Julian Assange of WikiLeaks fame is now back in the country of his birth, having endured conditions of captivity ranging from cramped digs in London’s Ecuadorian embassy to the maximum-security facilities of Belmarsh Prison. His return to Australia after striking a plea deal with the US Department of Justice sees him in a state with some of the most onerous secrecy provisions of any in the Western world.
As of January 2023, according to the Attorney-General’s Department, the Australian Commonwealth had 11 general secrecy offences in Part 5.6 of the Criminal Code, 542 specific secrecy offences across 178 Commonwealth laws …
Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore, Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!
— Emma Lazarus’s inscription on the Statue of Liberty
The contestants squared off in the first of the US presidential debates of 2024. Both wore identical white shirts and navy suits with American flag lapel pins. One wore a red tie; the other a blue one. There were other differences, but none quite so substantive.
The immigration issue dominated the debate. The challenger claimed that the country was being menaced by immigrants …
It was cruel. Sinister cruel. While Donald Trump was always going to relish the chance to be not only economical with the truth but simply inventive about it, Joe Biden, current Commander in Chief of the United States, leader of the self-described Free World, seemed a vanishing shadow, longing for soft slippers and the fireplace with cocoa, a case of comfort rather than the battling rage of politics.
It need never have happened, and certainly not so early. But the earliest-ever US Presidential election debate, held even before both candidates had been formally confirmed at their party conventions, did much to …
... for Instituting Laws that Copy U.S. Legislation and Were Designed to Ward Off Coups
by John Perry / June 28th, 2024
Source: Georgia Today Politicians in the small Caucasian nation of Georgia have been sanctioned by Washington for “undermining democracy” and depriving Georgian people of “fundamental freedoms,” simply because its parliament has passed a law to control foreign influence over Georgian politics. Politicians in another small country, Nicaragua, were subjected to U.S. sanctions for doing the same. Although the two countries are very different, there are striking similarities in the ways that Washington and its allies have striven to undermine their sovereignty.
In both cases, legislation to limit foreign influence …
It was only two years ago that studies of the infamous Thwaites Glacier, aka: the Doomsday Glacier located in West Antarctica, found rapid melting. At the time, scientists said it was “hanging on by its fingernails.” (Source: “Doomsday Glacier”, Which Could Raise Sea Level by Several Feet, is “Hanging by its Fingernails”, Scientists Say”, CNN, September 6, 2022.)
Since that warning was issued the planet has vastly exceeded global warming expectations. A new study raises the bet on sea level rise, maybe by a lot. The study warns that the Antarctic ice sheet is melting in a “new, worrying way” that …
Twelve buildings are destroyed every hour in Gaza. (Hadi Daoud APA images) When you’re in Gaza and see the destruction firsthand, the clearest conclusion is that Israel’s stated goals are an epic lie, on a par with “a people without a land for a land without a people,” packaged and sold to the world.
The Israelis are not targeting Hamas, nor are they interested in returning their captives, who pose tremendous liability upon their release, as they often have good things to say about their captors.
Erik Bulatov (USSR), People in the Landscape, 1976. There was a time when calls for a nuclear-free Europe rang across the continent. It began with the Stockholm Appeal (1950), which opened with the powerful words ‘We demand the outlawing of atomic weapons as instruments of intimidation and mass murder of peoples’ and then deepened with the Appeal for European Nuclear Disarmament (1980), which issued the chilling warning ‘We are entering the most dangerous decade in human history’. Roughly 274 million people signed the Stockholm Appeal, including – as is often …
The WikiLeaks project was always going to put various noses out of joint in the journalistic profession. Soaked and blighted by sloth, easily bought, perennially envious, a good number of the Fourth Estate have always preferred to remain uncritical of power and sympathetic to its brutal exercise. For those reasons, the views of Thomas Carlyle, quoting the opinion of Edward Burke in his May 1840 lecture that “there were Three Estates in Parliament; but in the Reporters’ Gallery yonder, there sat a Fourth Estate more important far than they all” seem quaintly misplaced, certainly in a modern context.
