Labor unrest has been a part of history for generations. Some sources even point to the first ever recorded strike taking place in 1170 BCE Egyptover delays in receiving building materials. With the emergence of organized labor, it was a dialectical inevitability that the bourgeois class would take on their own efforts to undermine the organizational endeavors of the working class by any means. From the Pullman Strike of 1894 to the PATCO Strike of 1981 to the union-busting efforts of Starbucks in the 2020s, the forces of capital …
Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh – image from Press TVOn July 31, Chairman of the Hamas Political Bureau Ismail Haniyeh attended the inauguration of Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian. Hours later, he was reported killed in an “Israeli strike” along with his bodyguard in Tehran.
Simultaneously, Israel claimed it had killed senior Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr in an airstrike in Lebanon’s capital, Beirut, and that its intelligence had confirmed that another top Hamas leader Mohammed Deif was also killed in a July 13 Israeli strike in Khan Younis, Gaza.
Democracy can be considered a commodity with multitude of varieties. Each elite ruling class claims theirs is the best suitable for its people, and thus imposes it on them. Mind you, not pure democracy — government of the people, by the people, for the people” — because that would amount to nothing less than socialism. The “democracy” that countries profess to practice is nothing but an interpretation of the ruling class in those countries with the aim to control its general populace.
India has Modi-cracy where one man, Narendra Modi, is running the show. A year ago, …
So, my second trial for alleged thoughtcrime-tweeting is going ahead as planned on August 15 in Berlin Superior Court (Das Kammergericht). Full-blown anti-terrorism security protocols will be in effect in the courtroom. Yes, that’s right, the Berlin Superior Court denied my attorney’s motion to rescind their special Security Order, so the German authorities will be putting on an elaborate official show of force, which everyone is welcome to attend!
Or, actually, according to the Security Order, only 35 people are welcome to attend. That’s one of the anti-terrorism security protocols. Also, if …
This July, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) held its annual summit in Washington, DC, where they celebrated themselves for continuing to exist for 75 years, despite the growing opposition around the world to Western hegemony that the US, EU, and their military gang of thugs NATO carry out.
Even after months of massive and consistent protests against the genocide in Gaza, it seems inconceivable that NATO would still gather to plan the next phase in maintaining Western imperialist hegemony over the world, but this is logical and necessary for their purposes because imperialism cannot continue to rule the world without …
Every empire falls. Its collapse becomes inevitable once its rulers lose all sense of how absurd and abhorrent they have become
by Jonathan Cook / August 5th, 2024
There is only one country in the world right now, in the midst of Israel’s slaughter in Gaza, where Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is guaranteed dozens of standing ovations from the vast majority of its elected representatives.
That country is not Israel, where he has been a hugely divisive figure for many years. It is the United States.
On Wednesday, Netanyahu was back-slapped, glad-handed, whooped and cheered as he slowly made his way – hailed at every step as a conquering hero – to the podium of the US Congress.
The fact that the Democrats currently occupy the White House has done little to ruffle the equation of blood and gore in the Middle East, notably regarding the fate of the Palestinians. The ongoing Israeli campaign of stunning ruthlessness against the Gaza unfortunates is certainly a worry for some Democratic strategists, if only because certain voters are finally expressing an opinion on the subject. Israel, right or wrong, is no longer an entirely plausible proposition.
In swing states such as Michigan, the cranky and disgruntled on the issue, certain given the potential role of Arab American voters, is not negligible. In …
To hell with the truth! As the history of the world proves, the truth has no bearing on anything. It’s irrelevant and immaterial, as the lawyers say. The lie of a pipe dream is what gives life to the whole misbegotten mad lot of us, drunk or sober.
— Eugene O’Neill, The Iceman Cometh, Written in 1939 and published in 1946
Voters in the U.S.A. live in fantasy and probably always will. No matter how obvious it is that the U.S. is an oligarchy, not a democracy, the ardent pipe dreams of a …
East vs West and the Ecological, Political and Economic Reasons for Their Differences
by Bruce Lerro / August 5th, 2024
Orientation
How much do left brain pathologies have to do with culture and geography?
