Latest articles
by Paul Haeder / December 14th, 2020
It’s an unprecedented coalition of business networks that have come together to raise our ambition. Not just to help our individual CEOs succeed, we’ll do that for sure. But to actually bring their voices together to help shift culture. So that the pushback on the BRT [Business Roundtable] from different business publications or other people within the business community lessens. So there’s less of a headwind culturally for this type of leadership.
— Jay Coen Gilbert, co-founder of B Lab and B Corporations [Source]
[These are not good people, and if anyone thinks …
by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies / December 14th, 2020
(Photo Credit: CODEPINK)
Joe Biden will take command of the White House at a time when the American public is more concerned about battling coronavirus than fighting overseas wars. But America’s wars rage on regardless, and the militarized counterterrorism policy Biden has supported in the past—based on airstrikes, special operations and the use of proxy forces—is precisely what keeps these conflicts raging.
In Afghanistan, Biden opposed Obama’s 2009 troop surge, and after the surge failed, Obama reverted to the policy that Biden favored to begin with, which became …
by The Jimmy Dore Show / December 14th, 2020
by Vanessa Beeley / December 13th, 2020
People walk past damaged buildings at the Yarmouk refugee camp on the southern outskirts of Damascus © ReutersEvidence of Dutch and British funding for extremists who’ve beheaded children & carried out ethnic-cleansing grows by the day. Yet most of the mainstream media – including the BBC – still try to keep this truth silent.
Recently, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte effectively blocked a Parliamentary motion to allow an external independent investigation of Dutch government funding of terrorist groups in Syria.
Rutte initially tried to …
Maria Sause: growing up in Chile and then San Francisco grafted her life toward socialism
by Paul Haeder / December 12th, 2020
Before heading over to interview this subject, I was thinking of a possible epigraph for the piece. One from a Chilean:
Discovery is not seeing what there is (that is impossible at any level), but rather allowing oneself to converge towards a continually freshly-created reality.
? Chilean economist, Manfred Max-Neef, From the Outside Looking In: Experiences in Barefoot Economics
Then I thought –Why not a female Chilean poet?
Speech is our second possession, after the soul-and perhaps we have no other possession in this world.
— Gabriela Mistral
…
by Graham Peebles / December 11th, 2020
There are said to be around 30 armed conflicts currently taking place in the world, some large, some small, all deadly. The warring factions of today are more likely to be insurgent groups – ‘rebels’ (sometimes fighting proxy wars for a regional or global power) or terrorists, extremists – right and left, battling with a federal army or police force – than nation squaring up to nation.
Research shows that less people are dying in such clashes than at any time in history. This is positive, of course, but the number of deaths isn’t really the issue, although clearly less is …
by David Rovics / December 11th, 2020
Portland, Oregon has been in the headlines again over the last few days, and this trend will continue. The reasons for the headlines will vary depending on who you ask. If you ask the far right they will say something about Antifa terrorists having violent confrontations with the police because they hate law and order. The mainstream media’s headlines will also tend to lead with the so-called violent clashes, but then they may inform us that the reasons for the confrontation have to …
by Yves Engler / December 11th, 2020
Hong Kong protesters trash MTR stations — Strait TimesFor those who support a truly just foreign policy comparing Canadian politicians’ reactions to protests in Hong Kong and the slightly more populous Haiti is instructive. It reveals the extent to which this country’s politicians are forced to align with the US Empire.
Despite hundreds of thousands of Canadians having close ties with both Haiti and Hong Kong, only protests in the latter seem to be of concern to politicians.
Recently NDP MP Niki Ashton …
by Edward Curtin / December 11th, 2020
He who binds to himself a joy
Does the winged life destroy;
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity’s sun rise.
– William Blake, Eternity
Great songwriters, like great poets, are possessed by a passionate melancholic sensibility that gives them joy in the telling. They seem always to be homesick for a home they can’t define or find. At the heart of their songs is a presence of an absence that is unnameable. That is what draws listeners in.
While great songs usually take but a few minutes to travel …
by Yanis Iqbal / December 11th, 2020
Farm workers in various regions of Peru- such as Ica, Viru La Libertad and Piurahad – went on a strike in the first week of December, 2020, blocking the strategic Pan-American motorway to demand wage increases, basic social security benefits and the repeal of the decades-old Agrarian Promotion Law, enacted in 2000, as a mechanism to bolster the bourgeoisie’s power in the agro-export sector. The law benefits agro-export corporations in two ways. Firstly, it cuts the corporate tax rate by 30 to 15%, making the government lose out on more than $1 million in tax revenue. Agrokasa, Beta …
by Binoy Kampmark / December 11th, 2020
“Never Again.” These words are used with boring, stage managed frequency by political and company figures who should know better. They title the interim report from the Joint Standing Committee on Northern Australia investigating the destruction of rock shelters at Juukan Gorge in Western Australia by Rio Tinto. This act of spectacular cultural vandalism destroyed sites 46,000 years old. The company initially thought it was worth the bill: AU$135 million worth of iron ore.