The civil war in Myanmar is set to become a lot more bloody and chaotic – if the United States follows through on plans to massively intervene in this conflict.
by Finian Cunningham / June 27th, 2024
A civil war has been raging for three years, although the nation has always been gripped by inter-ethnic violence since independence in 1948 as a legacy of British colonialist abuse.
KJ Noh is a seasoned political analyst and commentator on the Asia-Pacific region. He says the U.S. is already heavily involved in fanning the civil war in this Southeast Asian nation because Washington views it as a critical opportunity to destabilize China’s strategic interests.
Someone, whose cousin was friendly with White House (WH) correspondent, Helen Thomas, related to me the anguish that the dean of WH correspondents suffered after being accused of anti-Semitism. Helen was born in Lebanon and consistently favored the Palestinian cause. Having been the first female officer of the National Press Club, the first female member and president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, and the first female member of the Gridiron Club, the pro-Israel contingent found it difficult to silence her. When she was at the advanced age of 90, they leaped to the …
The future of Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution, a target of US imperial power since its inception in 1998, may be decided on July 28, the date of their presidential election.
Incumbent President Nicolás Maduro and seven other presidential candidates pledged to abide by the choice of the electorate. Edmundo González, promoted by the US, and another candidate have not signed the pledge, consistent with the far right only accepting contest results where they win. Likewise, a bipartisan and bicameral resolution was introduced on June 18 to the US Congress not to recognize a “fraudulent” Maduro victory.
“Clare, my friend, I know you’re in the hot seat these days, but do you think you can find it in yourself do one more little favor for the boys; I mean, if it’s not too much trouble?”
“What’s up, boss?”
“It’s that damn gun thing again: an infringement on the Constitutional right to sell patriotic weapons. A lot of the guys are still grousing about the stupid bump stock law that Trump got conned into signing. They’re saying if we sit back and let the wing nuts have their way with that one, then what will they try to screw us …
Is it possible for an entire ‘mainstream’ media system – every newspaper, website, TV channel – to completely suppress one side of a crucial argument without anyone expressing outrage, or even noticing? Consider the following.
In February 2022, Nigel Farage, former and future leader of the Reform UK party, tweeted that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was:
‘A consequence of EU and NATO expansion, which came to a head in 2014. It made no sense to poke the Russian bear with a stick.’
The world is at its most dangerous moment since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. Back then, however, the fear of total destruction consumed the public; today, few people seem even to be aware of this possibility.
It is easily imaginable that nuclear war could break out between Russia (and perhaps China) and the West, yet politicians continue to escalate tensions, place hundreds of thousands of troops at “high readiness,” and attack military targets inside Russia, even while ordinary citizens blithely go on with their lives.
The situation is without parallel in history.
Consider the following facts. A hostile military alliance, now including …
One of the longest sagas of political persecution is coming to its terminus. That is, if you believe in final chapters. Nothing about the fate of Julian Assange seems determinative. His accusers and inquisitors will draw some delight at the plea deal reached between the WikiLeaks founder’s legal team and the US Department of Justice. Others, such as former US Vice President, Mike Pence, thought it unjustifiably lenient.
Alleged to have committed 18 offences, 17 novelly linked to the odious Espionage Act, the June 2020 superseding indictment against Assange was a frontal assault on the freedoms of publishing and …
by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead / June 25th, 2024
No matter what carefully crafted sound bites and political spin get trotted out by Joe Biden and Donald Trump in advance of the 2024 presidential election, you can rest assured that none of the problems that continue to undermine our freedoms will be addressed in any credible, helpful way by either candidate, despite the dire state of our nation.
Indeed, the 2024 elections will not do much to alter our present course towards a police state.
Nor will the popularity contest for the new occupant of the White House significantly alter the day-to-day life of the average American greatly at all. …
The recent European Parliament elections shocked the mainstream European parties and their international friends and allies.
