The author peals the imperial white mask off the black skin in an analogy to Frantz Fanon’s classic work. Racism, colonization and contemporary neo-colonialization have distorted the psyches of many people of all colors. Barak Obama’s black Kenyan roots allowed him to do …
Given the kind of responses I hear coming from both sides of the Pacific Ocean, I feel it’s necessary to say something more about what the NBA backlash in China is really about.
The NBA commissioner, both in his interviews in Japan and in his written statement to clarify himself, missed the point of what the Chinese people are actually angry about. It’s not about the freedom of an individual to express his or her personal opinions, but about the bottom line of what is acceptable in societies. In the U.S., you support freedom of expression, but do you support openly …
On August 20, Heba Ahmed al-Labadi fell into the dark hole of the Israeli legal system, joining 413 Palestinian prisoners who are currently held in so-called administrative detention.
On September 26, Heba and seven other prisoners declared a hunger strike to protest their unlawful detention and horrific conditions in Israeli prisons. Among the prisoners is Ahmed Ghannam, 42, from the village of Dura, near Hebron, who launched his hunger strike on July 14.
Administrative detention is Israel’s go-to legal proceeding when it simply wants to mute the voices of Palestinian political activists, but lacks any concrete evidence that can …
This article was first published on February 21, 2017, one month after Donald Trump was sworn in as president, more than two-and-a half years ago. What was true then is even truer now, and so I am reprinting it with this brief introduction since I think it describes what is happening in plain sight today.
Now that years of Russia-gate accusations have finally fallen apart, those forces intent on driving Trump from office have had to find another pretext. Now it is Ukraine-gate, an issue similar in many ways to Russia-gate in that both were set into motion by the …
Attracting a large audience, political theorist Nancy Fraser visited Stockholm a couple of days ago to present her view of a socialism for the 21st century. However, the talk was not only about socialism but also about its antagonist, capitalism, which, according to Fraser, must be subjected to a more refined analysis in order for a credible socialist alternative to be formulated. Current analyses of capitalism, Fraser argues, are inadequate as it is stuck in the Marxist notion of capitalism as an economic system. Rather, for this system to even function, it is dependent on a range of non-economic …
Local woman’s fight for aerial spray ban is her sense of purpose
by Paul Haeder / October 9th, 2019
We’re being accused of being eco-terrorists. But the way the laws are right now, the corporations have priority over the citizens’ right to defend their own health and safety. That’s terrorism.
— Newport resident Maria Sause
We meet at Oceana Natural Foods Co-op. Maria Kraus will turn 77 on December 9. Her face reflects five or six iterations of her
life’s journey.
Just four days 80 years ago could have changed this interview – she might not have been conceived and born. Maria’s father Franta (Francisco) left Czechoslovakia a scant 96 hours after …
Whether it involves the undermining or destruction of what were once largely self-sufficient agrarian economies in Africa or the devastating impacts of soy cultivation in Argentina, localised, traditional methods of food production have given way to global supply chains dominated by policies which favour agri-food giants, resulting in the destruction of habitat and peasant farmer livelihoods and the imposition of a model of agriculture that subjugates remaining farmers and regions to the needs …
This is another version of: it is easier for capitalists to imagine the end of the world than it is for them to imagine the end of capitalism.
Charter schools are pay-the-rich schemes that emerged in the midst of the neoliberal period that was launched at home and abroad in the late 1970s.
Charter schools are one of many mechanisms the rich have concocted since the 1980s and 1990s to counter the unavoidable law of the falling rate of profit under capitalism.
Mainstream economists often refer to this inescapable law as the law ofdiminishing returns. This is when the “return on investment” …
Hundreds of people from across the Southeast converged on Atlanta on Friday September 27th for the Southeast Climate Strike & Rebellion. Organized by a coalition including Earth Strike and Extinction Rebellion, it came at the end of a global strike week called for by the school strike movement in which millions railed against the systems that are failing humanity. At least 19 were nicked for offences ranging from carrying PVC pipe for a trampoline prop to standing briefly on a piece of land designed exclusively for fast-moving metal death machines.
by Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers / October 8th, 2019
Protesters outside building where Ajit Pai was giving a speech in Washington, DC, December 2017 (From Free Press)
Last week, the DC Circuit Court of Appeals finally issued a decision on a challenge to the Trump administration’s “Open Internet” rule, which ended Net Neutrality protections in 2017. While the court reversed and remanded important parts of the rule, it upheld the reversal of Net Neutrality regulations.
This decision opens the next phase of the struggle in the battle for the Internet — a battle between control of the Internet by …
“We are here at the National Bean Counters Convention with Martin Long, chairman of the Bean Counters Board. Good evening, Mr. Long.”
