In an interview with Peter Robinson, Thomas Sowell (Hoover Institution) criticizes the political work of Noam Chomsky on grounds that make clear he does not distinguish Chomsky’s libertarian socialism from the technocratic and highly militarized state capitalism favored by liberal elites. Incredibly, Sowell lumps him in with the liberal intelligentsia Chomsky has long attacked, ignoring the glaring fact that liberal elites loathe Chomsky precisely because of the brilliant and unanswerable nature of that attack.
Person arrested protesting for Medicare for All. New York City. 2009 (HealthcareNow.org.)
It was ten years ago last week that the Arab Spring began. I recall it well as the day before Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire in Tunisia and ignited a revolutionary movement, I stood in the snow for hours protesting outside the White House with hundreds of veterans against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Inside the White House, President Obama was telling the press how well the wars were going. Outside, soldiers who …
When the song of the angels is stilled, when the star in the sky is gone, when the kings and princes are home, when the shepherds are back with their flocks, the work of Christmas begins: to find the lost, to heal the broken, to feed the hungry, to release the prisoner, to rebuild the nations, to bring peace among the people, to make music in the heart.
? Howard Thurman
The Christmas story of a baby born in a manger is a familiar one.
The Roman Empire, a police state in its own right, had ordered that a census be conducted. Joseph …
Two groups with powerful political voices have provided a lifeline of support to the Trump presidency. The Pro-life and Pro-gun lobbies have been with him from the beginning, and likely will be there for whoever attempts to follow in his footsteps. While not solely confined to those avowing religious dogma, Pro-life sentiment is largely extolled from a Christian/Evangelical base. And while having little religious pretext to their cause, pro-gun sentiment is often found within the Christian (particularly Evangelical) community (nearly 60% of Evangelicals oppose stricter regulation). To many it seems a conflict; how can one be both Pro-life and …
The mind changer in Downing Street has struck again. With UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson at the helm, changes of direction are compulsive, natural and sudden. The U-Turn has become the prosaic expectation. “Too often it looks like this government licks its finger and sticks it in the air to see which way the wind is blowing,” Tory MP Charles Walker, deputy chair of the 1922 Committee, lamented in August. “This is not a sustainable way to approach the business of governing and government.”
As unsustainable as it might be, the UK was treated to another round of vigorous U-turning …
by Medea Benjamin and Marcy Winograd / December 21st, 2020
Photo credit: Witness Against Torture
It was painful enough to live through the U.S invasion of Iraq that caused untold devastation and human misery for no justifiable reason.
Now we are again reminded of the grim Bush legacy with President-elect Biden’s nomination of Avril Haines for Director of National Intelligence. Haines, who has an inside-the-beltway reputation for being nice and soft spoken, was a little too nice to CIA agents who hacked the computers of Senate Intelligence Committee investigators looking into the CIA use of torture–waterboarding, sleep deprivation, hypothermia, rectal feeding, whippings, sexual humiliation–at prisons …
The Good Samaritan by Vincent Van Gogh, 1890Lately, I’ve been musing about religion and politics. And more specifically, the thought that keeps recurring to me is the following: Is the idea of born agains and other Christians becoming political radicals, a far-fetched one? Or, should the question be, how could they not become politically radical Christians?
One sees frequent references to the large number of white, born again Christians who voted for Trump and the unmistakable inference is that there is a deep, principled gap between these …
Capitalism and patriotism do not share the same stable. When those in the business of accumulating profits suggest a love for flag and country, be wary. Wars might take place and trade agreements struck by governments, but the capitalist will go for the market that matters, whatever the flag.
A recent exponent of this proposition is Sir Jim Ratcliffe, a billionaire who was a strong advocate for Britain leaving the European Union. In approaching negotiations with the EU after the referendum result, he had an instruction to Britain’s diplomats: “We must listen, we must be unwaveringly polite and retain our charm. But …
This is a saying our country is familiar with. It’s a mentality that built American society the way it is today. Unfortunately, it’s not the only problematic sentiment our society is familiar with either.
Our society is full of platitudes, bromides all too often used to gloss over and even to excuse the profound economic injustices that continue to plague our modern world. The stark reality is that many people commend America as the land of promise and plenty, …
The notion that the COVID-19 pandemic was ‘the great equalizer’ should be dead and buried by now. If anything, the lethal disease is another terrible reminder of the deep divisions and inequalities in our societies. That said, the treatment of the disease should not be a repeat of the same shameful scenario.
