkish border.
“Last night, operating on my orders, US military forces successfully removed a major terrorist threat to the world: the global leader of ISIS. Thanks to the bravery of our troops, this horrible terrorist leader is no more,” a visibly …
by Allen Forrest / February 3rd, 2022
by Vijay Prashad / February 3rd, 2022
Amadou Sanogo (Mali), Je pense de ma tête, 2016.
In October 2021, the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) held a seminar on the pandemic and education systems. Strikingly, 99% of the students in the region spent an entire academic year with total or partial interruption of face-to-face classes, while more than 600,000 children struggled with the loss of their caregivers due to the pandemic. It is further estimated that the crisis …
by Ramzy Baroud and Romana Rubeo / February 2nd, 2022
It should matter little to the Chinese that American diplomats and a handful of their western allies will not be attending the Beijing Winter Olympics in February. What truly matters is that the Russians are coming.
The above is not an arbitrary statement. It is supported with facts. According to a survey conducted by China’s Global Times newspaper, the majority of the Chinese people value their country’s relations with Russia more than that of the EU and certainly more than that of the United States. The newspaper reported that such a finding makes it “the first time in 15 years …
by Ramzy Baroud / February 2nd, 2022
A scheme is underway to withhold or to reduce payments made by the Palestinian Authority to the families of Palestinian prisoners. According to Israeli media, the Biden Administration has requested that the PA entirely overhauls its support system of Palestinian prisoners. The Palestinian leadership had already expressed willingness to engage the US in a ‘discussion’.
According to Israel’s Channel 12, the Biden Administration has called on PA President Mahmoud Abbas to stop paying stipends to Palestinian prisoners’ families and, instead, to consider an alternative ‘welfare’ system. For example, over 60-year-old prisoners would receive payments as if ‘retired PA employees’. …
by Yves Engler / February 2nd, 2022
The anti-China panic sweeping Canadian politics has descended from tragedy into farce.
A month ago I mocked Globe and Mail Report on Business columnist Eric Reguly for complaining about China-based Zijin Mining purchasing Neo Lithium. The nominally Canadian firm extracts lithium in Argentina.
Reguly succeeded in stirring a national security scare about minerals extracted 10,000 kilometres from Canada. Since he published “The West is asleep while China hoards key minerals” on December 18 the opposition parties have repeatedly criticized the Liberals for failing to conduct a “national security review” of the Neo Lithium sale. Conservative leader Erin O’Toole called it …
by Ron Forthofer / February 2nd, 2022
Medicare is a successful and treasured government program that provides health care for seniors, for those with disabilities and for those with end-stage renal disease. The Traditional Medicare (TM) approach provides quality and necessary health care with administrative costs that are far lower than that of private health care insurance such as Medicare Advantage (MA). However, this highly valued public program is now at risk of being turned into just another cash cow for Wall Street investors and the private health insurance industry at the public’s expense.
The CMMI
How is this happening? Well, the 2010 Affordable Care Act established the Center …
by Ralph Nader / February 2nd, 2022
Some readers responded to one of my earlier columns urging the national progressive civic groups, with millions of members back home, to overcome the dominance of giant corporatism with a Ten-Year Plan ((Richard Parker, Here, the People Rule: A Constitutional Populist Manifesto, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998.)) budgeted at $1 billion a year (See, “Think Big to Overcome Losing Big to Corporatism,” January 7, 2022). Readers wanted to know more about the Plan and where the money would come from to implement this grand initiative.
New billionaires are proliferating in numbers reflecting the record stock market surges. Some are enlightened …
by Chandran Nair / February 2nd, 2022
Following the announcement of Leena Nair’s (no relation) appointment as CEO of Chanel last month, media and fans were quick to laud the announcement as a step forward in diversity and inclusion (D&I) efforts by global brands given she would be one of the industry’s only women of colour in the exclusive ranks of leadership.
However, Ms Nair’s appointment as the first Indian woman to lead a Western luxury brand is a long overdue opportunity to reflect on the fact that D&I developments – even ones as seemingly …
by Gustavo A Maranges and Bill Hackwell / February 2nd, 2022
Last Friday, it became known that the 77-year-old native American political prisoner Leonard Peltier was sick with COVID-19. Peltier has been in prison for over 46 years, which makes him the oldest political prisoner in the United States.
