Latest articles
by Allen Forrest / March 9th, 2022
Among the ethical concerns of having one’s DNA in a registry are, first of all, privacy and the fact that for forensic purposes DNA evidence is not 100%; there is human bias in analysis, so innocent people might be linked to crimes.
by Ramzy Baroud / March 9th, 2022
Israel’s war on Palestinian sports is as old as the Israeli state itself.
For Palestinians, sport is a critical aspect of their popular culture, and since Palestinian culture itself is a target for the ongoing Israeli attack on Palestinian life in all of its manifestations, sports and athletes have been purposely targeted as well. Yet, the world’s main football governing body, FIFA, along with other international sports organizations, has done nothing to hold Israel accountable for its crimes against Palestinian sports.
Now that FIFA, along with UEFA, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and others have swiftly joined the West’s anti-Russia measures …
by Binoy Kampmark / March 9th, 2022
Grand foreign policy speeches are not usually the specialty of Australian Prime Ministers. Little insight can be gleaned from them. A more profitable exercise would be consulting the US State Department’s briefings, which give more accurate barometric readings of policy in Canberra. The same goes for the selected adversary of the day. Washington’s adversaries must be those of Canberra’s. To challenge such assumptions would be heretical. To act upon them would be apostasy.
The speech by Prime Minister Scott Morrison on March 7 to the Lowy Institute lived down to expectations. Where it did serve some value was to highlight …
by Evan Jones / March 9th, 2022
Let justice work Yet another piece extolling the virtue of the Australian government getting involved in the Assange case (“Time is right for Morrison to step up for Assange,” December 16). This man is involved in a complex legal fight, being prosecuted and defended by the most senior legal minds, and being heard before the highest courts in the land. What would be the relevance of a prime ministerial letter to the court suggesting that the man be set free on the basis of him being an Australian citizen and demonstrating …
by Gary Olson / March 9th, 2022
Offering predictions about what will follow the Russia-Ukraine conflict is probably a foolhardy exercise but here a few thoughts that might engender further speculation and discussion.
First, after the Ukraine crisis is resolved we’re likely to see a self-congratulatory period in Washington over its temporarily forcing Western European nations into a closer integration with U.S. imperialism, guaranteeing more European purchases of U.S. weapons and giving an immediate boost to Pentagon spending. The United States will portray the Russian Bear as intent on gobbling up more European countries and every effort will be made to ignite Cold War, Phase 2. These efforts …
by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead / March 9th, 2022
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
— “The Hollow Men,” T.S. Eliot
Barely three years into the 2020s, and we seem to be living out the prophesies of the Book of Revelation with its dire warnings about plague, poverty, hatred and war.
Just as the government hysteria over the COVID-19 pandemic appears to be dying down, new threats have arisen to occupy our attention and fuel our fears: food shortages, spiking inflation, rocketing gas prices, and a Ukraine-Russia conflict that threatens to bring about a world …
by Eric Zuesse / March 9th, 2022
On March 2, the New York Times bannered “China Asked Russia to Delay Ukraine War Until After Olympics, U.S. Officials Say,” and reported that:
A Western intelligence report said senior Chinese officials told senior Russian officials in early February not to invade Ukraine before the end of the Winter Olympics in Beijing, according to senior Biden administration officials and a European official. …
The intelligence on the exchange between the Chinese and Russian officials was classified. It was collected by a Western intelligence service and considered credible by officials. Senior officials in the United States and allied governments …
Far worse than war, guns, crime, or car accidents — combined
by Mickey Z. / March 8th, 2022
If someone is killed in a terrorist attack, it’s headline news. If another person dies at the hands of police, it’ll be the top story for weeks. But when was the last time you saw breaking news about a deadly medical error? It’s at least the third leading cause of death in the U.S. but it’s so common that it rarely (if ever) warrants notice. Then, of course, there’s also the whole cover-up aspect of it all. We’re never supposed to question the infallible men and women in white coats, right?…
by C.J. Hopkins / March 8th, 2022
And they’re back! It’s like one of those 1960s Hammer Film Productions horror-movie series with Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee … Return of the Putin-Nazis! Revenge of the Putin-Nazis! Return of the Revenge of the Bride of the Putin-Nazis! And this time they are not horsing around with stealing elections from Hillary Clinton with anti-masturbation Facebook ads. They are going straight for “Democracy’s” jugular!
