The Choice
Why should one choose between Left and Right?
Latest articles
Marah’s Story, or The Disintegration of a Country Family
In this miserable country love stories end too soon and families fall apart in the blink of an eye.
This is how Marah Kamal begins her life story and if you know anyone from Gaza, you know how much they love the land they live on. They literally ‘worship the ground they walk upon.’ Only God is loved more than the land. So, for Marah to call her country miserable, is to admit that after a year and a half of war, there is nothing left. Even pregnancy is a curse.
New World Odor
President Donald Trump has just released fragrances for God-fearing, America-loving patriots. While proudly wearing Trump’s trademark red MAGA caps, they can now make an olfactory declaration of their love of the U S of A!
The fragrances named “Trump Victory 45-47” — referring to his capturing the 45th and 47th presidencies — are available as cologne for men and perfume for women, and are bargain priced at only $249 for the limited edition 3.3 fl oz numbered collectors version. You can get them at the dedicated website. Hurry! …
Israel and the Albanese Report
An Economy of Genocide
It makes for stark and dark reading. The report for the UN Human Rights Council titled From economy of occupation to economy of genocide makes mention of “corporate entities” who have been enriched by “the Israeli economy of illegal occupation, apartheid and now genocide.” Authored by the relentless Francesca Albanese, the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, it is unflinching in its assessments and warnings to companies doing business with Israel.
What makes the investigative undertaking by Albanese useful is its examination of the corporate world and its links to …
A Zionist Gaza is a Sick Vision Unworthy of any Country with Integrity
Dear Anita Anand, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Canada:
Prime Minister Carney’s statement that the solution to Mideast peace was a “Zionist Gaza” made me ill. It demonstrated his support for Israel’s genocide of Palestinians and showed total contempt for international law.
Canada’s official foreign policy supports international law and Canada
is a signatory to the Fourth Geneva Convention. The ICJ has repeatedly called Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory illegal and the UN GA even demanded last year that Israel vacate the Palestinian territories by this year. A Zionist Gaza means either the outright Israeli theft of the Palestinian territory or continued illegal …
Nothing to Say, Ma
As a result of recent conversations, my life-long closest friend Diego wrote the following. If you’re lucky as we are, you have such a friend whose interests and thoughts match yours so closely that it seems that you were separated at birth in a dream. We both felt from the days of our youth when chance brought us together that, to paraphrase Bob Dylan, it was not he, she, them, or it that we belonged to, or that we would ever gargle in the rat race choir for those who make the rules to terrorize humanity.
By Diego Sandoval
“Does anybody ever say …
The Impeachment Problem
I wish U.S. academics would spend less time fantasizing choices between various murders with trollies, or playing games with theories about how greedy robots might do diplomacy, and more time on the impeachment problem.
The United States has an impeachment problem. Impeachment was put into a Constitution that made no mention of, allowance for, or plans to survive the existence of political parties. Presidents are now generally not impeached for any abuse or outrage unless there is one party that doesn’t itself engage in that same abuse or outrage and that party is in the majority in the House. The use …
The Perfect Islamophobic Storm
A familiar violence is brewing in the heart of Europe. The numbers reveal only what has surfaced so far. A quarter of the voting population now openly support the AfD, a party classified by the security services as ‘right-wing extremist’ due to their Islamophobic rhetoric and white-supremacist affiliations. Boosted by the mainstream press and the endorsement from the Nazi-saluting billionaire, the xenophobic message is broadcast across Germany once more.
Traditional conservative parties, the CDU and CSU, while reluctantly distancing themselves from the AfD, have adopted the same Islamophobic stance …
Mamdani and Beyond
It should not surprise that many US leftists are excited by the victory of Zohran Mamdani in last Wednesday’s New York City primary election. They should be buoyed by a rare victory in a bleak political landscape.
Mamdani defeated an establishment candidate showered with money and endorsed by Democratic Party royalty. His chief opponent, Andrew Cuomo, enjoyed the support and the forecasts of all the major media, locally and nationally. Cuomo fell back on every cheap, spineless trick: redbaiting (Mamdani is a member of Democratic Socialist of America), ethnic and religious baiting (Mamdani is a foreign-born Muslim), and “unfriendliness” to …
Faramarz Farbod in Conversation with Yves Engler on Canada, the US, and Imperialism
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.
“Have Some Blood! You Like Shedding It All Over the World So Much? There You Go!”
Concrete Expressionism Makes Its Mark at the US mission to the UN Amid the Gaza Genocide. Mass action at Israeli mission — 28 reportedly arrested.
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 …
Reclaiming the Forgotten: Our Elders, Our Planet
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 …
Inalienable Rights in an Age of Tyranny
The Government Is Playing God
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).
This week alone, the Trump administration is reportedly erecting protest barricades around the White House, Congress is advancing legislation that …
The Difference between “News”-Reporting and News-Reporting
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 …
Trump, Leakers, and Journalists
The Assange Precedent and Revisiting the Espionage Act
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 …
What July 5th Taught Me that July 4th Never Did
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 …
America’s Republicans’ Hatred of the Poor
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 …
Operation Midnight Hammer: Were Iran’s Nuclear Facilities Damaged?
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 …
Magical Theatricality in the Ice Age Caves: Why it Should Matter to Socialists
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 …
A Battle for Humane Consciousness in a War Against Truth: Exposing the Dark Arts of War
Repairing the aparture of Western society
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
Jeremy Kuzmarov was kind to spend an hour with …
Australia Backs US Strike on Iran
A Vassal’s Impulse
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, …
Carl von Clausewitz and the Clausewitzian Viewpoint of Warfare
A Theoretical Approach
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:
“War is merely the continuation of …
Charter Schools and “Paperism”
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 …
Anatomy of a Wrap-Up Smear
It could have been worse. It can always be worse.
Article in Wired magazine by “Beth Mole”
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”
Hold on to your horses there, “Beth …
Public Schools, Climate Disasters, Workers’ Control
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 …
The Wobbly Planet
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 …
NATO’s Promise of War
The Five Percenters
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 …
What It Means to Be Human
How do you think- in words or images?
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 …
Mamdani’s Win in NYC Transforms America’s Mid-Term Political Contests
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 …