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by Sophie Michel / December 31st, 2020
“I hear the lower castes are finding this lack of monsoons rather difficult for their crops,” droned Aashka’s father at their lavish supper (as usual), in the midst of her father’s normal dull conversing with the other Brahmins.
The table was long and elegant and filled every night with rich Brahmins, such as Aashka’s family. Most of them were reserved old men, who hardly spoke to Aashka save for reprimanding her that if she kept up her unladylike behavior she’d surely be reincarnated as a stick bug. Some women were …
by Binoy Kampmark / December 30th, 2020
Memories are thick of this: the respectful, even reverential German introduction of a comedy sketch; the scratchy string orchestral music that adds a layering of anticipation. Black-and-white film. Dining room, white tablecloth, silver chandeliers. The names Freddy Frinton and May Warden. An English show broadcast on German public TV networks without subtitles. Family members, perched, sprawled, slumped, comfortable, lightly sozzled, eyes glued to an 18-minute sketch with only two actors: the attentive butler by the name of James, played by the roguish Frinton; the spinster lady of the birthday moment, Miss Sophie, played by Warden.
This 90th birthday is characterised by …
by Luke Eastwood / December 30th, 2020
When one questions current trends, especially for those beyond their twenties, it is quite common to be thought of as ‘out of touch’, ‘outdated’, ‘reactionary’ or various other negative descriptions for those who might be resistant to the inevitable process of change.
Change is perhaps the only constant in known existence, on both a micro or macro scale. Accepting that all things are subject to eventual change is perhaps a valuable life lesson that all of us must confront if we wish to attain any self-knowledge of wisdom. However, not all change is necessary, inevitable or beneficial and change for its …
by Ramzy Baroud / December 30th, 2020
On December 21, the United States Congress passed the COVID-19 Relief Package, as part of a larger $2.3 trillion bill meant to cover spending for the rest of the fiscal year. As usual, US representatives allocated a massive sum of money for Israel.
While unemployment, thus poverty, in the US is skyrocketing as a result of repeated lockdowns, the US found it essential to provide Israel with $3.3 billion in ‘security assistance’ and $500 million for US-Israel missile defense cooperation.
Although a meager $600 dollar payment to help struggling …
by David Rovics / December 30th, 2020
In response to the state of Oregon’s latest extension of the partial ban on evictions, the landlord lobby here is suing for 100% of back rent.
I know it is often hard to see, but significant elements of the folks in power at various levels of government are keenly aware that we’re in a crisis, and they want to avoid a total meltdown of the social order. They often like to act blase and in control of the situation, they like to pretend that …
by Shawgi Tell / December 30th, 2020
So-called “public-private-partnerships” (PPPs) are nothing new, but they have been multiplying rapidly at home and abroad since the start of the neoliberal period several decades ago. Not surprisingly, the accelerated expansion of PPPs is a big part of the “post-Covid-19” “Great Reset” agenda of the international financial oligarchy as they strive to avert the inescapable law of the falling rate of profit under capitalism.
PPPs are wreaking havoc in every sector in nearly every country. In the U.S. they can be found in education, healthcare, infrastructure, municipal services, transportation, and more. In education, they take the form of charter schools and …
by Gerald E. Scorse / December 30th, 2020
A weary America is suffering through the worst public health crisis in more than a century. Covid-19 has taken over 300,000 lives. Parts of the economy have effectively shut down, throwing millions out of work and bankrupting businesses large and small. In the richest country in the world, Thanksgiving dinner for tens of thousands came from food banks at the end of traffic jams stretching for miles.
Now for the good news. Vaccines have arrived sooner than anybody could have expected. The latest pandemic relief bill should keep a double-dip recession from setting in. Lastly—if a divided Congress can …
by Binoy Kampmark / December 30th, 2020
The odds are stacked against Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks publisher who faces the grimmest of prospects come January 4. On that day, the unsympathetic judicial head of District Judge Vanessa Baraitser will reveal her decision on the Old Bailey proceedings that took place between September and October this year. Despite Assange’s team being able to marshal an impressive, even astonishing array of sources and witnesses demolishing the prosecution’s case for extradition to the United States, power can be blindly vengeful.
