Although it is somewhat banal to say, it should never be forgotten how the First World War traumatized the political and cultural life of Europe, especially in the German speaking world. Heidegger’s, Jasper’s, Freud’s, Junger’s, Hesse’s (not to mention Hitler’s) inter-war works are unthinkable without this bloody caesura in European history. In a profound sense, the inter-war period in Germany (but not only) could be viewed as a psychic expression of what we would call today: Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
One of the more notable of these dark intellectual manifestations was Carl Schmitt’s The Concept of the Political.
Since death is one idea that has no history except as an idea and not a reality any of us have experienced, it is the most frightening idea there is and also quite simple. It is the ultimate unknown. It has always haunted human beings, whether consciously or unconsciously. It lies at the root of war, violence, religion, art, love, and civilization. The good and the bad, the beautiful and the ugly, why we like to win and not lose, pass and not fail, “pass on” and not die. It is so funny and so sad. We would be lost …
One might think that artists wouldn’t mind being isolated and having more time in studios on account of the current Coronavirus situation. After all, we spend an enormous amount of time alone, and isolation allows us to have uninterrupted amounts of time to let our imaginations fly.
But there are other elements in play when we examine creativity. For example, it is crucial that we feel safe to expose all our senses to our environment so that we ground our minds properly to our surroundings, harmoniously with all our channels open.
When the “lockdown” started I was at an art residency in …
Back in November 2016, the Indian government decided to remove all 500- and 1000-rupee notes from circulation overnight without prior notice. This effectively removed 86% of cash in a country that was almost 90% cash reliant.
The notes became worthless and people were asked to hand them in to banks. They would only receive what they had deposited in dribs and drabs over time in the form of new notes. The official reason for this was that the action would curtail the shadow economy and reduce the use of illicit and counterfeit cash to fund illegal activity and terrorism.
While private businesses like non-profit and for-profit charter schools have been seizing enormous sums of public money for decades, ((This does not include the billions of dollars unaccountable charter schools have received from venture philanthropists over the course of nearly 30 years. Nor does it include the numerous public facilities, assets, and services worth billions of dollars that charter schools have seized during the same period.)) they continue to seize hundreds of millions of public dollars during the “COVID Pandemic”—a move that further undermines the nation’s public education system and economy.
The latest example of this massive transfer of public funds …
Mr Assange will be facing a David and Goliath battle with his hands tied behind his back.
— Edward Fitzgerald QC, lawyer for Julian Assange, April 27, 2020
Julian Assange must have had time amidst cramped and hostile surrounds, paper work, pleas and applications, to ponder what circle of Dante’s Hell he finds himself in. Ailing but still battling, the WikiLeaks publisher, through his lawyers, made another vicarious appearance at the Westminster Magistrates’ Court on Monday to delay the next stage of extradition proceedings slated for May 18. He would have appeared via video link, but medical advice suggested it would …
While governments’ responses to the Covid-19 pandemic proves significant resources can be marshalled quickly in a crisis, there is little evidence official Canada sees global warming as a comparable emergency.
Even though Justin Trudeau’s Liberals say they take climate change seriously, Canadian greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are actually increasing. According to the inventory report the government filed with the United Nations last week, Canada’s emissions grew to more than 729 million tonnes of carbon dioxide and its equivalents in 2018. This represents a 15 million tonne increase over 2017.
Incredibly, the editors at the Globe and Mail decided this information deserved …
With his rival Benny Gantz now on side and few checks in place, the prime minister is all set to rule with an iron fist
by Jonathan Cook / April 27th, 2020
Only weeks ago, Benjamin Netanyahu was a hair’s breadth from being ousted from the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office in disgrace, after 11 years of continuous rule. But after a dramatic turnaround in fortunes last week – that saw him signing a pact with Benny Gantz, his chief political rival – Netanyahu has begun to rapidly consolidate his power.
In what many critics claim amounts to a power grab, he began pushing through changes on Thursday to Israel’s basic laws, the equivalent of a constitution. The move was described as “terrifying” by Elyakim Rubinstein, a conservative former supreme court judge.
Although President Trump, in his daily press conferences, attempts to show that his administration is succeeding in containing the epidemic, the April 22, 2020 report from worldometers.info demonstrated the opposite — the United States had 1/3 of the Corona Virus cases and 1/4 of the corona virus deaths worldwide. Could the response be more catastrophic?
TOTAL CASES TOTAL DEATHS
World
2,592,234
181,062
USA
820,600
45,967
On April 22, compared to April 19, the already significant number of daily cases increased by 4000.
On Gramsci’s "Interregnum" and Zizek’s Ethnocentric Philosophy
by Ramzy Baroud and Romana Rubeo / April 27th, 2020
The prophecies are here and it is a foregone conclusion: the post-coronavirus world will look fundamentally different from anything that we have seen or experienced, at least since the end of World War II.
