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“Palestinians are the only people in the world who have to prove they’re dead.” – Dr. Mads Gilbert + What Americans are witnessing in Gaza is a reiteration of our own history in real-time: Dispossess indigenous people, violently crush their resistance, blame any retaliatory “massacres” as an excuse to use overwhelming military power to wipe […]
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Image by Ömer Yıldız.
When Cyprus was illegally invaded by the Turkish Armed Forces in the summer of 1974, the international community took notice. Condemnations were issued. There were reports about the Cypriots who were killed, the women raped, the families separated, those who went missing (many still unaccounted for), the displaced refugees. We would only later come to find out the true depth of the atrocities committed or hear about the mass graves into which Cypriot bodies were indiscriminately tossed to quickly dispose evidence of the massacres.
But if you are reading this, you likely don’t know much about Cyprus, you may have not even heard the country’s name, let alone understand much about its past. If so, you are in a solid majority. In fact, I wrote this piece to explain why Cyprus and its history is unfamiliar to many and how this relates to what’s unfolding in Palestine and Israel right now.
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Image by Mohammed Ibrahim.
The genocide in Palestine is the atrocity of the 21st century and if there are history books we will remember where we were, what we were doing, and who we were with. Many people don’t realize it yet, but they will, and it will be too late and the wrong lessons will be learned. But if you’re on the left you at least have the ability to see this atrocity in real time.
The left saw this coming. This is not the time or place to ask about the left. This is a serious moment that should be left to serious people. At this point I will admit that I am not one of those people. So addressing this question of the left is a nod to our only and final hope. It feels ridiculous to talk about the left at this time but I won’t pretend to understand anything else or even be interested in understanding anything else. At this point the left will save us or no one will.
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“I say that between colonization and civilization, there is an infinite distance.” – Aimé Césaire + Israeli historian Ilan Pappé: “They [Hamas] warned Israel: we will not sit idle as long as the political prisoners are not going to be released…we will do all we can to abduct Israeli soldiers and citizens so we have […]
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There are people who have made a career off Palestine, off essentially metabolizing our pain and our resistance, appointing themselves as pseudo-spokespeople or intellectual historians of this moment, who have been shown to be fundamentally unqualified to do so, essentially that they’re cowards. To avoid giving specific examples, I’ll say that I’ve found refuge in my comrades in PYM, and in those who’ve shown principled, unwavering solidarity with the Palestinian people. This is a clarifying moment, because, if this has not been enough for you to adopt solidarity with Palestinians, nothing ever was going to be.
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Shrouded bodies of bombing victims in the courtyard of Al-Aqsa Hospital in Gaza. Image: AJA, Egypt.
On Friday, Gaza went dark. The lights were shot out. The internet unplugged. The phone lines down. The power shut off. Gaza was alone under bombardment, some of the heaviest of the war so far. Killing 25 journalists and some of their families simply wasn’t enough. The word of how brutal conditions there are, how many women and children are being slaughtered and starved, was still leaking out, making half the world sick to its stomach. Gaza had to be cut off. Under a physical embargo for more than a decade, the IDF has now placed Gaza under an information blockade. Missiles, tanks and commandos coming in, but no words or images getting out. The only illumination is Gaza burning.
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“Is fascism merely a dictatorial force in the service of capitalism? That may not be all it is, but that certainly is an important part of fascism‘s raison d’etre, the function Hitler himself kept referring to when he talked about saving the industrialists and bankers from Bolshevism.” – Michael Parenti, Blackshirts and Reds. The question […]
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As Israel once again “mows the grass” in Gaza, leaders of Western countries have taken an unprecedented step. During previous atrocities like Operations Cast Lead (2008-09) and Protective Edge (2014), the Prime Minister of the UK, the President of France, the Chancellor of Germany, and so on, typically issued mundane statements: that both sides—the Israeli […]
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Image by Markus Spiske.
Not long ago I was asked to speak about “minority” rights and basic income at a symposium in Barcelona leading up to the celebration of the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Among the human rights professionals, who were also speaking, the gagged elephant in the room was ginormous because it is, in fact, immeasurable: the crime of ecocide—the result, in particular, of capitalism, imperialism, and neoliberalism—which is also universal because it affects everyone and everything that is alive now and also future generations. Well, it may be universal but it also affects some much more than others. The left criticizes its causes but without sufficiently considering the consequences or alternatives.
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In the ensuing interview Jim Heddle references a “nuclear revival,” a phenomenon which has also recently been occurring in different mediums. Christopher Nolan’s all-star epic Oppenheimer dramatizes the creation of the atomic bomb and the fallout from it. Steve James’ A Compassionate Spy chronicles espionage conducted by the Manhattan Project’s youngest physicist at Los Alamos. Oliver Stone’s documentary Nuclear Now argues in favor of nuclear energy as a supposed solution to the climate emergency. Janice Haaken’s new film Atomic Bamboozle: The False Promise of a Nuclear Renaissance looks at the downside of this supposed nuclear energy revival. Irene Lusztig’s doc Richland, like Joshua Frank’s book Atomic Days, The Untold Story of the Most Toxic Place in America, both chronicle the U.S.’s largest plutonium production site, the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington state.
