Towards the latter part of July, Australia’s unimaginative Prime Minister Scott Morrison received a request from the police commissioner from the state of New South Wales. It was a query on whether personnel from the Australian Defence Forces might aid in patrolling eight local government areas in Sydney subject to pandemic restrictions.
The NSW police minister David Elliot explained their function: the soldiers would be aiding the police with “extra capability when it comes to ensuring compliance”. They would mainly be directed to a “very active small minority … that think the laws don’t apply to them.”
Somewhere in Kansas, there’s a long plodding line. In it, as on any given day, some 5,000 cattle slowly amble forward, each steer or heifer following the one just ahead. For the most part, they’re calm; it’s just another bovine line; cattle get used to them. Abruptly, for a few near the front, the familiarity changes and then it’s not the same old tired line anymore. Alarming sounds and frightening smells suddenly come from beyond a strange, curtain-like barrier. There’s some panic, but before realization has a chance to …
On 11 April 2019 Julian Assange was carried by UK police from the sovereign territory of Ecuador’s London embassy. He was then conveyed to Westminster magistrates court, which convicted him of absconding within fifteen minutes.
The event was captured in iconic images displaying his untrimmed beard, which is significant for two overlooked reasons. One is that visual documentation would be lacking if not for the presence of vigilant supporters. The other is that Ecuador progressively deprived their asylee of everything he needed, including shaving equipment cancelled months before the last …
William Tell with a crossbow, is forced to hit the apple placed on top of his son’s head, according to the legend, on November 18, 1307. Colored woodcut, XVI century. Source: (Photo by Fototeca Gilardi/Getty Images)
The legend has it that Switzerland was celebrating her 730th Anniversary on 1 August 2021. That’s the legend about the creation of an independent, neutral and sovereign nation. It’s a legend that has taken hold in every Swiss citizen’s heart and mind. It’s a legend that has made Switzerland around the …
All it takes is a cool seven million smackeroos to build that field of dreams
by Paul Haeder / August 10th, 2021
The fourth of John Talbott’s criteria is the need for cultural sustainability: Satisfying our need as human beings to be creative and expressive; to learn, grow, teach and be; to have a diverse, interesting, stimulating and exciting social environment and range of experiences available.
? Christine Connelly, Sustainable Communities: Lessons from Aspiring Eco-Villages
And, we can take what Connelly states in her book to the level of — There is relatively little sharing of facilities, faculties, things, social capital, land, farming, cooperative everything, largely due to the dispersement of collective action capitalism has welded to the capitalist consumer, err, citizen. In one …
— Mike Pompeo, former US secretary of state on how the United States conducts its business
One of the filters in the Propaganda Model propounded by professors Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky is stoking a fear of communism. ((See Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (Pantheon Books, 2002 edition).)) The establishment’s anti-communism has never abated in the United States. The elitists require a populace fearful of …
Why does the Canada Revenue Agency treat Jewish, Christian, and Muslim charities so differently?
In June the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group (ICLM) released a report showing that the CRA disproportionately targets Muslim groups. According to the report, 75% of the groups whose charitable status was revoked following a division audit by the CRA between 2008 and 2015 were Muslim. ICLM’s findings add weight to a report released in March by the National Council of Canadian Muslims that also found Muslim charities were disproportionately targeted for surveillance, audits …
This song goes out to all those people who have gone into action to end state organized racist violence and oppression and all forms of racism.
Rome is Burning Lyrics
The story goes you’re gonna make it if you try,
And if you don’t may your life waste away ‘cause its your fault
Like the sheen of a rotting fish, The glitter just dazzles,
For everyone who’s filthy rich, A million must suffer,
So start your climb up the money tree, The best slaves are those who think they’re free,
Oh say can you see Rome is Burning, Oh how it burns, Oh feel the burn,
Jonah Goldberg and Michael Ledeen have much in common. They are both writers and also cheerleaders for military interventions and, often, for frivolous wars. Writing in the conservative rag, The National Review, months before the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, Goldberg paraphrased a statement which he attributed to Ledeen with reference to the interventionist US foreign policy.
“Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business,” Goldberg …
Australia’s Channel 7 team was all about ignoring history as its selected commentators went into describing, poorly, the closing ceremony of the Tokyo Olympics. The trio was poorly equipped culturally, geographically and totally (the Japanese component was barely credible: “We want to make things warm for you,” she chirped), to deal with the eclectic groupings of the athletes as they assembled. Clichés and platitudes clogged the commentary as each team strode into the stadium.
It would have been interesting had they noted the militaristic, political echo that follows the beginning, and end, of each Olympic Games. “In the Olympic Opening ceremony,” …
Hope you are doing well because I am not! All thanks to you.
