Faramarz Farbod speaks with Yves Engler, a Canadian activist and author of 13 books, including most recently Canada’s Long Fight Against Democracy and Stand on Guard for Whom? (A People’s History of Canadian Military). The conversation explores Canada’s role in the world, its relationship with US capitalism and imperialism, Canada’s policies toward Iran and Cuba, misperceptions of Canada in the US, and the concept of Canadianism.
Concrete Expressionism Makes Its Mark at the US mission to the UN Amid the Gaza Genocide. Mass action at Israeli mission — 28 reportedly arrested.
by Sam Husseini / July 2nd, 2025
Through the looking glass.
Mike Ferner, of Veterans For Peace, threw blood at the US mission to the UN today: “Here, United States, have some blood! You like shedding it all over the world so much? There you go! How about some blood? A small amount of the blood — the blood money — that corporations make taking us to war all the time. No. More. Killing. Please. Stop it.”
He and 28 others were reportedly arrested today. He had been participated in …
This Earth Day reflection urges us to confront two intertwined truths we too often ignore: our relationship to the environment and our treatment of the elderly.
Growing up in Ghana, I was taught by my history professor that true life stems from connection—that severance invites death. This idea mirrors ancient Egyptian cosmology, where a vast community of affection included the living, the dead, and the unborn. It was the sacred task of the living to remember those who came before and prepare the way for those yet to come. These connections weren’t limited to human beings—they extended to landscapes, waterways, trees, and the entire natural …
by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead / July 2nd, 2025
When a long train of abuses and usurpations… evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government.
—Declaration of Independence (1776)
We are now struggling to emerge from the wreckage of a constitutional republic, transformed into a kleptocracy (government by thieves), collapsing into kakistocracy (government by the worst), and enforced by a police state algogracy (rule by algorithm).
On July 1, CBS ‘News’ and Yahoo News headlined “Comparing the Medicaid cuts in House and Senate ‘big, beautiful bill’,” and presented news that was actually an analytical or “opinion” article which was 860 words of gobbledygook that enumerated minor differences between the House-passed and the Senate-passed versions of Trump’s budget-and-tax bill that he insists must be on his desk to sign on July 4th and that in BOTH versions increases spending on ‘Defense’ (aggression) and cuts billionaires’ taxes and cuts health care and disability coverage for …
The Assange Precedent and Revisiting the Espionage Act
by Binoy Kampmark / July 2nd, 2025
When campaigning in 2016, presidential candidate Donald Trump was delighted by leaked, hacked or disclosed material that wound its way to the digital treasure troves of WikiLeaks. The online publisher of government secrets had become an invaluable resource for Trump’s battering of the Democratic establishment hopeful, Hillary Clinton, with her nonchalant attitude to the security of email communications and a venal electoral strategy. “Very little pick-up by the dishonest media of incredible information provided by WikiLeaks,” he tooted on what was then Twitter. “So dishonest! Rigged system!” After winning the keys to the White House, he mysteriously forgot …
Growing up in Venezuela and now living in the United States, I’ve always felt caught between two independence days: July 4th and July 5th. Two celebrations. Two flags. Two very different ideas of what it means to be free.
In the U.S., the Fourth of July comes with fireworks, parades, and an almost unquestioned belief in the righteousness of the revolution it commemorates. However, in Venezuela, July 5th evokes different thoughts. It is not just a break from colonial rule but the beginning of a long, unfinished struggle to define freedom on our own terms. It’s not something we …
The budget-and-tax bill that President Trump has placed before America’s U.S. Senators and Representatives to pass by a majority in each of the two houses of Congress is a total repudiation of the first Republican U.S. President (and the only progressive Republican U.S. President), Abraham Lincoln, as will here be documented.
The Republican Party was basically started by Lincoln, who (if he had lived) would have repudiated and condemned virtually all of his Republican successors. The assassination that killed him transformed his Party into its exact opposite, in the most important ways.
Here is Lincoln speaking, so that the transformation wrought …
The aftermath of Operation Midnight Hammer, a strike by the US Air Force on three nuclear facilities in Iran authorized by President Donald Trump on June 22, was raucous and triumphant. But that depended on what company you were keeping. The mission involved the bombing of the Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant, the uranium-enrichment facility at Natanz, and the uranium-conversion facility in Isfahan. The Israeli Air Force had already attacked the last two facilities, sparing Fordow for the singular weaponry available for the USAF.
