Some movement leaders say they are inspired by Martin Luther King while also supporting the U.S. proxy war against Russia. King's anti-war stance was uncompromising. He made a choice and didn't waiver in his condemnation of the U.S.
On April 4, 1967 Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave one of the most significant speeches of his career. In “Beyond Vietnam – Time to Break Silence ” King declared his unequivocal opposition to the war in Vietnam. His very public break with Lyndon Johnson was greeted with derision, including from his own allies, who believed that the president was an ally who should not be attacked. The NAACP board passed a resolution calling King’s statement a “serious tactical mistake” that would neither “serve the cause of civil rights nor of peace.” The media joined in the condemnation, with the New York Times characterizing his comments as “facile” and “slander.” Even Black newspapers such as The Pittsburgh Courier judged his remarks to be “tragically misleading.” Continue reading →
A sizeable share of America’s pundits and politicians have—with good reason—been spending the last several days bemoaning and bewailing billionaire Elon Musk’s latest business gambit: a $44-billion annexation of the social media universe known as Twitter. Continue reading →
Removing the taboo around talking about money, two collectives are helping people work toward securing their financial well-being.
Financial health is the elephant in the room that we avoid talking about in social situations, at work, and even with our loved ones, despite the fact that financial well-being has a profound effect on how we think and feel. A review of 32 studies conducted on the dynamics of financial well-being and mental health between 2001 and 2019 found that a person’s financial situation has a “significant impact” on their mental health, with financial hardship being frequently associated with increased stress, anxiety and depression. Yet, financial well-being remains a taboo subject. Continue reading →
WASHINGTON—A draft U.S. Supreme Court majority opinion eliminating abortion rights angered women and pro-choice advocates and sparked a political war on both sides of what anti-abortionists have made their cultural issue keystone for 49 years. Continue reading →
If you want to trigger a conservative, just suggest nationalizing the US gas and oil industry. “Venezuela!” they’ll scream hysterically, perhaps adding a few, “Iran!” squeals. (Somehow, they always forget to yell about Norway…) Continue reading →
We’re in a national state of denial. Continue reading →
Senator Manchin has already sabotaged his own party’s Build Back Better plan to address the climate crisis. Now he wants to delay and divert action on climate by building his own nuclear empire.
Senator Joe Manchin’s International Nuclear Energy Act of 2022 is couched in a good deal of America first-style rhetoric, promising to deliver a new home-grown “whole-of-government strategy for nuclear cooperation and nuclear exports.” Continue reading →
Starting on April 15, the Israeli occupation army and police raided Al-Aqsa Mosque in Occupied East Jerusalem on a daily basis. Under the pretence of providing protection to provocative ‘visits’ by thousands of illegal Israeli Jewish settlers and right-wing fanatics, the Israeli army has wounded hundreds of Palestinians, including journalists, and arrested hundreds more. Continue reading →
When Elon Musk was born in South Africa in 1971, the racially-segregated nation was firmly in the grasp of Musk’s fellow white Afrikaaners. Unlike most of the British colonialists, the Dutch Afrikaaners stridently believed in their racial superiority over the non-white population of South Africa. Under the apartheid system, South Africa’s population was classified as being part of four groups: African, White, Indian, and Coloured. Apartheid was marked by a system of racial classification that defied logic to most people, but would have found favor by the Nazi German racial purity enforcers. In South Africa, those of mixed white and black lineage were considered “Coloured.” But that designation also applied to Malays and Indonesians. Filipinos, however, were designated as black. Chinese were deemed as Coloured, while Japanese and South Koreans were bestowed with the title of “honorary whites.” The Old Testament-fearing Afrikaaner Calvinists also considered Jews, Lebanese, and Syrians as the children of Canaan, and they were thus branded as whites. Continue reading →
Fort Detrick’s collusion with fascist Japan and Nazi Germany in the development of biological weapons of mass destruction is not some macabre relic of the distant past.
Russia and China have lobbied the UN Security Council for an independent investigation into dozens of laboratories that were being run by the Pentagon in Ukraine up until Moscow launched its military intervention in February. Continue reading →
What liberal politicians and the media refuse to acknowledge is that crime is linked to the failures of capitalism, not to the lack of police. Indeed, police are part of the problem, not the solution.
