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by Ramzy Baroud / July 8th, 2020
Wednesday, July 1, was meant to be the day on which the Israeli government officially annexed 30% of the occupied Palestinian West Bank and the Jordan Valley. This date, however, came and went and annexation was never actualized.
“I don’t know if there will be a declaration of sovereignty today,” said Israeli Foreign Minister, Gabi Ashkenazi, with reference to the self-imposed deadline declared earlier by Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. An alternative date was not immediately announced.
But does it really matter?
Whether Israel’s illegal appropriation of Palestinian land takes place with massive media fanfare and a declaration of sovereignty, or whether …
by Peter Koenig / July 8th, 2020
Russia did it again. This time it’s paying to kill Americans. How criminal!
Such things only Americans would do – Washington, the Pentagon, CIA…. Because killing and have killed is in their mindset and bloodstream. That’s what criminals do: They project their own crimes onto others.
The latest NYT reporting is, “It’s not the Taliban that were offered a ‘bounty’ for killing American/ NATO soldiers, but Afghan criminals.” The NYT admits to a mistake in their reporting – a mistake that had already been confirmed by another two media traitors, the Washington Post and the WSJ? Com-on, NYT! You are openly disclosing …
This is the expanded text of a talk I gave to the “Stop the JNF Campaign” webinar on Saturday 4 July 2020. The video can be watched below, or on Facebook, starting at 5.50 mins:
by Jonathan Cook / July 8th, 2020
The Jewish National Fund (JNF) rightly presents itself as the most venerable of the Zionist institutions:
It stands at the heart of a state-building project launched more than a century ago;
It is an organisation that is today deeply embedded in the structures of the Israeli state;
It is the guardian of the Israel’s most precious resource – land;
And it is the bridge connecting Jews abroad to Israel, allowing them to become practically and emotionally involved in its continuing national mission of …
by Eric Zuesse / July 8th, 2020
Where are Sergei and Yulia Skripal? Are they still alive? Their having been poisoned in England on 4 March 2018 didn’t kill them.
Sergei Skripal is (or was) the Russian and British double agent (Russian spy who defected to UK), who had become imprisoned for six years in Russia, and then became spy-swapped to, and resided in, UK.
Yulia is (or was) his daughter, who happened to be visiting with him from Russia on that fateful day, which almost ended her life but which definitely did end her freedom.
The last time that either Sergei or Yulia were seen or heard from in …
by Mark Petrakis / July 8th, 2020
In my experience, big events (like THIS one) and powerful social movements (like THAT one, oh you know, back a ways ago) do not appear out of nowhere, but can rather be traced back to what first appears as imperceptible shifts in the narrative ethers and in each of our views of the world around us.
Sure, we may THINK we think with our brains, but reason and logic are just the functional tip of an iceberg of conditioned responses and programmed behaviors that rise up from below and seize sub-conscious control of our thoughts and behaviors.
Let me apply an example.
Even …
by Binoy Kampmark / July 8th, 2020
The state of Victoria is being sealed off from the rest of Australia. On Tuesday, at 11.59pm, the border with New South Wales will be shut with publicised resoluteness. It is happening at the insistence of politicians across the country with a panicked urge. On the way are reminders about the miracle that was federation in 1901. That a Commonwealth was ever formed from the Britannic nuts and bolts of an invasive penal settlement was remarkable, given the otherwise innate hostilities, not to mention competitiveness, the states had shown to each other.
The last time this happened was a touch over …
Tyranny Without a Tyrant
by John W. Whitehead / July 7th, 2020
In a fully developed bureaucracy there is nobody left with whom one can argue, to whom one can present grievances, on whom the pressures of power can be exerted. Bureaucracy is the form of government in which everybody is deprived of political freedom, of the power to act; for the rule by Nobody is not no-rule, and where all are equally powerless, we have a tyranny without a tyrant.
― Hannah Arendt, On Violence
What exactly is going on?
Is this revolution? Is this anarchy? Is this a spectacle engineered to distract us from the machinations of the police state? Is this a …
20 years with Oregon Coast Aquarium gives CEO deep blue view of world
by Paul Haeder / July 7th, 2020
While in her office overlooking the entrance to Lincoln County’s most popular attraction, she’s like a child in a candy store — she watches trees and shrubbery get yanked out to make way for a new admissions and ticketing station. “Wow, what a change.”
Then a nuthatch alights on the feeder suction cupped to her office window. “Spring’s coming early.”