For years, you have controlled me. Abused me. Held me back from the future I deserved.
During my early years, you saw I needed guidance, and you took advantage of my weakness. You exploited me. Used me. I was nothing but a pawn in your big, ugly game.
At that time, I was too vulnerable to know the toxicity of our relationship, yet too naïve to see through the kindness hiding the ulterior motives …
The crisis-prone charter school sector has been highly segregated for three decades. No amount of charter school disinformation has been able to conceal this harsh reality.
Non-profit and for-profit charter schools are notorious for selective enrollment practices even though they are said to be “public” schools “open to all.” Many have been investigated for discriminatory enrollment practices. Indeed, numerous charter schools oppose efforts to diversify their student body. This cherry-picking of students is also how numerous charter schools secure students that score well on educationally unsound tests produced by large …
A review of Drought, Flood, Fire, How Climate Change Contributes to Catastrophes by Chris Funk
by Robert Hunziker / August 8th, 2021
The world is on fire like never before: “Wildfires Have Erupted Across the Globe Scorching Places That Rarely Burned Before” (CNN headlines July 22, 2021) but not only is fire raging, Biblical floods are destroying entire communities; e.g., 9,000 homes swept away in central China (BBC News) as towns were nearly decimated in Germany, “Europe’s Deadly Floods Leave Scientists Stunned” (Science, July 20, 2021). All of that with worldwide droughts at a fever pitch.
Is the sky (actually) falling?
According to SPEI Global Drought Monitor, the current drought cycle is worldwide. …
When dawn broke this morning on the fourteenth day of the Olympic Games, Cuba was in 15th place in the Tokyo medal standings. It is admirable and not fortuitous that the small island of only 11 million people is 15th among the 204 countries attending the world games.
Each of the talented athletes who represent the Cuban flag in Japan trained and sacrificed to represent their country. The passion they exhibit on the field, including those who have not won medals, moves us here.
Cuba will not forget the tears of young Juan Miguel Echevarría, who was hampered by a femoral bicep …
There are some crises that never touch the well-heeled. Money, like flab, insulates them from bruising. The generally applied laws of a state can be treated as meaningless jottings; the citizenry ignored with class contempt. But few can blame the world’s sixth wealthiest person, Larry Page, for circumstances that were gifted to him. An opportunity presented itself, and the country he finds himself a resident of, despite being shut because of COVID-19, was willing to make an exception.
Google’s co-founder was granted residency under New Zealand’s wealthy investors scheme, requiring an investment of at least NZ$10 million (US$5 million) over …
Photo by Jarr1520; Strategy of reward and punishment
In the newly coined so-called War on Covid, the arsenal is eclectic. There is not only science, in the form of experimental RNA vaccines hastily developed by giants of the pharmaceutical industry, but also semi-authoritarian or full-blown authoritarian government measures imposed and legally validated by declarations of states of emergencies. The panoply of edicts include mandatory face masks indoor and sometime outdoor, depending on the country; enforced or unenforced social distancing recommendations; limitation …
Despite a climate of continuing mask confusion and deviantly “variant” COVID-19 strains: “It’s Tourist Season Again in the United States of America!” Now, if you’re traveling across the USA this Summer, you may encounter a startling sight known as the St Louis “Gateway” Arch as you navigate which Interstate Highway will best deliver you to your preferred destination in this Continental Empire. The Arch, however, is pretty far from a navigational device; it’s really a free-standing sculpture that defies all of the prairie-woodlandscapes that you’ve just driven through. To local boosters, St Louis and its Arch are known as “The …
On Thursday last week (29 July), Zamekile Shangase, a 33-year-old woman from Asiyindawo in Lamontville, was shot and killed outside her home by the police. Zamekile was the mother of two children aged 6 and 11. She was elected to a position on the local Abahlali council in 2018 and served on the council for a year.
Zamekile was shot while the police were raiding the settlement as part of Operation Show Your Receipt.
Another life has been lost. Another family is in mourning. Two young children must now …
In May, the HBO television network aired a new two-part documentary exploring America’s ongoing opioid epidemic entitled The Crime of the Century. The first episode summarized the role of the pharmaceutical industry in the crisis, specifically that of Sackler family drug-maker Purdue Pharma and its deadly prescription painkiller, OxyContin. Part One also thoroughly investigates the complicity of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the deceptive marketing by the drug company to obtain U.S. government approval for oxycodone despite its high risk of abuse and dependency, just as the …
China is providing the equivalent scaremongering of the Soviet “missile gap” in order to sustain America’s militarist-dependent capitalist economy.