Such blindness is much in evidence in a co-authored contribution to The Daily Signal from this month. The authors are …
by Medea Benjamin and Marcy Winograd / December 29th, 2020
Credit: Columbia World Projects
Even before President-Elect Joe Biden sets foot in the White House, the Senate Intelligence Committee may start hearings on his nomination of Avril Haines as Director of National Intelligence.
Barack Obama’s top lawyer on the National Security Council from 2010 to 2013 followed by CIA Deputy Director from 2013 to 2015, Haines is the proverbial wolf in sheep’s clothing. She is the affable assassin who, according to Newsweek, would be summoned in the middle of the night to decide if a citizen of …
by Binoy Kampmark / December 29th, 2020
Filling the espionage ranks with legions of the non-belonging comes with its share of risk. The process is counter-intuitive, putting stock in skill and aptitude above the potential compromise of loyalty and divergence. Eventually, such a recruit might find a set of closely guarded principles.
The son of a Sephardic Jew and Dutch Protestant might well count as excellent material for British intelligence but George Behar ended up condemned in Britain and the toast of the now defunct Soviet Union. George Blake, as he came to be known, along with that other great British export of betrayal, Kim Philby, was always …
by Robert Hunziker / December 28th, 2020
Global warming is the biggest challenge of all time. It impacts every living species. However, the inherent dangers are very difficult to comprehend. As such, people brush it off as one more issue in life that will somehow be handled, fixed, no worries, human ingenuity will prevail.
But, what if it’s not that simple?
Stuart Scott, executive producer of Facing Future.TV, which is part of United Planet Faith & Science Initiative (UPFSI.org) founded by Stuart, knows better than almost anybody that it’s not that simple. He is one of the few, the exceptional, to cast aside a comfortable lifestyle to take on …
The Nature of the American State
by Yanis Iqbal / December 28th, 2020
Settle your quarrels, come together, understand the reality of our situation, understand that fascism is already here, that people are already dying who could be saved, that generations more will live poor butchered half-lives if you fail to act. Do what must be done, discover your humanity and your love in revolution.
— George Jackson, Blood in My Eye (1990): xvii
USA’s President-elect Joe Biden’s cabinet picks have already deflated the hopes of lesser-evilists. Filled with deep-dyed neoliberals and unswerving imperialists, Biden’s cabinet will try its hardest to competently revive the murderous American empire. Externally, it would mean the professional …
by Paul Haeder / December 26th, 2020
I remember a long time ago, finding a Life (or Look) magazine at a swap meet in Arizona, on the outskirts of Tucson. Man, those were the days – 1977. Every sort of snow bird and desert rat out there swapping any number of a million things: from shrunken and powdered dog testicles (for the prostate issues of old men) to silver dollar certificates, from six shooters to bleached out badger bones; dream catchers and gold panning equipment; everything you could imagine, it was out …
by Ellen Brown / December 24th, 2020
A self-funding national infrastructure bank modeled on the “American System” of Alexander Hamilton, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin D. Roosevelt would help solve two of the country’s biggest problems.
Millions of Americans have joined the ranks of the unemployed, and government relief checks and savings are running out; meanwhile, the country still needs trillions of dollars in infrastructure. Putting the unemployed to work on those infrastructure projects seems an obvious solution, especially given that the $600 or $700 stimulus checks Congress is planning on issuing will do little to address the growing crisis. Various plans for solving the infrastructure crisis involving public-private partnerships have …
Huge Risks, Huge Injuries: Huge Compensations?
by Peter Koenig / December 24th, 2020
Did you know that the US Government since 1988 paid as of 1 December 2020 more than 4.4 billion dollars to vaccine-injury victims? It’s your money, Taxpayers money. This is Health Services and Service Administration Vaccine Injury Compensation Data
The National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP), was set up in 1988 to compensate for the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act (NCVIA) of 1986 (42 U.S.C. §§ 300aa-1 to 300aa-34) which was signed into law by US President Ronald Reagan as part of a larger health bill on November 14, 1986. Under NCVIA nobody can sue a vaccine producing pharma-company or …
You can fool most of the people most of the time. P. T. Barnum.
by Paul Haeder / December 24th, 2020
Someone said, “If you don’t have something nice to say about someone, don’t say anything.”
