From what is read and what is said, Iran is the major sponsor of international terrorism — creating turmoil, preventing peace, and wanting to dominate the Middle East. One problem with the accepted scenario is that the facts do not coincide with the assumptions.
Except for revenging terrorist attacks by Iranian dissidents and Israeli intelligence and military services, the Islamic Republic has not harmed anybody in the Western nations. In the last 200 years, Iran has fought only one war ─ a defensive battle against aggressor Iraq. It has assisted friendly nations …
While the CGT proudly participated in the ‘Games of Shame,’ a personal triumph for Macron and his repressive, regressive policies, with the participation of the Israeli delegation and even the Israeli President, who was honored amid the ongoing genocide in Gaza, this letter from Jean-Pierre Page, former head of the CGT’s International Department, condemns the betrayals of France’s leading trade union.
Jean-Pierre Page sent this message (see original in French here) to an elected CGT representative who, on January 29, wrote against …
The mismatch between the complexity of the world and the simplistic manner in which we think about it
The social, economic and political world in which we live is extremely complex, but most of the Yankee population does not have the thinking skills that can make intelligent decisions about this world and what to do about its problems. At the micro level, we find the same shortcoming in how we solve individual problems if we can tolerate learning and appreciating that thinking goes through stages of judgment. The choice of the word …
It is farcical to suggest a distinction between settler and state violence: They are part of the same settler-colonial structure, and not only complement each other but depend on one another.
— Fathi Nimer, The West Bank: Settler Colonial Spillover of the Gaza Genocide
While Israel continues its brutal genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, armed Israeli settlers, backed by the Israeli government, continue to expand illegal settlements in the West Bank. Our new visual captures how the Israeli government has transferred hundreds of thousands of guns and other weapons …
Rumi: Come out of the circle of time into the circle of love.
I have taken up ping pong as my sole viable remaining sport in my 70s. It really was made for frustrated sedentary has-beens. I played real tennis till tennis elbow set in, but even the thought of lurching, run around asphalt (let alone falling) makes it easy to shift into a scaled-down version. The paddle weighs almost nothing, the ball nothing. You play for an hour without noticing the time. …
In a land where logic twisted and turned
every moment, a lesson was learned,
a large blue caterpillar with arms folded high
turned to Alice and asked with a sigh:
‘Who are YOU?’, his voice was languid and slow,
Alice paused, for really, she didn’t quite know,
‘I—I hardly know, sir, just at present—it’s true.’
‘Explain yourself Alice, this simply won’t do’.
“I can’t ‘ she said, with a disheartened frown,
‘because I’m not myself, I’ve suddenly found.
At least I know who I was this morning it’s true
but since then I’ve changed, I’m someone quite new.’
The caterpillar nodded, deliberate and drawn,
‘you’ll get used to it in time’ he said …
Noam Chomsky (95) famous dissident and father of modern linguistics, considered one of the world’s leading intellectuals, is recovering from a stroke he suffered at age 94 and now living with his wife in Brazil. According to a report in Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now (July 2, 2024), in June, Brazilian President Lula personally visited Chomsky, holding his hand, saying: “You are one of the most influential people of my life” personally witnessed by Vijay Prashad, co-author with Noam Chomsky, The Withdrawal (The New Press).
Indeed, Noam Chomsky is established as one of the most influential intellectuals of …
Be happy. Think of your wellness. Across organisations, private and public entities, government bodies and social clubs, the cult of contrived happiness abounds with ritualistic, clotting repetition. In such cases, the forced grin, the pressured smile, the affected giggle, have become part of a project of puppeteering, manipulation and manufacture. Critics of such approaches are ostracised, treated as leprous reminders of reality.
The cult of orchestrated happiness is intended to veil, covering the moonscape scars and lingering mutilations of life. The forced smile, as it has so often been, repels reality. It is also intended as a transferral of responsibility for …
WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has determined that the upsurge of mpox in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and a growing number of countries in Africa constitutes a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC) under the International Health Regulations (2005) (IHR).
