In March 2015, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates – along with other members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) – began to bomb Yemen. These countries entered a conflict that had been ongoing for at least a year as a civil war escalated between the government of President Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi, the Ansar Allah movement of the Zaidi Shia, and al-Qaeda. The GCC – led by the Saudi monarchy – wanted to prevent any Shia political project, whether aligned …
Left media should explore a wide range of critical ideas. But it should try to avoid ‘punching down’ too often.
Recently new left outlet The Breach published a long interview with Columbia University PhD student Barnaby Raine “on the resurgence of ‘tankie’ and ‘campist’ politics” titled “Is the enemy of my enemy my friend?”
It was an odd choice. Unlike The Breach’s other stories, there’s nothing about Canada in the interview and it’s a republication of a radio interview rather than unique content.
The article is largely an effort to psychoanalyze anti-imperialist politics that ‘go too far’. But it ignores maybe the …
'They' will have your housing, health, harmony whole cloth without a real revolution
by Paul Haeder / October 28th, 2021
The they, of course, are the capitalists. The bankers. The mortgage companies. The housing agencies. The alphabet soup of agencies which will squeeze blood from turnips and your progeny’s progeny.
The media is the medium for their poison, all those tricks of the mind, subliminal and overt, messages that cause chaos, the mass hysteria, the constant fear, the rage against the ‘other.’ And, the other are our fellow citizens, victims, most of us, sliding and slipping and slurrying down the proverbial drain.
Housing management companies; i.e., apartment management companies, now property management companies. We are talking about putting people out on the …
Review of Yanis Varoufakis' book Another Now: Dispatches from an Alternative Present
by Bernard Marszalek / October 27th, 2021
Yanis Varoufakis’ new book, Another Now, is a utopian novel. It follows the form of most utopian works in that it is didactic, with minimal character development and a slim plot line. So, if that turns you off, you might as well not read further. However, if you do enjoy informed speculations of a possible future world, then you might like Another Now.
I purposely say “informed” to distinguish this utopian fiction from total fantasy, though like almost all works in this genre there is an element …
When Joe Biden was declared the winner in the US elections last November, expectations in Ramallah were high. A Biden Administration, compared to the brazenly pro-Israel Trump Administration, would surely be much fairer to Palestinians, was the conventional wisdom at the time.
By Official James Bond 007 Website
The latest Bond flick No Time To Die was certainly a rollercoaster ride of exciting action scenes and great special effects, yet contained more than a quantum of longueurs. With a running time of 163 minutes it certainly tries the patience and the bladders of its audiences (who I saw popping out of the cinema throughout the film). Personally, I think 90 minutes is enough for any film, especially since the disappearance of the intermission and ice-cream selling of yore. …
For months, the ruling elite at home and abroad have used their media to incessantly repeat the nonsense that economies around the world are doing very well and rebounding nicely. Endless headlines from around the globe screamed wantonly about how economies everywhere were breaking all kinds of growth records and that everything looked bright and promising. Apparently, country after country was coming out of yet another profound economic crisis that has wreaked havoc around the world.
However, in the last few weeks or so there has been a sharp and visible turn …
by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead / October 27th, 2021
You see them on the street. You watch them on TV. You might even vote for one this fall. You think they’re people just like you. You’re wrong. Dead wrong.
We are living in an age of mayhem, madness and monsters.
Monsters with human faces walk among us. Many of them work for the U.S. government.
What we are dealing with today is an authoritarian beast that has outgrown its chains and will not be restrained.
Through its acts of power grabs, brutality, meanness, inhumanity, immorality, greed, corruption, debauchery and tyranny, the government has become almost indistinguishable from the evil …
Is the imperium showing suspicions about its intended quarry? It is hard to believe it, but the US House Intelligence Committee is on a mission of discovery. Its subject: a Yahoo News report disclosing much material that was already in the public domain on the plot to kidnap or, failing that, poison Julian Assange. Given that such ideas were aired by officials within the Central Intelligence Agency, this struck home. On the Yahoo News “Skulduggery” podcast, Committee chairman and Democratic Representative Adam Schiff said, “We are seeking information about it now.”
According to “science,” the coelacanth (Latimeria) went extinct 65 million years ago. After all, this carnivorous fish dates back some 400 million years to the age of dinosaurs — or so said the all-knowing men in the white lab coats. Along came a South African museum curator on a fishing trawler in 1938. Lo and behold, he caught himself a DinoFish!
A Few Things to Know About the Coelacanth
They are most definitely NOT extinct.
There are two known species. One lives off the east …
Two recent articles have recently appeared in the Russian journal Strategic Culture that point to significant changes that are occurring among western nations toward Russia and China. These changes have been in the wind for some time but in recent months the tempo has accelerated. Both Russia and China are pointing the way to a new system, the ramifications of which will have extraordinary effects on the geopolitical world.
