by Romana Rubeo and Ramzy Baroud / October 16th, 2020
A Zionist-led war on a Palestinian cultural festival in Rome has exposed the fragility of the Italian political system when it comes to the conversation on Palestine and Israel. The sad truth is that, although Italy is not often associated with a ‘powerful’ pro-Israel lobby as is the case in Washington, the pro-Israel influence in Italy is just as dangerous.
The latest episode began on September 24, when the Palestinian community in Rome announced plans to hold ‘Falastin – Festival della Palestina’, a cultural event that aims at illustrating …
In July 2017, two journalists working for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Dan Oakes and Sam Clark, wrote of a stash of incriminating documents, running into hundreds of pages. They were “secret defence force documents leaked to the ABC”. These documents gave “an unprecedented insight into the clandestine operations in Australia’s elite special forces in Afghanistan, including incidents of troops killing unarmed men and children.”
In exposing these depravities of invasion, adventurism and war, the devotees of secrecy got busy. Bureaucrats chatted; investigations commenced. On June 5, 2019, officers of the Australian Federal Police raided the Sydney offices of the …
Conservatives have every reason to love Ronald Reagan. He cut taxes hugely on high incomes. Once a union leader, he became a ruthless union-buster. He warred endlessly against welfare.
But the darling of the Right made one sharp Left. His landmark Tax Reform Act of 1986 called for equal taxes on income from wealth and income from work. For the first time in over 60 years, there would be no preferential rate for capital gains. Income earned sitting by the side of the pool would be taxed the same …
Perhaps Pena does not see this because he does not appear to grasp the point that in the Marxian concept of socialism (aka communism – unlike Lenin, Marx never differentiated between these two terms), the question of “exchange value” becomes completely redundant (and, with that, the preoccupation with ensuring “equivalent exchange”). This is because in socialism, as Marx saw it, commodity production would completely cease to exist.
The “actually existing socialisms” that Pena refers to have nothing in common with Marxian socialism. In all of these, commodity production and wage labour prevails. From …
There is no "most prestigious environmental prize" if the poor young people aren’t leading the charge
by Paul Haeder / October 14th, 2020
I also know that one must do what one can do. No matter how little it is, it is nonetheless a human testimony and human testimonies, as long as they are not based on greed or personal ambition for power, can have unexpected positive effects.…I believe in local action and in small dimensions. It is only in such environments that human creativity and meaningful identities can truly surface and flourish.
Morgen in Riesengebirge by Caspar David Friedrich
Sometimes it can be useful to be brief. Last year, the wave of worry, promoted by the Swedish Alberich, without at least the artistic virtue of her deceased compatriot, Birgit Nilsson, stimulated predictions of imminent Götterdämmerung. This virtually Wagnerian kitsch was further dramatised by the pretensious performers of troupes apocalyptical like Extinction Rebellion. As 2019 ended we were all to believe that indeed Valhalla lay around the corner- at least for the sustainable. Instead we should have anticipated the Götzendämmerung. Yet 2020 proved …
More than a dozen young visiting scholars from China had their visas abruptly terminated in a letter from administration of the University of North Texas (UNT), Denton, on August 26, in a letter dated …August 26! The letter informed the students that they could return to campus from their lodgings to pick up belongings, but all other access was closed to them. The students and fellows were given no explanation. They were left with no legal basis to be in the U.S. and began scrambling for the very few and very expensive flights back to China.
Back in July 1962, when, according to Donald Trump, America was “great,” I was in the Deep South, working to register Black voters. It was a near-hopeless project, given the mass disenfranchisement of the region’s Black population that was enforced by Southern law and an occasional dose of white terrorism.
It all started in the fall of 1961, the beginning of my senior year at Columbia College. My roommate (Mike Weinberg) and I, both white, had joined the campus chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and participated in a few of its New York City projects. The real …
The nomination to the United States Supreme Court of Amy Coney Barrett has raised again the issue of access to abortion, legalised in the United States in the decision in Roe v Wade 410 US 113 (1973) 47 years ago. If Ms Barrett is confirmed as a member of the Supreme Court it will make the conservative majority of the court 6:3. It is difficult to see why her appointment would make a difference to the United States abortion laws. The conservative capacity to make such changes already existed.
