Antarctica is coming apart, crumbling into the sea, much, much faster than anybody ever thought possible. After all, it was only a couple of months ago when polar scientists called an extraordinary emergency meeting to discuss shocking developments: “Runaway ice loss causing rapid and catastrophic sea level rise is possible within our lifetimes.” (Source: Our Science, “Your Future: Next Generation of Antarctic Scientists Call for Collaborative Action,” Australian Antarctic Research Conference, November 22, 2024).
Another more recent new study using data from the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program is now overshadowing those panicky voices of polar scientists in November 2024. The new …
Australians will vote to elect a new Federal Government on 3 May 2025. For decent Australians the major issue is the Gaza Genocide, the US-backed, Zionist Israeli mass murder of about 0.6 million Indigenous Palestinian children, mothers, women and men, and unforgivable Mainstream Australian complicity in this appalling and ongoing atrocity. The Australian Labor Government with Coalition support has been complicit in the Gaza Genocide in 20 ways and lies for Apartheid Israel in 35 ways.
Mainstream media (with the exception of the Guardian and the Independent) undercount Gaza deaths by a factor of 10 – egregious genocide-ignoring, genocide-denial, …
Over the last several weeks, demonstrations have erupted across Indonesia. They were reported in Medan (North Sumatra), Jakarta, Bandung, Yogyakarta, Solo, Malang, Surabaya, Makassar and, no doubt, they erupted in other towns as well. Although these demonstrations have not been massive, – ranging from a few hundred to one or two thousand people, they have been notably militant. The incidents include a police post being set on fire, street clashes between students and police, students breaking down gates of government buildings and shattering the Parliament’s compound walls, and the use of few Molotov cocktails. The police have used water cannons …
Five countries in Central America, together with the Dominican Republic in the Caribbean, have a free trade agreement with Washington, but this didn’t protect them from the punitive tariffs announced on President Trump’s “Liberation Day.”
A minimum 10 per cent tariff on exports to the US will hit low-income countries throughout the region. But exports from Nicaragua have been saddled with an even higher tariff of 18 per cent. Delighted opponents of Nicaragua’s Sandinista government have blamed it, rather than Trump, for the country receiving this additional penalty. However, …
Because I live in Japan and post articles which are critical of America, I am often accused of being anti-American. The truth is both counter-intuitive and disturbing.
I haven’t changed, but America certainly has.
America has become anti-American!
The Constitution guarantees freedom of the press. Yet reporters are now being intimidated and threatened with arrest and incarceration. Whistleblowers who try to expose fraud, corruption, and waste in government by making available in public news media forums information of value to American citizens, are likewise harassed and prosecuted.
The Constitution requires the government to promote the general welfare. Yet the benefits of our economic wealth …
The Waqf (Amendment) Bill 2025 was passed after an intense debate for nearly 12 hours on April 4, at 2 a.m. This bill, which had been given the approval of the Lok Sabha, the lower house, just a day before, at 1 a.m. on April 3, brings about a sweeping change in the Waqf property laws-charitable trusts under Islamic law. Titled the Unified Waqf Management, Empowerment, Efficiency, and Development Act or “UMEED” meaning hope in Hindi, this bill has set off fierce contentions, with …
Why Neo-Pagans Should be Anti-Christian and Anti-Capitalist
by Bruce Lerro / April 6th, 2025
Orientation
Christianity’s sinister past against Paganism The very first commandment in the Bible says “I am the Lord thy God, thou shalt not have strange gods before me”. These Pagan Gods are claimed to be either unreal or false. Pagan statues were therefore fair game to be destroyed or desecrated. The story of the Christian destruction of the Greco-Roman Pagan world has been told by Robin Lane Fox in Pagans and Christians; Jonathan Kirsch, God Against the Gods; Catherine Nixey, The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of The Classical World and Helen Ellerbe, …
I join you in your affirmation of life, and I hope that you have sustained the inward peace that follows a refusal to do that which one considers morally wrong, despite the consequences. Imprisonment of the body is certainly a small price to pay for freedom of the spirit.
