More than two centuries of lies are now getting exposed. Bizarre tales about freedom and democracy are collapsing like houses of cards.
One man’s death triggers an avalanche of rage in those who for years, decades and centuries, have been humiliated, ruined, and exterminated.
It always happens just like this throughout the history of humankind – one single death, one single “last drop”, an occurrence that triggers an entire chain of events, and suddenly nothing is the same, anymore. Nothing can be the same. What seemed to be unimaginable just yesterday, becomes “the new normal” literally overnight.
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For more than two …
Israel’s balancing act that allowed it to reap America’s unconditional and, often, blind support, while slowly benefiting from China’s growing economic influence and political prestige, is already floundering.
Thanks to the heated cold war between the US and Chinese economic superpowers, the Israeli strategy of playing both sides is unlikely to pay dividends in the long run. Soon enough, Tel Aviv might find itself having to make a stark choice between Washington and Beijing.
When US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, visited Israel on May 13, two items topped his agenda: Israel’s imminent illegal annexation of Palestinian land and the growing Israeli-Chinese economic …
In this episode of Know Your Stuff we speak with author and journalist Yves Engler about Canada’s foreign policy and the impact it has globally. Is Canada’s image as a peaceful actor and force for good a real reflection of its policy or is it just that, an image?
‘Hero’ Trump brandishes a Bible to frighten away devilish protesters his DC National Guard may have missed in their brutal assault on them clearing the way for his photo-op.
The wretched and ignorant former governor of Wisconsin, Scott Walker, has praised President Trump for his “courage” in supposedly “braving” protesters in the nation’s capital to walk across Lafayette Park from the White House and stand, Bible in hand, in front of a small …
It is the anxiety-inducing nightmare for the studious: A dream where you find yourself in an exam hall, which might, on ordinary days, be a gym or some other facility. It is repurposed for that most cruel of blood sports: sorting out the learned from the dolts, the prize winners from the dunces. The stern invigilators gaze as you like vermin to liquidate. You are seated on a firm stool, rarely comfortable. You have been checked to see if you have any cheating accoutrements. Permitted items: scrap paper, a pencil, an eraser.
Before you, apart from the often blue-rinsed wonders wishing …
Here is one thing I can write with an unusual degree of certainty and confidence: Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin would not have been charged with the (third-degree) murder of George Floyd had the United States not been teetering on a knife edge of open revolt.
Had demonstrators not turned out in massive numbers on the streets and refused to be corralled back home by the threat of police violence, the US legal system would have simply turned a blind eye to Chauvin’s act of extreme brutality, as it has done before over countless similar acts.
A Review of Robert Reich’s The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It
by William Hawes / June 3rd, 2020
Robert Reich’s new work, The System: Who Rigged it, How We Fix itoffers a wide-ranging critique of our nation’s contemporary political and economic ills. Reich does a brilliant job succinctly reminding us of the scale and scope of corporate corruption, economic inequality, and political spinelessness in America.
Reich’s diagnosis is on point and there is not much to quibble with. He focuses the first half of the book on the finance sector and the arrogant, misguided, debauched behavior of one of its leaders, Jamie Dimon, Chairman and CEO …
Do you know who coined the curse, “conspiracy theory” or accusation, “you are conspiracy theorist!”? It was nobody less than the CIA in the 1950s, to silence those who saw through the lie of the Cold War against the Soviet Union. This was a complete lie by US war strategists to install fear in the population in general and in Europeans in particular and to boost the American Military Industrial complex and presenting a constant threat to the communist Soviet Union.
A complementary phrase developed in the last years is “fake news” — people who are saying well-founded truths are being …
Since I started News Junkie Post, eleven years ago, I have, as a rule, avoided the first person narrative. In my mind, there is a simple reason for an aversion for the “me, myself, and I” type of storytelling so widespread in our culture. The first person is fine for a journal, an autobiography of course, or if you have the immense literary talent of Marcel Proust. Otherwise, it amounts to a navel gazing narcissism common in our era and society as a spectacle where anyone, with no …
The food crisis that could follow in the wake of the various lockdowns that were implemented on the back of the coronavirus may have long-lasting consequences. We are already seeing food shortages in the making. In India, for instance, supply chains have been disrupted, farm input systems for the supply of seeds and fertilisers have almost collapsed in some places and crops are not being harvested. Moreover, cultivation has been adversely affected prior to the monsoon and farm incomes are drying up. Farmers closer to major urban centres are faring a bit better due to shorter supply chains.
