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In about a week’s time (on 16 June), an event is due to take place in London which, according to the Guardian, would be unique in “modern British legal history”. On that day a criminal trial is due to begin whose proceedings are expected to take place in absolute secrecy.

According to the Guardian, until last week it had “not even been possible to report the existence of the forthcoming trial against the two men, known only as AB and CD.” Then last week, “three appeal court judges lifted a gagging order allowing reporting of a hearing challenging the …

Primary elections originated in the American progressive movement and were intended to take the power of candidate nomination away from party leaders and deliver it to the people.  California’s Top Two Primary takes power away from third parties representing the 99% and delivers it to the 1%.

Voters have increasingly become disillusioned with the Democratic and Republican Parties. According to a poll reported by Rasmussen in April, more than half the country believes that neither of the top two parties represents the American people. As presidential candidate Ron Paul remarked in 2011:

These parties aren’t different, they’re all …

(Full article …)

 Let’s Be Honest

Despite the seeming popularity of environmental and social justice work in the modern world, we’re not winning. We’re losing. In fact, we’re losing really badly. ((For Example:
U.S. Inequality is at its highest point since 1928.
One in three women is beaten, raped, or otherwise abused in her lifetime.
Obama has overseen more deportations — more than 2 million — than any president in history.
Two hundred species are driven extinct every day.))

Why is that?

One reason is because few popular strategies pose real threats to power. That’s not …

Spain’s King Juan Carlos put an end to his reign this week. With focus shifting to his son, there is an attempt to reinvigorate an institution intimately linked to the fascist regime of General Franco. In order to break with his legacy and a divided country, Spain’s democrats must now push for the return of the republic more than ever.

King Juan Carlos of Spain leaves the throne to make way for, in his own words, a new generation that can take the country to a future of peace and prosperity. The circumstances of his abdication are far from ideal. With …

We Are Ritual

This getting close to Holy Holies, exiled from sanctuary, no recompense for slaughter; this poor interpretation of Accused; this blaming Everyday for any Other, is how we whistle past grave-yard sophistries of “common knowledge” and “all that goes without saying” and such. Such. Such Righteous exclamations.

Like: “You should have been more clear!”

We are Accused. Still, yet, again. We are ritual.

Happy catastrophes meant to entertain – witch-hunts, for instance – can easily get out of hand, burn far more kindling than planned, cause many deaths, on Sacred Days, beyond the Chosen, scape-goated few.

But if we burn …

The Syria Solidarity Movement applauds the Syrian people for their widespead participation in the first competitive election since the new Constitution approved in 2012. The voting by Syrians living or taking refuge in Lebanon was massive. Voting in Beirut needed to be extended by a full day. Similarly, the voting inside Syria on June 3, 2014 exceeded expectations and polls remained open until midnight to accommodate the huge numbers of Syrians waiting to vote.

Insurgents increased their shelling of civilian areas in Damascus and Aleppo but otherwise the election was conducted peacefully …

Democracy is a core feature of Western society, normally understood as representative parliament – i.e. in free elections citizens vote for people to represent their interests for a parliament consisting of parties of which some form the government and some the opposition.

It’s not always included in the definitions that democracy requires a reasonable level of knowledge and information, freely available. For instance, one often hears that India is the world’s biggest democracy but 26% of the people are still illiterate (287 million people).

So the ”world’s largest democracy” also has the world’s largest population who can’t read and write. In comparison, …

One of the most important Palestinian feature films ever, Omar, is the deepest expose of the diabolical nature of the Israeli occupation and the inhuman situation imposed on Palestinians by the Jewish State. It also throws light on the tragic and depressing Palestinian struggle against a sophisticated, demonic enemy — an on-going battle that so far has led nowhere.

In his latest film, Palestinian director Hany Abu Assad sets Omar (Adam Bakri), a young freedom fighter in an impossible, yet common, Palestinian dilemma, caught in a devastating triangle between his patriotic commitment, romance and the omnipresent Jewish State – a brutal, …

Anyone who reads his work will quickly be made aware of the enormous amounts of study that lie behind the writing of Paul Levy—study in the form of wide and vast reading, of deep and patient thought, and, perhaps above all, a never-ending process of extraordinarily close observation. Observation of what? For the moment, the answer to that question can best be given in two parts. First, Paul Levy is an acute and close observer of the nature of life. Second, he is an acute and close observer of us, of we, of the ones who live inside of that …

We live under the omnipresent shadow of a political/economic system, which promotes materiality, selfishness and individual success over group wellbeing. It is a model of civilisation that is making us miserable and ill. Dependent on continuous consumption, everything and everyone is seen as a commodity, and competition and ambition are extolled as virtues. Together with reward and punishment this trinity of division has infiltrated and polluted all areas of contemporary life, including health care and education.

It is a system that denies compassion and social unity.  Unhappiness and mental illness, as well as extreme levels of inequality (income and wealth) flow …

Pope Francis’ “pilgrimage” to the Holy Land last week proved to be an unbalanced impossible mission. The pontiff failed to strike a balance of neutrality between contradictory and irreconcilable binaries like divinity and earth, religion and politics, justice and injustice and military occupation and peace.

Such neutrality is viewed by the laity of Christian believers, let alone Muslim ones, in the Holy Land as religiously, morally and politically unacceptable.

The 77-year old head of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics “is stepping into a religious and political minefield,” Naim Ateek, the Anglican priest who founded the Palestinian liberation theology movement and runs the …

For years now prominent scientists have warned of the dangers of global warming and a concomitant tipping point for the Arctic. Because of abnormal heat, things are not looking good. Arctic sea ice is in a vertical free-fall. But, the melt season only just started!

This makes Obama’s call for regulation of coal-burning power plants look like a fanciful ephemeral wish list, too little, too late.

Do not expect to see this story on the nightly news. This news story comes by way of the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) obtained whilst comparing images of sea ice concentration on May 14, 2014 to …

“Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence”

Astronomer Carl Sagan was fond of saying this when talking about the possibility of intelligent life existing elsewhere in the universe. Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld also used the expression in his own portrayal of intelligent life on this planet, in reference to his inability to find Saddam Hussein’s WMDs (weapons of mass destruction) that didn’t exist.

It’s a basically useful mindset that has both useful and useless applications, as in Rumsfeld’s using it to mean, apparently, something like: “we don’t need no stinking evidence, we know his WMDs used to …

Victoria and Albert Museum, London; March, 2000

A passel of statues spread before us, a collection: Buddhas, Saints, variations on a theme of Pietà, knights on catafalques, the whole bit. Centuries of Fashion revised, redacted, re-positioned, from time-to-time, by expert members of Museum staff, in deference to the fashion du jour and its inevitable re-valuation of all values as defined in relation to (and in correlation with) levels of Manichean contempt and contrast between, former regime – Them, and its successor – Us.

Time is the new black.

Percocet clonazepam espresso.

Fresh-air promenades avec Gitaines, Hyde Park.

It cost a pound to …

Contra Arendt, one may speak of the “’evil’ of banality”—certainly a pervasive cultural pathology at the present time. Although the average American is not guaranteed sufficient panem, he almost always has access to circenses; i.e., the cornucopia of amusements and games which may soothe and refresh his otherwise battered, humble self. TV sitcoms and the like can be said to offer a kind of low-grade therapy—if by therapy we refer merely to a temporary catharsis of tension rather than deeper insight.

Indeed, as Freud wrote in his book on jokes: humor, by suddenly juxtaposing incongruous thoughts, momentarily dissolves an inner inhibition–thereby …