COVID Restrictions in Ancient Times
What would Jesus have done?
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A Moral Imperative for the 2025 Canadian Election
Will Canadians Vote for Genocide?
Prime Minister Mark Carney, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre and NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh. Photo by Thomas Padilla/AP; Dave Chan/AFP via Getty Images
Back in August 2014, the New Democratic Party (NDP) was led by Tom Mulcair whose Zionism was so extreme that a sitting MP, Sana Hassainia, of the Montreal-area riding of Vercheres-Les Patriotes, could not accept Mulcair’s position and chose to sit as an independent.
The current NDP leader Jagmeet Singh forthrightly denounced the genocide in Gaza and questioned current Canadian prime minister Mark Carney (Liberal Party) about his position on Gaza.
“Mr. …
Maura Finkelstein on Academic Freedom, Jewish, Zionism, and Palestine
Host Faramarz Farbod talks with Dr. Maura Finkelstein, writer, ethnographer, anthropologist, and author of The Archive of Loss: Lively Ruination in Mill Land Mumbai (DUP 2019). Dr. Finkelstein was falsely accused of antisemitism and fired last May (2024) from her teaching position at Muhlenberg College in Allentown. We talk about the state of academic freedom, classrooms as ethnographic spaces, decanonization, being Jewish and anti-Zionist in the US, Zionism, Israel, misuses of antisemitism, Islamophobia, empire, and the present moment in history.
Ten Commandments for the New American Century
First Commandment: THOU SHALT TAKE MONEY OUT OF POLITICS
No money in politics. Zero! First, people should stand up and declare unequivocally they will not vote for anyone who takes ANY money from corporations, lobbyists and PACs. Then, down the road, by having elections 100% financed out of public funds, we can build a democracy where our legislators might actually have some time to legislate. It is common knowledge, most federal office holders spend enormous amounts of time raising funds and worrying about winning the next election, instead of doing the job …
How a President Becomes a Dictator
By Executive Order
130 executive orders in under 100 days.
Sweeping powers claimed in the name of “security” and “efficiency.”
One president acting as lawmaker, enforcer, and judge.
No debate. No oversight. No limits.
This is how the Constitution dies—not with a coup, but with a pen.
The Unitary Executive Theory is no longer a theory—it’s the architecture of a dictatorship in motion.
Where past presidents have used executive orders, decrees, memorandums, proclamations, national security directives and legislative signing statements to circumvent Congress or sidestep the rule of law, President Trump is using executive orders to advance his “unitary executive theory” of governance, which is a …
Not Taking a Position on Gaza IS Taking a Position on Gaza
It’s not okay to claim ignorance or uncertainty about what’s happening in Gaza in 2025. You’re an adult. You have internet access. If you don’t know, learn. You can’t just go “it too compwicated, me no understandy, googoo gaga.” It’s not cute and it’s not okay. Grow the fuck up.
Not taking a position on Gaza IS taking a position on Gaza. One you’ll have to live with for the rest of your life. One you will be judged by history for. One you will have to explain to your grandkids. Failure to oppose a genocide that your own government is …
Story Time
The Grimm Brothers never came up with such a tale.
Israel Stalls and the International Court of Justice Complies
One year ago, the International Court of Justice ruled that Israel had fifteen months to prepare their defense (“counter memorial”) against the charges of genocide filed by South Africa. They were told to present their arguments by 28 July 2025.
That seems like a very long time in a case involving the daily killing of many people, including children. But it was not enough time for Israel, which on 27 March 2025 filed a request to extend the time.
In a very recent decision, the International Court of Justice has obliged and extended the time by six months. Israel can …
Challenges to Nepal’s Republican Structure from Monarchists and Why?
On March 28, 2025, pro-republic and pro-monarchy forces organised rival protests in Nepal’s capital, Kathmandu, to showcase public support for and against the Republic. According to the Ministry of Home Affairs, about 4,000 people attended the pro-monarchy rally, while around 35,000 joined the pro-republican protest. This was the second major monarchist demonstration following a bigger rally welcoming the king back from Pokhara on March 9. Pro-monarchy forces have been increasingly active, particularly after the former king Gyanendra Shah’s provocative statement on the eve of Democracy Day (February 19).
Sensing the offense of counterrevolutionary forces, the pro-republican protest, …
Ending the US Dollar’s Exorbitant Privilege
The Selling of America
Has the love, or even more so the fixation, gone with the US dollar, that all cushioning reserve currency that has shown itself unimpeachable for decades? A curious event teasing and ruffling currency watchers and financiers is becoming a pattern: the US dollar is being sold off, suggesting it has lost its princely shine. To this can also be added the sale of US Treasuries.
