by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies / February 8th, 2022
Peace protest at the White House – Photo credit: iacenter.org
While the Biden administration is sending more troops and weapons to inflame the Ukraine conflict and Congress is pouring more fuel on the fire, the American people are on a totally different track.
A December 2021 poll found that a plurality of Americans in both political parties prefer to resolve differences over Ukraine through diplomacy. Another December poll found that a plurality of Americans (48 percent) would oppose going to war with Russia …
Xiomara Castro of the Liberty and Refoundation party (Libre) is Honduras’ first president in 40 years who is not a member of either the Liberal Party or the National Party.
Piloting a series of substantial policy changes a little more than one week into her mandate, Honduras’ President Xiomara Castro has already established herself as a firm Latin American leader. In the process, she has brought hope and happiness to the Honduran people, living under the pall of an oppressive regime since the 2009 military coup that removed Manuel Zelaya …
Martin Schotz, a respected Massachusetts-based author on the assassination of President Kennedy, explores the systematic basis for Cold War logic.
by Finian Cunningham / February 7th, 2022
The Cold War is back with a vengeance. The current impasse between the United States and Russia over the Ukraine crisis is running the risk of an all-out war in Europe, a war that could escalate into nuclear Armageddon. The crisis is wholly manufactured by Washington’s geopolitical power calculations – claims made against Russia about planning to invade Ukraine are baseless if not absurd. The impasse reflects an impoverishment of diplomacy and respect for international law, and a reckless tendency to militarize bilateral relations. This is the manifestation of Cold War thinking, primarily on the U.S. side.
There are some things that strain credulity. There are the dubious accounts of virgin births. There are the resolute flat earth theorists and denialists of the moon landing. To this can be added the environmental stance of Australia’s Scott Morrison and his ministers, one resolutely opposed to the empirical world. We are now at the phoney stage of an electoral war, and, with the government in more than a spot of bother, you can start expecting some rather extravagant promises of public spending.
The Great Barrier Reef, one of the single most remarkable natural structures on Planet Earth, home to …
Capital-centered economics is unscientific and irrational. It does not provide people with a coherent, integrated, and cogent understanding of the economy. Instead it increases confusion every day, leaving people rudderless and disoriented about what is really happening.
The capitalist economic system is always chaotic, anarchic, and violent, but the last two years have been more volatile and disordered than usual. Stability and security remain elusive. Uncertainty and anxiety are ever-present. Sustained healthy economic growth is largely absent.
In the most schizophrenic way, one week the monopoly-controlled media claims that the economy is doing extremely well while the following week we are told …
Former Newfoundland premier Brian Peckford has sued Canada’s federal government. Peckford maintains that the COVID-19 vaccine requirement for air travel is unconstitutional and infringes on all Canadians’ charter rights.
It all seems worn, part of an aspic approach to foreign policy. But US President Joe Biden is keen to ensure that old and lingering mistakes retain their flavour. Towards Cuba, it is now 60 years since President John F. Kennedy’s Presidential Proclamation 3447 imposed an embargo on all trade with the island state.
The proclamation was packed with Cold War righteousness and much sanctimony. Cuba, under the revolutionary Fidel Castro, fresh from overthrowing a Washington favourite and blood-smeared thug, Fulgencio Batista, was “incompatible with the principles and objectives of the Inter-American system”. The US was “prepared to take all …
As you know, I have other gigs, other ways to express ideas, and construct my own analysis in my own life. Experiences turned into philosophy. Or, anti-philosophy to invent self.
This piece is in the local rag, again, Newport, Lincoln County, Oregon. On the coast. (see story/Op-ed below — Newport News Times.)
Yes, the world is a microcosm in places wherever you find yourself, if you are willing to explore how universality is a common thread for most people, excluding the elites and rich and super-rich and sociopaths in those classes as well as down and dirty people born from a …
by Bruce and Barbara MacLean-Lerro / February 5th, 2022
Why Sylvia Matters
How many of you about to read this have heard of Sylvia Pankhurst? Our guess is, not many. She seems to have fallen through the cracks of socialist and suffragette movement literature. Her mother, Emmeline Pankhurst and sister, Christabel Pankhurst are still looked up to as leaders in the suffragette movement. What is overlooked is the fact that they only supported suffrage for women who had property. This, of course, completely eliminates women in the working class and women who are poor. Sylvia, on the other hand, devoted her …
The Russians are coming! So says the Australian mainstream media.
