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The Guardian has long promoted itself as a valiant publisher of news and analysis that holds the powerful to account. It is a thing of wonder that the Guardian appends the following comment beneath news pieces:

Our quality, investigative journalism is a scrutinising force at a time when the rich and powerful are getting away with more and more.

For over twenty years, Media Lens has shown how false is this claim.

A new, significant example occurred just last week. On 15 November, the paper removed Osama bin Laden’s …

It is a particularly quotidian breed in the modern, management-driven university.  The desk clerk who pretends to be an academic and researcher but is neither.  The desk clerk who admires rosters, work plans and “key performance indicators”, thinking that the process of knowledge is quantifiable by productivity targets and financial returns.  The desk clerk who pilfers the work of undergraduates, sports a dubious doctoral thesis, and who rarely sets foot within the sacred surrounds of a library.

The rise of such a figure in the global university scene, one neither fish nor fowl, is no accident.  As universities have declined, bureaucracy …

In Canada, trans “justice” has gone haywire. “A Certain Madness Amok.”

Three U.S. presidents were instrumental in establishing Thanksgiving as a regular national event. On October 3, 1789, George Washington declared the first federal Thanksgiving holiday. In 1863, Abraham Lincoln made it an annual federal holiday. And in 1941, Franklin Roosevelt signed a bill setting the date at the fourth Thursday of every November. All three presidents were giving thanks for bringing the country through a major financial crisis related to war, and they all achieved this feat through what Sen. Henry Clay called the “American system” of banking and finance – sovereign or government-issued money and credit.

For Washington, the challenge …

What is the truth, and where did it go?
Ask Oswald and Ruby, they oughta know
“Shut your mouth,” said the wise old owl
Business is business, and it’s a murder most foul

Don’t worry, Mr. President
Help’s on the way
Your brothers are coming, there’ll be hell to pay
Brothers? What brothers? What’s this about hell?
Tell them, “We’re waiting, keep coming”
We’ll get them as well

— Bob Dylan, Murder Most Foul

*****
Why President Kennedy was publicly murdered by the CIA sixty years ago has never been more important.  …

At least as one response to the perceived failures of the French Revolution, some of what became the Romantic movements in the 19th century turned away from social interaction, especially collective activity, and toward individual isolation. Such a reaction was not peculiar to this period. In fact, withdrawal from social contact was an established niche strategy throughout Latin Christendom. There were two broad views in the Church as to how sin was to be encountered. One was collective labour. The other was solitary penitence.

Solitude for the Romantic movements emerged as a …

For those who survive.

The fossil fuel lobby has had a busy year on the eco-camouflage front.  Earlier this year, interest started to rumble and rage against the stranding of humpback whales on the east coast of the United States.  Suddenly, opponents of wind turbine technology – and renewable technology more broadly – had identified an invaluable, if tenuous nexus: a link between whale mortality and offshore wind farms.

One true enthusiast for the proposition proved to be Donald Trump.  Speaking at a rally in South Carolina in September, for example, the Republican presidential contender suggested that these “windmills” were driving whales “crazy”, inflicting …

Reflections on the psychological, moral and political implications of what we eat, and on prospects for non-violent social change.

Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are.

— Brillat-Savarin, The Physiology of Taste, Brillat-Savarin, Jean-Anthelme, (Penguin Books, 1994): p.13.

Getting back into fasting after a break is difficult. In the past, I would fast for two days in every week, but occasionally challenged myself to extend that by a day or two, maybe three, until one day — evidently one day too many — I collapsed like a device unplugged and cracked my head on the sink …

The holocaust now visited on Palestine by US-Israel is unique in many ways. Rates of killing and maiming exceed those of previous Israeli assaults on Gaza, the perpetrators announce their genocidal intent with unusual frankness, and Western media and official apologists are especially shameless.

But in a world under centuries of West European domination, this particular intentional genocide/mass-death event ought to seem familiar. These mass killings have always been necessary for the global system to function, providing land for settlement, cultivation and resource extraction, labor for hyper-exploitation, and geopolitical power.

In the “long 16th century” (~1450 to ~1650) the capitalist world system …

Since he was elected Hezbollah Secretary General in 1992, following Israel’s assassination of his predecessor and mentor Sayed Abbas Mousawi, Sayed Hassan Nasrallah has achieved a very special status in the history of Arab & Muslim leaders. As Norman Finkelstein put it, “Nasrallah is the only political leader in the world from whom you learn in the speeches. He is a teacher. He is among the shrewdest and most serious political observers in the world today. Israeli leaders carefully scrutinize Nasrallah’s every word.” And denouncing the relentless censorship suffered by my translation …

Standing on a corner,
alone,
in the early morning
half-dark, half-light,

You, waiting for
the commuter bus
to take you to
the Big Apple,

Me, on one of my
3/4 times a week
long distance bike rides,
approaching you,
30-20-10 feet away,

And our eyes meet,
followed a second or two later
by a smile,
an involuntary acknowledgement,
you to me
and vice-versa,
that though we
don’t know each other
and may never see
each other again,

Today, this morning,
for literally one second,
we felt the warmth,
the quiet joy,
the reassurance
of human connection.

I wrote this poem in 2016. I was reminded of it by something which happened yesterday morning.

I’ve been sick for a week and a half, needing to stay home and concentrate on trying …

We are approaching critical mass, the point at which all hell breaks loose.

The government is pushing us ever closer to a constitutional crisis.

What makes the outlook so much bleaker is the utter ignorance of the American people—and those who represent them—about their freedoms, history, and how the government is supposed to operate.

As Morris Berman points out in his book Dark Ages America, “70 percent of American adults cannot name their senators or congressmen; more than half don’t know the actual number of senators, and nearly a quarter cannot name a single right guaranteed by the First Amendment. Sixty-three percent …

This week’s News on China. Sources:

• Xi Jinping in the US

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplo…

https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/20231…

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/artic…

https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/Inte…

• BYD catches up with Tesla

https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/The…

https://es-us.finanzas.yahoo.com/noti… …

Summary of Part I

In Part I of my article, we began by distinguishing the social self from two forms of identity that are often confused with it: temperament and personality. The focus of part one is to show how very social (or even socialist) was the work of social psychologist George Herbert Mead. We discussed in detail the thirteen building blocks necessary for creating the social self. This self must construct both an objective and subjective identity. From here even by the age of eight the child must learn to navigate routine, …