Latest articles
Teaching gaps in the hidden history of the US
by T.P. Wilkinson / July 25th, 2024
Among the subjects of instruction in schools are the local language, spoken and written; the techniques of computation, arithmetic and algebra or geometry; the principles of the physical world, chemistry and physics; and the story of the country in which the school is located—unless it is a colony in which case the story of the country that rules it. That story and its episodes is what is commonly known as history. Sometimes it is taught generally. At some point a distinction may be made between local or national history and the …
by Maureen Clare Murphy / July 24th, 2024
Palestinians walk along a street covered with stagnant wastewater near tents sheltering displaced people in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza Strip, 22 July. Omar Ashtawy APA images)
As Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu traveled to Washington, where he will deliver a speech to Congress on Wednesday, the Israeli military massacred Palestinians throughout Gaza and forced a new wave of mass displacement in the south of the territory.
The World Health Organization meanwhile warned that there was a high risk of the polio virus spreading within and beyond …
by David Penner / July 24th, 2024
In my youth I studied for many years as a classically trained oboist, and one day during the Yeltsin years whilst watching the squirrels in Washington Square Park it suddenly dawned on me that the stereotype of the classical musician being an elitist snob had an element of truth to it, and that there was something fundamentally wrong about the fact that most of us lived in a bubble utterly indifferent to catastrophic political and socio-economic problems. This revelation inculcated me with an understanding that the artist has a moral obligation to not turn away in the face of injustice, …
by Allen Forrest / July 24th, 2024
by Tamara Nassar / July 24th, 2024
Palestinians inspect the damage following a raid by Israeli forces in the Tulkarm refugee camp in the northern occupied West Bank on 23 July ( Mohammed Nasser APA images)
The Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority held a secret meeting with American and Israeli officials in Tel Aviv earlier this month to conspire on “day after” plans in Gaza that would involve the collaborative body in reopening the Rafah crossing with Egypt.
“Egypt wants personnel from the Palestinian Authority to operate the crossing,” Axios reported. The crossing, when …
by Dan Lieberman / July 24th, 2024
A revelation — in order to liberate Palestinians from a century of oppression and prevent their genocide, Jews must liberate themselves from centuries of conditioning that trained them to pose as perpetual victims while victimizing others. This is happening and too slowly; progressive Jews are wrestling with reacting to Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people without crippling the Jewish community. Almost entirely anti-Zionist in the 19th century, Zionist advances have enticed the Jewish community to split between Zionists and anti-Zionists. The former have gained control of a community that never had a higher hierarchy. Jew is preceded by an adjective …
by C.J. Hopkins / July 24th, 2024
Just when I thought things could not possibly get more shockingly totalitarian in New Normal Germany, where I’m being prosecuted in criminal court (for the second time) for tweeting, the German authorities have gone and surprised me again. No, they haven’t established an actual Nazi-style People’s Court (pictured above) yet, and, of course, there is absolutely no similarity between the current German justice system, which is totally fair and democratic and a paragon of impartial justice and the rule of law, and The People’s Court of Berlin during the Nazi …
by Joseph Essertier / July 23rd, 2024
The first chapter of Agamben’s The State of Exception (U. of Chicago, 2005) presents a brief outline of the history of the state of exception, including concrete examples from Nazi Germany, the U.S. (the Civil War and after 9/11), France, Switzerland, Italy, and England, roughly in that order. He explains that World War I was a “laboratory for testing and honing” systems for establishing states of exception, and that there was a “gradual expansion of the executive’s powers during the two world wars.” He quotes Walter Benjamin writing in 1942, that “the state of exception… has become the rule.”
Similarly, …
by Allen Forrest / July 23rd, 2024
How do “we” discern what, where, why, and how events are transpiring?
by Binoy Kampmark / July 23rd, 2024
Having been endorsed as the only viable candidate to battle Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential elections, Joe Biden was subsequently browbeaten and harried into leaving the way open for another candidate. It involved some movement of political furniture, but nothing more.
