A Post Asking for Trouble
One has to be careful when the government throws free speech and free expression in the toilet.
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Part II: The World Confront its Malaise
From an American killing 29 Palestinians to an American bomb killing Hassan Nasrallah
Read Part 1.
The events described in previous articles ─ pro-Israel influence that enabled rapid recognition by the U.S. government of the Israel regime in 1948 and an American murder of 29 Palestinians at the Cave of Patriarchs in Hebron in 1994 are not isolated relics of the past. They link to events that occur in contemporary times and remain alive as if happening today ─ salient features in the historical narrative that a world ignored and served to claim more victims.
Pro-Israel influence that enabled rapid …
A Declaration of War on the Poor
On 16 September we marched in our thousands in Ballito to oppose evictions and racism. However, the attacks on the poor are escalating and the Dolphin Coast Residents & Ratepayers’ Association have made a public declaration of war against one of our branches.
Since the formation of the Government of National Unity there has been a huge increase in state attacks on shack settlements around Durban and elsewhere. This includes settlements in Belair and the Bluff, both formerly white suburbs, and the Lindokuhle Mnguni Occupation in Johannesburg, which is near to a middle-class area. In all these cases settlements in middle …
Did 1.4 billion Chinese Achieving Poverty Alleviation Cut into Washington’s Cake?
The hopeless fault-finder. Illustration: Liu Rui/GT
These days the People’s Republic of China is celebrating its 75th anniversary. Over the past 75 years, China has grown from a poor and backward country to the world’s second-largest economy, with about one-sixth of the world’s population escaping poverty.
However, as China continued to rise, the US’ attitude toward China has changed dramatically. Be it the “China threat” narrative or the “China challenge” theory, US politicians …
Handmaiden to the Establishment
Peter Greste’s Register of Journalists
When established, well fed and fattened, a credible professional tires from the pursuit. One can get complacent, flatulently confident, self-assured. From that summit, the inner lecturer emerges, along with a disease: false expertise.
The Australian journalist Peter Greste has faithfully replicated the pattern. At one point in his life, he was lean, hungry and determined to get the story. He seemed to avoid the perils of mahogany ridge, where many alcohol-soaked hacks scribble copy sensational or otherwise. There were stints as a freelancer covering the civil wars in Yugoslavia, elections in post-apartheid South Africa. On joining the BBC in 1995, Afghanistan, …
Russia Confirms Liberation of Key Donbass Town
Ukraine had previously announced a retreat from Ugledar, after intense fighting
An Honest Terrorist List Would Include Israel Military
The Canadian government needs to put the Israeli military on its terrorist list. And no Canadian should assist that organization in any way.
Over the past year the IDF has committed a holocaust in Gaza. The IDF has destroyed most of the occupied coastal strip’s buildings, water sources and agricultural land. According to the UN Satellite Centre (UNOSAT), 66% of buildings in Gaza have been damaged and “68% of the permanent crop fields in the Gaza Strip exhibited a significant decline in health …
A Walk Along the Baiyangdian Lake in the Xiong’an New Area
Detail of: Ye Wulin (China), 红星颂 (Ode to the Red Star), 2015.
Seventy-five years ago, on 1 October 1949, Mao Zedong (1893–1976) announced the creation of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). It is important to note that the Communist Party of China (CPC) did not name the new state the Socialist Republic, but instead called it the People’s Republic. That is because Mao and the CPC did not foresee China being immediately ushered into socialism; rather, the country was embarking on the road to socialism, a process that would likely …
The World Confronts its Malaise
Part I- How was the Middle East destruction allowed to fester and happen?
The world is in shock; stricken by the realization that mass murder occurs unimpeded and those who were regarded as protectors against atrocities are those who enable the slaughter of innocents. An uneasiness has gripped the world and brought it to the depressing state of watching helplessly as democratically chosen leaders aid and abet in the most severe criminal activity ─ genocide. Israel has achieved a level of committing atrocities, denying humanity, and displaying insanity that is incomprehensible. Go back in history and return to Hulegu, prince of the Mongol Empire, besieging Baghdad in the thirteenth century. “Surrender …
Inconvenient Truths: The Shia Salah al-Din and 10/7
Salah El Din – Salah El Din El Ayoubi – Saladin and Richard the Lionheart
Jerusalem’s hard-fought liberation, now in process, is a recapitulation of the Christian Crusades of the 11th-13th centuries, this time, not by the knight on a white horse of legend, but through the long march of guerilla warfare by the much maligned Shia. This follows on the liberation of Iran from its Judeo-Christian yoke in 1979 and Iraq 25 years later, ironically by the US, forming the second Shia majority state. But it is the …
America Is Falling Apart
Our National Priorities Are in Dire Need of Restructuring
You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.
— Bob Dylan
A water main breaks every two minutes somewhere in the U.S., resulting in contaminated drinking supplies and boil water notices.
