Clever diplomacy rarely involves total commitment or unqualified fidelity to any one state. Treacherous waters require careful navigation, an understanding of shifty and shifting allegiances. The goal for the prudent statesperson is the pursuit of self-interest without alienation. In that regard, Papua New Guinea is proving increasingly interesting, finding itself between playground thugs with varying degrees of form. It has refused to cold shoulder the People’s Republic of China, signing to its Belt and Road Initiative. It also continues to accept the patronising largesse from Australia, a country increasingly hostile to Beijing’s ambitions in the Asia-Pacific.
The whiplash of authoritarianism is being ruthlessly used in Egypt. On January 6, 2021, Ahmed Khalifa, social news editor of Egypt 360 website, was arrested after publishing a series of reports on workers’ legitimate protests. He was falsely charged with joining a terrorist group and spreading fake news, and remains in detention to date. Before his arrest, Khalifa published articles about strikes at the state-owned ElDelta Company for Fertilizers and Chemical Industry.
Turn of Events
In 2011, bold protest chants flowed out from Tahrir Square: from “The people want the fall of the regime!” to “Down, down with military rule!” – everything …
If you enjoyed the Global War on Terror, you’re going to love the new War on Domestic Terror! It’s just like the original Global War on Terror, except that this time the “Terrorists” are all “Domestic Violent Extremists” (“DVEs”), “Homegrown Violent Extremists” (“HVEs”), “Violent Conspiracy-Theorist Extremists” (“VCTEs”), “Violent Reality Denialist Extremists” (VRDEs”), “Insurrectionary Micro-Aggressionist Extremists” (“IMAEs”), “People Who Make Liberals Feel Uncomfortable” (“PWMLFUs”), and anyone else the Department of Homeland Security wants to label an “extremist” and slap a ridiculous acronym on.
Only the most deluded denier can now question that the global climate is dramatically changing and that the chaos is man-made. Extreme weather events – wildfires, drought, intense heat, hurricanes – are becoming more frequent, the impact on ecosystems and biodiversity, populations and infrastructure devastating. Fueled by the industrialized nations and the lifestyles of the rich, it is developing nations in the global south that are most severely impacted by climate change, with the poorest communities, particularly women and children, hit hardest.
The disruption to weather cycles is caused by global warming (increases in average surface temperature) which results from …
Claims made by Democratic New York City mayoral candidate, Andrew Yang, in a recent op-ed in the Jewish weekly, ‘The Forward’, point to the prevailing ignorance that continues to dominate the US discourse on Palestine and Israel.
Yang, a former Democratic Presidential candidate, is vying for the Jewish vote in New York City. According to the reductionist assumption that all Jews must naturally support Israel and Zionism, Yang constructed an argument that is entirely based on a tired and false mantra equating criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism.
Brand a few neo-Nazis in Canada as “terrorists” but train and give military assistance to a much larger and more violent group of them in the Ukraine. What’s going on?
The New Democratic Party’s successful push to list the Proud Boys as a terrorist organization highlights their indifference to imperialism and a decidedly ‘North Americanist’ worldview. A tool of US-led global domination, Canada’s terrorist list should be abolished not have names added to it.
One indication that the push to list the Proud Boys was “North Americanist” posturing is revealed by …
The Chinese Foreign Ministry has demanded an apology from the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) for its recent coverage of COVID-19, saying the BBC used a clip about an anti-terrorism exercise, claiming it was for pandemic control. The BBC responded: it will continue to uphold the “principle of justice”. For more on this, CGTN talked to Martin Jacques, a senior research fellow at the London School of Economics.
"It is not for me to say whether we see best with the hand or the eye. I only know that the world I see with my fingers is alive, ruddy, and satisfying." -- Helen Keller, 1908, The World I Live In
by Paul Haeder / February 6th, 2021
The legacy of a society is, well, how it treats its young, old, frail, infirm, sick, poor and those hobbled by structural and environmental injustice.
Some in urban planning circles also allude to how safe a community is based on the popsicle test – can a child or two walking from home to a store, get a popsicle without having to cross high speed roads or highways, without having to walk along long stretches of ugly dangerous buildings, and who can find a multitude of stores that sell good food …
When a European graduate student emailed to ask if I would participate in an assignment to “do an interview with one of my favourite authors,” I said yes. My books have not exactly been best-sellers, and so I was an easy target for anyone describing me as a “favourite author.”
