Robert Inlakesh
Al Mayadeen English

In one case, a young Black woman is violently shoved to the ground by a crazed Zionist man, while in another case that was caught on video, a young man is caught yelling the N-Word repeatedly.

As the American corporate media and government mobilize in opposition to student protests across the United States, ridiculously attempting to portray pro-Palestinian demonstrations as being in support of terrorism and anti-Semitism, pro-Israeli counter-protesters launch a campaign of racist hate. Repeatedly there have been reports of and videos in which Zionists yell the N-word, but why do they direct their hate towards Black people?

While student encampments are being set up on University campuses across the United States and beyond, with protests urging academic institutions to divest from Israeli-linked companies, the establishment is employing every tactic available to discredit and combat these efforts. Suddenly, US corporate broadcast media outlets, such as CNN and FOX News, who would usually object to the other's description of the color of the sky being blue, are condemning pro-Palestinian students together. With few exceptions, a bipartisan effort between Democratic and Republican Party representatives - who only seem capable of agreeing on financing war - has been launched to smear the anti-war movement as violent and anti-Semitic.

John Waters

‘Rockers’ Neil Young and Joni Mitchell have not merely defected from rock ‘n’ roll non-conformism to establishmentarianism, but betrayed their unawareness of the truth and also their duty to uphold it.

There are those who believe that the behaviour of Neil Young in threatening to withdraw his music from Spotify unless it cancelled Joe Rogan for ‘spreading misinformation,’ and Joni Mitchell who issued the same ultimatum ‘in solidarity,’ can only be explained by wickedness. By this reading, the two are knowing collaborators with the evil machinators seeking to enslave the world and possibly wipe out significant chunks of its population. In short, they have sold their souls to the New World Order. I doubt it.

My sense of Mitchell’s involvement in the controversy is that she did it out of genuine friendship for Young who had put himself out on a slippery limb. There is nothing in her past record that suggests she might have any truck with the would-be architects of world domination and human subjugation.

In the case of Young, there is some evidence of such an outlook in his recent assertions that he would be prepared to give up all his freedoms to save the planet for his grandchildren.

Just before Christmas 2021, he said in an interview with Apple Music 1 that he ‘wouldn’t hold on to anything’ if it would save his grandchildren and other younger people from the environmental problems allegedly facing the world. He also praised US President Joe Biden for ‘addressing the world's most pressing issues, such as the climate emergency.’

‘There's nothing more important,’ he claimed, ‘than making sure that the earth is as good as it can be for our grandchildren. That's got to be the first thing, that's got to be the most important thing for everybody, for the human race.’ People all over the world, he said, must accept we have ‘got to do things’ even if they ‘may be unpopular.’

Chris Graham

If you’re trying to follow the trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd – the 2020 killing that re-invigorated the #BlackLivesMatter movement and sparked worldwide protests against police violence – there’s unfortunately not a lot of interest in Australian media. But there is plenty of content on Youtube if you’re prepared to go looking, including live streams to the ongoing court case. It began just over a week ago and is set down for at least a month.

The testimony has so far been compelling, albeit gut-wrenching. If you’ve never quite worked out why Floyd’s death sparked so much anger, then following the trial will almost certainly get you there. There’s numerous videos from bystanders showing Chauvin strangle the life out of a man (of whom there’s no evidence he committed a crime), including continuing to apply severe pressure to Floyd’s neck for more than three minutes after he passed out.

And if you’re looking to get up to speed quickly on the issue, this video from Dr Todd Grande, a licensed mental health counsellor and former associate professor at Wilmington University, is a very good option. Grande weighs in on the basic facts of the case, but he also provides a scientific perspective about the personalities on trial.

Chris Floyd

Shoppers sprint through a department store on Saturday
as gunmen open fire in a shopping mall in Nairobi, Kenya.

This article is originally from 24 November 2008.

