Latest articles
by Colin Todhunter / October 2nd, 2020
Cotton is the only genetically modified (GM) crop that has been officially approved in India and has been cultivated (illegally then legally) in the country for more than 20 years. Although GM mustard has been approved for commercial cultivation by India’s apex regulatory body for GM crops (the Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee, GEAC), a public interest litigation led by Aruna Rodrigues is before the Supreme Court challenging that decision and commercialisation of the crop is on hold.
The push to drive GM food crops into India has been happening for many years. Back in February 2010, the government placed an indefinite …
by Binoy Kampmark / October 2nd, 2020
October 1, 2020. Central Criminal Court, London.
The Old Bailey has been the venue for a trial that should never have taken place. But during the course of these extradition proceedings against Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder accused by the US Department of Justice for violating the US Espionage Act (17 charges) and one under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, an impressive battalion of defence witnesses has been called upon. They have assisted Assange’s legal team to build a picture of obscene politicisation, imperial overreach and wanton callousness.
A picture of the detention facilities awaiting the publisher was painted with fine …
by Peter Koenig / October 2nd, 2020
Only the Dead Have Seen the End of War.
— Plato.
This wisdom is as valid today as it was 2,500 years ago. Wars go on and on. They are exactly the antidote of sustainability. Though they may be the only “sustainability” modern mankind knows – endless destruction, killing, shameless exploitation of Mother Earth and its sentient beings, including humans.
Yes, we are hell-bent towards “sustainably”, destroying our planet and all its living beings, with wars and conflicts and shameless exploitation of Mother Earth and the people who have peacefully inhabited her lands for thousands of years.
All for greed, and more greed. Greed …
by David Penner / October 1st, 2020
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.
— Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to Colonel Charles Yancey, January 6th, 1816
As the tech monopolies, the military industrial complex, the medical industrial complex, and other powerful corporate entities accumulate unprecedented wealth rivaling that which is wielded by many countries, the cult of identity politics has likewise become increasingly formidable. Indeed, this metastasizing Tower of Babel is fomenting an erasure of collective memory, as the multicultural sacking of the working class enters a new and increasingly violent phase, …
by Shawgi Tell / October 1st, 2020
From the very beginning, more than 35 years ago, the idea and practice of charter schools was conceived and gradually executed by those with abundant cultural, social, political, and economic capital. Charter schools are not the product of grass-roots forces, as the public has often been led to believe. They never have been. Charter schools did not arise as a result of ordinary everyday people coming together and saying: “hey, we need charter schools, let’s make it happen.” Charter schools did not emerge from the ground-up. Nonprofit and for-profit charter schools, which have a well-documented track record of failure and …
by Ramzy Baroud / October 1st, 2020
It is abundantly clear that Palestinian Authority President, Mahmoud Abbas, has underestimated the seriousness of the challenges facing Palestine and the Palestinians.
The rushed agreement between his party, Fatah and Hamas in Istanbul on September 24, and the Palestinian leader’s speech at the 75th session of the UN General Assembly the following day, indicate that the Palestinian leadership insists on operating within the stifling confines of the Oslo accords and the dead-end road of the ‘peace process’.
Abbas has spent most of his political career mastering an intricate balancing …
by Beau Peters / October 1st, 2020
There’s no doubt that the resources of our digital age are valuable. They provide us with new development opportunities and help us to build meaningful connections with a diverse range of global communities. The past couple of decades have seen our adoption of tech grow, and as such we are seeing the first generations of digital natives. Kids are surrounded by technology from an early age and are more comfortable with its use. They continue to use it in creative ways, not least of which is organizing themselves …
by Jonathan Cook / October 1st, 2020
What I think of as the cynical left are once again berating the progressive critical left, myself included, for failing to write what they want written about Covid-19. I take this as a kind of unintended compliment: that they think we can write about their concerns better than they can themselves.