Recently I was interviewed by Jeff J. Brown on China Rising about an article I wrote titled “The Dark Side of Left-Brain Operations”. During the interview, I contrasted the differences between the functions the left and the right sides of the brain. As we went through this, Jeff commented on how the characteristics of the right side of the brain corresponded to Chinese culture and how the characteristics of the left side of the brain seemed to be an …
To: The State of Israel, AIPAC and the International Zionist Movement
I write as an American citizen. You have stolen my country, and I want it back.
I did not ask for my country to be complicit in the ongoing genocide and attempted eradication of the people of Gaza and Palestine. I do not want to be complicit in the genocide of anyone. I do not want this crime to stain the name of the United States of America whenever it is spoken for the next century and for all eternity, and to bring shame upon me and my descendants, and to …
It was not the highly visible acts of Congress but the seemingly mundane and often nontransparent actions of regulatory agencies that empowered the great transformation of the U.S. commercial banks from traditionally conservative deposit-taking and lending businesses into providers of wholesale financial risk management and intermediation services.
While the world is absorbed in the U.S. election drama, the derivatives time bomb continues to tick menacingly backstage. No one knows the actual size of the derivatives market, since a major portion …
It is increasingly becoming clear–even to some Western observers—that the Zionist project has run its course. It had an extraordinary run, but it has now reached the end of its settler-colonial track.
The creation of this exclusionary settler-colonial Jewish state was a historical anomaly, among the greatest blunders of Western civilization in the twentieth century. Despite the deep alliance—between Western Jews and their Western tormentors—that established Israel in the mid-20th century, this Jewish state could not in the long run resist the deep logic of history. A few sober Israelis, too, can …
How aristocratic it all sounds, if only in a playground, papier-mâché sense. The language of the estates, the “crowning,” the “coronation,” words repurposed for republican politics, is much in evidence with Kamala Harris, who is all but guaranteed formal nomination at the Democratic Party Convention as US presidential candidate. She has now secured the necessary votes from Democratic delegates, without running a single primary, let alone engaging any rival contenders in her party. She has also garnered support despite her abysmal efforts to secure presidential nomination in 2020.
Her tenure as Vice President has been far from glorious, a point …
What explains the meteoric rise of a little-known principal at an investment firm to one of the youngest, least politically experienced Vice-Presidential candidates in US history? How did Senator J. D. Vance rise from relative obscurity in 2016 to become the current running mate to Donald Trump?
Simple: groveling service to the ruling class.
In 2016, Vance published a book describing his youthful hardships growing up in the Midwest, the Rust Belt, or Appalachia, depending on what you choose to call the vast lands impoverished by corporate deindustrialization in the late twentieth century. The social, political, and economic …
A new study shows methane (CH4) emissions behaving like a sprinter on speed, setting decadal records. This is bad news. It’s 80-times more powerful than CO2 at trapping heat.
Global emissions of methane, a powerful planet-heating gas, are ‘rising rapidly’ at the fastest rate in decades, requiring immediate action to help avert a dangerous escalation in the climate crisis, a new study has warned.
— “Global Methane Emissions Rising at Fastest Rate in Decades, Scientists Warn”, The Guardian, July 30, 2024.
The new study by Drew Shindell, et al, “The Methane Imperative”,Frontiers in Science, July 29, 2024 discusses the methane issue …
Rula Halawani (Palestine), Untitled XII from the Negative Incursion series, 2002.
On 26 July, senior United Nations (UN) officials briefed the UN Security Council about the terrible situation in Gaza. ‘More than two million people in Gaza remain trapped in an endless nightmare of death and destruction on a staggering scale’, said Deputy Commissioner-General Antonia De Meo of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA). Within Gaza, the UN officials wrote, 625,000 children are trapped, ‘their futures at risk’. The World Health Organisation …
The sordid story on the CIA-backed operation against the WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange during his time cramped in London’s Ecuadorian Embassy continues to froth and thicken. US officials have persisted in their reticent attitude, refusing to cooperate with Spain’s national high court, the Audiencia Nacional, regarding its investigation into the Agency’s espionage operations against the publisher, spearheaded by the Spanish security firm Undercover (UC) Global.
