Latest articles
by Anthony Fulton / June 26th, 2021
These are early days for the self-styled ‘coalition of change’ in Israel, but it has already been presented with significant challenges in the form of the Jerusalem Flag March, the Evyatar outpost, and the Citizenship and Entry law. There is another one just around the corner.
This week, the High Court of Justice informed the new Minister of Education, Yifat Shasha-Biton, that she has three weeks to decide her position regarding one of the last acts of her predecessor, Yoav Gallant of Netanyahu’s government. Before leaving his post, Gallant made a final decision as Education Minister not to award the high-profile …
Masked soldiers will still terrorise Palestinian children in the middle of the night, but new military jargon will hide the true purpose
by Jonathan Cook / June 26th, 2021
The videos are all over YouTube. Masked Israeli soldiers storm a Palestinian family’s home in the middle of the night. Parents, dressed in nightwear, are suddenly surrounded by heavily armed men in balaclavas.
Young children are forced awake. With a mix of bleary-eyed confusion and fear, they are made to answer questions posed to them in broken Arabic by these faceless, armed strangers. They are lined up in one room while the soldiers take photographs of them holding their identity cards. And then, just as suddenly as they arrived, the masked men disappear into the …
by Ramzy Baroud / June 26th, 2021
The killing of a Muslim family on June 6 in Ontario, Canada, again presented an opportunity for Canadian Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, to brand himself as a voice of reason and communal harmony. However, Trudeau’s amiable and reassuring language is designed to veil a sinister reality which has, for many years, hidden the true face of Canadian politics.
“This was a terrorist attack, motivated by hatred, in the heart of one of our communities,” Trudeau told Parliament, two days after a Canadian terrorist, Nathaniel Veltman, deliberately struck a Canadian Muslim …
by Dongsheng News / June 25th, 2021
by Yanis Iqbal / June 25th, 2021
In late April 2021, US President Joe Biden announced a withdrawal from Afghanistan. In other words, the US has been trounced in Afghanistan by its very own jihadist Frankenstein, the Taliban. The defeat of USA is covered with the ugly debris of history. The dirty war on Afghanistan was part of a disastrous process of occupying and controlling large swathes of the world. On September 16, 2001, President George W. Bush vowed to “rid the world of evil-doers,” then cautioned: “This crusade, this war on terrorism, is going to take a while.” The word “crusade” comes from the …
by Robert Hunziker / June 25th, 2021
The news does not get much worse than a recent scientific report that the planet is trapping twice as much heat as it did only 14 years ago.
If this one report does not turn heads and create a sense of panic to get off fossil fuels, as soon as yesterday, then nothing will ever move the needle to fix the planet’s broken climate system. ((Norman G. Loeb, et al, Satellite and Ocean Data Reveal Marked Increase in Earth’s Heating Rate, Geophysical Research Letters – Advanced Earth and Space Science, June 15, 2021.))
Scientists have been warning about the consequences of human-generated …
by Alejandra Garcia / June 25th, 2021
Cuba bursting with pride as 184 nations stand with them in the UN and vote for an end to the criminal blockade of the island (Photo: Bill Hackwell)
Cuba’s new victory over Washington was not news in the US. No head of diplomacy or White House representatives issued any criteria regarding the fact that 184 of the 193 countries that make up the United Nations (UN) voted on Wednesday to end the blockade imposed on the island for almost 60 years.
Only two governments voted in favor of maintaining …
The Uprising of the Dispossessed
by Peter Koenig / June 25th, 2021
On 28 July 2021, Peru, with her 33 million inhabitants, celebrates 200 years of Independence. The People of Peru may have chosen this Bicentennial celebration to bring about a drastic change to their foreign and national oligarchy-run country. In a neck-on-neck national election run-off on 6 June 2021, the socialist Pedro Castillo, a humble primary school professor from rural Cajamarca, a Northern Peruvian Province, rich in mining resources, but also in agricultural land, seems to be winning by a razor thin margin of less than 100,000 votes against the oligarch-supported Keiko Fujimori, daughter of former President Alberto Fujimori, currently in …
by Colin Todhunter / June 24th, 2021
A newly published analysis in the journal Frontiers in Environmental Science argues that a toxic soup of insecticides, herbicides and fungicides is causing havoc beneath fields covered in corn, soybeans, wheat and other monoculture crops. The research is the most comprehensive review ever conducted on how pesticides affect soil health.
The study is discussed by two of the report’s authors, Nathan Donley and Tari Gunstone, in a recent article appearing on the Scientific American website. The authors state that the findings should bring about immediate changes in how regulatory agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) assess the risks …
by Shawgi Tell / June 24th, 2021
While democracy has always been limited and restricted in societies based on the “free market” and private ownership, one of the main things detested by the pro-privatization fanatics behind segregated charter schools operated by unelected individuals are the long-standing duly-elected school boards that govern America’s 100,000 public schools. Publicly-elected school boards are a huge thorn in the side of the millionaires and billionaires behind deregulated charter schools.