Travesty or Tragedy?
I have often wondered what the world would have been like if the USA had lost 20% of its population (like the Soviet Union in WWII or Salvador and Guatemala at US hands) in any one of its endless wars?
I do not wonder that if one now searches for web entries on deaths in Africa, figures caused by starvation, political-economic terror and the lack of basic infrastructure (despite 70 years of “Western aid”) and other diseases, nothing appears before COVID-19.
Does the societal prominence accorded professional athletes confer a societal obligation?
by Kim Petersen / June 2nd, 2020
He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.
I have expressed an opinion on public issues whenever they appeared to me so bad and unfortunate that silence would have made me feel guilty of complicity.
Albert Einstein, Address to the Chicago Decalogue Society (20 February 1954)
The horrendous police murder of George Floyd would obviously satisfy Einstein’s criteria of being “bad and unfortunate.”
In a blizzard of destruction, assaults on peaceful demonstrators, provocateurs, lies, cover-ups, and fascist proclamations, America teeters at a tipping point. The murder, by police, of George Floyd, has sparked a jaw-dropping response across America. Police in many locations have behaved as instigators and perpetrators of savage violence against citizens attempting to exercise their First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and to assemble to demand a redress of grievances.
African-Americans have over 400 years of grievances to fall back upon. The video footage is undeniable, outrageous, and the crime perpetrated with the complicity …
The corporate media and corporate politicians are paralyzed with indecision. Which fake myth do we adhere to? “Black people burning down their own neighborhoods” or “outside agitators”? What if it’s both, and more…?
Media coverage of the past few days and nights of the multiracial uprising that is currently taking place in various forms in cities small and large across the United States has been confused and misleading, as usual. Media coverage of such events is usually either confusing, misleading, or both, because of the influence of the media owners, and because of the implicit biases, insufficient resources, and/or ignorance of …
• Author’s Note: Contains spoilers for Knives Out (2019), Bacurau (2019), and The Wandering Earth (2019)
How can I confound myself with those who today already find a hearing? — Only the day after tomorrow belongs to me. Some are born posthumously.
— Friedrich Nietzsche, The Antichrist, 1895
Introduction
2019 was a very interesting year in cinema, in particular for the South Korean film Parasite which became the first film in a language other than English to win Best Picture at the 92nd Academy Awards. The success of Parasite shows the changing attitude of Americans towards foreign cinema. 2019 also showed three major new …
Well, it looks like the Resistance’s long-anticipated “Second Civil War” has finally begun … more or less exactly on cue. Rioting has broken out across the nation. People are looting and burning stores and attacking each other in the streets. Robocops are beating, tear-gassing, and shooting people with non-lethal projectiles. State National Guards have been deployed, curfews imposed, “emergencies” declared. Secret Servicemen are fighting back angry hordes attempting to storm the White House. Trump is tweeting from an “underground bunker.” Opportunist social media pundits on both sides of the political spectrum are whipping people up …
In the aftermath of yet another police slaying of a Black person in the US of A, Terry Everton presents what a second term with Donald Trump as POTUS might look like.
On May 28, 2020, John Lonski, chief economist at Moody’s Capital, said:
Both the troubling outlook for debt repayment and the unfinished hammering of an already weak labor market underscores the highly speculative nature of the latest rallies by equities and corporate bonds. In addition, corporate earnings have yet to escape from a now deep contraction. ((Moody’s Analytics, Capital markets research, May 28, 2020.))
The inherently chaotic, anarchic, unplanned, and violent nature of the “free market” ensures that the outmoded capitalist economic system always lurches from crisis to crisis and is never free of upheavals and instability.
The war on Vietnam plays an infinitely larger role in history in the common understanding of a typical U.S. citizen than does what the U.S. government did to Indonesia in 1965-1966. But if you read The Jakarta Method, the new book by Vincent Bevins, you will have to wonder what moral basis there can possibly be for that fact.