Media reports from the U.S. this week – regurgitated by the European press – highlighted concerns that China is embarking on a massive scale-up of underground silos for launching nuclear weapons.
Hundreds of silos are alleged to be under construction in the western regions of Xinjiang and Gansu, according to U.S. media reports citing commercial satellite data. American military officials and State Department diplomats are quoted as saying they are “deeply concerned” by the purported expansion of China’s nuclear arsenal.
I tried listening to some podcasts the other day, but every one of them — regardless of their general theme — chose to focus on “vaccine hesitancy.” None of them offered any new evidence to back up their jab fetish. However, that did not stop them from creating a straw man army to gleefully mock what they called “anti-vaxxers.” All this as the CDC warns about a “pandemic of the unvaccinated” — once again, without any compelling evidence to back up this blatant pandering. Instead, the vilification …
Women who migrated to the Wangjia community participate in local activities at the community centre in Tongren City, Guizhou Province, April 2021.
Confounding news comes from the flagship World Economic Outlookreport of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The report highlights many of the pressing issues facing our planet: disruptions in the global supply chain, rising shipping costs, shortages of intermediate goods, rising commodity prices, and inflationary pressures in many economies. Global growth rates are expected to touch 6% in 2021 and 4.9% …
This week, Twitter was keen to share the news about its new arrangement with The Associated Press and Reuters “to expand our efforts to identify and elevate credible information” on its platform. The company reiterates its commitment that people using its service are able to “easily find reliable information” hoping to “expand the scale and increase the speed of our efforts to provide timely, authoritative text across the wide range of global topics and conversations” taking place on the platform each day.
The global head of user-generated content at Reuters, Hazel Baker, was businesslike in describing a partnership that …
When the Palestinian Olympic delegation of five athletes – adorned in traditional Palestinian attire and carrying the Palestinian flag – crossed into the Tokyo’s Olympic Stadium during the inauguration ceremony on July 23, I was overcome with pride and nostalgia.
I grew up watching the Olympics. All of us did. Throughout the month-long international sports event, the Olympics were the main topic of discussion among the refugees in my refugee camp in Gaza, where I was born.
Unlike other sports competitions such as football, you did not need to care …
“Post-Pandemic” for many countries, especially western countries, is a dream. The west will have to wake up fast, if it doesn’t want to fall prey to a destructive plan of chaos, unemployment, bankruptcies, and, yes, famine – shifting of capital from the bottom and the middle to the top – and leaving misery at the bottom.
Not so for China. For China, the post-pandemic era is well under way.
When SARS-CoV-2, later renamed by WHO to Covid-19, hit Wuhan in January 2020, China was prepared. Chinese authorities proceeded with warp-speed to prevent the spread of this new corona disease, by a radical …
The Public Inquiry into the murder of the resourceful journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia handed down its findings on July 29. Firm aim was taken at the Maltese State, which had “to shoulder responsibility for the assassination because it created an atmosphere of impunity, generated from the highest levels in the heart of the administration of the Office of the Prime Minister”. Such conditions proved expansive “like an octopus” and “spread to other entities like regulatory institutions and the police, leading to the collapse of the rule of law.”
In such a climate, the State duly failed in recognising “real and …
Emblematic of our times, the Berniecrat organization Our Revolution – never remotely revolutionary – has rebranded itself as “pragmatic progressive.” This innovation is based on the realization that progressive reforms will never be enacted unless they are fought for. And, since they are not about to fight President Biden, then it is only programmatic to accept that these reforms won’t happen.
Our Revolution surrenders
Good bye, Medicare-for-All, now that Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and even Bernie Sanders have abandoned the cause. Never mind that a majority of the electorate still favors the proposal. But to get …
I remember chatting with a man from Iraq in 2016. He was driving a taxi in Germany. I wrote about him in one of my essays: ((Hiroyuki Hamada. How Do We Dream the Dream of Peace Together?Counterpunch, September 23, 2016.))
“Last month, I was chatting with an Iraqi taxi driver in Berlin. My 12 year old son and I took a cab from the Museum for Contemporary Art to our hotel. I couldn’t help but ask the cab driver why he ended up in Berlin. He said it was something to do with the availability of the visa. He stressed that …
The United States is losing the ability for rational political debate and respect for science. Politicians, media and public discourse have been infected by lies, conspiracies, racial stereotyping of nations like China, and rampant hostility.
The World Health Organization seems to have succumbed to U.S. pressure to falsely incriminate China over the Covid-19 global pandemic.
The United Nations-affiliated body has called for a Phase Two study of laboratories and markets in the Chinese city of Wuhan where early Covid-19 cases were detected in December 2019. Beijing has rebuffed the call, saying that the proposed investigation is a cover …
