(Dedicated to Leonard Zeskind and his life partner Carol Smith)
by Bill Berkowitz / April 18th, 2025
Leonard Zeskind, 75, a fearless investigator of the nooks and crannies of America’s racist history and fragile democracy, has died. He spent the better part of his life advocating for civil and human rights and combatting racism. He attended white nationalist meetings to understand this rising movement, risking his life and going to places that most leftists and progressives wouldn’t dare. Much of what he learned he reported in his groundbreaking book, Blood and Politics: The History of the White Nationalist Movement from the Margins to the Mainstream, …
The war in Ukraine will be over, and those who died will not be remembered as heroes or liberators. “Our own children will curse us,” said one of the participants in the Ukrainian army’s escape from the town of Selidov in the DNR. He witnessed extrajudicial executions and torture of civilians – old men, women, children – committed by his “brothers” before the retreat.
“The war will write it all off” – that must have been the opinion of the killers of civilians who thought they would remain anonymous. Unfortunately, neither in …
In 2024, Project Censored introduced Beyond Fact-Checking: A Teaching Guide to the Power of News Frames to critically analyze narrative strategies media outlets use to present news stories. Framing shapes how we understand these stories by emphasizing certain aspects and downplaying others, ultimately promoting a particular interpretation of events. The point of framing is that it’s subtle and extremely easy to overlook, so the guide walks readers through framing red flags, such as selective sourcing, passive voice in headlines, and deceptively cropped images.
Although my colleague, Andy Lee Roth, and I initially developed this guide to educate students about …
In recent months, the Israeli Defense Forces have been much taken by a term that augurs poorly for peaceful accord in the Middle East. “Security zones” are being seized in the Gaza Strip, Lebanon and Syria. Land is, for claimed reasons of self-defence, being appropriated with brazen assuredness. It is hard, however, to see this latest turn as anything other than a de facto military occupation, a situation that will prolong the crisis of vulnerability the Jewish state so wishes to overcome. Israel’s insecurities are much the result of various expansions since 1948 that have only imperilled it to future …
Despite much lofty rhetoric portraying the United States as a democracy (in which the people rule), this nation, in fact, has often resembled a plutocracy (in which the wealthy rule).
The confusion owes a great deal to the fact that the United States, at its founding, was somewhat more democratic than its contemporaries. In the eighteenth century, European nations, governed by kings, princes, and other wealthy hereditary elites, usually provided a contrast to the more unruly, less hidebound new nation, where some Americans even had the vote.
Naturally, nobody cares about that fraud in today’s Sweden
by Jan Oberg / April 17th, 2025
SIPRI is the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, established in 1966. Read about it here and see how it has twisted its aims to not include the words ‘peace research.’ Because here is what it should do according to § 2 of its statutes: “…to conduct scientific research on questions of conflict and cooperation of importance for international peace and security, with the aim of contributing to an understanding of the conditions for peaceful solutions of interstate …
by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead / April 17th, 2025
Homegrowns are next. The homegrowns. You gotta build about five more places [like the CECOT prison]. It’s not big enough.
— President Trump on his desire to send American citizens to a megaprison in El Salvador, beyond the reach of U.S. courts and the Constitution
It has begun, just as we predicted, justified in the name of national security.
Mass roundups. Raids. Indefinite detentions in concentration camps. Martial law. The erosion of habeas corpus protections. The suspension of the Constitution, at least for select segments of the population. A hierarchy of rights, contingent on whether you belong to a favored political class.
After he lost the 1912 presidential election on the Progressive Party ticket, Roosevelt wrote his lengthy Autobiography. His insights on “the malefactors of great wealth”–and the urgent need to regulate and/or dismantle them–remain as perspicacious as ever.
Regarding a sycophantic judge who had written to a prominent finance-capitalist that he was “willing to go to the very verge of judicial discretion to serve your vast interests,” Roosevelt commented on the judge’s “wholly inexplicable reverence for the possession of a great fortune as such. He sincerely believed that business was the end of existence… and …
One of the world’s most isolated tribes will be wiped out if the Indian government presses ahead with a mega-development project on their island, according to a new report published today.
by Francisco Dominguez and Roger D. Harris / April 16th, 2025
Donald Trump has launched an aggressive campaign that targets Latino migrants – particularly Venezuelans – as scapegoats in a broader geopolitical agenda. Bolstered through a controversial alliance with the Salvadoran president, Trump has overseen mass deportations, detentions in Guantánamo Bay and El Salvador’s notorious CECOT prison, and invoked 18th-century war powers to justify these actions.
Trump’s brutal attacks on the working class have been supplemented by the systematic demonization of immigrants – many of whom are themselves working class. During his electoral campaign, Trump not only promised large-scale deportations but, pandering to a far-right base, vilified migrants to unprecedented …
Island states tend to be anxious political entities. Encircled by water, seemingly defended by natural obstacles, the fear of corrupting penetration is never far. Threats of such unwanted intrusion are embellished and magnified. In the case of Australia, these have varied from straying Indonesian fishermen who are seen as terrors of border security, to the threatened establishment of military bases in the Indo-Pacific by China. With Australia facing a federal election, the opportunity to exaggerate the next threat is never far away.