“Hello, Sarah, nice of you to have me on.”
“Our pleasure. Earlier this evening, in your keynote address to this convention, you called for a nationwide job action next Friday in order to impress upon this country the critical services that Bean Counters, especially in the healthcare industry, provide each and every day.”
“Indeed I did, Sarah. For far too long, our work, the day to day accounting needed for …
The meaning of democratic socialism?a mixture of political and economic democracy?should be no mystery to Americans. After all, socialist programs have been adopted in most other democratic nations. And, in fact, Americans appear happy enough with a wide range of democratic socialist institutions in the United States, including public schools, public parks, minimum wage laws, Social Security, public radio, unemployment insurance, public universities, Medicare, public libraries, the U.S. postal service, public roads, and high taxes on the wealthy.
Even so, large numbers of Americans seem remarkably confused about democratic socialism. This April, at a CNN town …
Of late there has been a lot of ink spilled over the idea of a Universal Basic Income (UBI). Democratic presidential hopeful Andrew Yang has made it the center of his campaign. Before going too far, it should be noted that there are legitimate questions to be answered with such a revolutionary proposal and many details to be worked out. Some plans are generous and others much less so. And there is the very real fear that a UBI could be used as a tool of the State to …
Science and Global Security (SGS) has been publishing technical articles on arms control and related issues since 1989. I urge you not to succumb to political censorship.
Recently it was announced you are withholding publication of an article titled “Computational Forensic Analysis for the Chemical Weapons Attack at Khan Sheikhoun on 4 April 2017.” The article presents evidence that a crater in the road in the town of Khan Sheikhoun (Syria) could have been caused by an “improvised rocket-propelled artillery round with a high explosive warhead” rather than an aerial bomb dropped by a Syrian …
In September 2019, facing everyday dangers of the war and under constant pressure to view those from other tribes as enemies, young people from each of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces gathered for a three day “On the Road to Peace” conference in Kabul.
*****
Despite the violent crises which we human beings have created for Afghanistan and our planet earth, I have witnessed yet again how renewing our relationships with Nature and one another can calm us, teach us, and change us.
I saw this happening among the 26 participants of the “Youth on the Road to Peace Conference” organized by the …
Sustained committed activism is unraveling the dominant media’s shameful blackout of Canadian imperialism in Haiti. But, the bias against putting Canadian policy in a negative light is such that small breakthroughs require tremendous effort.
On Monday 15 Haitian community members and allies occupied Justin Trudeau’s election office for a little over three hours. The Solidarité Québec-Haiti #Petrochallenge 2019 activists called on the PM to withdraw Canada’s backing of a repressive, corrupt and illegitimate president of Haiti. Trudeau’s government has provided financial, policing and diplomatic support to Jovenel Moïse whose presidency is dependent on Washington, Ottawa and other members …
While the European family seems to be having its internal spats – populist sparks within threatening to light the powder keg – the marshals and deputies, for the most part, are attempting to contain the British contagion. Britain is still scheduled to leave on October 31 without a deal with the European Union. The divorce papers remain unimplemented, and the lawyers and mediators are chafing. Governments across the European Union are planning for the hardest of hard departures, and Yellowhammer, the emergency government document contemplating the worst – queues, depleted supplies of necessaries, possible riots, transport shortages – has …
The Little Green Women and Men (LGWM) are us, humanoids, especially those living in the west, believing we command Mother Earth. Well, no wonder, there is a group among us, who claims to be “God’s Chosen People” – and they act it all the way. So much so, that they and their influence on LGWMs, have almost managed to dominate all the women, men and resources of Mother Earth.
Humanoids, LGWMs, are easily manipulated. They have chosen to be green, because “green” is IN. They are ‘little’, because in the big scheme of things, as compared to Mother Nature, for example, …
In recent years, internationalism — cooperation among nations for promotion of the common good — has acquired a bad reputation.
Of course, internationalism has long been anathema to the political Right, where a primitive tribalism and its successor, nationalism, have flourished for many years. Focusing on their nation’s supposed superiority to others, a long line of right-wing demagogues, including Adolf Hitler (“Deutschland Über Alles”) and Donald Trump (“America First”), have stirred up xenophobia, racism, and militarism, often with some success in public opinion and at the polls. Numerous nationalist imitators have either secured public office or are hungering …
There is no shortage of articles, books, reports, blogs, and websites that continually detail the perpetually scandalous and troubled nature of charter schools. Not a day goes by without a report on some sort of infamy, fraud, mismanagement, corruption, or failure in the unaccountable charter school sector.