Since 2019, requests for assistance regarding the matter, including querying public statements by former CIA director Mike Pompeo and former head of counterintelligence, William Evanina, along with information mustered by the relevant Senate Intelligence Committee, …
Ismail Haniyeh during a video statement marking the 34th anniversary of the founding of the Hamas movement, December 2021. (Hamas Chief Office)
Hamas announced early Wednesday that Ismail Haniyeh, the head of the Palestinian faction’s political wing, was assassinated in Tehran, where he was present for the inauguration of the new Iranian president.
The assassination, in Iran no less, marks a major escalation that will likely have regional ramifications and came hours after Israel bombed Lebanon on Tuesday evening, killing three civilians, according to Lebanese state media. Israel claimed that it …
by Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East / July 31st, 2024
Earlier this month, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) finally concluded that Israel’s occupation of Palestine is illegal and must end immediately. This was a massive ruling from the world’s top court that affirmed what Palestinians, UN experts, and human rights groups have been saying for decades. But what does it mean for Canada?
Last week, CJPME sent a letter to Prime Minister Trudeau, urging him to take 7 concrete steps to align Canadian policy with international law as outlined in the ICJ advisory opinion. Below, we will outline these steps and answer several other key questions.
The First Amendment assures us of a right to free speech.
It does not, unfortunately, explicitly assure us of a right to not be lied to by our government and its various officials. Any hope of holding government officials accountable for their lies rests with the political process, in the voting booths and through the impeachment process, which themselves have become so ineffective as to offer little real hope of transparency, accountability or reform.
We have been lied to so much, for so long, and on every …
In late June, Kenyan President William Ruto backtracked on a tax-hiking finance bill after protests left at least 20 people dead and more than 150 injured when police opened fire with live ammunition.
According to Patrick Gathara of The New Humanitarian, the youth-led protests were triggered by a range of proposed new taxes that will increase the financial burden on families already struggling with rising prices.
In response to the ongoing nationwide protests that led up to the aforementioned incident, Ruto said he would withdraw the bill as “members of the public insist on the need for us to make more concessions. The …
The figures have been stalled for months. The goal is to minimise Israel’s barbarism, while lulling western publics into a false sense of complacency
by Jonathan Cook / July 31st, 2024
The death toll in Gaza is way too low by every imaginable metric. We need to be stressing this – all the more so when Israel’s apologists are vigorously engaged in a disinformation campaign to suggest that the figures are inflated.
On 6 May, 7 months into Israel’s slaughter, there were reported to be 34,735 dead. That was an average of 4,960 Palestinians killed each month.
Today, nearly three months on, the reported death toll stands at 39,400 – or an increase of 4,665.
“The media is lying to you about the Venezuelan election,” begins
BreakThrough News reporter about what is undeniably another US-sponsored coup to try and overthrow the Venezuelan people’s desire as expressed through an election.
Swimming, or dipping, in faecal polluted waters is not unusual. The spirit longs for purity in the staining aqua, and the body keeps pace with it. The Ganges, for instance, features sacred rites and ceremonies defiant of science. In an aqueous body of lingering corpses, thickening pollutants and full flowing faeces, foolhardy believers can find spirituality.
Such foolhardiness has also found itself in Paris 2024, the occasion of the XXXIII Summer Olympiad. Since 1923, the River Seine’s toxicity had become the stuff of legend. Over five decades, the famous river received untreated sewage.
With the award of the Olympics came the intention …
It is a point verging on the trite: an arms corporation suspected of engaging in corrupt practices, spoiling dignitaries and officials and undermining the body politic. But one such corporation is France’s Thales defence group, which saw raids on their offices in France, the Netherlands and Spain on June 26 and June 28. The prosecutors are keen to pursue charges ranging from standard corruption and attempts to influence foreign officials to instances of criminal association and money laundering.
It is clear in this that even the French republic, despite having a narcotics grade addiction to the international arms industry, thought …