The 720-member European legislature has largely been the handmaiden for the technocrats in Brussels, who craft the economic and social direction of the European Union. Since its inception, the EU has presented a stable, reliable face of capitalist rule organized around market fundamentalism, minimizing market intervention, and slowing, even reversing, the growth of the public sector. The broad right-center and left-center — traditional pro-business, liberal, and social democratic parties — have united in ensuring that agenda.
With the demoralization or decline of the anti-capitalist left, there …
Part 1 of a two-parter: Israelis Live Wasted and Desperate Lives and Should Leave
The fuss that President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Anthony Blinken manufactured over their Israel inspired ceasefire plan is pathetic. Claiming Hamas is “proposing changes that are not workable.” without specifying the proposed changes (are there changes?), is not informing anybody. Apparently, Blinken’s subservient role in this sleight of hand act is to make believe a truce is pursued, and then charge Hamas with deception for not agreeing with an impossible plan. His tone and posturing indicate more performance than honest diplomacy.
There are three sources of power in Chile: Pinochet, God and DINA.
— Chilean intelligence officer, remarks to a US military attaché, 1974
Decree 521 of the Chilean government of June 18, 1974, was a chilling moment in the country’s convulsed history. With the state now in the pathologically disturbed hands of a military dictatorship steered by coup leader and usurper General Augusto Pinochet, the measure saw the creation of the Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional (DINA), the clandestine agency responsible for a good share of the mutilations and murders that came to typify the Cold War atrocities of the period.
The Haiti/Americas Team of the Black Alliance for Peace rebukes the US Black “misleadership” class for its support of the latest US invasion and occupation of Haiti. We condemn the participation of this class in discussions with the US security state and its promotion of imperialist foreign policy objectives aimed at undermining Haitian sovereignty and dignity.
On March 29, 2024, US Deputy National Security Advisor Jon Finer led a meeting on Haiti policy with a selected group of “leaders of U.S.-based Black civil rights groups.” The White House’s Readout lists the participants as Reverend Al Sharpton of the National Action …
During the 2016 election Trump fanatics chanted “Lock her up,” referring to Hillary Clinton. The tables have now turned. Trump is a convicted criminal and Biden violates international law.
In one of the most twisted forms of logic ever to appear in politics, liberals believe that screaming “Trump is a fascist” somehow proves that Biden is not. If what Biden is helping the Zionists do in Gaza is not a fascist war crime, it is difficult to know what is.
The word “fascism” has historically been used when a rich world government begins …
Faramarz Farbod: You have taught at Princeton University for four decades; you were the UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories in Israel (2008-2014); and you are the author of numerous books about global issues and international law. In preparation for this conversation, I have been reading your autobiography, Public Intellectual: The Life of a Citizen Pilgrim (2019). Tell us about yourself and how you became politically engaged in your own words.
Richard Falk: I grew up in New York City in a kind of typical middle-class, post-religious, Jewish family that had a lot of domestic stress …
In his seminal work on modern slavery, Kevin Bales does away with certain, antiquated concepts. In its insidious, older form, one focused on the concept of natal alienation, slaves were chattels and assets, outrightly owned. Each slave system was distinct and protean, if marked by certain universal features.
The universal feature of ownership, at least when it comes to its modern iteration, has little role to play in the modern slave system. The modern slave can be found in abundance. Disposability is its vital feature, abundance of vulnerable persons its source. Care for human welfare is of secondary concern. Bales, in …
I recently found an unpublished essay written in 1979 by a comrade from Western Pennsylvania who argued passionately for the urgent necessity of independent political action. In The Time is Now: A Position Paper on Independent Political Action, Bob Bonner challenged the left to begin the process of building independent political organizations and to convince the people to support them.
Bob is not a starry-eyed academic or a know-it-all armchair socialist, but a keen observer of local politics, its limitations, and its possibilities.
He was then a worker, a founding leader of the Clairton Coalition, a leader in a local independent political …