But even if I wished to write someone else’s argument rather than my own, it would still be difficult to know for sure what the cynical left wants from progressive writers: that we pronounce the pandemic fake, or that we declare the danger from it overblown, or that we …
by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies / October 1st, 2020
Trump holds a chart of weapon sales as he welcomes Mohammed bin Salman in the Oval Office, March 20, 2018. (Photo: Reuters)
Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi was brutally murdered on October 2, 2018 by agents of Saudi Arabia’s despotic government, and the CIA concluded they killed him on direct orders from Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS). Eight Saudi men have been convicted of Khashoggi’s murder by a Saudi court in what the Washington Post characterized as sham trials with no transparency. The higher …
by Binoy Kampmark / October 1st, 2020
September 30. Central Criminal Court, London.
Today will be remembered as a grand expose. It was a direct, pointed accusation at the intentions of the US imperium which long for the scalp of the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. For WikiLeaks, it was a smouldering triumph, showing that the entire mission against Assange, from the start, has been a political one. The Australian publisher faces the incalculably dangerous prospect of 17 charges under the US Espionage Act and one under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. Stripped to its elements, the indictment is merely violence kitted out in the vestment of sham …
by Gary Olson / September 30th, 2020
To know who I am is a species of knowing where I stand.
— Charles Taylor
Part One
In the early 1980s, which now seems a few lifetimes ago, I began offering a college seminar course titled “The Politics of Personal Identity,” quickly dubbed “POPI” by students. It was designed as a capstone course and limited to twelve seniors. Most of the identity groupings around today were addressed in readings, films and guest speakers. During the final weeks of the course, each student was responsible for giving a 45-minute oral presentation: “Who Am I? What Do I Believe? Why Do I Believe It?” …
by Eric Walberg / September 30th, 2020
I was always dismissed as a ‘Sov symp’ in the days of communism, attracted by the Soviet Union’s great foreign policy: anti-imperialist, ant-zionist, pro-nuclear disarmament, pro-liberation movements, etc, etc. I could never understand why lefties didn’t fall in love with the only real non-capitalist modern society. It worked, however badly. It had to be at the heart of the struggle against capitalism, imperialism.
Now I’m a ‘putinist’ according to my Canadian MP Chrystia Freeland, herself granddaughter of the leading WWII Ukrainian Hitler propagandist as Ukrainian Jews were whisked away to concentration camps and death. She was …
by Ramzy Baroud / September 29th, 2020
Overwhelmed by uncontrollable circumstances, the Greek government is bracing for another financial crisis that promises to be as terrible as the last one in 2015.
Prime Minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, announced on September 12 that Athens has made a “robust” arms deal that will “reinforce the armed forces” and create a “national shield”.
However, beyond Mitsotakis’ mask of confidence, there is a nightmare brewing that is likely to haunt Greece for years to come. Five years ago, when Athens defaulted on its debt, largely to European countries and institutions, …
by Binoy Kampmark / September 29th, 2020
September 29. Central Criminal Court, London.
Julian Assange’s defence team spent the day going over, reemphasising and sharpening the focus on what awaited their client should he, with the blessing of Her Majesty’s Government, make his way to the United States. Not only will he confront 17 charges under the US Espionage Act and one under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, he faces the prospect of imprisonment for the rest of his life in conditions that risk prematurely ending his life.
Warden Baird and SAMs
The opening expert witness was Maureen Baird, who knows a thing or two about US carceral fare, …
by Press TV / September 29th, 2020
On Thursday, Sept. 24, Rick Sterling, investigative journalist and member of the Steering Committee of the Syria Solidarity Movement, spoke with Press TV about a threat of terror attacks, including chemical weapons, on Syrian civilians in Idlib.
Syrian authorities have alerted that Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (formerly Jabhat al-Nusra) and the UK-US funded ‘White Helmets’, in coordination with Turkish/NATO intelligence, have brought two tones of chemicals to towns south of #Idlib City, as part of a plan to carry out attacks on civilians and then blame them on the Syrian Government.
