During Netanyahu’s visit, Trump dropped Washington’s sugar coating of Israel’s 15-month genocidal destruction of Gaza. This was always about ethnic cleansing
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to the White House this week tore the mask off 16 months of gaslighting by western leaders and by the entirety of the western establishment media.
United States President Donald Trump finally dropped Washington’s sugar coating of Israel’s genocidal destruction of Gaza.
This was always, he told us, a slaughter made in the US. In his …
On 3 February there appeared in the local paper of record, the Sydney Morning Herald (Independent. Always), a number of letters regarding Israel and Gaza. The first opines:
… the more often people hear lies and see troubling incidents like violence and vandalism associated with Jews, the more likely people are to blame Jews for causing those troubles, regardless of the truth.
A sub-editor attached an AP-credited photograph of a devastated Gaza with the caption ‘Destruction caused by the Israeli air and ground offensive in Gaza’.
Is this seeming carnage a fabricated Hamas photoshop of a functioning Gaza Strip, a propaganda …
Two elected members were suspended from the KPFA Local Station Board (LSB) in a closed door session on November 16, 2024. It was a “show trial” that was not for show, not to be seen or even whispered about — a skeleton for the board’s closet, and an insult to the “free speech radio” spirit of KPFA.
This was a Zoom session, a meeting in cyberspace; twenty two board members attended; four Pacifica National Board directors were here as observers, and there were several technicians and some others, in all, thirty people. The accused persons were Elizabeth Milos and Steve Zeltzer. …
Lawyers and judges know it all too well: If parsed with proper eloquence, the intent of words and phrases can be twisted to one’s own purpose or made meaningless. It’s no secret that particular judicial interpreters (judges/justices) are championed by special interest groups and then appointed by politicians in anticipation of how eloquently the U.S. Constitution or Bill of Rights will be argued in support of a desired position. To that end, a state court in Texas or even the Supreme Court of the United States may soon be called upon …
All of these changes, we can plot them and if we look exponentially, we see really catastrophic effects in the next few years, certainly in the next decade or two the world will be completely different… I think we’re at the last minute now.
— Peter Wadhams
PM Margaret Thatcher’s 1989 speech to the UN General Assembly made reference to Peter Wadhams, Head of Polar Ocean Physics, Cambridge as her British scientist on board a ship in the Arctic Ocean: “The lesson of these Polar processes is that an environmental or climatic change produced by man may take on a self-sustaining or ‘runaway’ quality …
Whereas all of its first 14 minutes — the entirety of Beeley’s report — is extremely insightful into what’s now happening in the Middle East (especially Israel, Palestine, Syria, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the U.S. regime that has been running the show there ever since at least the 1970s), …
State and market solutions to the ecological crisis have only increased the wealth and power of those on top, while greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise. Nearly all the experts and professionals are invested, literally, in a framework that is only making things worse. With so much power concentrated in the very institutions that suppress any realistic assessment of the situation, things seem incredibly bleak. But what if we told you that there’s another way? That there are already people all around the world implementing immediate, effective responses that can be integrated into long-term strategies to survive these …
Veterans Oppose Mass Deportation and Domestic Military Deployments
by Veterans for Peace / February 7th, 2025
Veterans For Peace strongly objects to the Trump Administration’s racist campaign of mass deportation of undocumented workers, who are our friends, neighbors and even our fellow veterans. We condemn the violent raids that are sowing fear and terror in communities across the United States. As veterans, we are particularly opposed to the misuse and abuse of U.S. military personnel, including their illegal deployment to the U.S. border with Mexico.
Since Donald Trump’s inauguration, about 1,000 U.S. Army personnel and 500 Marines have been sent to the border, in addition to 2,500 National Guard members already there. Helicopter units are being sent along …
Since his second inauguration, the billionaire, known for his highly discriminatory anti-immigrant mentality and behavior, has taken the toughest measures in favor of a “cleansing” that will have terrible consequences, even for unborn children.
