The push towards an all-out war in the Middle East is moving out of its sleepwalking phase to that of conscious eschatological reckoning. A blood filled, fiery Armageddon will reveal the forces of virtue, linking the evangelicals of the United States with the right-wing Jewish nationalists in Israel. That appalling prospect is certainly not one to discount: the messianic are always a frightful bunch, thinking history and selectively pruned religions texts to be on their side.
Each week now comes with some measure of sabotage, mutilation and disruption to prospects of peace. In his July 24 address to the US …
by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead / August 13th, 2024
The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don’t. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They’ve long since bought and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the state houses, the city halls. They got the judges in their back pockets and they own all the big media companies, so they control just about all of the news and information you get to hear… They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying. Lobbying …
Through the centuries, the Republic that eventuated in North America has maintained a maximum of chutzpah and minimum of awareness in forging a creation myth that sees slavery and dispossession not as foundational but as inimical to the nation now known as the United States. But, of course, to confront the ugly reality would induce sleeplessness interrupted by haunted dreams, so far this unsteadiness has prevailed.
— Dr. Gerald Horne
From his own redoubt of critical inquiry, the former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating has made fighting the imperialising leprosy of the AUKUS security pact between Australia, the UK and the United States a matter of solemn duty.
In March 15, 2023, he excoriated a Canberra press gallery seduced and tantalised by the prospect of nuclear-powered submarines, calling the Albanese government’s complicit arrangements with the US and UK to acquire such a capability “the worst international decision by an Australian Labor government since the former Labor leader, Billy Hughes, sought to introduce conscription to augment Australian forces in World War …
69% of Israelis support assassinations even if cease-fire in Gaza delayed: Poll, Anadolu Agency
In post-World War II, except for assassins from Israel, have military and intelligence agencies assassinated political leaders of another nation? Have any of these assassinations occurred in a nation that is not the native nation of the assassinated? Two come to mind.
On March 1, 2020, the Trump government assassinated Iranian General Qasem Soleimani in Baghdad, and, on November 28, 1971, four Black September gunmen killed Wasfi Tal, Prime Minister of Jordan, in the lobby …
They say Iran “masterminded” a Canadian student encampment and is “destabilizing” West Asia. But these crude ‘blame Iran’ claims are nothing more than pathetic attempts to legitimate genocidal Zionism.
Recently, various commentators, politicians and Zionist groups promoted a deranged report Iran “masterminded” the student divestment encampment at McGill. Seeking to frame student opposition to their university’s complicity with Israel’s holocaust as Iranian interference, the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, Canada Proud, MP Kevin Vuong, senator Leo Housakos, conservative candidate Neil Oberman, influencer Yasmine Mohammed, journalist Sam Cooper, Hampstead mayor Jeremy Levi and others shared an Iran International report headlined “…
Jeffrey Sachs joins The Grayzone’s Max Blumenthal and Aaron Maté to discuss the investigation into the origins of Covid-19. As chair of the Lancet COVID-19 commission, Sachs alleges that SARS-CoV2 originated from dangerous gain of function experiments sponsored and conducted by US biotech institutions. He alleges a vast cover-up of Covid origins, including by former members of his commission, and details the personal attacks he has incurred for speaking out.
On Monday, August 5, former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina boarded a Bangladesh Air Force C-130J military transport in a hurry and fled to Hindon Air Force base, outside Delhi. Her plane was refueled and reports said that she intended to fly on either to the United Kingdom (her niece, Tulip Siddiq is a minister in the new Labor government), Finland (her nephew Radwan Mujib Siddiq is married to a Finnish national), or the United States (her son Sajeeb Wajed Joy is a dual Bangladesh-US national). Army Chief Waker uz-Zaman, who only …
A guest on Judging Freedom, Dr Gilbert Doctorow, took a contrarian stance to Scott Ritter’s journalism work on Russia, which seemingly aligns Doctorow’s stance with the official government stance.
Doctorow accused Ritter (starting about 21:30) of stomping across redlines that any person familiar with Russia should have been aware of. Doctorow didn’t specifically state what any of these redlines might be.
He also accused Ritter of violating FARA (the Foreign Agents Registration Act), albeit he conceded that was not for him to judge.
