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Bonfire Night, St. John’s Eve by Jack Butler Yeats (Ireland)
Traditional summer festivals have always revolved around the solstice and bonfires on the feast of St. John (24 June) in many countries. Maypole dancing was also an important aspect of some rural and agricultural summer events, and other summer festivals like Ferragosto (15 August), involved celebrating the early fruits of the harvest and resting after months of hard work. The summer solstice was seen as the height of the powers of the sun which has been …

The Biden/Harris administration is renewing its attacks on Venezuela. On Monday, September 2, US officials seized a jet plane belonging to the Venezuelan government when it was in the Dominican Republic for servicing, then flew it to Florida.

Contrary to a false report in the NY Times, the plane was not “owned by Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro”. It is owned by the Venezuelan government and used for travel by various Venezuelan officials in addition to the president.

The NYT article claims, “The Biden administration is trying to put more pressure on Mr. Maduro because of his attempts to undermine the results of …

The Guardian reported this week a source from within the Foreign Office confirming what anyone paying close attention already knew.

By last February, according to the source, Britain’s then Foreign Secretary, David Cameron, had received official advice that Israel was using British arms components to commit war crimes in Gaza. Cameron sat on that information for many months, concealing it from the House of Commons and the British public, while Israel continued to butcher tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians.

Several points need making about the information provided to the Guardian:

1. …

In Norman Solomon’s new Afterword in the paperback edition of his book War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine, the author excoriates the White House for arming a genocide with assistance from a negligent press. Solomon tracks events following Hamas’ killings and kidnappings of Israelis on October 7th, a few months after publication of the book in hardcover. The 31-page Afterword indicts the Biden administration for complicity in Israel’s genocide, a horror facilitated by Pentagon media stenographers who covered up, ignored …

Power should only ever be vested carefully, and certainly not in the hands of mining magnate Gina Rinehart, a creature so comically absurd as to warrant immediate dismissal in any respectable commentary.  But Australia’s richest human being demands to be noticed, given the insensible influence she continues to exert in press and policy circles.  Rants of smelly suggestion become pearls of perfumed wisdom, often occasioned by large amounts of largesse she disgorges on her sycophantic following.

Of late, she has been busy in her narcissistic daftness.  At the National Bush Summit held last month, she proved particularly unstoppable.  While advertised …

When AC/DC is not about a rock band, it is usually about certain personalities.

“Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.” So the saying goes.

The idea is found in a book written by Anthony Weldon in 1651 titled The Court and Character of King James. Weldon writes, “The Italians have a Proverb, ‘He that deceives me once, it’s his fault. He that deceives me twice, it’s my fault.’”
— Don McMinn

The Vietnam War protest movement left us with a number of timeless anti-war songs, which are, despite the absence of a draft and large numbers of American soldiers dying, still extremely pertinent as they underscore the growing dangers posed by Washington’s pathological addiction to war.

Country Joe McDonald’s “I Feel Like I’m Fixin to Die” let loose a volley of vitriol directed against conscription, the war on students, and American oligarchs who have long sought to solve all problems with violence. The song makes use of humor and sarcasm to remind listeners that imperialist wars are invariably rooted in hubris …

Every day in communities across the United States, children and adolescents spend the majority of their waking hours in schools that have increasingly come to resemble places of detention more than places of learning.

—Investigative journalist Annette Fuentes

It’s not easy being a child in the American police state.

Danger lurks around every corner and comes at you from every direction, especially when Big Brother is involved.

Out on the streets, you’ve got the menace posed by police officers who shoot first and ask questions later. In your neighborhoods, you’ve got to worry …

I am sitting on the beach at the National Seashore, a forty-mile long stretch of the Atlantic Ocean seashore on Outer Cape Cod, established in 1961 by President Kennedy.  The wind is whipping hard and the waves are running wildly high against the shore, and, to paraphrase Thoreau – the sand is rapidly drinking up the last wave that wets it.  I am looking far out to the horizon where the sun shimmers on what seems to be the world’s watery edge, creating a strange mirage that I wonder at but …

Critical cultural historical perspective is not easy to obtain. Yet its importance as an orientation is immeasurable. One episode in the past American century of war is still virtually unknown and/ or misrepresented, the longest single armed conflict in the history of the North American republic—its campaign against Korea. In terms of active hostilities conducted by military formations, the United States dba the United Nations fought in Korea between 1951 and 1953, until a ceasefire and armistice was agreed between the United Nations and the People’s Democratic Republic of Korea. In practice, war by other means has continued with scarcely …

How did philosopher Joh Lennon explain it?

Max Weber (1864-1920) was a prominent German sociologist who developed influential theories on rationality and authority. He examined different types of rationality that underpinned systems of authority. He argued that modern Western societies were based on legal-rational authority and had moved away from systems that were based on traditional authority and charismatic authority.

Traditional authority derives its power from long-standing customs and traditions, while charismatic authority is based on the exceptional personal qualities or charisma of a leader.

According to Weber, the legal-rational authority that characterises Western capitalist industrial society is based on instrumental rationality that focuses on the most efficient means to …

On 23 August 1927, in Anarchist History, Italian-American Immigrants Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were executed by electric chair near Boston, Massachusetts for allegedly robbing a factory and murdering a security guard and the paymaster 7 years earlier.

By all accounts their trial was a sham. They were found guilty even after somebody else confessed to the crimes.

Their funeral was attended by 10,000 people and the wreath over their casket read, “Waiting for the hour of vengeance.” Anarchists around the world would soon deliver on this promise of vengeance.

Who wants to confuse the masses?