For an entire year, wealthy celebrities and government officials have been reminding us that “we are in this together”, that “we are on the same boat”, with the likes of US singer, Madonna, speaking from her mansion while …
The world-system is slowly changing. For the first time in capitalism’s history, the global economy’s centre of gravity is shifting away from the west – a process which is a result of Uneven and Combined Development (UCD). On the one hand, dominant states utilize imperialism to preserve existing uneven configurations of capitalist development which favour them. On the other, contender states accelerate development to contest imperial projects of dominant states. Such hot-house development is called combined development because it compresses multiple stages into shorter and more intense bursts.
Combined Development
Today, China is leading a process of combined development as part …
Now that Joe Biden will be America’s next president, it might be worthwhile to take a closer look at some of the choices for his cabinet, White House staff, and national security positions. There are some real crazies here, as we shall see. As we dig deeper and deeper, what emerges is a network of people whose views can quite literally be defined as fascist. This is not to deny that in many ways Trump and his administration were worse than many of these officials profiled below. What is noteworthy is that Biden’s team of imperialists is potentially more competent …
The number of figures extolling the merits of Britain’s Westminster system and how it supposedly embodies a glorious model of democracy are too numerous to mention. This is despite exploits by the government of Boris Johnson, marked by the appointment of unelected advisers with enviable, unaccountable powers and a record of assault on Parliament’s scrutineering functions. “As the government blunders from one disaster to the next,” wrote a resigned George Monbiot in June, “there seem to be no effective ways of holding it to account.”
Press freedoms supposedly axiomatic in holding government to account have been regarded with increasing suspicion …
In the context of China’s webinar on 14 December 2020, on the topic of “China’s New Development Paradigm and High-Quality Belt and Road Cooperation”, organized by the China Center for Contemporary World Studies, International Department of CPC Central Committee and the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, Renmin University of China, my presentation was on China’s Economy of Peace.
*****
China, about a decade ago, has deliberately embarked on an Economy of Peace. A strategy that China pursues, unimpressed by constant aggressions from the west, which are mostly led by the United States. Is it perhaps this Chinese steadfast, non-aggressive way …
In an opinion poll published in the Guardian online an astonishing 2/3 of voters either approved or strongly approved of the Prime Minister’s conduct of the nation’s affairs. While this may in part be a reflection of the abysmal performance of the official Labor “opposition” there must be a deeper reason for the Prime Minister’s support. It cannot be that a substantial majority of Australians think that he is doing a good job. He manifestly is not. This can be illustrated by reference to the greatest problem currently facing the Australian government.
I am not referring to the Covid-19 coronavirus. That …
While technology has been encroaching on more spheres of life over the past 25 years, the ruling elite and their representatives are now zealously promoting a new and dramatic digital-technological upheaval—the so-called Fourth Industrial Revolution—that will supposedly transform everything under the sun, open amazing vistas, increase government and business transparency and accountability, and put humanity on a bright new footing. Klaus Schwab of the World Economic Forum is the main spokesperson of this capital-centered agenda.
The super-rich tell us that the “velocity, scope, and systems impact” of this “historically unprecedented” and “disruptive” digital-technological revolution full of “endless innovations” sets it apart …
December 8 came and went as if it were an ordinary day. For Palestinian political groups, it was another anniversary to be commemorated, however hastily. It was on this day, thirty-three years ago, that the First Palestinian Intifada (uprising) broke out, and there was nothing ordinary about this historic event.
Today, the uprising is merely viewed from a historic point of view, another opportunity to reflect and, perhaps, learn from a seemingly distant past. Whatever political context to the Intifada, it has evaporated over time.
2020 was GloboCap Year Zero. The year when the global capitalist ruling classes did away with the illusion of democracy and reminded everyone who is actually in charge, and exactly what happens when anyone challenges them.
On December 9 a regional planning body, the Delaware River Basin Commission, gave a green light to a mammoth fracked-gas export terminal in Gibbstown, New Jersey. It would export fracked-gas from the Marcellus Shale gas fields to Angola, among other countries. The Governors of Pennsylvania, Delaware, and New Jersey voted yay. Governor Andrew Cuomo of NY abstained. Environmentalists and concerned citizens had hoped Governor Phil Murphy of NJ would oppose the project. Here is my letter to the Governor.
Dear Governor Murphy,
I suggest a Zen workshop.
You know – the kind where you sit cross-legged. You stare at a blank wall. Once-in-a-while …
I admittedly approached this work with some skepticism about Karl Popper’s well-known “open” vs. “closed” dichotomy (which indeed is only distinguished, and quite vaguely, in Chapter 10). Written in the early 1940s, the book is clearly a period-piece, with some useful things to say about totalitarian “utopianism” (and the ethnic-racialistic “cleansing” which sometimes accompanied it).