On April 14, the specialist military publication Janes reported that Indonesia had “received an official request from Moscow, seeking …
The Black Alliance for Peace and Movimiento Afrodescendiente Nacional Ecuatoriano (MANE) reported back on the Ecuadorian presidential elections held on Sunday, April 13, 2025. Despite the fact the current president, Daniel Noboa, issued a last-minute decree (Decree 597) that sealed the northern and southern borders, intending to deny entry to international observers, the election team for the Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) was able to enter and observe the elections on the ground.
The National Electoral Council (Consejo Nacional Electoral) has declared Daniel Noboa the winner of the second round of elections, with over an 11-point lead. With this win, it …
Purge is the word symbol of Athena – AthensSo, I slip me a work out in on a local trailway and then decide to drop off a deposit at my bank. I spot a branch of my bank just down the way and think, cool, I’ll just pop in the drive-through.
But there is no drive-through.
I park and walk inside. There are few twenty-somethings sitting around in offices, but no tellers. Just an automated ATM, who one of the twenty-somethings tells me can take my deposit. But a maintenance …
The post-WW2 ‘international rules-based order’ that supposedly underpins global affairs in the interests of peace, democracy and prosperity has always been largely a charade. But Israel’s continuing Gaza genocide, carried out with seeming impunity and with the complicity and even active participation of the US and its allies, has exposed the charade like never before.
Twenty years ago, at the 2005 World Summit, the United Nations General Assembly endorsed the doctrine of the ‘responsibility to protect’ or ‘R2P’. The key concerns were to …
In George Orwell’s novel 1984, the Ministry of Love, despite its name, is not about affection or compassion. Instead, it is the enforcement arm of the Party, responsible for surveillance, torture, brainwashing, and punishment of political dissidents.
I didn’t meet a Republican until I was 18 years old, my freshman year at university. I grew up in working class suburbs of Detroit. Everyone was union. Everyone was a Democrat. This was the party of the New Deal, FDR, JFK.
That political party, that institution which understood and worked for everyday people – the blue collars of the lower class and the white collars of the middle class – that political force which invested its energy to foster an America for all, to serve the citizenry equally regardless of class …
Indulgent, vain and profligate, the all-female venture into space on the self-piloted New Shepard (NS-31) operated by Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin was space capitalism and celebrity shallowness on full show, masquerading as profound, moving and useful.
The crew consisted of bioastronautics research scientist and civil rights activist Amanda Nguyen, CBS Mornings co-host Gayle King, pop entertainer Katy Perry, film producer Kerianne Flynn, former NASA scientist and entrepreneur Aisha Bowe and Lauren Sánchez, fiancée of Jeff Bezos. The journey took 11 minutes and reached the Kármán line at approximately 96 kilometres above the earth.
Everyone this Easter and Passover season should watch Michael Anderson’s 1968 film The Shoes of the Fisherman. Matter of fact just tune into the last 10 minutes. You will see the new Russian Pope, played by Anthony Quinn, telling his followers and the world how to solve the crucial risk of WW3. The Chinese were dying from a horrific famine that impelled their leaders to have no choice but to plan to invade neighboring countries for resources. The new Pope, having visited with the leaders of China and the Soviet Union, gave an order on the day of his coronation. …
My dear mother, who had an artistic temperament that tended at times toward the sentimental, liked to call me a contrarian. She was right. I think she liked but feared this inclination of mine that started in childhood. It no doubt has many roots, some of which an artful reader may sense in the essays in this book, for while I have written …
Apparently, he is addicted to it. The French President, Emmanuel Macron, adores using perfume. The variety: Dior Eau Sauvage. Dior states that the perfume is characterised by notes of Calabrian bergamot and Papua New Guinean vanilla extract. The company is also keen to glorify elements of power and nobility in the scent.
Apparently, the use of that particular fragrance by the France’s head of state happens to be “industrial” in application, “at all hours of the day”, intended to impress “less-accustomed visitors” with “the floral and musky scent, as refined as it is powerful.” A former aide is quoted as claiming …
Former UNSCOM weapons inspector Scott Ritter usually provides excellent analysis of geopolitical events and places them in a morally centered framework. However, in a recent X post, Ritter defends a controversial stance blaming Iran for US and Israeli machinations against Iran.
Donald J. Trump is reinstating protectionist rhetoric, using tariffs as a tool for reindustrialization, political pressure, and wealth redistribution, while the American elite continues to support him, despite the potentially devastating effects on the global economy.
Is Trump turning his tariffs against the United States’ historic allies? One doesn’t have to be a genius to see that. At the same time, the local elite stands by Trump, seeing him as a savior, even when stock market indices on Wall Street fall or the competitiveness of American businesses declines.
Why did America have to resort to tariffs (taxes on imports)? The reason is …
