Scare Tactics
Is Chicken Little a Deep State operative?
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Justice and Sovereignty: the Dispute over the Essequibo Strip
The unsolved border dispute between Venezuela and Guyana sparked renewed tensions in recent weeks. The two governments have engaged in a war of words, military presence has increased, as well as fears of US intervention.
The following infographic recaps the main chapters of the longstanding controversy over the resource-rich Essequibo Strip.
The Attack Against the Freedom to Read and What to Do About It
During the past three years, the country has seen a dramatic increase in book bans at public and K-12 school libraries and in rightwing pro-censorship activism, usually targeting books that address race, gender identity, or sexuality.
In Texas, Suzette Baker was fired from her job as director of a rural public library for refusing to withdraw books about racial justice and the lives of LGBTQ people from circulation. A mob of neo-fascist Proud Boys descended on a Downers Grove, Illinois, school board meeting to demand that school libraries under the district’s control remove …
Indian Ministries Set to Approve Mega-project that Will Destroy Uncontacted Island People
The Shompen live in the rainforests of Great Nicobar. If their forest and rivers are destroyed, they will be too. © ASI
Authorities in India have vowed to press ahead with a controversial mega-development project, despite experts’ warnings that it will destroy a unique uncontacted tribe.
The $5bn mega-port planned for the Indian Ocean island of Great Nicobar, plus associated ‘development’ such as a new city, defense base, industrial zones, airport and power station, will utterly destroy the Shompen people. They are one of India’s two tribes who shun contact …
Anti-Palestinian Racism in Canada
After months of research and analysis, CJPME published a landmark study highlighting the widespread problem of anti-Palestinian racism (APR) in Canada. Entitled, “Anti-Palestinian Racism in Canada: CJPME’s 2022 Report,” the report constitutes the first-ever, non-exhaustive study of APR in Canada, and exposes more than 500 examples of this form of racism in online written content from 2022.
Although the study focused exclusively on examples from 2022, the report acknowledges the huge uptick in incidents of anti-Palestinian racism in 2023. …
Genocide: The Gaze from the Abyss
Left-progressive websites don’t always get it right. Take Media Lens, for example. In October, we discussed the corporate media invention of so-called ‘disinformation experts’. We lampooned the claim that although journalists are ‘working within profit-maximising, billionaire-owned, advertiser-dependent, government-subsidised media, they are nevertheless exposing “disinformation” without the slightest trace of bias’.
Last May, the BBC unveiled just such an initiative:
BBC Verify is transparency in action – fact-checking, verifying video, countering disinformation, analysing data and explaining complex stories in the pursuit of truth.
We took it for …
Face to Face with Hezbollah
The Many Faces of the Lebanese Shiite Organization
As part of a fact-finding mission to the Middle East in late 2007, one year after Hezbollah concluded a war with Israel, we spent a few days with Hezbollah. I knew that Hezbollah carried heavy baggage, could be threatening, and operated as a state within a state, but it never seemed, as bludgeoning reports insisted, an international terrorist organization. All of the few horrific actions involving Hezbollah have been tit-for-tat revenge attacks for Israeli murder of its cadres, such as the February 16, 1992, Israeli Apache AH64 helicopter missile attack on an automobile that killed Sheikh Abbas Musawi, the then …
Does It Really Matter Who Sits on the Throne?
Organisation or personality
by T.P. WilkinsonThere have been recent elections in numerous principalities. The constellations by which governments — the outward and visible signs of obscured and conspiratorial power — have been formed since 2020 are not in themselves unique but have occurred with an intensity — I like here the German term Verdichtung, i.e. thickening or coagulation — perhaps unlike anything since the financial coup d‘etat that inaugurated the Great Depression (as it was called in the US).
In fact, one could date this phenomenon to …
Your Enemies Destroyed One Palestine; My Wounds Populated Many Palestines
Malak Mattar (Palestine), A Life Stolen Before It Had Begun, 2023.
The indecency of the phrase ‘humanitarian pause’ is obvious. There is nothing humanitarian about a brief interlude between bouts of horrendous violence. There is no true ‘pause’, merely the calm before the storm continues. We are witnessing the bureaucratisation of immorality, the use of old words with great meaning (‘humanitarian’) and their reduction to new, empty phrases that betray their original meanings. Before the debris …
Minefield
Which way ahead?
