A new radio play by Tayo Aluko based on events surrounding Paul Robeson’s concert in Peekskill, New York in 1949, and the racist, anti-communist riots that came before and after it, drops on Paul Robeson’s birthday — April 9th — and it seems more timely than ever.
One of the artistic projects I’ve been involved with as a minor participant since early autumn is a radio play. It’s a fictional depiction of real …
Do you remember the promises made by the Democratic Party’s presidential and Congressional candidates on universal health insurance? You can forget their pledges and somber convictions now that your votes put the Democrats in charge of the House and the Senate. The Democrats’ leaders are abandoning their promises and retreating into a cowardly corporatist future.
Here is the present scene. Leading Democrats, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, have decided to spend tens of billions of taxpayer dollars to subsidize the giant health insurance companies like Aetna and United Healthcare to “cover recently laid-off workers and those …
by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies / March 12th, 2021
The Biden presidency is still in its early days, but it’s not too early to point to areas in the foreign policy realm where we, as progressives, have been disappointed — or even infuriated.
There are one or two positive developments, such as the renewal of Obama’s New START Treaty with Russia and Secretary of State Blinken’s initiative for a UN-led peace process in Afghanistan, where the United States is finally turning to peace as a last resort, after 20 years lost in the graveyard of empires.
Party pushing for expulsion of Palestinians forms election pact with Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud
by Jonathan Cook / March 12th, 2021
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has brokered an electoral alliance that is almost certain to bring Israel’s version of the Ku Klux Klan into the Israeli parliament when elections are held later this month.
Netanyahu’s primary aim is to make sure he wins a decisive majority by shoring up the far-right bloc so that he can pass an immunity law to neutralize his current corruption trial.
Enter Otzma Yehudit, or the Jewish Power party.
Otzma Yehudit is strongly influenced by the late Rabbi Meir Kahane, whose virulently anti-Palestinian Kach party was barred from Israeli elections more than 30 years …
CNBC recently produced a 17-min video about direct air capture (DAC) and corporations, specifically big oil, funding R&D operations. The video discusses the basic technology, as well as some pitfalls. Direct air capture is in early stages of developing technology to remove atmospheric CO2. ((“Money is Pouring Into Carbon Capture Tec, But Challenges Remain”, CNBC, March 3, 2021.))
By implication, the oil giants are clearly aware of what’s at stake (a) the planet is stressed almost beyond limits (b) there’s some money to be made trying to fix it (c) it’s a great PR gig. But, the problem is much bigger …
B’nai B’rith is at it again. The racist group is smearing a pro-Palestinian voice for pointing out a simple truth about Canadian life.
Last week the anti-Palestinian organization released a statement headlined “Carleton University Should Condemn Antisemitism, Take Action on Professor’s Remarks”. The alleged offence was that sociology professor Nahla Abdo stated that pro-Israel individuals gave significant sums to Canadian universities and sponsored many buildings. She pointed out that this funding gave them influence and that Jewish studies operates as “basically Israel studies”. One can listen to her full, …
by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead / March 12th, 2021
If freedom of speech is taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.
— George Washington, Address to the Officers of the Army, Saturday, March 15, 1783
It’s a given that the government is corrupt, unaccountable, and has exceeded its authority.
So what can we do about it?
The first remedy involves speech (protest, assembly, speech, prayer, and publicity), and lots of it, in order to speak truth to power.
The First Amendment, which is the cornerstone of the Bill of Rights, affirms the right of “we the people” to pray freely about our grievances regarding the government. …
Fukushima Daiichi’s multiple nuclear reactor meltdowns started ten years ago. They are not over. They are not even close to over. Nuclear disasters don’t ever end. The radioactive danger slowly decays over decades, during which it needs constant safety management until radiation measurements are below “acceptable levels.” That’s still not safe.
Fukushima continues to be a low-level nuclear disaster, as it has been for ten years. The initial explosive accident has been mitigated, but the danger has never been fully contained. Recent news from Fukushima is hardly reassuring.
In whose interest did the creation of the Cold War serve and continues to serve? Cynthia Chung addresses this question in her three-part series.
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In 1998, the Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records Interagency Working Group (IWG), at the behest of Congress, launched what became the largest congressionally mandated, single-subject declassification effort in history. As a result, more than 8.5 million pages of records have been opened to the public under the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act (P.L. 105-246) and the Japanese Imperial Government Disclosure Act (P.L. 106-567). These records include operational files …
Many Palestinian intellectuals and political analysts find themselves in the unenviable position of having to declare a stance on whether they support or reject upcoming Palestinian elections which are scheduled for May 22 and July 30. But there are no easy answers.