For this essay, I’m restricting my criticisms to vol. 1, “The Spell of Plato.” In my opinion, Popper’s choice to present Plato’s Republic and The Laws as providing the blueprint for later 20th century, collectivist-nationalist …
Regardless of the traditional bluster about the Founding Fathers and the world historic nature of the US Constitution, the electoral system it set up to choose a new president is far from democratic. We now find Trump attempting to use the Constitution as written to be “re-elected.” Those who laud “our great democracy,” claiming Trump is maneuvering in an illegal manner to stay in office, even alleging a “fascist coup,” base their assertions to no small extent on illusions about the US electoral system.
The first illusion we must discard is that the people’s vote determines the winner of the US …
The United States has reached a severe crisis point and the next few months will determine how we address it. The COVID-19 pandemic is raging across the country and some areas are struggling to provide enough hospital beds and staff to care for people. The recession is deepening as unemployment benefits and the moratorium on evictions run out. Yet, members of Congress cannot even agree to pass a weak version of the CARES Act they passed last March when the situation was less serious.
What is the result when a media outlet does a new story every day about the history of racism in the US, without ever mentioning the history of the multiracial radical labor movement whose white and BIPOC organizers were lynched for fighting for equality and freedom?
I listen to NPR a lot. I’m not going to go into all the reasons I do this, but there are many, and they are contradictory. Generally it’s a combination of a desire to know what’s going on from a news source that has actual reporters on the ground, and wanting …
“The story of methane really is a story of a very serious definitive threat to our future existence on this planet.” (Peter Wadhams)
Legendary Arctic explorers Sir James Clark Ross, who located the northern magnetic pole in 1831 and Sir William Edward Parry, who set a record in 1827 for the Farthest North exploration serve as footnotes in the context of the Arctic’s most prolific scientist, Peter Wadhams, professor emeritus, University of Cambridge, with more than 50 expeditions to the world’s poles under his belt.
Dr. Peter Wadhams (A Farewell to Ice: A Report from the Arctic, Oxford University Press) delivered the …
Governments that issue press releases about the abuse of human rights tend to avoid close gazes at the mirror. Doing so would be telling. In the case of Australia, its record on dealing with refugees is both abysmal and cruel. It tends to be easier to point the finger at national security laws in Hong Kong and concentration camps in Xinjiang. Wickedness is always easily found afar.
Australia’s own concentration camp system hums along, inflicting suffering upon asylum seekers and refugees who fled suffering by keeping them in a state of calculated limbo. Its brutality has been so normalised, it barely …
In 1940, eighty years ago, a New Yorker deemed by many in the Establishment a “dictator” who had to be removed — and went so far as to conspire except that General Smedley Butler denounced the plot — was elected to a third term as the President of the corporate United States. He was an established member of the Democratic Party from an established family among the US plutocracy who had been forced by the catastrophic handling of the 1929 Great Reset, aka as the Great Depression, by his nouveau riche predecessor Herbert Hoover, to restore popular support for the …
Since signing the Abraham Accords, the UAE and Bahrain have been actively colluding with Israel’s settler movement and military authorities
by Jonathan Cook / December 14th, 2020
The professed rationale for the recent Abraham Accords, so-called “peace deals” signed with Israel by the UAE and Bahrain, was to stymie Israeli efforts to annex swaths of the West Bank.
The aim was supposedly to neutralise another “peace” plan – one issued early this year by US President Donald Trump’s administration – that approved Israel’s annexation of large areas of the West Bank dominated by illegal Jewish settlements.
The two Gulf states trumpeted the fact that, in signing the accords in September, they had effectively scotched that move, thereby salvaging hopes of a future Palestinian state. Few observers …
— Opening line of the last paragraph of Chapter 5 in Pnin, a novel by Vladimir Nabokov, 1953
Well, the weather report is in, as we transition from Trump’s Titanic to Joe Biden’s Adventure, and it looks like we’re all in for a “dark winter” of the long knives; so, hopefully, there are no Towering Infernos in the forecast as well! In the journo-world, certainly, the knives are already out…
Today, swarms of Corporate Media “self-limiting mosquitoes” are rejoicing — in their small buzzing ways — over the self-banishment of that notorious gadfly Glenn Greenwald from the Kingdom …
Five of the pharmaceutical companies developing COVID-19 vaccines through the USA’s Operation Warp Speed have paid out a total of nearly $6 billion to settle lawsuits charging them with fraud related to “off-label” marketing of atypical antipsychotics and antidepressants that were mandated through the Texas Medication Algorithm Project (TMAP), which evolved into President George W. Bush’s federal “New Freedom Commission on Mental Health.” AstraZeneca, GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson & Johnson, Janssen Pharmaceutical, and Pfizer, which are currently funded with over $7 billion from Operation Warp Speed, financed the nationwide rollout of fraudulent TMAP algorithms in order to bilk …