Oh, the idiocy of America!!
Shit-dog, this country, now, and going back when I was in my teens (13 when my family moved us from Paris, France, to Arizona – of all places), well, lying, cheating, achy-breaky heart, don’t you know, thieving, scamming, and, well, bombing (military and economic), that’s what it is, but you won’t get that from those lying cheating bullshitting PR-spinning, pass-the-hat, money-loving politicians on both sides of the manure pile.
Literally, most Americans really believe this is, at its …
by Shawgi Tell / December 24th, 2020
President-elect Joe Biden recently nominated Miguel Cardona to serve as the next U.S. Secretary of Education. Hardly anyone in education circles has heard of or spoken about Cardona, let alone in an open and serious way. For weeks there was endless speculation and confusion surrounding the “top potential pick” for this position. All kinds of illusions, diversions, and false hopes predictably came to the fore. As in previous elections, emotions ran high while analysis, theory, and experience took a back seat.
The notion, according to many, that Cardona is a “non-controversial,” “non-party-splitting,” “unifying choice” is meant to intensify opposition to analysis, …
by Edward Curtin / December 24th, 2020
Here where I dwell in the northern hemisphere, the winter solstice has just occurred. The darkest day of the year in a dark year. A few days ago was also the Grand Conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn and the dawning of the Age of Aquarius, which is interesting to those who like the musical Hair and believe their fates lie in the stars and not in themselves. Shakespeare’s Cassius had it right: such astrological determinism is for underlings.
Free people agree with Beethoven:
I will take fate by the throat; it …
by Roger D. Harris / December 24th, 2020
The balance between the US drive to dominate Latin America and the Caribbean and its counterpart, the Bolivarian cause of regional independence and integration, tipped portside by year end 2020 with major popular victories, including reversal of the coup in Bolivia and the constitutional referendum in Chile. Central has been the persistence of Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution against the asphyxiating US blockade, along with the defiance by Cuba and Nicaragua of US regime-change measures.
The grand struggle played out against the backdrop of the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic, impacting countries differently depending on their political economies. As of this writing, Venezuela, …
by Vijay Prashad / December 24th, 2020
Chittaprosad (India), Peace, undated.
Our year has been eclipsed by the pandemic, the rush of a virus paralysing societies across the world. Some governments offered smarter, more scientific, and humane approaches to the pandemic; many (but not all) of these have been governments with a socialist orientation. Amongst them is the Indian state of Kerala, tucked into the country’s south-west with a population of 35 million and governed by the Left Democratic Front (LDF). Kerala’s Health Minister KK Shailaja …
by Ramzy Baroud / December 23rd, 2020
It is convenient to surmise that Israel’s current political crisis is consistent with the country’s unfailing trajectory of short-lived governments and fractious ruling coalitions. While this view is somewhat defensible, it is also hasty.
Israel is currently at the cusp of a fourth general election in less than two years. Even by Israel’s political standards, this phenomenon is unprecedented, not only in terms of the frequency of how often Israelis vote, but also of the constant shifting in possible coalitions and seemingly strange alliances.
It seems that the only constant in …
by Binoy Kampmark / December 23rd, 2020
A flurry of them has been expected, and just prior to Christmas, US President Donald Trump waved his wand of pardon with vigour. On December 22, the president issued fifteen pardons and five commutations. The choices so far have been, to put it mildly, problematic.
The power to pardon can be found in Article II, Section 2, Clause 1 of the US Constitution, a provision which states, in part, that the President “shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.” That most eminent of judicial heads Chief Justice Marshall …
by David Rovics / December 23rd, 2020
As 2020 draws to a close, an open letter to Portland with particular regards to the renters, and the peculiar beauty of the notion of a rent strike during an eviction moratorium.
Dear Portland,
And dear anyone else, particularly in other localities that have passed similar laws to the eviction moratorium that was just renewed by the Multnomah County Board of Supervisors this week — which is now extended until July 2nd.