The question is whether universities like Glasgow will continue to submit to attacks on academic life under the cover of false or evidence-free claims of anti-semitism
by Jonathan Cook / October 25th, 2021
Hundreds of international scholars have begun a fightback against pro-Israel lobbyists who have been scoring increasingly high-profile victories on UK campuses as they seek to curb academic freedoms under the guise of stamping out antisemitism.
Glasgow university officials have found themselves in the eye of a storm this week, accused of “capitulating” in two separate cases that have undermined academic research into the activities of Israel and its supporters.
More than 500 scholars from around the world, including a Nobel prize winner, Royal Society fellows, and former and current presidents of major academic bodies, signed a petition delivered to the …
On January 7, 2015, the staff of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo found themselves facing a form of cancel culture before it became fashionable in the Twaddle sphere. It was of the most severe, lethal sort. Twelve people were butchered and the fanatic’s credo asserted. The assailants Chérif and Saïd Kouachi had been offended by the magazine’s cartoon depictions of the Prophet Muhammad. To add insult to grave injury, figures of various shades of political colour not exactly disposed to free expression were suddenly claiming they stood with the slain, declaring themselves in solidarity to be “Je suis …
When the news circulated that Morocco’s leading political group, the Development and Justice Party (PJD), has been trounced in the latest elections, held in September, official media mouthpieces in Egypt celebrated the news as if the PJD’s defeat was, in itself, a blow to the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood movement. Regionally, political commentators who dedicated much of their time to discredit various Islamic political parties – often on behalf of one Arab government or another – found in the news another supposed proof that political Islam is a failure in both theory and practice.
Genocides against the Vietnamese, Afghans, Iraqis and Palestinians
by Gideon Polya / October 24th, 2021
File photo taken on 5 February 2003, US Secretary of State Colin Powell holds up a vial that he said was the size that could be used to hold anthrax as he addresses the UN Security Council in New York. (Photo by Timothy A. Clary / AFP)The pro-Apartheid Israel former African-American military commander, mass murderer and genocidal liar, Colin Powell, has just died. Mendacious, racist and pro-war Western Monopoly media and politicians have been fulsome in their praise for the first Black US Secretary of …
Chris Hedges talks to documentary filmmaker and investigative journalist John Pilger about the upcoming appeals hearing in London for the Julian Assange case.
On Sept. 26, Yahoo! News published “Kidnapping, assassination and a London shoot-out: Inside the CIA’s secret war plans against WikiLeaks.” The article detailed discussions within the CIA to kidnap or assassinate Julian Assange. The revelations came a month before a hearing in Britain’s High Court that will see the U.S. government appeal a decision that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange cannot be sent to the United States to face espionage charges. These revelations also coincided with the arrest …
Halloween is an odd holiday. The ostensible concept — as it has evolved to become — is to shock, startle, frighten, petrify, horrify, and/or terrify… all while consuming enough high fructose corn syrup to keep the American Dental Association content for another century or two. Every year, as October 31 nears, loyal consumers squander a small fortune to adorn their soon-to-be-foreclosed-upon abodes with Made-in-China images …
In their classic book on the news media, Manufacturing Consent, Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky presented a ‘propaganda model’ of how the major broadcasters and newspapers operate. Whereas the ‘mainstream’ media declare that their aim is to educate, inform and entertain the public, their actual societal purpose ‘on matters that are of significance for established power’ is to avert any ‘danger’ that the public can ‘assert meaningful control over the political process’. ((Herman and Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent, Vintage, 1988/1994, p. 303.))
The best-selling Irish novelist Sally Rooney is openly shunning Israel after recent reports from human rights groups warned that Israel practices apartheid, systematically oppressing Palestinians under its rule.
But while Israel risks becoming a pariah among some cultural producers, it is being aggressively embraced by globe-spanning corporations like Amazon and Google – among the wealthiest companies in history.
The two tech giants are not just lining up to do business with Israel. They are actively working to build and improve the technological infrastructure Israel needs to surveil Palestinians and confine them to the ghettos Israel’s army has created for them.
The Israel lobby regularly torments people and seeks to undermine their ability to make a living. While increasing numbers of Canadians are wise to their slander campaigns, some progressives still end up aligning with the bullies who have misused the term anti-Semitism to intimidate and silence.
The list of good people who have been put through the “cancel culture” ringer by the Israel lobby is long. Hundreds, probably thousands, of Canadians have lost jobs and contracts or simply been tormented by the Israel lobby for supporting Palestinians.
The United States — the land and people — will be a lot better off when the idea of US supremacy is dropped. Toward that end, and toward the goal of a better world, here are ten things for US to understand about Latin America. This piece has a special focus on Nicaragua, a country whose sovereignty needs respect, especially during this election season, from US critics both Right and Left.
