The Political Economy of Dissent Peter Blunt
What I Saw in Ukraine: 2015-2022: Diary of an International Observer Benoit Paré
America's Hijacked Peace Dividend: Long Overdue and Immediately Payable John Rachel
Mind Abuse: Media Violence and Its Threat to Democracy Rose Dyson
Class War, Then and Now: Essays toward a New Left Chris Wright
Killing Democracy: Western Imperialism's Legacy of Regime Change and Media Manipulation Finian Cunningham, Daniel Kovalik, Jeremy Kuzmarov, KJ Noh, & Ron Ridenour
At the Lost and Found: Personal & Political Dispatches of Resistance and Hope Edward Curtin
Anthropause: The Beauty of Degrowth Stan Cox
Broken Stars: Gaza Poems Buff Whitman-Bradley
Martyrs to the Unspeakable: The Assassinations of JFK, Malcolm, Martin, and RFK James W. Douglass
There was a hope in some quarters after Judge Vanessa Baraitser ruled on Monday against an application to extradite Julian Assange to the US, where he faced being locked away for the rest of his life, that she might finally be changing tack.
Washington has wanted Assange permanently silenced and made an example of – by demonstrating to other journalists its terrifying reach and powers of retaliation – ever since the Wikileaks founder exposed US war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan a decade ago.
There were reasons, however, to be suspicious of what Baraitser was really up even as she made her …
Have you ever found yourself surrounded by masked rioters being chased by flag-waving patriots and thought, I’ve seen this movie before?
I woke up this morning dreaming that I was speaking at one of your rallies. I thought then, well, if I probably won’t be getting an invitation to speak at one of them, what would I say if I were to be asked to share some words?
Contrary to popular opinion in kindergarten, words are far more …
History, while not always a telling guide, can be useful. But in moments of flushed confidence, it is not consulted and Cleo is forgotten. A crisp new dawn can negate a glance to the past. Having received the unexpected news that Julian Assange’s extradition to the United States for charges of breaching the Espionage Act of 1917 and computer intrusion had been blocked by Justice Vanessa Baraitser, his legal team and supporters were confident. All that was left was to apply for bail, see Assange safely to the arms of his family, and await the next move by wounded US …
Segregated charter schools have a high failure rate and are notorious for lacking accountability and oversight. Charter schools are also well-known for being non-transparent even though they are ostensibly “public” schools. This has been the case for nearly 30 years when charter schools first came into being. Over the years, endless reports, articles, and books have documented the chronic lack of accountability in the troubled charter school sector.
Privately-operated charter schools have always over-promised and under-delivered on accountability. This is closely related to why fraud and corruption remain entrenched in the charter school sector. The worn-out assertion that charter schools will …
2020 will go down in history as the year that terminated the American-sponsored ‘peace process’. While 2021 will not reverse the monumental change in the US attitude and objectives in Palestine, Israel and the Middle East, the new year presents Palestinians with the opportunity to think outside the American box.
The previous year began with an unmistakable American push to translate its new political discourse with decisive action. On January 28, the so-called ‘Deal of the Century’ was declared as an actual political doctrine. A new political lexicon began …
A Brief History of Lebanon’s Hezbollah
Lebanese resistance movement Hezbollah has inspired fear within the Empire through both armed struggle and its success in electoral politics. For effectively wielding this double-edged sword, the “Party of God” has been vilified by countless politicians and media outlets.
From its birth as an armed resistance to Israeli attacks on Lebanon over 35 years ago, Hezbollah developed into an institution that provided health and education services to the country’s neediest. After defeating the Zionist state in successive conflicts, it rode great mass support into the electoral sphere and now constitutes …
When profit determines every outcome of social and economic life, the minority politics of lesser evil wins again, and again, and again.
— Anonymous
The pandemic has heightened public awareness of the injustice of a political economic system that profits private wealth at massive loss to the public good. All talk of change that simply involves different individuals serving in positions of responsibility but committed to maintain rather than radically transform that system are support for a status quo that will eventually destroy more people and the rest of nature than has so far been the case. We need political representation dedicated …
Twelve voices were shouting in anger, and they were all alike. No question, now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
? George Orwell, Animal Farm, First published 17 August 1945
What should we expect in 2021?
So far, it looks like this year is going to be plagued by more of the same brand of madness, mayhem, manipulation and tyranny that dominated 2020.
Frankly, I’m sick of it: the hypocrisy, the double …
Image source
Homeownership is the traditional cornerstone of the American Dream. Yet for millions of people across the nation, who may have poor credit scores and earn less than a living wage, the possibility of homeownership has long been out of reach, even before the COVID pandemic. Today, with COVID serving as yet another barrier to homeownership in the U.S., especially among minority populations, the situation has become dire.
