Latest articles
by Yves Engler / June 18th, 2020
The international community’s rejection of Canada’s bid for a seat on the United Nations Security Council isn’t a surprise. In the below introduction to my recently published House of Mirrors: Justin Trudeau’s Foreign Policy I detail how Liberal foreign policy has largely mimicked that of Stephen Harper who lost a bid for the Security Council in 2010.
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Justin Trudeau presents himself as “progressive” on foreign affairs. The Liberals claim to have brought Canada “back” after the disastrous Stephen Harper government. But, this book will …
by Todd Smith / June 17th, 2020
“What is the Secret of Soylent Green?” — leading question from the theatrical trailer to the 1973 major motion picture release Soylent Green.
We live in an age of Fake News based on Alternative Facts spanning the full spectrum dominance of mis-to-disinformation. One rides the painted pony of the Major Media Circus and this “brave new world” becomes one mad, gyrating, hallucinatory blur. Acid for the Masses, with “Reality” transformed into a vast, virtual Rorschach Blot. Baked into this seemingly infinite “blot of info” — like some other virus spliced into a coronavirus in a Bio-lab, for example — are equally …
by Ramzy Baroud / June 17th, 2020
The banning of deadly police practices by many American states and cities following the murder of an African American man, George Floyd, at the hands of Minneapolis police officers is, once more, shedding light on US-Israeli collaboration in the fields of security and crowd-control.
From California to New York, and from Washington State to Minneapolis, all forms of neck restraints and chokeholds that are used by police while dealing with suspects are no longer allowed by local, state, or federal authorities.
This is only the beginning of what promises …
by Binoy Kampmark / June 17th, 2020
Things along the Indian-Chinese border in the Himalayas have rarely lacked interest, notably along the secretive, heavily patrolled 3,488 km Line of Actual Control. Neither China nor India have ever quite sorted out their differences on that front, plagued by territorial claims over unclearly demarcated boundaries. The administration of Narendra Modi might well have wood global governments, but China’s Xi Jinping has remained cool. Old habits die hard, and memories of India’s disastrous defeat in 1962 against its populous neighbour remain vivid.
Early last month, soldiers from both armies engaged in a fistfight of sizeable proportion akin to a large …
by Lawrence S. Wittner / June 17th, 2020
In late May of this year, President Donald Trump’s special envoy for arms control bragged before a Washington think tank that the U.S. government was prepared to outspend Russia and China to win a new nuclear arms race. “The president has made clear that we have a tried and true practice here,” he remarked. “We know how to win these races and we know how to spend the adversary into oblivion.”
This comment was not out of line for a Trump administration official. Indeed, back in December 2016, shortly after his election, …
(Eco-Nihilism, Supra-Nationalism, and Societal Collapse)
by Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin / June 17th, 2020
Western countries see the rest of the world as their playing field fit only for exploitation.
— Pramoedya Ananta Toer in conversation with Andre Vltchek, in Jakarta, 2004
The “global playing field” is “level” only from the perspective of the west.
— Robert H. Wade
Spoiler alert
Introduction
The success of Bong Joon-ho’s film Parasite (2019) has drawn attention to his back catalogue, in particular his first mainly English-language film, Snowpiercer (2013).
Snowpiercer is a fast-paced movie about a train on a global circular train track, set in the future after a climate change engineering experiment goes wrong. Ice cold temperatures freeze the world into …
by Max Parry / June 17th, 2020
The May 25th killing of George Floyd, an unarmed African-American man, at the hands of a white police officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota shocked the world and set off mass protests against racism and police brutality in dozens of cities from the mid-western United States to the European Union, all in the midst of a global pandemic. In the Twin Cities, what began as spontaneous, peaceful demonstrations against the local police quickly transformed into vandalism, arson and looting after the use of rubber bullets and chemical irritants by law enforcement against the protesters, while the initial incitement for the riots was …
by Graham Peebles / June 17th, 2020
Whatever corner of the world one happens to live in, the most pressing issues of the day affect everyone. Pandemics/epidemics and the environmental emergency; war and terrorism; poverty and food insecurity; overpopulation and the displacement of persons. Such crises cannot be limited by borders or controlled by nation states; no government or corporate power can manage them. They are interconnected global issues and they require a coordinated global response.
