The Eighteenth Brumière of Louis Napoleon (1852), the great philosopher Karl Marx famously stated the history repeated itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.
This prophecy is evident today with Russia Gate and the New Cold War.
The first cold war was a genuine tragedy which resulted in the deaths of millions of civilians in proxy wars and waste in human resources in the waging of a nuclear arms race between the United States and Soviet Union. There was at least some semblance of legitimacy in that the Soviet Union lived up to its moniker as an evil empire in some aspects, …
Environmentalist Dr Rosemary Mason has just written to the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), the Department for Food, Environment and Rural Affairs (Defra) and the Chemicals Regulation Division (HSE) in the UK claiming that the glyphosate-based weed killer Roundup has poisoned her nature reserve in South Wales and is also poisoning people across the UK (she includes herself here, as she struggles with a neurodegenerative condition). She notes that the widespread spraying of glyphosate went against the advice of directive 2009/128/EC of the European parliament but was carried out at the behest of the agrochemicals industry.
Kashmir is glorified the world over as paradise on the earth for its scenic beauty, serene valleys, calm and fresh waters, and colourful flora and fauna. But, beyond the gaze of this matrix lies a narrative of pains, sufferings, and broken promises. Caught in the whirlpool of hypersensitive political environs, the Kashmir imbroglio refuses to abate and has assumed multiple forms of uncertainty and chaos with the passage of time.
Many theories have been put forth by the political pundits within and outside the valley, but those theories go astray …
As social divisions deepen, polarities spread, extremists rise, anger and abuse grows, is growing, is being legitimized, excused. Lies are sanctioned, truth dismissed. The abuser armed, flag-waving, ignorant, spewing vitriol and poisoning the collective psychological space, weaving a brittle web of insecurity.
There are multiple forms of abuse, from exploitation as in the case of modern day slavery, to torture and sexual violence including pornography, insults, degradation, online and off. The motive is consistent, inflicting pain, physical or psychological, and in many cases both, one leading to the other, oftentimes laying a lifelong seed of suffering and trauma.
And chlorpyrifos, atrazine* continue to cream the brains of fetuses and young kids because America is all about gender neutral pronouns but no life-saving actions
by Paul Haeder / July 26th, 2019
Charlie Hill, Oneida-Mohawk-Cree: “A Redneck told me to go back where I came from, so I put a tipi in his backyard.”
What exactly is the size and shape and breadth of that infamous straw that broke the camel’s back? One thousand more African-American youth murdered by cops this year in US of A? One million more people this year leaving homelands because of climate change? One billion more people making less than $2 a day? Flotilla of icebergs floating down the Baja coast? Epstein-Trump-Clinton-Woody Allen on tape raping boys and girls?
Does the Democratic Party know how to defeat the foul-mouthed, bigoted, self-enriching crony capitalist Donald Trump? Trump pretends to be a populist. In reality he does the bidding of Wall Street instead of Main Street and weakens or repeals governmental health and safety programs.
Defeating corrupt, disgraceful, disastrous Donald should be easy. He is, on many documented fronts, the worst and most indictable president in U.S. history. Moreover, Trump is personally obscene and is a walking tortfeasor against women. He is a politician who doesn’t read and doesn’t think. He …
[U]nder existing conditions, private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information (press, radio, education). It is thus extremely difficult, and indeed in most cases quite impossible, for the individual citizen to come to objective conclusions and to make intelligent use of his political rights.
— Albert Einstein
While the professional class minority employed in sustaining the multi-million dollar Russiagate fiasco has financially cleaned up, one has to sympathize with the slightly larger minority of innocent citizens who missed their therapy appointments in order …
Young social workers marching in the plaza of the revolution on May Day
Today marks the 66th anniversary of the simultaneous assaults on the Moncada Barracks in Santiago de Cuba and the military garrison in Bayamo led by Fidel Castro and less than 200 combatants in what is known as the impossible storming of the heavens against the brutal U.S. puppet dictator Fulgencio Bautista, who in the 7 years before the Revolution, carried out a reign of misery and poverty punctuated by torturing and executing 20,000 Cubans.
I have previously written a summary of the interrelated psychological, sociological, political-economic, military, nuclear, ecological and climate threats to human survival on Earth which threaten human extinction by 2026.
Rather than reiterate the evidence in the above article, I would like to add to it by focusing attention on three additional threats – geoengineering, medical vaccinations and electromagnetic radiation – that are less well-known (largely because the evidence is officially suppressed and only made available by conscientious investigative activists) and which, either separately or in combination with other threats, significantly increase the prospect of extinction for humans and most (and …
Lush mangroves, the spray of emerald water from the Timor Sea, the sense of the untainted: the journey to the Tiwi Islands, some 80 kilometres north of Darwin, was crudely advertised as one of the Things to Do in the Northern Territory. “Take the opportunity to have a truly fantastic day out. Visit Bathurst Island for this special day and a chance to view and buy Tiwi Island artwork and watch the grand footy final.”