On July 23, 2022, the WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus went against the majority vote of the WHO expert committee (9 against 6 in favor): The committee was …
A total demolition of the previous forms of existence is underway: how one comes into the world, biological sex, education, relationships, the family, even the diet that is about to become synthetic.
— Silvia Guerini, radical ecologist, in From the ‘Neutral’ Body to the Posthuman Cyborg: A Critique of Gender Ideology (2023)
We are currently seeing an acceleration of the corporate consolidation of the entire global agri-food chain. The big data conglomerates, including Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook and Google, have joined traditional agribusiness giants, such as Corteva, Bayer, Cargill and Syngenta, in a quest to impose their model of food and agriculture on the world. …
Ekecheiria, also known as the “Olympic Truce,” is a quaint notion dating to Ancient Greece, when three kings prone to warring against each other – Iphitos of Elis, Cleosthenes of Pisa and Lycurgus of Sparta – concluded a treaty permitting the safe passage of all athletes and spectators from the relevant city-states for the duration of the Olympic Games. The truce had a certain logic to it, given that many of those granted safe passage would have been serving soldiers or soldiers in waiting.
In 1894, the founder of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), Pierre de Coubertin, fantasised about the …
If Jeffrey Dahmer and Ted Kuzinski were the candidates for the Republican and Democratic parties, which one would you vote for?
Donald Trump and Kamala Harris both have more blood on their hands than either of these serial killers, and they promise to kill many more. Both of them supported the latest $20 billion to Israel, to keep the project to eradicate the people of Gaza on schedule. Voting for them means giving them permission and encouragement to keep the rivers of blood flowing, so I won’t do it. I might vote …
Needless is it for me to say to the thinking workingman that he has no choice between these two capitalist parties, that they are both pledged to the same system and that whether the one or the other succeeds, he will still remain the wage-working slave he is today.
According to the New York Times, U.S. officials say there’s no excuse, on the warmakers’ own terms, for the genocide they are arming:
“Israel has achieved all that it can militarily in Gaza, according to senior American officials, who say continued bombings are only increasing risks to civilians while the possibility of further weakening Hamas has diminished…. William J. Burns, the C.I.A. director, is due in Qatar on Thursday. Brett McGurk, President Biden’s Middle East coordinator, has headed to Egypt and Qatar. Amos Hochstein, a senior White …
A review of Nuclear War: A Scenario, by Annie Jacobsen
by Sheila Velazquez / August 16th, 2024
I remember the day World War II ended. I was five. Our tiny apartment was filled with adults in various stages of euphoria, and inebriation. My one-month-old brother slept through it all in a basket on the kitchen sink.
My Uncle Jack was there on leave from the Coast Guard, which, during the war, escorted Navy ships carrying our troops, munitions, and supplies to Europe, protecting them from U-boat attacks. Jack was my hero. Each time he came back, there were gifts for my mother and for me. I still have the Turkish leather trinket box with the harem girl figure …
Actually I have gotten tired of explaining to people the deception at the heart of airport security procedures. For years I have tried to show that the explanations given for the increasingly intrusive, not to mention time-consuming, controls to which passengers in international travel and for decades now domestic movement have nothing to do with safety or protection of travellers, nor the safety and protection of transport assets such as aircraft or railway rolling stock. I have told younger people how easy it was to board a train or enter an …
In the UK, Islamophobia is so bipartisan, so normalised, that BBC reporters refer to anti-Muslim pogromists as ‘pro-British protesters’
by Jonathan Cook / August 16th, 2024
Imagine this scene, if you can. For several days, violent mobs have massed in the centre of British cities and clashed with police in an attempt to reach synagogues to attack them.
Draped in England flags and Union Jacks, and armed with cricket bats and metal rods, the trouble-makers have dismantled garden walls to throw bricks.
Gangs have swept through residential areas where Jews are known to live, smashing windows and trying to break down doors. The rioters attacked and torched a hotel identified as housing Jewish asylum seekers, an act that could …
The philosophy of the dunce, and the politics of the demagogue, often keep company. And Peter Dutton has both of these unenviable traits in spades. The Australian opposition leader, smelling weakness in his opponent, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, has again gravitated to something he is most comfortable with: terrifying the kaka out of the Australian public.
