So much debate over whether or not we should be wearing masks in order to fight COVlD but multiple scientific studies over the past decade have already settled this question. Not only do medical masks not prevent the spread of the virus, but a 1995 study proves that wearing a cloth mask can put you at greater risk for infection. Ben Swann breaks down the science.
While the US administration of President Donald Trump remains adamant in its support for Israel, the traditional democratic leadership continues to employ underhanded language, the kind of ‘strategic ambiguity’ that offers full support to Israel and nothing but lip service to Palestine and peace.
Trump’s policies on Israel and Palestine have been damaging, culminating in the outrageously unfair ‘Deal of the Century’, and his administration remains largely committed to the trend of growing affinity between the Republican establishment and the Israeli right-wing camp of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The views of the Democratic leadership, represented in the presumptive Democratic challenger …
Common Dreams, a liberal-left website, reposted an article by David Smilde of the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA): “Joe Biden Should Not Try to Out-Hawk Trump on Venezuela.” It starts off well with the subtitle: “The first task for a Biden administration would be to take military intervention off the table.” The US has no business invading Venezuela. But Smilde’s approach is that the military option is ill-advised because there are more efficient ways of removing the Maduro government.
Smilde criticizes the US unilateral sanctions as “doing more harm than good,” something of an understatement, and later says “sanctions …
The many similarities in the unfolding narrative of Covid-19 to that of September 11, 2001 — the mass hysteria, the banker bailouts, the insider trading, the censorship of dissent, the apparent foreknowledge (Lockstep, Event 201, PNAC, Catastrophic Terrorism, A Clean Break etc), the rollout of mass surveillance measures and more — make the two seem like parallel conspiracies. Covid-19 could also be compared to 9-11 in that it seems to be a ‘controlled demolition’ of the world economy by the global financial powers, one that was either planned, or at very least allowed to happen.
What are the priorities of a president when the nation struggles with a seemingly unremitting pandemic? A look at Donald trump’s pronouncements while COVID-19 surges in several states.
by Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers / July 14th, 2020
COVID Dollars from Fiscal Times
While corrupt elected officials and elites feed at the public trough, the economic collapse is hitting people in the United States hard. According to the newly released Bureau of Labor Statistics figures 47.2 percent of working-age people are without work and businesses are finding it impossible to pay their rent or keep their employees. The basic ability to feed children is in crisis, as nearly 14 million children in the United States went hungry in June, an increase of 10 million since 2018, and …
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever.
— O’Brien to Winston Smith in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four
Seventy years ago, on August 29, 1949, the Soviets successfully tested their first nuclear bomb, and became the only other state power on the planet, after the United States, with nuclear WMD. Thus commenced an ever-expanding arms race between the two global powers in what became known as the Cold War. Democracy versus Totalitarianism, duking it out, like rock’em-sock’em robots (sold in …
by Medea Benjamin and Zoltán Grossman / July 14th, 2020
Credit: CreativeCommons
Since George Floyd was murdered, we have seen an increasing convergence of the “war at home” against Black and brown people with the “wars abroad” that the U.S. has waged against people in other countries. Army and National Guard troops have been deployed in U.S. cities, as militarized police treat our cities as occupied war zones. In response to this “endless war” at home, the growing and thunderous cries for defunding the police have been echoed by calls for defunding the Pentagon’s wars. Instead of seeing these as two separate but related …
For decades, one of the main strategies used by neoliberals to destroy public enterprises and eliminate the public interest has been: Starve It, Demonize It, Discredit It, Privatize it.
Since the late 1970s, neoliberals and their state have made greater use of the “Takeover” reporting method to justify wrecking and privatizing social programs and public enterprises, especially public education.
In practice, this neoliberal strategy means continually cutting funding for public enterprises and making it very difficult, even impossible, to do things properly and effectively, even though an enormous amount of money actually exists. Then the targeted public entity is vilified and blamed …
Have you noticed recently that things are collapsing?
Sure, the right-wing, nationalist rulers of many countries never stop telling us that they have made their nations “great” again.
But we would have to be dislocated from reality not to notice that something is wrong?very wrong. After all, the world is currently engulfed in a coronavirus pandemic that has already infected over 12.5 million people, taken over 550,000 lives, and created massive economic disruption. And the pandemic is accelerating, while, according to scientists, new and more terrible diseases are in the offing.
