America's Hijacked Peace Dividend: Long Overdue and Immediately Payable John Rachel
What I Saw in Ukraine: 2015-2022: Diary of an International Observer Benoit Paré
Killing Democracy: Western Imperialism's Legacy of Regime Change and Media Manipulation Finian Cunningham, Daniel Kovalik, Jeremy Kuzmarov, KJ Noh, & Ron Ridenour
Mind Abuse: Media Violence and Its Threat to Democracy Rose Dyson
Anthropause: The Beauty of Degrowth Stan Cox
Broken Stars: Gaza Poems Buff Whitman-Bradley
Surviving the 21st Century Noam Chomsky and José Mujica
Martyrs to the Unspeakable: The Assassinations of JFK, Malcolm, Martin, and RFK James W. Douglass
At the Lost and Found: Personal & Political Dispatches of Resistance and Hope Edward Curtin
Class War, Then and Now: Essays toward a New Left Chris Wright
We really have reached the crossroads, where such matters as having coitus with an artificial intelligence platform has become not merely a thing, but the thing. In time, mutually consenting adults may well become outlaws against the machine order of things, something rather befitting the script of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. (Huxley came to rue missed opportunities on delving into various technological implications on that score.) Till that happens, AI platforms are becoming mirrors of validation, offering their human users not so much sagacious counsel than the exact material they would like to hear.
In April this year, OpenAI …
On October 4th, 2025, in an interview with Axios, President Trump stressed that one of the main goals behind his Gaza plan was to restore Israel’s international standing. “Bibi took it very far and Israel lost a lot of support in the world,” Trump said. “Now I am gonna get all that support back.”
Under Trump’s plan, a supposed ceasefire took effect on October 10th. But Israel only withdrew from less than half of …
“A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes” (attributed to Mark Twain). [A misattribution. — DV ed]
Israel’s image is now so badly damaged that it is desperately stepping up its ‘hasbara’ (meaning propaganda and disinformation) programme on all channels, especially social media. In the past they’ve paid an army of students to push their lying texts. Now they’re hiring even more scribblers to poison our media channels.
It’s no surprise that Israel’s lie machine has an instruction manual for those it recruits into its vile business including the stooges they’ve positioned at …
“I don’t think anything changes until ideas change. The usual American viewpoint is to believe that something is wrong with the person.” — James Hillman
You have to see that the buildings are anorexic, you have to see that the language is schizogenic, that “normalcy” is manic, and medicine and business are paranoid.
— James Hillman, The Soul’s Code: In Search of Character and Calling
The pain incurred by bracing awareness is crucial here:
The wound can act as a womb birthing art or will fester giving birth to the societal monster known in modernity as fascism. The latter comes into being as a result of the angst and anger created by …
“I think we can do a lot, if a critical mass of organizations steps forward and develops a plan to go public and visible calling out the undemocratic and dangerous reality of what the Supreme Court majority is doing, particularly these shadowy, opaque, undemocratic ‘emergency’ decisions. Just like we have had and will be having, on October 18, successful mass actions of millions in the streets around the country calling for No Kings, worker justice, women’s rights, climate justice, racial justice and more, it is time for such a nationally coordinated …
(Part 1)
That’s what inspired American independence in the first place.
But autocracy takes many shapes.
How about No Oligarchs? Or No Deep State? No Police State? No Mass Surveillance? No Compromised Politicians? No Corrupt Judiciary?
There was much enthusiasm and excitement. And talk of channeling that energy into constructive action. There would be regular Calls to Action sent across social media platforms and by direct email.
“Call your Senator today and urge …”
“Call your Representative today and object to …”
“Go to your congressman’s local office and …”
What? Is this a joke?
Let me …
For the past few weeks the Trump administration has intensified its long-standing aggression against Venezuela by deploying warships (including a nuclear submarine) in the Caribbean Sea in a purported anti-narcotics operation. US forces have carried out at least five incidents of strikes on boats in Venezuelan waters to date, killing 37 people. Trump’s latest move has been to authorise the CIA to conduct covert operations inside Venezuela.
