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Rashid Diab (Sudan), Out of Focus, 2015.

One summer evening, the unrelenting sun over Niger refused to dip below the horizon. I sought out some shade with three anxious men in Touba au paradis, a small quiet restaurant in Agadez. These three Nigerians had tried to make the crossing at Assamaka, to our north, into Algeria, but found the border barred. They hoped their final destination would be Europe across the Mediterranean Sea, but first they had to make it into Algeria, and then across the remarkable Sahara Desert. By …

Invention is the mother of necessity, and Russia’s response to largely Western-imposed economic and trade sanctions has shown the extent of that inventiveness.  While enduring attritive punishment in its Ukraine campaign, the war remains sustainable for the Kremlin.  The domestic economy has not collapsed, despite apocalyptic predictions to the contrary.  In terms of exports, Russia is carving out new trade routes, a move that has been welcomed by notable powers in the Global South.

One of the chief prosecutors of sanctions against Moscow was initially confident about the damage that would be caused by economic bludgeoning.  US President Joe Biden, in …

Five questions, and a sixth:

1. At what point does it become irresponsible not to compare Israel’s slaughter of the Palestinian people with the genocide westerners know best: the Nazi Holocaust?

2. At what point does shielding Israel from the revulsion its actions naturally inspire not turn into complicity?

3. At what point should western publics be offered proper historical context to make sense of Israel’s genocide: one that lets them understand how the Zionist movement was ideologically shaped by its exposure to ugly, century-old European ethnic nationalisms that culminated …

We should be clear about one thing. Death is not preventable. In fact it is assured. Even David Rockefeller, third generation patriarch of the gangster family on the Hudson, bit the dust at 101 in 2017. There may be some of his kind with ambitions of greater longevity but Daoist immortality has so far escaped them. However we may find that the improvements rendered notorious by Christiaan Barnard’s surgical experiments may reach a level to satisfy the most Methuselahaic of our ruling oligarchy. Perhaps some of these ancients are still around …

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 …