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Why is Sam Husseini Channeling Neocon Conspiracy Theories on Covid-19?

Journalist Sam Husseini, was once known for challenging the Neocon warmongers on the Iraq War in a former lifetime. He now seems to have joined them, becoming a promoter of anti-China Neo-con conspiracy theories on the origins of Covid-19.

Husseini recently wrote a series of articles that recycle a large amount of right wing disinformation–alt-right fecal matter–and smeared them inside a juicy little hamburger of truth: the fact that the US engages in dangerous biowarfare research.

It is certainly true, if not really hot news, …

Left Gatekeepers Through the New Left: Monitored Rebellion (Part 1)

Cultural containment meant “ring around the pinkos”

— The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters, Frances Stonor SaundersLeftist Patron Saints

What do the following people have in common: Noam Chomsky, Cornel West, Naomi Klein, Robert Reich, Michael Albert, Howard Zinn, Amy Goodman, Medea Benjamin, Norman Solomon, Chris Hedges, Michael Moore, Greg Palast, and Chip Berlet? With the exception of Norman Solomon and Chip Berlet, these are household names among “progressives”. What they appear to have in common is that they are “left.” How far left? …

Why Thinking Makes It So: Donald Trump’s Obamagate Fixation

The “gate” suffix has been wearing thin since the break-in scandal that gave it its birth.  Since Watergate, virtually anything dubious and suggestive, and much more besides, is suffixed.  Which brings us to the issue of President Donald Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama.  Finding himself in hot water (did he ever leave it?) Trump has been sowing the seeds of “Obamagate”, a fairly grotesque measure that serves to fill the shallow spaces of the social mediaverse.

Obamagate is a show without much of a script, supported by the faintest of threads.  Supposedly, they revolve around the merrily murky former national security advisor …

We Don’t Have to Choose Between Our Health and the Economy

The United States is at a critical moment in the COVID-crisis. This week, the nation is likely to surpass 100,000 deaths and new hotspots in the south and midwest are developing. Forty-two states have either started “reopening” their economies or imminently plan to do so without putting in place essential public health measures to prevent the spread of the virus. As of May 7, more than half of the states that had either reopened or planned to do so (30 at the time) have seen an increase in …

The Soviet Victory over Nazism 75 Years Ago and Covid-19

How could the Great Patriotic War in which the Soviet people (including many members of my own family) lost at least 25 million lives, have anything in common with the latest outbreak of the novel coronavirus?

You think this is an absolutely insane question?

However, before you dismiss it, think twice. There are similarities how they are being portrayed. There is a dangerous, even deadly, pattern.

The storylines of both monumental events have been shamelessly kidnapped and perverted by Western propaganda!

Those people and countries that fought hard and heroically have lost the narrative. At the same time, those who negotiated to twist and …

China’s New Crypto-Currency:  First Step to Full Dedollarization?

 ‘We’ll cut off the whole relationship’ –Trump threatened China in a recent Fox-Business interview, suggesting he may cut diplomatic relations with China and thereby saving US$ 500 billion. He didn’t say how, though.

Mr. Trump’s anger referred to what he calls China’s “mismanagement” of the corona crisis. This is consistent with the new China bashing hard line being pushed by his administration. “I’m very disappointed in China,” Trump said during the same Fox interview. “We asked to go over and they said no,” he continued, referring to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) February offer of assistance to the virus-stricken city …

An Illusion of Protection: The Pandemic, the “Criminal” Government and Public Distrust of the Media

Any notion that the UK government actually considers that its primary responsibility is to protect the health and security of the country’s population ought to have been demolished in 2020. The appalling death toll that continues to mount during the coronavirus pandemic is largely rooted, not merely in government ‘incompetence’, but in criminal dereliction of its core duties in a supposedly democratic society.

The UK has the highest death toll in Europe, and the second highest in the world (the US has the highest). On …

Another Bank Bailout under Cover of a Virus

Insolvent Wall Street banks have been quietly bailed out again. Banks made risk-free by the government should be public utilities.  