— Coretta Scott King, September 1969 letter to me in support of my draft resistance activism
Today, April 4, is the 57th anniversary of the day Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot and killed in Memphis, Tennessee. King was there to support the labor strike of the sanitation workers of that town, …
This writer recalls back in the mid 80s when I took myself a vacation to Club Med in Martinique. It was discount time, June, so I could afford the week of fun. When I arrived at the facility, man it was a lot hotter than Elmont, Long Island. They placed me in a cottage with a roommate, nice guy from the Philly area, a bit younger than my 35 years. The first night we both were bushed from the trip and the heat. I lay in my bed with the bug net surrounding me. I suddenly realized that the place …
by Medea Benjamin and David Swanson / April 4th, 2025
We are passionate supporters of all but one of the items on the Hands Off agenda for the April 5 rallies. We couldn’t agree more that the corrupt U.S. government should stop destroying, privatizing, firing, and giving away the post office, schools, land, Social Security, healthcare, environmental protections, and all sorts of essential public services. But we are deeply disturbed to see NATO (The North Atlantic Treaty Organization) on the list of items that we are rallying to protect.
Many people believe that NATO is a peace-loving, defensive alliance, …
Host Faramarz Farbod interviews Robert Jensen, professor, journalist, activist, and author of many books, most recently It’s Debatable: Talking Authentically about Tricky Topics. They talk about how to think freely, speak responsibly, and live authentically in an uncertain world and end with a discussion of contemporary controversies like white supremacy, ecological sustainability, and trans ideology.
On March 26, Congressman Jim Banks sent a letter to Attorney General Pamela Bondi requesting that CODEPINK be investigated for our alleged funding from the Chinese Communist Party. According to him, our activism against the genocide in Gaza is antisemitic and undermines US-Israel relations, and therefore must mean we are acting on China’s behalf.
To state it very clearly: CODEPINK is in no way funded by China, nor any other foreign government or agency. We are funded primarily by donations from concerned citizens that support peace over war. Anyone can check. We pass every audit, unlike the Pentagon.
China …
Universities in the United States are facing one of the most serious attempts to impose political control on higher education since the anticommunist loyalty tests of the 1950s. Whatever one thinks of the issues being debated today, such as the Israel/Palestine conflict, playing politics with federal funding is a threat to open inquiry. Administrators and faculty are scrambling to respond and resistance is strengthening, although Columbia University’s capitulation to the Trump administration isn’t heartening.
It’s too early to write an obituary for academic freedom, …
When they shelled us with the second missile, I woke up and was surrounded by rubble. I realized that my leg had been cut off…. My father and mother were martyred. My brother Mohammad and my sister Dalia, too. I only want one thing: for the war to end.
The ongoing Israeli genocide of Palestinians has made Gaza “the world’s most dangerous place to be a child.” For every child Israel kills, many more are wounded or maimed, causing mass amputations …
Amid growing international chaos, it should come as no surprise that nuclear dangers are increasing.
The latest indication is a rising interest among U.S. allies in enhancing their nuclear weapons capability. For many decades, remarkably few of them had been willing to build nuclear weapons―a result of popular opposition to nuclear weapons and nuclear war, progress on nuclear arms control and disarmament, and a belief that they remained secure under the U.S. nuclear umbrella. But, as revealed by a recent article in London’s Financial Times, Donald Trump’s public scorn for NATO allies and embrace of Vladimir Putin have raised …
Liberation Day, as April 2 was described by US President Donald Trump, had all the elements of reality television perversion. It also had a dreamy, aspirational hope: that factories would spring up from rust belt soil in a few months across the United States; that industries would, unmoored from the globe, become vibrant and burgeoning. The world’s largest importer had decided to turn back the tide.
The imposition of what Trump calls reciprocal tariffs was broadly savage. Over 180 countries fell within their scope. A baseline tariff of 10% was applied on goods imported by the US. Countries were then singled …
According to three Australian university academics: “We argue that, contrary to the WEF prediction, an owner-less future would not be a happy one for individuals. Ownership should thus be preserved as a property concept and we offer an aspiration for it that better supports not just human happiness, but also a more socially just, sustainable, and emancipatory future.”
David Alfaro Siqueiros, The New Democracy, 1944-45
I’m simply going to posit, without a dollop of varnish applied, the following declaration outright: The foremost and defining reason for the present miseries of US culture: Generation after generation have internalized the grift perpetrated by high dollar capitalists predators and blood-drenched war profiteers: the citizenry has been induced into believing, in fact, defining their lives by the soul-sucking lie: that which does not make a profit is devoid of value.
A hidden agenda is veiled within the capitalist work ethic: those who do the day-by-day work enrich …
The new US administration is set to announce its reciprocal tariffs on Wednesday local time, prompting widespread concern and opposition over the uncertainty they could unleash, according to media reports.