The long-awaited decree by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas last January to hold legislative and presidential elections in the coming months was widely welcomed, not as a triumph for democracy but as the first tangible positive outcome of dialogue between rival Palestinian factions, mainly Abbas’ Fatah party and …
White Washing: According to one Merriam-Webster definition, to whitewash is to “gloss over or cover up,” which, in a sense, is what the racial form of whitewashing does. It creates a White world where sins against people of color, including Blacks, Native Americans, Asians, Latinos, and other minority groups cease to matter because, in revisionist history and reality, those minority groups barely exist.
Here’s one example believe it or not which ties into my neck of the woods on the Central Oregon Coast, and even Portland, OR: ‘Daniel Boone was a man. Yes a big man. With an eye like an …
Recent years have seen inspiring uprisings and mass mobilizations against racial, ethnic and gender-based oppression. One of the responses to this surge in activity has been a rise in a right-wing populism that has sought to defend established hierarchies of power through appeals to violence, often couched in the language of “law and order.” But we have also seen forward-looking elements of the ruling class respond to these movements with calls for more diverse representation within the existing status quo. While this seems like a reasonable and positive development for many people, it is important to understand the motives of …
Elon Musk and his company SpaceX have become a regular feature in news cycles. SpaceX succeeded in landing a team of astronauts on the International Space Station in November 2020, in partnership with NASA. The next month, the company lost a rocket in an explosion while attempting to land after a test flight. Another rocket exploded during landing in early February. In mid-February, SpaceX launched sixty satellites as part of the Starlink program to provide broadband internet access to the globe, …
Aristotle famously said that man was a social animal: ???? ?????????. He also strongly implied that what distinguished man from all other animals was his rationality.
Today this description seems to make more sense than ever.
Human beings, contrary to the contract theorists such as Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau, were never lone beings in search of society. They always were in society already.
Humans evolved within groups not as singletons like modern day Orangutans.
And this prehistorical social history is what shaped who we were to become.
While sociality came first, the rise of reason was not far behind.
To navigate increasingly complex social dynamics, …
(to Send Iran a Message, by Attacking Iraqis in Syria)
by Gary Leupp / March 9th, 2021
Recall the broad context.
In March 2003, in the worst crime of the 21st century, a war-based-on-lies led by President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, the U.S. invaded and destroyed the modern country of Iraq, generating mass flight and civil war. Half a million people were killed and the suffering continues.
Too soon do we forget the magnitude of the atrocity, including the cheerful murderous bombing sprees revealed by Wikileaks, the Abu Ghraib torture, the ignorant mishandling of Sunni-Shiite issues, the civil war and terror engendered by the criminal occupation. During the Trump years our attention’s been focused on …
A growing and coordinated attack on the rights of transgender people is taking place through state legislation and sadly it is receiving support from people across the political spectrum. The attack is successful because its proponents are using myths about transgender people to cloak their efforts under a veneer of feminism and concerns about children’s health. In reality, this attack is anti-feminist and threatens the well-being and lives of not only the transgender community, particularly the youth, which is one of the most vulnerable communities in our society, but …
This is the sort of stuff barnacles clinging on the antiquated raft known as British Royalty were waiting for. One of the royal couples makes a dash for it, shirking and then shedding their subsidised duties. They get in touch with that great squeeze and fluff of publicity, Oprah Winfrey. Being interviewed by Winfrey is not going to get you kudos for aristocratic virtue but will appeal to a certain demographic. (New fashion design in the offing? Perfume line?)
The Prince Harry-Meghan Markle revelations were boring, uninspiring, tedious, self-promoting celluloid slush. For a moment, royalty gorgers and gloaters could forget the …
Since day one, advocates of privately-operated charter schools have tried to convince everyone that segregated charter schools “empower parents” and that parents are not only “stakeholders” but the most important “stakeholders” in education. Everything in education is supposedly all about parents first and foremost. Parents are the end-all and be-all. Education apparently serves no one else or 10 other broad functions. Education exists mainly to serve parents. Everyone and everything else is secondary at best. Oddly enough, while the “parent empowerment” theme is central to charter school disinformation it is actually charter schools that choose parents and students, not the …
Amidst widespread mistrust of authority and governing institutions (politicians, particularly governments, are the least trusted group in society), dogma, from whatever source, appears to be losing its suffocating hold on the minds of people everywhere. Disillusionment with ideologically based solutions is being strengthened by the consistent failure of existing methods to solve the problems of the times, which are many and considerable.
If global and national challenges are to be met fully and whole-heartedly, creative reimagining, free of doctrine, is required; independent thinking outside the ideological box. Decrepit systems must be reappraised, the good retained the rest rejected; values realigned, belief …
“That’s certainly our goal and our intention.” This was the non-committal answer given by White House Press Secretary, Jen Psaki, when, on February 12, she was asked by a reporter whether the new Joe Biden Administration intends to shut down the notorious Guantánamo Bay Prison by the end of the president’s first term in office.