Says Doctorow,
My concern is [that] two generations of Americans have not …
by Roger D. Harris and Peter Bolton / August 10th, 2024
Corporate media’s coverage of Venezuela’s July 28 presidential election is akin to an investigation of a homicide that is focused not with identifying the murderer but with an unpaid parking ticket of the victim. Likewise, the media has shifted the narrative into the minutia of electoral procedures, ignoring the much larger issue of US interference in the internal affairs of another sovereign county.
Nowhere in the corporate media is there even an inkling that US-imposed regime-change activities in Venezuela or elsewhere might violate some basic principles.
US is not interested in democracy
Ours is a homeland where the likes of George Clooney and …
There is much to loathe about the AUKUS security agreement between Canberra, Washington and London. Of the three conspirators against stability in the Indo and Asia Pacific, one stands out as the shouldering platform, the sustaining force, the political and military stuffing. But Australian propagandists and proselytisers of the US credo of power prefer to see it differently, repeatedly telling the good citizens down under that they are onto something truly special in being a military extension, the gargantuan annexe of another’s interests. Give them nuclear powered submarines, let them feel special, and a false sense of security will follow.
If one views the classic 1993 Claude Berri film Germinal one can see what 19th century feudalism was all about. It took place in a mid-century Northern France mining region. Here in the USA we had John Sayle’s 1987 film Matawan, which portrayed the 1920 Matawan, West Virginia miner’s strike. Both films gave viewers a taste of how feudalism operates. Well, hang on gang because Amerika 2024 is fast approaching the evil of Capitalism on steroids.
We have less than 10% of private sector workers here in unions, and about half …
Temperatures for the entire month of July in Antarctica were 50°F above average, but it also experienced days when temperatures spiked up to 82°F above average. Yes, Antarctica is the world’s deepfreeze, and it is the dead of winter. What does this portend?
For starters, according to Michael Dukes, director of forecasting at MetDesk: “In Antarctica generally that kind of warming in the winter and continuing into summer months can lead to collapsing of the ice sheets.” (Source: “Antarctica Temperatures Rise 10C Above Average in Near Record Heatwave”, The Guardian, August 1, 2024.)
Already, the summers of 2022 and 2023 saw unprecedented …
US political and media elites tried but failed to sink the Chinese swimming team at the Paris Olympics. The Chinese swimmers performed well despite the increased stress caused by media-induced rumors of “Chinese doping”. And now, the tables are being turned as the US anti-doping regime is coming under increasing scrutiny and criticism.
The media manufactured cloud of suspicion
Just a few months ago the NY Times and German ARD media ignited the controversy with an “investigation” regarding an incident from December 2021. At that time, 23 Chinese swimmers tested positive for a trace amount of the heart medication Trimetazadine (TMZ) …
I can’t really find the words to express how depressing it is to watch the life get sucked out of the anti-genocide movement in the United States because one of the candidates running for president this year happens to come from the administration that’s been overseeing said genocide.
Kamala Harris shouted down protesters against the US-backed incineration of Gaza during a campaign rally on Wednesday, responding to their chants of “we won’t vote for genocide” by telling them they’re helping Trump win.
Journalist and political analyst Caleb Maupin put out a video “Scott Ritter’s home raided by the FBI.” Maupin affirmed his solidarity with Ritter, a staunch opponent of US militaristic support for Ukraine and Israel.
Ritter’s anti-imperialist stand is nothing new. He first came to wider attention with his opposition to US plans to attack Iraq for having weapons-of-mass-destruction. Ritter, the then United Nations weapons inspector, said that Iraq was “fundamentally disarmed.” History has proven Ritter correct. The US government was wrong.
Nonetheless, many patriots often trot out the canard “my country, right or wrong.”
Failure to stop Israel’s genocide of Palestinians gambles with the fate of humanity as a whole
by Kathy Kelly / August 8th, 2024
Following World War II, Albert Camus posed a “formidable gamble” to those who had survived a tragedy of immense proportions. “We’re in history up to our necks,” he observed, yet we must wager that “words are more powerful than munitions.”