Actuarial Justice: Released Refugees and Secondary Punishment
In most instances, the justice system of a liberal democracy presumes absence of arbitrary and cruel treatment by the State. Punishment, when levelled, is finite. It might see out the term of a convict’s natural life, but that would only be for the most extreme cases. Even then, the whiff of parole, while far off, might still be possible.
On being released, the usual assumptions apply. Time served is time done. Past punishment will not be revisited upon you; the State will not send its hounds and officers of the thin blue line after you. This would only happen in …
Gaza: The Masks are off
As the genocide in Gaza resumes, it becomes ever more clear that the Operation “Al-Aqsa Flood”, launched by the Palestinian Resistance on October 7, and the events that followed, have not only destroyed the prestige of the Israeli army: they completely unmasked the hypocrisy of the West, who is not only silent but accomplice of the unprecedented massacres perpetrated against a defenseless and trapped civilian population, as well as the duplicity of most of the so-called Western “friends” of Palestine, be they political forces, media, Unions or associations.
The Biggest Vaccine Lie Exposed
Safe & Effective? – NOT ACCORDING TO THE PFIZER CONTRACT
South Africa – Pfizer contract
“…considering the relevant risks, uncertainties, limitations and challenges of the development, manufacture, commercialization and distribution of a novel COVID19 vaccine product, taking into account the following factors: actual and potential issues of safety and efficacy,…” (p 3)
“Purchaser acknowledges and agrees that (i) Pfizer’s efforts to develop and manufacture the Product are aspirational in nature and subject to significant risks and uncertainties,…” (p 8)
Albania Contract – (use “purchaser” as a …
COP28: Where Fossil Fuel Industries Go to Gloat
The sequence of COP meetings, ostensibly a United Nations forum to discuss dramatic climate change measures in the face of galloping emissions, has now been shown for what it is: a luxurious, pampered bazaar for the very industries that fear a dip in their profits and ultimate obsolescence. Call it a drugs summit for narcotics distributors promoting clean-living; a convention for casino moguls promising to aid problem gamblers. The list of wicked analogies is endless.
Reading the material from the gathering that is known in its longer form as the United Nations Climate Change Conference, one could be forgiven for falling …
Predicting Pestilence
World Health Organization now says disease could be even deadlier than airstrikes in Gaza
Speaking from a hospital ward about 50 meters from where a bomb had just exploded, UNICEF spokesperson James Elder raised his voice over sounds of children screaming. In a video posted on Twitter/X he emphasized that Gaza’s health care system is overwhelmed. Pointing at children packed into the ward of a hospital he said was operating at 200 per cent capacity, Elder insisted the hospital “cannot take more children with the wounds of war…with the burns, with the shrapnel littering their bodies, with the broken bones.”
Calling it a war on children, Elder warned that “inaction by those …
2,315 Charter Schools Failed And Closed In 11 Years
Although they have been around for more than 30 years, and although they are frequently touted as being superior to public schools, the U.S Department of Education reports that between 2010-11 and 2021-22, an 11-year period, 2,315 charter schools failed and closed in the U.S.
That is a huge number of school closures in a short time frame. By any measure, it is hard to call such a phenomenon “successful.”
And this figure probably does not capture the real number of charter schools that have failed and closed over the years, leaving thousands of parents, students, teachers, education support staff, and …
Bah Humbug: The Police State Wants Us To Be a Nation of Snowflakes
This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased.
— Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol
It feels as if government Grinches and corporate Scrooges have been working overtime to drain every last drop of joy, kindness and liberty from the world.
After endless months of being mired in political gloom and doom, we could all use a little Christmas cheer right now.
Unfortunately, …
In Search of Kindness
Now is the season when priests proclaim, “Peace on earth, goodwill towards men” and mainstream media soothe us with stories and images of kindness.
But why do peace and goodwill remain just dreams? Why is kindness so rare in the world today? Why is it limited to the personal sphere? Why is the wider world so cruel?
The root cause of this is capitalism, an intrinsically violent and harsh social-economic system that shapes us. By forcing people to compete for the essentials of life, it generates selfish, aggressive personalities. Individual accumulation is the priority rather than cooperative sharing.
