Before being abruptly cut off by an Ecuadorian government lawyer during a court hearing on Monday, WikiLeaks founder and publisher Julian Assange accused that government of seeking to end his asylum in its London embassy and hand him over to the United States. Assange spoke from the tiny embassy via teleconference to a hearing in Quito of a lawsuit in[Read More…]

Marches are the supreme symbolic subsumation of the ego.  Individuals do not march, only unified groups of people sharing a common mass identity march.  Soldiers, who qua soldiers, have had their   individualities destroyed and been taught to obey unquestioned and unquestionable orders, move as one.  The very uniform movement their uniformed bodies, the sight and sound of their precision –[Read More…]

Nahdlatul Ulama, with 94 million members the world’s largest Sunni Muslim movement, is bent on reforming Islam. The powerful Indonesian conservative and nationalist group that operates madrassahs or religious seminaries across the archipelago has taken on the ambitious task of reintroducing ijtihad or legal interpretation to Islam as it stands to enhance its political clout with its spiritual leader, Ma’ruf[Read More…]

  Why does the Green Party elect so few people in the US while similar parties have elected representatives across the globe?  Some have suggested it is the way Greens organize or problems with the leadership.  While these may be contributing factors, they could hardly be a complete explanation since the Democrats and Republicans have elected thousands of incompetent, disorganized[Read More…]

Pakistan President Arif Alvi on Sunday (Oct 28) ruled out establishing any kind of relations with Israel as he strongly rejected reports that an Israeli aircraft carrying some officials secretly landed in Islamabad and flew away after several hours at the airport here. “Islamabad is not establishing any kind of relations with Israel,” President Alvi told the media before his[Read More…]

 Text and Photos: Andre Vltchek It is one of those complex stories that are so difficult to tell, and yet they should, they have to be shared. Imagine the splendid Mekong River, as it flows not far from an ancient capital of Laos,Luang Prabang. The river is powerful, with muddy banks, surrounded by lush mountains. Imagine poor villages and old[Read More…]

Canada recently has been doubling down on two areas of global concern, highlighting its ongoing governmental rhetorical double standards. Humanitarian standards I had noted previously the twitter spat between Canada and Saudi Arabia. After the Saudis were insulted/enraged by Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland’s tweet concerning the sister of a Saudi journalist, the Saudis kicked out the Canadian ambassador. Since then[Read More…]

The origins of the Invictus Games (“For our Wounded Warriors,” goes the slogan) lies in war.  Wars that crippled and caused depression and despair. The games became a project of grand distraction and worth, a form of emotional bread for servicemen and women.  Do not let wounds, mental or physical, deter you.  Move to the spirit of William Ernest Henley,[Read More…]

 Historians debate to what extent the Treaty of Versailles was responsible for Hitler’s march to World War II, but there can be little doubt that the treaty ending the “War to End All Wars” continues to be a major factor in our ongoing “War Without End.” On November, 11, 1918, Europe laid exhausted and nearly bled dry. Just months before[Read More…]

Trump proudly says he is a “nationalist.” He is, of course, saying this to shore up support among white nationalists. The Nazi sites on the web were all having wet dreams in the aftermath. From the 1990s, polling has found that about 10% of Americans support far right militias. These are the white nationalists. Trump came to power by mobilizing[Read More…]

President Donald J. Trump has made it his signature move to repudiate the signatures of others, and the latest, promised evacuation from the old US-Soviet pact otherwise known as the intermediate range nuclear forces (INF) treaty was merely another artefact to be abandoned. When it came into force after 1987, it banned ground-launched short- and medium-range missiles within the range[Read More…]

At the age of 10 I was sent as a scholarship student to a boarding school for the uber-rich in Massachusetts. I lived among the wealthiest Americans for the next eight years. I listened to their prejudices and saw their cloying sense of entitlement. They insisted they were privileged and wealthy because they were smarter and more talented. They had[Read More…]

The growth rate of the Chinese economy has fallen to its lowest level since the beginning of 2009 in the immediate aftermath of the global financial crisis. Official figures released at the end of last week put the annual growth rate for the third quarter at 6.5 per cent. This was below market expectations of 6.6 percent and down from[Read More…]

