Latest articles
by Vijay Prashad / January 4th, 2024
Michael Armitage (Kenya), The Promised Land, 2019.
The final months of 2023 pierced our sense of hope and threw us into a kind of mortal sadness. Israel’s escalating violence has killed more than twenty thousand Palestinians to date, wiping out entire generations of families. Horrifying images and testimonies from Palestine have flooded all forms of media, stirring a deep sense of anguish and outrage among large sections of the global population. At the same time, in keeping with the zigs and zags of history, this …
by Binoy Kampmark / January 3rd, 2024
The killing of an Australian-Lebanese national Ibrahim Bazzi, his Lebanese wife Shorouq Hammoud, and his brother Ali Bazzi by the Israeli Defence Forces in a missile strike in southern Lebanon, has been an object exercise in selective outrage, selective ethical concern, and, generally speaking, selective morality.
The strike took place on a home in the neighbourhood of Al-Dawra in the town of Bint Jbeil, said to belong to the Bazzi family. On paper, the case demands investigation, explanation, even reparation. But the Australian government has pounced on an opportunity to ignore the killing of Ibrahim and his wife – both civilians …
Apocalypse Now
by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead / January 3rd, 2024
Figure One: Just stop a few of their machines and radios and telephones and lawn mowers…throw them into darkness for a few hours and then you just sit back and watch the pattern.
Figure Two: And this pattern is always the same?
Figure One: With few variations. They pick the most dangerous enemy they can find…and it’s themselves. And all we need do is sit back…and watch…and let them destroy themselves.
— “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street,” Twilight Zone
Will 2024 be the year the Deep State’s exercise in controlled chaos finally gives …
by Allen Forrest / January 3rd, 2024
The rarely discussed war.
Ukraine itself is not a foe, but Western elites backing it are, the Russian president has said
by RT / January 2nd, 2024
To support the globalist's Climate Change agenda
by Robert Malone / January 2nd, 2024
Starting in the mid-20th century, companies began distorting and manpulating science to favor specific commercial interests.
Big tobacco is both the developer and the poster child of this strategy. When strong evidence that smoking caused lung cancer emerged in the 1950s, the tobacco industry began a campaign to obscure this fact.
The Unmaking of Science
The tobacco industry scientific disinformation campaign sought to disrupt and delay further studies, as well as to cast scientific doubt on the link between cigarette smoking and harms. This campaign lasted for almost …
by Allen Forrest / January 2nd, 2024
Protecting against what? Who?
by Edward Curtin / January 2nd, 2024
Standing there I wondered how much of what we had felt on the bridge was just hunger. I asked my wife and she said, ‘I don’t know, Tatie. There are so many sorts of hunger. In the spring there are more. But that’s gone now. Memory is hunger.
– Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast, 1964
Now that our revels are ended, the holiday celebrations and feasts, if one had them, just a dream melted into thin air, our hungers perhaps richly satiated temporarily or not, our visions project us into a new year in which we hope to …
by Binoy Kampmark / January 2nd, 2024
If demography is destiny, as Auguste Comte tells us, then economics must be current, pinching reality. The Israel-Gaza conflict is invigorating a global protest movement against the state of Israel which is seeing various manifestations. From an economic standpoint, Israel can be seen as vulnerable in terms of global supply lines, potentially at the mercy of sanctions and complete isolation. Both imports and exports are of concern.
Israel, however, has been spared any toothy sanctions regime over its conduct in Gaza. If anything, the Biden administration in Washington has been brightly enthusiastic in sending more shells to the Israeli Defence Forces, …
by Allen Forrest / January 1st, 2024
What causes one’s BS detector to sound?
by Binoy Kampmark / December 31st, 2023
When war criminals can daub canvasses in blithe safety, rake in millions of dollars in after dinner speeches and bore governments to death with their shoddy words of wisdom, the world is not so much as it should be, but merely as it is. Former US President George W. Bush, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, and tag along bore, former Australian Prime Minister John Howard, remain at large, despite their respective countries wagging fingers of disapproval at authoritarian regimes for defying the rules-based international order. Never a more fitting trio in terms of abusing international law could you find.
In …
Western support for genocide in Gaza means the answer is yes
by Jonathan Cook / December 31st, 2023
The desperate smear campaign to defend Israel’s crimes highlights the toxic brew of lies that’s been underpinning the liberal democratic order for decades.
