Russia, Russia, ever failing

No one ever asks: Mr Expert, you’ve been wrong for twenty years, why should anybody take you seriously now?

One of the favourite delusions of the people Scott Ritter calls the “Putin whisperers” is that Russia or Putin—to them the two are synonymous—are always on the point of collapse and one more push will bring them down. To the sane, observing the development of Russia from 1991 to 2021, this conviction is crazy: Russia has endured and prospered. But, as I have said elsewhere, these people fit Einstein’s definition of insanity and forever repeat their failures: Ritter calls them “intellectually lazy”. They’re not Russia experts, they’re wrongness experts and constant practice has made them quite good at being wrong. Continue reading

Migrant women farmworkers: An invisible essential labor force

The Biden administration must address the industry’s long-standing gender discrimination and systemic inequalities, which have become even more severe during the pandemic.

Throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, there has been an outpouring of public support for essential workers. But this national discourse has largely excluded migrant women farmworkers, despite their vital role in keeping food on American families’ tables. Continue reading

Israeli violence against Palestinian protesters in Occupied Jerusalem

Time and again, when Palestinians protest legitimately against Jewish state viciousness, Israeli soldiers and other security forces attack them with live fire, rubber-coated steel bullets, toxic tear gas, and other repressive tactics. Continue reading

If Joe Biden is truly a ‘union guy’ he must strike dead the Taft-Hartley monster

The PRO Act alone is simply not going to get the job done for U.S. workers.

President Joe Biden likes to say, “I’m a union guy.” Unfortunately, as Vice President from 2009 to 2017, his boss, Barack Obama wouldn’t let him be a “union guy.” Even with large Democratic majorities in Congress and control of the White House, worker needs went unmet. Continue reading

Musk’s and Bezos’s great escape

Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos want to colonize outer space to save humanity, but they couldn’t care less about protecting the rights of workers here on earth. Continue reading

Almost everything Biden Said about ending the Afghanistan war was a lie

While Americans hailed the announcement that the U.S. would withdraw troops from Afghanistan after nearly two decades of war, President Biden left out the most important details about the war and how it will in fact continue.

President Joe Biden, in announcing an ostensible end to the U.S. war in Afghanistan, is continuing his streak of paying eloquent lip service to progressive causes while maintaining the implied status quo. In a televised address from the White House on April 14, Biden said, “it’s time to end America’s longest war. It’s time for American troops to come home.” But just a day later, the New York Times reported without a hint of irony that “the Pentagon, American spy agencies and Western allies are refining plans to deploy a less visible but still potent force in the region.” This means we are ending the war, but not really. Continue reading

The incompetent, negligent, mishandling, miscalculating elite blunderers

You’ve heard of them, no doubt, the U.S. rulers who can’t rule too well and are always getting surprised by events or fed bad advice by their underlings. Their “mistakes” are always well intentioned. They stumble into wars through faulty intelligence. They drop the ball because of bureaucratic mix-ups. Continue reading

A textbook case of environmental injustice

People of color are more likely to be exposed to pollution than white people. A proposed Louisiana plastics plant shows how.

Even as the Biden administration commits to environmental justice, people in the Fifth District of Louisiana’s St. James Parish are mobilizing to stop a Formosa plastics plant accused of environmental racism in the majority-Black community. Continue reading

Americans’ minds are artificially intelligent

It is tempting to think that free-will exists. Unfortunately, it does not, particularly in America (tip of the hat to Baruch Spinoza writing in his Ethics). Taste in music (rap, rock, pop, etc.), fashion and food; political orientation whether left, right or center; what sports team to support, or vehicle to drive, or television series to watch is all supplied by media/corporations to American brains that are as malleable as silly putty. The mind easily succumbs to the totalitarian machinations of the American domestic/global capitalist network as its marketers, advertisers, and politicians/ideologues pound content into the brain via television news, hand-held computers/telephones, the world wide web, social media, and legacy media. Alberto J. L. Carrillo Canan believes that “the dominant technological forms determine the way we conceive reality, human life and mind.” Continue reading

