Archive | February, 2021

Supporters of public education and school teachers were relieved to see Betsy DeVos leave her job as head of the Department of Education, knowing full well the education policies she and former President Trump supported would go nowhere in a President Biden administration.

With the technology and firepower on show during the conflict – precision bombing, satellite guidance, missile interception, air-to-surface strike to eliminate tanks, electronic warfare, one-way transparency on the battlefield, stealth bombers – the Gulf War was a “psychological nuclear attack” on China, observers say.

COVID-19 is now raging uncontrolled throughout the United States. New variants that are more easily transmitted have entered the country from the U.K., Brazil and South Africa. Vaccine is scarce.

Beginning a series on the role of fishing in the birth and spread of capitalism, and the role of capitalism in today’s mass extinction of ocean life.

Money floods the system, eats into the loyalties of politicians, corrupts the institutions of civil society, and shapes the narratives of the media. It matters that the dominant classes in our world own the main communications outlets and that these outlets shape the way people decipher the world around us.

Susan Ram explores the factors behind the February 1st military coup in Myanmar.

As FAIR (12/9/20) has reported, the New York Times has pushed for reopening public schools over teachers union concerns in New York City.

The 2020 uprisings articulated transformative visions of a world without anti-Black violence, a world without hyper-funded police forces and thus a world with deep community safety and care.

A battle by a business that ‘privately’ grew and prepared cannabis for clients, to have this service declared lawful, landed in the Western Cape high court this week–this as police clamped down on another dagga laboratory.

We thought climate catastrophe the main danger. Now we know there is another. A double-whammy ecological crisis threatens collapse into dystopian chaos.

Against the backdrop of the recent change in the White House administration, and the absence of clear harbingers of the United States’ desire to reduce the number of armed conflicts around the world, it is worth noting that in many respects the present conflicts owe their existence to how they are pumped with American weaponry.

The philosophical understanding of technology historically presents a pendular characteristic, swinging between enthusiasm and fear. The control of nature, the creation of artifacts that substitute what is naturally given, and the liberating while subjugating power of technology all give rise to enchantment and apprehension, which impact the philosophical horizon.

Is U.S. President Joe Biden’s January 27 Executive Order to address ‘climate crisis’ as good as many activists claim, enough to reverse earlier scepticism?

ExxonMobil, one of the world’s largest oil companies (newly merged in 1998), signed an agreement with the government of Guyana in 1999 to develop the Stabroek block, which is off the coast of the disputed Essequibo region.

The example of Sparta is an interesting precedent for the way in which people’s bodies have been controlled and utilized beyond their consent throughout history. The control of our bodies presupposes capitalism, but capitalism in turn has entrenched it.

As known COVID-19 infections exceed 100 million internationally, with more than two million lives lost, rich countries are now quarrelling publicly over access to limited vaccine supplies. With ‘vaccine nationalism’ widespread, multilateral arrangements have not been able to address current challenges well.

During 2019 and 2020 Cuba suffered the greatest impact ever from the blockade, with losses estimated at more than 5 billion dollars.

The United States seeks to regain its sagging world dominance by capturing wealth, quelling rebellions, and deterring competitors. It supports this operation with gigantic military power and a burdensome arms economy.

The 2014 coup is now called with masterly irony in Wikipedia “The Revolution of Dignity.” That is a Big Lie even Josef Goebbels would have envied.

The reasons behind the protest actions that began in Russia in January 2021, the social forces involved, and the possible consequences.