In fact, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) reports that “an estimated 10 million adults are …
The barrister-brewed humour of Edward Fitzgerald QC, one of the solid and stout figures defending a certain Julian Assange of WikiLeaks at the Old Bailey in London, was understandable. Time had worn and wearied the parties, none more so than his client. Fitzgerald had asked for water, but then mused that its absence could hardly have been as bad as the horrors of war in the Battle of Iwo Jima. What mattered was the decision on extradition.
Kevin Gosztola of Shadowproof also gave us a sense of the scene. “I see a bench of a glass container, where Assange …
In early December I travelled to Venezuela to be an election observer at their national assembly election. I was part of a group of eight persons from Canada and US organized by CodePink. There were about two hundred international observers in total, including the Latin American Council of Electoral Experts. I have previously been an official election observer in Honduras and was an unofficial observer at the 2015 Venezuela national assembly election.
Meeting Opposition Leaders
Before the election, our small group met eight leaders of the Democratic Alliance. This is the major opposition coalition. Pedro Jose Rojas of Accion Democratica said the …
A London court has ruled against those seeking Wikileaks founder Julian Assange’s extradition to the US. Assange is charged with 17 counts of espionage as well as hacking.
Despite the hype, an investigative report released today reveals Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger is no hero defending democracy from Trump. Rather, in this investigative film (produced by George and Peggy DiCaprio, and Rosario Dawson, and narrated by Debra Messing), Raffensperger is exposed for using vote suppression Jim Crow tactics — even misleading a federal court to keep 198,000 Georgians from voting in Tuesday’s Senate runoff race.
Western politicians in general, and the American and Australian versions are not exempted, are fond of using phrases such as “the rules-based international order.” What they unfailingly really mean is the Western version of a rules-based order. The classic definition was set out in Wikipedia when it said:
The rules based international order describes the notion that contemporary international relations are organised around principles of international cooperation through multilateral institutions, like WTO, open markets, security cooperation, promotion of liberal democracy and leadership by the United States and its allies.
The key lies in the last part of that quote, “leadership by the …
According to two recent U.S. government reports, private businesses like segregated charter schools have far fewer nurses and more inexperienced teachers than public schools: School Nurses in U.S. Public Schools (April 2020) and Characteristics of Public and Private Elementary and Secondary School Teachers in the United States (April 2020). Both reports cover many years of data.
It is also well- known that privately-operated charter schools have higher teacher, principal, and student turnover rates than public schools, ensuring instability in the school milieu.
These and other facts stem directly from the privatized and marketized character of segregated charter schools, …
The unexpected decision by Judge Vanessa Baraitser to deny a US demand to extradite Julian Assange, foiling efforts to send him to a US super-max jail for the rest of his life, is a welcome legal victory, but one swamped by larger lessons that should disturb us deeply.
Those who campaigned so vigorously to keep Assange’s case in the spotlight, even as the US and UK corporate media worked so strenuously to keep it in darkness, are the heroes of the day. They made the price too steep for Baraitser or the British establishment to agree to …
The somewhat mind-expanding origins of this story started on April 19th, otherwise known as “Bicycle Day.” It was on that date in 1943 when Albert Hoffman first discovered the psychedelic properties of LSD and, this year—the year of perfect vision—is when my roommate, Paul, discovered an ad by a philanthropic-based bike shop in San Juan Capistrano, CA, called Buy My Bikes, which is owned and operated by a friendly hippie named Jim. Once he saw it, he had an epiphany on how he could best help hundreds of people, including his family, friends, coworkers, and “clients” (patients) of the addiction/mental …
The People Who Run the U.S. Government Despise Their Voters
On December 30th, U.S. Senators voted 80 to 12 not to increase the Covid-19 relief one-time payments from $600 per qualifying person, to $2,000. The same bill had already passed, December 28th, in the U.S. House, by a vote of 322 to 87.
Here is how the great investigative-reporting team of David Sirota and Andrew Perez reported this on December 31st, under the headline “Senate Democrats’ Motion To Concede On $2,000 Checks,”
Only six members of the Senate Democratic Caucus mustered the courage to vote against [Republican …
A US President inadvertently informed Americans on the war against Vietnam ... and Korea
“Unknown to most Americans, the US ‘totally destroyed’ North Korea once before” — Irish Times
Well, it was bound to happen sooner or later that someone of high notoriety would blurt out the truth about the American genocide in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, and lift for a moment the curtain of imbecility that keeps why-me-worry silly American society, self-indulgent in sales and sports, gung-ho slap-happily accepting what its criminal media tells it about being proud of its Vietnam War veterans and proud of today’s American soldiers, who have …
The US Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) has announced that weapons exports have risen by 2.8% to $175 billion in 2020. In their annual briefing on US arms sales, the Pentagon and State Department cold-bloodedly described this increase as an “accomplishment”.