When the Dodd Frank Act was passed in 2010, President Obama triumphantly declared, “No more bailouts!” But what the Act actually said was that the next time the banks failed, they would be subject to “bail ins” – the funds of their creditors, including their large depositors, would be tapped to cover their bad loans.

Then bail-ins were tried in Europe. The results were disastrous.

Many economists in the US and Europe argued that the next time the banks failed, …

COVID-19 Great Depression: Global Ecosocialism Is the Way Out

Sunflower field in Hudson — Photo by Larry Goodwin

Suffering in numbers

The abstract science of mathematics is a language like music. But while music is in the realm of pure emotion, the language of mathematics only speaks to the mind not the heart. Numbers and equations do not lie. They are not, by essence, subjective. This being said, when the numbers are those of the dead, they can have the chilling emotional effect of a meat …

A Plague From Harvard 

Practically speaking, government might do well to maintain a more vigorous countermisinformation establishment.

Cass Sunstein and Adrian Vermeule

In 2008, Harvard law professors Cass Sunstein and Adrian Vermeule published “Conspiracy Theories” with the Social Services Research Network, and a year later in The Journal of Political Philosophy under the title “Conspiracy Theories: Causes and Cures”. In time, the contents became known to a shocked public, because the authors, to summarize, recommended that citizen groups failing to believe official accounts of events should be covertly penetrated by governmental agents who would then work to bring opinion into line with …

The Need to Know

A review of TDY by Douglas Valentine

Early on in this “based on a true story” book, Pete, narrator and central character, says something important to understanding it as a human document. “I wish I could tell you more about Rusty, José, and Taurus,” he says wistfully. “I wish I could fully develop their characters and entertain and enlighten you with snippets of our repartee. But we never had any clever conversations, and after our initial introduction we stood there looking at each other, not knowing what to say … In fact, just as Taurus and …

Pilpul for Beginners

Americans may be surprised to learn from Alan Dershowitz that their constitution is far more intrusive and oppressive than what they and their forefathers have believed for generations. The law ‘scholar’ declared yesterday that “you have no (constitutional) right to not be vaccinated.”

Watch Video: You Have NO RIGHT to NOT be Vaccinated” – Alan Dershowitz:

One possible explanation for Dershowitz’s peculiar constitutional ‘interpretation’ is that some parts of the American constitution were actually written in Yiddish, Hebrew and Aramaic. As such, their meaning is only accessible to a small privileged segment within the American population, one that amounts to 2% or …

Down and Out in Portland: Retired in Style in Waldport, OR

The irony of this quote from the Dustin Hoffman movie, The Graduate, is not wasted on Duane Snider:

— One word: plastics.

That was Benjamin Braddock, just graduated from college, sitting in a swimming pool. Giving him advice on gaining the American dream, the neighbor’s statement says it all. Today? Hedge funds? Flipping houses? Coronavirus repossessions?

For Duane, that one word: artwork.

Duane as a child with his only sibling.
We’re sitting on the back porch of his brand-new Adair home on a third of an acre on the high land of Waldport. He and his wife Linda …

The Spiritualisation of Culture

Much like socialism or love, ‘spiritual’ is a word that through overuse and misappropriation has been diluted to the point where it has lost virtually all meaning. Although commonly understood to allude to something separate from the material world, according to esoteric literature that which we regard as ‘spiritual’ – referring to spirit, and its opposite, form, exist in duality and are but the positive and negative polarities of one energy, which we broadly think of as ‘life’. Spirit then is the highest most refined form of matter, and matter is the lowest, or grossest form of spirit.

Helena Blavatsky, founder …

Learning from the Great Depression

According to Mark Twain (supposedly), history doesn’t repeat itself, but it frequently rhymes. He was right. Donald Trump, for example, rhymes with Mussolini. The decline of organized labor in recent decades rhymes with its decline in the 1920s. And the coming depression will rhyme, in many respects, with the Great Depression.