President Nicolas Maduro, as Venezuela’s current leader, has been a focus of this …
Real peace demands Palestinian statehood, Ukrainian neutrality and the courage to defy the war lobby
United States President Donald Trump styles himself as a peacemaker. In his rhetoric, he claims credit for his efforts to end the wars in Gaza and Ukraine. Yet beneath the grandstanding lies an absence of substance, at least to date.
The problem is not Trump’s lack of effort, but his lack of proper concepts. Trump confuses “peace” with “ceasefires,” which sooner or later revert to war (typically sooner). In fact, American presidents from Lyndon Johnson onward have been subservient to the military-industrial complex, which profits from endless war. Trump is merely following in that line by avoiding a genuine resolution to …
The core ethos of decent Humanity is Kindness and Truth but this is grossly violated by the racism and mendacity of US-, UK-, Apartheid Israel- and Zionist-perverted and US lackey Australia. War is the penultimate in racism and genocide the ultimate in racism. Australia has been involved in all 1950 onwards US Asian Wars, atrocities associated with 40 million Asian “deaths from violence and deprivation” (Google this phrase), with the Right-Far Right Coalition (presently in Opposition) involved in all and Centre-Right Labor (presently in Government) being involved in all except for the Vietnam War and the Iraq War. Australia ignores …
The wish to be credulous is central to the fraudulent scheme. The one playing the fraud can always rely on some connivance and collaboration from the tricked and the gulled. Many an art curator is bound to turn scarlet at the prospect that their expertise was utterly subverted by a counterfeiter of Picasso and Matisse. The Hungarian painter Elmyr de Hory, immortalized in Orson Welles’s F for Fake, is but one such example. Claiming to be a dispossessed aristocrat with a lucrative stash of originals, he could whip up a Matisse in a matter of minutes. The rest was …
In proscribing Palestine Action as a terrorist organization, along with criminalizing many of those who have challenged this government policy decision, the British Government has opened itself up to criticism and ridicule. In the past few months alone, there have been over 2,000 politically motivated arrests, mostly of elderly people who have held up placards saying that they ‘Oppose Genocide’ and ‘Support Palestine Action’. Lawyers, journalists, and doctors caught up in this dragnet of invented criminality for expressing views in support of Palestine have faced arrests and interrogation under counterterrorism laws. Particularly absurd was the arrest of someone for wearing …
Israel destroyed Iran’s press center in June.
Don’t be fooled by Trump’s words on “Gaza peace”, his peace gesture, and promises of international aid
It has been two years since the unequal war of the Zionist regime against the defenseless and resilient people of Gaza. We are now at the most sensitive and turning point in world history. The major media under the control of the Zionists and the United States are seeking to divert public attention towards US President Donald Trump’s alleged peace in …
Gen Z-led uprisings across the Global South point to long-term socioeconomic and environmental crises caused by neoliberalism. Yet they have often been coopted by entrenched social classes. Can their energy be channelled towards progressive ends?
Guillermo Grebe (Chile), Muro sagrado de la dignidad (Sacred Wall of Dignity), 2021.
The walls of Santiago, Chile – the city where I live – are marked with faded graffiti from the estallido social (social uprising) of 2019. Years later, these slogans continue to spill onto the sidewalks, from Nos quitaron tanto que nos quitaron hasta el miedo (they took so much from us that they even took away our fear) to No son 30 pesos, son 30 años (it’s …
Kathryn Bigelow once worked with the CIA to make a movie widely criticized for dishonestly promoting torture and glorifying killing (Zero Dark Thirty). (She has also explicitly advocated for war-making.) Now she has made a movie highlighting the danger of nuclear apocalypse (A House of Dynamite). I know which film I would prefer for you to see. It’s on Netflix.