And here we go with a continual slide into fascism, and, yes, a fascist nation turns on its own people. Fascism can also come into the light of the 21st century as techno-feudalism, another form of elite billionaires and their ground troops strangling the working class, even professional managerial …
The degree of restraint and investigative rigor employed by Washington, NATO, and their media allies when ascribing guilt to Russia for any indiscretion bears little relation to how NATO’s actions are assessed. This has long been standard operating procedure, but the events in the Baltic Sea over the past two years take this pattern further.
Acts of aggression where the US or its allies motives are clearest must be most obfuscated, with logical conclusions displaced in headlines by nefarious sounding, circumstantial evidence that points elsewhere. The framing for the public of any reporting regarding Russia’s war with Ukraine must always note …
One of the most stunning events of the past few months has been the fall of Damascus. This fall had initially been expected over a decade ago, when rebel armies funded by Qatar, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and the United States crowded around the edges of Syria and threatened then President Bashar al-Assad’s government. These armies, backed by rich and powerful countries, were comprised of a range of actors, including:
swaths of people who were angered by the economic distress caused by the opening up of …
What if the citizens of Germany during the 1930s somehow could have known in advance how World War II was going to end? Would they have bought into the lies of Hitler and the Third Reich? Would they have gone along with the wanton aggression knowing it was a suicide mission and would turn their beloved homeland into a pile of rubble and put nearly 9,000,000 of them in early graves?
What about Japan? Before World War II, Japan was securely locked down. No dissent from the …
The passing of Jimmy Carter has been duly noted in ubiquitous remembrances and commentaries on his four-year presidency, 1977-1981. Carter is lauded more for his post-presidential humanitarian projects, while his presidency is deemed a mixed bag by left and right alike. For many Vietnam War resisters – myself included, it is more personal. Jimmy Carter’s first act as president was to pardon draft resisters. He then established a program for military deserters like me, who were able to return from exile or up from “underground” without going to prison.
President Carter’s pardon took a certain amount of courage and compassion, and …
The ghosts of thousands of Palestinian children crushed by Israeli bombs loomed over this year’s Auschwitz commemorations
An entirely mendacious message lay at the heart of this week’s coverage by the BBC of the 80th Holocaust Remembrance Day commemorations.
The British state broadcaster asserted throughout the day that the voices of the few remaining survivors of the Nazi extermination programme were still being heard “loud and clear” in western capitals. Those survivors – now in their 80s and 90s – warned that the …
Amid its beautiful and quite vales of Parachinar lying between the two neighbouring countries, Pakistan, the echoing of muffled screams can be heard far too often as families lose their dear ones to sectarian terrorism. Once surrounded by the natural beauty and orderly with friendly neighbours and kin folk, this town can now boast about appearing to be hell on earth—the manifestation of an entrenched conflict that has taken so many lives. It is not a story of just a small town named Parachinar but also a testimony of hatred between …
At the risk of writing a numbed monotone in response to fifteen months of reported Israeli war crimes in Gaza l note here some of the lesser known efforts to resist the genocide in Gaza. No legal system has countered the atrocities against civilians, civilian infra-structure, humanitarian support, medical and health care, Palestine’s culture, Gaza’s habitat. Governments which have signed the Convention on Genocide have not intervened. And the U.S. has vetoed U.N. and Security Council resolutions toward peace and impeded application of international laws which might prevent the genocide.
The International Criminal Court and the Court of International Justice at …
by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies / February 6th, 2025
This year’s Doomsday Clock Statement landed like a damp squib in a Trump-swamped corporate news cycle on January 28th. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists only moved the hands of the Clock forward by one second, from 90 seconds up to 89 seconds to midnight, which must have come as a relief to the few members of the public who heard about it.
But this minimal advance in the hands of the Clock was a strange and misleading top-line for the Bulletin’s actual Doomsday Clock Statement, which was brimming with …
by Joseph Essertier and Zobidah Yousif Elamin / February 6th, 2025
Even those who pay attention to Africa-related news may not know how terrible the situation is in Africa, for example, that there are more conflicts on that continent now than at any point since at least 1946. Sudan is no exception. In mid-April of 2023, fighting broke out between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in Khartoum, the capital city of Sudan, and the fighting then spread throughout the country.