The post Nuclear Power Plant is Ground Zero in SOS – THE SAN ONOFRE SYNDROME appeared first on CounterPunch.org.
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Shaken America Syndrome. Image: JSC and AI Art Generator.
In 2002, Robert Roberson raced his 2-year-old daughter, Nikki, to a hospital emergency room in the east Texas town of Palestine. Nikki was limp, her skin blue. Roberson told the emergency room doctors and nurses that the two had been sleeping when he awoke and found Nikki on the floor, having fallen off the bed. The child was unresponsive. Nikki Curtis never regained consciousness and died a few days later.
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Image by Ehimetalor Akhere Unuabona.
Conditions for working people continue to get worse. The right to strike, or to join a union, is denied by increasing numbers of the world’s governments. The 2023 Global Rights Index report issued by the International Trade Union Confederation makes for grim reading, as has consistently been the case for the decade that the ITUC has issued its yearly reports.
Once again, there is no country on Earth that fully protects workers’ rights, the Global Rights Index report informs us. Nothing new here, as this was the case in the 2022 report, and all the reports before that. Neoliberalism does not have a human face.
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The Atlanta Public Safety Training Center, intended to consume at least 85 acres of forest adjacent to Atlanta’s Black working-class neighborhoods, is more accurately called Cop City. Slated to be one of the largest militarized police training centers in the nation, Cop City is owned by the nonprofit Atlanta Police Foundation, which, by paying $10 […]
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This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Susie Day.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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Image by Harold Mendoza.
A spate of articles on gerontocracy have emerged over the last few months, spawned by recent events like Trump’s particularly unhinged campaign trail comments, 81-year-old Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell freezing mid-speech multiple times, and the 90-year-old Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a key member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, being hospitalized and publicly exhibiting confusion and a “rapidly deteriorating” memory. Feinstein’s extended absence earlier this year delayed numerous judicial confirmations—she missed over fifty votes during her ten-week vacancy. A Pentagon-funded study released in April this year identified dementia among high-level US officials as a national security threat.
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Image: YouTube Screenshots\Wikimedia Commons
On 5 September, the US state of Georgia made public an indictment under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act against 61 activists involved in the Stop Cop City movement. The indictment alleges a “criminal conspiracy” among people who have distributed flyers, coordinated a bail fund, and participated in protests to prevent the construction of a militarized police training facility in the middle of a public forest in Atlanta. The charges explicitly name solidarity, protest, and mutual aid as activities that “intimidate” law enforcement and other citizens.
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James N. Wallace – This image is available from the United States Library of Congress
The 50th anniversary of the first 9/11 — the military coup that overthrew the democratically elected government headed by Socialist Party leader Salvador Allende — is this month. Chilean working people made enormous advances during the first year of the Allende government, formally a multiparty coalition known as Popular Unity, before Chilean capitalists, U.S. corporate interests firmly backed by the Nixon administration and right-wing elements in both countries were able to regroup and begin a heavy-handed sabotage campaign waged with increasing vehemence. In this excerpt from What Do We Need Bosses For?: Toward Economic Democracy, some of those first-year successes are recounted but the bourgeois forces are already beginning their efforts to obstruct and ultimately reverse all advancement.
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Image by Juice.
One very dangerous new norm that all humans should be worrying about is who most benefits and accumulates most power in this death-dealing system, or who can be held largely responsible for the plight the world’s in. Let’s start with the richest man, Elon Musk. Asked last year if he has more influence than the American government, he complacently replied, “In some ways”. Ronan Farrow describes how “Musk has sought out business opportunities in crucial areas where, after decades of privatization, the state has receded. The government is now reliant on him”. For example, he “seeded so much of the country with … [Tesla’s] proprietary charging stations”, that he pushed the Biden Administration into pushing his electric cars and now, “His stations are eligible for billions of dollars in subsidies”.
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On the first day of August, Ta’Kiya Young turned 21. She’d been struggling since her mother’s premature death, but she’d recently found a new place to live and was eager to explore a career as a social worker. To celebrate her birthday, she took her two sons, 3-year-old Ja’Kenli and 6-year-old Ja’Kobie, to the Ohio […]
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Image by Joe Piette.
Richard Hooker has worked at the United Parcel Service (UPS) for over twenty years and after long, sweltering shifts spent at the warehouse, sweat burning his eyes, his limbs feeling like they’ve been filled with concrete, he would just sit in his car, unable to drive home.
“You’re physically drained, you’re mentally drained from moving packages all day, non-stop,” he explained, “And you need to take a nap cause you’re too scared you’ll fall asleep when driving home.”
Hooker, now a union leader for Teamsters Local 623 which represents over 5,000 workers at both facilities in Philadelphia, is part of a broader Teamsters campaign to address many of the lingering issues impacting workers at the company, from conditions inside the warehouses and trucks to pay for part-time employees and drivers.
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In Palestine – a country whose existence goes unrecognized by most of the West – Palestinians are arrested, humiliated, beaten, killed by Israeli military or settlers every day, if not every hour. What began in 1948 as the Nakba has taken on force, ramped up control, occupied every aspect of Palestinian life. And, given Israel’s […]
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Image courtesy of the US EPA.