Netflix has a show called The Diplomat that supports false flag attacks, destructive fossil fuel extraction, government secrecy, the F-35, …
I have been informed by the leadership of what might best be described as the “black consciousness movement” of Azania (South Africa) that a formal call to include Israel in the “cultural boycott” of South Africa will be issued from inside South Africa within the next few weeks.
The Black Consciousness Movement was started under the leadership of Steve Biko (whose life and murder by the Pretoria regime was the basis for the film “Cry Freedom”) and was the first organization to call for a cultural boycott of South Africa.
This call, sent out especially to pop musical groups, eventually generated the …
This Day in Anarchist History
This Day in Anarchist History, October 23rd 1956 we remember the Hungarian Revolution when student protesters and the broader Hungarian working classes took on the Secret Police and the Red Army.
After days of striking and rioting that boiled into a firefight, protesters were able to defeat the country’s Secret Police and even negotiated the withdrawal of the Red Army from Hungary… for a time, that is.
Impromptu proletarian militias wasted no time looting factories to arm themselves. Unfortunately time was in too short supply as the Red Army tanks were sent back just days later, this time with orders to brutally …
How Canada Manages Reconciliation to Protect the Stolen Prize of the Land
“Since my life as a prisoner has begun, I have heard of some white men who said they owned my land and my home. I don’t believe they do. I have never given any consent to such ownership. The land belongs to my people and to our children.”1
“We were taught that God’s laws are about how we treat each other and the land. The white man doesn’t obey God’s laws. They take the …
Much of the world is rightly transfixed by the genocide in Gaza, the unimaginable horrors experienced by its Palestinian inhabitants, the callous antics of those who would ‘develop’ its ruins (Trump, Blair, Kushner, etc.), and the strong likelihood of more of the same to come for the West Bank.
But what is it that explains why one humanitarian tragedy commands global attention while others that have entailed as much or more suffering for as long or longer seem less deserving of the world’s interest and go relatively unnoticed and unremarked upon?
The case of South Sudan
If international humanitarian interest in a country …
Draw the Line action, Ottawa, September 20, 2025, part of a country-wide day of action against the Carney government’s anti-social pro-war agenda.
The measures taken by the Carney government since it took over power after the last election confirm this government’s adherence to the methods Carney and several of his ministers and point men of the state learned at Goldman Sachs. Previous employment in that institution seems to be in fashion at this time.
To see how Carney rules over not only his cabinet, but also the Liberal caucus, the House of Commons and Canada as a whole, …
Reviving UNRWA’s Remit
Few times in its history has the International Court of Justice been this busy, if ever. For anyone ignorant of the world court’s existence till now, it has blanketed news coverage with provisional orders and advisory opinions on the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza. Each order is accompanied by another layering of exasperation and, it must be said, hope that the situation on the ground will somehow alter. The topics have been sanguinary and cruel in their consistency: starvation, the restriction of humanitarian aid, policies of racial segregation and apartheid, population displacements masquerading as evacuation orders and the possibility (to be …
In an interview with Swedish paper Aftonbladet, Greta Thunberg has corroborated earlier eyewitness reports that she and her fellow Global Sumud Flotilla activists were subjected to monstrous abuses by Israeli officials after being abducted from their boats carrying aid for Palestinians in Gaza.
Cartoonery is a powerful weapon against the powerful – richly deserving of satire. How privileged we are to benefit from so many cartoonists who perennially spring from nowhere to harness a craft that transcends language barriers and cuts through literary density.
The rogue state of Israel has naturally provided bounteous raw material for the graphic artist’s talent. Unhappily, the omnipresent diehard Israel support squad finds unpalatable even the minutest adverse treatment of the object of their devotion. Self-censorship of media editors helps. Failing that, considerable weaponry is brought to bear against the transgressor …
It seemed an odd thing to begin with. Australia’s National Press Club is a rather ordinary, stuffy institution, where enlightened, let alone contentious thought, rarely intrudes. For those guests of unorthodox disposition, questions of establishment swinishness await to douse any fiery rebelliousness. That they had invited war correspondent Chris Hedges, former Middle East Bureau Chief of the New York Times, was itself a surprise. Did they not get the catalogue of his recent writings and addresses, notably on how the Western media have covered the war in Gaza?