The method of doing so is always unimaginatively dull and almost always inaccurate. Select your marginal group in society. Elevate it as a threat, filling it with a gaseous, nasty fantasy. Condemn said group for various fictional and misattributed defects. When all is done, demonise …
With a click, with a shock
Phone’ll jingle, door’ll knock, open the latch
Something’s coming, don’t know when but it’s soon . . .
— “Something’s Coming,” West Side Story, lyrics by S. Sondheim, music by L. Bernstein.
Shock should not be the word, but when World War III breaks fully loose many who are now sleeping will be shocked. The war has already started, but its full fury and devastation are just around the corner. When it does, Tony’s singular fate in West Side Story will be the fate of untold millions.
It is a Greek tragedy brought on by the terrible hubris of …
During his four years as President of the United States, Donald Trump was remarkably active and often successful in sabotaging the health and safety of the nation’s workers.
Trump, as the AFL-CIO noted, targeted Medicare and Medicaid for $1 trillion in funding cuts, eroded the Affordable Care Act (thereby increasing the number of Americans lacking health insurance coverage by 7 million), and “made workplaces more dangerous by rolling back critical federal safety regulations.” Trump’s administration not only refused to publicly disclose fatality and injury data reported to the U.S. Occupational Safety …
Czech, Polish, and Slovenian PMs travel to Kyiv in 2022
In June, rumors swirled in the media that the Biden administration was holding discussions with Israel and Ukraine about the possibility of transferring aging Patriot air defense systems currently in Israel to Ukraine. The CNN reported: “The systems would likely need to be transferred to the US first, where they would undergo refurbishment, before being sent to Ukraine.”
In April, the Israel Defense Forces said it would soon “retire its Patriot systems,” as noted by the …
Our current leaders are hypnotized by war. They lack the vision and resourcefulness to consider negotiation and cooperation. Peace is not in their thoughts. ‘Peace’ is not in their vocabulary. They are addicted to war. They are obsessed with war.
The lesson we must take from this is this: Talking to them, trying to change their minds, trying to alter their policies and methods, …
by Allan Miller and Roger D. Harris / August 14th, 2024
In the quarter century of the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela, initiated by the election of Hugo Chávez and continued by his successor Nicolás Maduro, 31 national elections have been held. Invariably, the US-backed opposition claimed fraud in all but the two contests that they won. Equally unvaryingly has been the corporate press’s supporting and indeed embellishing of the claims of fraud as described below.
Blackmailing the Venezuelan electorate
The moment that Venezuela’s election authority (CNE in its Spanish initials) reported that incumbent Maduro had prevailed in the July 28 presidential contest over his nearest challenger, Edmundo González, howls of fraud were to …
Political prisoner in Ukraine, Inna Ivanochko sits in a dock in a Ukrainian court. Inna Ivanochko is the head of the Lviv organisation of Opposition Platform — For Life, which was Ukraine’ second largest party in parliament until it was persecuted and then banned. She is facing up to 15 years in prison for expressing her political views in the years before the war started – which the Ukrainian regime have now retrospectively deemed to have been in the service of Russia.
Vice President Kamala Harris in August 2021. (White House /Erin Scott) Two college professors who studied and lived in the 1960s recently published an opinion piece in The Los Angeles Times urging dissidents not to protest at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. The first paragraph is a stark example of uber-liberals suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome:
A collection of fringe radical groups are calling for demonstrations in Chicago this August at the Democratic National Convention — a ‘March on the DNC’ for Palestine. We study political movements, and we’ve …
Roma fleeing the war in Ukraine on April 13, 2022 in front of the Main Railway Station in Prague (PHOTO: Richard Samko)
Historically it has turned out that Roma occupy the position of outcast almost in all countries where they live. From 2005 to 2015 twelve countries of Central and Eastern Europe took part in the project aimed at improving the socio-economic status and social inclusion of the Romani people, but in the end the goals were not achieved. Currently, there are Roma integration strategies in many countries, but the nation continues …