The efforts of Rio Tinto were given that more punch as they took place on the eve of Reconciliation Week on May 24. They were approved …
A Thirty-Year Reckoning
by Bruce Lerro / December 11th, 2020
Orientation
When I first considered myself a socialist revolutionary in 1970, I was hounded by free marketers’ challenge: “name me one country where socialism works”. These market fundamentalists would then hold up the most strident expectations for socialism:
Everyone is exactly equal with no classes.
There is an abundance of goods which are conveniently circulated.
Political rule is not dictatorial.
All competition is banished.
There are no capitalist markets.
People are working together, collectively and creatively.
The state has withered away.
Anything less than this was proof that …
by Shawgi Tell / December 11th, 2020
It is no accident that fewer than three percent of the nation’s roughly 7,300 charter schools are operated by teachers and that 90% of charter schools do not have a teachers union. So much for the narrative that charter schools started nearly 30 years ago to empower teachers. Some states even allow charter schools to hire teachers with no teaching certification. In addition, most charter school teachers are paid less than their public school counterparts and usually have fewer years of teaching experience. Charter school teachers also tend to work longer days and years than public school teachers.
As deregulated “free-market” …
by Vijay Prashad / December 10th, 2020
Madhuri Shukla (USA), Wring, 2020
The night before the National Assembly elections in Venezuela, President Nicolás Maduro spoke to a group of visitors at Miraflores Palace in Caracas. He recounted how he had been a member of the Constituent Assembly, which was formed in 1999 and set up the legal framework for Venezuela’s political system. Maduro told the visitors that he had been a member of the National Assembly during its first and second terms (2000-2005 and 2005-2010 respectively), and he was the president of …
by Michael K. Smith / December 9th, 2020
As U.S. death tolls from Covid 19 spiral towards three or four thousand a day, health officials urge us to stop breathing on each other while saying nothing about the vast majority being dependent employees or small entrepreneurs, not free agents, thus unable to cheerfully comply with draconian public health orders that torpedo our jobs and businesses while remaining silent on how the bills are supposed to get paid.
While one searches in vain for intelligent commentary in the corporate media about this dilemma, ordinary Americans are well aware of the problem, as well as of the contempt with which they’re …
by John Stanton / December 9th, 2020
Military leader, council, assembly of the people are the organs of gentile society developed into military democracy – military, since war and organization for war have now become regular functions of national life. Their neighbors’ wealth excites the greed of peoples who already see in the acquisition of wealth one of the main aims of life. They are barbarians: they think it more easy and in fact more honorable to get riches by pillage than by work. War, formerly waged only in revenge for injuries or to extend territory that had grown too small, is now waged simply for plunder …
by Binoy Kampmark / December 9th, 2020
Before the January 4 ruling of District Judge Vanessa Baraitser in the extradition case of Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks publisher will continue to endure the ordeal of cold prison facilities while being menaced by a COVID-19 outbreak. From November 18, Assange, along with inmates in House Block 1 at Belmarsh prison in south-east London, were placed in lockdown conditions. The measure was imposed after three COVID-19 cases were discovered.
The response was even more draconian than usual. Exercise was halted; showers prohibited. Meals were to be provided directly to the prisoner’s cell. Prison officials described the approach as a safety precaution. …
by Ramzy Baroud / December 9th, 2020
No one seemed as excited about the election of Joe Biden being the next President of the United States as Palestinian Authority President, Mahmoud Abbas. When all hope seemed lost, where Abbas found himself desperate for political validation and funds, Biden arrived like a conquering knight on a white horse and swept the Palestinian leader away to safety.
Abbas was one of the first world leaders to congratulate the Democratic President-elect on his victory. While Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, delayed his congratulatory statement in the hope that Donald Trump would eventually be able to reverse the results, Abbas …
by Bill Quigley / December 9th, 2020
87 million. 87 million workers will lose federally mandated COVID sick leave at the end of December unless Congress acts to extend the law.
50 million. 50 million people are now facing hunger at least once a month, including 1 in 4 children. The rate of adults who sometimes or often do not have enough to eat is double in Black and Latino homes, according to the Associated Press.
30 million. 30 million people are facing eviction as of December 31, 2020 when the current Centers for Disease Control moratorium on evictions ends. There …
by James O'Neill / December 9th, 2020
On the second of December this year the Chinese representative to the United Nations General Assembly addressed the meeting on the topic of Palestine and more particularly on his country’s view of the ongoing disasters that daily inflict the Palestinians in that country. Unsurprisingly, the speech received no coverage in the Australian media. The continued support by the Australian government for Israel in that Assembly, typically with the votes of the United States, Canada, Israel and some pocket handkerchief sized neo-colonies in the Pacific, is one of the great unreported matters of Australian “diplomacy”.
The attitude of the Beijing government is …
by Binoy Kampmark / December 9th, 2020
Leafing – or in this case scrolling through – the commemorative issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists after 75 years of publication is a tingling exercise of existence. The subject matter pushes you to the edge. You threaten to fall off. Death is promised; extinction contemplated. Nuclear holocaust. Your sanity is called into question. The Bulletin’s own Doomsday Clock pointing to potential nuclear Armageddon continues to guarantee a permanent state of terrifying insecurity.
