The US has had years to clarify its intention to give Assange a fair trial but refuses to do so. The UK court’s latest ruling is yet more collusion in his show trial
by Jonathan Cook / March 26th, 2024
The interminable and abhorrent saga of Julian Assange’s incarceration for the crime of journalism continues. And once again, the headline news is a lie, one designed both to buy our passivity and to buy more time for the British and US establishments to keep the Wikileaks founder permanently disappeared from view.
The Guardian – which has a mammoth, undeclared conflict of interest in its coverage of the extradition proceedings against Assange (you can read about that here and here) – headlined the ruling by the UK High Court today as a “temporary reprieve” for Assange. …
President Kennedy was furious at the CIA for having misled him. Waiting several months before he compelled CIA Director Allen Dulles to resign, Kennedy told him, “Under a parliamentary system of government it is I who would be leaving. But under our system it is you who must go.”
Thus John F. Kennedy defended the illusion that the Anglophile dominated US government had transcended its British aristocratic-monarchical roots. Allen Dulles resigned from his office as Director of Central Intelligence to preside over the committee that would disprove Kennedy‘s naive belief in an …
What more can one say about the genocide in Gaza that hasn’t already been said? Special thanks to Ali Abunimah, Max Blumenthal, even Pierce Morgan, and others who break through the legacy media bubble and report what’s happening on the ground and the real history, not a sanitized, Hollywood version of it, like the movie Exodus.
Disclosure: I grew up in the late 50s, early 60s with Zionism as much a part of my childhood as going to shul and being Bar Mitzvah’d. As a teenager I joined a social-political group called …
Once again, the accusation of antisemitism was weaponized to trump both common sense and support for the victims of Israel’s murderous rampage.
Last week prominent Quebec cartoonist Serge Chapleau caricatured Benjamin Netanyahu as a vampire. The cartoon published in La Presse reads “Nosfenyahou, en route to Rafah.”
The pro-Israel and genocide lobby immediately condemned the caricature of Israel’s prime minister. So did NDP MP Alexandre Boulerice and others.
In my opinion there’s nothing antisemitic about the cartoon and Chapleau should be celebrated for using his mainstream platform to challenge Israel’s holocaust in Gaza. Even more, his refusal to apologize for a cartoon that was …
Two British ministers, the UK Foreign Secretary David Cameron and Defence Secretary Grant Shapps, paid a visit to Australia recently as part of the AUKMIN (Australia-United Kingdom Ministerial Consultations) talks. It showed, yet again, that Australia’s government loves being mugged. Stomped on. Mowed over. Beaten.
It was mugged, from the outset, in its unconditional surrender to the US military industrial complex with the AUKUS security agreement. It was mugged in throwing money (that of the Australian taxpayer) at the US submarine industry, which is lagging in its production schedule for both the Virginia-class boats and new designs such as the Columbia …
Back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, a spate of books and articles extolling the word “soul” became the rage in the United States. Soul became the chic word. It popped up everywhere. Everything seemed to acquire soul – cars, toasters, underwear, cats’ pajamas, assorted crap, kitsch, etc. Soul sold styles from boots to bras to bibelots from The New York Times to O Magazine.
The vogue in soul talk spread to every domain as everyone was commodified and capital was financialized. While political, economic, and ecological reality spun out of regular people’s control and they felt unable to …
Climate agreements suck. There are no real enforcement provisions. Many signatories cheat. Some don’t rep0rt at all. Moreover, reported data is highly suspect. It’s a worldwide scandal recently exposed by YaleEnvironment360.