Now the show really gets going — Carrie E. Lewis lugs into her second-floor office 10 large architectural design images for the aquarium’s five new capital improvement …
by Mark W. Bradley / July 7th, 2020
Let’s imagine there’s a fictitious country on our border, the government of which is committing unspeakable atrocities against its own people. And let us further imagine there is a steady stream of refugees attempting to cross over our border and into our country, so as to escape the horrors that await them, should they be unsuccessful in seeking asylum from our government. Is it not likely that the decent and fair-minded citizens of this country would demand that their leaders at least make a good-faith effort to rectify the situation in this living hell on our border? And is it …
by Kim Petersen / July 7th, 2020
Media Lens (ML) provides a first-rate critical eye on the media, especially the British mediascape, as well as sundry events in the world. In a recent piece, ML pointed to the science as supporting the effectiveness of wearing face masks against respiratory viral infections. In addition to citing science to buttress their support of mask wearing, ML attempted to dismiss those with opposing views as conspiracy theorists. If that and the science was not persuasive, the fallback …
by Binoy Kampmark / July 7th, 2020
It all looked like it was going so well for Australia and Victoria, in particular. They could point to the mishandling of the Ruby Princess, a cruise ship that docked in Sydney and whose passengers disembarked chocked with coronavirus, precipitating 700 cases and some 21 deaths across the country. It had, till now, been the single most contagious incident in the COVID-19 annals of the antipodes. Victorians could hold their heads hubristically high.
Then, the dreaded spike returned. Before journalists had time to file, or arm chair warriors time to muster their thoughts, the coronavirus beast had gotten away from an …
by Yves Engler / July 6th, 2020
In recent weeks movements in different countries have toppled statues and put the police and other institutions upholding systemic racism on the defensive. But, amidst unprecedented protests against racism, there has been remarkably little interest in the white supremacist foreign policy alliance currently driving conflict with China. The “Five Eyes” intelligence arrangement has faced almost no criticism for propelling the Canada-China hostage standoff.
The seven-decade old Five Eyes — Canada, Britain, New Zealand, Australia and US — alliance has been central to Washington’s anti-China push. To counter China the component countries recently announced plans to coordinate the production of strategic …
by Nicolas J.S. Davies / July 6th, 2020
When President Clinton dropped 23,000 bombs on what was left of Yugoslavia in 1999 and NATO invaded and occupied the Yugoslav province of Kosovo, U.S. officials presented the war to the American public as a “humanitarian intervention” to protect Kosovo’s majority ethnic Albanian population from genocide at the hands of Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic. That narrative has been unraveling piece by piece ever since.
In 2008 an international prosecutor, Carla Del Ponte, accused U.S.-backed Prime Minister Hashim Thaci of Kosovo of using the U.S. bombing campaign as cover to murder hundreds of people to sell their internal organs on …
by Andre Vltchek / July 6th, 2020
Let us start with the punchline: “Mass media in the United States, Europe, Canada, and Australia is depicting the People’s Republic of China as ‘capitalist’ because ‘capitalist’ is now a dirty word. Even people in the West see ‘market economy’ as some sort of filth.”
To call China ‘capitalist’ is to smear China. It is as if to say: “Chinese people are precisely like us. China is doing to the world the same injustice, committing the same crimes as we have been doing for 500+ years.”
Western, but particularly the British …
by Jonathan Cook / July 6th, 2020
Annexation by Israel of occupied Palestinian territory in the West Bank was never likely to happen on July 1, as many observers assumed. The date was not a deadline; it was a window opened by the Israeli government to carry out annexation before US President Donald Trump leaves office.
Unhappily for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, that window could slam shut in a matter of months, if current polling trends continue and Trump loses the presidential election in November.
Certainly, the fact that no dramatic move took place last week does not indicate that annexation is off the table. Indeed, following meetings …
by Max Parry / July 6th, 2020
The secret of freedom lies in educating people, whereas the secret of tyranny is in keeping them ignorant. — Maximilien Robespierre
The ongoing series of protests, riots and unrest following the death of George Floyd culminated in the establishment of a self-declared “autonomous zone” by activists in Seattle, Washington, after police abandoned a local precinct in the city’s Capitol Hill district. Lasting just three weeks until law enforcement retook the six block territory from occupants on July 1st, the Capitol Hill Organized Protest (CHOP) — initially called …
by Binoy Kampmark / July 5th, 2020
By most accounts, the response of UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson to the coronavirus pandemic has been abysmal. When the architect of the response himself catches the virus, he is either a more informed person for his sin or a buffoon in need of serious chastising.
In June, the prime minister claimed pride in announcing a new commitment for the majority – and a thumping one at that – of COVID-19 tests to be processed within 24 hours. Marvellous news to behold, except that Johnson had also revealed how he was getting a meaty grip on cabinet committees, thereby taking “control” …
by T.P. Wilkinson / July 5th, 2020
It is many years ago that Jean-Paul Sartre wrote an essay, which was, in fact, the preface to his magnum opus, The Critique of Dialectical Reason, the title of which was “The Search for Method”.
A significant transformation from his critique of Heidegger, Being and Nothingness, Sartre attempted to liberate European Marxism from its captivity in Russian party ideology and restore its historicity.
Contrary to liberal interpretations Sartre was not an advocate of either neo-Marxism or post-Marxism. If anything, and this can be …
by Terry Everton / July 5th, 2020
“Table one wants to see a manager.”
As a restaurant manager, my lap is a proverbial dumping ground where servers regularly invite grumpy and entitled customers to sit. In the prevailing I don’t get paid enough to deal with this shit culture which permeates the service staffs in most eateries, the feces usually rises to the top – and most days I just happen to find myself occupying the highest rung on the crapometer ladder.