For decades, in fact, it has been clear that the political economy of neoliberalism “rhymes” with the political economy that caused the Depression. In addition to (and in part because of) the analogous collapses of organized labor, economic inequality skyrocketed in both eras: in 1929 the richest 0.1% …

The Online Double-bind

The trap was set at least twenty-five years ago and the mice jumped at the smell of the cheese.  I am referring to the introduction of the computer as a mass necessity and the Internet that followed. I was slow to enter the trap, “forced” finally in 2007 by the college where I was teaching. Up to that point I was just a member of The Lead Pencil Club, whose motto was “a speed bump on the information superhighway” and whose membership list numbered twenty-three and a half people worldwide. When I slowly and reluctantly reached for the cheese, the …

Trump’s Lesser Economy

How many times a day, and in how many different presentations, has President Donald Trump suddenly departed from script to exclaim, “This was the greatest economy we ever had, the greatest in the world, the greatest ever, and it all went down because of a pandemic?” A large part of the United States electorate has accepted this political statement, which Trump uses to boost his election chance. Time to burst the bubble he has created around himself and let him know his ego- building statement is entirely false.

Trump does not describe the criteria by which he created the illusion that …

Are We Up Against the Wall Yet, Alma Mater?

If all values are system values, what do we make of trending lawsuits filed by students against their college campuses? Is it something like the demand of an air traveler who gets downgraded from first class to coach? The analogy seems to have merit. At least it reminds us of flying.

Campuses have about five categories of bills they send to students: tuition, student activity fees, parking, meal plans, and housing. Tuition goes to the academic budget. Student activity fees go into the infrastructure of extracurricular life, student organizations, counseling, libraries, health services, etc. In public debate, the term tuition often …

Iran:  Socialist, Internationalist, Powerful and Determined

I refuse to describe Iran as a victim. It is not. It is one of the most influential and strong-minded nations on Earth.

When facing mortal danger, its people unite, harden themselves and get ready to face invaders, no matter how threatening they might be.
Iran determined despite attacks
Iran is home to one of the oldest and deepest cultures in the world, and it’s precisely this culture that helps Iranian people to survive the most frightening moments.

And one such moment is sadly right now.
*****
U.S. battleships are sailing …

How Huxley’s X-Club Created Nature Magazine and Sabotaged Science for 150 Years

Amidst the storm of controversy raised by the lab-origin theory of COVID-19 extolled by such figures as Nobel prize winning virologist Luc Montagnier, bioweapons expert Francis Boyle, Sri Lankan Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith and the head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, an elaborate project was undertaken under the nominal helm of Nature magazine in order to refute the claim once and for all under the report “The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2.”

This project was led by a team of evolutionary virologists using a line of reasoning that “random mutation can account for anything” and was parroted loudly and repeatedly …

My Beit Daras, My Nakba: Two Palestinian Intellectuals Reminiscing about Their Destroyed Village


Dr. Ghada Ageel and Dr. Ramzy Baroud have more in common than their scholarly research on Palestinian history and politics. They are both refugees, and the direct descendants of Palestinian refugees who have been expelled from their historic village of Beit Daras at gunpoint during the catastrophic events that led to the Palestinian Nakba of May 15, 1948.
Starting on March 27, 1948, a small Palestinian village, called Beit Daras, came under Zionist militias’ attacks. With little means – a few old rifles and kitchen knives – the Badrasawis fought back, repelling the first raid and the second.
The …

Amid the Coronavirus Pandemic, America’s Billionaires Thrive and Prosper

Although most Americans currently face hard times, with unemployment surging to the levels of the Great Depression and enormous numbers of people sick or dying from the coronavirus pandemic, the nation’s super-rich remain a notable exception.

Financially, they are doing remarkably well.  According to the Institute for Policy Studies, between March 18 and April 28, as nearly 30 million Americans applied for unemployment benefits, the wealth of America’s 630 billionaires grew by nearly 14 percent.  During April 2020 alone, their wealth increased by over $406 billion, bringing it to $3.4 trillion.  According to estimates by Forbes, the 400 …

China’s International Solidarity Aid to the World During the Corona Pandemic

China’s worldwide assistance and medical aid to other countries to combat the coronavirus is barely covered in the corporate press. Instead, the US has ramped up its anti-China campaign to cover up its own incompetence in combating the virus. As John Pilger shows in his Obama era film The Coming War on China, this is no new campaign.

