Gospel, a word from Old English, is a compound that means “good news.” And it’s gospel that’s been in short-supply as we head into the Christmas season. Whenever this fact gets me down, I remember that finding evil, malfeasance, and even suffering in the headlines is just a sign that the press is doing its… Read More Edward Snowden – Everything Going Great: Bad Faith, Worse News and Julian Assange
Assange committed empire’s greatest sin. He exposed it as a criminal enterprise. He documented its lies, callous disregard for human life, rampant corruption and innumerable war crimes. Republican or Democrat. Conservative or Labour. Trump or Biden. It does not matter. The goons who oversee the empire sing from the same Satanic songbook… The execution of… Read More CHRIS HEDGES – The execution of Julian Assange: He exposed the crimes of empire; and that can't be tolerated
NB: Attempts to rewrite history with the use of political power are taking place in India as well. Ironically, the infamous habit has been connected to communist regimes, but is quite clearly popular with anti-communist ones as well. As George Orwell remarked in his dystopian novel 1984: “He who controls the past controls the future;… Read More Memorial and the liberating power of history. By Timothy Snyder
Neoliberalism was the form of capitalism that came after colonialism, driving markets back into the public sectors of the former colonial powers, allowing capital to monetise and extract wealth from their soft underbellies. Surveillance capitalism, led by the data giants, is taking its place. As academic and writer Shoshana Zuboff has argued, under surveillance capitalism,… Read More Adam Ramsay – Culture wars: identity politics and the fight against surveillance capitalism
Since the 1980s, fossil fuel firms have run ads touting climate denial messages – many of which they’d now like us to forget. Here’s our visual guide. Why is meaningful action to avert the climate crisis proving so difficult? It is, at least in part, because of ads. The fossil fuel industry has perpetrated a… Read More Geoffrey Supran and Naomi Oreskes: The forgotten oil ads that told us climate change was nothing
NB: If anything signifies the total takeover of democracy by capitalist robber barons and corporate (including communist) totalitarianism, it is the refusal to take necessary measures to halt global warming. A new internationalist, movement is required to save a sustainable ecological balance on earth. Labels such as Left/Right/Liberal etc., have no meaning any more. The… Read More Honest Government Advertisement: Net Zero by 2050
The videos from the Russian prison hospital are almost too horrific to describe. In the worst, the victims are tied down while other inmates rape or penetrate them with metal objects, the screams and abuse recorded in bodycam footage that was later used as blackmail. Sergey Savelyev says he spent two of his years as an… Read More Sergei Savelyev: ‘I was always scared’: inmate who exposed systemic Russian prisoner abuse
‘Began teaching the detainee lessons such as stay, come, and bark to elevate his social status up to that of a dog. Detainee became very agitated’: Guantánamo guard diary entry, 20 December 2002 What is a detainee? The term has been given a new lease of life as a result of the authoritarianism that has… Read More Mark Neocleous: Whatever happened to martial law? Detainees and the logic of emergency
NB: After willfully neglecting Fr Stan Swamy‘s bail pleas and subjecting him to unusual punishment without trial, our criminal justice system literally presided over his death in custody. He was 84 years old, weak and ailing; and had suffered enormously in jail. After he died, spokesmen for the government repeated the allegations against him as… Read More Bhima Koregaon: Kin of jailed activists write to authorities to not discontinue telephone calls / How the ‘anda cell’ is used to discipline prison inmates
NB: A very thought-provoking essay. “The real cell of society in the United States is the individual…. the family, has disintegrated.’ (In the American system) “everything has a dual nature, and the glamour of high commodification abounds. Human flesh, sex, knowledge, politics, power, and law can all become the target of commodification (which) corrupts… Read More N.S. Lyons: The Triumph and Terror of Wang Huning
After the truth-shower 