A sign of desperation before the firing squad is jitteriness and the desperate sense that history needs revision.  You were not the one responsible for the debacles and the cockups; everybody and everything else was.  You knew who was guilty, and needed to tell everybody about it.  You bluster, you boast and you stumble; you look more buffoon than statesman;[Read More…]

Politics can, after a time, becomes a myopic exercise of expedient measures and desperate hope.  Politics, raw and crude, is at its best at points where survival matters. Conversely, it can illustrate human vices in raw fashion, low points of idiocy and the disaster of folly. The Morrison government in Australia risks succumbing to another march of folly.  Having arisen[Read More…]

Turkey has recently signed a military cooperation agreement with Kuwait, member of the six-state Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). According to the agreement, signed during the Turkey-Kuwait Military Cooperation Committee meeting, the two countries are planning to share their military experiences and coordinate their activities beginning in 2019. The GCC alliance includes Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United[Read More…]

As surely as night follows day if you want to make all before you tremble and kneel at your feet you only have to mention religion. The fear of God and a promise of the hereafter is all that is necessary. Cynical? Yes it is, but I am not talking about myself. I am agnostic. I speak of the cynical[Read More…]

The maliciously mocking, malevolent, maladroit, misfit, malappropriating the White House got his comeuppance this week … at least for a while.  Senator Elizabeth Warren released her DNA test results conducted by noted Stanford University expert Professor Carlos D. Bustamente.  The results prove a Native American ancestor six to ten generations ago, supporting her claim that her great-great-great grandmother, O.C. Sarah[Read More…]

“The establishment of a republic… means insurrectionary war, it means the desolation of a thousand households.  When the question shall arise, it will be determined… by balls from cannon and from musket, by grape and shrapnel, by bayonet and by the sword.” Sir Alfred Stephen, NSW Legislative Council , June 16, 1887 The republic has tended to be a dormant[Read More…]

Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) made a fundamental error in chasing the coattails of DNA provenance as a response to the jibes of US President Donald J. Trump.  She had been derided by the president as an ordinary “Pocahontas”, and promised at a July 5 rally in Montana a million dollars “to your favourite charity, paid for by Trump, if you[Read More…]

Since the hungry billion in the world community believe that we can all eat if we set our common house in order, they believe also that it is unjust that some men die because it is too much trouble to arrange for them to live. Stringfellow Barr Citizens of the World (1954) The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (2015-2030) aims[Read More…]

  Text and Photos: Andre Vltchek As I was reading, on board an Air Canada flight from Mexico City to Vancouver, The Globe and Mail coverage of the horrors that have been unraveling for several days on the island of Sulawesi, I felt two powerful and contradictory emotions: I wanted to be there, immediately, ‘on the ground’, in the city[Read More…]

The modern art world is filled with pranks and pranksters, the clowns who have decided that play counts for art.  Brattish artists foist a range of projects and conceptual themes upon art galleries who, foolishly, see emperors decked in the finest wear. They refuse to consider that the wear is absent, an expensive mirage that tells to an old tale[Read More…]

“It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their selfish purposes.” President Andrew Jackson, Washington, July 10, 1832 They are three players, all problematic in their own way.  They are the creatures of inconvenient chaos.  Donald Trump was born into the role, a misfit of misrule who found his baffling[Read More…]

It was raining in Torino. A North European rain. The kind that lasts. Through the restaurant’s great windows the wide avenue lined by plane trees points in the direction of the whitened Alps on the horizon. The rain, the trees, the distant mountains, and the silence create a sensation of nostalgia. Nostalgia for things that once were and can be[Read More…]

Co-Written by Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers  The radical attack on our constitutional right to protest in Washington, DC needs to be stopped. The National Park Service (NPS) has published proposed rules that would curtail First Amendment rights to assemble, petition the government and exercise free speech in the nation’s capital. Together, we can stop this proposal from going forward.[Read More…]

“The making of a journalist: no ideas and the ability to express them.”           – Karl Kraus, Half-Truths & One-and-a-Half Truths “Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress.  But I repeat myself.”           – Mark Twain “All cats die. Socrates is dead. Socrates is a cat.”           – Eugene Ionesco, Rhinoceros If believability is[Read More…]

