May Day, or International Workers Day, is celebrated with marches and rallies every May 1 to lift up the working people and their demands for freedom, equality, and justice. That is the Red tradition of May Day. But there is also an older Green tradition in which cultures the world over celebrate as Spring arrives in temperate and arctic climates or the wet season arrives in tropical climates. This Green tradition of May Day celebrates all that is free and life-giving on the green Earth that is our commonwealth and heritage. These Red and Green May Day traditions are complementary.
It is increasingly looking like a war – at least a new ‘cold’, ideological war.
But in the shadow of COVID-19, it goes almost unnoticed.
The blind horseman, who hates China intuitively, without knowing hardly anything about it, is leading the pack, pushing his president into a confrontation with the most populous country on Earth. His name is Peter Navarro.
Not that the president is ‘innocent’. Under him, the White House has become a haven of bigotry, of anti-Chinese racist sentiments. Here, not only China, but also Iran, Venezuela, Cuba and Russia are hated. It was already converted …
A storm cloud of fear hangs in the air, palpable as the billions of cowering human bodies now living under threat of annihilation, festering in hearts, censoring rational thoughts, rotting souls, turning atheists to prayer. A virus has invaded planet earth, apparently threatening the extermination of humankind. And true to form, the victims look to their oppressors for guidance, then follow unquestioningly.
Few close friends are able to step outside the grand illusion, fully appreciating the ongoing iron-fisted and dehumanizing efforts of the cheap thugs and mass murderers who’ve been running the United States of America since before the so-called Revolutionary War, which was nothing more …
Former members of the leading Vietnam War-era peace organization in the US, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), recently circulated an open letter warning today’s young activists to – as the adage goes – do as I say and not as I did. Back in the ‘60s and ‘70s, these former leaders led the way in opposing the ravages of US imperialism and exposing what they called the “death culture.” Today, they are admonishing the new generation not to follow in their footsteps, but to go all out for what they call the “capitalist democrat” Joe Biden.
“Know the true value of time; snatch, seize, and enjoy every moment of it,” urged the Earl of Chesterfield in a letter of advice to his son penned in 1749. “No idleness, no laziness, no procrastination: never put off till tomorrow what you can do today.” This has not tended to be the view of university governors the world over, notably in the field of ethical investments. The elite heavy weights have shown their flabbiness in the area, dragging in their approach to matters of environment and the climate. Money is just that; where it goes, in terms of …
Over 50,000 people have died of COVID-19 in the U.S. and the momentum is not letting down. This comes as President Trump and his allies are elevating their anti-China rhetoric to a new level. Their newest tactic: legitimize a conspiracy theory and blame a Chinese lab for “creating” the deadly virus.
But exactly how are they trying to spin the narrative?
The so-called Defense Department does not live up to its name; instead, the acronym and word Bloateddescribe this behemoth and its budget. We the people need defense, but the trillion tax dollars we spend a year do not provide it. Instead they pay for:
Some 800 US overseas military bases
Endless wars
The Nuclear Arsenal
Billions for Bombers and Battleships
These do nothing to make us secure. They have benefited few people in the US or the world, apart from bloated arms manufacturers and merchants, bloated military contractors, bloated generals, bloated politicians, and those in the high echelons of …
I define a “national crisis” as a calamitous event that imperils the overall well-being of the nation’s citizenry. For America, I suppose there could be several answers depending on the crisis: The President, the National Guard, the military, the Department of Homeland Security. In this article I am going to focus on some instances where the President’s answer was not the right one, and end with a President giving the right answer.
Take the case of FDR, for instance, and his answering the nation’s call with his New Deal policies and programs after the First Great Depression. The popular belief and …
Dynamic duo: Same bat virus, same fat profits From Havana to Helmstedt
The major reason for Cuba’s travel restrictions — always used as grounds for slandering the Cuban state — is the extreme difficulty Cuba has maintaining foreign exchange reserves essential for international trade, especially since the end of trade-in-kind with the COMECON. Every traveller from Cuba spends pesos that have to be covered by Cuba’s USD or EUR reserves. Since there are already more than enough obstacles imposed by the US embargo, every forex transaction is critical for …
This is a column I have been mulling over for a while but, for reasons that will be instantly obvious, I have been hesitant to write. It is about 5G, vaccines, 9/11, aliens and lizard overlords. Or more accurately, it isn’t.
Let me preface my argument by making clear I do not intend to express any view about the truth or falsity of any of these debates – not even the one about reptile rulers. My refusal to publicly take a view should not be interpreted as my implicit endorsement of any of these viewpoints because, after all, only a crazy …
Shortly after an agreement to form a “national emergency government” in Israel, leader of the Blue and White (Kahol Lavan) party, Benny Gantz, tweeted triumphantly that ‘democracy’ in Israel has been ‘safeguarded’.
But how is a deal that would grant Israel’s right-wing Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, a veto power over the very judicial system which will determine his fate, a form of democracy?
In January, Netanyahu was indicted on multiple counts of bribery, fraud and breach of trust. His trial is …
While the US took two-and-a-half years to identify HIV/AIDS after the discovery of the first symptomatic case in the country, China discovered, identified and contained COVID-19 within a few months. In the US, over half a million people have died of HIV/AIDS; worldwide that same number die every year. Even now, in the US, 13,000 die each year of the disease. ((See: “Number of deaths due to HIV/AIDS/Global Health Observatory (GHO) data,” World Health Organization, 2020; “Current Trends Update on Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) — United States,” Center for Disease Control: Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, September 24, …
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. …
