The control of global agriculture has long been a tentacle of US state-corporate geopolitical strategy. The Green Revolution was exported courtesy of oil-rich interests, and poorer nations adopted Western agri-capital’s chemical- and oil-dependent model of agriculture that required loans for inputs and related infrastructure development. It resulted in trapping nations into a globalised system of debt bondage, rigged trade relations and a system vulnerable to oil price shocks and manipulation.
In his book The Unsettling of America (1977), Wendell Berry criticises the US Department of Agriculture for adopting a …
The slow, often grinding machinery of international law has just received a push along with the issuing of three arrest warrants by the International Criminal Court. They are for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s former defence minister, Yoav Gallant, and, rather incongruously, Hamas figure Mohammed Deif. The last issue is somewhat odd given claims by Israel that he was killed in an airstrike in July, though Hamas has never confirmed nor denied the fate of the man also known as Mohammed Diab Ibrahim Al-Masri.
The issue of the warrants was the culmination of a request on May 20 by …
“Joe Biden and the neo-cons in his administration have been constantly escalating war… What they’re trying to do is start a war that Donald Trump can’t stop,” warns Dore about a potential WWIII.
“The only hope we have is that Putin shows restraint, that he is the only adult in the room and that he can hold off somehow until Donald Trump becomes president,” Dore opined in an interview with Going Underground host …
Would the below statements from the American Family Physician (11/2024) be true if, after 40 years of a prostate cancer epidemic, it was White men, not Black men who have been suffering and dying?
“Black men: Compared with White men, Black men have a more than 60% higher incidence of prostate cancer, an earlier age at diagnosis, a higher rate of metastatic cancer at the time of diagnosis, and a two to three-fold higher rate of prostate cancer mortality. Unfortunately, none of the large prostate cancer screening trials included adequate numbers of Black men to determine any specific recommendations for screening.”1See …
After the fourth graders concluded singing the songs of the Army, Navy, Marines and Air Force, they were hailed as “our future heroes.” Fifty-caliber machine guns and other weapons were on display. An invocation was offered for those missing and captured. A bagpiper skirled a haunting benediction of “Amazing Grace” and the school kids returned to close it out with “Thank You, Soldier.”
In between there were speeches by local dignitaries and military officers as 1200 people chowed down on pancakes, eggs, bacon, sausage gravy and biscuits, fruit salad, coffee and juice. When the grade schoolers filed out, several saluted, some …
by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead / November 25th, 2024
We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Wherever men or women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must–at that moment–become the center of the universe.
—Elie Wiesel, Nobel Peace Prize Speech
Once again we find ourselves approaching that time of year when, as George Washington and Abraham Lincoln proclaimed, we’re supposed …
President Vladimir Putin has announced that serial production of the new Oreshnik hypersonic, intermediate range, 36-warhead missile has commenced. He made this announcement at a special public meeting with Defense Ministry officials in the Kremlin on Friday, November 22.
“There are no means of countering such a missile; no means of intercepting it exist in the world today,” Putin said. “We need to launch its serial production. Let us assume that the decision on the serial production of this system has been made. As a matter of fact, it has already been essentially organised.”
Sainsbury’s is one of the ‘big six’ supermarkets in the UK. In 2019, it released its Future of Food report. It is not merely a misguided attempt at forecasting future trends and habits; it reads more like a manifesto for corporate control and technocratic tyranny disguised as ‘progress’. This document epitomises everything wrong with the industrial food system’s vision for our future. It represents a dystopian roadmap to a world where our most fundamental connection to nature and culture — our food — is hijacked by corporate interests and mediated through a maze of unnecessary and potentially harmful technologies.
In his 1959 classic book, The Sociological Imagination, the American sociologist C. Wright Mills wrote that ordinary people are often reduced to moral stasis and feel trapped and overwhelmed by the glut of information that is available to them. They have great difficulty in an age of fact to make sense of the connections between their personal lives and society, to see the links between biography and history, self and world. They can’t assimilate all the information and need a “new” way of thinking that he called “the sociological imagination” that would allow them to connect history and …
More than 50 years ago, John Lennon wrote, “God is a concept by which we measure our pain.” Toying with his lyrics, it’s possible to express another observation: “God is a concept by which we muscle our gain.”
Man’s individual will to dominate and assert himself began thousands of years ago, long before the flowering of collaborative aggression that permeates much of humanity’s recorded history. As with other mammals, human males possessing an abundance of muscle and mass had an advantage over less endowed males. Bigger and stronger males could push aside weaker rivals …
Dr. Peter Carter, an Expert Reviewer of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has new information about the status of climate change that meets the IPCC 6th Assessment worst-case scenario. Carter makes the case that the climate system is several years ahead of expectations, and in fact, knocking on the door of the IPCC’s 6th Assessment worst-case scenario decades early.
Experts on climate change are at a loss for words and at a loss for understanding how and why the climate change issue, which is negatively impacting planetary ecosystems, is largely ignored. The proof of this is found at the …
The Australian government is being run ragged in various quarters. When ragged, such a beast is bound to seek a distraction. And what better than finding a vulnerable group, preferably children, to feel outraged and noble about?
The Albanese government, armed such problematic instruments as South Australia’s Children (Social Media Safety) Bill 2024, which will fine social media companies refusing to exclude children under the age of 14 from using their platforms, and a report by former High Court Chief Justice Robert French on the feasibility of such a move, is confident of restricting the use of social media by …
Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget
falls drop by drop upon the heart
until, in our own despair, against our will,
comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.