Watch the video below:…
by Max Parry / September 29th, 2020
On August 20th, Russian opposition figure and self-styled “anti-corruption” activist Alexei Navalny fell seriously ill while in mid-flight from Tomsk, Siberia to the Russian capital. The Moscow-bound plane was abruptly re-routed to make an emergency landing in the Siberian city of Omsk where the anti-Kremlin politician was subsequently hospitalized for suspected poisoning and placed in a medically-induced coma. Two days later, Navalny was airlifted to Germany in an evacuation arranged by a Berlin-based “human rights” NGO at the request of Pussy Riot spokesman Pyotr Verzilov. His transport on a medically-equipped plane with German specialists was permitted by the Russian authorities …
by Saving Lives Campaign US-Cuba Normalization Conference Coalition / September 29th, 2020
Cuba, battling successfully to contain COVID-19 at home, also provides medical internationalism and solidarity abroad. While Cuba dispatches the Henry Reeve Brigade to countries requesting healthcare assistance, Donald Trump’s administration escalates the anti-Cuba economic, financial and commercial blockade while threatening sovereign states who request needed Cuban medical solidarity — in a global pandemic.
The limited measures implemented by President Barack Obama towards US-Cuba normalization, are being steadily dismantled by the Trump Administration. Between January 2019 and March 2020 many new measures were implemented against Cuba and incrementally announced. In April, after a shipment of coronavirus aid delivery to Cuba …
by Robert Hunziker / September 29th, 2020
Global warming is ravaging forests throughout the world.
New studies show drought and heat waves will cause massive die-offs, killing most trees alive today. ((“We Need to Hear These Poor Trees Scream: Unchecked Global Warming Means Big Trouble for Forests”, Inside Climate News, April 25, 2020.))
According to Bill Anderegg, a forest researcher at the University of Utah:
Global warming has pushed many of the world’s forests to a knife edge… in the West, you can’t drive on a mountain highway without seeing how global warming affects forests. ((Ibid.))
Similar to corals and reefs, trees are slow growing and long-lived but cannot easily move …
by T.P. Wilkinson / September 29th, 2020
Gustave Dore — Dante’s fourth circle of hell “the hoarders and wasters”
In 1973, the world economy was brought almost to a halt by a supposed shortage of oil. The ostensible trigger for this alleged shortage was the so-called Yom Kippur War in which the armed forces of the Anglo-American Empire’s settler-colonial offshore enterprise in Palestine, also known as the State of Israel, repelled the forces of Egypt and Syria, which had moved to reoccupy the territory stolen from them by Israel in the 1967 Six Day …
by Binoy Kampmark / September 29th, 2020
September 28. Central Criminal Court, London.
Throughout the sham process formally known as the Julian Assange extradition trial, prosecutors representing the United States have been adamant: the carceral conditions awaiting him in freedom’s land will be pleasant, accommodating and appropriate. Confronting 17 charges under the US Espionage Act and one under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, Assange and his defence team have been resolutely sceptical.
Today, the prosecution reiterated its position on the US federal prison system as one of rosy comfort and decent facilities. As has happened at several points in the extradition trial, the views of Gordon Kromberg, assistant …
Pena’s metaphysical concept of “value”
by Robin Cox / September 28th, 2020
Read Part 1 here
We now turn to consider, in more depth, what is the basic flaw in Pena’s whole argument which I briefly alluded to earlier.
According to him:
A viable ecological socialism must build a classless society that meets fundamental human needs without destroying the environment. To accomplish this, we must discover theoretical and practical approaches to value that bring human society into harmony with the requirements of a thriving ecology. Human beings can reassess value in this way because value is indeed a human construct.
As noted, this is fundamentally at odds with Pena’s own idiosyncratic notion of value as …
by Kim Petersen / September 28th, 2020
The RT headline speaks volumes: “China’s Forced Rape and Slave Labor Being Excused.” The right-wing RT Eat the Press host Steve Malzberg presents the ludicrous-on-its-face charge that China has some preponderant influence over American corporations. Why ludicrous? Because ever since Donald Trump lost the vote and won the presidency in that bastion of democracy, the United States, the media wonks and White House apparatchiks have stepped up an unrelenting demonization of China. Thus China is blamed for the COVID-19 pandemic, blamed for trade frictions, accused of intellectual property theft …
by Wafaa Aludaini and Ramzy Baroud / September 28th, 2020
The inevitable has finally happened, and the coronavirus pandemic is now ravaging the besieged Gaza Strip. On August 24, a total lockdown was imposed by the Gaza authorities following the discovery of several COVID-19 cases outside designated quarantine areas. Since then, over 1,000 cases have been identified and ten people have died. Experts estimate the number to be significantly higher.