“What am I walking into,” I ask so I know which one of my standard I really don’t care about your petty bullshit but I’m …
by Ed Ciaccio / July 5th, 2020
As we celebrate the 244th anniversary of our nation’s Declaration of Independence, in the midst of demonstrations and protests against systemic racism and police brutality of African-Americans, it is time to consider replacing our national anthem with one more suitable to the values and priorities of the United States in 2020.
There are many important reasons to discard “The Star-Spangled Banner” as our national anthem right now. Not only is it nearly impossible to sing, but it was composed in 1814 by a slave-owning lawyer who prosecuted cases against abolitionists, and it only became our national anthem in 1931, when lynching of …
A Manifesto for the United States of America, Part IV
by Paul Larudee / July 5th, 2020
Read Part I, Part II, and Part III.
The US is ruled by a private club of a few hundred oligarchs and corporations. An uprising aimed at the police cannot succeed without taking economic and political power away from this club and redistributing it among the poor and disenfranchised, especially Blacks and Indigenous members of our society.
In Part I, we examined the creation of a Universal Basic Income (UBI) – an extension of the …
by Terry Everton / July 5th, 2020
Barney came walking back into the living room from his kitchen holding a sandwich baggie and a bottle of cheap scotch. “I’m gonna teach that fuckin’ post office a thing or two about losin’ peoples unemployment checks,” he announced.
He took a pull off the bottle and his entire body trembled as he swallowed. I don’t think he’d been entirely sober since he’d been fired from the restaurant eight weeks ago. He handed the bottle to me and I had a tug off it as well. Nasty shit, but effective. Sometimes being a cheap drunk is the best you can …
by Press TV / July 4th, 2020
A militant from the so-called Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) stands guard at the entrance of the eastern Syrian village of Baghouz, on March 13, 2020. (Photo by AFP)
The United States has built a new military base, including an airport for military aircraft, for its occupying forces in Syria’s northeastern province of Hasakah.
Local sources told Syria’s state news agency SANA on Wednesday that the new base and its airport had been established in Jazira Region, located between Um Kahif Village and Tal Alu silos.
The sources said the …
by Roger D. Harris / July 4th, 2020
In reverential tones with ominous background music, director of Planet of the Humans Jeff Gibbs intones about “the most terrifying realization I ever had.” Gibbs instructs us, “Every expert I talked to wanted to bring my attention to the same underlying problem.” It is “not the elephant but the herd of elephants in the room,” Prof. Nina Jablonski warns. “The underlying problem,” the movie earnestly preaches is that “there are too many human beings.”
Planet of the Humans is produced and promoted by Michael Moore and is free online. The underlying message of the movie, critiquing the green energy …
by subMedia / July 4th, 2020
Welcome to Kolektiva, an open-source platform for hosting anarchist videos from around the world. Our goal with Kolektiva is to help increase communication and material solidarity across borders and linguistic divides. If you are interested in getting involved — whether through hosting your content with us, or helping out with translation — please contact us at ten.puesirnull@aidemavitkelok.
by Terry Everton / July 4th, 2020
Looking for conscience in the wrong place. In his book, Joel Bakan captured the nature of the corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Power.
by J.B. Gerald / July 3rd, 2020
There is a long history of human rights violations by Cameroon’s government against its Anglophone people. Brutalized by war with Boko Haram, the Cameroon military is now engaged in low intensity warfare against militant Anglophone separatists. On May 15, 2019 for instance, Cameroon’s military attacked Anglophone Separatist Bamenda, burning 70 dwellings and stores in retaliation for the killing of two government soldiers. Under international pressure the Government is charging three of its military with the atrocity murder of 24 civilians in the Ngarbuh village massacre. ((“Cameroon: …
by Don Fitz / July 3rd, 2020
Chief HatueyIf you look at a US $20 bill, you might notice Andrew Jackson nervously watching statues of Columbus and Robert E. Lee coming down and wondering if his face is going to disappear from currency. As Democrats ponder which militarist they wish to glorify in the next round of monuments, it is critical to realize that statues which go up are at least as important as the ones that come down. Perhaps the best nominee for a new statue is Hatuey.
A few years ago, while …
by Ramzy Baroud and Romana Rubeo / July 3rd, 2020
In the past, there have been many attempts at holding accused Israeli war criminals accountable. Particularly memorable is the case of the late Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, (known, among other nicknames, as the ‘Butcher of Sabra and Shatila’) whose victims attempted to try him in a Belgian Court in 2002.
Like all other efforts, the Belgian case was dropped under American pressure. History seems to be repeating itself.
On December 20, the International Court of Justice (ICC) Chief Prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, resolved that she had sufficient evidence to investigate …
by Pratyush Chandra / July 3rd, 2020
A view of deserted Ranganathan Street in Chennai on June 23, 2020. Hindu TimesAt times, states compete to showcase merchandise and relative productive capacities. Other times, many of these states sell misery to gain access to economic packages, charities and loans. Today is the time when they compete to show off their capacity to impose the most efficient lockdown on their citizenry. Of course, the priority is to make this imposition consensual, because that would showcase the self-discipline of the national workforce. …
