Latest articles

We live in a world of make-believe politics, a world where strings pulled in the interests of the super-rich are ever more visible. And yet we are expected to pretend we cannot see those strings. More astonishing still, many people really do seem blind to the puppet show.

1. The “leader of the free world”, President Joe Biden, can barely maintain his attention for more than a few minutes without straying off topic, or wandering offstage. When he has to walk before the cameras, he does so like he is auditioning for the role of a geriatric robot. His whole body …

On June 13th 2013in anarchist history, we remember The Vinegar Revolt, a series of protests turned into riots across the lands occupied by Brazil.

On June 13th 2013 ongoing demonstrations over a transit fair hike In São Paulo, Brazil erupted into a national uprising after police cracked down hard, arresting 60 people for simply possessing vinegar to protect themselves against the use of teargas.

Soon the demonstrations spread to many other cities and became one of the first documented use of the Black Bloc tactic in the country.

The violent and disruptive tactics of The Vinegar Revolt highlighted the wide gulf between the …

War always commands its own appeal.  It has its own frazzled laurels, the calling of its own worn poets tenured in propaganda.  In battle, the poets keep writing, and keep glorifying.  The chattering diplomats are kept in the cooler, biding their time.  The soldiers die, as do civilians.  The politicians are permitted to behave badly.

With Ukraine looking desperately bloodied at the hands of their Russian counterparts, the horizon of the conflict had seemingly shrunk of late.  Fatigue and desperation had set in.  Washington seemed more interested in sending such musically illiterate types as the Secretary of State Antony Blinken …

The Story of Julia Chinamo
“I realized when I was nine years old that I liked boys,” Julio Sanchez tells me. Julio is also known by the nickname “Julia Chinamo” and socially as “Nahomy Campbell.”

“My father was a military man, a macho man. My aunt told him, ‘Look at Julito, he’s queer.’ I didn’t like boys’ things: no marbles, no tops, no cars for me. I loved dolls, I loved fixing their hair, I loved to wear my grandmother’s heels, my grandmother’s apron. I loved all the women’s stuff, that …

From the Red Scare of the 1920s to the McCarthyism of the 1950s to the Reagan Crusade against the Evil Empire of the 1980s, the American people have been subjected to a relentless anti-communist indoctrination. It is imbibed with their mother’s milk, pictured in their comic books, spelled out in their school books; their daily paper offers them headlines that tell them all they need to know; ministers find sermons in it, politicians are elected with it, and Reader’s Digest becomes rich on it.

— William Blum

Israel must be held accountable for the suffering it is inflicting on Gaza (Omar Ashtawy APA images)
Israel does not belong in the modern world. It is the child of European colonialism and Europe’s genocidal anti-Semitism, imposed by force and fire and Western guilt on a land already inhabited by an indigenous people.

Israel is a contemporary trespass of that old world’s colonial ethos that justified genocide, ethnic cleansing, wholesale plunder, endless theft and destruction of indigenous peoples in the name of settlement and divine entitlement …

Aisha Khalid and Imran Qureshi (Pakistan), Two Wings to Fly, Not One, 2017.

Half of the world’s population will have the opportunity to vote by the end of this year as 64 countries and the European Union are scheduled to open their ballot boxes. No previous year has been so flush with elections. Among these countries is India, where a remarkable 969 million voting papers had to be printed ahead of the elections that culminated on 1 June. In the end, 642 million people (roughly two-thirds of those eligible) voted, …

“HUNGER CATASTROPHE IN GAZA – DONATIONS NEEDED” cries Mercy Corps.

“URGENT: STARVATION IN GAZA: ALL GIFTS MATCHED FOR GAZA” shouts Rescue.org.

These and many other appeals from international relief organizations have motivated untold numbers of compassionate and generous souls to open their purses. You may be among them. If so, you may have thought that these organizations are delivering food, medicine and other relief supplies to Gaza. But they are not.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) confirms that not a single truck with relief aid has crossed the border from Egypt to Gaza since Israeli troops captured the Rafah border …

…

It was well-encapsulated in this 10-minute compilation video from 12 March 2014, “Ukraine Crisis – What You’re Not Being Told” (also archived here and here).

That 10-minute documentary’s only error is at 22 seconds in, where its narrator said the year “two thousand thirteen” when he obviously meant to say “two thousand fourteen”; but, other than that, I have verified the authenticity and correctness of each one of its many sources and allegations, and find that it is the best (most comprehensive, brief, and accurate) single history of the …

The EU elections over June 6 to June 9 have presented a chaotically merry picture, certainly for those on the right of politics.  Not that the right in question is reliably homogeneous in any sense, nor hoping for a single theme of triumph.  A closer look at the gains made by the conservative side of politics, along with its saltier reactionary wings, suggests difficulty and disagreement.

In any case, papers such as The Economist were hopelessly pessimistic about the post-Eden fall, which may suggest that democracy, in all its unpredictable nastiness, is working.  The lingering nature of the Ukraine War, …

FILE PHOTO. David van Weel. ©  Getty Images / …

Terror: noun
ter· ror ˈter-ər  ˈte-rər
plural: terrors

Violence or the threat of violence used as a weapon of intimidation or coercion

— Merriam-Webster, 1828

While the Western elites continue to pour money and materiel into their terrorist proxies in Kiev and Tel Aviv American society is grappling under the iron heel of a different kind of siege. Indeed, two of the deadliest truncheons in Washington’s war on the American people are the weaponization of heath care and the weaponization of education. The hijacking of these two indispensable institutions by demonic corporate forces is antithetical to democracy and has played a critical role in spawning this …

Nearly half a century ago, on Labor Day 1974, President Gerald Ford signed the Employee Retirement Income Security Act. The bill created Individual Retirement Accounts (IRAs) and essentially paved the way for 401(k)s, 403(b)s, and a host of imitations.

Retirement experts have been beating up on the accounts ever since. Two fresh examples aim specifically at 401(k)s, easily the most common of the type.

One was an in-depth article asking a serious question, “Was the 401(k) a Mistake?” The answer, equally serious, was an emphatic “yes”. By coincidence, the second critique also asked a …

Nobody has stopped the 75 years of massacres of Palestinians or countered the acceleration of the massacres after Israel took advantage of a temporary high ground given by the October 7 attack. With the Palestinians awaiting the future from the present massacre in a deliberately destroyed Gaza, the New York Times solicited political pundits’ opinions of the future of Gaza. The pundits offered a variety of scenarios.

Israel should allow Palestinians to create a legitimate political leadership — which can take charge in the West Bank and Gaza — and empower Palestinians who pursue their freedom …