Businesses, mosques, schools, cafes and virtually everything else is now under lockdown. The local government, alongside the UN Palestinian refugee agency, UNRWA, and together with many volunteers, are desperately working to keep Gaza functioning and to limit the spread of the pandemic, …
by Margaret Flowers / September 27th, 2020
The current uprising across the nation is a take-off moment for systemic racism in the United States. A take-off moment occurs when awareness about a crisis reaches a level of public consciousness where an event (in this case, the recent high-profile police murders of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd) sparks protests across the country.
Racist police violence has now become part of the national dialog, as has systemic racism, which is a much bigger topic than policing. A national movement to change these systems is growing. It will succeed if …
by Jonathan Cook / September 27th, 2020
In my recent post on the current hearings at the Old Bailey over Julian Assange’s extradition to the United States, where he would almost certainly be locked away for the rest of his life for the crime of doing journalism, I made two main criticisms of the Guardian.
A decade ago, remember, the newspaper worked closely in collaboration with Assange and Wikileaks to publish the Iraq and Afghan war diaries, which are now the grounds on which the US is basing its …
The Incredulous Case of Mr. N
by Roger D. Harris / September 27th, 2020
The New York Times released sequel six in the best-selling Putin-the-Poisoner series on September 22. The incredibly gifted junior G-men and women in the Times Tower have sleuthed yet another episode of boundless evildoing by the arch-villain Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin.
“The editorial board,” we are informed, “is a group of opinion journalists whose views are informed by expertise, research, debate and certain longstanding values” (emphasis added). In this blue state special, they spin the tale of Russian dissident Alexei Navalny poisoned with “a nerve agent developed by the Soviet Union.” Jacobin calls Navalny, who is a right-wing …
by Ted Glick / September 27th, 2020
The primary goal of politics in the environment and in the institutions of bourgeois democracy is, above all, to hold power. Power, on the other hand, is about getting a share from the monopolies. Obviously, this cannot be the objective of democratic politics. Even if democratic politics are to operate within the institutions of power (e.g., the government), their fundamental task remains the same. This task is not to seize a share of the monopolies but to arrive at and implement decisions that serve the vital interests of society …
by Binoy Kampmark / September 26th, 2020
September 25. Central Criminal Court, London.
On this Friday, the Assange trial moved into the rarefied realm of computer hacking and the less than rarefied world of when final arguments will be made. The WikiLeaks publisher is confronting the prospect of extradition to the United States for 17 charges under the US Espionage Act and one under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
The defence first pushed for more time to prepare closing arguments. As Edward Fitzgerald QC explained, “It seems unlikely for you to make a judgment before Nov. 3 and you would have to bear in mind that the …
by Jonathan Cook / September 26th, 2020
If you find yourself wondering what the hell is going on right now – the “Why is the world turning to shit?” thought – you may find Netflix’s new documentary The Social Dilemma a good starting point for clarifying your thinking. I say “starting point” because, as we shall see, the film suffers from two major limitations: one in its analysis and the other in its conclusion. Nonetheless, the film is good at exploring the contours of the major social crises we currently face – epitomised both by our addiction to the mobile phone and by its ability to rewire …
by Robin Cox / September 25th, 2020
David Pena has responded to a critique I wrote of an article of his published in this e-journal. My critique was published in the Socialist Standard, monthly journal of the Socialist Party of Great Britain (SPGB), and Pena’s response has appeared here. What follows is my response to Pena’s response.
Pena kicks off in robustly combative style:
The present article is my response to Cox’s critique. I will show that his ignorance of Marxism and scientific method, and his polemical approach to the subject, which is full of fallacies and misrepresentations of my views, renders his arguments inept and …