Currently, many public school boards in America can exercise a certain degree of power and authority when it comes to approving or terminating …
by Frank Scott / June 24th, 2021
The new CEO fronting for America Inc. completed his first meeting among our Euro lapdogs – officially known as NATO – and had a more important meeting with Putin in which, according to media servants of market forces, he let him know who’s boss of the universe. Politely, of course, because even this glorified clerk understands the danger of provoking a world war which would spare few of us, if any. An unedited interview of the Russian president, available online if American authorities of freedom and democracy haven’t already removed it, clearly reveals the infantile ignorance of a network assailant …
by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies / June 24th, 2021
Woman votes in Iranian election (Photo Credit: Reuters)
It was common knowledge that a U.S. failure to rejoin the Iran nuclear deal (known as the JCPOA) before Iran’s June presidential election would help conservative hard-liners to win the election. Indeed, on Saturday, June 19, the conservative Ebrahim Raisi was elected as the new President of Iran.
Raisi has a record of brutally cracking down on government opponents and his election is a severe blow to Iranians struggling for a more liberal, open society. He also has a …
by Paul Haeder / June 24th, 2021
Duties — Teacher, US Forest Service, Yachats, OR
Summary
This position is located on the Angell Forest Service Job Corps Civilian Center in Yachats, OR.
The incumbent is responsible for providing classroom instruction to students in a variety of academic subjects.
For more information about the duties of this position, please contact BBF at: @usda.govor 541-547-
Responsibilities
Through classroom instruction and guidance.
Establishes a learning environment in which students can develop their ability to make rational and informed decisions relevant to …
by Ramzy Baroud / June 24th, 2021
When former US President Barack Obama used an old cliché to denigrate his political opponent, the late US Senator, John McCain, he triggered a political controversy lasting several days.
“You can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig,” Obama said at a campaign event in 2008. The maxim indicates that superficial changes have no bearings on outcomes and that modifying our facade does not alter who we really are.
American politicians are an authority on the subject. They are experts on artificial, rhetorical and, ultimately, shallow change. …
by Binoy Kampmark / June 24th, 2021
While Australian politicians languish in a world blotched by climate change scepticism and fossil fuel love-ins, global oil and gas companies have been shaken. Three titans of oil fame – Shell, ExxonMobil and Chevron – faced a range of decisions in May that promise to dramatically shape their future operations. The point is not negligible, given that this triarchy produced, between 1988 and 2015, 5% of total global scope 1 and 3 emissions.
Royal Dutch Shell was the first giant humbled by a Dutch court ruling that it was required to reduce total emissions by net 45% of 2019 …
by James O'Neill / June 24th, 2021
One has to seriously wonder what game Joe Biden thinks he is playing. Fresh from what appears to have been an amiable meeting with Vladimir Putin in Geneva, the United States promptly announced a new range of sanctions upon Russia. The ostensible reason for the latest sanctions was the imprisonment of minor Russian dissident Alexei Navalny. This man has been the subject of more media attention in the western mainstream media than any other Russian figure apart from President Putin himself.
The latest episode of publicity springs from Navalny being sentenced to 2 years imprisonment. What is missing from the vast …
by Jonathan Cook / June 23rd, 2021
There’s been a new public fracturing of the intellectual left, typified by an essay last week from Nathan J Robinson, editor of the small, independent, socialist magazine Current Affairs, accusing Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi of bolstering the right’s arguments. He is the more reasonable face of what seems to be a new industry arguing that Greenwald is a wolf in sheep’s clothing, setting the right’s agenda for it.
Under the title “How to end up serving the right”, Robinson claims that Greenwald and Taibbi, once his intellectual heroes, are – inadvertently or otherwise – …
by Edward Curtin / June 23rd, 2021
After fifteen months of assiduous reading, study, observation, and research, I have come to some conclusions about what is called COVID-19. I would like to emphasize that I have done this work obsessively since it seemed so important. I have consulted information and arguments across all media, corporate and alternative, academic, medical, books, etc. I have consulted with researchers around the world. I have read the websites of the CDC, the World Health Organization, and government and non-government health organizations. In other words, I have left no stone unturned, …
by Binoy Kampmark / June 23rd, 2021
To float over such an aqueous body is to find a majestic creature unparalleled in beauty and expanse, stretching at 2,300km. There are other stunning formations on the planet, but the Great Barrier Reef has such dimension, form and cocksure brilliance as to make others shrink, not so much because of beauty as due to sheer scale and ecological variety.
But the Reef’s health record has been patchy. Each year brings a series of negative assessments about the patient. Its ticker is having palpitations; its central mineral supports in the form of coral life is being bleached. Water quality is being …
by C.J. Hopkins / June 21st, 2021
The ultimate goal of every totalitarian system is to establish complete control over society and every individual within it in order to achieve ideological uniformity and eliminate any and all deviation from it. This goal can never be achieved, of course, but it is the raison d’être of all totalitarian systems, regardless of what forms they take and ideologies they espouse. You can dress totalitarianism up in Hugo Boss-designed Nazi uniforms, Mao suits, or medical-looking face masks, its core desire remains the same: to remake the world in its …
by Bruce Lerro / June 21st, 2021
Image from Imgur @i.imgur.com
Orientation
As I was looking at images to place at the beginning of this article, I was struck by how many images and quotes there were of Le Bon. It is pretty amazing for someone whose first work was published in 1895 and whose last works are still around 100 years old. It is especially strange given how unscientific his methods were and how recent empirical studies of crowds like David Miller’s Introduction to Collective Behavior and Collective Action contradicts virtually everything Le Bon claimed. Why is …
by E.R. Bills / June 20th, 2021
I get it.