One out of three bridges in the U.S. needs repair, endangering hundreds of millions of commuters. More than 42,000 bridges across the country, carrying about 167 million vehicles each day, are in disrepair.
It is estimated that 300 million people could face power outages across the United States …
Biden’s Israel Policy Has Led Us to the Brink of War on Iran
Photo credit: CODEPINK
On October 1, Iran fired about 180 missiles at Israel in response to Israel’s recent assassinations of leaders of its Revolutionary Guard (IRGC), Hezbollah, and Hamas. There are conflicting reports about how many of the missiles struck their targets and if there were any deaths. But Israel is now considering a counterattack that could propel it into an all-out war with Iran, with the U.S. in tow.
For years, Iran has been trying to avoid such a war. That is why it signed the 2015 JCPOA nuclear agreement with the United States, …
Legacy Media
Is the corporate/state media something that people want to claim as their mainstream?
Your Mind is a Battlefield: Decolonize Your Mind to Prevent Global Catastrophe!
Talk delivered for the event “Changes Not Seen in a Century: 75th Anniversary of the Founding of PRC.”
Friends, Colleagues, Comrades,
It’s a great honor for me to join you in this extraordinary, historical moment of celebration and reflection on the 75th anniversary of the founding of the PRC.
As has been said, we are seeing changes unseen in a century. Changes both great and terrible.
We are currently seeing the unravelling of Empire–and its last desperate, violent, hideous death rattle. We are seeing the unmasking of 500 years of western “civilization”, and the laying bare of its …
Australian Officials Push Authoritarian Crackdown on Pro-Hezbollah Speech
As Israel begins another invasion of Lebanon, Australian officials from both sides of the imaginary partisan divide have been falling all over themselves to get Australians punished for speech crimes about the Lebanese resistance group Hezbollah.
The Australian political-media class have been in an uproar ever since footage surfaced of people waving Hezbollah flags at a protest in Melbourne over the weekend and displaying pictures of the group’s deceased leader Hassan Nasrallah, who was assassinated by Israel in a massive airstrike on Friday.
After initially stating …
The Longest Day: Israel’s Victim Mindset
Next month will see the commemoration in Israel of the tragic events of October 7, 2023. For Israelis, that day has taken on a degree of sanctity. It is seen as an event that was unprecedented, unforeseen and unconnected to all that came before. To look for causes, beyond antisemitism and military and political culpability or incompetence, is to question the sacred. To link it to one hundred years of war against Palestine is to provide succor to the barbarians at the gate.
Israeli media platforms – the webpages, the rolling news channels – provide a constantly updated count of …
Unrealisable Justice: Julian Assange in Strasbourg
It was good to hear that voice again. A voice of provoking interest that pitter patters, feline across a parquet, followed by the usual devastating conclusion. Julian Assange’s last public address was made in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. There, he was a guest vulnerable to the capricious wishes of changing governments. At Belmarsh Prison in London, he was rendered silent, his views conveyed through visitors, legal emissaries and his family.
The hearing in Strasbourg on October 1, organised by the Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights of the …
A Moral Imperative for the 2024 US Elections
Will Americans Vote for Genocide?
Is it acceptable for Israel to wipe Palestine and Palestinians off the map? On 5 November 2024, Americans have an opportunity to signal whether genocide is anathema for the majority of its citizens.
So, how can Americans signal their abhorrence for genocide?
Americans have been locked in a pattern of voting for the political duopoly: either wing of the business party. It is widely held that on most major matters there is little to separate the Democrats and Republicans. And this has led to many Americans voting based on whichever party is perceived to be the lesser evil.
Despite this …
The Most Important US Presidential Election of Our Lifetime
The Rightward Trajectory of the Two-Party System
Left-liberals plea every four years that this really is the most important election ever and time to hold our noses and send a Democrat to the White House. The manifest destiny of US world leadership, we are told, is at stake, as is our precious democracy which we have so generously been exporting abroad.
Let’s leave aside the existential threats of climate change or nuclear war. However important, these issues are not on the November 5 ballot. Nor are they addressed in even minimally meaningful ways by the platforms of …
Choose-Up Games from the Sandlots of Jamaica, Queens NY
Culture and Class Conflicts 1956-1969
Field of Dreams
When I was about seven years old I used to play a “let’s pretend” baseball game in our backyard. I laid out 4 rags I’d gotten from the garage and placed them in a diamond form which represented the bases. The bases were about 20 feet apart. Then I looked at our house and took my batting stance and let my imagination take over. The imaginary scene is no doubt familiar to many of you. It is the last of the 9th inning, we are losing by three runs. …
The Electoral Spectrum of Evil
There is little substantive difference between the Republicans and Democrats; they are both corporate dominated and controlled parties. As futile as lesser evilism is, it is also futile to talk about there being a lesser evilism between the two utterly dominant political parties in the United States.