The idea that a democratic government would deliberately create fake "extremist groups" then send them out to foment violence and terrorism -- in order to discredit legitimate opposition to elite rule and to "justify" authoritarian powers -- has long been derided in "serious" circles as that worst of modern heresies: "conspiracy theory." Anyone advancing such a preposterous notion is instantly relegated to the ranks of the "lunatic fringe," and dismissed with varying degrees of contempt and condescension.

And the woeful fact that millions of the ruminants out there in the vast public herd swallow these wild tales and believe that their betters are up to no good is also widely deplored in the higher circles of public discourse. As any fully-accredited, perk-laden, sinecured think-tanker can tell you, democratic governments are led by men and women devoted to public service. Sure, there can be fierce disputes over policies and approaches and outcomes and ideologies and competence. Sure, some people may step over a line here and there in their pursuit of what they believe is the nation's best interests. But just as western democracies do not torture, do not launch aggressive wars, do not spy upon their own people or imprison them by the millions, they most assuredly do not create and support extremist groups and instigate acts of terror and chaos to advance authoritarian agendas.

J B Campbell

Treason everywhere. Our crackhead queen president is arming what we’ve been told for over a decade is the enemy in the war on terror, al-Qaeda, which means “the base.” That refers to the CIA’s computerized data base of mujahedeen fighters they put together in Afghanistan back in the ‘80s to fight the Soviet Army, which was finally defeated by surface-to-air Stinger missiles the CIA provided to al-Qaeda.

How al-Qaeda could ever be considered “the enemy” is a joke, since the CIA created the group, armed it, trained it and financed it with the help of Osama bin Laden, who was the CIA’s paymaster. Osama said in several interviews leading up to his death of Marfan Syndrome and kidney failure in late 2001 that he had nothing to do with 9/11. He said it was committed by the US government and Israel.

However, al-Qaeda is the boogyman in the Bush/Obama power grab they call the war on terror, except when we supply them with powerful ordnance including chemical weapons.

Chris Floyd

They are insane. They are stupid. They are enslaved to murderous power — so they will kill.

At some point in the next few hours or days, it is likely that deeply damaged collection of moral cretins known as "Western leaders" will sit down behind the gargantuan phalanxes of heavily armed security that keeps their well-wadded rumps safe and cozy and give the nod to some close-cropped flunky laden with medals for mendacious time-serving and relentless butt-covering to launch the airstrikes that will kill a large number of human beings who had absolutely nothing to do with the alleged chemical weapon attacks allegedly carried out by Syrian government forces.

That is to say, the leaders of the West, particularly the notoriously bloodthirsty nations of the United States and Great Britain, will murder a number of their fellow human beings for no reason whatsoever. What's more, they know this and admit it beforehand, speaking under oath, as the U.S. military chief did this week, of the inevitable "collateral damage" the coming attacks will cause. These Western leaders, primarily Barack Obama and the pathetic, feckless ex-PR shill David Cameron, will knowingly murder an unknown number of people while braying all the while of their own righteousness and the strict "legality" of their acts of mass murder.

Arthur Silber

Chris Floyd: All Systems Go: The Core of the Acquittal - The acquittal of George Zimmerman for his killing of Trayvon Martin has already sparked a torrent of fervid commentary -- millions of words -- and will no doubt produce many millions more in the days and weeks to come. But good sense and insight have been near-impossible to find in the roiling surges of this tsunami. One place where you can find these rare commodities is -- as you might expect -- Arthur Silber's blog. Silber has posted a powerful essay on the case and its implications, extending and deepening a likewise excellent piece by Ta-Nehisi Coates in The Atlantic, which Silber builds upon to striking effect. You should read the whole piece -- read the whole of both pieces -- but be prepared for some counter-intuitive conclusions, the chief of which is this: in the Trayvon Martin case, the system did not fail; the system worked, it did what it was supposed to do. The problem is that what it is supposed to do is to maintain and replicate the brutal, violent and, above all, dehumanizing injustice encoded in the core of the national culture. Trayvon Martin's life was broken on the hard, metallic spikes of this core; an unspeakable personal loss. But the travesty was not the case itself -- an inevitably ambiguous affair (an unwitnessed encounter between two men, one of them left dead) hobbled with a daunting burden of legal proof required to produce a guilty verdict. No, the real travesty is the system that produced the volatile circumstances of that fateful night, and all of the seething, hateful, fearful, alienating currents that lay behind the encounter. But read the eloquent insights of Silber and Coates for more.