As the date approaches, global financial markets including the US stock market have experienced a rollercoaster ride as investors’ anxiety continues to worsen.
Asia-Pacific markets were mixed on Wednesday. Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 edged up 0.28 percent higher to close at 35,725.87, and the broader Topix index closed down by 0.43 percent at 2,650.29. Meanwhile, South Korea’s Kospi slipped 0.62 percent to close at 2,505.86 while the Kosdaq declined 0.95 percent to …
Reports that a US national has been arrested after landing on North Sentinel Island in the Indian Ocean to make contact with the uncontacted Sentinelese people are “deeply disturbing”, Survival International’s Director Caroline Pearce said today.
“It beggars belief that someone could be that reckless and idiotic. This person’s actions not only endangered his own life, they put the lives of the entire Sentinelese tribe at risk. It’s very well known by now …
On April 2, Reuters headlined “US officials object to European push to buy weapons locally,” which means that Trump’s demand for Europe to increase greatly its ‘defense’ spending is, indeed, part of his plan to keep the boom in the U.S. stock markets going. This needs to be understood in the relevant context:
by Aaron Kirshenbaum and Melissa Garriga / April 3rd, 2025
As the world braces for another Earth Day, the environmental justice movement is at a critical juncture. While much of the climate conversation continues to focus on Big Oil and other corporate polluters, there is a glaring, often overlooked, contributor to the climate crisis: the U.S. military. In a bold statement of solidarity and urgency, several leading environmental justice organizations—including 350.org, Sunrise Movement, Climate Defenders, and National Priorities Project as well as frontline groups like NDN Collective, Anakbayan, and Diaspora Pa’Lante—have signed onto an open letter initiated by CODEPINK, urging …
Last Friday night, I went out to support a friend’s oldest boys. They had a high school rugby match in Bedford, Texas.
It was a great evening for it, and it felt good to be back out at the pitch (rugby field). I’d played in college and still held a catalogue of deep and abiding memories of my teammates and the matches we played in, the remembrances a comfort and a reminder of the bonds we forged and still shared.
It was no minor joy to see a younger generation of ruggers making …
In America, lying by the Government is routine because the Government represents not the public but only the wealthiest billionaires who provide most of the money that funds political campaigns. Any candidate who doesn’t represent the megadonor won’t get their money and will therefore be defeated by one who DOES represent the billionaires and NOT the public. Consequently, the winningest political candidates are the best liars, who (get all lof the billionaire money that they need in order to) deceive the most voters the most — and who fulfill on their public campaign promises to the …
Ironically, it was the US under President Trump which has broken with the US national security establishment’s bi-partisan strategy of incremental encirclement and escalation against Russia. That break offered Europe the opportunity to escape the trap created by its past lack of policy vision. Instead, Europe has proved plus royaliste que le roi (more royal than the King) and has remained loyal to the US national security Deep State.
In her recent “Threat Assessment” testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Director of Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard reasonably described Russia as a “formidable competitor.” However, in keeping with Trump’s desire for improved …
At the request of the United States, Argentine president Javier Milei ordered the declassification of all archives related to Nazi war criminals who fled to his country, including lists of those who sought asylum and were under protection, their bank accounts and financial transactions, as well as records held by Argentina’s Defense Ministry. On top of that, Milei promised full cooperation to organizations engaged in the search for escaped Nazis.
Despite the fact that of the approximately 10,000 war criminals who left Europe via the so-called “ratlines”, about 5,000 were settled …
Want to imagine that no Africans actually live in Africa? Want to go on safari and pretend that you’re not on Indigenous people’s lands? Then Colonial Holidays – supported by big conservation corporations – is for you. Photo by Fokke Baarssen via Pond5
A new travel company has launched today, offering stunning safari holidays with a guarantee of no Africans to spoil the view.
Colonial Holidays is a joint venture between exclusive tour operators and the conservation organizations WWF, WCS, The Nature Conservancy and African Parks.
Paranoia manifests in various ways. It can eat away individuals in desperate solitude, whittling away sanity and balance. It can be enlisted in the making of policy. The latter can be particularly dangerous, notably when readying for a fantastic threat. For the Baltic States, Poland and Finland, there is much talk about the Russia threat, one that will supposedly manifest in boots, armour and missiles once the war against Ukraine concludes. Unfortunately, that talk is now manifesting in preparations for war. So eager are these countries in making such preparations, they are willing to exit important treaties in doing so.