But beyond my gratitude for someone noticing my writing, I was intrigued by the questions. And when I suggested we might publish the interview, I was even more intrigued by the student’s request to stay anonymous. She wrote that she …
On February 3rd, 2021, Anne Feeney died in the hospital in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with her children at her side. She was 69 years old. She was a cancer survivor in poor physical health when she fell and broke her back a month ago, and in the hospital she contracted Covid-19, then pneumonia.Although Anne died too young, she lived a long life. She lived many lives during those 69 years, really, and she cheated death at least a couple times during her last decade …
The San Francisco Chronicle ran an excellent article on Sunday, January 31 about the failure of the California Public Health Department (CDPH) to abide by state law requiring the agency to disclose information about COVID-19 outbreaks in the workplace, and about the failure of county public health departments, including San Francisco, to disclose information about workplace outbreaks.
Of course the Chronicle consigned this article to the business section, when it really belonged on the front page above the fold. And the reporters, Chase DiFeliciantonio and Shwanika Narayan, were a bit hobbled by the need to be “objective” and allow both …
Racism is one of the major social justice issues of the modern era. It can be seen in all corners of the globe, and in virtually every industry, negatively impacting minority communities and overall public health. The global food system is no exception.
As a niche dietary movement, veganism is particularly problematic, with various news sources referring to the community as “elitist,” and even demonstrative of white privilege. To those social critics, the very idea of an individual choosing what he or she will (or won’t) eat is …
The Pakistani government should never, under any circumstances and no matter the pressure, normalize with Israel. Doing so is not only dangerous – as it will embolden an already vile, racist, violent apartheid Israel – but it would also be considered a betrayal of a historic legacy of mutual solidarity, collective affinity and brotherhood that have bonded Palestinians and Pakistanis for many generations.
The bond between Palestine and Pakistan is not one that is based on rhetoric. Rather, it is cemented through blood and sacrifice, as Pakistani fighters have taken …
Oswaldo Terreros (Ecuador), Mural para la Universidad Superior de las Artes (‘Mural for the University of the Arts’), 2012.
In 2019, 613 million Indians voted to appoint their representatives to the Indian parliament (Lok Sabha). During the election campaign, the political parties spent Rs. 60,000 crores (around US $8 billion), 45% of which was spent by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the governing party; …
A French legal battle offers an opportunity to revisit Canada’s role in chemical weapons use and whether Ottawa owes something to its Vietnamese victims.
On the weekend activists gathered in Paris to support a court case launched by a woman exposed to Agent Orange in Vietnam. The group Collectif Vietnam Dioxine is supporting French-Vietnamese woman, Tran To Nga, who is suing 14 companies that sold the powerful defoliant dioxin to the US military.
As a member of the Vietnamese Communists (Viet Cong) Nga breathed Agent Orange in 1966. She told the …
Every year billions of public dollars and assets flow into the hands of private businesses like charter schools, leaving public schools, the economy, the public interest, and the nation worse off. This is due to the fact that competing owners of capital are using deregulated charter schools to atomize the socialized economy for private gain. As pay-the-rich schemes, privately-operated charter schools drain the large-scale socialized economy of a huge amount of social wealth produced by working people and meant for the public interest.
When public funds leave the public sector and end up in the hands of deregulated private entities like …
by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies / February 3rd, 2021
Image: Calvin Shen
In 2004, journalist Ron Susskind quoted a Bush White House advisor, reportedly Karl Rove, as boasting, “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality.” He dismissed Susskind’s assumption that public policy must be rooted in “the reality-based community.” “We’re history’s actors,” the advisor told him, “…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”
Sixteen years later, the American wars and war crimes launched by the Bush administration have only spread chaos and violence far …
A Review of Greg Poulgrain’s book JFK vs. Allen Dulles
by Edward Curtin / February 3rd, 2021
Before I digress slightly, let me state from the outset that the book by Greg Poulgrain that I am about to review is extraordinary by any measure. The story he tells is one you will read nowhere else, especially in the way he links the assassination of President Kennedy to former CIA Director Allen Dulles and the engineering by the latter of one of the 20th century’s most terrible mass murders. It will make your hair stand on end and should be read by anyone who cares about historical truth.
About twelve years ago I taught a graduate school course to …
In a prison hospital in Athens, Greece, a man named Dimitris Koufontinas lies unconscious most of the time. Almost a month into a water-only hunger strike, one of his tremendously weakened organs could fail, and he could die at any moment.
As always, there’s a lot happening in the world. Ongoing wars between countries, civil wars within them and threats of war elsewhere; at least one full-blown famine; dramatically growing rates of …
The least surprising news item in the past week was that the United States government under President Biden had decided that American troops would after all, despite Ex- President Trump’s order, remain in Afghanistan. This breaks an agreement that had been reached by the Trump administration and the Taliban that US troops would all be gone by May 20 21.
It was unclear in the Trump agreement whether the withdrawal of “US Forces” included the United States mercenaries who for at least the past year have outnumbered formal US troops. What Trump’s negotiated agreement meant for the other “allied” forces in …
It’s the sort of stuff that should have been sorted years ago in Australia: a murderous, frontier society ill disposed to the indigenous populace; the creation of a convict colony that was itself an act of invasion rather than settlement; the theft of land and its rapacious plunder.