What her prospective appointment has done, however, is to raise the issue …
George Carlin warned all good Americans to think critically at their own peril. Although life has now become somewhat difficult…even lonely at times, I have forsaken his fascetious advice. When I was a child, my grandfather was my god. Pops. I can still see his steady eyes touching some secret place deep inside me as he softly said that there is only one unforgivable sin. Nobody has the right to take another human life. He was emphatic when he added that the worst offenders of this basic precept are …
Coastal GasLink has called in the RCMP to try and remove Wet’suwet’en community members and Indigenous youth as they hold a ceremony at a proposed drill site for Coastal Gaslink’s pipeline. Coastal Gaslink has been evicted from our territories by the Wet’suwet’en Hereditary Chiefs – who have full jurisdiction over Wet’suwet’en lands. As CGL continues …
One of the hallmarks of totalitarianism is mass conformity to a psychotic official narrative. Not a regular official narrative, like the “Cold War” or the “War on Terror” narratives. A totally delusional official narrative that has little or no connection to reality and that is contradicted by a preponderance of facts.
Nazism and Stalinism are the classic examples, but the phenomenon is better observed in cults and other sub-cultural societal groups. Numerous examples will spring to mind: the Manson family, Jim Jones’ People’s Temple, the Church of Scientology, Heavens Gate, …
America and the world are suffering a crisis of capitalism like no other in recent history. With an economy teetering on a mountain of incredible debt without which it could not continue, and a virus threatening the globe but with the highest death toll in America and even a president leading in gross ignorance about it testing positive, stresses and strains are created that, while showing positive awakening among some to systemic rather than personal problems, also creates negative descents into fantasy among others that make immaterial religious mythology seem like critical examinations of material reality.
(Photo Credit: Jenna Pope)
This weekend, celebration of Indigenous People’s Day will replace the federal holiday, Columbus Day, in at least eight states and over 130 cities in 34 states. Along with the toppling of Columbus statues and the removal of a racial slur as a name for a major football team, this signals a shifting awareness in the United States of our colonial roots and ongoing Indigenous genocide and a desire for change.
If, like me, you are not indigenous, there are ways each of us …
The tide has been turning against UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Oafishly, he has managed to convert that tide into a deluge of dissatisfaction assisted by the gravitational pull of singular incompetence. Much of this is due to such errors of communication as committed last month, when he got into a tangle over new coronavirus restrictions in England’s northeast.
In responding to a question on these new regulations, the prime minister erred in stating that the rule-of-six limit on gatherings did not apply to people meeting outdoors. “It is a six in a home or in hospitality but not six outside.” …
Graduate Student Workers Reckoning with the Policing University at the University of Michigan and Beyond
by Kylie Broderick and Mekarem Eljamal / October 12th, 2020
As the dust settles after the end of the University of Michigan’s (UM) historic eight-day strike, autopsies investigating the labor action are already being churned out. Why the strike ended, who is responsible for breaking the strike, and what future labor action at UM will look like are now questions that will doubtlessly rise to the forefront of debates among laborers at the university for many months—if not years—to come.
But we cannot allow those truly responsible for curtailing labor action to sink into the background: the university administration. Now is the time we should turn our focus to its functions, …
A vigil during the wee hours of Monday, October 5, 2020
by Daniel Borgström / October 12th, 2020
For several weeks people prevented AT&T from installing 5G devices in the first two locations in Berkeley. A key part of the project consisted of placing antennas on utility poles at the corner of Gilman and Neilson streets and near the Monterey Market on Hopkins Street. These are tiny business districts with coffee shops, restaurants, a natural grocery and other small shops in a residential area.
Residents and workers feared negative health effects from the radiation, that 5G just might even turn the district into a slow-acting microwave oven. So whenever AT&T’s installation crews showed up with trucks and equipment, small …
“No one cares about the prisoners.” Over the past few years, I have heard this phrase — or some variation of it — uttered many times by freed Palestinian prisoners and their families. Whenever I conduct an interview regarding this crucial and highly sensitive topic, I am told, repeatedly, that ‘no one cares.’
But is this really the case? Are Palestinian prisoners so abandoned to the extent that their freedom, life and death are of no consequence?