The Fordow site was of particular interest, located some eighty to a hundred metres underground and cocooned …
Orientation From the time of the Renaissance until representational art began to be challenged at the end of the 19th century, most of us think of secular art as consisting of separate disciplines – dance, theatre, singing, painting, sculpture and writing. The exception to this was the theatrical work of Richard Wagner, a German composer, theater director, essayist and conductor who understood that combining the arts can create altered states of consciousness in the German public. Speaking religiously, the Catholic church was and is a master at creating altered states …
The total liberation and unification of Africa under an All-African Socialist Government must be the primary objective of all Black revolutionaries throughout the world. It is an objective which, when achieved, will bring about the fulfillment of the aspirations of Africans and people of African descent everywhere. It will at the same time advance the triumph of the international socialist revolution, and the onward progress towards world communism, under which, every society is ordered on the principle of –from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.
— Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah
The initial statement from Australian government sources was one of constipated caution and clenching wariness. Senator Penny Wong’s time as head of the Department of Trade and Foreign Affairs has always been about how things come out, a process unsatisfyingly uncertain and unyielding in detail. Stick to the safe middle ground and sod the rest. These were the cautionary words of an Australian government spokesperson on June 22: “We have been clear that Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile program has been a threat to international peace and security.”
That insipid statement was in response to Operation Midnight Hammer, …
In dealing with both theoretical and practical points of view about war, at least six fundamental questions arise: 1) What is war?; 2) What types of war exist?; 3) Why do wars occur?; 4) What is the connection between war and justice?; 5) The question of war crimes?; and 6) Is it possible to replace war with the so-called “perpetual peace”?
Probably, up to today, the most used and reliable understanding of war is its short but powerful definition by Carl von Clausewitz:
It is standard practice for most charter school owners, operators, promoters, commentators, reporters, and even some “critics” of charter schools to habitually describe charter schools, word-for-word, as they are spelled out in state charter school laws (while often overlooking inconvenient or unflattering descriptions as well). Even those who try to be somewhat nuanced or grounded in their descriptions of charter schools engage in this pattern.
This is “paperism”—dogmatically repeating what appears on paper without deeply thinking about, let alone questioning, how charter schools actually operate in practice. Part of this stems from an ossified prejudice that says there is no gap …
Speaking at an anti-vaccine rally in 2022, Malone spread dangerous falsehoods about mRNA Covid-19 vaccines: “These genetic vaccines can damage your children. They may damage their brains, their heart, their immune system and their ability to have children in the future. Many of these damages cannot be repaired.”
By the way, besides being a pro-pharma propaganda rag, Wired magazine appears to have ties with, shall we say, “the intelligence community”
When teachers’ union president Ray Cummings told the superintendent that her plan could put students in danger, he brought together problems of excluding workers from critical decisions and schemes to use climate disasters to privatize public schools.
On May 16, 2025 a tornado tore through predominantly Black north St. Louis, killing 5, and leaving thousands of homes, businesses and schools either destroyed or with roofs ripped off. A month later, many buildings still had blue tarps over the top as the only way to protect them from hot summer downpours.
Without consulting the teachers’ union, School Superintendent Millicent …
Science is under attack throughout the world. Meanwhile, there’s substantial scientific evidence that the planetary system is turning unstable. This may not strike most people as a big problem because ‘life goes on,’ an attitude that’s more, and more, prevalent and one of the factors behind anti-science attitudes. But, if in fact the planetary system is becoming unstable, if it is true, life will be hell.
Johan Rockström, joint director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research/Germany, internationally recognized for his work on global sustainability, recently gave a 30-minute speech that specifically addresses stability of the Earth system. This is …
he confidence trickster was at it again on his visit to The Hague, reluctantly meeting members of the overly large family that is NATO. President Donald Trump was hoping to impress upon all present that allies of the United States, whatever inclination and whatever their domestic policy, should spend mightily on defence, inflating the margins of sense and sensibility against marginal threats. Never mind the strain placed on the national budget over such absurd priorities as welfare, health or education.