The ferry service seemed a sloppy operation. Locals heading back to the Tiwi Islands knew something visitors did not: do not bother pre-purchasing tickets. Do …
Planting billions of trees across the world is by far the cheapest and most efficient way to tackle the climate crisis. So states a Guardian article, citing a new analysis published in the journal Science. The author explains:
As trees grow, they absorb and store the carbon dioxide emissions that are driving global heating. New research estimates that a worldwide planting programme could remove two-thirds of all the emissions that have been pumped into the atmosphere by human activities, a figure the scientists describe as “mind-blowing”.
For skeptics who reject the global warming thesis, reforestation also addresses the critical problems …
Locke (as the commentator said) “praises money as probably no one prior and after him,” because Locke’s 1689 Second Treatise on Government, Sections 49 & 50, asserted that only by means of money, “Man will begin presently to enlarge his Possessions” and thereby start to get beyond the crudest agriculturally based economy. Locke then said in …
Jeff Halper, a leader of the anti-demolitions movement, discusses the destruction of Palestinian homes, along with the history and politics that allows this violation of international law to continue.
He has been glorified as a hero and obeyed as a ruler, but fundamentally he is always the same. His most fantastic triumphs have taken place in our own time, among people who set great store by the idea of humanity. He is not yet extinct, nor will he ever be until we have the strength to see him clearly, whatever disguise he assumes and whatever his halo of glory. The survivor is mankind’s worst evil, its curse and perhaps its doom. Is it possible to escape him, even now at this last moment?
The British-flagged tanker “Steno Impero”, heading for Saudi Arabia, was seized on Friday, 19 July 2019, by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), in the Strait of Hormuz, after it rammed an Iranian fishing boat, whose distress call it ignored.
The tanker was taken to an Iranian port, because it was not complying with “international maritime laws and regulations,” Iran’s Revolutionary Guard said. Most importantly, the ship did not respond to several warnings from helicopters and Iranian boats, as apparently it turned off its transponder. How could that happen under control of professional sailors, other than as an open provocation.
Tariq ZabaniaSeven-year-old Tariq Zabania from Al-Khalil (Hebron) was killed on the spot when an Israeli Jewish settler ran his car over him on July 15. Little Tariq’s photograph, lying face down on the road, was circulated on social media. His untimely death is heartbreaking.
Tariq’s innocent blood must not go in vain. For this to happen, we are morally obliged to understand the nature of Jewish settler violence, which cannot be viewed in isolation from the inherent racism in Israeli society as a …
The BBC World Service took its listeners to the English cathedral town of Ely, set in picturesque Cambridgeshire, during the course of a hot July 23 in an effort to take the pulse of the country. Well, at least that particular, erratic pulse. It found, for the most part, a certain enthusiasm for Boris Johnson, the fop-haired, bumbling wonder of the Conservatives, a quite literally inventive journalist, former magazine editor and Mayor of London who has become the new prime minister of Britain.
One word kept cropping up in discussions like an endangered species searching for a bullet: enthusiasm. Plain, sprightly, …
As I sit on the small balcony on the top floor of an old house in the working class neighborhood of Alfama in Lisbon, Portugal, it is early evening, the time for wine and voices wafting on the fragrant breeze through the twisting cobble-stoned streets. The National Pantheon (Panteao Nacional) stares me in the face. I stare back, and then look up to the heavens and to the cross that is silhouetted against the blue sky. It crowns the Pantheon’s massive dome. On its façade stand three statues, only one of which I can see clearly. She is Santa Engracia, …
The 2020 presidential election in the United States may be the most critical political event in human history. At no time in the history of global civilization have human beings faced existential crises on a global scale. Regional crises of the past 10,000 years reveal that economic regimes have often outstripped local and regional resources, but these crises remained regional in scope. Today, however, the excesses of global capitalism have driven all of humanity to the brink of ecological and civilizational collapse.
Our addiction to fossil fuels has significantly warmed the global atmosphere and accelerated the loss of polar ice caps …
I felt shaky and uneasy all day, preparing for this talk.
— Jehad Abusalim, a Palestinian from the territory of Gaza
Jehad Abusalim, a Palestinian now living in the United States, grew up in Gaza. In Chicago last week, addressing activists committed to breaking the siege of Gaza, he held up a stack of 31 papers. On each page were names of 1,254 Palestinians living in Gaza who had been killed in just one month of Israel’s “Operation Protective Edge” attacks five years ago.