The Permanent Crisis of Capitalism
The growth in arms sales is structurally driven by the permanent crisis of capitalism. There has been a long-term decline in the rate of profit of the productive sectors of leading capitalist states. This decline began in 1965 and persisted all through the 1970s. A partial recovery occurred from 1982 to 1997, at roughly …
Give Prisoners the Vaccine Now
San Quentin
Inmates in federal prisons, state prisons and local jails should be in the first cohort of people to be offered COVID-19 vaccinations.
One in five prisoners in the U.S. has been reported to have had COVID-19. That’s 20% of people behind bars. And that is likely a “vast undercount,” according to Homer Venters, the former chief medical officer at New York’s Rikers Island jail complex.
If compassion for prisoners does not move policy makers or the general public, then eyes should turn to a pair of recent studies, one by …
A short video on the Anarchist movement throughout history to the modern day.
For thousands of years folk wisdom has insisted that ‘you shall be known by the company you keep’. This is also true of countries.
A recent United Nations vote condemning the “glorification of Nazism, neo?Nazism and other practices that contribute to fuelling contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance” generated significant commentary on social media. The US and Ukraine voted against the widely supported resolution while Canada, Australia, New Zealand and most European countries abstained. One commentator tweeted that the countries who failed to condemn Nazism were …
Image from the Plaza of the Revolution by Bill Hackwell
Time is starting to distance itself from that dramatic moment, 6 years ago today, when the final 3 members of the Cuban Five were freed from the prisons of the Empire after 16 years. Never the less, because of a healthy distrust of the US government, for those of us who worked in solidarity with the Five, we did not believe it was true until the plane carrying them home landed in Havana and it was verified by the …
The year 2020 is coming to an end, and that is cause for celebration, in COVID-19-safe ways, of course.
The 2020s is the beginning of an era in which the roots of the crises we face are coming into clear focus. The Trump administration openly exposed these crises through its candid disdain for the well-being of people and the planet. But the systems that are bringing our demise – capitalism, white supremacy, racism, colonialism, patriarchy and imperialism – have been in place for a long time, since the founding of …
Force The Vote! We demand that every progressive in Congress refuse to vote for Nancy Pelosi for Speaker of the House until she publicly pledges to bring Medicare for all to the floor of the House for a vote in January: https://forcethevote.org/
Image in homage of Bolivian people’s resistance by Tings Chak (China)
Towards the end of November, United Nations Secretary General António Guterres addressed the German Bundestag to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the United Nations (UN). At the heart of the UN is its Charter, the treaty that binds nations together in a global project, which has now been ratified by all 193 member nations of the UN. It is well worth …
The people are unaware. They’re not educated to realize that they have power. The system is so geared that everyone believes the government will fix everything. We are the government.
— John Lennon
No doubt about it: 2020—a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad year for freedom—was the culmination of a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad decade for freedom.
Government corruption, tyranny, and abuse coupled with a Big Brother-knows-best mindset and the COVID-19 pandemic propelled us at warp speed towards a full-blown police state in which nationwide lockdowns, egregious surveillance, roadside strip searches, police shootings of unarmed citizens, censorship, retaliatory arrests, …
Before Antony Blinken can become Secretary of State, Senators must approve. And before that, they must ask questions. Here are some suggestions for what they should ask.
1. Second to the war on Iraq, which of the disasters you’ve helped facilitate do you most regret, Libya, Syria, Ukraine, or something else? And what have you learned that would improve your record going forward?
2. You once supported dividing Iraq into three nations. I’ve asked an Iraqi friend to draw up a plan to divide the United States up into three …
PressTV Interview with Peter Koenig
Background
The Middle East Eye reports there are no gold mines under Dubai’s sands with artisanal miners or children toiling away trying to strike gold. But there is the Dubai Gold Souk and refineries that vie with the largest global operations as the United Arab Emirates (UAE) strives to expand its position as a major gold hub.
In recent years, the UAE, with Dubai in particular, has established itself as one of the largest and fastest-growing marketplaces for the precious metal, with imports rising by 58 percent per annum to more than $27bn in 2018, according to data collated by the Observatory …