As a native Texan, I feel your pain.
I, too, was weaned on comic book versions of the Alamo and the Texian War for Independence, and I understand your anger and frustration. We have been betrayed.
The question, now, is what are we going to do about it?
Should we slap AK47s over our shoulders and strap pistols across our beer bellies and stage our own Alamo about what never really happened at the Alamo at the state capitol? Do we need to stand tall with the Texas chapter of the Daughters of the Confederacy and protest these shameless revisions to …
by Todd Smith / June 19th, 2021
Vanderbiltson Cooper of the Cartoon News Network will not accurately report this, but the Biden administration recently moved the “Exit from Afghanistan” goalposts. Again. Despite inheriting a Trump era agreement signed in late February of 2020 for full U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan by May 1, 2021, the Biden folks have decided to push the “pullout” back to September 11. Well, what’s a few more months after nearly 2 decades?
The obsequious Corporate press that ushered in the Biden regime with wildly fawning fanfare, of course, have used the occasion to heap even further praise upon the brilliant Biden, not least …
by Shawgi Tell / June 19th, 2021
While accountability, oversight, and transparency have long been weak in brick-and-mortar charter schools, all three are even weaker when it comes to virtual charter schools, also known as cyber charter schools. ((Unlike public schools, all charter schools in the U.S. are governed by unelected individuals.))
This is troubling in and of itself but also because virtual charter schools are notorious for particularly low graduation rates, abysmal academic performance, and widespread fraud and corruption. The news is regularly filled with stories about scandals plaguing virtual charter schools, even more so than …
by Media Lens / June 19th, 2021
11. The BBC On The Saintly Motives For Waging War On Iraq And Libya
In focusing on the grim future in April, US vice president, Kamala Harris, surely revealed far more than she intended about the grim past:
‘For years and generations, wars have been fought over oil. In a short matter of time, they will be fought over water.’
A remarkable statement. Our search of the ProQuest media database found no mention of it in any UK corporate newspaper.
Four months before the invasion of Iraq, the minutes …
by Binoy Kampmark / June 19th, 2021
After tormenting the man for years, it became clear that the Australian authorities were willing to, for want of a better word, compromise. The more accurate word would be compromising. Instead of banishing former spy turned bean spiller Witness K to a cell and throwing away the key, there was preference for a softer, more hypocritical mode of punishment. He would be spared jail time, showing that the national security state can, when it wishes to sit in judgment, show some mercy.
For those familiar with the case, there was nothing merciful in the finding. A punishment had been levelled for …
USAID does not provide aid, it carries out coups
by Nan McCurdy / June 18th, 2021
Since the Sandinistas won the 2006 election their anti-poverty policies have had enormous success.
The country is 90% self-sufficient in food. 99% of the population have electricity in their homes that is now generated with 70+% green energy; International financial Institutions including the World Bank, the International Development Bank and The Central American Bank for Economic Integration praise Nicaragua for its excellent, efficient project execution. it has one of the best health systems in Latin America praised by the International Monetary Fund, with 20 new state of the art hospitals …
by Binoy Kampmark / June 18th, 2021
My, were they delighted! Politicians across several international jurisdictions beamed with pride that police and security forces had gotten one up on criminals spanning the globe. It all involved a sting by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, led in conjunction with a number of law enforcement agencies in 16 countries, resulting in more than 800 arrests. The European Union police agency Europol described it as the “biggest ever law enforcement operation against encrypted communication”.
The haul was certainly more than the usual: over 32 tonnes of an assortment of drugs including cocaine, cannabis, amphetamines and methamphetamines; 250 firearms, 55 luxury …
by James O'Neill / June 17th, 2021
This Wednesday, the United States president Joe Biden will meet Russian president Vladimir Putin in Geneva in the first meeting of the two since Biden came to power in January 2021. It would be unwise to expect too much from this meeting. There are a number of reasons for advancing this view.
The first of these reasons relates to American motives for the meeting. It is clear that the Americans have decided that the greatest threat to their position in the world comes from the Chinese. Their policy is plainly to try and isolate the Chinese. In this endeavour they are …
by Media Lens / June 16th, 2021
After 20 years of Media Lens, it seems only natural that we should look back in gratitude at the support we’ve received. In response to one of our early pieces, a kindly columnist at the Observer commented:
‘Dear David,
‘Thank you very much for sending me a copy of your piece, which strikes me as spot on.
‘Yrs,
‘Nick Cohen’
A Guardian columnist responded with even more effusive praise:
‘This article is brilliant and fascinating David, as ever.’ (George Monbiot)
Alas, our ethical integrity declined precipitously after we subjected our interlocutors to criticism, with Cohen addressing …