Even before the global imposition of Donald Trump’s tariff-driven bonanza and his public bruising of Federal Reserve chairman, Jerome Powell, the world’s dominant currency was already being moved on. Since 2014, the Chinese and Russian central …
For a Veterans March on Washington
In May 1932, jobless WWI veterans organized a group called the a march on Washington. 43,000 demonstrators including 17,000 veterans their families, and affiliated groups gathered to demand to demand compensation from the Federal Government for their sacrifices in World War 1. That march and it’s suppression by the military was a key factor in the overturning of a deeply reactionary Republican Administration and the onset of the New Deal.
In this same month of May 2025, plans are being made in Washington for a military parade by Donald Trump for his birthday on June 14, honoring himself. All this …
Pope Francis and the Battle Over Cultural Terrain
The mainstream media is proclaiming that Pope Francis spoke up for the poor and marginalized. What they aren’t mentioning is that he named the system that’s causing so much suffering around the world.
“… [W]e should not be fooled: Much of the organized opposition to Francis has nothing to do with how we care for the divorced and remarried. It is this, his trenchant critique of modern capitalism that keeps money flowing to conservative outlets intent on marginalizing what the pope says.’
— Michael Sean Winters, The National Catholic Reporter, 10/29/17.
So far, we have the still unsubstantiated allegations by Archbishop Carlo …
How Israel Used October 7 to Spread Propaganda
This video dives into a groundbreaking investigation by Al Jazeera’s Investigative Unit, exposing how fabricated stories about October 7 were used to justify mass violence — and how the Western media played along.
Close the US Military Bases in Asia
The best strategy for the superpowers is to stay out of each other’s lanes.
President Donald Trump is again loudly complaining that the US military bases in Asia are too costly for the US to bear. As part of the new round of tariff negotiations with Japan and Korea, Trump is calling on Japan and Korea to pay for stationing the US troops. Here’s a much better idea: close the bases and return the US servicemen to the US.
Trump implies that the US is providing a great service to Japan and Korea by stationing 50,000 troops in Japan and nearly 30,000 in Korea. Yet these countries do not need the US …
Someone Doesn’t Like Us
Alan Robok, “20 reasons why geoengineering may be a bad idea,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, May/June 2008.
The One State
A Critique
Israel and the Palestinian Authority are each convinced that the long reach of history is on their side; the Israelis believe that future generations throughout the world will be detached from the illegal and oppressive acts committed against the Palestinians and only be aware of their present situations; the Palestinians believe that a Jewish Israel has no place in an Arab world, will constantly face enemies and hostility from Arab and Muslim nations, and these nations will one day achieve sufficient power to force their dictates on the Zionist regime.
With its historical view, Israel proceeds to ignore Palestinian …
The Forever Wars May be over, but Trump is No Peacemaker
The new guard of kleptocrats are seeking quick deals on Gaza and Ukraine, not because they want peace but because they’ve found a better way to make themselves even richer.
Anyone trying to make sense of the Trump administration’s policy towards Gaza should have a thumping headache by now.
Initially, US President Donald Trump called for the mass expulsion of Palestinians from the tiny territory wrecked by Israel over the past year and a half, so that he could build the “Riviera of the …
Green Party Has “Hands On” Indigenous Rights
Following the massive “Hands Off” demonstration on April 5, the Green Party asked its leaders to describe what the Green Party had its “Hands On.”
During the 2024 presidential election, I, like thousands of committed voters, decided to take a stand. When I was much younger, I believed that the American government was not for the people. I was confused by politics, but I knew what I saw in my community — poverty, police brutality, public schools with inadequate supplies, and markets offering unhealthy products that contributed to the chronic diseases plaguing neighborhood children and elders. I was convinced that the people …
Those Chinese Peasants
Some would posit, “If you have nothing nice to say, don’t say anything.”
US president Donald Trump is not beholden to that epithet and neither is his vice-president JD “I don’t like China” Vance.
Previously, in January 2018, Trump was criticized for referring to Haiti and African countries as “shithole countries.”
On 8 April 2025, Trump took pleasure in describing countries purportedly cowering at the prospect of US tariffs being levied on them:
These countries are calling us up, kissing my ass. They are, they are dying to make a deal. Please, please sir, make a deal. I’ll do anything. I’ll do anything …
Trump Massacres Yemenis so Israel can Massacre Palestinians
On April 17, US airstrikes on Yemen killed 74 people and injured 171 in a dangerous escalation of US President Donald Trump’s war against the poorest country in the Middle East. A resident of the area around Yemen’s Ras Issa fuel port told Chinese media that “among the victims were employees, truck drivers, contracted workers, and civilian trainees of the port,” and “rescue teams recovering bodies and extinguishing fires were also targeted in [US] subsequent strikes.”
