There is a statue of Gen. Douglas MacArthur in Milwaukee, in Veteran’s Park next to the Milwaukee County War Memorial Center. It is a replica of the one at West Point.
The general stands there arms akimbo, in that memorable pose he assumed next to the diminutive defeated emperor of Japan in the famous photo soon after Japan’s surrender in Aug. 1945. (In it, Hirohito stood in rigid submission, hands at his side, in a formal suit; MacArthur towered above him, in informal dress, hands on his hips.) It was on the front pages of newspapers in Japan Sept 28, a …
Heavily armed federal officers without name tags have carried out nightly attacks on antiracist demonstrations in Portland, Oregon, and snatched people off the streets into unmarked vans, sparking widespread outrage. “What we’ve seen is a continuous escalation in violence against our protesters,” says Lilith Sinclair, an Afro-Indigenous local organizer in Portland. They note the federal violence follows many years of “severe police brutality” from local police. “It’s left the people of Portland not only worried about their safety, but, even more so, justified in the fight that we’re engaged in.”
There are only a few introductory texts on socialism that manage to be accessible, witty, and broad enough to survey its history as well as contemporary thought on the subject. Nathan J. Robinson’s new book, Why You Should Be a Socialist is able to do just that by weaving together a compelling narrative and excellent arguments that cover the rich practical and theoretical implications of socialism in a down to earth, entertaining way. There are serious holes in the book’s content with regards to theory, …
At Cerrejon (Colombia), the largest open-pit coal mine in Latin America owned equally by BHP (Australia), Anglo American PLC (United Kingdom) and Glencore (Switzerland), the situation of the indigenous people is progressively worsening. Cerrejon Limited has informed the workers that “all the existing shifts will be unified into a single 7-day work, for three days off.” With the enforcement of the new shifts, “workers would go from working 15 to 21 days and the mine would go from 4 to 3 shifts, leaving at least 25% of the current workforce unemployed.” The new shift pattern is likely to …
As the coronavirus, once again, surges out of control in the United States, it is safe to say that even those few lessons learned have been cast aside by those who place profits before people. Greed and ignorance, not public health policy, is deciding the fate of tens of thousands in our nation who are likely to die and many times that who will suffer from COVID-19 as we stumble from one surge to another. As other nations succeed, the US continues to fail under incompetent political leadership and a privatized health care system unprepared to handle a domestic epidemic, …
My post earlier this month on the so-called “cancel culture” letter proved to be the most polarising I have written – matched only by another recent post on the pulling down of a statue in the UK to a slave trader. The ferocity of the reactions to both, I believe, is related. It derives from a similar refusal, even on the left, to factor in power – and how it is best confronted – when assessing issues of speech and oppression.But first, I want to briefly address the concerns of those who …
by Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers / July 20th, 2020
While the climate justice movement has been winning important victories, stopping and slowing pipelines and other fossil fuel infrastructure, and putting the future of fossil fuels in doubt, the political system, long connected to the fossil fuel industry, is still fighting the urgently needed transition to clean sustainable energy. Both President Trump and former Vice President Biden put forward energy plans that do not challenge fossil fuels. The only candidate with a serious climate plan is Green Party candidate Howie Hawkins.
The movement needs to build momentum from these successes …
Melbourne — The Victorian Premier turned up for his weekend delivery of coronavirus infections, gruffly delivering the news. It has become grim if compelling viewing: the announcement about the next spike in coronavirus infections, the next gruesome statistical spread on transmission. On Sunday, Daniel Andrews had a pose that has become legend, a cross between plasticine figure and instructive despair. Stern, humourless, with little to be humour filled about, his role of late is telling people what to do. With stern command he had a message: All those in the state of Victoria, had to wear face masks. “Most of …
Personality is persona, a mask…The mask is magic…Larva means mask; or ghost…it also means mad, a case of demoniacal possession.
– Norman O. Brown, Love’s Body, 1966
Walk the streets in the United States and many countries these days and you will see streaming crowds of people possessed by demons, masked and anonymous, whose eyes look like vacuums, staring into space or out of empty sockets like the dead, afraid of their own ghosts. Fear and obedience oozes from them. Death walks the streets with people on leashes in lockstep.
That they have been the victims of a long-planned propaganda campaign to use …
I walk up, introduce myself and thank them for joining us this evening. Before I can ask them if they’d like to begin their dinner with a cocktail, the woman reaches into her purse and slaps a Groupon down on the table, essentially broadcasting their intention to eat on the cheap.
Fuck me. It’s the last day of the month, I’m $250 short of making rent, and was hoping for a section full of 20 percenters tonight to help me get over the hump. Hopefully these couponers aren’t an omen of …
Any serious study of the relevant scholarly literature reveals at least four possible paths to imminent human extinction, that is, human extinction within five years: nuclear war, the climate catastrophe, the deployment of 5G, and biodiversity collapse.