Yes, that’s right, folks, Vladimir Putin, leader of the Putin-Nazis and official “Evil Dictator of the Day,” has launched a Kamikazi attack on the United Forces of Goodness (and Freedom) to provoke us …
by Colin Todhunter / March 8th, 2022
Remember how the notion of freedom was spun by the ideologues of neoliberalism for decades prior to COVID? The freedom to consume. The freedom to make money. The freedom to be plunged into poverty and debt.
Platitudes about ‘individual responsibility’ and ‘standing on your own two feet’. A relentless ideological attack on the state and collective responsibility. The doctrine of ‘no such thing as society’ Thatcherism. Ideologically, at least, the individual and ‘the market’ were paramount. But in reality, of course, there was no genuine rolling back of the state: its machinery was used differently to facilitate the needs of …
by Vern Loomis / March 8th, 2022
I had to check. Was I still at an actual news site, or had I inadvertently clicked myself into a satirical outlet? Perhaps the article came from The Onion or some other humorous blog? Well, it hadn’t. I was still viewing news through The NYT, and with a quick search, I could see the same article posted at several valid news sites: “Pastor Resigns After Incorrectly Performing Thousands of Baptisms.”
It seems the Rev. Andres Arango was heard performing a baptism using the words “We baptize you …” rather than the Vatican approved “I baptize you …” What’s more, he had apparently used …
by Oliver Boyd-Barrett / March 8th, 2022
Let us begin a conversation in response to what currently qualifies as the most profound question, the one that needs most urgently to be addressed if we are to have any chance of understanding what we conveniently refer to as the “Ukraine crisis.” This is, more accurately, a planetary crisis—close in magnitude to the near-certainty of species extinction within the next century, but in some ways ahead of secondary catastrophes such as the obscene, raging inequality between peoples and nations unleashed by President Ronald Reagan and UK Prime Minister Margaret …
by Allen Forrest / March 8th, 2022
John Emerich Edward Dalberg wrote in a letter to archbishop Mandell Creighton: “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority…”
by Binoy Kampmark / March 7th, 2022
Working with Russian academics and institutions. The attack upon Ukraine by Russia. These are two features playing out heavily in university discussions. As typifies such chitchat, nuance features rather less than cant and sanctimony. As writer and lecturer Paolo Nori of Milano-Bicocca University stated after discovering that his course on Fyodor Dostoevsky would be cancelled in response to the war, “Not only is it a fault to be a living Russian in Italy today, but also to be a dead Russian.” (Dostoevsky has since been reprieved; the course will now run.)
Throughout history, academic cooperation between universities and academic institutions, …
Deflecting from the Supreme Warmonger
by Kim Petersen / March 7th, 2022
… the claim that Russia should not have violated Ukrainian sovereignty is based on the erroneous belief that Ukraine was invaded. This assertion is based on ignorance. Quite aside from the international-law issues posed by the sovereign claims of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics (DPR and LPR), and hence whether they could exert sovereign rights to conclude treaties and hence invite military aid, there is the long-standing original threat and active aggression of NATO in and through Ukraine’s governments. The recognition of sovereignty does not outweigh the right of self-defense.
— T.P. Wilkinson
Prominent anti-war activist …
by Roger D. Harris / March 7th, 2022
Viewing the Ukraine war as starting with the current Russian invasion leads to very different conclusions than if you consider that the starting point of this war was the 2014 US-orchestrated coup in Ukraine. The coup, which had elements of an authentic popular revolt, has been used by outside powers to pursue geopolitical ends.
The conception that the war started on February 24 of this year is like viewing the “invasion” by the US and its allies of Normandy in June 1944 against the “sovereign” and “democratic” Vichy French as the start of World War II. Never mind that the …
Where on the Western Peninsula lies Ukraine?
by T.P. Wilkinson / March 7th, 2022
Unlike many who seem to believe that freedom of movement (since 2020 extinguished in the EU) must mean an end to national borders, I have only felt that borders should be recognised as the product of political will and history.
In the entrance to the museum at the Invalides in Paris there is a quote attributed to Charles de Gaulle, “France was made by the sword.” The idea that anywhere in Europe especially borders are natural or that they are defined by some innate qualities is absurd. ((The cultural historian Morse Peckham …
by Jeremy Kuzmarov / March 7th, 2022
by Caleb Maupin / March 7th, 2022
by Survival International / March 7th, 2022
Adivasi activist Hidme Markam has been thrown into jail for resisting the takeover of her people’s land for mining. © Survival
WARNING: Contains images some may find disturbing
A devastating new report from Survival International – launched on International Women’s Day, March 8 – exposes how Adivasi (Indigenous) women in India are being brutally persecuted for defending their lands against a massive corporate and governmental mining rush.