The commemorative issue is a compendium of highlights. Early attitudes to the atomic bomb are covered in the June 1947 issue of the Bulletin, …
by C.J. Hopkins / December 9th, 2020
All right, that’s it. I’ve run out of patience. No more excuses. Where’s the Hitler?
Yes, you heard me. I’m talking to you. You respectable journalists and political pundits. You Intelligence officials and politicians. You fanatical liberals. You pseudo anti-fascists. All you members of the GloboCap “Resistance” who have been hysterically shrieking that “Trump is Hitler!” since he won the nomination back in 2016.
Well, OK, it’s November 2020. The show is almost over. When do we get Hitler?
No, do not tell me “any day now.” You’ve been telling us that …
by Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin / December 9th, 2020
The drum is always there. In life and death. In between is dance. Always the drum is everywhere.
— Peniel Guerrier, Interview with Yvonne Daniel, BOMB, January 1, 2005
I don’t think this world was made for a small minority to dance on the faces of everyone else.
— H.G. Wells, In the Days of the Comet, 1906
Introduction
The dance group Diversity’s ‘I Can’t Breathe’ routine evoked around 24,500 complaints from members of the public when it aired on ITV on 5 September, 2020. The performance was inspired by the killing of George Floyd in the USA. Its choreography references progress from …
by Craig Wood / December 8th, 2020
With the encouragement of friends and after serving eleven terms in the U.S. House of Representatives (1961-1983), Congressman Paul Findley (R-IL) wrote a book, They Dare to Speak Out, about influences and pressures inside the Israeli lobby.
His was the first book to point out ways the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), along with pro-Israel affiliates, use recruiting inducements and propaganda to steer political candidates toward a favorable view of Israel. It also exposed how Zionists in Israel and the U.S. get away with surreptitiously funneling money and perks …
by Margaret Flowers / December 8th, 2020
On December 2, the Embassy Protection Collective (EPC) members, who were arrested in May 2019 when the United States illegally invaded the Venezuelan embassy in Washington, DC, completed their probation, ending the risk of the 30 days in prison that was being held over their heads. I am one of the four who were arrested. Sadly, Kevin Zeese, another member and the co-director of Popular Resistance, died unexpectedly in September.
For the past 18 months, those who were arrested on May 16 had to check in regularly with the …
by Kim Petersen / December 7th, 2020
When French president Emmanuel Macron was pilloried in some quarters for defending freedom of expression as a French value, Australian prime minister Scott Morrison backed his European counterpart: “We share values. We stand for the same things.” This professed French/Australian value for freedom of expression has now come back to bite the backside of the Australian prime minister.
When it comes to publication of inflammatory western depictions of the prophet Mohammed that raise the ire of many Muslims worldwide, many western voices will step forth to defend freedom of expression. However, this fidelity to the freedom …
by Don Fitz / December 7th, 2020
And Esau said to Jacob, Feed me, I pray thee, with that same red pottage; for I am faint;
And Jacob said, Sell me this day thy birthright.
And Esau said, Behold, I am at the point to die: and what profits shall this birthright do me?
And Jacob said, Swear to me this day; and he sware unto him: and he sold his birthright unto Jacob.”
— Genesis 25: 30-33
Despite the bizarre fantasy by Trump supporters that the 2020 presidential election was stolen, there was, in fact, genuine electoral fraud in the …
by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies / December 7th, 2020
CODEPINK protests killer drones at DC home of Jeh Johnson (Credit: CODEPINK)
President-elect Biden’s choice for Secretary of Defense has turned out to be one of the most controversial and difficult of his Cabinet appointments. The early front-runner, Michèle Flournoy, was originally seen as a shoo-in and was touted as a great breakthrough for women, but her hawkish views have provoked serious concerns. Biden now appears to be also considering two Black Americans promoted by the Congressional Black Caucus: Jeh Johnson and retired General Lloyd Austin.
All three are …
by Media Lens / December 7th, 2020
Noticing the way journalists seemed unable to resist commenting on our work, even if it was just to slag us off, Glenn Greenwald tweeted us in 2012:
‘You are really deeper in the heads of the British establishment-serving commentariat than anyone else – congrats.’ ((Greenwald, Twitter, 12 September 2012.))
If that was true then, our relationship with the commentariat now feels more like a case of out of sight, out of mind. We have been blocked en masse on Twitter, even by loveable liberals like Jeremy Bowen, Jon Snow, Mark Steel (yes, …
by Gilbert Mercier / December 7th, 2020
Newspeak, Trumpism and conspiracy theories
News Junkie Post has a policy of zero tolerance for conspiracy theories. With a story as big and global as the COVID-19 pandemic, alternative narratives from conspiracy theorists were bound to happen. Like most news outlets, big or small, News Junkie Post‘s main focus in 2020 was the pandemic. Our Co-Editor-in-Chief, Haitian born microbiologist Dr. Dady Chery, superbly focused on and explained the science; our Indian Editor Imtiaz Akhtar gave us a heart …