But capitalism is not as …
The Ancient Agonies of the Unelected OverLords
They didn’t have a choice, those infant twins abandoned into the river Tiber. We can only imagine what their Mother went through. What feelings would have washed the womb of the infants, when the Royal Mother knew that her babies would be murdered at birth by her uncle? The Palace servants were ordered to drown the newborns in the Tiber, but the river was in flood that day, so the basket was left to be washed away.
It scars the infant brain – the terror of abandonment, the terror of starvation. Before the conscious mind can make sense of pain, the …
Renaming the Hippocratic Oath
What would a more accurate andappropriate name be?
Refreshing the Camelot School: Kennedy Hagiography at Sixty
Camelot, the sweetly sentimental shorthand for a shortened US presidency, has generated a mythopoetry so rich it turns the stomach, clogs the intestines, and soils the historical record. With its effacing tendencies, its soppily loyal hagiographers, its ghastly, moist worshippers, anniversaries are the best occasions to shine. Six decades have passed since President John F. Kennedy was slain in Dallas, and the miasma of psychic doubt and veneration has only slightly abated.
As with each decade, the conspiracy behind the death of the Republic’s youngest Caesar is always revisited with a pilgrim’s myrrh perfumed dedication. The energy with which this is …
Palestine’s Days of Glory
Just two months ago, no one could have predicted the earthquake of October 7, which was by no means a massacre, but a spectacular military operation that decimated the Gaza Brigade in less than 3 hours.
And after the deluge of iron and fire that fell on the besieged Palestinian people, in a real war of extermination waged by the fanatical, distraught and desperate Netanyahu government, eager to wash away Israel’s defeat in massive death and destruction, the very existence of the Palestinian cause was at stake. In an attempt to force the Gaza population into a new, final Nakba, Israel …
Handmaid Tells
Those who know, know.
Those who don’t know, need to be told
I am infected. I am a carrier.
I am contagious.
I didn’t realize it myself, at first. And then, when I became aware, I was afraid. It made me different. I wanted to hide it. I tried to hide it. I wasn’t sure I wanted anyone else to know. I didn’t know what they would think.
It wasn’t my fault, really. I was exposed at a very young age.
I had no idea what I had contracted. And by the time I understood, it was too late. I never completely recovered. It spread through …
Turbulent Winds of the Last Peace Conference: Annapolis
A Voyage Through Middle East Capitals Reveals the Truths that Lack Exposure
For those interested, here is a previous article on a significant past event that gives a background to contemporary events. George W. Bush organized the Annapolis peace conference; predictions had it going nowhere and the last ”peace conference” went nowhere. While U.S. administrations warned Israel not to expand settlements, claimed they favored a two-state solution, and acted as the principal mediator in the crisis, Israel continued to expand settlements, made certain the Palestinians could never have a viable state, and eschewed all mediations. The day that the Annapolis conference failed is the day the Western world failed the Palestinians and …
If You Don’t Want to Make the CIA Happy
Then this is necessary.
Gaza Water Salinity
Palestinians in Gaza are resorting to drinking from polluted agricultural wells that are almost as salty as seawater, posing an immediate health risk. Special thanks to 10Tooba for their work and partnership on this visual.
Banished from Pakistan: Islamabad Moves on Afghan Refugees
Across the globe, refugees, always treated as the pox of public policy, continue to feature in news reports describing anguish, despair and persistent persecution. If they are not facing barbed wire barriers in Europe, they are being conveyed, where possible, to third countries to be processed in lengthy fashion. Policy makers fiddle and cook the legal record to justify such measures, finding fault with instruments of international protection such as the United Nations Refugee Convention of 1951.
A very dramatic example of roughing up and violence is taking place against Afghans in Pakistan, a country that, despite having a lengthy association …
No New “Epidemic” in China
This week’s News on China.
Sources:
• Spike in respiratory illnesses
“China Tells WHO Known Germs Are Causing Surge in Child Pneumonia”
“Upsurge of respiratory illnesses among children-Northern China”
• Taiwan opposition parties run on separate tickets
“Taiwan opposition parties register separate bids for presidential race in a boost for DPP and a worry for mainland China”
“Taiwan election: KMT’s Hou Yu-ih climbs in polls after collapse of joint ticket, but DPP’s William Lai still leads”
• Negative FDI for the first time
“How much FDI is China actually attracting?”
“…