Even before the ‘curve flattened’ in many countries that have experienced high death tolls — let alone economic devastation — as a result of the unhindered spread of the COVID-19 disease, thinkers and philosophers began speculating, from the comfort of their own quarantines, about the many scenarios that await us.
The devastation inflicted by the coronavirus is likely to be as consequential as “the fall of the Berlin …
by Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers / April 27th, 2020
On Friday, May 1, an ongoing General Strike campaign begins. This campaign could become the most powerful movement in the United States and reset the national agenda. It comes when the failures of the US political system have been magnified by the COVID-19 pandemic, which triggered an economic collapse in a presidential election year. The General Strike campaign will be ongoing with actions on the first of every month. Strategic strikes of workers, students, consumers, prisoners, and renters will also continue.
Cuban Medical Brigade going to Italy (Photo credit: Ismael Francisco Gonzalez)
Today the latest medical brigade from Cuba’s Henry Reeves contingent arrived in South Africa to join the front lines with those saving lives in the battle against the Covid-19 pandemic. After a 14 day quarantine the 216 member group, made up of family physicians, epidemiologists, bio statisticians, health technology engineers, and biotechnology experts, will be deployed to all 9 provinces in that country.
This makes the 24th Cuban medical brigade, so far, to be requested during this international …
While many countries grapple with the health, social and economic costs of the COVID-19 pandemic, there’s another, much more serious disease infesting our world that goes largely un-noticed and usually un-treated.
Tragic and traumatic as COVID-19 undoubtedly is for the individuals affected by it, when seeking answers about how, why, and how fast it happened, most of us are missing the point.
COVID-19 is a graphic illustration – delivered to us in an unpleasant biological form – that the real cause of our current pandemic and inability to respond to similar, entirely predictable crises is our collective ignorance and stupidity.
The final message of Jeff Gibbs’ new documentary Planet of the Humans can hardly be faulted: rejection of the centuries-old anthropocentrism which has justified dominion over, and exploitation of, all other life-forms. Without mentioning Deep Ecology or the anti-industrial critiques of radical environmentalists, the movie does implicitly follow the lead of earlier thinkers such as Arne Naess. For decades, such a radical critique of the Industrial Revolution, presented by maverick theorists (Mumford, Ellul) and developed in obscure ‘zines (e.g., Fifth Estate), was on the intellectual-fringe. Now it’s become almost mainstream. And for several decades, almost all major eco-groups have campaigned for …
The name of the latest enormous transfer of wealth to the one percent, the CARES (Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security) Act, represents a public relations coup. Unsurprisingly, this great sounding title misrepresents the bill’s contents.
Pattern of transferring wealth upward
Unfortunately, this bill is essentially a repeat of the bailout of Wall Street during the Great Recession that further enriched the obscenely wealthy at the public’s expense. This current legislation again showers Wall Street and gigantic corporations with oodles of money while providing aid for Main Street that is far too little and far too late. This legislation will also increase …
They have been struggling to keep their membership numbers healthy, but the latest antics of the executive that make up Australia’s National Tertiary Education Union suggest why. For a good period of time, Australian unions have been losing teeth, and not all of it can be put down to the measures of the federal government to pull them. In the university sector, where unionism should be intellectually vibrant and committed, the issue is one of corporatist accommodation. Do not rock the boat of management; give executives vast, byzantine powers of disciplining staff; do little to criticise the obscene remuneration packages …
Photo credit: Ramir Mazaheri.
History shows us that economic crises do not become political crises that severely threaten the ruling order until a critical mass of people come to the realization that the system itself is rotten, unbearable and incapable of meaningful reform.
— Glen Ford, Executive Editor, Black Agenda Report
The estimated 73 million Millennials (those born between 1981 and 1996) among others, will painfully endure the severest financial setback from the COVID-19 pandemic and they’re already worse off in every major economic indicator than the three preceding generations. …
As the holy fasting month of Ramadan begins, the coronavirus outbreak in Israel and the Palestinian territories is proving how inevitably intertwined the two populations’ lives are, while also underlining the extreme differentials of power between them.
While 15,000 Israelis have tested positive for Covid-19 so far, the numbers infected in the occupied territories are still measured in the hundreds – though that, in part, reflects the difficulties for Palestinians of getting tested. The Palestinian Authority is desperately short of equipment, including testing kits, to deal with the virus.
Research suggests that most infections of Palestinians have originated in contacts with Israelis. …
This season’s sequel to the Game of Thrones features reality TV star and current occupant of the Oval Office versus the former Senator from MBNA and two-term VP. It’s time to binge watch dueling hit pieces from the US electoral duopoly going at it.
The narrower the distinctions between Democrats and Republicans, the more vociferous they get in inflating those distinctions, as if a distinction were really a difference. As liberation president of Tanzania Julius Nyerere famously observed, “The United States is a one-party state but, with typical American extravagance, they have two of them.”