Trump’s attack targeted Ras Issa a vital lifeline connecting the isolated, bombarded country to …
Close Military Bases, Not Embassies
The Trump clowns are planning to close U.S. embassies in Africa.
Good riddance, right?
Wrong.
They still plan to work on “coordinated counterterrorism operations” and “strategic extraction and trade of critical natural resources.”
They also still plan to maintain U.S. military bases across the continent. They’re shutting down all kinds of offices, but not Africom.
In U.S. culture and media, where it’s one’s duty to pretend that the military budget and everything that goes with it does not exist, one could …
The Fears of Thinking for Oneself
And what would the greatest fear of thinking for oneself be?
Latin America Three Months into the Trumpocalypse
Nobody is complaining anymore about Latin America and the Caribbean being neglected by the hegemon to the north. The Trump administration is contending with it on multiple fronts: prioritizing “massive deportations,” halting the “flood of drugs,” combatting “threats to US security,” and stopping other countries from “ripping us off” in trade. The over 200-year-old Monroe Doctrine is alive and on steroids.
But has Washington taken a sharp right turn, qualitatively departing from past practices, or simply intensified an already manifest imperial trajectory? And, from a south-of-the-border perspective, to what extent are the perceived problems “made …
The Pope Has Died, and the Palestinian People Have Lost an Important Advocate
Notes from the Edge of the Narrative Matrix
Pope Francis has died after using his Easter Sunday address to call for peace in Gaza. I don’t know who the cardinals will pick to replace him, but I do know with absolute certainty that there are transnational intelligence operations in the works to make sure they select a more reliable supporter of Israel. They’ve probably been working on it since his health started failing.
Anyone who’s been reading me for a …
Climate Change Kills Capitalism
Capitalism, like Antarctica and like the Amazon rainforest, is under threat of destruction by excessive levels of CO2 emissions which cause radical climate change. Risk of some level of extinction of capitalism goes to the heart of a recent article written by Gunther Thallinger, Member of the Board of Management of Allianz Group (est. 1889, Munich) the world’s largest insurance company: “Climate, Risk, Insurance: The Future of Capitalism,” March 25, 2025.
Mr. Thallinger’s provocative article starts by spelling out the …
Reviewing AUKUS
Dotty and Cretinous
It was a deal for the cretinous, hammered out by the less than bright for less than honourable goals. But AUKUS, the trilateral security alliance between Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States, is now finally receiving the broader opprobrium it should have had from the outset. Importantly, criticism is coming from those who have, at points, swooned at the prospect of acquiring a nuclear-powered submarine capability assuming, erroneously, that Australia somehow needs it.
A report by the Strategic Analysis Australia think tank has found that AUKUS, despite the increasingly vain promise of supplying the Royal Australian Navy …
Some Sleepwalk into Autocracy
I was Dragged Kicking and Screaming
I am a whistleblower with a master’s of public policy from Central European University (kicked out of Hungary by Orban’s regime), and I have spent the last several years feverishly trying to blow the whistle about authoritarianism and rising fascism in the U.S. On Christmas Eve in 2023, I wrote a prescient and illustrative letter to civil society abroad as I begged for help on behalf of a marginalized, targeted U.S. activist. When the international civil society employee had a call with me, she explained what human rights are to me, assuming I did not know, and she seemed to …
No Wonder
We found all-cause death risks to be even higher for those vaccinated with one and two doses compared to the unvaccinated and that the booster doses were ineffective. We also found a slight but statistically significant loss of life expectancy for those vaccinated with 2 or 3/4 doses.
— Cited from conclusion in Alessandria, M., Malatesta, G. M., Berrino, F., & Donzelli, A. (2024). A Critical Analysis of All-Cause Deaths during COVID-19 Vaccination in an Italian Province. Microorganisms, 12(7), 1343. https://doi.org/10.3390/microorganisms12071343
What Lies behind Nvidia’s Commitment to “unswervingly serving the Chinese market”
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, who has visited China again three months after his trip in January, recently publicly stated that the company would “unswervingly serve the Chinese market” and emphasized China’s key role in the global supply chain. He said Nvidia has grown together with the Chinese market and achieved mutual success. Against the backdrop of the US imposing tariffs and banning Nvidia’s export of H20 chips to China, Huang’s visit and his emphasis that China is a “very important market for Nvidia” can be seen as US companies’ indirect resistance to US government’s protectionist trade policies. His stance, viewing …