A Manifesto for the United States of America, Part V
by Paul Larudee / July 13th, 2020
In Part IV, we noted that the U.S. is ruled by a few hundred oligarchs and corporations, and that as long as power resides among this tiny elite, the chances of making headway against racism, police brutality, poverty and exploitation are exceedingly slim. The societal changes proposed in Parts I – IV can do much to remove power from that elite and redistribute it among the rest of the citizenry, upon whom the U.S. Constitution nominally bestows power, but who have never exercised more than cosmetic authority – least of all Blacks, Indigenous peoples, …
Dunbar’s number, the famous estimate of how many relationships you can meaningfully maintain in life, is just 150.
— Edward Snowden, Permanent Record (2019)
I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together
— The Beatles, “I Am The Walrus,” (1967)
Dot-Dash. Here-Gone. Off-On. In-Out/Out-In. One-Zero. 2B or 2B. Being and Nothingness. At the same time. Anal-Digi-Quanthump. The Dot Com lowers the boom. Fuck me, if I can follow; I need help. Is this AA; am I in the right place? It makes me think of what Eddie Snowden said last year in his illegal …
You’ve got to start thinking about this as an ecosystem. All these plantations might as well be growing corn. But if you want clean water, salmon, wildlife, and high-quality lumber, you’ve got to have a forest.
— Mike Fay, a Wildlife Conservation Society biologist and National Geographic Society explorer-in-residence
Seeing a pair of bald eagles, a possum and a black bear just minutes into my trip to an interview is, to say the least, icing on the “Eco Cake.”
Especially now, with so many people in various stages of isolation and paranoia — restricting time outdoors has a double-whammy effect on our …
When the caustic Evelyn Waugh visited the majestic sixth century creation of Emperor Justinian, one subsequently enlarged, enriched and encrusted by various rulers, he felt underwhelmed. “‘Agia’ will always win the day for one,” he wrote of Istanbul’s holiest of holies, Hagia Sophia, in 1930. “A more recondite snobbism is to say ‘Aya Sofia’, but except in a very sophisticated circle, who will probably not need guidance in the matter at all, this is liable to suspicion as a mere mispronunciation.”
Malaysia’s record on letting journalists be is a blotted one. This month, authorities have been kept busy intimidating the independent news outlet Malaysiakini, with a seven-member federal court panel agreeing to hear contempt proceedings against its editor-in-chief Steven Gan. Charged under section 114A of the Evidence Act, Gan and his outlet are said to have permitted the publication of over five reader comments critical of the judiciary.
The Committee to Protect Journalists senior Southeast Asia representative Shawn Crispin urges Malaysian prosecutors to “drop the bogus contempt of court charges pending against Steven Gan and stop using legal threats to intimidate …
In Chile, the Covid-19 pandemic is raging with an unprecedented speed. There are more than 300,000 confirmed cases with one of the highest per capita infection rates of 13,000 cases for every 1 million people. The economy is severely experiencing the repercussions of Coronavirus-caused restrictions and the historically high national unemployment rate of 11.2% is an indicator of such damage. Chileans have took to the street to protest against the malfunctioning right-wing government of the billionaire president Sebastian Pinera and the police force has responded aggressively by shooting dead a young agitator.
One of the most effective weapons in the corporate employer’s fuck you arsenal is the employment at will clause. It’s the trump card that stacks the deck against you regardless of the winning hand you think you’re holding, relegating you instead to the chump pile of players who stayed in the game one bet too long.
Your legal rights? Good fucking luck. Under the doctrine of employment at will, your boss can fire your ass for any reason he sees fit or for essentially no reason at all. From the moment your work day begins your rights not only become secondary …
So-called overseas reps of China’s Uyghur ethnic group filed evidence at the International Criminal Court (ICC) to spark an investigation on alleged human rights violations. But are the reports founded on strong evidence? (story starts at 2:00)
The longing, desire and biological drive of many human beings to fulfill the imperative to be fruitful, to procreate and to become parents, is real and painful when unachievable. This has led to an increase of assisted reproductive technology (ART) and surrogacy, despite ethical and legal concerns.
Preface
The infertility and surrogacy multi-billion-dollar industries, those who benefit from it, and others, too often attempt to out-shout any criticism of surrogacy by conflating surrogacy with LGBTQ+ rights and labeling all opposition to surrogacy as homophobic.
The pro-Israel community is engaged in a remarkable effort to bankrupt a small progressive Toronto restaurant. In their attack on Foodbenders, the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs and B’nai B’rith have once again allied with the violent, far-right, Jewish Defence League (JDL).