In 1945 civilians from the German village of Hurlach were marched into the midst of the horrors of newly liberated Kaufering 6, a sub-camp of Dachau. As they moved from the crisp spring air into the zone of stench and death and disease they protested that they did not know that this horror existed. Could it be true that people living in the midst of 11 such subcamps, 11 such sites of oppression and misery, did not understand what was happening to their fellow humans on their very doorstep? Could it be true of other Germans? The answer is that …
The nation’s first charter school law was passed in Minnesota in 1991. Today there are roughly 3.8 million students enrolled in about 8,000 charter schools across the country. Charter schools are legal in 46 states, Washington DC, Puerto Rico, and Guam.
Over the past 30+ years, thousands of charter schools have failed, closed, and abandoned millions of students, parents, teachers, education support staff, principals, and others—all in the name of “choice,” “competition,” “innovation,” “accountability,” “results,” “empowering parents,” and “busting teacher unions” (see here, here, and here). In Michigan alone, 36% of charter schools fail in the first …
No, this is not about the ocean or surfboards. It’s about the current economic and cultural climate we are living in. While the Democratic Party turned a mostly deaf ear to the ills of our working stiffs… for decades, their adversaries, the Republican Wolves, have always tried to ratchet the pump. Trump 2 wants, as the Brits say, to go the ‘ Full Monty’ and make America a totally feudal state. When we have less than 10% of private sector workers in unions ( actually at around 6%) the **** is about to hit the fan! Legislating anti terrorism laws …
Victoria, Poldark, and Brexit cultural nationalism
by Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin / February 6th, 2025
The recent drama, Victoria (2016-2019) on Netflix based on the life of Queen Victoria is an elaborate, well-made and well-acted series, all the better to convince one of the authenticity of its content.
Victoria was presented as a young queen who was always concerned with the interests of not only her adoring public but with the staff who worked in her palace.
However, this all starts to break down in an episode that dealt with the horrors of the Great Hunger raging in Ireland in 1847.
by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead / February 5th, 2025
This is what militaries do during coups: you capture the major targets, with government buildings high on the list, and you take over communications and other systems.
— Ruth Ben-Ghiat, historian on fascism and authoritarian leaders
How something is done is just as important as why something is done.
To suggest that the ends justify the means is to launch oneself down a moral, ethical and legal rabbit hole that leaves us in a totalitarian bind.
We are already halfway down that road.
Whatever the justifications for discarding, even temporarily, the constitutional framework and protocols that have long served as the foundations for our …
Will the world ever be free of the menace of nuclear annihilation?
There was a promising start along these lines during the late twentieth century, when―pressed by a popular upsurge against nuclear weapons―the nations of the world adopted a succession of nuclear arms control and disarmament agreements. Starting with the Partial Test Ban Treaty of 1963, these agreements helped curb the nuclear arms race and prevent nuclear war.
But the tide gradually turned during the final years of the twentieth century and the first decades of the twenty-first. As international conflict heightened and the nuclear disarmament movement waned, additional nations …
by Michelle Ellner and Melissa Garriga / February 5th, 2025
Trump’s executive order to rename the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America” isn’t just another absurd stunt or another example of his outlandish behavior. It signals a much deeper, more troubling agenda that seeks to erase historical identity and assert imperial domination over a region already suffering under a long history of interventionist policies. At its core, this is a move to expand the U.S. empire by erasing Mexico’s presence from a geographical feature recognized for centuries.
The name “Gulf of Mexico” has existed since the 16th century. Its recognition is supported by international organizations such as the …
It has had a rebarbative, blighting effect across the entire aviation industry. The Ryanair model, for want of a better term, prides itself on minimal, no-frills service for eye popping prices. The Irish-based low-cost carrier was intended to revolutionise European air travel by offering a budget option for the eager and easy holiday maker. In time, this seemingly attractive option has become a handy model to emulate by more traditional airlines, who have become mere shadows of themselves. National carriers, in other words, are now shameful replicas of budget airlines, with one exception: prices have been kept high and, post …