Drawn together by economic interest or shared geo-political concerns various allied groupings and regional alliances exist in the world. While such assemblies present the possibility of nations unifying, self-interest, ideology and partisanship …
by Jason Hirthler / June 17th, 2020
Spellbound. Hypnotized. Entranced. Narcotized. Captivated. Anesthetized. Mesmerized. Fascinated. Mystified. Stupefied. From literature to film, our culture is rife with stories of men and women coming under the mental sway of diabolic schemers. Wielding the conditional clauses like a wand, Iago spellbinds Othello to a state of jealous rage, which leads him to kill Desdemona, his innocent wife. In the German series Perfume, a master of scent-making conjures fragrances unique to a particular person, and which makes him or her completely irresistible. In the film Inception, ingenious thieves implant formidable ideas in the subconscious of unwitting targets. Anywhere we look along …
by John W. Whitehead / June 16th, 2020
The system is rigged.
The system is rigged, the government is corrupt, and “we the people” continue to waste our strength by fighting each other rather than standing against the tyrant in our midst.
Because the system is rigged, because the government is corrupt, and because “we the people” remain polarized and divided, the police state will keep winning and “we the people” will keep losing.
Because the system is rigged and the U.S. Supreme Court—the so-called “people’s court”—has exchanged its appointed role as a gatekeeper of justice for its new role as maintainer of the status quo, there will be little if …
by L.A. Pontes / June 16th, 2020
It’s hard to admit how far off Brazil has strayed. Less than forty years ago, the country was coming out of a military dictatorship, and for more than three decades stood on a steady, and shiny, path to development. Now again, there’s a military president ruling the country, with a military as his Vice, several militaries on his cabinet, and hundreds of other military personnel on the lower ‘ranks’ of the government. And this military president comes in public and simply states that the Armed Forces of the country will not accept a supreme court rule if it comes out …
by Edward Curtin / June 16th, 2020
Imagine this: A so-called presidential historian for a major television network publishes an interview in the most famous newspaper in the world with the most famous singer/songwriter in the world, who has recently written an explosive song accusing the U.S. government of a conspiracy in the assassination of the most famous modern American president, and the interviewer never asks the singer about the specific allegations in his song except to ask him if he was surprised that the song reached number one on the Billboard hit list and other musical and cultural references that have nothing to do with the …
by Myles Hoenig / June 16th, 2020
Why is this not an Emmett Till moment?
The quick, simple response is because the Democratic Party is where social movements go to die and this will be absorbed into their own conservative narrative.
The open casket for Emmett shocked the nation, the white nation that is. It was neither shocking nor surprising for the majority of black Americans. They’ve seen it all too often before, just not with the exposition that Mrs. Till orchestrated in order to shock the world with an open casket. Many would rightfully say the civil rights movement truly began with this horrific murder and necessary showcase.
Attitudes …
Democrats and Republicans Play Good Cop/Bad Cop
by Roger D. Harris / June 16th, 2020
A long smoldering and now massive popular response to injustice has been catalyzed by the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25th. Even Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson concedes, “this was without precedent in the modern era.”
A broad consensus critical of the coercive police function of the US state is building. The mass movement around Black Lives Matter has many currents, some reformist and others angling for bigger fish. A sea change may be in the making. In opposition, state officials from the police chief of Ferguson to any number of politicians are making …
by Medea Benjamin / June 16th, 2020
Credit: Cubacooperation
A team of 85 Cuban doctors and nurses arrived in Peru on June 3 to help the Andean nation tackle the coronavirus pandemic. That same day, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced another tightening of the sanctions screws. This time he targeted seven Cuban entities, including Fincimex, one of the principal financial institutions handling remittances to the country. Also targeted was Marriott International, which was ordered to cease operations in Cuba, and other companies in the tourism sector, an industry that constitutes 10 percent of Cuba’s GDP …
by Binoy Kampmark / June 15th, 2020
When the superseding indictment was returned by a federal grand jury in the Eastern District of Virginia against Julian Assange on May 23, 2019, there was one glaring omission. It was an achievement, it might even be said the achievement, that gave the WikiLeaks publisher and the organisation justified notoriety. Collateral Murder, as the leaked video came to be called, featured the murderous exploits by the crew of Crazy Horse 1-8, an Apache helicopter that slew 11 people on July 12, 2007 in east Baghdad. Among the dead were Reuters photographer Namir Noor-Eldeen and a driver and fixer, Saeed …
by Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers / June 15th, 2020
The current uprising against police violence and racism is just beginning. It is rapidly shifting public consciousness on issues of policing, violence against Black people and others, and systemic racism. The movement is deepening and becoming broader as well as putting forward solutions and making demands.