In a popular British comedy sketch set during the Second World War, a Nazi officer near the front lines turns to a fellow officer and, in a moment of sudden – and comic – self-doubt, asks: “Are we the baddies?”
For many of us, it has felt like we are living through the same moment, extended for nearly three months – though there has been nothing to laugh about.
Western leaders have not only backed rhetorically a genocidal …
Seoul’s policy of “unification by absorption” does not correspond to Pyongyang's principles, Kim Jong-un has said
by RT / December 31st, 2023
by K.J. Noh / December 31st, 2023
A bright star in the firmament of justice has gone out. One of the greatest journalists of our era has passed away.
John Pilger was always on the side of the oppressed. He denounced Imperialism and all its violent predations–war, genocide, exploitation–as well as its endless lies and propaganda. Till his death, he fought tirelessly for the freedom of Julian Assange, and his last article was a call to solidarity.
John gave voice to the invisible and the voiceless: the hungry, …
by Brandy Johnson Owen / December 30th, 2023
On December 21, Piers Morgan hosted a debate on Palestine between British neoconservative and anti-immigrant activist Douglas Murray and The Young Turks founder Cenk Uygur. Morgan has been hosting several debates and one on one discussions on Israel/Palestine. He’s had great guests such as Norman Finkelstein, Cornel West, and Dr Gabor Mate arguing against the current genocide in Gaza and for a ceasefire.
Murray would appear to have done well in this debate to anyone who does not know the issue. He was substantive, he is smart, but he was there as a “journalist”, the kind of journalist wearing a …
by Binoy Kampmark / December 30th, 2023
Litigating against countries is the stuff of esoteric delight for international lawyers. Such matters become yet more complex when it comes to claims of genocide or broader crimes against humanity. Accusations, however motivated, are always easy to make. Proving them in a court of law is quite another proposition. International law remains a terrain of punctures and potholes, rather than smooth lines and fine paving. Working around those punctures is a skill worthy of prize and praise.
The ongoing flattening, mauling and extirpation of the Gaza Strip by Israel’s armed forces has drawn interest from jurists and litigants. The potholes and …
by Vijay Prashad / December 30th, 2023
Han Youngsoo (Republic of Korea), Seoul, Korea 1956–1963.
In October 2023, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) published its annual Trade and Development Report. Nothing in the report came as a major surprise. The growth of the global Gross Domestic Product (GDP) continues to decline with no sign of a rebound. Following a modest post-pandemic recovery of 6.1% in 2021, economic growth in 2023 fell to 2.4%, below pre-pandemic levels, and is projected to remain at …
by Allen Forrest / December 30th, 2023
Terms of Service: the control and direction of cell phone technology.
by Yves Engler / December 30th, 2023
Critics say Israel is an army with a country, but it is the apartheid state’s supporters who confirm it. Canadian Friends of the Hebrew University has once again launched an initiative to promote the Israeli military even though it violates charity regulations and risks the group’s special tax status.
In a recent end of year fundraising appeal, a group officially dedicated to the “Advancement of Education” sent its members “Supporting Our Student Soldiers”. The CFHU appeal notes: “The We Are One campaign provides scholarships and academic assistance to our returning IDF …
by Matthew J.L. Ehret / December 29th, 2023
by Robert Hunziker / December 29th, 2023
Global warming can add one more notch to its gun belt. The rapid onset of global warming is turning Alaska’s wilderness rivers orange. Global warming impacts Arctic temperatures 2-4 times warmer than the global average, and permafrost that’s been around since before humans sat round crackling cave fires is rapidly melting. Eons of frozen stuff is making its first appearance in tens of thousands of years, clobbering wilderness rivers with deadly toxicity.
Researchers believe the cause(s) is/are (1) acid from minerals leaching iron out of bedrock exposed to water for the first time in millennia and/or (2) bacteria mobilizing iron from …
Review of Against Erasure
by Kim Petersen / December 29th, 2023
Against Erasure (Haymarket Books) is a book, edited by Teresa Aranguren and Sandra Barrilaro, that presents a pictorial history of Palestinians. The photos refute the often-heard canard that Palestine was a land without people. More importantly, the historicity of the photos humanizes the Palestinians. It seems ludicrous to anyone familiar with Palestinians that they would require humanization. Nonetheless, the humanity of Palestinians is denied by many prominent Israeli Jews.
