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In autumn 2002 the Observer newspaper’s correspondent Ed Vulliamy found confirmation of a terrible truth many of us already suspected. In a world-exclusive, he persuaded Mel Goodman, a former senior CIA official who still had security clearance at the Agency, to go on record that the CIA knew there were no WMD in Iraq. Everything the US and British governments were telling us to justify the coming attack on Iraq were lies.

Then something even more extraordinary happened. The Observer failed to print the story. In his book Flat Earth News, Nick Davies recounts that Vulliamy, one of the Observer’s most trusted reporters, …

Where does anti-Black racism among Toronto police come from? Can we trace discrimination today, such as disproportionate police carding, to past events when this bias developed?

Based on research for my new book Canada in Africa: 300 Years of Aid and Exploitation, I’d say yes.

While the most obvious source of this racism is the legacy of justifications for enslaving Africans, Toronto has made a distinct contribution as well. For example, dozens of Torontonians participated in British expeditions to subjugate various parts of Africa and the conquest was generally cloaked in the rhetoric of superior and inferior “races”.

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The outlawing of narcotic drugs at the start of the Twentieth Century, the turning of the matter from public health to social control, coincided with American’s imperial Open Door policy and the belief that the government had an obligation to American industrialists to create markets in every nation in the world, whether those nations liked it or not.

Civic institutions, like public education, were required to sanctify this policy, while “security” bureaucracies were established to ensure the citizenry conformed to the state ideology. Secret services, both public and private, were likewise established to promote the expansion of private American economic interests …

Weinberg’s polemics on positivism are to be found in a chapter of his Dreams of a Final Theory characteristically entitled “Against philosophy”. He polemicizes there against philosophy in general, making some negative judgments on eminent thinkers of the era of bourgeois progress and on Marxism. His observations are one-sided, to say the least, but deserve attention as being representative of weaknesses shared by many leading physicists, such as their inadequate acquaintance with philosophy, which prevent them from assimilating progressive thought and Marxism. We shall comment them briefly in this final part.

Weinberg is a physicist interested in the philosophical foundations of …

It’s the morning of the twelfth day that I haven’t been eating. The only things I’ve been putting into my body are lots of water, salt, potassium and a multi-vitamin.

How do I feel? Weak, very weak, as do most of the others—about 15 as I write—who are also fasting and intend to do so until September 25, the day after the people’s pope speaks to Congress. 11 of the 15 are also, like me, on the twelfth day of water-only.

We’re physically weak mainly because of the water-only diet but also because we’ve been conducting this hunger strike on the sidewalk …

Since the demolition of the World Trade Center in New York City in 2001, the volume written about a so-called New World Order has been enormous. For those who mark the beginning of the New World Order in progress with the spectacle of Manhattan skyscrapers collapsing, this order of things or re-ordering of things is a relatively new phenomenon. It has become an obsession among those who for the first time seem to have noticed that something was not well with the world. But isn’t this really a matter of perspective?

Who remembers the new world order that began seventy years …

Dr. Binoy Kampmark discusses the political situation that has led to the fourth prime minister of Australia since 2013.

https://youtu.be/Gwt0MPoX72U

Seven months ago, UK Prime Minister David Cameron lamented the “sickening murder” of Jordanian pilot Moaz al-Kaseasbeh by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). President Barack Obama also decried the “viciousness and barbarity” of the act. Obama even declared al-Kaseasbeh’s murder demonstrated ISIS’s “bankrupt” ideology. In his home country, al-Kaseasbeh was remembered as a “hero” and a “martyr” by government officials. The killing was seen by the Western coalition and allied Arab monarchies fighting ISIS as a symbol of the evilness of their enemies, which necessitated their own righteous military intervention.

The act that precipitated such a strong …

It was the ideal audience for Donald Trump. American Airlines center was packed with 20,000 enthralled Texans who seemed to hang on every word of boast, harangue, and self-aggrandizement that passed through Trump’s lips. They whooped and hollered through 90 minutes of Trump speech-making. In scattered and rather loose references to issues, Trump skillfully intermixed attributes of puerile boasting about his skills, mocking his opponents and their cluelessness, and lionizing his “oft-demonstrated” business skills.

The biggest winner was his condemnation of American immigration policy while characterizing all “illegals” as leaving a large swatch of murder, rape, and pillage in their wake. …

Politics is the art of compromise. Successful politicians rarely give ultimatums because doing so would limit their ability to navigate complex issues. In 2012, President Obama misread the complexity of the crisis in Syria. He drew a “red line” for President Assad: the use of chemical weapons would have “enormous consequences” and would “change [his] calculus” on American military intervention in Syria’s civil war. A year later, someone used weaponized chemicals, killing hundreds of civilians. Although no investigation was conducted to identify the perpetrator at that time, the U.S., pressured by its regional allies like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey, …

When Zionist Haganah militias carried out Operation Yiftach, on May 19 1948, the aim was to drive Palestinians in the northern Safad District which had declared its independence a mere five days earlier, outside the border of Israel.

The ethnic cleansing of Safad and its many villages was not unique to that area. In fact, it was the modus operandi of Zionist militias throughout Palestine. Soon after Israel’s independence, and the conquering of historic Palestine, the militias were joined together to form the Israeli armed forces.

Not all villages, however, were completely depopulated. Some residents in …

The metaphors are too ripe. California, symbol of limitless abundance, material wealth, possibilities for personal transformation. California, the impossibly over-endowed beauty, who wins all the contests, to the bitter envy or sycophantic admiration of the average Joes and Janes. California, the consummate global destination for the millions of who are desperate for reinvention: sexual, political, economic. California – thanks to the limitless marketability of human desire, which built its gargantuan industry of dreams – the world’s avatar for the whole USA.

All this is now tinder in a planetary fireplace.

New York, financial capital of the uniquely nameless and stateless global empire …

On the Monday in January 2015 marked in the U.S. by many to commemorate the life of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the organization called Healthcare-Now in the U.S. emailed its subscribers a message titled “Reader’s Guide to Racial Equity in Healthcare.” The message started with the still necessary reminder that no biological basis for race exists, then went on to point out that “[i]n the United States … segregationist politics in Congress blocked national healthcare for much of the 20th century – not, as is often claimed, the growth of employer-based insurance during WWII.” Their email said …

Last week a new leader of the British Labour Party was chosen. Already the chimes can be heard from the belfries of thousands of Labour parishes, with coronation eulogies published in the journals of political dissent. The abdication of the Miliband dynasty would seem to herald the end of New Labour’s reign of terror begun when Thatcher acolyte, Anthony Charles Lynton Blair kissed hands in 1997. One commentator has already ventured the fantasy of the “special relationship” led after 2016 by one Rt Hon J Corbyn and President Sanders. ((Oliver Tickell, “Victory! Corbyn’s Political Earthquake Will Resound Long and Deep”, …

He will judge between the nations, and will render verdicts for the benefit of many. They will beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nations will not raise swords against nations, and they will not learn warfare anymore.

– Isaiah 2:4

There definitely are some exciting studies that (show) horticulture, getting outside, working with plants, definitely has some healing effects on the cognitive and all the areas of brain function (and) recovering from brain damage.

— Michael O’Gorman founder of nonprofit Farmer-Veteran Coalition, based in Davis, California

Spokane, like big dog Seattle, or funky Portland – similar to almost …