  India produces enough food to meet the needs of its entire population, and has at its disposal arable land that has the potential to produce food surplus for export. Yet, it is unable to feed millions of its people, especially women and children. India ranks 100th among 119 countries in the Global Hunger Index (GHI) 2017, where it has[Read More…]

 As the 2018 U.S. midterm elections approach, there is still no evidence of ‘collusion’ between the campaign of President Donald J. Trump and the Russian government after nearly two years of inquiry. Thus far in the Department of Justice’s investigation led by Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III, only a trail of corruption involving Trump associates has been discovered. None[Read More…]

   The strategic turn-around in India-Russia relations is all too obvious with New Delhi getting closer to Moscow in recent years.  The joint statement issued after the 19thAnnual Indo-Russian Summit held on 4-5 October 2018 in New Delhi between President Vladimir Putin and Prime Minister Narendra Modi specifically mentioned that “India-Russia cooperation is based on the solid foundations of the[Read More…]

One day in the 7th Century AD a great earthquake in the Red Sea rocked the sea bed and created a tsunami so powerful that it travelled over six kilometers inland and completely wiped off from the face of the earth the ancient African city of Adulis, capital of Punt, “Land of the Gods” or “God’s Land”. Adulis, built in[Read More…]

The Tablighi Jamaat, a non-political group which concentrates on individual piety, has split in recent years into three major groups over leadership issue. Since its inception in 1929, the Tablighi Jamaat (TJ) had its global headquarters in Basti Nizamuddin in New Delhi, India. However in recent years Maulana Saad Khandalvi, grandson of the TJ founder Maulana Muhammad Ilyas Kandhalawi has claimed sole[Read More…]

My daughter, a guidance counselor for around 350 young children in another state from mine, understands that she supersedes me in some ways in terms of her understandings and skills. Ditto for my side of the equation/,matter. I know elementary education in far more replete ways and my language skills surpass hers, too.Yet it is all a case of ça[Read More…]

Ever since the Brexit referendum was first announced, we have been bombarded by an array of starkly contradictory pronouncements – from the Leave camp’s now infamous claim that withdrawal from the EU would release £350 million a week for the NHS to the former Chancellor George Osborne’s assertion that Brexit would leave the UK “permanently poorer”. At first glance, the[Read More…]

For the Proportional Referendum (Pro-Rep) ballot vote to succeed in Canada’s up-coming election its essential that the under 35’s vote, since, when polled, 7 in 10 of them want to change the voting system and make it more egalitarian and democratic. The same situation applies to voters in the forthcoming midterm politics in the United States who hope to change[Read More…]

  Pakistan’s latest announcement about Saudi Arabia’s investment in an oil refinery at the strategic port of  Gwadar has set alarm bells ringing in India. James M. Dorsey, a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University, says that Saudi’ oil refinery in Gwadar Port could threaten Iran’s India-backed Chabahar Port. The deal[Read More…]

Pakistan, following in the footsteps of Malaysia and Myanmar, is the latest country to balk at the China and infrastructure focus of Beijing’s Belt and Road-related investments. Preparing for his first visit to China as Pakistan’s prime minister, Imran Khan is insisting that the focus of the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a US$60 billion plus crown jewel of the[Read More…]

Universities have become bastions of sessional torment, feeding grounds for despair.  The term “sessional” is merely a euphemised way of describing an academic employee who has no ongoing employment other than what is offered, a person ever at the mercy of the subject or course coordinator of a department.  They are the toiling poor, the barrel scrapers, the trudged upon[Read More…]

  Since introduction of automated machines in factories and offices, labor force is being slowly dispensed with. For instance, before mechanization and computerization, banks used to employ clerical staff for writing ledger accounts. But after introducing computers to note transactions, many posts were removed on the pretext of ‘downsizing’ or ‘ right sizing’ . The banking industry, which was ‘labour[Read More…]

Sweden, an amazing economy to many utopians or to the naive about capitalism, is experiencing pains capitalist economies feel. Capitalist crisis has already torn down that façade of the utopia. Ordinary citizens in Sweden are seeing the dream demolished. It is being manifested into politics, into electoral process in Sweden. At the same time, ordinary citizens are trying to stand[Read More…]