Take, for instance, Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant who besmirched Palestinians as “human animals.” Jerusalem deputy mayor Arieh King …
by Binoy Kampmark / December 29th, 2023
Finance analysts free of moral scruple can point to Palantir with relish and note that 2023 was a fairly rewarding year for it. The company, which bills itself as a “category-leading software” builder “that empowers organizations to create and govern artificial intelligence”, launched its initial public offering in 2020. But the milky confidence curdled, as with much else with tech assets, leading to the company stock falling by as much as 87% of value. But this is the sort of language that delights the economy boffins no end, a bloodless exercise that ignores what Palantir really does.
The surveillance company …
The Gaza Plantation
by Dan Lieberman / December 28th, 2023
Except for acceptances of United States requests during the Gulf and Lebanon Wars, Israel’s governments have nonchalantly proceeded with their plans, disregarding multiple United Nations (UN) Resolutions that affected them and eschewing suggestions from United States leaders. Knowing the history of the one-way relationship, why is President Joe Biden recommending the Palestinian Authority (PA) govern Gaza after Israel liquidates a major part of the Gazan population? Could it be to delude others into thinking that, after Israel destroys Gaza, a new and refreshing life awaits the Gazans? Once rid of “corrupt Hamas,” who built an amazing amount of …
by Binoy Kampmark / December 28th, 2023
As a private citizen, the options for suing an intelligence agency are few and far between. The US Central Intelligence Agency, as with other members of the secret club, pour scorn on such efforts. To a degree, such a dismissive sentiment is understandable: Why sue an agency for its bread-and-butter task, which is surveillance?
This matter has cropped up in the US courts in what has become an international affair, namely, the case of WikiLeaks founder and publisher, Julian Assange. While the US Department of Justice battles to sink its fangs into the Australian national for absurd espionage charges, various offshoots …
by Faramarz Farbod / December 28th, 2023
In the words of the UN Chief Antonio Guterres, the US-Israel assault has created “a graveyard for children” in Gaza, a tiny sliver of land that is home to several generations of impoverished refugees, half of whom are children. Gazans arguably make up one of the most vulnerable populations globally. They live in the “largest open-air prison” or the “largest concentration camp” in the world. Since 2007, Gazans have been subjected to a cruel siege by Israel, with cooperation from Egypt, and support from the US, which has led to unbearable conditions of life. As early as 2012, …
by Cale Holmes / December 27th, 2023
U.S. “ironclad” support for militarism undercuts attempts to curb right-wing terrorism. From white supremacist violence in the West Bank to gendered violence in Olongapo, we can’t defeat at home what we export abroad.
In his first month as secretary of defense with the J6 Capitol riots fresh in memory, Lloyd Austin rolled out training requirements to combat right-wing extremism in the ranks of the U.S. military.
Extremism has indeed been a problem for quite some time, dating back to early American history when George Washington’s army committed violence against the Haudenosaunee and recaptured enslaved Africans who had fled from plantations. In 1919, …
by Allen Forrest / December 27th, 2023
by Binoy Kampmark / December 26th, 2023
The Bank of Israel Governor Amir Yaron is worried. He is keeping an eye on the ballooning costs of his country’s war against Gaza and the Palestinians. Initially, the Netanyahu government promised to increase its defence budget by NIS 20 billion (US$5.48 billion) per annum in the aftermath of the war. But a document from the Finance Ministry presented to the Knesset Finance Committee on December 25 suggests that the number is NIS 10 billion greater.
The Finance Ministry is also projecting that the war against Hamas will cost the country’s budget somewhere in the order of NIS 50 billion …
Prospects for Peace and Solving Global Problems
by Roger D. Harris / December 26th, 2023
Xi Jinping: “It is unrealistic for one side to remodel the other… the planet Earth is big enough for the two countries to succeed.”
Joe Biden: “We will not leave our future vulnerable to the whims of those who do not share our vision.”
In the latest salvo preparing the US for confrontation with China, Nicholas Burns flat out said, “I don’t feel optimistic about the future of US-China relations.” Burns should know. He is Washington’s ambassador to Beijing.
The US stance on bilateral relations with China, according to Burns, is one of “strategic competition in the coming decades… vying …