1. Threat of a good example. That is the main reason countries get on the “bad lists” of the US, not …
Jaime de Guzman (Philippines), Metamorphosis II, 1970.
On 5 October, the United Nations Human Rights Council passed a historic, non-legally binding resolution that ‘recognises the right to a safe, clean, healthy, and sustainable environment as a human right that is important for the enjoyment of human rights’. Such a right should force governments who sit at the table at the UN Climate Change Conference COP26 in Glasgow later this month to think about the grievous harm caused by the polluted system that shapes …
(Mickey Z)
Last month, I stopped by an anti-mandate rally at Columbus Circle/Central Park for a little while. While I was there, a band played mellow music. Much of the crowd was singing along and dancing as I wandered around taking photos and feeling happy to see so many people in attendance — speaking out against repressive and anti-science measures. (Mickey Z)
On the fringes of the event, I noticed a man. He appeared to be South …
As a city, Melbourne previously prided itself with the air of a prim and proper heiress, one without peer in Australia: a gastronomic wonder, a sporting goddess, and a place of orderly public transport. The Economist Intelligence Unit glowed with praise, designating the city the world’s “most liveable” for seven years running. There were few law and order issues; nothing to speak of in terms of war, famine, crisis and the sorts of things that disturb the money minded business traveller. Even after Vienna got on its high horse and knocked Melbourne off its pedestal, Melbournians were undisturbed. The …
The pro-Israel crowd on social media was quick to pounce on award-winning Irish novelist, Sally Rooney, as soon as she declared that she had “chosen not to sell … translation rights of her best-selling novel, ‘Beautiful World, Where Are You’ to an Israeli-based publishing house”.
Expectedly, the accusations centered on the standard smearing used by Israel and its supporters against anyone who dares criticize Israel and exhibits solidarity with the oppressed Palestinian people.
Rooney’s laudable action was not in the least ‘racist’ or ‘antisemitic’. On the contrary, it was taken as a show of support for the Palestine Boycott Divestment and Sanctions …
by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies / October 20th, 2021
(Photo: Tom Pennington)
In country after country around the world, people are rising up to challenge entrenched, failing neoliberal political and economic systems, with mixed but sometimes promising results.
Progressive leaders in the U.S. Congress are refusing to back down on the Democrats’ promises to American voters to reduce poverty, expand rights to healthcare, education and clean energy, and repair a shredded social safety net. After decades of tax cuts for the rich, they are also committed to raising taxes on wealthy Americans and corporations to pay for this popular …
Whew, the realities of so many people as part of the walking wounded in high and low places. The landscape in USA, now Canada, UK and parts of Europe, where the Capitalists buff their gold-plated toilets and polish their collection of cars, there are hundreds of millions of people, rudderless, broken, flayed, laid prostrate from the emptiness of the consumerism, the bright lights and the smoke and mirrors. Everywhere in these lands there are masses of people faking it, living in la-la land. So much mental illness. So many variations on a theme of poor spiritual and intellectual hygiene.
History is strewn with the broken branches of twisted irony. An individual who found himself entangled in it was the late Colin Powell, who, as a military man, gave a doctrine his name only to forgo it as a diplomat.
The Powell Doctrine was one of certitude and caution: do not engage in conflict except in conditions whereby you could bring overwhelming and decisive force to bear. Political goals had to be clear; hostilities would be brief. There would be no more quagmires, no more Vietnam Wars for the US imperium. The model for this was his first engagement with Saddam …
by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead / October 19th, 2021
… the world is in greater peril from those who tolerate or encourage evil than from those who actually commit it.
—Albert Einstein ((Einstein’s tribute to Pablo Casals (30 March 1953), in Conversations with Casals (1957), page 11, by Josep Maria Corredor, translated from Conversations avec Pablo Casals : souvenirs et opinions d’un musicien (1955). Wikiquotes.))
America is breaking down.
This breakdown—triggered by polarizing circus politics, media-fed mass hysteria, racism, classism, fascism, fear-mongering, political correctness, cultural sanitation, virtue signaling, a sense of hopelessness and powerlessness in the face of growing …
No one can stop him. He can barely stop himself. The former Australian prime minister, Tony Abbott, seems to be everywhere, fighting the poor cause. At the very least, he is everywhere with the press cameras, the niggling concerns, the irritations that make it into the twenty-four-hour news cycle before sinking with toxic charm. He is the perfect ingredient in a stew of conflict, the agitator, the irritant.
The range of issues that have seen his intervention have taken him to conservative, often reactionary fora, the world over. He has given a gloss of legitimacy to the Great Replacement theory, worried …