This fact has brought attention to his case, but the truth is that his freedom has been a permanent demand of a movement since the first day of his unfair incarceration.
For decades, American and foreign activists along with renowned personalities like the Dalai Lama, Reverend Jesse Jackson, Senator Patrick Leahy, and even …
With the publication of Amnesty International’s new apartheid report, Israel’s supporters have just one tactic left: to accuse critics of antisemitism
by Jonathan Cook / February 2nd, 2022
The walls protecting Israel are quickly crumbling. A year ago, it was Israel’s most celebrated human rights group, B’Tselem. Months later, it was the New York-based Human Rights Watch, whose senior staff have often enjoyed a revolving door with the US State Department.
Now, the one speaking up is Amnesty International – an organisation widely viewed as the most authoritative arbiter of what constitutes human rights violations. Over the past year, all have reached the same conclusion: Israel is an apartheid state. According to Amnesty’s new report published on …
by Joseph Essertier / February 2nd, 2022
Men wearing Japanese imperial military uniform visit the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo, Japan August 15, 2019, on the 74th anniversary of Japan’s surrender in World War Two. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon TPX IMAGES OF THE DAYAccording to Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, 18,515 people had lost their lives to the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) by 24 January 2022. Of those deaths, four were minors, i.e., 19 years of age or younger. At this point, nobody can say exactly why the …
by Vern Loomis / February 2nd, 2022
Perhaps you’ve seen it up-close: a parent, an uncle, or maybe a boss with an almost visceral tendency to lie. The lie and the need for affirmation is never a one-off occurrence; you’ve seen its dynamic play out many times: “If validated, I will be happy; if not, I will be angry.” You know that he knows he is lying, and he probably knows that you know he is lying, but none of that is actually important. It’s not the affirmation of truth being sought; it’s the confirmation of power. The dynamic in play is a tacit agreement between you and the liar. Acceptance of the lie confers amity …
by Kim Petersen / February 2nd, 2022
Musician Neil Young finds himself in the 2022 limelight. It may well generate more on-air play and music sales for the Canadian. Young wrote a letter on his website (since removed) that garnered much attention. It read:
Please immediately inform Spotify that I am actively canceling all my music availability on Spotify as soon as possible. I am doing this because Spotify is spreading false information about vaccines — potentially causing death to those who believe the disinformation being spread by them.
Young had a specific target in mind: …
by Peter Koenig / February 1st, 2022
“Venceremos” is a concept. It’s a philosophy. It’s a lifestyle. It’s a conviction – a conviction in solidarity with masses of other people. Venceremos is more than “we shall overcome”. Venceremos is enduring. Venceremos is a movement. Venceremos is persevering against all odds – and Venceremos, finally is dynamics. It’s a concept that adapts to circumstances and moves on and on and on until — and way beyond — the movement has achieved its objective. The philosophy of Venceremos is to sustain our efforts to hold onto sovereign control of our lives.
Remember, freedom doesn’t come for free. Freedom is a …
by Robert Hunziker / February 1st, 2022
Some time ago Jeremy Grantham (83), a renowned value investor who runs the $65 billion asset fund GMO, called the stock market a “super bubble.” ((Erik Schatzker, “Jeremy Grantham Has an Even Scarier Prediction Than His Crash Call”, Bloomberg, January 26, 2022.))
Nowadays, a lot of the air has come out of hot stocks of the covid era, losing 30%-40%-50%, or more, in only a couple of months; e.g., Netflix falling from $700 down to $390/share within 3 weeks. That’s a lot of hot air wheezing out quickly. As Joe Granville, market technician 1923-2013, famously said: They (investors) are “bag-holders.”
The title …
by Allen Forrest / February 1st, 2022
An irreverent take on government officials and their adherence to COVID protocols on stage and behind the curtain.
by Binoy Kampmark / February 1st, 2022
Not wishing to be left out from the brutal closed border system that has characterised COVID-19 policy in Australia, New Zealand has also been every bit as extreme in limiting the return of its nationals. Pandemic policy, if not logic, has taken issue with the nature of citizenship, which, truth be told, is simply not worth the print or the paper.