The process resulting in Biden’s decision had increasingly bulked over the last two months. With each day, another Democratic figure would come out to suggest he pass the torch to another appropriate appointee of the establishment. Whispers became roars. Former President Barack Obama, whose deputy Biden had been, also joined the camp of dissent. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi …
Quos Deus vult perdere, prius dementat. “Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.”
by Paul Larudee / July 22nd, 2024
If you want to get ahead in Washington, devise the most dangerous, reckless, merciless and destructive plan for US world domination. If it kills millions of people (especially if they are mostly women and children), you will be called a bold strategist. If tens of millions more become refugees, it will be even more impressive. If you find a way to use nuclear weapons that would otherwise be gathering dust, you will be hailed as brilliant. Such is the nature of proposals for dealing with Russia, China and Iran, not to mention smaller nations like Cuba, Syria, Yemen, Venezuela, North …
by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead / July 22nd, 2024
A failed assassination attempt on a presidential candidate. An incumbent president withdrawing his re-election bid at the 11th hour. A politicized judiciary that fails to hold the powers-that-be accountable to the rule of law. A world at war. A nation in turmoil.
This is what controlled chaos looks like.
This year’s election-year referendum on which corporate puppet should occupy the White House has quickly become a lesson in how the Deep State engineers a crisis to keep itself in power.
Don’t get so caught up in the performance that you lose sight of what’s real.
This endless series of diversions, distractions and political drama …
by CST Research / July 22nd, 2024
The citizens of India have a problem. In what the media like to call ‘the world’s biggest democracy’, there is a serious, proven conflict of interest among officials in the areas of science, agriculture and agricultural research that results in privileging the needs of powerful private interests ahead of farmers and ordinary people.
This has been a longstanding concern. In 2013, for instance, prominent campaigner and environmentalist Aruna Rodrigues said:
The Ministry of Agriculture has handed Monsanto and the industry access to our agri-research public institutions, placing them in a position to seriously influence agri-policy in India. …
by Bruce Lerro / July 22nd, 2024
Orientation
Leninist and anarchist shortcomings in relation to rhetoric
A little over three years ago I wrote an article about how bad Mordor Leninists and anarchists are about knowing about, let alone using rhetorical rhetoric. The article is titled Socialist Rhetorical and Dialectical Communication: Overcoming Brainwashing, Propaganda and Entertainment
These areas of bumbling included:
Initiation engagement
Holding attention
Time and timing
Setting the right atmosphere
The use of the five canons of rhetoric
Importance of charisma
Adjusting to neutral and hostile audiences
Defining key terms
Use of Aristotle’s rhetorical triangle
Appealing to short-term …
by Shawgi Tell / July 22nd, 2024
In a much-awaited case brought forth by Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond (Drummond v. Oklahoma Statewide Virtual Charter School Board), the Oklahoma State Supreme Court ruled 6-2 on June 25, 2024, that St. Isidore of Seville Catholic K-12 Virtual Charter School is unconstitutional and cannot open and enroll students in Fall 2024.
The online religious charter school is sectarian and not permitted to receive any public funding, said the court. Writing for the majority, Justice James Winchester said that, “the contract between the state board and St. Isidore violates the Oklahoma Constitution, the Oklahoma Charter Schools Act and the …
by Media Lens / July 22nd, 2024
Last November, we reported on an incisive and courageous email that had been sent on 24 October 2023 to Tim Davie, the BBC’s Director General, by Rami Ruhayem, a Beirut-based BBC correspondent. Basing his arguments on considerable evidence and rational analysis, Ruhayem was highly critical of the BBC’s pro-Israel coverage of Gaza since the Hamas attacks on 7 October 2023.