The New York City subway shooting in Brooklyn on April 12 miraculously resulted in no deaths, although about 30 people suffered injuries, including 10 from gunshot wounds. Within hours, a massive manhunt for the shooter was underway, but in the end it was the suspect who tipped police off and turned himself in. Still, that has not stopped politicians and corporate media outlets like the Washington Post and others from using the shooting to shore up police talking points and implicitly make the case for more police funding. Continue reading →
It’s the middle of the night. Continue reading →
An article written by authors John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge for Bloomberg on March 24 sounded the alarm to announce the end of “the second great age of globalization.” The Western trade war and sanctions against China that predated the pandemic have now been joined by the stiff Western sanctions imposed against Russia after it invaded Ukraine. These sanctions are like an iron curtain being built by the United States and its allies around Eurasia. But according to Micklethwait and Wooldridge, this iron curtain will not only descend around China and Russia but will also have far-reaching consequences across the world. Continue reading →
Zelensky and his handlers want the whole of Europe to drive over the abyss. But the talented Mr Zelensky is pushing the script beyond acceptable limits when he starts slapping Berlin around.
Team Zelensky has been playing a deft, if cloyingly confected, game up to now. The Ukrainian president has found time in his busy wartime schedule to address over 17 parliaments around the world in recent weeks, each time with a speech tailor-made to push specific cultural emotive buttons. Continue reading →
Russia and China are no match for the United States’ instruments of national power. The Pale Blue Dot’s existence is at risk if nuclear weapons are employed by either or both sides.
American military, political and economic support for Ukraine have little to do with any real concern for the lives of the Ukrainian people. They are merely cannon fodder for the larger goal of ensuring that there will be no multipolar world that undermines US power or seriously challenges US dollar hegemony as it is today. Further, the US, as Empire, with a big E, seeks to continue to expand its military alliances through the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) compelling would be nation-state competitors to steer clear of state sponsored violence against US NATO allies. It seems likely that NATO will continue to expand with Sweden and Finland set to sign on next, and NATO expansion beyond Europe to include nations in Asia is already well underway. Continue reading →
The hundred years before 1914 offered Europe relative peace. What wars took place were of a short-lived nature. The reason for this was the Congress of Vienna (1814-15), which brought together the victors and the vanquished from the Napoleonic wars to create a lasting peace. The chair of the conference was Klemens von Metternich, who made sure that the defeated power (France) paid for its actions with territorial losses but that it signed the treaty along with Austria, England, Prussia, and Russia to secure peace with dignity. Continue reading →
The U.S. is sliding toward a grim future where abortion is criminalized with little support for families. This “new normal” is disproportionately impacting low-income people of color.
Republican state legislatures are creating abortion refugees across America. Continue reading →
The West’s actions against Russia since the war in Ukraine could signal an emerging new order that shuns the U.S. for weaponizing the dollar and Western control over the global financial system.
Do the Ukraine war and the action of the United States, the EU and the UK spell the end of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency? Even with the peace talks recently held in Turkey or the proposed 15-point peace plan, as the Financial Times had reported earlier, the fallout for the dollar still remains. For the first time, Russia, a major nuclear power and economy, was treated as a vassal state, with the United States, the EU and the UK seizing its $300 billion foreign exchange reserves. Where does this leave other countries, who also hold their foreign exchange reserves largely in dollars or euros? Continue reading →
Since the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan last August and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February, the White House has been desperate to showcase U.S. strength on the world stage. But the Biden administration has struggled to rally traditional Middle Eastern allies against Russia, raising questions over U.S. influence in the region.
For decades, U.S. policy in the Middle East has relied on coordination with the Saudi-led Gulf states, Israel, Egypt and Turkey. Since the Obama administration, however, relations between Washington and its core regional allies in the Middle East have floundered, confounding the United States’ ability to manage Middle Eastern crises and formulate consensus in the region. Continue reading →
How is it possible that so many left voters in France are willing to choose a far-right candidate in the second round of the presidential elections?