Moreover, as I have documented previously, under cover of the non-existent ‘virus’ labeled COVID-19, the global elite is conducting a coup against humanity. That is, by bombarding us with fear-mongering propaganda to focus our attention on the ‘virus’, the capacity of virtually all people, including activists, to devote attention to the coup, and to resist it, has been effectively eliminated.
After the corona crisis, may the world be facing a monumental paradigm shift of power towards a more balanced civilization, more social justice and equity? The global almost total lockdown, chosen by most governments around the globe in response to mastering the Covid-19 crisis, devastated the world economy, as we know it, and hundreds of millions of lives. Was it necessary? Will there be a time when those responsible for this universal, scientifically unnecessary lockdown be held accountable?
The last six months, governments around the world have almost unilaterally committed an auto-destruction of their socioeconomic fabric and collectively of …
When it comes to stereotypes of the masses of revolutionary people, the masses have built barricades that look like forts which they hide behind, armed with guns. But if we trace the behavior of masses back far enough to pre-revolutionary situations, masses become groups. In order to understand how masses of people become a revolutionary force, we first need to understand how groups, small groups of ten to twenty people, become revolutionary. By revolutionary I don’t mean that groups consciously advocate for revolutions. By revolutionary I …
Americans who grew up with nightmares of nuclear weapons explosions should get ready for some terrifying flashbacks, for the Trump administration appears to be preparing to resume U.S. nuclear weapons tests.
The U.S. government stopped its atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons in 1962, shortly before signing the Partial Test Ban Treaty of 1963. And it halted its underground nuclear tests in 1992, signing the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) in 1996. Overall, it conducted 1,030 nuclear weapons test explosions, slightly more than half the global total.
With MAS in the lead, the coup leader appeals for foreign intervention
by Aidan Jonah / July 19th, 2020
On July 15, Luis Fernando Camacho, leader of the violent coup against Bolivian president Evo Morales and current candidate for the Bolivian presidency, issued a desperate appeal to the Organization of American States.
Bolivia's coup leader, Fernando Camacho, has asked the OAS to intervene to stop democratic elections taking place on September 6th.
Camacho says that "we mustn't allow the elections to become an act of resurrection" for the MAS. pic.twitter.com/wYa9FvV4ST
According to a poll done by Centro Estratégico Latinoamericano de Geopolítica, which was released on July 7, Camacho is polling at nine per cent. Meanwhile MAS (Movement for Socialism) candidate Luis Arce, Bolivia’s finance minister from 2006 until the coup, is polling at 42 per cent. To surpass Arce’s lead in the polls, Carlos Mesa, the unelected coup president Jeanine Anez, and Camacho would …
Though most consumers don’t seem to realize it, visiting a restaurant places them on a public stage where their true natures are readily on display. People often shed their facades when dining out, exhibiting behaviors they normally wouldn’t dream of doing at either their own places of employment or other social settings.
And that’s usually where the fun begins.
The way we publicly nourish ourselves is often a microcosm of both social nuance and elevated douchebaggery. And should you possess either a learned or inherent penchant for pretense, here then is …
It could be that the ongoing gratuitous murders by police across America are not mistakes but part of a program of terror and fear to control, to maintain unjust apportionment of power, resources, money, in the hands of a few. As the need rises, more people of color are cut in to positions of power to control others. But as the presidency of Barrack Obama suggests, buying off minorities with models of success is not a solution. simply a broadening of the power base of unjust controls.
In a recent TV discussion, a respected pro-Palestine journalist declared that if any positive change or transformation ever occurs in the tragic Palestinian saga, it would not happen now, but that it would take a whole new generation to bring about such a paradigm shift.
As innocuous as the declaration may have seemed, it troubled me greatly.
I have heard this line over and over again, often reiterated by well-intentioned intellectuals, whose experiences in researching and writing on the so-called ‘Palestinian-Israeli conflict’ may have driven some of them to pessimism, if not despair.
The ‘hopelessness discourse’ is, perhaps, understandable if one is to …
Peter Beinart, a bellwether for American Jews, has provoked a storm by renouncing the two-state solution and urging equality for all
by Jonathan Cook / July 18th, 2020
Peter Beinart, an influential liberal commentator on Israel and Zionism, poked a very large stick into a hornets’ nest this month by admitting he had finally abandoned his long-cherished commitment to a two-state solution.
Variously described as the “pope of liberal Zionism” and a “bellwether for the American Jewish community”, Beinart broke ranks in two essays. Writing in the New York Times and in Jewish Currents magazine, he embraced the idea of equality for all – Israelis and Palestinians.
Once again the media focuses on salacious details rather than the big picture.