“I felt shaky and uneasy all day preparing for this talk,” he told the group. He described his dismay when, looking …
The strategy is clear. Whether Trump confronts Sleepy Joe, Crazy Bernie, Pocahontas or some other Democratic opponent in the presidential race, he will target the “Squad” of newly elected freshman congresswomen Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib and Ayanna Pressley.
Trump has decided to (1) depict them as the real face of the Democratic Party; (2) attack them as socialists and radical leftists; (3) misrepresent their criticisms of Israel as egregious anti-Semitism, and (4) win the 2020 election by posing as the savior who revived the U.S. economy versus the …
Evidence suggests he pressured the Brits to seize an Iranian ship. Why? More war.
by Gareth Porter / July 23rd, 2019
The Panama registered Grace 1 tanker after British Royal Marines from 42 Commando took part in the seizure of an Iranian oil tanker in the Gibraltar Strait. Photograph: Ministry of Defence/RAF/EPAThe notice required the Gibraltar government to detain any such ship for at least 72 hours if it entered “British Gibraltar Territorial Waters.” Significantly, however, the video statement by Gibraltar’s chief minister Fabian Picardo on July 4 explaining the seizure of the Grace 1 made no such claim and avoided any mention of …
Wouldn’t you think the corporate media would be interested in the US embassy’s reaction to the appointment of a new Canadian foreign minister? Especially if that reaction was to claim Ottawa had decided to adopt an “America First” foreign policy? Wouldn’t some big newspaper or TV station, dedicated to telling the truth about what our governments, corporations and other institutions are doing, find it noteworthy enough to report the existence of an embassy memo claiming Justin Trudeau appointed Chrystia Freeland foreign minister in order to promote the interests of President Donald Trump?
In one concise statement, Dan Kovalik sums up the criminal — if self-serving and for now effective — foreign policy of the U.S. across the planet:
The US appears to be intentionally spreading chaos throughout strategic portions of the world, leaving virtually no independent state standing to protect their resources, especially oil, from Western exploitation. And, this goal is being achieved with resounding success, while also achieving the subsidiary goal of enriching the behemoth military-industrial complex.
A divided Korea, a decimated Vietnam, endless war in Afghanistan, a barely functional Iraq, a destroyed Libya, ongoing destruction of Syria and Venezuela, relentless attacks and incipient war on Iran, …
Again, The West Tries to Destroy China, Using Religion and Terror
by Andre Vltchek / July 22nd, 2019
Important note: The Uyghurs have managed to create a very old and deep culture. Most of them are good, law abiding citizens of the PRC. Also the great majority of followers of Sunni Islam are peaceful people. This work is addressing terrible problems related to extremism and terrorism, most of them crafted and then fueled by the West and its allies. The goal is to damage China. The victims live in various countries.
***** Uyghurs man in Istanbul
They are everywhere, where their Western, Gulf states and Turkish …
The greatest fear of those holding the most power and wealth is that they will lose their exalted position in the world. They will resist any changes to the grossly unequal and unjust class structure that causes grievous damage to so many people; and to the planet itself. Even the threat of real change must be crushed. This, in a nutshell, underpins the astonishing and relentless campaign to stop Jeremy Corbyn, a moderate leftist, from ever becoming Prime Minister.
On July 10, BBC broadcast an episode of Panorama that purported to be an impartial investigation into the loaded question, ‘…
The Fourth Estate, that historical unelected grouping of society’s scrutineers, has become something of a rabble, and, as a confederacy of strewn dunces and the ongoing compromised, is ripe for analysis. An essential premise in the work of WikiLeaks was demonstrating, to a good, stone-throwing degree, how media figures and practitioners had been bought by the state or the corporate sector, unwittingly or otherwise. At the very least, the traditionalists had swallowed their reservations and preferred to proclaim, rather unconvincingly, that they were operating with freedom to scrutinise and question, facing down the rebels from the WikiLeaks set.
concentration camp: a guarded compound for the detention or imprisonment of aliens, members of ethnic minorities, political opponents, etc., especially any of the camps established by the Nazis prior to and during World War II for the confinement and persecution of prisoners. ((Dictionary.com))
The people seeking a new life in the United States are mainly an ethnic group commonly referred to as Latinos. Many of these migrants/asylum seekers are being fenced in detention centers with decidedly spartan conditions. Ergo, the affixation of the term concentration camp to the ICE detention centers seems unassailable …
by Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers / July 21st, 2019
“If there isn’t justice for the people, there won’t be peace for the governor.” Protesters in Old San Juan on Tuesday call for the resignation of Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rosselló, who has vowed to remain in office (Thais Llorca/EFE/Zuma Press)
This weekend marks the 40th anniversary of the Sandanista Revolution in Nicaragua. Hundreds of thousands of people celebrated in the streets of Managua Friday night. This past week, mass protests erupted in Puerto Rico over long term corruption and subversion of democracy. A general strike …