Amongst its key findings:
– This mining rush, including plans to increase coal production …
by Allen Forrest / March 6th, 2022
Did the Borg infiltrate Earth? It seems there has been a widespread response to the Borg dictate: “You must comply.”
by Stanislav / March 5th, 2022
https://youtu.be/OisJkpGYpAo
by AJB / March 5th, 2022
Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime.
— Ernest Hemingway, 1946
Imagine you’re in an escape room with strangers. Each of you holds a key that can unlock several padlocks to the final door that lets you out. You’re so close to finishing, and you can’t wait to leave. Then something peculiar happens — you turn around and find these strangers rolling on the floor, aggressively attacking each other. Why? Because one left their coffee cup too close to the centre of a table.
This imaginary scenario is …
by Vijay Prashad / March 5th, 2022
Konstantin Yuon (USSR), People of the Future, 1929.
It is impossible not to be moved by the outrageousness of warfare, the ugliness of aerial bombardment, the gruesome fears of civilians who are trapped between choices that are not their own. If you read this line and assume I am talking about Ukraine, then you are right, but of course, this is not just about Ukraine. In the same week that Russian forces entered Ukraine, the United States launched airstrikes in Somalia, Saudi …
by Media Lens / March 5th, 2022
The American population was bombarded the way the Iraqi population was bombarded. It was a war against us, a war of lies and disinformation and omission of history. That kind of war, overwhelming and devastating, waged here in the US while the Gulf War was waged over there.’ ((Howard Zinn, ‘Power, History and Warfare’, Open Magazine Pamphlet Series, No. 8, 1991, p. 12.))
What a strange feeling it was to know that the cruise missile shown descending towards an airport and erupting in a ball of flame was not …
by Ramzy Baroud / March 5th, 2022
Finally, France will be leaving Mali, nearly a decade after the original military intervention in 2013. The repercussions of this decision will hardly be confined to this West African nation, but will likely spread to the entirety of the Sahel Region; in fact, the whole of Africa.
France’s decision to end its military presence in Mali – carried out in two major military operations, Operation Serval and Operation Barkhane – was communicated by French President, Emmanuel Macron. “Victory against terror is not possible if it’s not supported by the …
by Robert Hunziker / March 5th, 2022
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — IPCC — has issued its direst warning of all-time: “Climate breakdown is accelerating rapidly.” Additionally, they readily admit to overly conservative predictions: “Many impacts will be more severe than originally predicted.” ((The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Working Group II Sixth Assessment Report, 2022.))
The crowning blow of this heavy-hitting report is a chilling statement: “There is only a narrow chance left of avoiding its worst ravages.”
Moreover, the IPCC claims that even at current levels dangerous widespread disruptions threaten devastation of swathes of the natural world: “Many areas will become unlivable.”
Interestingly enough, the world …
by Yves Engler / March 5th, 2022
Canadians calling for a no-fly zone over Ukraine have lost the plot. Unless their real aim is nuclear war.
Recently, former Conservative cabinet minister Chris Alexander, New Brunswick education minister Dominic Cardy and former Chief of the Defence Staff Rick Hillier have raised the idea of creating a “no-fly zone” (NFZ) over Ukraine. “We’re calling on all governments of the world to support creating a no fly zone over Ukraine,” declared Michael Shwec, president of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress, at a rally in Montréal. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and US Congressman Adam Kinzinger have also called for NATO to adopt a …
NATO, Russia & Ukraine
by Daniel Borgström / March 4th, 2022
“Those awful Russians!” That was in the late 1940s, just after WW II, and I was a little kid then. As I got older, I was told that Russia was Communist, and Communism was bad in every way. Above all, it was a police state, spying on people and watching their every move. Most of the details went over my head; what I understood was that Russia was bad. Russians were bad. Russians were the enemy.
The Cold War, from its very beginning, was all within my lifetime and that of the people around me. We didn’t just live through it, …
Progressives are Silent
by Ira Glunts / March 4th, 2022
The following is an email I wrote on February 20 to a group of progressive political activists from Syracuse, NY, a city less than one hour’s drive west from where I live. For the last three years the Jewish Federation of Central New York (JFCNY) has sent a series of letters to the Syracuse Peace Council (SPC), a local progressive organization, attacking a number of their members who participated in pro-Palestinian actions and events. The JFCNY falsely claimed those events were expressions of antisemitism, which were the cause of increased violence against local Jews. Half of the recipients of my …
