Meet Joe Black (1998) is basically a 2 1/2 hr anecdote, where an angelic Brad Pitt, the angel of death, comes and saves the day by impersonating an IRS agent investigating and exposing the vile young suitor Drew, as Brad takes fiancee Allison’s father (Anthony Hopkins) to heaven. Brad quotes money-grubbing Drew: You can’t avoid ‘death and taxes’.
Yes, Death gets us all in the end, smokers and nonsmokers, smokers statistically earlier but not nearly everyone, and not all that much sooner in any case. And there are lots more causes of lung …
What a nasty thing it has turned out to be. It involved subversion – Israel’s desire to ignore international tenets of humanitarian aid in favour of expediency and security – and the naked show of violent desperation. Via the shoddy US- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation company, distribution of necessaries in the Gaza Strip through the organisation’s delivery arm, Safe Reach Solutions (SRS), has been inadequate and selective.
SRS is a disreputable outfit, one lacking a résumé in humanitarian aid. Its prowess, rather, lies in the realm of military intelligence. A report from Ynet News describes …
Our society doesn’t always stand out for its values, but damn well does for its production values. There may be nothing more powerful in the world than a film — or even a commercial — with high production values. So I’m deeply appreciative when a well-made movie actually says something that needed saying, when you can watch the closing credits feeling wiser, rather than dirtier, more aware of what’s worst in the world and yet inspired to change it, rather than outraged at the normalization of violence or stupidity.
In the early 1970s I joined a community organization called Radical Psychiatry in Berkeley, California. The purpose of the group was to help people in the community who were suffering with moderate to severe mental problems so they did not have to go to a traditional psychiatrist or use drugs. As I recall, these community meetings were once or twice a week for a couple of hours for each meeting. The staff was organized as a collective and this collective had its own weekly meetings to discuss how …
As summer approaches, the French government and its media echo chambers are once again launching an Islamophobic offensive. By seizing on a newly released report about the so-called ‘influence’ of the Muslim Brotherhood, they are using a crude pretext to target and suppress any visible expression of Islam in society. This comes in the wake of the brutal murder of 22-year-old Aboubakar Cissé, a Malian-born carpenter who was stabbed 57 times while praying in a mosque — a horrific hate crime. We are republishing this article from last summer as a stark testament to the …
A public opinion poll in 2023 found that 64% of likely United States voters thought that our government should officially recognize the Island of Taiwan as an independent nation, while a poll this year found that 82% of them believe that Taiwan “is” independent. A few months ago the U.S. State Department removed a line from their website stating that the US does not support Taiwan independence, triggering a rebuke from Beijing that this “sends a seriously erroneous message to the separatist forces” in Taiwan. Consistent with such views among U.S. citizens and State Department officials, the …
The ghosts of Paul Weyrich, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, the OG’s (Old Guard) of the religious right are dancing these days. Since his inauguration, Trump has rewarded his religious right allies with executive orders creating a “Religious Liberty Commission” and a “Task Force to Eliminate Anti-Christian Bias.”
“Together they will put the force of the federal government behind the conspiracy theories, false persecution claims, and reactionary policy proposals of the Christian nationalist movement, including its efforts to …
by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead / May 29th, 2025
If one company or small group of people manages to develop godlike digital superintelligence, they could take over the world. At least when there’s an evil dictator, that human is going to die. But for an AI, there would be no death. It would live forever. And then you’d have an immortal dictator from which we can never escape.
—Elon Musk
The Deep State is not going away. It’s just being replaced.
Replaced not by a charismatic autocrat or even a shadowy bureaucracy, but by artificial intelligence (AI)—unfeeling, unaccountable, and immortal.
As we stand on the brink of a new technological order, the …
A short guide on how to engineer a genocide by starvation and ethnic cleansing:
1. Choose your moment. Ok, you’ve been ethnically cleansing, occupying, oppressing, and killing your neighbours for decades. The international courts have ruled your actions illegal. But none of that will matter the moment your neighbours retaliate by attacking you. Don’t worry. The Western media can be relied on to help out here. They will be only too ready to pretend that history began on the day you were attacked.
Fragmented by nationalism and distracted by power games, humanity stands at a turning point. We face global crises that threaten our survival, yet we remain without a common purpose rooted in solidarity and mutual care. This—our failure to recognize our shared fate—is the true crisis of our time.
Every nation clings to its sovereign right to act in its interest: to strike deals, close borders, and extract value from the global system. This is not new, but it is increasingly dangerous. The Global South strives to reclaim agency from …
As the world was readying for the Second World War, the insightful humane Austrian author Stefan Zweig made the following glum observation: “Openly and flagrantly, certain countries express their will to expand and make preparations for war. The politics of rearmament is pursued in broad daylight and at breakneck speed; every day you read in the papers arguments in favour of armaments expansion, the idea that it reduces unemployment and provides a boost to the stock exchange.”
This is not so different from the approval by European Union countries on May 27 of a €150 billion loan program known …
The pro-government alliance achieved a sweeping victory in Venezuela’s May 25 elections, while a fractured opposition suffered losses. Western media distorted the results – spinning low turnout claims, ignoring the role of illegal US sanctions, and offering selective sympathy to elite opposition figures.
Opposition fractures, pro-government consolidates
At stake for the 54 contesting Venezuelan political parties were seats for 285 National Assembly deputies, 24 state governors, and 260 regional legislators.
