Archive | December, 2022

Ocotal is a historic Nicaraguan city located in the Department of Nueva Segovia. It is famous for being the site of battles between the U.S. Marines and the peasant guerilla forces of Augusto Cesar Sandino in the mid-1920s.

Mobilizing a population to vilify and hate a targeted enemy is a tactic that leaders have used since before the dawn of human history, and it is being used to demonize Russia and Vladimir Putin in the current conflict.

It is hard to fathom the depths of our time, the terrible wars, and the confounding information that whizzes by without much wisdom. Certainties that flood the airwaves and the internet are easy to come by, but are they derived from an honest assessment of the war in Ukraine and the sanctions against Russian banks (part of a broader United States sanctions policy that now afflicts approximately thirty countries)?

As the world moves dangerously close to global violent conflict, anti-war journalists have been banned and censored in Europe and the U.S. One of these banned voices, Lee Camp, discusses the development and why it is so dangerous.

Major Switzerland-based bank Credit Suisse forecasts Venezuela’s real GDP growth to be 20% in 2022 and 8% in 2023. This is despite an illegal U.S. blockade, which starved the government of 99% of its revenue, according to the top UN expert on sanctions.

Massachusetts Peace Action, a venerable part of the U.S. Peace Movement, has been around since the 1980s and its predecessors date back to the 1950s. Its voice is heeded and it represents most of the shared opinions of the liberal and progressive U.S. peace movement.

We propose a novel method for quantifying national responsibility for ecological breakdown by assessing nations’ cumulative material use in excess of equitable and sustainable boundaries.

“We are anonymous because we fear retaliation.” This text was part of a letter signed by 500 Google employees last October, in which they decried their company’s direct support for the Israeli government and military.

On Monday, President Joe Biden unveiled his 2023 budget, calling for dramatically increased funding for war and the police while allocating all-too-little funding for social services. Out of the total $1.58 trillion of spending outlined in the budget, $813 billion is allocated to the military while $769 billion is allocated for non-military spending. This is a $31 billion increase in funding for the war machine.

Harvard Law School’s International Human Rights Clinic’s recent report declaring that Israel is practicing apartheid is a victory for Palestinian human rights.

The city of Bucha, in Ukraine, has recently come to the attention of the U.S. and EU corporate media, for the purpose of criminalizing Russia for the supposed assassination of 300 civilians. However, the lack of evidence for these claims brings into doubt any allegations that the Russian military was involved.

Current pledges to cut emissions won’t be enough to slow climate change, according to a new report from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

“Twenty-one Indian cities are going to be waterless very soon,” Rajendra Singh tells me in an interview for NewsClick conducted last week in Delhi. Singh is alluding to a prediction in a Niti Aayog report on water. He says, “It means that the underground and surface water availability will become zero.” Another report says 72% of water reservoirs are in overdraft.

After the latest round of talks between Russia and Ukraine in Turkey on Tuesday, both sides said the negotiations released positive signals. Ukraine proposed adopting neutral status in exchange for security guarantees from the international community. Russia said the country would sharply cut military activity around Kiev and Chernihiv.

Queer advocates worry how the ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill, set to go into effect in Florida, could impact education on gender diversity and sexual orientation of young Canadians.

The West has made a snap judgment about who is responsible for the massacre at the Ukrainian town of Bucha with calls for more stringent sanctions on Russia, but the question of guilt is far from decided, writes Joe Lauria.

Ben Lewis, the translator and editor of “Karl Kautsky on Democracy and Republicanism” talks with Green Left’s Barry Healy.

As regular readers of this blog will be aware I think that Andreas Malm, even where I disagree with key points of his argument, is one of the most stimulating Marxist authors on environmental politics.

Socialists, anti-imperialists, anti-war activists, Black radicals, and other independent alternative voices who challenge mainstream media and its political culture are being explicitly targeted by Liberals and Big Tech in a censorship campaign akin to the McCarthy era.

Since the U.S.-engineered 2013-14 coup in Ukraine, American forces have taught Ukrainians, including neo-Nazi units, how to fight in urban and other civilian areas. Weaponizing Ukraine is part of Washington’s quest for what the Pentagon calls “full spectrum dominance.”