― Aeschylus, Agamemnon
One of the most disturbing trends I have witnessed over the course of my forty-nine years is the hijacking of American education by unholy anti-democratic forces, and its transformation into a battering ram used to assault solidarity, literacy, and reason without which democracy cannot survive. In any reasonably humane society, school is a sanctuary where students read great books and learn to distinguish right from wrong, and yet in 21st century …
Proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that the only thing intellectually lower than Trump is his opposition, he was re-elected by a more solid margin than last time. After one of the dumbest and most slanted hit jobs on American consciousness, with tens of thousands of photos of Harris beaming as in contemplation of dinner dishes filled with food instead of animal waste, and Trump in an equal number looking as though he has not had a comfortable bowel movement in thirty or forty years, the public was expected to react as their keepers, in their incredibly bigoted stupidity, …
There is something enormously satisfying about seeing those in the war racket worry that their assumptions on conflict have been upended. There they were, happily funding, planning and preparing to battle against threats imagined or otherwise, and there comes Donald Trump, malice and petulance combined, to pull the rug from under them again.
What is fascinating about the return of Trump to the White House is that critics think his next round of potentially rowdy occupancy is going to encourage, rather than discourage war. Conflict may be the inadvertent consequence of any number of unilateral policies Trump might pursue, but they …
“On the campaign trail, she [María Corina Machado] was received almost as a religious figure, often wearing white, promising to restore democracy and reunite families torn apart by an economic crisis and mass migration. ‘María!’ her followers shouted, before falling into her arms,” the New York Times reverently reported.
Indeed, Machado’s personally chosen surrogate to contend in last July’s Venezuelan presidential election, Edmundo González, did fall into her arms. But that was because her infirm disciple had trouble, both literally and figuratively, standing on his own two feet.
Machado was the main Venezuelan opposition figure backed …
Western societies are committing moral suicide in Palestine. Collective suicide always is an ugly business to observe – especially when it’s your own country debasing itself. Yet, we seem unfazed. Indeed, we redouble our acts of inhumanity as if reiteration somehow normalizes the perversity of what we have done. The systematic insulating of ourselves from the magnitude of our turpitude is all the more remarkable for its requiring the constant filtering of graphic images of odious criminality to which we are accomplices. There may be some faint recognition, subliminally, of our culpability in the diligence with which dissenters and truth-tellers …
Hide nothing from the masses of our people. Tell no lies. Expose lies whenever they are told. Mask no difficulties, mistakes, failures. Claim no easy victories…
— Amilcar Cabral (Revolution in Guinea, stage 1, London, 1974, p 70-72)
It was under the Democrats and the first “Black” president that the Department of Defense 1033 program that militarizes local police forces was expanded by 2,400%; the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) expanded by 1,900%; Libya, the most prosperous African and Pan African nation was attacked and destroyed; the war on Yemen began; the Occupy Wall Street Movement was smashed; the FBI created the “Black …
In the wake of the election — THE ELECTION, in capital letters and with strong emphasis — I have read many insightful and thoughtful assessments of how we have arrived at the point where Donald Trump was re-elected. I highly recommend the recent scathing essay by my colleague at Marxism-Leninism Today, Chris Townsend, on the crying need for an alternative to the two-party charade and the bankruptcy of the Democratic Party as a representative for working people.
But for every good analysis, there are a dozen awful commentaries that ultimately blame the voters’ judgment or endorse their worst fears.
This is an extract from the author’s new book Power Play: The Future of Food.
In the annals of agrarian history, one particular movement has left a profound impact on the collective imagination of food sovereignty advocates. The Diggers in 17th century England were led by the visionary Gerrard Winstanley. This radical group emerged during a period of intense social and political upheaval, offering a revolutionary perspective on land ownership and food production that continues to resonate with modern struggles for (food) justice.
The Diggers, also known as the True Levellers, arose in …
David Swanson asked me to write about Kiribati after I wrote to him to point out Costa Rica is not the only “full-fledged and totally independent country to be entirely demilitarised.” Kiribati, and other small countries I suspect, have no military. In Kiribati’s case this was a deliberate decision taken by the first President and Government of Kiribati as it was becoming Independent in 1979. Like Costa Rica it has almost certainly benefitted from that foundational decision. Many other newly independent ex British colonies suffered from coups and …
Living theater poses crucial questions about consequences of war and potential to abolish it
by Kathy Kelly / November 20th, 2024
Art work by Robert Shetterly, taken from the playbill for “Reap What You Sow”
In mid-November, New York’s Catholic Worker community, located in lower Manhattan, opened their sizable auditorium to host “Reap What You Sow: Don’t Lose Heart!” a two act play with two actors which debuted, for two nights, on the Maryhouse stage.
Prior to the performance, preparations included selecting the sturdiest wooden chairs for audience seating, carefully cleaning furniture and floors, and rearranging the space so the next issue of the Catholic Worker newspaper, stacked and ready to …
In August 2021, following the withdrawal of major U.S./NATO military forces from Afghanistan after two decades of occupation, Taliban forces took effective control over the country. In response, the United States seized the assets of Afghanistan’s central bank totaling around $7 billion. Half of that amount was transferred to the misleadingly named “Afghan Fund” in September 2022, a Swiss-based “charitable foundation” whose only role thus far has been to privately conceal and invest the funds without any concrete plans to return them, as confirmed by U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan Thomas West. …