Evidence of cheating is found in the atmosphere: Global CO2 is on a rampage, skyrocketing upwards like never before, double-to-triple rates of only one year ago, see: “CO2 Bursting into the Atmosphere”, March 22nd. This is not supposed to be happening. It is twisting the planet’s climate system into a pretzel that doesn’t know which way to turn next. There are plenty of reasons to believe it is going to …
Most people would agree that in any modern, wealthy, multicultural, free, non-colonized, democratic society, people have the right to know what is going on in their community. In fact, in order to fulfill their various responsibilities as citizens, consumers, workers, company presidents, government officials, family members, etc., they have to know what is going on. We want and need to know what our own government and foreign governments are doing; what products, …
It would seem to me that Texas immigration law is not only unconstitutional, but fails to meet the requirements of and violates the Treaty of Guadalupe. The definition, status of Mexican nationals in the American southwest on what is now US soil, immigration, and movement of peoples between the US and Mexico, is actually defined in part by treaty law, which actually is above even federal law and becomes the “law of the land” per article 2, section 2.
This simple fact certainly makes it clear why border issues including immigration can only be a matter of …
The US pier show is not about bringing aid to Gaza but exporting its citizens, hospitals levelled, the crimes of the IDF, murder most foul in Moscow and the Kate cover-up revealed.
Ramadan (Arabic: رَمَضَان, Ramaḍān, Ramadhaan) is the ninth month of the Islamic calendar, and the month in which the Quran is believed to be revealed to the prophet Muhammad
Quran 20:81 Eat of the good things We have provided for your sustenance, but commit no excess therein.
Fasting is good for you. Very good. Josh Mittledorf, in Cracking the aging code: The new science of growing old and what it means for staying young, 2016, estimates he’s added a decade, a good, healthy decade, to his life with his regime, …
Having no Native American ancestry, I nevertheless want to express a deep admiration for the intense beauty of the spiritual foundations of what Steve Newcomb (Shawnee-Lenape) suggests we refer to as “the view from the shore”—the perspectives of peoples enjoying a genuinely free and independent existence before what Tink Tinker (wazhazhe/Osage) has called “the eurochristians” invaded bringing with them a foreign system of domination that has since been maintained by their heirs and successors.
If we take this “view from the shore” seriously, it calls into question all of the crumbling dominant narratives of our world today—especially narratives based in “nationalism” …
When I was an undergraduate eons ago in my zoology lab class, I examined varmints under a microscope and then dissected them with my scapple back at my dorm room with a bag of toxic formaldehyde hanging out the window. I nicknamed the varmints after the U.S. politicians at the time. Are you wondering what on earth comes next in this article? Please stay with me.
The idea for this article occurred to me after my e-mail encounters a few days ago with two candidates for the next U.S. Presidency, first Dr. Jill Stein and next former President Donald J. Trump. …
It’s not often I agree with opinions expressed in the pro-business, pro-Conservative Party and self-proclaimed Canada’s national newspaper. But the editorial board written piece, which appeared Friday in the Globe and Mail makes an important point, captured in the following sentence concerning their suggested motion for the House of Commons.
“We’ve taken the liberty of writing the motion they ought to bring forth and adopt unanimously: This House unequivocally condemns antisemitism in all of its forms, and in particular rejects the idea that Jewish Canadians are in any way responsible …
Despite Palestinians in Gaza facing a genocide, despite indifference from those in Washington who could stop it, and despite glee from Tel Aviv and the majority of the Israeli population over the mass death and suffering, it would seem that there would be nothing more that could faze those of us who want justice for Palestine.
It is as if we were not already drowning in waves of outrage and despair as new waves continue to barrel in. In addition to the IDF denying aid from coming into Gaza, many groups of Israel’s most depraved citizens are sitting in and blocking …
Photo Credit: Roger D. Harris
The book Gaza Writes Back is a collection of short stories from twenty young Gazans. Although published in 2013, the book is highly relevant today. The stories reveal how the last five months is the culmination of a process which has been going on for decades.
The title is curious: Gaza Writes Back. Perhaps it is an alternative to “Gaza Fights Back”. Certainly in the context of Gaza, writing is an important form of resistance to Israeli repression, occupation and massacres. The …
Be wary of what Washington offers in negotiations at the best of times. The empire gives and takes when it can; the hegemon proffers and in equal measure withdraws offers it deems fit. This is all well known to the legal team of WikiLeaks’ founder Julian Assange, who, the Wall Street Journal “exclusively” reveals, is in ongoing negotiations with US Justice Department officials on a possible plea deal.