The subject, and the claim, resurfaces every time a Palestinian prisoner launches a hunger …
Afghan children play in the bombed out rubble of the Darul Aman Palace in Kabul, amidst a photo exhibition marking four decades of Afghans killed in war and oppression (Photo: Maya Evans)
The NATO and US backed war on Afghanistan was launched 7th October 2001, just a month after 9/11, in what most thought would be a lightning war and a stepping stone onto the real focus, the Middle East. Nineteen years later and the US is still trying to extricate itself out of the longest war …
The death of Supreme Court Justice and liberal icon Ruth Bader Ginsburg left a gaping hole on America’s highest court. The question over her replacement has quickly become a hotly contested issue which will define the coming weeks and perhaps even months. Mere days after Ginsburg’s death, Trump nominated Amy Coney Barrett, a federal judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit with a conservative track record. Republican leaders have already signaled that they are ready to confirm Trump’s nominee as quickly as possible, while many Democrats have argued that whoever wins in November should nominate the …
Compassion has no place in the natural order of the world, which operates on the basis of necessity. The laws of nesessity are as unexceptional as the laws of gravitation. The human faculty of compassion opposes this order and is therefore best thought of as being in some way supernatural. To forget oneself, however briefly, to identify with a stranger to the point of fully recognizing her or him, is to defy necessity, and in this defiance, even if small and quiet and even if measuring only 60cm. x 50cm., there is a power that cannot be measured by the …
Why It’s in Your Self-Interest to Break the Rules of the Game
by Cynthia Chung / October 11th, 2020
Game theory, the mathematical theory of games of strategy, was developed by John von Neumann in several successive stages in 1928 and 1940-41, according to his book Theory of Games and Economic Behaviour which he co-authored with Oskar Morgenstern.
The crux of the theory is that an individuals’ behaviour will always be motivated towards achieving an optimal outcome, which is determined by self-interest. An assumption made is that the players in such a game are rational, which translates to, “will strive to maximize their payoffs in the game”. In other …
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
Speaking at what the White House described as a “conference on American history,” Trump said that he plans to sign an executive order soon to create a “national commission to support patriotic education” called the 1776 Commission and that he is directing funding to create a patriotic curriculum for schools. “Our youth will be taught to love America with all of their heart and all of their souls,” Trump said….
In March, the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeal upheld an original jury finding that Led Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven did not infringe copyright in Spirit’s 1968 song Taurus. Michael Skidmore, who had filed the suit in 2014 as trustee of the estate of the late Spirit guitarist Randy Wolfe, was hoping that the US Supreme Court would take time to hear, and hopefully reverse, the decision. The highest court in the US refused to bite.
Wolfe, known professionally as Randy California, wrote Taurus somewhere between 1966 and 1967. On composing the song, Wolfe’s publisher armoured Taurus with copyright protection as …
Americans are dealing with an upcoming general election, a pandemic that has killed over 200,000 of us, and corporate news media whose business model has degenerated to selling different versions of “The Trump Show” to their advertisers. So who has time to pay attention to a new war half way round the world? But with so much of the world afflicted by 20 years of U.S.-led wars and the resulting political, humanitarian and refugee crises, we can’t afford not to pay attention to the dangerous new outbreak of war between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh.
Armenia and Azerbaijan fought a bloody war over Nagorno-Karabakh from …
Political theater is nothing new. And Trump is, arguably, a master at it.
The speed with which Trump was diagnosed, “hospitalized”, and, as of now, seemingly set for early release must raise a few seasoned eyebrows.
What would Trump have to gain by pretending to be sick with Covid?
Feeling really good! Don’t be afraid of Covid. Don’t let it dominate your life. We have developed, under the Trump Administration, some really great drugs & knowledge. I feel better than I did 20 years ago!
If this tweet doesn’t strike you as a campaign message/strategy, think again!
Our headwaters are under attack. Our way of life is at risk. Coastal Gaslink is weeks away from test drilling beneath Wedzin Kwa — the river that feeds all of Wet’suwet’en territory and gives life to our nation.
We continue to reoccupy our territories — to prepare our foods, to hold our ceremonies, to teach our children what it means to be Wet’suwet’en.
We have to protect ourselves. We have to protect what we have at all costs.
We need your support now more than ever.
A message from Sleydo, Molly Wickham, spokesperson for the Gidimt’en Checkpoint.
With the initial brouhaha surrounding the leak of Trump’s tax returns fading, including finger pointing at the IRS and talk of criminal charges, has anyone stopped to consider whether someone other than the IRS leaked the documents? There seems to be two criteria to consider in identifying the leaker. First, who had “access” to Trump’s tax returns? This limits the pool of candidates to a relatively small number. Second, who has the greatest “incentive” to leak those tax returns at this time?
Depression and anxiety are commonplace in contemporary societies, part of everyday life; celebrities and public figures, British Royalty even, talk openly about their struggles with conditions that were hidden and dismissed just a few years ago. Most of us either suffer from one of these debilitating diseases or know someone who does; for huge numbers of people around the world, life has become a kind of agony, something to cope with, a competitive battlefield in which only the few triumph.
Individual stress adds to, and is intensified by, the collective anxiety and tension under which we all live, which in turn …