During the war on Vietnam a tiny fraction of the casualties were members of the U.S. military. During the overthrow of Indonesia, zero percent of the …
Third degree murder for 3/5 for a devalued life
Knee in throat air gone, gasping dying under the color of law!
George Floyd had no chance! The gang of state sponsored assassins had already signed his death warrant!
They think we should be grateful for watered down justice that has not and will never be color blind!
Cry out! Resist! Don’t make excuses or apologies for race-based killings!
Don’t attack those who dare to put their lives on the line to declare: George Floyd’s life mattered. Black Lives Matter—a just demand!
— Jaribu Hill, Mississippi Workers’ Center for Human Rights and Black Alliance for Peace Coordinating …
An entire generation of Yemeni children has suffered the traumas of war, many of them orphaned, maimed, malnourished, or displaced. The United Nations reports a death toll of 100,000 people in that nation’s ongoing war, with an additional 131,000 people dying from hunger, disease, and a lack of medical care. A report from Save the Children, issued in November 2018, estimated at least 85,000 children had died from extreme hunger since the war began in 2015.
Since then, 3.65 million people have been internally displaced and the worst cholera outbreak ever recorded has infected 2.26 million and cost nearly 4,000 lives. …
The long overdue national security law for Hong Kong
by Andre Vltchek / June 1st, 2020
The Hong Kong rioters and other violent so-called opposition figures are up for a big surprise soon: their actions may simply not be tolerated anymore. In fact, they might become illegal. But not because, as the White House and the Western mass media are continuously trumpeting, “China is governed by the Communist Party”, but simply because such activities are illegal in China as well as in most parts of the world, including the United States and Europe.
In some countries, which are seen as close allies of the West, like Indonesia and India, even speaking about independence can lead people to …
by Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers / June 1st, 2020
The nationwide uprising sparked by the murder of George Floyd and other recent racially-motivated events is a response to the bi-partisan failed state in which we live. It comes in the midst of the COVID19 pandemic and the largest economic collapse in the US in more than a century. These three crises have disproportionately impacted people of color and added to longterm racial inequality and injustice.
Black Lives Matter erupted six years ago when a police officer shot and killed Mike Brown in Ferguson, MO. Since that time, police have …
Mobs are unruly, headless things. The message is the action. The platform is often violence. But what is happening across the United States cannot simply be labelled as a looting-leads-to-shooting episode. It ranks as another chapter of enraged despair and untidy opportunism.
It all began with a savage act in South Minneapolis, a killing grotesque for its indifference. The hunter in this gruesome Monday spectacle of cruelty proved to be a policeman from the 3rd Police Precinct, Derek Chauvin; the quarry, a black man by the name of George Floyd. s Floyd was held down by the knee for almost nine minutes, suffocating to …
The City of Portland, Oregon, and Multnomah County, are doing the best job in the country at kicking the can down the road. Now is the time to push for a real solution to the housing crisis, here and across the USA.
Since the pandemic hit, I have joined the ranks of the unemployed, like so many others have. Dozens of gigs planned in nine countries on three continents canceled. I’m doing better than many of my fellow musicians, because I have been moving more towards the modern, crowdfunded patronage model of artistic existence for years now, in the wake …
According to South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency, on May 28th, 2020, “The Ministry of National Defense and the USFK (United States Forces in Korea) engaged in a transportation operation in the middle of the night to bring equipment to the Seongju THAAD [missile defense] system in Gyeong sang buk do [Province]. The Ministry of National Defense said that it supported the land transportation operation by the USFK from the night …
Without trampling through all the historical details, we can designate the entire history of [Americans]—the glorious past so eulogized by our fathers—as the history of shame, for in that history there is more betrayal, apostasy, perfidious intrigue, ignominious defeat, well-deserved failure, base vengeance, merciless retaliation and brutality that no hypocrisy can mask…So let’s forget about the past and old glories, namely let’s leave it be, let’s no longer bring up those shames of the past and the jumbled mendacities considered worthy of praise, it’s more than enough for us just to remain on the surface of that swamp if at …