Even some of the rough colonists were not oblivious to such a crude record. Henry Parkes, in planning the Centenary celebrations as New South Wales premier in 1888, was asked by a fellow politician what he would be doing for the poor and needy for the occasion. Wealthy landed citizens had been …
On January 22, 2021, the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) became international law for the 122 states who signed the agreement in July 2017. Article 1a of states: “Each State Party undertakes never under any circumstances to… Develop, test, produce, manufacture, otherwise acquire, possess or stockpile nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices.”
Initiated by a cross-regional group comprising Austria, Brazil, Ireland, Mexico, Nigeria and South Africa, the TPNW was approved by the United Nations General Assembly by a vote of 122-1. The treaty required that 50 signatory nations officially ratify it before it could become international …
RT’s Murad Gazdiev reports on new evidence of links between MI6 and Russian opposition figure and activist Alexei Navalny. Then author and professor of international human rights Dan Kovalik joins Rick Sanchez to discuss the role of the US and UK in fomenting political discord in Russia and other countries.
The rapid rise of Covid-19 has spawned a renaissance in socio-economic thinking about the best way to face the future, as mayors of cities throughout the world search for answers in the face of declining revenues while society demands more urgent help.
Eureka! Amsterdam, the Venice of the North, discovers doughnut economics. With a click of fingers, it abandons the major tenets of the neoliberal brand of capitalism’s insatiable thirst for growth to infinity at any and all costs. This city where capitalism spawned via the Dutch East India Company first issuing shares in 1602 has turned agnostic on 400 years …
Inde etiam habitus nostri honor et frequens toga; paulatimque discessum ad delenimenta vitiorum, porticus et balinea et convivorum elegantiam. Idque apud imperitos humanitas vocabatur, cum pars servitutis esset.
(They adopted our dressing fashion, and begun wearing the togas; little by little they were drawn to touches such as colonnades, baths, and elegant talks. Because they didn’t know better, they called it ‘civilization,’ when it was part of their slavery.)
The general problem of culture today is its ability to facilitate and support negative aspects of society through encouraging escapism, diversion and ignorance regarding many important …
The events of January 6, 2021 in Washington D.C. were historic and will be analyzed for some time to come. Many were rattled and shaken to their core by what unfolded that day in the nation’s capital. Others were excited, relieved, and hopeful.
Since then, all sorts of disinformation, confusion, and illusions have filled mainstream accounts of what happened that day and why, but it is already clear that certain things are emerging that once again do not bode well for the people. It is always important to ask: “when a major event happens, who ultimately ends up benefitting from it?”
According to a new report by Oxfam, ‘The Inequality Virus’, the wealth of the world’s billionaires increased by $3.9tn (trillion) between 18 March and 31 December 2020. Their total wealth now stands at $11.95tn. The world’s 10 richest billionaires have collectively seen their wealth increase by $540bn over this period. In September 2020, Jeff Bezos could have paid all 876,000 Amazon employees a $105,000 bonus and still be as wealthy as he was before COVID.
At the same time, hundreds of millions of people will lose (have lost) their jobs and face destitution and hunger. It is estimated that the …
On 25 January, during the first session of the virtual World Economic Forum (WEF), President Xi Jinping, in his address, stated clearly that China’s agenda was to move forward in the World of Great Change, with its renewed policy of multilateralism, aiming for a multi-polar world, where nations would be treated as equals.
China will continue to vouch for strong macroeconomic growth and pledge assistance for those that are suffering the most during this pandemic-induced crisis in view of a balanced development of all countries.
There is no place in this world for large countries dominating smaller ones, or for economic threatening …
The Biden administration’s first White House press secretary is keen that things will be done differently under her guidance. The jaw dropping, sniping essions between the press and government that were characteristic of the Trump administration were going to cease. “When the President asked me to serve in this role,” Jen Psaki outlined in her first press briefing on January 20, 2021, “we talked about the importance of bringing truth and transparency back to the briefing room, and he asked me to ensure we are communicating about policies across the Biden-Harris administration and the work his team is doing …
President Biden has inherited a terribly flawed US foreign policy. For the past few decades, the pro-corporate US foreign policy has been a catastrophic failure, especially in the Middle East. Our criminal military interventions there have resulted in the devastation of much of that area, impoverished millions, created millions of refugees, and injured or killed millions more. Moreover, this criminal policy has wasted trillions of US taxpayer dollars, injured or killed thousands of US forces, and has badly damaged US strategic interests.
The illegal US use of aggressive sanctions against nations that don’t follow its dictates has also harmed tens of …