The pro-government coalition won all but one of the governorships, taking three of the four states previously held by the opposition. The loss of the state of Barinas was particularly symbolic, for this …
Last Thursday, May 22, a coalition named Veterans and Allies Fast for Gaza kicked off a 40-day fast outside the United Nations in Manhattan in protest against the U.S.-backed Israeli genocide in Gaza. Military veterans and allies pledged to fast for 40 days on only 250 calories per day, the amount recently reported as what the residents of Gaza are enduring.
The fasters are demanding:
1) Full humanitarian aid to Gaza under UN authority, and
2) No more U.S. weapons to Israel.
Seven people are fasting from May 22 to June 30 outside the U.S. Mission to the United Nations, where they are …
The collective “The West” is now not ONLY supporting (and the U.S. Government itself is supplying virtually all of the bombs, ammunition, weapons, and satellite intelligence to) Israel’s (and America’s) genocide against the formerly 2.2 million Gazans, but also is making life hell for journalists who honestly report this and other ugly realities that The West is perpetrating, such as in order to achieve its dream ever since 25 July 1945 to capture Russia (add it to their empire). Furthermore, it started supplying weapons and training to …
Western journalists – having promoted Israel’s lies for more than a year and half – have grown entirely insensible to their active collusion in genocide.
Israel’s claim that Hamas is “stealing aid” is so preposterous no serious journalist or politician ought to give it any kind of airing – yet there it is continuously cropping up in the coverage of Gaza.
How do I know Israel’s claim is utterly worthless? For this simple reason:
Israel has a fleet of surveillance drones constantly hovering over the …
by Aaron Kirshenbaum and Jasmine Butler / May 27th, 2025
At the core of most demands for the US empire, we’re asking for kindergarten ethics– is that a stretch? It’s what the climate movement teaches about our relationship with the Earth: not to take and take and extract and extract because we have a reciprocal relationship. For most of its history, the US has largely ignored this, and that remains the case when it comes to the string of accusations leveled against the current president of Burkina Faso, Ibrahim Traoré. And if all of us– the climate movement, peace lovers, people with basic compassion–want to save the planet, we …
On April 30, 2025, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) heard the much-awaited and much-discussed case of St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual Charter School v. Drummond, which originated in Oklahoma.1
On May 22, 2025, less than a month later, and without issuing an actual opinion, the SCOTUS delivered a 4-4 split ruling on the landmark case, which effectively leaves intact the lower court’s decision (in Oklahoma) that blocked the establishment of the online K-12 religious charter school. While it is not known how the eight Justices voted, it is likely that three “liberal” Justices …
Citing as being critical to protection of the United States’ defense, and a need to punish China’s alleged use of forced labor, U.S. government policies have restricted dozens of Chinese companies from operating on U.S. soil, exporting to the U.S, and receiving materials, including advance computer chips from U.S. and allied sources. All of these directives are a masquerade, so far from reality that they need no discussion. They have one purpose ─ to deter the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) from becoming the leading economic power and submerging the U.S. to a subordinate position. Previous articles — …
On April 22, militants from The Resistance Front (TRF), a group accused by Indian authorities of being linked to the Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorist group, slaughtered 26 tourists in the resort town of Pahalgam in the Indian administered portion of Kashmir. This came as a rude shock to the Indian military establishment, which decided that rebellious sentiments in the region had declined. (In March 2025, an assessment concluded that a mere 77 active militants were busying themselves on India’s side of the border.)
The feeling of cooling tensions induced an air of complacency. Groups such as the TRF, along with a …
As-of now, 80% of the 100 U.S. Senators — that’s 80 U.S. Senators — are co-sponsors of the bill that was written by the U.S. Senate’s arch-neoconservative (i.e., pro-MIC or pro Military Industrial Complex) U.S. Senator, Lindsey Graham (R-SC), to blockade shipments of Russian oil, and to punish all nations which refuse to comply with the blockade. This bill is written as an economic, not a military, blockade; it is a sanctions bill with secondary sanctions (or “penalties”) against nations that violate the U.S. sanctions against Russia. However, the UK and EU are now …
As Stacy Bannerman has been telling us for decades, the U.S. military has a domestic violence problem. So do some other — and I strongly suspect all — militaries.
The Pentagon has long known about the significantly increased risk of domestic violence by combat-exposed troops, yet has failed to properly inform military members or their families, and has violated laws mandating reporting on the problem.
This lack of transparency and breach of legal responsibilities has left thousands of spouses, children, caregivers, parents, partners, and veterans dead, injured, suffering emotional distress and damages, and often struggling in silence without …
When you think of Feb. 14 do you think of Valentine’s Day? On Feb. 14, 2022, the University of Texas at Austin Faculty Council adopted a fateful resolution affirming that “educators, not politicians, should make decisions about teaching and learning” (doc. …
Here was another chance – at least as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu saw it – of threading one set of events with another. It’s all part of the Israeli security state’s playbook: any killing of Jews or its citizens, wherever they might be, will have a causal link to rabid, drooling antisemitism. To protest ethnic cleansing against Palestinians, dispossession, starvation as a tool of war, and the conscious infliction of humanitarian catastrophe on a population is equivalent to believing the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. These accusations and charges are seen as blood libels on the Jewish people, …
Tesla was once the undisputed king of electric vehicles but BYD is now the King. In this video, we break down how China’s BYD dethroned Elon Musk’s Tesla to become the world’s #1 EV manufacturer. From dominating domestic sales to overtaking Tesla in global deliveries, BYD’s meteoric rise is reshaping the future of the auto industry — and it’s all part of China’s larger plan to lead in green technology.
