The philosophy of the dunce, and the politics of the demagogue, often keep company. And Peter Dutton has both of these unenviable traits in spades. The Australian opposition leader, smelling weakness in his opponent, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, has again gravitated to something he is most comfortable with: terrifying the kaka out of the Australian public.
The method of doing so is always unimaginatively dull and almost always inaccurate. Select your marginal group in society. Elevate it as a threat, filling it with a gaseous, nasty fantasy. Condemn said group for various fictional and misattributed defects. When all is done, demonise …
With a click, with a shock
Phone’ll jingle, door’ll knock, open the latch
Something’s coming, don’t know when but it’s soon . . .
— “Something’s Coming,” West Side Story, lyrics by S. Sondheim, music by L. Bernstein.
Shock should not be the word, but when World War III breaks fully loose many who are now sleeping will be shocked. The war has already started, but its full fury and devastation are just around the corner. When it does, Tony’s singular fate in West Side Story will be the fate of untold millions.
It is a Greek tragedy brought on by the terrible hubris of …
During his four years as President of the United States, Donald Trump was remarkably active and often successful in sabotaging the health and safety of the nation’s workers.
Trump, as the AFL-CIO noted, targeted Medicare and Medicaid for $1 trillion in funding cuts, eroded the Affordable Care Act (thereby increasing the number of Americans lacking health insurance coverage by 7 million), and “made workplaces more dangerous by rolling back critical federal safety regulations.” Trump’s administration not only refused to publicly disclose fatality and injury data reported to the U.S. Occupational Safety …
Czech, Polish, and Slovenian PMs travel to Kyiv in 2022
In June, rumors swirled in the media that the Biden administration was holding discussions with Israel and Ukraine about the possibility of transferring aging Patriot air defense systems currently in Israel to Ukraine. The CNN reported: “The systems would likely need to be transferred to the US first, where they would undergo refurbishment, before being sent to Ukraine.”
In April, the Israel Defense Forces said it would soon “retire its Patriot systems,” as noted by the …
Our current leaders are hypnotized by war. They lack the vision and resourcefulness to consider negotiation and cooperation. Peace is not in their thoughts. ‘Peace’ is not in their vocabulary. They are addicted to war. They are obsessed with war.
The lesson we must take from this is this: Talking to them, trying to change their minds, trying to alter their policies and methods, …
by Allan Miller and Roger D. Harris / August 14th, 2024
In the quarter century of the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela, initiated by the election of Hugo Chávez and continued by his successor Nicolás Maduro, 31 national elections have been held. Invariably, the US-backed opposition claimed fraud in all but the two contests that they won. Equally unvaryingly has been the corporate press’s supporting and indeed embellishing of the claims of fraud as described below.
Blackmailing the Venezuelan electorate
The moment that Venezuela’s election authority (CNE in its Spanish initials) reported that incumbent Maduro had prevailed in the July 28 presidential contest over his nearest challenger, Edmundo González, howls of fraud were to …
Political prisoner in Ukraine, Inna Ivanochko sits in a dock in a Ukrainian court. Inna Ivanochko is the head of the Lviv organisation of Opposition Platform — For Life, which was Ukraine’ second largest party in parliament until it was persecuted and then banned. She is facing up to 15 years in prison for expressing her political views in the years before the war started – which the Ukrainian regime have now retrospectively deemed to have been in the service of Russia.
Vice President Kamala Harris in August 2021. (White House /Erin Scott) Two college professors who studied and lived in the 1960s recently published an opinion piece in The Los Angeles Times urging dissidents not to protest at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. The first paragraph is a stark example of uber-liberals suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome:
A collection of fringe radical groups are calling for demonstrations in Chicago this August at the Democratic National Convention — a ‘March on the DNC’ for Palestine. We study political movements, and we’ve …
Roma fleeing the war in Ukraine on April 13, 2022 in front of the Main Railway Station in Prague (PHOTO: Richard Samko)
Historically it has turned out that Roma occupy the position of outcast almost in all countries where they live. From 2005 to 2015 twelve countries of Central and Eastern Europe took part in the project aimed at improving the socio-economic status and social inclusion of the Romani people, but in the end the goals were not achieved. Currently, there are Roma integration strategies in many countries, but the nation continues …
The push towards an all-out war in the Middle East is moving out of its sleepwalking phase to that of conscious eschatological reckoning. A blood filled, fiery Armageddon will reveal the forces of virtue, linking the evangelicals of the United States with the right-wing Jewish nationalists in Israel. That appalling prospect is certainly not one to discount: the messianic are always a frightful bunch, thinking history and selectively pruned religions texts to be on their side.
Each week now comes with some measure of sabotage, mutilation and disruption to prospects of peace. In his July 24 address to the US …
by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead / August 13th, 2024
The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don’t. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They’ve long since bought and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the state houses, the city halls. They got the judges in their back pockets and they own all the big media companies, so they control just about all of the news and information you get to hear… They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying. Lobbying …
Through the centuries, the Republic that eventuated in North America has maintained a maximum of chutzpah and minimum of awareness in forging a creation myth that sees slavery and dispossession not as foundational but as inimical to the nation now known as the United States. But, of course, to confront the ugly reality would induce sleeplessness interrupted by haunted dreams, so far this unsteadiness has prevailed.
— Dr. Gerald Horne
From his own redoubt of critical inquiry, the former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating has made fighting the imperialising leprosy of the AUKUS security pact between Australia, the UK and the United States a matter of solemn duty.