The marvellous irony in this is that much of the budget increases have been prompted by Trump’s perceived unreliability and …
Various domesticated bird species usually run around the farm, including guinea fowl. We love our guinea fowl because they spend their days eating bugs: including ticks, flies, and other noxious pests. Guinea fowl are funny creatures, with colorful bald heads, speckled feathers, long legs, and oddly shaped bodies. We often view them as comic relief as they run around squawking and scurrying from here to there. They like to hang out under the horses, snapping up bugs that the horses disturb as they graze. Guinea fowl are a very …
A typical initial take on the totally unexpected landslide win, by the self-declared socialist Zohran Mamdani, of the Democratic nomination for (and thus almost certainly) the Mayoralty of NYC, was Eric Levitz’s June 25 Vox News article “What Democrats can (and can’t) learn from Zohran Mamdani’s triumph,” which said that
Some on the left have suggested that Mamdani’s victory proves Democrats do not need to moderate their party’s image to compete for national power. This argument does not make much sense. To secure a Senate majority in 2026, Democrats will need to win …
Bill Moyers, the esteemed journalist, presidential adviser and philanthropist, died on Thursday at age 91 in New York. In the early 2000s, Moyers played a pivotal role in creating and promoting Free Press and delivered a series of powerful appearances at the National Conference for Media Reform.
“You will search the dominant media largely in vain for journalists that tell the truth about the fading of the American dream,” Moyers told a crowd of more than 3,000 people assembled at the 2008 conference in Minneapolis. …
As the second Trump administration is dispatching its minions to stalk US streets, smashing citizens’ First Amendment rights, in partnership with unregulated Big Tech, it also surveils online, helping itself to citizens’ personal identifiable information (PII).
In the age of surveillance capitalism, information is a hot commodity for corporations and governments, precipitating a multi-billion-dollar industry that not only profits from the collection and commodification of citizens’ PII, but also puts individuals, businesses, organizations, and governments at risk for cyberattacks and data theft.
Social security numbers, location details, health information, student …
by Kelly Nelson and Roger D. Harris / June 26th, 2025
Traditionally regarded as safe for visitors, Costa Rica has recently become Central America’s second most dangerous country, with 400 homicides recorded so far this year. The violence is attributed to an epidemic of drug-related crime, as the country has become a major staging post for narcotics smuggled to Europe. Costa Rica just detained a former security minister and ex-judge for drug trafficking following a US extradition request. Even the US State Department warns of the danger of “armed robbery, homicide, and sexual assault” in Costa Rica.
This month the violence claimed a Nicaraguan victim, Roberto …
No to NATO protest at The Hague, June 22, 2025. Photo credit: Xinhua News
At this week’s NATO summit in The Hague, leaders announced an alarming new goal: push military spending to 5% of nations’ GDP by 2035. Framed as a response to rising global threats, particularly from Russia and terrorism, the declaration was hailed as a historic step. But in truth, it represents a major step backward—away from addressing the urgent needs of people and the planet, and toward an arms race …
Over the past few years, the Europeans’ confidence in the current governments of the EU countries has been plunging. This trend is foremost caused by the unpopular policy of the ruling circles. They have made it clear to the population that total militarization requiring unprecedented $800 billion from the already shaky budget of the EU, as well as enhancing military and financial aid to Ukraine at the expense of the European taxpayers are now their top priorities. Earlier this year, the Netherlands and Sweden announced their aid packages of …
It was a blast to a past wiped out by amnesia, social media and mental decrepitude. Andrew Hastie, Australia’s opposition minister for home affairs, had been moved by an idea: greater transparency was needed regarding the US military buildup in Australia. It was an inspiration overdue by some decades, but it was worthwhile in its unaccustomed sensibility.
In an interview with the Insiders program on the ABC, Hastie proved startling in proposing that Australia needed “to have a much more mature discussion about our relationship with the United States. I think we need greater transparency.” He proceeded to recall the …
“Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.” — The Book Of Proverbs, 16:18
“CEASEFIRE IS IN EFFECT!” Trump shouts in upper case impotent rage into the pixel abyss.
To bring about and sustain peace, the leaders of empires must surrender the illusion that they can maintain control of people and events in far-flung places. It is imperative, an empire’s elites let go of their domination compulsions and live by the principles inherent to compassion. Hopeless and risible fantasy, huh?
Trump, who cannot quote a single line of scripture, hero to Christian evangelicals, …