With three weeks to go, Hedges received the news that he would …
The October 13 Muridke incident has left Pakistan shaken once again. The violent clashes between security forces and supporters of Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) turned a planned religious procession into one of the deadliest confrontations since the Faizabad sit-in.
What unfolded in the small Punjab town was more than a law-and-order breakdown; it revealed Pakistan’s deepening struggle with non-state actors, political repression, and the dangerous overlap of religion and power.
Social media platforms flooded with graphic videos and sharply divided opinions. In response to the escalating online unrest, the government temporarily blocked access to Twitter (X), citing national security …
Brazil Braces for the Million Women Event: A Huge New Apostolic Reformation Power Play
Calls for million-person marches rarely reach their lofty goals. But when Lou Engle — one of the most outspoken and influential leaders of the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) — brings his movement to Brazil on October 25 for the Million Women Event, he may actually succeed in drawing that number. The rally, slated to take place a year ahead of Brazil’s next presidential election, has the potential to be a watershed moment in both religious and political terms.
“It has the potential …
We live in a time when truth is reversed in plain sight. Black is declared white, and white is declared purple with pink polka dots. Immunity appears to be assumed on the basis that a sufficient proportion of the screen-addled population are too gullible or distracted to notice.
Thus, continuing the Nobel Committee’s ignoble tradition of awarding its Peace Prize to celebrity warmongers – think Theodore Roosevelt, Henry Kissinger and Barack Obama – this year’s award has been handed to Maria Corina Machado, leader of oil-rich Venezuela’s opposition. Max Blumenthal …
Back in the 1960s, Mariam Makeba aka Mama Africa played an important role in bringing apartheid in South Africa to the attention of the world. A singer with a voice seasoned by living under a brutal system of settler colonial racism known as “apartheid”, correctly pronounced exactly as it means, “apart-hate”, Mama Africa was exiled from her motherland by the fascist South African government and left to drift in the purgatory of exile with no where to set her roots down.
The fact …
Alexis de Tocqueville, nearly 200 years ago, cited extreme individualism as the potential Achilles heel of America democracy. He was struck by a pervasive self-regard that was a cardinal feature of the national personality – a fixed reference mark for how people saw the world and acted in it. The most evident risk, to his mind, was that this condition could erode the sense of common values which was the crucial software for the institutional hardware of public bodies. Tocqueville also was an uncommonly perceptive ‘psycho-anthropologist.’ He noted that there existed within the American psyche uneasy feelings of incompleteness rooted …
[A version of this essay was presented at the Taos Community of Love service on October 19, 2025.]
I know this isn’t a conventional church service, but I would like to start with scripture:
“The moral high ground is a dangerous place to stand, even when it’s warranted.”
That’s not really scripture but rather a sentence from An Inconvenient Apocalypse: Environmental Collapse, Climate Crisis, and the Fate of Humanity, the 2022 book I wrote with Wes Jackson, co-founder of The Land Institute and an early innovator …
It is personal, painful, and frightening
Recently, a friend since high school, an individual, a self-identified, as of late, Christian-nationalist, curtailed — in the stark, cold manner that I have witnessed true believer Christians are prone — our friendship due to a recent article of mine in which I called out the fascistic elements of Christian-nationalism and genocide-apologist aspects of Christian Zionism. In his shunning of me, he made clear, at least in my mind, he was a (willing) victim of the affliction of the collective soul that scholars of the phenomenon term: Authoritarian Personality Type.
Authoritarian Personality Theory, developed by Theodor Adorno and Frankfurt …