In March 15, 2023, he excoriated a Canberra press gallery seduced and tantalised by the prospect of nuclear-powered submarines, calling the Albanese government’s complicit arrangements with the US and UK to acquire such a capability “the worst international decision by an Australian Labor government since the former Labor leader, Billy Hughes, sought to introduce conscription to augment Australian forces in World War …
69% of Israelis support assassinations even if cease-fire in Gaza delayed: Poll, Anadolu Agency
In post-World War II, except for assassins from Israel, have military and intelligence agencies assassinated political leaders of another nation? Have any of these assassinations occurred in a nation that is not the native nation of the assassinated? Two come to mind.
On March 1, 2020, the Trump government assassinated Iranian General Qasem Soleimani in Baghdad, and, on November 28, 1971, four Black September gunmen killed Wasfi Tal, Prime Minister of Jordan, in the lobby …
They say Iran “masterminded” a Canadian student encampment and is “destabilizing” West Asia. But these crude ‘blame Iran’ claims are nothing more than pathetic attempts to legitimate genocidal Zionism.
Recently, various commentators, politicians and Zionist groups promoted a deranged report Iran “masterminded” the student divestment encampment at McGill. Seeking to frame student opposition to their university’s complicity with Israel’s holocaust as Iranian interference, the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, Canada Proud, MP Kevin Vuong, senator Leo Housakos, conservative candidate Neil Oberman, influencer Yasmine Mohammed, journalist Sam Cooper, Hampstead mayor Jeremy Levi and others shared an Iran International report headlined “…
Jeffrey Sachs joins The Grayzone’s Max Blumenthal and Aaron Maté to discuss the investigation into the origins of Covid-19. As chair of the Lancet COVID-19 commission, Sachs alleges that SARS-CoV2 originated from dangerous gain of function experiments sponsored and conducted by US biotech institutions. He alleges a vast cover-up of Covid origins, including by former members of his commission, and details the personal attacks he has incurred for speaking out.
On Monday, August 5, former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina boarded a Bangladesh Air Force C-130J military transport in a hurry and fled to Hindon Air Force base, outside Delhi. Her plane was refueled and reports said that she intended to fly on either to the United Kingdom (her niece, Tulip Siddiq is a minister in the new Labor government), Finland (her nephew Radwan Mujib Siddiq is married to a Finnish national), or the United States (her son Sajeeb Wajed Joy is a dual Bangladesh-US national). Army Chief Waker uz-Zaman, who only …
A guest on Judging Freedom, Dr Gilbert Doctorow, took a contrarian stance to Scott Ritter’s journalism work on Russia, which seemingly aligns Doctorow’s stance with the official government stance.
Doctorow accused Ritter (starting about 21:30) of stomping across redlines that any person familiar with Russia should have been aware of. Doctorow didn’t specifically state what any of these redlines might be.
He also accused Ritter of violating FARA (the Foreign Agents Registration Act), albeit he conceded that was not for him to judge.
Says Doctorow,
My concern is [that] two generations of Americans have not …
by Roger D. Harris and Peter Bolton / August 10th, 2024
Corporate media’s coverage of Venezuela’s July 28 presidential election is akin to an investigation of a homicide that is focused not with identifying the murderer but with an unpaid parking ticket of the victim. Likewise, the media has shifted the narrative into the minutia of electoral procedures, ignoring the much larger issue of US interference in the internal affairs of another sovereign county.
Nowhere in the corporate media is there even an inkling that US-imposed regime-change activities in Venezuela or elsewhere might violate some basic principles.
US is not interested in democracy
Ours is a homeland where the likes of George Clooney and …
There is much to loathe about the AUKUS security agreement between Canberra, Washington and London. Of the three conspirators against stability in the Indo and Asia Pacific, one stands out as the shouldering platform, the sustaining force, the political and military stuffing. But Australian propagandists and proselytisers of the US credo of power prefer to see it differently, repeatedly telling the good citizens down under that they are onto something truly special in being a military extension, the gargantuan annexe of another’s interests. Give them nuclear powered submarines, let them feel special, and a false sense of security will follow.
If one views the classic 1993 Claude Berri film Germinal one can see what 19th century feudalism was all about. It took place in a mid-century Northern France mining region. Here in the USA we had John Sayle’s 1987 film Matawan, which portrayed the 1920 Matawan, West Virginia miner’s strike. Both films gave viewers a taste of how feudalism operates. Well, hang on gang because Amerika 2024 is fast approaching the evil of Capitalism on steroids.
We have less than 10% of private sector workers here in unions, and about half …
Temperatures for the entire month of July in Antarctica were 50°F above average, but it also experienced days when temperatures spiked up to 82°F above average. Yes, Antarctica is the world’s deepfreeze, and it is the dead of winter. What does this portend?
For starters, according to Michael Dukes, director of forecasting at MetDesk: “In Antarctica generally that kind of warming in the winter and continuing into summer months can lead to collapsing of the ice sheets.” (Source: “Antarctica Temperatures Rise 10C Above Average in Near Record Heatwave”, The Guardian, August 1, 2024.)
Already, the summers of 2022 and 2023 saw unprecedented …
US political and media elites tried but failed to sink the Chinese swimming team at the Paris Olympics. The Chinese swimmers performed well despite the increased stress caused by media-induced rumors of “Chinese doping”. And now, the tables are being turned as the US anti-doping regime is coming under increasing scrutiny and criticism.
The media manufactured cloud of suspicion
Just a few months ago the NY Times and German ARD media ignited the controversy with an “investigation” regarding an incident from December 2021. At that time, 23 Chinese swimmers tested positive for a trace amount of the heart medication Trimetazadine (TMZ) …
I can’t really find the words to express how depressing it is to watch the life get sucked out of the anti-genocide movement in the United States because one of the candidates running for president this year happens to come from the administration that’s been overseeing said genocide.
Kamala Harris shouted down protesters against the US-backed incineration of Gaza during a campaign rally on Wednesday, responding to their chants of “we won’t vote for genocide” by telling them they’re helping Trump win.