In the twentieth century, the left defined itself as anti-fascist. It was against Franco in Spain, Hitler in Germany, and Mussolini in Italy. During the Cold War, progressives opposed far-right dictators like Augusto Pinochet in Chile and Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines. It mobilized against neo-Nazis in Germany, right-wing militias in the United States, and fascist formations elsewhere in the world. Continue reading →
Americans have been shocked by the death and destruction of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, filling our screens with bombed buildings and dead bodies lying in the street. But the United States and its allies have waged war in country after country for decades, carving swathes of destruction through cities, towns and villages on a far greater scale than has so far disfigured Ukraine. Continue reading →
In 1969, Richard Nixon and congressional Republicans took down the Supreme Court’s most liberal member, Abe Fortas, threatening to send his wife to prison. There’s a lesson here for today’s Democrats and Clarence Thomas. Continue reading →
The war in Ukraine has placed U.S. and NATO policy toward Russia under a spotlight, highlighting how the United States and its allies have expanded NATO right up to Russia’s borders, backed a coup and now a proxy war in Ukraine, imposed waves of economic sanctions, and launched a debilitating trillion-dollar arms race. The explicit goal is to pressure, weaken and ultimately eliminate Russia, or a Russia-China partnership, as a strategic competitor to U.S. imperial power. Continue reading →
After Biden’s charade-busting admission it will be difficult politically to maintain US-European “unity” over such a flagrant imperial agenda.
U.S. President Joe Biden came to Europe last week riding high on European deference towards America’s leadership. Then he went to Warsaw to make a victory lap speech at the weekend which was billed as marking the high point in galvanizing European and NATO unity towards Russia. Continue reading →
The victory of conservative candidate Yoon Suk-yeol in South Korea's recent presidential election will push the country deeper into the U.S. embrace.
South Koreans are sorting out the implications of the recent presidential elections. Victorious conservative candidate Yoon Suk-yeol rose to prominence on an anti-corruption agenda and has various plans to shake up the way government functions. He has also pledged to reduce government intervention in the economy, boost incentives for business, increase the role of nuclear energy, and spur the construction of 2.5 million homes. He wants to compensate the population for its COVID losses. He has embraced Korea’s nascent anti-feminist movement. Continue reading →
As the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation’s (NATO) plans for expansion play out on Russia’s borders, the question of sovereignty and defense could be recalled through the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962.
Cuba’s request for USSR protection from U.S. imperialist interventions was not unfounded. Only the year before, in April 1961, the U.S. had suffered a spectacular defeat at the Bay of Pigs, when the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)-funded paramilitary operation to overthrow Fidel Castro and the Cuban revolution was thwarted in less than 72 hours and 1,200 mercenaries were taken prisoner by the Cubans. Continue reading →
How artist collectives are helping creatives stay afloat during the pandemic.
In the age of online retail and freelance work platforms like Etsy and Upwork respectively, the ability for professional creatives to skip the job hunt and become independent contractors can be very appealing, but studies show that the challenges and anxieties faced by freelancers increase when they take on the responsibility of managing every aspect of running a business, from accounting to marketing and beyond. The global pandemic has only exacerbated the worries of independent creatives, who may not be able to afford to take time off when they want to, whether they are sick or healthy. Continue reading →
We have arrived, way ahead of schedule, into the dystopian future dreamed up by such science fiction writers as George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, Margaret Atwood and Philip K. Dick. Continue reading →
Pointing fingers won’t help—an attitude shift is what the world needs now.
The old long war in Afghanistan has barely ended and already there is a new one, this time in Europe. Most governments, the media, and the United Nations General Assembly reached a consensus quickly: the contemptible aggressor is Vladimir Putin. Public opinion strongly supports Ukraine. Large demonstrations form almost daily to demand peace. Continue reading →
“We are anonymous because we fear retaliation.” This text was part of a letter signed by 500 Google employees last October, in which they decried their company’s direct support for the Israeli government and military. Continue reading →
While Russia’s original and shifting objectives in Ukraine remain unclear, the Kremlin is increasingly wary of a publicized, drawn-out conflict. A potential intervention by its military alliance, the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), could give Russia a diplomatic victory and an acceptable path to de-escalating its campaign if it can leverage its influence over member states effectively.
Russia’s attempts to build an alliance between former Soviet states began shortly after the Soviet collapse in 1991. This led to the signing of the Collective Security Treaty (CST), which came into effect in 1994, by Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Designed to coordinate military policies and collective defense between member states, the CST failed to promote any real military integration, and Azerbaijan, Georgia and Uzbekistan chose to leave in 1999, during the renewal of the treaty. Continue reading →
How the tables have turned. A high-level US delegation visited Venezuela on March 5, hoping to repair economic ties with Caracas. Venezuela, one of the world’s poorest countries partly due to US-Western sanctions is, for once, in the driver’s seat, capable of alleviating an impending US energy crisis if dialogue with Washington continues to move forward. Continue reading →