We, feminist organisations and allies, express opposition and concerns over World Bank’s recent recommendations in the World Development Report 2019, which focuses on increasing flexibilisation of labour and delinking corporate accountability on respecting labour rights. Such recommendations come in the context where the report argues that automation is about to replace workers in large scale, therefore it is necessary for labour[Read More…]

As I write this, Kris Kobach, the ‘He Was Trump Before Trump’ Republican nominee for Governor of Kansas, along with Donald himself, are getting ready for a rally in Topeka at the Kansas Expocenter. Kobach’s campaign manager and chamcha @jrclaeys tweeted recently in regard to the rally, “It’s gonna be YUGE! #ksleg #RemainRed #MAGA.” As you can see Claeys’ chamchagiri[Read More…]

A dictatorship does not represent the public but only the aristocracy that, behind the scenes, controls the government. Jonathan H. Adler, Professor at Case Western University School of Law, noted, regarding George W. Bush’s secret policy for the NSA to access everyone’s phone-records, that “The metadata collection program is constitutional (at least according to Judge Kavanaugh),” and he presented Judge[Read More…]

“In fourteen hundred and ninety two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue…. Today, Christopher Columbus is celebrated as a mythical hero by some – complete with songs, poems, and fictional tales about his great adventure across the Atlantic to explore the majestic land that would eventually be known as the Americas. There are fifty four communities named after the explorer in[Read More…]

How could a country win her fight against Western imperialism, how could it become truly independent, if its people are fully conditioned, through the mass media and education, by the North American and European doctrines and world view? Wherever I work and struggle in this world, I am always amazed, even shocked, by how powerful the Western tools of indoctrination[Read More…]

In 2015, India’s internal intelligence agency wrote a report that depicted various campaigners and groups as working against the national interest. The report singled out environmental activists and NGOs that had been protesting against state-corporate policies. Those largely undemocratic and unconstitutional policies were endangering rivers, forests and local ecologies, destroying and oppressing marginalised communities, entrenching the corporatisation of agriculture and[Read More…]

  Here are several key points regarding Brett Kavanaugh during these tumultuous times in the USA: You can like or not like MA Senator Warren. It is immaterial. 2, You can consider her a liar or not. She said that the FBI report, which she has read, contradicts Kavanaugh’s own statements UNDER OATH regarding his behaviors on multiple issues, but[Read More…]

The Russian Defence Minister has announced that the promised S-300 air defence system has been delivered to Syria with the Karushka 4 radar systems jammer and other related military equipment, to boost the safety of Russia’s military personnel and facilities. The system will be in place by 20th October. Syrian Army personnel will, meanwhile, be brought up to speed in[Read More…]

Jason Van Dyke, the Chicago cop who murdered Laquan McDonald, has been convicted—of second degree murder and 16 counts of aggravated battery. After decades of police and racists getting away with murder—from Emmett Till to Fred Hampton and up to Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Freddie Gray, Darius Pinex, Justus Howell, Rekia Boyd, Aquoness “Quono” Cathery, and Harith Augustus—we finally got[Read More…]

Edited version of remarks made at the Inter-Religious Organization Singapore, 1 October 2018 This is a tough time for men and women of the cloth, at least those whose message is one of peace, tolerance, mutual respect, equality and inter-faith dialogue. Underlying the rise of populism, nationalism, protectionism, fear of the other, anti-migrant and anti-foreigner sentiment, and hate speech is[Read More…]

  Responses to recent exposures in Jyllands Posten It was early in the October 1977 morning that they came. Ironically, they came on the morning of the Hindu festival of lights called Diwali, celebrating justice over injustice, light over darkness and truth over untruth. They stormed into our home in Albesville, Port Shepstone in South Africa. Four burly Security Policemen[Read More…]

Relations between Russia and Israel have been those of an estranged couple punctuated by occasional breakouts of tense understanding.  As with other such couples, a public row does not necessarily reflect the more placid, if stern discussion that might happen behind closed doors. On the public side of things, Russia’s decision to deploy the S-300 anti-aircraft missile system to Syria[Read More…]

Last week the UN halls have been the battlefields of aggressive covert wars in the form of speeches by world leaders. Each speech has maneuvers of attacks, defense, threats and bullying, lies and justifications, and rallying support of the international community. My interest is in the speeches concerning the Middle East; a very dangerous and volatile area, whose unfolding battles[Read More…]