The confluence of crises including recent police violence, the COVID-19 pandemic, and economic collapse along with the ongoing crises of lack of healthcare, poverty, inequality, homelessness, personal debt, and climate plus awareness of mirage democracy in the United States have created a historic …
or A Democratic Socialist Urges Trumpsters to “Follow the Leader”
by Mark W. Bradley / June 15th, 2020
Politics, in its most elemental form, is primarily a game of numbers. Let’s say I am running for office, and I manage to garner more votes than my opponent. Result? I win. Similarly, if I manage to prevent my opponent from getting as many voters to the polls as I do, I also win. These conclusions are (or should be) self-evident.
What might not be so self-evident, however, is why an atheistic democratic socialist such as myself would come out and boldly advocate for so many of President Trump’s strongly …
by Dr. Hakim / June 15th, 2020
The family of a killed protester demand fair distribution of bread (Credit: Tolo News)
COVID-19 is clarifying a significant source of global anger and angst: inequality.
At the start of the COVID-19 crisis, Afghanistan had 300 ventilators, only one ventilator for every 110,000 Afghans.
As a medical physician, I gasped, my heart racing at the dilemma of who gets the ventilator. What if I was near death with serious COVID-19?
The head of a global vaccine alliance advised that “nobody is safe unless everybody …
by Pepe Escobar / June 14th, 2020
The marriage of post-Lockdown and George Floyd protests has nurtured a rough beast that is still immune to any form of civilized debate in the U.S.: the Seattle Commune.
So what really is the Capital Hill Autonomous Zone cum People’s Republic all about?
Are the communards mere useful idiots? Is this a refined Occupy Wall Street experiment? Could it survive, logistically, and be replicated in NYC, L.A. and D.C.?
An outraged President Trump has described it as a plot by “domestic terrorists” in a city “run by radical left Democrats”. He called for “LAW & ORDER” (in caps, according to his Tweetology).
Shades of …
by David Rovics / June 14th, 2020
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The system based on a combination of police brutality, mass imprisonment, and evictions at gunpoint may be collapsing, but if it’s going to fall in the direction we want it to fall in, we need to push it that way. And if we want to make that happen, we have to organize to stop the impending wave of evictions before it starts.
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This society is at a crossroads in so many ways. In recent weeks, a multiracial uprising in the streets …
by Binoy Kampmark / June 13th, 2020
Fawlty Towers
It’s all getting nasty. The urge to remove statues in hurried indignation; the lust to censor programmes now deemed offensive; the erasure of history, which, any sensible sort should know, is often a panoramic account of crimes and slaughter worth knowing rather than banning and hiding. This is surely not what the late George Floyd intended, but it hardly matters anymore. His death has propelled a movement that has capitalised on a publicised event of police brutality in the United States to re-order matters and …
by Yves Engler / June 13th, 2020
The Palestinian solidarity movement is unsettling Canada’s diplomatic apparatus. In the final week of their multi-year campaign for a seat on the United Nations Security Council they’ve been forced to respond to a well-documented, strong campaign in defense of Palestinian rights.