While TV and newspapers have focused on the whiff of corruption surrounding the government’s $900 million contract with the WE Charity, some broader points have been ignored. Whatever the Trudeau and Morneau families have pocketed from WE, the deleterious impact that NGO has had on social services and young Canadians’ understanding of global inequities is much more significant.
In a series of poignant tweets Simon Black highlighted how WE has directed young people towards ineffective political actions and a narrow understanding of doing good in the world. He …
As the coronavirus spreads in Yemen, where the population already devastated by the world’s worst humanitarian crisis faces growing hunger and aid shortages, the Saudi-led, U.S.-backed coalition continues to drop bombs in the country. We speak to Yemeni scholar Shireen Al-Adeimi, who calls the ongoing crisis “Trump’s war.” “We’re seeing death rates that are just astronomical,” Al-Adeimi says. “The war continues, the bombing continues, the blockade is still enforced.”
Three years ago, I visited Old Supreme Court Building in Hong Kong, also known as The Court of Final Appeal, together with my friend, an Afghan-British lawyer, who was on a personal mission of ‘re-discovering Asia.’
Coming from a prominent, highly educated family in Afghanistan, my friend was extremely well aware that both the United States and the United Kingdom thoroughly destroyed her country during the recent occupation. In fact, under the NATO boots, Afghanistan became the poorest country in Asia, with the lowest life expectancy.
On July 15, 2020, the right-wing candidate for the upcoming October 20 presidential elections in Bolivia, Luis Fernando Camacho, issued an appeal to the Organization of Americans States (OAS). Camacho, who led the violent coup (backed by Trump, Trudeau and the OAS) against Evo Morales last fall complained about the electoral system.
Camacho concluded that “we must not allow the elections to become an act of resurrection” of Evo’s party MAS (Movement for Socialism). It is an open appeal to the US-controlled OAS to interfere once again in the elections …
The sky is falling is one of the more disturbing thoughts in society today, as to whether climate change is on a fast track collision course with doomsday amidst a collapsing society.
In that regard, according to the details of a scathing review by ScientistsWarning.org (“SW”) of Jem Bendell’s wildly popular “Deep Adaptation” the answer is no, not yet. Society is not ready to keel over, as postulated in Bendell’s paper.
Whew! Climate change handwringers, sleepless nights, can take a deep breath, exhale and relax based upon the critique of Bendell’s very popular paper, which crystal balls the “end to society” within …
It was a decision both rash and indulgent. In November 2018, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, after being nudged incessantly by then Australian War Memorial director Brendan Nelson, committed to a redevelopment project intended to double the exhibition space in Campbell. The amount for the project would be just shy of a half-billion dollars and would be, Nelson claimed with eye-brow raising plausibility, an exercise of therapy for veterans and their families “coming to terms with what they’ve done for us and the impact [war] has had on them.”
Voices in opposition grew, many not exactly fitting the description of …
We may know where one is, we may regularly pass by one, but most of us will never go to prison. Dark Islands of Confinement, existing in a space separated from the rest of society, where men, women and youths are locked up, often poorly treated, seldom rehabilitated.
Black men and people from Asian and minority ethnic groups including tribal peoples, make up a disproportionate percentage of the prison population in many countries. In America, where incarceration based on race is routine, Prison Policy found that “Black Americans make up 40% of the incarcerated population despite representing only 13% of …
Trump cannot turn back time and re-do February and early March. He cannot undo the damage caused by his inaction on the virus. The fact is, tens of thousands of people in this country became infected while the president pooh-poohed the problem. He showed ignorance and indifference, acting belatedly–as we (some of us) now know, too late to successfully contain the pandemic.
COVID-19 is now out of control, not peaking, not leveling off but rising. Projections of 200,000 dead by October now seem wildly optimistic as we pass 140,000 July 15. The insistence of the president …
by Dissident Voice Communications / July 16th, 2020
Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Hua Chunying
Global Times: US National Security Adviser O’Brien said the following in an article published by the Washington Post on July 13: “Under Marxism-Leninism, the self-proclaimed ideology of the Chinese Communist Party, individuals do not possess inherent value. People are merely a tool to achieve the ends of the collective nation-state”; “The details of the CCP’s anti-Uighur campaign are heartbreaking, but they reflect the Marxist-Leninist disdain for individual human beings”; “As long as these human rights violations continue, the Trump administration will respond.” …
Planetary heat is turning skeptics into climate change worrywarts with record temperatures galore!
But wait! The worst is yet to come. It’s guaranteed, as future heat is already locked and loaded into the vast climate system. It’s the inertia bugaboo. Today, we’re living with yesteryear’s carbon emissions from the turn of the century. Meantime, the next decade-and-a-half of planetary heat is already baked into the cake no matter what is done to mitigate emissions.
A new study reveals details about climate change inertia, a sobering study that speaks to the absolute necessity of herculean efforts to stop emissions, full stop, now, not …
