Latest articles

Faction: A number of citizens, whether amounting to a minority or majority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community
— James Madison, The Federalist No. 10, “The Utility of the Union as a Safeguard Against Domestic Faction and Insurrection”

The executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie
— Karl Marx, Communist Manifesto,  Chapter 1, “Bourgeois and Proletarians”

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss
— …

(Full article …)

Theatrical masks of Tragedy and Comedy. Mosaic, Roman artwork, 2nd century CE. Capitoline Museums, Rome

When the play ends, what begins?
Seeking conscientization: awareness leading to action.
— Sarah Thornton

Introduction

The importance of theatre is demonstrated by the prevalence and variety of forms it takes both locally and globally in society today.  Indeed, over the centuries theatre has played an important sociological and ideological role. It has been used both by communities and elites to propagate and spread ideas for the consolidation of society (Morality plays), for social improvement …

When is a war crime not a war crime? When, according to British officials, that war crime has been given a makeover as a “charitable act”.

The British state is being asked to account for its financial and moral support for a UK organisation accused of complicity in the ethnic cleansing of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homeland. So far, it appears determined to evade answering those questions.

The target of the campaign is the Jewish National Fund UK (JNF UK), which describes itself as “Britain’s oldest Israel charity”. Noting its role in “building Israel for …

Charter school promoters are skilled at promoting disinformation about charter schools and public schools; they have decades of experience.

One of the most worn-out forms of disinformation deployed repeatedly by charter school promoters is to pressure people into thinking that the problem is not that privately-operated charter schools run by unelected individuals and funded by the public exist, but that some charter schools are “high-quality” while others are “low quality,” and that the real issue is purging “low-quality” privately-operated charter schools while increasing the number of “high-quality” privately-operated charter schools.

In other words, not only is the public supposed to automatically accept …

It would be an understatement to claim that Bougainville, that blighted piece of autonomous territory in Papua New Guinea, had been through a lot.  Companies have preyed upon its environment with extractive hunger.  Wars and civil strife have beset its infrastructure and economy.  Some 900 kilometres from the PNG mainland, it has been what might be described as “a reluctant part” of that political compact, indigenously separate and stubborn.

An inglorious example of company misbehaviour remains Rio Tinto’s predations through its Panguna copper mine, of which it was a majority shareholder for 45 years.  Once it relinquished its share in …

Researchers have determined that the Vedic culture of India was the first global civilization. They have uncovered archeological and historical evidence indicating that the society which began millennia ago in the Indus Valley grew to encompass all of South Asia, then spread peacefully to many parts of the world.

Science and technology in ancient India were highly developed. “Some 1,000 years before Aristotle, the Vedic Aryans asserted that the earth is round and circles the sun. … 2,000 years before Pythagoras, philosophers in northern India understood that gravitation holds the solar system together, and therefore the sun, the most massive object, …

This was an election of two illusions.

The first helped persuade much of the British public to vote for the very epitome of an Eton toff, a man who not only has shown utter contempt for most of those who voted for him but has spent a lifetime barely bothering to conceal that contempt. For him, politics is an ego-trip, a game in which others always pay the price and suffer, a job he is entitled to through birth and superior breeding.

The extent to which such illusions now dominate our political life was highlighted two days ago with a jaw-dropping comment …

In the 1920s, the influential American intellectual Walter Lippman argued that the average person was incapable of seeing or understanding the world clearly and needed to be guided by experts behind the social curtain.  In a number of books he laid out the theoretical foundations for the practical work of Edward Bernays, who developed “public relations” (aka propaganda) to carry out this task for the ruling elites.  Bernays had honed his skills while working as a propagandist for the United States during World War I, and after the war he set himself up as a public relations counselor in New …

According to US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, the US will help “legitimate governments” in Latin America, in order to prevent protests from “morphing into riots”.

From what we are seeing this “legitimization” may be expanded to rest of the world. Because Washington-instigated destabilizing unrest goes on throughout the world. We may as well call it “Operation Condor 2.0 – Expanded”. It promises to become devastating, oppressive and murderous on all Continents. A transformation from whatever ‘freedom’ may have existed to neoliberal dictatorships bending towards neofascism.

The original “Operation Condor” was a campaign by the United States to bring ‘order’ into her …

US President Donald Trump told thousands of Israel’s supporters at a rally in Florida at the weekend that some American Jews “don’t love Israel enough”. It is certainly troubling that a US president insists a section of his country’s citizens – the Jewish population – be required to love a foreign state. But then Trump went further, muddying the waters about what constitutes “Israel”.

Echoing remarks made last month by Mike Pompeo, his secretary of state, he described the Jewish settlements in the West Bank as legal – thereby subverting a long-established principle of international law.

US Jews – and the rest …

From BBC TV New Year’s Eve retrospective, 31st December 2019:

“As we reflect on what was the most truly remarkable election campaign in living memory, indeed in all of recorded history, it is important to recognise the fact that we as human beings, as inhabitants of the planet Earth, have been fundamentally changed by the incredible events of December 2019. We are no longer the people we were before he came. When Jesus Christ revealed himself to us on December 6th, not long into the election campaign proper and whilst standing on top of a soapbox in the middle of a …

To those candidates who are putting themselves forward as MPs to become a voice within the UK Parliament — would you stand up for Julian Assange and for those who. in speaking truth, have the audacity to challenge the dialogue of power?
I am disappointed that my question relating to the arbitrary detention of Julian Assange was not presented at the Hustings meeting at Kirbymoorside. I consider it to be a question of such vital importance for all those who share a common belief in justice, truth and commitment to democracy and freedom of speech, so I have chosen to …

Bulgaria, it appears, is a captured state.  I’ll get to that in a minute.  I first heard about Jock Palfreeman, an Australian serving a lengthy prison sentence in Bulgaria, through a fellow Australian.  The context was a message from my friend Kamala that was straightforward, to the effect of, “would you write a song about Jock?”

I’m never entirely sure what the answer is going to be to a question like that, because it always depends on whether I can come up with something worth …

A nonprofit employer is not necessarily a better boss than a profit-making one.

That sad truth is reinforced by the experience of some 2,200 nurses at Albany Medical Center, who have been fighting for a contract since April 2018, when they voted for union representation.

Even that union recognition struggle proved exceptionally difficult.  The management at Albany Med?a vast, sprawling enterprise with roughly $2 billion in revenue and 9,500 workers, making it the New York capital district’s largest private employer?fought vigorously to prevent unionization.  As a result, three union organizing campaigns conducted between 2000 and 2003 were defeated, although …

West Point Professor Tim Bakken’s new book The Cost of Loyalty: Dishonesty, Hubris, and Failure in the U.S. Military traces a path of corruption, barbarism, violence, and unaccountability that makes its way from the United States’ military academies (West Point, Annapolis, Colorado Springs) to the top ranks of the U.S. military and U.S. governmental policy, and from there into a broader U.S. culture that, in turn, supports the subculture of the military and its leaders.

The U.S. Congress and presidents have ceded tremendous power to generals. …