Yesterday, Canada’s Permanent Representative to the UN, Marc-André Blanchard, delivered a letter to all UN ambassadors defending Canadian policy on Palestinian rights. Blanchard was responding to an Open Letter organized by Just Peace Advocates signed by more than 100 organizations and dozens of prominent individuals. Over the past week more than 1000 individuals have used that letter as …
by Terry Everton / June 13th, 2020
“I do believe God is working through you to try to call us together.” — Matt Gaetz, R-Fla speaking to the brother of George Floyd
“Defund the police, abolish ICE, disarm Americans and then surrender our cities to the Antifa mob — if this is the rulebook for the new Woketopia, count me out!… Antifa has now designated Seattle their capital.” — Matt Gaetz
“He [Matt Gaetz] represents, however, everything that is wrong with the modern Republican Party: from racism, anti-Semitism, and white nationalism; to conspiracism and anti-intellectualism; to a slavish and sycophantic loyalty to Donald Trump.” — Mehdi Hasan, The Intercept
In a world of depleting resources and contracting economies, states are preparing for future uprisings by a growing underclass
by Jonathan Cook / June 12th, 2020
It is hard to ignore the striking parallels between the recent scenes of police brutality in cities across the United States and decades of violence from Israel’s security forces against Palestinians.
A video that went viral late last month of a Minneapolis police officer, Derek Chauvin, killing a black man, George Floyd, by pressing a knee into his neck for nearly nine minutes has triggered a fortnight of mass protests across the US – and beyond.
The footage was the latest disturbing visual evidence of a US police culture that appears to treat Black Americans as an enemy …
by C.J. Hopkins / June 12th, 2020
So, the GloboCap-Resistance Minneapolis Putsch appears to have not gone exactly to plan. Once again, Trump failed to go full-Hitler, despite their best efforts to goad him into doing so. They gave it quite a good shot, however. It was more or less a textbook regime-change op, or “color revolution,” or whatever you call it. All the essential pieces were in place. All they needed Trump to do was declare himself dictator and impose martial law, so the generals could step in and remove him from office.
Unfortunately for the Resistance, Trump didn’t do that. Instead, …
by David Penner / June 12th, 2020
Medicine has changed. We used to be a calling that catered to the public welfare, and our prime consideration was the patient. Now we are a business, and some of us practice as impersonal corporations, with the bottom line the profits, not the well-being of the patient.”
— From The Doctor, by Dr. Edward E. Rosenbaum, 1991
The most shocking thing about the neoliberal health care model is not that it bankrupts and murders hundreds of thousands of Americans each year, but that vast numbers of physicians continue to support it. The insatiable depravity of the anti-single-payer virus has metastasized …
by Kim Petersen / June 12th, 2020
Muslims in Canada deserve to feel what non-Muslims feel when they hear of a vicious crime or a foiled plot committed by someone who looks like them: abhorred by the crime but knowing the crime reflects the perpetrator alone. Any other thought process should never occur.
— Graeme Truelove, Un-Canadian: Islamophobia in the True North (Nightwood Editions, 2020): location 35%
The police murder of George Floyd set off the powder keg filled by centuries of oppression of Black peoples in the United States. The United States has been beset by countrywide protests, some marred by violence of protestors and police. Many would …
Symbols are Invested with Power
by Jonathan Cook / June 12th, 2020
I did not expect to be returning to this issue so soon but I was surprised, to put it mildly, to discover that my last post on anti-racists toppling a statue of the notorious slave trader Edward Colston in Bristol proved to be the most polarising article I have ever written. Given the many controversial topics I have addressed over the years, that seems noteworthy in itself.
It may not be surprising that those on the right are troubled by ordinary people challenging authority, demanding change rather than conserving what we already have, and “taking the law …
Exoneration Visible?
by Michael H. Fox / June 12th, 2020
Across cultures, darker people suffer most. Why?
— T-shirt worn by rapper Andre 3000 at a recent concert.
Exonerations of wrongfully convicted suspects continue to dominate the news. For many years, wrongful convictions were considered the result of honest mistakes. Mistaken eyewitness judgments were considered the major factor. But contemporary research has disproved this hypothesis. We now know that police and prosecutorial malfeasance — suborning perjury, concealing evidence, falsifying scientific reports, etc., is the leading factor in wrongful convictions. And the majority of victims are people of color.
Racial prejudice has a long history in the USA. Jailing people of color is …