Chris Floyd

Here's a really weird "alternative history" thought experiment on this day set aside to celebrate workers around the world. Try to imagine a President of the United States standing up before Congress and saying something like this:

"There is one point … to which I ask a brief attention. It is the effort to place capital on an equal footing with, if not above, labor in the structure of government. … Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration."

Isn't that wild? Of course, it's the kind of thing only some ignorant goober from the sticks -- or maybe even from some other century -- would come out with. Today, fortunately, we know that people who work for wages are just moochers and takers: parasites feeding on the noble blood of their bosses and betters. Being advanced, savvy and modern, we now know that Labor deserves no 'consideration' at all (much less a higher one!): no safe work places, no job security, no secured pensions, no bargaining rights, no privacy, no decency, no dignity. Labor should be glad and grateful to give whatever it takes (and take whatever they give) to serve the interests of our precious elites -- our crusading corporate chieftains, our visionary venture capitalists, our wise shepherds of inherited wealth -- who graciously provide their beasts of burden with store of provender.

Unless, of course, the provender provisioning threatens to cut into the nobles' bloated profit margins too much. In that case, of course, the higher considerations of capital must take precedence, and the jobs have to go. And when that happens, Labor should humbly bow its head, without complaint, without whining, and quietly, meekly, accept its fate, in accordance with the ruling principle that governs our glorious modern world. And what is that principle?

Chris Floyd

All condolences are due to the victims of the Boston bombing and their families ― and to all those victimized by violence around the world today.

This includes the 37 people killed in bomb attacks across Iraq, a commonplace occurrence since American invaders destroyed the country and deliberately sowed bloody sectarian strife there.

And the families of the 20 people killed by a bombing Sunday in Somalia, a country whose fragile peace was shattered by an American-backed foreign invasion, which included American bombings, American renditions and American death squads sowing ― what else? ― bloody sectarian strife.

And the captives in Guantánamo Bay being beaten and brutalized by a Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, who is keeping dozens of men cleared for release even by the twisted, draconian "rules" of the gulag itself ― while he continues to kill people around the world ― without charges, trial, evidence, defense or warning ― by his own unchallengeable, merciless diktat.

Chris Floyd

As millions around the world mark the death of a god this weekend, let us add our voice to the chorus on this theme with a little number laid down back in ancient times (i.e., the last decade): End Times.

THIS IS NOT THE AGE OF DEFEAT ― This is the age of loss, not the age of defeat.

Drone strikes, kill lists, murderers and torturers approved for high office. Austerity for the poor, record profits for the rich. Truthtellers shackled, liars lauded, ignorance exalted, cruelty and callousness gilded with righteous piety. Everywhere, goodness is driven to its knees, and this brutality is not decried but celebrated.

As in that age of iron that lowered over our forbears during dark night of the Thirties, you see faces once thought kind and kindred turn suddenly feral. Fear is behind it, but not just fear: also a self-hatred for what fear has turned them into, a self-hatred that cannot be borne and so is turned outward, thrown outward, into harsh projections of hatefulness, violence and desolation.

The avid embrace of what was once denounced, or the sad but “savvy” acceptance of the “lesser evil”: this is what we see at every turn today among ourselves, among those we thought were our own, and sometimes, maybe – when the lowering is darkest, heaviest – in mirrors as we pass. When the lowering is darkest, when the soul is lost. In them. In us. This is the age of loss – but it is not the age of defeat.