The US empire realizes that China is slowly putting the US out of business around the world. If the point comes where the US can no longer impose the dollar as the medium of international exchange – still a long way away — …

Oppose the Israeli Annexation of West Bank Settlements

It is time for the United States to end its bipartisan blanket support for Israeli policies that violate the human rights of Palestinians. At this critical moment, where Israel has announced its intention to annex Israeli settlements on the West Bank with the support of the Trump administration, we must speak out and resist this blatant violation of international law and the right of Palestinians to self-government.

Friday, May 15 is the anniversary of the Nakba, which Palestinians commemorate as The Day of Catastrophe, when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were displaced from their own lands, homes, and businesses preceding and …

With Corbyn Gone, the Israel Lobby is targeting Palestinians Directly

Anti-Palestinian bigotry from an antisemitism watchdog is the latest move to dress up bullying as victimhood

An attack on a prominent British-Palestinian doctor and academic, Ghada Karmi, by a self-styled “antisemitism watchdog” looks suspiciously like a new trend in anti-Palestinian bigotry and bullying dressed up as victimhood.

Late last month, the Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA), which claims to represent the interests of the UK’s Jewish community, said it was writing to the General Medical Council and Exeter University to accuse Karmi of making “a series of antisemitic statements”.

The supposedly racist comments were contained in an opinion piece in Middle East Eye that praised Jeremy Corbyn’s record – and his …

What is Gender?

A is for Anarchy

Gender is one of the most fundamental stories humans have created.

It is a story about each one of us that begins being told even before we are born. It intersects with other aspects of our personal experience and social position to shape the opportunities we will have and the abuses we will suffer.

Gender is a means for society to categorize people along a masculine and feminine binary – categories which leave no space for the complexities and nuances in each one of us.

For anarchists the disruption and reformation of gender is intimately connected to our struggles against illegitimate power.

The fight …

Arabs, UN Must Move to Swiftly Protect the Status of Palestinian Refugees

‘Heinous racism,’ is how the Geneva-based Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor described a recent decision by Lebanese authorities to bar Palestinian refugee expats from returning to Lebanon.

Lebanon’s restrictions on its ever-diminishing population of Palestinian refugees is nothing new. However, this event is particularly alarming as it may be linked to a long-term official policy regarding the residency status of Palestinian refugees in this Arab country.

Many were taken aback by a recent Lebanese government’s order to its embassy in the United Arab Emirates, instructing it to prevent Palestinian refugees from …

The Black Animal

Recently, during a meaningful conversation about the effects of racism and colonization with a friend he mentioned that he did not understand why people of colour seemed to want to be categorized as victims. To support this argument he cited the great misdeeds and evil that was visited upon his ancestral Scottish people. Indeed, the Scots were abused by the Empire. “However,” my friend continued, “they continued fighting and never fell into becoming the victims of the horrors that were visited on them.” He continued to expound on this …

US Uses “Humanitarian Intervention” to Advance Economic and Strategic Interests

A review of Dan Kovalik's book No More War

No More War focuses on the one nation in recent times that has been continuously engaged in wars of aggression. In fact, that nation has been engaged in wars or military occupations in all but five years since its founding in 1776. Author and professor of human rights law at the University of Pittsburgh, Dan Kovalik, contrasts international law designed to keep the peace to the contravening ideology of “humanitarian intervention” used to excuse the US imperial project.

Besides being a compelling exposition on US imperial …

Ottawa’s Close Ties with Far Right Colombia President undermines Human Rights Rhetoric Regarding Venezuela

A week ago a former Canadian soldier instigated a harebrained bid to kidnap or kill Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. Launched from Colombia, the plot failed spectacularly with most of the men captured or killed.

Still, the leader of the invasion Jordan Goudreau, a veteran of the Canadian military and US special forces, has been remarkably forthright about the involvement of opposition figure Juan Guaidó. A leaked contract between Guaidó’s representative in Florida and Goudreau’s Silvercorp USA describes plans for a multi-month occupation force which, after ousting Maduro, would “convert to a National Asset Unit that will act under the …