But even articles and reports that are critical of charter schools often lapse into confused logic and arguments, revealing that the thinking around charter schools remains muddled.
This endless confusion and incoherence repeatedly conceals and renders forgettable the profound significance of the core feature of all charter schools: their inherently privatized nature.
So here we go. Like a 1960s straight-to-drive-in Hammer Film Production, the 2020 campaign season has begun. Dig into your bucket of popcorn, pop the flap on your box of Good & Plenty, turn off your mind, and enjoy the show. From the looks of the trailer, it’s going to be a doozy.
That’s right, folks, it’s the final installment of the popular Trumpenstein horror movie series, TRUMPENSTEIN MUST BE DESTROYED! It will be playing, more or less around the clock, on more or less every screen in existence, until November 3, 2020 … or until Trump takes that lonely walk …
In class society, everyone lives as a member of a particular class, and every kind of thinking, without exception, is stamped with the brand of a class.
— Mao, On Practice, 1937
That belief in Christ is to some a matter of life and death has been a stumbling block for readers who would prefer to think it a matter of no great consequence.
— Flannery O’Connor, Wise Blood, March 6, 2007
I think that most of the confusion in this respect has been the product of a failure to develop a class analysis of these changes. From a class perspective, it is clear …
The new generation of “pro-Western heroes” and “saints” is clearly failing to impress the world. Juan Guaido and Joshua Wong are definitely as right-wing as Mother Teresa was, but not as “credible”. *****
A long time ago I visited a place in Calcutta, India, where Mother Teresa used to operate. According to the Catholic Church and Western propaganda apparatus, she was helping the poor.
When I asked those who knew her personally, they described her as a spiteful, vindictive person, with a short temper. Off the record, of course, as to criticize her openly would be met with great outrage all …
The situation on the United State’s southern border continues to deteriorate. The American president, in a characteristic flourish of craven megalomania, has decided that his prospects for re-election hinge on his unique capacity to fix the country’s ‘broken borders’ and solve the problem of ‘illegal migration’ once and for all. To help bring this deranged and paranoid prophecy to fruition, Trump and his racist minion, Stephen Miller, have set out to purposefully manufacture chaos, fanning the flames of racial tensions in hopes of instilling fear, and greasing the wheels of further militarization.
Meanwhile, after crossing multiple countries by foot, desperate asylum …
There has never been more access to food – domestic and imported – yet hunger is an ongoing problem everywhere. In the U.S. alone, 16.5 million children go to bed hungry and 20% of community college students are experiencing “food insecurity.”
Never have there been more communications technologies, yet it is harder to get through to people personally than fifty years ago.
Never have people been able to use their right to free speech so unencumbered, yet a torrent of lies are now spread so freely and are often unchallenged.
Never …
Karl Marx used a metaphor about a camera obscura to describe the contortions in the interpretations of ideology, and it’s also an interesting metaphor to think about how information is delivered to us from power. A camera obscura receives an image from a tiny hole where the image is then projected in a state that is inverted and reversed, such is the perspective given to us by the powers that be where we are fed a myopic view and what is shown to the people is the opposite of what is really going on. The pictures taken from the camera …
Corporate pollution and releasing of toxic substances should be treated as a criminal act, with full power to seize assets for reparations, actual reparations, not just punitive fines.
Heinous. Savage. Ghastly. It’s hard to find the words to describe the act of luring journalist Jamal Khashoggi into a Saudi consulate in Istanbul, suffocating him, chopping him up and dissolving his bones. Yet a year later, governments and business people around the world are eager to forgive and forget — or already have.
So far, not a single Saudi official has been found guilty or punished for this crime. The Saudi government has put 11 officials on trial but these trials, which began …
On September 16, I visited South Africa, a country where many Palestinians have always felt welcomed, if not overwhelmed by the degree of genuine and meaningful solidarity.
While having the honor to address many audiences in six major cities, I have also learned a great deal. An important and sobering lesson is that while apartheid laws can be dismissed in a day, economic apartheid and massive inequality can linger on for many years. Thanks to my interactions with many South African intellectuals, activists and ordinary folk, I learned not to romanticize the South African struggle, a crucial lesson for …
Catastrophic events that send the world into turmoil happen on ‘just another day’. The atom bomb that exploded over Hiroshima took place while thousands of ordinary folk were just going about their everyday business on ‘just another day’. A missile attack on a neighbourhood in Gaza or a drone attack on unsuspecting civilians in Afghanistan: death and destruction come like a bolt from the blue as people shop at the local market or take their kids to school on ‘just another day’.
Will it be ‘just another day’ when the next nuclear bomb is exploded in anger, an ordinary day when people …