I want to talk to you about the rent strike, specifically. What rent strike, you may wonder? Well, it’s …
by Kim Petersen / December 23rd, 2020
Yes, there is a pandemic. And, yes, the COVID-19 numbers and deaths are rising in certain locales. In the Canadian province of Alberta, lockdown measures were put into effect that include shutting all casinos, gyms, dine-in restaurants, and bars. Mask wearing, despite what science says, has been mandated. As well, all outdoor and indoor social gatherings have been banned.
As CJ Hopkins wrote in a excellent essay on the transformation …
by Dissident Voice Communications / December 23rd, 2020
Lawrence B. Wilkerson, retired US Army Colonel and former chief of staff to US Secretary of State Colin Powell, has nominated the Cuban Medical Brigade Henry Reeve for the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize. Wilkerson is also a Distinguished Adjunct Professor of Government and Public Policy at William and Mary College.
Wilkerson’s interest in Cuba’s medical internationalism began when he learned that Cuban medical brigades were working all over Pakistan following the horrific earthquake of 2005, saving lives and spreading goodwill. “Thanks to the Cuban medical intervention, then-President Pervez Musharraf invited the Cubans to open an embassy in Islamabad. They did. Besides …
by Colin Todhunter / December 22nd, 2020
Agriculture in India is at a crossroads. Indeed, given that over 60 per cent of the country’s 1.3-billion-plus population still make a living from agriculture (directly or indirectly), what is at stake is the future of India. Unscrupulous interests are intent on destroying India’s indigenous agri-food sector and recasting it in their own image. Farmers are rising up in protest.
To appreciate what is happening to agriculture and farmers in India, we must first understand how the development paradigm has been subverted. Development used to be about breaking with colonial exploitation and radically redefining power structures. Today, neoliberal dogma masquerades as …
by Max Parry / December 22nd, 2020
In the final week of September, an Azerbaijani offensive renewed hostilities in the perennial armed conflict and territorial dispute in the South Caucasus between Armenia and its neighbor over the Nagorno-Karabakh (“Mountainous Karabakh”) region. By October, the clashes had escalated past the state border between Azerbaijan and the internationally-unrecognized Republic of Artsakh which suffered heavy shelling from banned Israeli-made cluster bombs by the Azeris. Meanwhile, Armenia retaliated with strikes in Azerbaijan outside of the contested enclave, with civilian casualties reported on both sides in the deadliest resumption of large scale fighting since the Russian-brokered ceasefire in 1994. Following Baku’s victory …
by Yves Engler / December 22nd, 2020
Add this to the “you can’t make this stuff up” file: Canada’s foreign minister recently met his Haitian counterpart, who is part of a de facto administration illegally rewriting the constitution, to discuss Venezuela’s supposed democracy deficiency. Apparently, Ottawa wants a Haitian regime extending its term and criminalizing protest to maintain its support for Juan Guaidó as “constitutional” president of Venezuela.
Last week foreign affairs minister François-Philippe Champagne spoke with his Haitian counterpart Claude Joseph. According to Champagne’s tweet about the conversation, they discussed COVID-19, Haiti’s elections and Venezuela. …
by William Manson / December 22nd, 2020
Investors are driven by two emotions: fear and greed.
— CNN-Money
These days, for the 5% of Americans who have substantial cash to invest, it has become increasingly easy to acquire large capital-gains in stock-market equities, even over the short-term. Super-wealthy investors, with periodic bolstering from the Fed, nowadays produce the frequent bubbles of absurdly inflated share-prices, later cashing out just before the predictable slump occurs. Such gains are then taxed at only a 15% rate, far lower than the 28% rate imposed on most wage-dependent earners. Moreover, of course, as such investors die — notwithstanding their frequent hubris about mortality (cf. …
by Shawgi Tell / December 22nd, 2020
Unlike public schools, private businesses like charter schools spend millions of public dollars a year on advertising and marketing.
Putting aside widespread fraud and corruption in the segregated charter school sector, this is an enormous waste and abuse of public funds, especially at a time when public schools are being starved of much-needed public funds and struggling to meet the needs of students. This is money that can and should be invested in teaching and learning, where it is most needed.
Many are also wondering why privately-operated charter schools need to spend so much public money luring students and families through advertising …