— “Evilism: There Is No Lesser,” Dissident Voice.
Presidential Marxism: AKD and the Sri Lankan Elections
Anura Kumara Dissanayake, known with convenient laziness as AKD, became Sri Lanka’s latest president after a runoff count focusing on preferential votes. The very fact that it went to a second count with a voter turnout of 77% after a failure of any candidate to secure a majority was itself historic, the first since Sri Lankan independence in 1948.
AKD’s presidential victory tickles and excites the election watchers for various reasons. He does not hail from any of the dynastic families that have treated rule and the presidential office as electoral real …
Why Never a Mention of Ukrainian Government Killing Its Ethnic Russian Citizens?
For sure since its 2023 invasion Russia has been taking a horrific amount of Ukrainian lives and causing a vast amount of injuries as most all wars do, however the constant and much longer ongoing killing and injuring during the Ukrainian civil war since the overthrow of the democratically elected Ukrainian government in 2014, has been entirely and utterly unmentioned in the hegemonic media of the West (as witnessed by this writer, who has been following this absence daily in both internet and television).
For example, although the present Ukrainian Government has been shelling Donbas since 2014, killing civilians including children. …
Jewish Chronicle Scandal: Why Was There No Uproar over Its Long Record of Pro-Israel Fake News?
The paper's disinformation is making waves only now, after it printed claims based on forged Hamas documents. But the JC has been peddling falsehoods for years.
Britain’s best-known Jewish newspaper has found itself thrust into the centre of an embarrassing and long-overdue storm over its involvement with the shadowy manoeuvrings of the pro-Israel lobby.
It raises questions about the degree to which parts of the British media are – inadvertently or otherwise – colluding in Israeli disinformation.
The 180-year-old Jewish Chronicle, or JC as it is now known, lost four of its big-name columnists on Sunday, after it was revealed that the paper had published a story based on a forged document concerning Israel’s war on Gaza. Jonathan Freedland, …
No to Foreign Military Intervention in Haiti!
Yes to Haitian Self-Determination!
The Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) urges the leaders of the nations of the Americas to oppose the upcoming United Nations’ decision to renew the Multinational Security Support Mission (MSS) in Haiti for another 12 months. Additionally, we call on these regional leaders to challenge the United States’ proposal to convert this MSS into a full-fledged UN Peacekeeping mission by 2025.
On October 16, 2022, the Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) sent a letter urging the People’s Republic of China and the Russian Federation to “respect Haitian sovereignty …
October’s Surprise Party
As another October approaches, the beautiful season of colors begins here in New England. Call it October’s Surprise Party. The turning leaves with all their colors come to announce the earth’s glory, the possibility of peace and happiness for all.
Yet as the month transpires and November nears, I think we might expect what for many will be the unexpected, as Bob Dylan reminds us with “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall.” Listen: “I heard the sound of a thunder that roared out a warnin’/I heard the roar of a wave that could drown …
Keeping a Sense of Humor
There are times when keeping a sense of humor would be nigh impossible.
Time to Face Truth: Canada’s Terrorist List Enables Terrorism
Justin Trudeau justified the brutal killing of the leader of a Lebanese political party on the grounds Canada lists his organization as “terrorist”.
On Friday Israel leveled six large apartment buildings in the Dahiyeh suburb of Beirut with some 80 bombs weighing 2,000 to 4,000 pounds each. Dropped by US-made F-15 fighter jets, the US-made BLU-109 “bunker-busters” incinerated an unknown number.
In response to this act of state terror Trudeau posted, “Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, has been killed. He was the leader of a …
Kamala Harris Backed by Hundreds of Millions of Dark-Money Dollars
On 17 March 2021, OpenSecrets.org headlined “‘Dark money’ topped $1 billion in 2020, largely boosting Democrats” and reported that,
The 2020 election saw more than $1 billion in ‘dark money’ pending at the federal level, a massive sum driven by an explosion of secret donations boosting Democrats in a historically expensive cycle. That’s according to an estimate from OpenSecrets. The billion-dollar sum includes a whopping $660 million in donations from opaque political nonprofits and shell companies to outside groups.
In many prior years, most of the dark money had been going to Republicans, but now this has apparently …
France: After Two Months without a Government, an Old Right-Winger is Appointed Prime Minister
Source: Contre-Attaque, September 5, 2024
In 2017, Macron was marketed by the media as a new product. He was elected without a program, solely on the argument that he represented the “new world,” breaking away from the old political class. Seven years later, Macron is resurrecting the worst aspects of the old world, amidst increasing fascization and overt authoritarianism, having shattered the last illusions of representative democracy.
Michel Barnier: A Political Dinosaur
After a prolonged indecision over several candidates for Prime Minister, Macron ultimately chose Michel Barnier, thereby sidelining Bernard Cazeneuve and Xavier Bertrand, other contenders for the role. Michel …