Over the past week the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs has tweeted no less than 25 times about a restaurant known for supporting indigenous rights, Black Lives Matter and other social justice causes. CIJA and associates have targeted Foodbenders’ delivery services, institutional customers, website host and social media accounts. They’ve also gotten the prime minister, premier of …
During his holiday remarks at Mount Rushmore, President Trump said he plans to establish, via executive order, a “National Garden of American Heroes,” described as “a vast outdoor park that will feature the statues of the greatest Americans to ever live.”
It seems a lot of thought has already gone into it — enough to already have produced site and content specifications. There are still unresolved questions though, and some of those specs appear to be … well, perhaps just a little subjective. So, before handing out the funds, revving up the bulldozers, and introducing the chiselers, how about a bit more …
What is a million dollars worth compared to the love of eight million Cubans?
— 3-time Olympic heavyweight boxing champion Teofilo Stevenson on why he never signed a contract to become a professional boxer
Fidel inaugurated revolutionary Cuba’s First National Series. Photo: Archive
On April 2, 2019, the Cuban Baseball Federation published a list of 34 players between the ages of 17 and 25 who would be eligible to sign with major league teams. A list of players over 25 who would be able to …
With Corbyn the bogeyman gone, Tzipi Hotovely will finally force Britain’s liberal Jews to confront truths about Israel they long ago buried
by Jonathan Cook / July 11th, 2020
After years of successfully drawing attention away from Israel’s intensifying crimes against the Palestinian people by citing a supposedly growing “antisemitism crisis” in Britain’s Labour Party, Jewish community leaders in the UK are exasperated to find themselves unexpectedly on the defensive.
Last month, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pulled the rug out from under leading British Jewish organisations by appointing Tzipi Hotovely as Israel’s next ambassador to the UK. She is expected to take up her position in the summer.
Recently made Israel’s first settlements minister, Hotovely does not appear to …
The Supreme Court of the United States has barely had time to gather its collective breath this last few days. Among its decisions, including those dealing with President Donald Trump’s financial records, was that of McGirt v Oklahoma. The case furnishes a detailed discussion on the extent Native American self-governance survived the assaults of the US Congress and the creation of the State of Oklahoma in 1907.
The Creek (Muscogee) Reservation itself arose from circumstances of predation and cruelty. Forcibly relocated from Georgia and Alabama, “the Creek nation,” wrote Justice Neil Gorsuch, “received reassurances that their new lands in the …
Hue – full of public spaces
Some twenty years ago, when I moved to Hanoi, the city was bleak, grey, covered by smog. The war had ended, but terrible scars remained.
I brought my 4WD from Chile, and insisted on driving it myself. It was one of the first SUVs in the city. Each time I drove it, it was hit by scooters, which flew like projectiles all over the wide avenues of the capital.
Hanoi was beautiful, melancholic, but clearly marked by war. There were stories, terrible stories of …
This just in: Cable news presenter-hero Jake Tapper finds new spotlight at the Movies with the Millennium Media studio release of The Outpost, based on Tapper’s 2012 book The Outpost: an Untold Story of American Valor. Tapper’s tale tells the story of a locally massive attack by Taliban-types on a remote American forward operating base, Combat Outpost Keating, in the precipitously rugged Hindu Kush mountains of Afghanistan’s northeastern province of Nuristan, which borders Pakistan. This violent incident occurred on October 3, 2009, and is known as the Battle of Kamdesh, named for a village near the base.
An open letter published by Harper’s magazine, and signed by dozens of prominent writers and public figures, has focused attention on the apparent dangers of what has been termed a new “cancel culture”.
The letter brings together an unlikely alliance of genuine leftists, such as Noam Chomsky and Matt Karp, centrists such as J K Rowling and Ian Buruma, and neoconservatives such as David Frum and Bari Weiss, all speaking out in defence of free speech.
Although the letter doesn’t explicitly use the term “cancel culture”, it is clearly what is meant in the complaint about a …
The U.S. racist-capitalist class and its ideological apparatus fetishize the word democracy. Using fatuous appeals to civil discourse, it sponsors the illusion that democracy is the most advanced political system in human history. In addition to voting for their representatives, people supposedly engage with civil society through which they achieve greater social goods through voting, civic involvement, and giving “voice” to their desires. Once people make a case for change and opinions are expressed in civil discourse, society theoretically modifies and incorporates new changes. In this idealized state, …