Standing on a ridge overlooking the expansive Berkeley Pit, a pungent smell emanates from the murky waters below, leaving a slight burn in my nostrils. This is Butte, nestled in a valley that straddles the Continental Divide, high up in the Rocky Mountains of western Montana. A little over a hundred years ago, Butte was a boomtown, ruled by copper and raging with prosperity. Industrious miners from Ireland to China ventured to this remote place to strike it rich or at least make a decent living. In its heyday, Butte was a bastion of socialist politics. International Workers of the World (IWW) was active in the early 1900s and, along with other labor factions, fought the monopolies of Butte’s three Copper Kings; Marcus Daly, William A. Clark, and F. Augustus Heinze. It was a tough, violent era, and miners were known to let off steam in local gambling dens, brothels, and bars. A historical plaque in town sums Butte’s past well: “She was a bold, unashamed, rootin’, tootin’, hell roarin’ camp in days gone by, and she still drinks her liquor straight.”
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A Scene from Jesse Short Bull & Laura Tomaselli’s LAKOTA NATION VS. UNITED STATES. Courtesy of IFC Films. An IFC Films release.
Whenever I think about the “Manifest Destiny” genocide U.S. rulers wrought against this continent’s original inhabitants – arguably the greatest land theft in human history – the sheer injustice of it all makes me feel like tearing my hair out, gnashing my teeth, slashing my flesh, rending my garments and howling at the moon. At a time when racist reactionaries suppress dissident histories, the new documentary Lakota Nation Vs. United States, co-directed by Oglala Lakota Jesse Short Bull and Laura Tomaselli, bravely and poetically presents a version of America’s story told from the Indigenous point of view. Indeed, Lakota’s parts I and II – “Extermination” and “Assimilation” – could be titled: “How the West was Lost.”
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Stills from ‘Barbie’ and ‘Oppenheimer’ | Photo Credit: Warner Bros. and Universal Pictures
In 1945, against the dry, sun-drenched backdrop of the American Southwest, two events took place that would alter the course of history. One was Trinity, the world’s first nuclear detonation, and the moment that would prompt Robert Oppenheimer to cite from the Bhagavad Gita: “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” The other was the founding of Mattel.
The coincidence of the Oppenheimer–Barbie release dates incited a frenzy amongst the movie-going public precisely because they seem so at odds. And yet, beneath their grit and camp, the two share more than meets the camera. They are, at heart, both stories of America at war—a war defined by the success of Oppenheimer and his colleagues, and which would in turn define the best-selling doll. The world into which Barbie was born, and of which she would become both symbol and soldier, did not exist before that first successful detonation in the early hours of July 16.
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Image by Scott Goodwil.
Market fundamentalists would have us believe that if only we left the provisioning of all human needs to the tender mercies of unregulated markets, a cornucopia of fabulous wealth would trickle down to all. A powerful fire hose of propaganda ceaselessly proclaims this, amply funded by those whose interest lie in accumulating unlimited wealth without regard to social or environmental harm.
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The six white Mississippi cops called themselves “the Goon Squad.” Give them points for accuracy, if not originality. They prided themselves in going the extra mile. For not playing by the rules. For not feeling any level of force was excessive. For not ratting each other out. They had a good run. But it appears […]
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This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Jeffrey St. Clair.
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Given the continual resurgence of the populist Far-Right under the all encompassing banner of the AFD (Alternative für Deutschland), the Alternative for Germany party, a shocking coalition agreement has just been reached between the Christian Democrat Party (formerly led by Chancellor Angela Merkel) on a local and regional political basis. It has become imperative for […]
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In the two years following the enactment of NAFTA, the price of beef dropped by as much as 50 percent. If hamburger eaters exulted at the news, they should have also been aware that with this fall in beef prices has come a crisis for the nation’s small ranchers as grave as that which put […]
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A still from Compassionate Spy, courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.
Two-time Oscar nominee and three-time Emmy Award winner Steve James’ compelling, confessional A Compassionate Spy is the latest in a current cinematic trend of nuke-related documentary and feature films that includes Oliver Stone’s Nuclear Now, Irene Lusztig’s Richland and Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer. Perhaps this vogue is emerging from the collective psyche now because of historic dates regarding the Manhattan Project and the fact that June 19 was the 70th anniversary of the electrocution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg on June 19, 1953. Or because the war in Ukraine plus tensions between the People’s Republic of China and the USA are heightening.
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In his young adult novel, The Oil’s Secret Tale, Walid Daqqah describes a wall – a vast wall that darkens the sky, divides the Earth, separates animals and plants and people from each other – a wall that stops children from visiting their parents in prison. Daqqah’s story is about a 12-year-old Palestinian boy, born […]
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The ultra rightwing parental rights group, Moms for Liberty, held their second annual convention the last week of June in Philadelphia. The Moms for Liberty received nationwide attention before and during their gathering as an example of the new normal: welcoming the Moms for Liberty’s right-wing racism, homophobia and book banning into the Republican mainstream. […]
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