A former journalist for the Associated Press, Ruhayem has worked as a journalist and producer for BBC Arabic and the BBC World Service since …
by Binoy Kampmark / July 21st, 2024
The International Court of Justice has again deliberated over the thorn-bloodied subject of Israeli-Palestinian relations. Its latest advisory opinion, sought by the UN General Assembly early last year, was unremarkably conventional though nonetheless affirming: a finding that Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, along with “the regime associated with them, have been established and are being maintained in violation of international law.”
Given the avalanche of international opinions, deliberation and understanding on the status of the settlements that arose after 1967, the ICJ was merely revising homework and reiterating home truths of international law. As Eitay …
Polling predicts that Trump is going to win in a landslide!
by Robert Malone / July 21st, 2024
Kamala’s negatives are even worse than Biden’s. That said, now that he has endorsed her – the party will have to accept her as their nominee.
It is going to be a landslide for Trump.
He will easily hit and surpass the 270 electoral votes needed to become the next President of the United States of America.
Only 58% of Democrats think Harris would make a good president.
Only 30% …
by William Manson / July 21st, 2024
Let us first dispense with a misleading (and superannuated) word: “society.” You and I, mere human beings scrambling to survive, inhabit a marketplace. From the moment we step outside our door, figuratively speaking, contractual and civil laws circumscribe each and every interaction we have with our fellow citizens/consumers. (I’m mindful that, with the absolute governance of private property, this “door” is likely to belong to the mortgage bank rather than us.)
Having left this sanctuary, what should we do? Aside from public areas set aside for recreation, we are to–buy or to sell. But what can we sell? Our mere physical …
by Lawrence Wittner / July 21st, 2024
Over the past decade and more, nuclear war has grown increasingly likely. Most nuclear arms control and disarmament agreements of the past have been discarded by the nuclear powers or will expire soon. Moreover, there are no nuclear arms control negotiations underway. Instead, all nine nuclear nations (Russia, the United States, China, Britain, France, India, Pakistan, Israel, and North Korea) have begun a new nuclear arms race, qualitatively improving the 12,121 nuclear weapons in existence or building new, much faster, and deadlier ones. Furthermore, the cautious, diplomatic statements about international relations that characterized an earlier era have …
by Glenn Sacks / July 20th, 2024
American soldiers on foreign soil fighting to prop up an army of unmotivated conscripts. Savage bombings. Widespread use of napalm. Massacres of civilians by both the US Army and the allied army we’re propping up. Three million killed, and a larger proportion of civilian deaths than World War II. Lies upon lies about the background of the war and the enemy. What Bruce Cumings, former chair of the history department at the University of Chicago, describes as “Gooks, napalm, rapes, whores, an unreliable ally, a cunning enemy, fundamentally untrained G.I.’s fighting a war their top generals …
by Binoy Kampmark / July 20th, 2024
Bring out the bon bons, the bubbles, and the praise filled memoranda for that old alliance. At the three-quarter century mark of its existence, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation is showing itself to be a greater nuisance than ever, gossiping, meddling, and dreaming of greater acts of mischief under the umbrella of manufactured insecurity. It is also being coquettish to certain countries (Ukraine, figures prominently in the wooing stakes) making promises it can never make good.
Its defenders, as is to be expected, see something very different before the mirror. They call the alliance a call for freedom, its enduring importance …
by Edward Curtin / July 19th, 2024
A contronym is a word having two definitions that contradict each other. Two examples are the word bolt, which can mean to lock with a bolt and to flee, and clip, which means to attach and to detach.
There are many such words and there is also a system of thought based on them. It has no name except for the one I give it here, admittedly an awkward one: The Contronymal Circus. Like words that are their own antonyms, this system of thought confuses and traps, as it is meant to do.
Language is, of course, slippery and equivocal, with words …
by Robert Hunziker / July 19th, 2024
Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant is the world’s leading epicenter of toxic radioactive water released into the ocean. Yet, these activities are no longer closely monitored by mainstream media. As it happens, Tokyo Electric Power Company is the electric utility that manages the decommissioning of the collapsed nuclear reactors. This controversial ongoing release of radioactive water is mostly unopposed by the nations of the world. No problem, dump it!