Psaki’s answer may have seemed reassuring, that the untold suffering experienced by hundreds of men in this American gulag – many of whom were surely innocent – would be finally coming to an end. …
More than a generation ago, a bipartisan Congress added a clever new twist to tax breaks for the rich. It created a long, drawn-out tax break for rich retirees—and these days it’s getting even longer.
Not even the pandemic could interfere. On the contrary, it gave lawmakers an extra opportunity to tip the scale in favor of the upscale.
They tipped it only months before the virus. They slipped a special, rich-retiree giveaway into the first pandemic relief bill. Now they’re coming back with a new bipartisan bill that doubles down on, you guessed it, making …
This present menace comes from the government and its army of bureaucratized, corporatized, militarized mercenaries who are waging war on the last stronghold left to us as a free people: the sanctity of our homes.
The weapons of this particular war on our personal security and our freedoms include an abundance of laws that criminalize almost everything …
The European Union has been keeping up appearances in encouraging the equitable distribution of vaccines to combat SARS-CoV-2 and its disease, COVID-19. Numerous statements speak to the need to back the COVAX scheme, to ensure equity and that no one state misses out. And EU member states could be assured of a smooth vaccine rollout, led by the EU apparatus, humming with needle jabbing efficiency. Negotiating as a bloc, lower prices could be assured, along with an appropriate supply of vaccines across the 27 member states.
These initial hopes have been shredded. While the vaccination programs in Israel, the United Kingdom …
In January, a news organization called The Conversation announced they were spearheading a much needed dialogue about race. But, ironically, they began this project by stealing the words and ideas of a Black organizer.
The Canadian bureau of The Conversation declared a new podcast called “Don’t Call Me Resilient” that would actively grapple with the difficulty of discussing racism. In their post, The Conversation noted that they had been inspired by the words of Tracie Washington, a civil rights lawyer based in New Orleans, and had named the podcast after a phrase she used in an interview with Al Jazeera. (Full disclosure: Washington is a friend and former coworker).
While our sacred democracy was allegedly being served by a stupid attempt to unsuccessfully impeach an ex-president for the second time and essentially tell more than 70 million Americans that they might as well vote for Pavlov, FDR, Hitler or Oprah Winfrey since any alleged exercise of supposed freedom on their part would be meaningless in the rape of language we call a democracy. You know, the one with a billionaire class getting richer by the second and Americans across the board sinking lower by the minute. But enough good news, let’s move on to the even better signs of …
Neoliberalism, at its heart, is class war waged from above under the guise of rational, technocratic management of an economy that must — as neoliberals claim —be shielded from the corrosive influence of democratic politics.
— Chris Maisano, “Liberalism, Austerity, and the Global Crisis of Legitimacy,” The Activist, 7/19/2011.
[W]hat’s becoming increasingly clear to many scholars and intellectuals is that there is a new morphology of fascism that is taking place in the United States, one that is integrated into, and supportive of, the political logic of neoliberalism.
— Eric J. Wiener, “Neo-Fascism, Or The Political Logic of Neoliberalism” 3 Quarks Daily, …
Children are the world’s most valuable resource, and its best hope for the future. — John F. Kennedy (“Re: United States Committee for UNICEF, July 25, 1963.”) •
What President Kennedy said over half a century ago, is more valid today than ever. This world needs a generation that can lead us out of the mess of dystopian values that was created predominantly by a western civilization of greed. The covid crisis, man-made, served the destruction of the world economy, as well as the ensuing World Economic Forum (WEF) designed “Great Reset”. If not stopped by our youth and coming generation, Covid …
A recent UN Assessment, as of February 26th, 2021, regarding progress or lack thereof by the 195 nations to the Paris 2015 climate agreement is starting to look like a big bust.
As described in the report, nations are not meeting their voluntary commitments to decrease carbon emissions, especially based upon the Paris ‘15 goals to decelerate CO2 emissions of cars, trains, planes, and collectively, the human-generated colossus. ((“We Are Nowhere Near Keeping Warming below 1.5°C Despite Climate Plans”, NewScientist, February 26, 2021.))
According to data provided by the 74 nations that have reported to the much-heralded Paris climate accord, collectively, their …
Part Two of “Is there a remedy for the PCR disease?”
by T.P. Wilkinson / March 5th, 2021
Gates: The Fauci Project
In the Spiritual Exercises, Ignatius Loyola, the man credited with the establishment of the Society of Jesus, to which the reigning Roman Catholic pontiff belongs, stipulated Rules to have the true sentiments, which we ought to have in the Church Militant. The thirteenth rule is:
To be right in everything, we ought always to hold that the white which I see, is black, if the Hierarchical Church so decides it, believing that between Christ our Lord, the Bridegroom, and the Church, his bride, there is the same Spirit which governs and directs …
