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Is the belligerent U.S. enmity toward Islam an expression of the Jewish Zionist control of the United States? The second question is equally as pertinent as the title’s question. Recalling the Crusades, is it not legitimate to question whether we are witnessing a replay of Pope Urban II and over two centuries of pillaging European wars on the people of the Eastern Mediterranean under the pretext of liberating the “holy land” from Muslims? Is the analogy of a replay true or false?

To debate this issue, the hating of Islam could never be separated from the political and ideological conditions that …

If you want to learn real economics instead of neoliberal junk economics, read Michael Hudson’s books.

What you will learn is that neoliberal economics is an apology for the rentier class and the large banks that have succeeded in financializing the economy, shifting consumer spending power from the purchase of goods and services that drive the real economy to the payment of interest and fees to banks.

His latest book is J is for Junk Economics. It is written in the form of a dictionary, but the definitions give …

We live in strange and dangerous times. While Toronto thugs export their violence and extremist ideology to the USA and the Jewish Defence League works with neo-fascists to bash Muslims, the dominant Canadian media has placed a cone of silence over these disturbing developments.

At the recent American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) conference in Washington, D.C., a mob organized by JDL Toronto attacked counter-protesters. In the worst incident, a 55-year-old Palestinian-American teacher was punched, kicked and hit with flagpoles. Bruised across his body, Kamal Nayfeh needed 18 stitches around his eye.

Thornhill JDL member Yosef Steynovitz was charged …

50 years ago, on April 4, 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King reconnected with the radical black tradition by adding his voice of opposition to the murderous U.S. war machine unleashed on the people of Vietnam. For Dr. King, his silence on the war in Vietnam had become an irreconcilable moral contradiction. He declared that it was hypocritical for him to proclaim the superior value of non-violence as a life principle in the U.S. and remain silent as the U.S. government engaged in genocidal violence against a people whose only crime was to believe that they could escape the clutches of …

You could send Congress to space.

— Senator Ted Cruz, March 21, 2017

The NASA authorisation bill was another Trump huff and puff show, brimming with the usual air of minted if misplaced confidence.  “My fellow Americans, this week in the company of astronauts I was honoured to sign the NASA Transition Authorization Act right into law.”

The bill was meant to “renew our national commitment to NASA’s mission of exploration and discovery, and we continue a tradition that is as old as mankind.  We look to the heavens with wonder and curiosity.”  Ever hackneyed, always banal, and fastidiously clichéd – Trump’s touch …

With the Trump administration and the mainstream media gleefully beating the war drums for a military attack on North Korea, there’s crucial historical context missing from the corporate media coverage of this issue. I suspect most Americans have never heard of of Korea’s “Sunshine Policy” (1998-2008), aimed at eventual reunification of North and South Korea. We certainly heard about it here in New Zealand, thanks to the mass revolt in Bush’s diplomatic corps when he deliberately sabotaged this policy to isolate and provoke North Korea into amping up their their nuclear weapons program.

On learning of the Sunshine Policy, my …

The U.S. has been at war throughout much of its history. Some wars were blatantly wars of conquest; e.g., the Indian Wars (the near genocide of Native Americans) and the Mexican-American War. Whatever the real reasons for our military actions, they were usually sold to the public as being defensive in nature and this practice still goes on.

Some insiders have spoken more openly about reasons for wars. For example, in 1933 Major General Smedley Butler USMC, who served for 33 years and was one of the most highly decorated marines, stated:

War is just a racket. A racket is best described, …

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It is the one great certainty in life – the shared inevitability for all humanity, and yet death and dying is rarely discussed. In the west and Christian countries more broadly it’s largely feared, pushed away until the body falls into fragility, the urge to rest becomes overwhelming and we’re no longer bothered. Then death becomes a blessing, a ‘merciful release’ as a dear friend use to say.

Loss and Grief

There has recently been a death in the family. She had been ill with secondary lung cancer for over five years. It was said to be terminal and so it proved. …

Oddly, with Trump having come out against non-Anglo Saxons, Muslims, immigrants, people on welfare, foreign aid, government support of the Arts, environmentalists, ACA, media, civil rights groups, anti-nuke protesters, Meryl Streep, the progressive income tax, and Thomas Friedman, the neoliberals’ performing flea, he hasn’t attacked one of the Republicans’ favorite and time-worn whipping boys:  organized labor.

Unless I missed it (while campaigning for Jill Stein), other than a couple of backhanded swipes at the AFL-CIO, an almost pitifully inviting punching bag, Trump has refrained from showering his crude invectives on America’s unions. And given Trump’s proclivity for indulging in the “blame …

I envy you. You North Americans are very lucky. You are fighting the most important fight of all. You live in the belly of the beast.

— Dr. Ernesto “Che” Guevara

A birth certificate from somewhere between the beast’s belly and its beating heartland condemns me to the dubious distinction of being among the privileged 5% of humans who claim United States Citizenship. A population which demands the right to consume 25% of earth’s resources while billions of our fellow-humans go hungry. A shame it was wasted on me, for I’ve never been one to make my country proud. Basically, I’ve always …

There is no political grey area. There is only feigned pragmatism. Wet noodle-ism.

The grey, the political middle in the American constituency, or what is considered moderate positions, has long been equivocating endorsers of the status quo. In today’s world these are corporate democrats, the Hillary voters who are still buying her shtick, the Republicans who are debating going to the left because Trump is a step too far even though he represents exactly what Republicans have been endorsing for years, and lastly the people still sincerely standing for the national anthem but aware America might just have some problems.

This is …

This has been a tumultuous week for healthcare reform. First there was the pleasantly quick defeat of the American Health Care Act in the House of Representatives Friday afternoon. Then, that evening, Senator Sanders spoke at a town hall in Vermont with Senator Pat Leahy and Representative Peter Welch where he announced that he would introduce a Medicare for All bill. Medicare for All and Bernie supporters lit up social media with their excitement over the announcement. This should have been great news, but it wasn’t exactly.

Over the weekend, more information was revealed in a series of …

Russian track and field athletes, plus the entire Paralympics team, were banned from the Rio Games last summer.  This was based on the first McLaren report commissioned by the World Anti Doping Agency (WADA).

The second McLaren Report was published in December 2016 and immediately accepted by the western media and political establishment as “proof” of the accusations about institutional corruption and doping conspiracy in Russia.

The following “open letter” is a critical review of the second McLaren Report and accusations of ‘state sponsored doping’  in Russia which have been promoted in the West. 
*****
To: WADA President Sir Craig Reedie …