As things stand, the US Department of Justice is determined to get its mitts on Assange on the dubious strength of 18 charges, 17 confected from the brutal Espionage Act of 1917. …
From battlefields to legislative arenas, and to Academy Awards, it is difficult to reconcile reality with the manner in which events are presented to the public. The world stands still and its Inhabitants spin.
Battlefield
The Trump administration’s State Department declared, “The Chinese government is committing genocide and crimes against humanity through its wide-scale repression of Uighurs and other predominantly Muslim ethnic minorities in its northwestern region of Xinjiang, including in its use of internment camps and forced sterilization.” Before being elected, President Joe Biden affirmed the previous administration’s rhetoric. He said, through a spokesperson that “the policies by Beijing …
How the CIA, DNI, FBI, and NSA Interfered in a Presidential Election and How Progressives Bought the Lie
by Stansfield Smith / March 22nd, 2024
The US rulers and their national security state foisted two major campaigns of lies on us to win our support for their planned wars. The first that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. This bogus story was rejected by the progressive and anti-war movements. The second that Trump colluded with Putin to steal the 2016 election; this, progressives fell for. It remains a shocking example of manipulation of supposedly well-educated progressive people – many of whom do not hesitate to ridicule MAGA people for their bigotry and ignorance.
Russiagate, packaged as a tale of Putin and Trump collusion, was a …
CO2 is bursting into the atmosphere like never before, up and away, like it has wings.
According to climate scientists, we’re fast approaching white-knuckle time. This reinforces the outlook for 2024 as expressed by WMO: “Every major global climate record was broken last year and 2024 could be worse.” (Celeste Saulo, secretary-general, World Meteorological Organization)
Making matters more nerve-wracking yet, Carbon dioxide, CO2, in the atmosphere is setting new all-time records, soaring above expectations and well above previous readings at Mauna Lua Observatory, Hawaii:
March 18, 2024, CO2 measured 426.02 ppm.
March 15, 2023. CO2 measured 420.24 ppm.
In August, 2008, Ismail Haniyeh, the elected Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority in Gaza, welcomed me and other members of the Free Gaza Movement to his home in the relatively small al-Shati refugee camp in northern Gaza, not far from the larger Jabalia camp. We had just arrived on the first boats to enter Gaza by sea in 41 years, breaking the Israeli siege, and all of Gaza was celebrating. The home was very simple, not different from most others in the camp, and the Prime Minister was proud to show it to us.
8 March was not always International Women’s Day, nor has there always been any such day at all. The idea emerged from the Socialist International (also known as the Second International), where Clara Zetkin of the German Social Democratic Party and others fought from 1889 to hold a day to celebrate working women’s lives and struggles. Zetkin, alongside Alexandra Kollontai of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, sustained a struggle with their comrades to recognise the role of working women and the role of domestic labour in the creation of social …
Hello and welcome to the first of what we hope will be a many episodes of our new series, This Day in Anarchist History!
In this series we’ll make brief primers on historical anarchist events, uprisings, bios of famous anarchists and beginnings of autonomous communities around the world and throughout time. It’s our hope that by understanding our past we can put our current social movements into broader perspective and fight for a better future.
In our premier episode we examine The Paris Commune, a short lived uprising when a broad coalition of the working classes took control of the …
The poor and marginalised have not seen any gains in almost 30 years of democracy. The poor remain poor and unemployment, poverty and inequality are worse today than at the end of apartheid. Many more people live in shacks than in 1994.
Those who live in shack settlements continue to be denied access to basic services such as water and sanitation. Violent evictions continue. Those in the rural areas continue to walk long distances to the nearest health facilities. Those who live in farms continue to be abused by farmers who see them as less than human.