Was there cancel culture before social media? Yes but it was slower

The cancel culture, rampant today, is defined as punishing public figures for their offensive behavior, whether boycotting their products and franchises or getting them fired. Today, when the Woke, virtuous and outraged demand the head of a miscreant on a platter it not only works, it works quickly thanks to social media. Continue reading

Key U.S. air base in Turkey sits on property stolen from Armenians during the genocide

Suppose the U.S. built and operated a military base in Germany on property confiscated from Jews during the Holocaust. America, Jewish Americans, Germany, and Israel would have reached a principled resolution years ago. Continue reading

To ‘honor the victims’ of 20th century atrocity, Biden recognizes Armenian genocide

"This principled stand represents a powerful setback to Turkey's century-long obstruction of justice for this crime, and its ongoing hostility and aggression against the Armenian people."

U.S. President Joe Biden cracked many decades of U.S. government silence on Saturday by publicly and officially recognizing that the systematic killing of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians by the Ottomans during the First World War was—as historians, survivors, and their descendants have long known—a “genocide.” Continue reading

Biden’s appeasement of hawks and neocons is crippling his diplomacy

President Biden took office promising a new era of American international leadership and diplomacy. But with a few exceptions, he has so far allowed self-serving foreign allies, hawkish U.S. interest groups and his own imperial delusions to undermine diplomacy and stoke the fires of war. Continue reading

The COVID-19 catastrophe in India keeps growing

It is difficult to overstate the grip of COVID-19 on India. WhatsApp bristles with messages about this or that friend and family member with the virus, while there are angry posts about how the central government has utterly failed its citizenry. This hospital is running out of beds and that hospital has no more oxygen, while there is evasion from Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Cabinet. Continue reading

America, go big again

Joe Biden may be a lifelong, go-slow politician, but his infrastructure plan is a serious, ambitious investment in the public good.

It’s time for America to go back to the future—a future of true greatness created by a people united to build a strong nation for the common good. Continue reading

The United States’ extensive knowledge of the 1976 planned military coup in Argentina

While the released documents portray the U.S. as having knowledge of the coup as opposed to intervening overtly or covertly, the aftermath shows U.S. involvement was considerable.

Last March, on the 45th anniversary of Argentina’s descent into dictatorship, the National Security Archive posted a selection of declassified documents revealing the U.S. knowledge of the military coup in the country in 1976. A month before the government of Isabel Peron was toppled by the military, the U.S. had already informed the coup plotters that it would recognise the new government. Indications of a possible coup in Argentina had reached the U.S. as early as 1975. Continue reading

Comply or die: The only truly compliant person in a police state is a dead one

Americans aren’t dying at the hands of police because of racism. Continue reading

‘If you want to save the USPS,’ says watchdog, ‘fire Louis DeJoy’

"The entire board and then Mr. DeJoy should be handed their walking papers," said Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-N.J.). "Their unquestioning support for this postmaster general is unacceptable."

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington on Thursday reiterated its call for the ouster of Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, the Republican megadonor accused of attempting to sabotage the U.S. Postal Service last year as millions of Americans relied on the agency to participate in the presidential election. Continue reading

A Palestinian prayer for Ramadan: May the voices of the oppressed be heard

COVID-19 cases in Palestine, especially in Gaza, have reached record highs, largely due to the arrival of a greatly contagious coronavirus variant which was first identified in Britain. Continue reading

How “representative” is US democracy?

American politicians love to boast of their nation’s status as the world’s premier “representative democracy,” and to lecture other, presumably less enlightened, countries on the importance of representative political institutions. Going by the numbers (which admittedly don’t tell the whole story), there’s good reason to question whether such preening is justified. Continue reading

Russia increases its defense while U.S. backs down from provoking WWIII

The stooge-president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, appears to be trapped between what he has promised to do — which is for Ukraine to retake both Donbas and Crimea — and what will be within his power to do.

Ever since Joe Biden became America’s President in January, America’s hostile and threatening actions and rhetoric against (as Biden refers to him) the ‘killer’ Vladimir Putin, Russia’s President, have made clear to Putin that the U.S. government’s determination to impose regime-change upon Russia will continue undiminished. This hostility from Biden has dashed Putin’s hope that the string of sanctions which the U.S. Government has constantly been adding to ever since President Obama started the anti-Russian sanctions in 2012, would end, or at least not continue to be added to, under Biden. Continue reading

In closed-door event with corporate lobbyists, Manchin vows $15 wage ‘not going to happen’

A top restaurant industry lobbyist reportedly "couldn't contain his excitement" at the West Virginia Democrat's remarks.

Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia on Tuesday reportedly mocked the popular push for a $15 federal minimum wage during a private event with restaurant industry lobbyists, telling attendees he prefers an hourly wage floor of $11 and nothing “above half of that” for tipped workers. Continue reading

Freedom Rider: Gun violence starts at the top

If the state reserves the right to commit mass murder no one should be surprised that the people follow suit. Continue reading

How to live in wonder

It’s so easy, as the years wind on, to sink into adult-mind. To get crusty and stagnant in our knowing. To lose our sense of wonder. Continue reading

A must read for any seeker of answers to the mysteries of life

In his new book, One Unbounded Ocean of Consciousness, Dr. Tony Nader has attempted something very difficult and achieved it very well. He overcomes the conceptual gap separating matter from mind, science from spirituality, the human from the divine and takes us beneath these superficial dualities into a fundamental synthesis establishing the wholeness of life. He conveys the unity underlying all diversity, and he deftly and convincingly resolves the apparent contradiction between free will and determinism. Nader writes in a clear, step-by-step manner that makes this knowledge understandable and shows how it can benefit us as individuals. Continue reading

Washington sanctions Cuba. Why not Saudi Arabia?

Cuba will remain one of Washington’s chosen enemies, while relations with the murderous autocratic Saudi regime will be “recalibrated.”

According to the geopolitical analysis site STRATFOR, sanctions are “a coercive tool to compel a targeted entity to adjust its behaviour” and can be effected in a number of ways and, indeed, applied for very different reasons. An intriguing aspect of sanctions’ imposition is that some of these reasons are not intended primarily to alter the target’s behaviour but rather to penalise it for failing to follow the policies of the punisher. Continue reading

Escalate to deescalate… then Biden takes escalator sideways

President Joe Biden wasn’t expecting Russia’s rapid slap back. He assumed, wrongly, that he could hit Moscow with a new round of sanctions (based on slanderous claims) and look as if he were chewing gum and acting the hard man. Continue reading

Democratic lawmakers urge Barrett to recuse herself from Koch dark money case

The members of Congress note that Americans for Prosperity, a Koch-funded advocacy group, mounted a "full-scale campaign" in support of the justice's confirmation.

Three Democratic lawmakers on Tuesday urged U.S. Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett to recuse herself from a pending case revolving around the nonprofit arm of Americans for Prosperity, a Koch-funded political advocacy group that spent heavily to ensure Barrett’s confirmation to the bench last October. Continue reading

The basic deal between Corporate America and the GOP is alive and well

For four decades, the basic deal between big American corporations and politicians has been simple. Corporations provide campaign funds. Politicians reciprocate by lowering corporate taxes and doing whatever else corporations need to boost profits. Continue reading

Biden’s jobs plan will help seniors get care at home

By supporting quality home care, the plan will help seniors avoid dangerous, for-profit nursing facilities.

As the nation’s population ages, the need for more care workers and safer, more affordable care options is urgent. Continue reading

The dirty campaign underlying Ecuador’s “free and fair” election

Ecuador’s April 11 election that led to a 5-point victory by conservative banker Guillermo Lasso over progressive candidate Andrés Arauz was not what it appeared to be. On the surface, it was a surprisingly clean and professional election, as our CODEPINK official observer delegation witnessed. But a fraud-free process for casting and counting ballots does not mean that the election was free and fair. Behind the scenes was a monumentally unequal playing field and dirty campaign designed to quash an Arauz win. Continue reading

A school for spooks: The London university department churning out NATO spies

Last week, MintPress exposed how the supposedly independent investigative collective Bellingcat is, in fact, funded by a CIA cutout organization and filled with former spies and state intelligence operatives. However, one part of the story that has remained untold until now is Bellingcat’s close ties to the Department of War Studies at King’s College London, an institution with deep links to the British security state and one that trains a large number of British, American and European agents and defense analysts. Continue reading