In theory, New Zealanders should have more claim to a right of return than their Trans-Tasman cousins. Australia lacks a charter or bill of rights that protects such entitlements; New Zealand does not. Article 18 of the New Zealand …
by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead / February 1st, 2022
by Alan Johnstone / February 1st, 2022
February is black history month and with conservatives challenging Critical Race Theory, there’s one thing when studying history, we have to always remember and it is the victors that write the history. It is the duty, therefore, of every socialist to tell it like it was, and is, at every opportunity. In the battle of ideas that we wage against the ruling class, we must not concede them one inch in interpreting the past.
When the American Civil War ended, Lincoln and his successor Andrew Johnson gave the defeated Confederacy generous peace terms. Vengeance upon the slaveocracy was to be no part …
Washington’s ban on NSO Group is not about safeguarding human rights. It’s about curbing Israel’s dominance of ‘espionage diplomacy’
by Jonathan Cook / February 1st, 2022
The Israeli spy software firm NSO Group has rarely been out of the headlines over the past year.
Its spyware tool Pegasus worms its way into phones, accessing data and turning on the microphone and camera to act as round-the-clock surveillance equipment. Authoritarian states have reportedly bought the cyber weapon from NSO and put it to nefarious political uses, targeting journalists, human rights workers, civil rights lawyers and opposition parties.
Perhaps most notoriously, associates of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a critic of the Saudi government who was murdered in the Saudi embassy in Istanbul in 2018, were …
by Ted Glick / January 31st, 2022
It was sort of like New Year’s Eve, except it was agreed it should be a simultaneous moment all over the Earth. Having it be the same very moment for all seemed right, it was important to feel the connection with everyone and everything. So the time came and we listened to the voices on our phones. We are the children of the planet, we are going to sing its praises all together, all at once, now is the time to express our love, to take the responsibilities that come with …
by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies / January 31st, 2022
U.S. allies in Ukraine, with NATO, Azov Battalion and neo-Nazi flags. Photo by russia-insider.com
So what are Americans to believe about the rising tensions over Ukraine? The United States and Russia both claim their escalations are defensive, responding to threats and escalations by the other side, but the resulting spiral of escalation can only make war more likely. Ukrainian President Zelensky is warning that “panic” by U.S. and Western leaders is already causing economic destabilization in Ukraine.
U.S. allies do not all support the …
by Ramzy Baroud / January 30th, 2022
The diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games may go down in history as the official start of the cold war between the US, a handful of its allies and China. The American strategy, however, of using boycotts to pressure Beijing in the name of ‘human rights’, may prove costly in the future.
On December 6, Washington declared that it would not send any diplomatic representation to the 2022 Winter Olympic Games in Beijing. In subsequent days, the UK, Canada and Australia followed suit.
The official American line claims that US diplomats will not participate in the event in …
by Binoy Kampmark / January 30th, 2022
It has become common fare to read ghoulish stories of child abuse in institutions supposedly created to care for the vulnerable. Orphanages, homes, religious orders have tended to feature, along with their assortments of innumerable sadists and pederasts. But in December, another institution caused ripples for its alleged role in abusing children.
A Danish Radio documentary series, The Search for Myself, did not hold back in levelling claims against the US Central Intelligence Agency that it had financially aided experiments on 311 Danish children in the early 1960s. A good number of them were orphans or adopted.
One such victim …
by Ramzy Baroud / January 30th, 2022
Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations, Gilad Erdan, is leading his country’s anti-Palestinian propaganda, this time engaging in pre-emptive hasbara in anticipation of a Palestinian response to the ongoing evictions in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah.
“Would you consider it a terror attack if a rock like this was thrown at your car while driving with your children?” Erdan asked the United Nations Security Council members, while holding the rock in his hands. “Would you, at the very least, condemn these brutal terror attacks carried out against Israeli civilians by Palestinians?”
This Israeli logic is quite typical, where oppressed …
Do We Know?
by P.A. Day / January 30th, 2022
On December 16, 2021, the United States and Ukraine voted against a UN General Assembly draft resolution “Combating the glorification of the Nazi movement, neo-Nazism and other practices that contribute to fueling contemporary forms of racism….” The Assembly expressed deep concern with current trends in Eastern Europe that serve to whitewash the Nazi period, including the Holocaust, by exalting former non-German members of the Waffen SS organization – including Ukrainians.
The current trends the Assembly was referring to include “erecting monuments and memorials, holding public demonstrations in the name of the glorification of the Nazi past, the Nazi movement and neo-Nazism” and …