‘We’re all in this together,’ chant the duplicitous politicians, meaning the Covid-19 pandemic. The official language around the crisis is consistently hypocritical and disingenuous; – ‘trite and misleading’ is how the BBC described the UK government’s slimy rhetoric. World-wide the script is much the same – ‘we’re at war…. we’re fighting an invisible enemy and we will prevail together,’ and soon, very soon, we will come out of this and get back to ‘normal’ — God forbid. For most people in Western nations ‘normal’ is stressful, full of uncertainty, exhausting; for the hundreds of millions living in dire poverty or …
The leper and his separation; the plague and its segmentations. The ?rst is marked; the second analysed and distributed. The exile of the leper and the arrest of the plague do not bring with them the same political dream. The ?rst is that of a pure community, the second that of a disciplined society. Two ways of exercising power over men, of controlling their relations, of separating out their dangerous mixtures. The plague-stricken town, traversed throughout with hierarchy, surveillance, observation, writing; the town immobilized by the functioning of an extensive power that bears in a distinct way over all individual …
You never want to let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that, it’s an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.
— Rahm Emanuel
Not long ago I was sent the link to Sheila Casey’s expose’ of the Boston Marathon Bombing as a staged event. I had been aware the U.S. Military used amputees as crisis actors for training combat soldiers, as CNN had done a report in 2012. In comparing CNN footage with photos in Casey’s report, the Boston production …
On March 19, 2020, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, spurred to action by the coronavirus pandemic, issued a memorandum that identified the nation’s 2.5 million farm workers as “essential” workers. Soon thereafter, agribusinesses began distributing formal letters to their farm laborers, also declaring that that they were “essential.”
Of course, it shouldn’t have required a government-business effort to establish this point. Without farm workers, there is no food. And the American people need food to survive.
But, remarkably, over the course of U.S. history, farm workers, although essential, have been terribly mistreated. Whether as slaves, indentured servants, sharecroppers, or …
Probably everyone in the West at least has seen some version of a famous figure by the late 19th century French sculptor Auguste Rodin, called in English, The Thinker. It is a nude man seated in a position we have all learned to understand as contemplative, as thinking. Several years ago, although I actually hate visiting museums, I took a few hours while in Paris to visit the Rodin museum. I confess a very good friend who knows more about the plastic arts than I do gave me the …
Celebrating 50 years of Earth Day, Michael Moore, executive producer and the director Jeff Gibbs re-released their daunting and alarming documentary about the heart and soul of America’s Green Movement in a compelling film: Planet of the Humans (2019).
According to Michael Moore: “This is perhaps the most urgent film we’ve shown in the 15-year history of our film festival.” (Traverse City Film Festival)
Director Jeff Gibbs, a tree-hugger since birth, who has received high praise from the likes of Dr. Jane Goodall, has inspired countless thousands of people over the decades to protect indigenous cultures and ecosystems. He is one of …
It is unrealistic to expect capitalists to manage any social crisis. Their goal is to accumulate capital, which they do exceptionally well, as evidenced by their enormous wealth in a world where billions struggle to survive.
Capitalists are highly skilled at sustaining their rule. They prioritize military spending in order to defend and expand their wealth. They invest in politicians, scientists, journalists, authors, psychologists, and other ‘experts’ to promote their views and enforce their rules. They excel at finding ways to profit from disaster.
Did you know that the U.S. government has done something odd with your tax dollars? The ones you get so furious and indignant about when they’re used to feed anybody who’s hungry? It has given over 280 billion of those dollars to the government of Israel (not counting classified hush-hush super-secret amounts).
Are we living surreal days? Hunkered down within four walls. Suspicious of every package at our door. Cleaning and cleaning some more. Gross monopolies mediating all our communication. And constant worry that the elders in our lives will die of COVID19.
Are these surreal days? The popular usage of the word has devolved to mean strange. What’s strange about these days? The silence punctuated by bird song in city centers? Or the clean air? Or walking in auto-free boulevards and ignoring stoplights—now flashing ornaments, not sentinels to obey. These delights are strange only to those who are unable to imagine another …
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) says that the Great Lockdown, which has no end date, could very well lead to a loss of $9 trillion to global Gross Domestic Product over the entirety of 2020 and 2021; this number is greater than the combined economies of Japan and Germany. This scenario, the Fund’s managing director Kristalina Georgieva admits, ‘may actually be a more optimistic picture than reality produces’.
It was intended to be a Machiavellian move, but the decision by Benny Gantz, leader of Israel’s Kahol Lavan (Blue and White) coalition, to join a Benjamin Netanyahu-led government is likely to destabilize the political fabric of Israeli society for years to come.
In a surprising move, Gantz has entered into precarious political compromises, whereby he would become the Speaker of the Israeli Knesset (Parliament), as a prelude to the formation of a national unity government which will include the ruling Likud party and Blue and White.
The move, however, proved disastrous.
As soon as Gantz declared his intentions to join hands …