“Leave or die” are the horrid words threatening largely unprotected Palestinian civilians in Gaza as dismayed populations around the world demand moral decency, or at least some indication of sanity, from their non-responsive governments.
The stakes couldn’t be higher. For decades, Israel has flouted international norms by refusing to …
I have been in Caracas, Venezuela, for the past two weeks, before and after the presidential election on 28 July. In the run-up to the election, two things became clear to me. First, the Chavistas (supporters of Hugo Chávez and the Bolivarian project that is now led by President Nicolás Maduro) have the enormous advantage of an organised mass base. Second, knowing that the odds were not in their favour, the opposition, led by far-right María Corina Machado and the US government, were already …
Soldiers! Don’t give yourselves to brutes, men who despise you and enslave you; who regiment your lives, tell you what to do, what to think and what to feel! Who drill you, diet you, treat you like cattle, use you as cannon fodder!
Don’t give yourselves to these unnatural men — machine men with machine minds and machine hearts ! You are not machines! You are not cattle!
You are men! You have a love of humanity in your hearts!
– Charlie Chaplin, excerpt of final speech in The Great Dictator, 1940
We have been lied to for decades about the creation of Israel. It was born in sin, and it continues to live in sin
by Jonathan Cook / August 8th, 2024
The headline above, about yet another Israeli operation to ethnically cleanse the Palestinians in the tiny, besieged and utterly destroyed enclave of Gaza, was published in yesterday’s Middle East Eye.
When I began studying Israeli history more than a quarter of a century ago, people claiming to be experts proffered plenty of excuses to explain why Israelis should not be held responsible for the 1948 ethnic cleansing of some 750,000 Palestinians from their homes – what Palestinians call their Nakba, or Catastrophe.
1. I was told most Israelis were not involved and knew …
While the Kamala Harris coronation for Democratic presidential nomination continues in its safely shielded path, her sacred status among party members growing with each day, the decision to select Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota as Vice Presidential running mate had all the hallmarks of unbearable caution. Caution for being secure from any ambition on his part (Presidential contenders tend to pick running mates unlikely to go off the reservation or eclipse them during their time in office.) Caution, as well, from other factions in the party that may make things interesting at the Chicago Democratic Convention slated to start on …
by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead / August 7th, 2024
You shall have no other gods before me.
— The Ten Commandments
Christians, get out and vote, just this time. You won’t have to do it anymore. Four more years, you know what, it will be fixed, it will be fine, you won’t have to vote anymore.
— Donald Trump
Politics has become our national religion.
While those on the Left have feared a religious coup by evangelical Christians on the Right, the danger has come from an altogether different direction: our constitutional republic has given way to a theocracy structured around the worship of a political savior.
Although the current U.S. presidential campaign has focused almost entirely on domestic issues, Americans live on a planet engulfed in horrific wars, an escalating arms race, and repeated threats of nuclear annihilation. Amid this dangerous reality, shouldn’t we give some thought to how to build a more peaceful future?
Back in 1945, toward the end of the most devastating war in history, the world’s badly battered nations, many of them in smoldering ruins, agreed to create the United Nations, with a mandate to “maintain international peace and security.”
Money vs the gift
Sacred Economics 100
Deconstructing the Story of Self/ the World
Life without prisons
Marx’s ‘death knell’ of capitalism, revolution, was the first answer to capitalism’s ills, after which the state would wither away, and we would live in a utopian bliss. The 20th century put paid to that vision, as revolution, as most revolutions do, disappointed, mostly unravelled, and predatory capitalism took hold again. Are we stuck with a system that’s quickly leading us to the cliff edge with seemingly no turning back?
Happily, no, and happily no need for messy revolution, though there is already …
Bureaucrats tasked with protecting national security are often inclined to encourage insecurity. It’s all part of the job prescription. The imperative is understandable if chillingly amoral: increased budgets are demanded to counter threats, however spectral; justifications for existing budgets needlessly bloated are always sought. In the Cold War, an old favourite was the teeth-chattering concern that the other side might just steal a march on the other in terms of nuclear missiles. Legendary “missile gaps” were confected to frighten lawmakers.
In any logical sense, such distinctions were always superfluous, even idiotic: one can only destroy the planet once, and claiming to …