But there is another side to this story.
“This is a time bomb.” (Robert Richmond, Ph.D. Kewalo Marine Laboratory)
A nationwide symposium on Zoom entitled: “Radioactive Contamination of US Food and Water and What …
by Eric Zuesse / July 19th, 2024
This is the list of U.S. coups during the Cold War that’s presented in the highly regarded 2018 academic book Covert Regime Change, by Lindsey O’Rourke.
(Only the start-date for each coup is shown here, but some of these coups went on for years; 39% succeeded at Government-overthrow, 61% did not. This list is taken from “Table 1.1: U.S.-backed regime change attempts during the Cold War (1947-1989)”):
France 1947
Italy 1947
Albania 1949
Belarus 1949
Bulgaria 1949
Czechoslovakia 1949
East Germany 1949
Estonia 1949
Latvia 1949
Lithuania 1949
Poland 1949
Romania 1949
Hungary 1949
Russia 1949
Ukraine 1949
North Korea 1950
Guatemala 1952
Iran 1952
Japan 1952
Indonesia 1954
Syria …
by subMedia / July 19th, 2024
On this day in anarchist history, July 19th of 1936, fascists attempted to take control of Spain by force.
While most of the more liberal elements of Spanish society rested on their laurels, the anarchists were preparing to defend against the fascist coup in the making.
On that day officers from the Spanish army led their troops into several cities around the country but in Barcelona the anarchists were prepared for them. By the next afternoon, anarchists were in full control of the city.
In the years to follow anarchists …
by Maryam Sakeenah / July 18th, 2024
This month on 11th July 2024, the UN commemorated the Srebrenica Genocide of 1995 with official statements and speeches by dignitaries, memorial services, moments of silence and designating a day for remembering what has been called the greatest atrocity in modern Europe.
What is ironic, however, is the fact that the world comes together to remember Srebrenica in the midst of another harrowing genocide — one that is live-streamed straight into every waking moment, all over the world. Ten months into the nightmarish bloodbath in Gaza that has cost nearly 40,000 lives, world leaders are still haranguing over the events of …
by Vijay Prashad / July 18th, 2024
Mahiriki Tangaroa (Kūki ’Airani), Blessed Again by the Gods (Spring), 2015.
Since May, a powerful struggle has rocked Kanaky (New Caledonia), an archipelago located in the Pacific, roughly 1,500 kilometres east of Australia. The island, one of five overseas territories in the Asia-Pacific ruled by France, has been under French colonial rule since 1853. The indigenous Kanak people initiated this cycle of protests after the French government of Emmanuel Macron extended voting rights in provincial elections to thousands of French settlers in the islands. The unrest led Macron to suspend the …
Trump makes it clear
by Global Times / July 18th, 2024
Illustration: Liu Rui/GT
The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) authorities of Taiwan should be trembling now. Former US president Donald Trump, who is the Republican Party’s official 2024 presidential nominee, accused Taiwan of stealing US chip business and claimed that Taiwan “should pay” for US protection, according to Bloomberg on Tuesday.
Trump’s words reflect the strong intention of many US politicians who attempt to replenish the US economy by exploiting the Taiwan island. We wonder how the DPP authorities, who rely on the US to seek “independence,” …
by Binoy Kampmark / July 17th, 2024
Politics and facts are not necessarily good dinner companions. Both often stray from the same table, taking up with other, more suitable company. The Australian opposition leader, Peter Dutton, has never been discomforted by facts, preferring the chimera-like qualities demagoguery offers. His vision for Australia is admirably simple and simplistic.
In foreign policy, he supports US interventions in any theatre of the globe without question. Ditto such allies as Israel. To the distant north, the evil Yellow Horde is abominated. Domestically, matters are similarly one dimensional. Irregular boat arrivals are to be repelled with necessary cruelty. And then there is a …