To be honest, I don’t know what the Murdoch press is saying as my equilibrium depends on my not reading it. The other major media chain, Nine Entertainment, is in full neo-Cold War mode.
Nine Entertainment, as its name implies, has been best known for televising sport. In 2018 it took over Fairfax Media. A family media dynasty was established when John Fairfax bought the Sydney Herald in 1841. When Nine bought Fairfax it acquired the sole ‘serious’ papers of …
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speaking against protesting truckers and their supporters: “We won’t give in to those who fly racist flags. We won’t cave to those who engage in vandalism or dishonor the memory of our veterans.”
War is big, loud, significant and attracts an audience; media likes it. Foreign wars (commonly Middle Eastern or African) distract from domestic chaos and reinforce a long-held prejudice of savagery and race, and the opposite, equally false notion of western superiority.
In all conflicts mainstream media plays a crucial role, often inflammatory, feeding the discord through a particular narrative. Western media claims it is independent, but this is fallacious; corporate owned or State sponsored, it is conditioned by a particular world-view, ideologically/politically, nationalistically, historically.
After war erupted in Ethiopia in November 2020 western media have played a major role in spreading mis-/disinformation …
Once again, the people of the United States are being lied into a war – this time with Russia over Ukraine. The corporate media echo chamber’s warning of an “imminent Russian invasion” is the equivalence of the “Iraq has WMD’s” lie used to justify a US invasion there in 2003.
We are in an urgent situation. To stop a war with Russia, antiwar groups from across the country are working together in a powerful way to organize actions, webinars and a national online rally this weekend.
In October 2020, CropLife International said that its new strategic partnership with the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) would contribute to sustainable food systems. It added that it was a first for the industry and the FAO and demonstrates the determination of the plant science sector to work constructively in a partnership where common goals are shared.
A powerful trade and lobby association, CropLife International counts among its members the world’s largest agricultural biotechnology and pesticide businesses: Bayer, BASF, Syngenta, FMC, Corteva and Sumitoma Chemical. Under the guise of promoting plant science technology, the association first and foremost looks after the …
They rolled up on Ottawa’s Parliament Hill like one of the plagues in the Book of Revelations, honking their infernal air horns, the grills of their tractors grinning demonically, the sides of their dry vans painted with blasphemies like “FREEDOM TO CHOOSE,” “MANDATE FREEDOM,” “NO VACCINE MANDATES,” and “UNITED AGAINST TYRANNY.”
Yes, that’s right, New Normal Canada has been invaded and now is under siege by hordes of transphobic Putin-Nazi truckers, racist homophobes, anti-Semitic Islamaphobes, and other members of the working classes!
According to the corporate media, these racist, Russia-backed, working-class berserkers are …
Israel is greatly concerned about the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) effort that seeks: 1) to end international support for Israel’s oppression of Palestinians; and 2) to pressure Israel to comply with international law. Israel claims that this campaign is a threat to its legitimacy. Unsurprisingly, Israel doesn’t want to acknowledge that it is its own repeated flouting of international law, including its numerous war crimes, that threaten its legitimacy.
Given Israel’s misperception, it is waging a campaign to limit any discussion about its illegal and immoral actions. Unfortunately, even without any Israeli campaign, the US corporate media already aids …
Despite its pedigree as a fundamental element in civilization’s greatest stories, nostalgia has come to be associated with treacly sentimentality, defeatism, and spurious spiritual inclinations. Homer, Vergil, Dante, the Biblical writers, and their ilk would demur, of course, but they have been dead for a few years, so progress’s mantra urges us to get on with it. This is now.
But now is always, and like its twin – exile – nostalgia is perpetual. The aching for “home” – from Greek algos, pain + nostos, homecoming – is not simply a desire for the past, whether in reality or imagination, time …
Centuries of ideological justification and normalization can transform the bizarre, unjust, and arbitrary into that which seems natural and inevitable. The modern concept of private property has become so ingrained in society that most assume it has been with us since humans stood upright. The truth is that all the various notions of property which have plagued mankind have only been around for a small percentage of the 200,000 years that humans have walked the earth. Our present understanding of private property has developed alongside the present mode of production, and …
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.
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.
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 …
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 …
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 …
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’. …
The anti-China panic sweeping Canadian politics has descended from tragedy into farce.
A month ago I mockedGlobe 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 …
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 …
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 …
