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The Demise of USAID: Few Regrets in Latin America
“Take your money with you,” said Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro, when told about Trump’s plans to cut aid to Latin America, “it’s poison.”
USAID (US Agency for International Development) spends around $2 billion annually in Latin America, which is only 5% of its global budget. The temporarily closed-down agency’s future looks bleak, while reactions to its money being cut have been wide-ranging. Only a few were as strong as Petro’s and many condemned the move. For example, WOLA (the Washington Office on Latin America), a leading “liberal” think tank which routinely runs cover for Washington’s regime-change efforts, …
“Quantitative Easing with Chinese Characteristics”
How to Fund an Economic Miracle
by Ellen Brown / February 12th, 2025
China went from one of the poorest countries in the world to global economic powerhouse in a mere four decades. Currently featured in the news is DeepSeek, the free, open source A.I. built by innovative Chinese entrepreneurs which just pricked the massive U.S. A.I. bubble.
Even more impressive, however, is the infrastructure China has built, including 26,000 miles of high speed rail, the world’s largest hydroelectric power station, the longest sea-crossing bridge in the world, 100,000 miles of expressway, the world’s first commercial magnetic levitation train, the world’s largest urban metro network, seven of the world’s 10 busiest ports, and solar …
Exposing Albion’s Rot: Why I Write About Political Corruption
by Barry Harden / February 12th, 2025
Has the world lost its last thread of sanity? Mass media drowns us daily with never-ending cycles of calamities, from cataclysmic global events to political quagmires. These scandals are nothing new, some more egregious than others, but all spark outrage across the political spectrum. It’s tempting to dust off that old protest sign. Sadly, it’s still relevant.
Writers like me craft sociopolitical fiction to explore and process society’s critical issues with the hope that change will follow. But hope implies a futuristic expectation. What can I as a writer do to bring these injustices to light and engage readers who might …
“No specific signals” from US on Resuming Dialogue – Moscow
Washington has yet to take steps to re-establish contacts with Russia, including on Ukraine, Vassily Nebenzia has said
by RT / February 11th, 2025
Brainwashing Is Not a Form of Personal Hygiene
by John Rachel / February 11th, 2025
Nor is being brainwashed a guarantee of personal bliss, though it’s becoming apparent that there are many who swear by it.
It’s like reverence for innocence. Well, yes, kids sure are sweet, unsullied, open, positive, vibrant, curious. They wear their innocence well and we all envy their abandon. But we’re protecting them. So we bear all the risks and potential for endangerment. They play. We watch the playground to make sure there are no perverts, rabid dogs, snipers, or kidnappers.
As adults, it’s a different story. ‘Ignorance is bliss’ and ‘What you don’t know won’t hurt you’ work …
MLK Day Turned into BMS Day
by B.R. Gowani / February 11th, 2025
Priscilla Chan, her husband Mark Zuckerberg of Meta/Facebook, Lauren Sanchez, her fiance Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Sundar Pichai of Alphabet/Google, and Elon Musk of Space X in the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol in Washington DC on Monday, Jan. 20, 2025, for the 60th Presidential Inauguration. IMAGE/AP/Julia Demaree Nikhinson, Poo/The Hill
Nothing can be more diametric and tragic than an unfolding fascist, joined by some of the world’s most richest men, being sworn-in for the second time on January 20, 2025 on the official Martin Luther King Jr. …
Strategy and Tactics for the Burgeoning Resistance
by Ted Glick / February 11th, 2025
The wide mix of acts of resistance over the past week have made it clear that there is and will be widespread resistance to the Trump/MAGA regressive, racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic and pro-billionaire plans, There have been actions in the streets in DC and all over the country. Congressional Democrats are speaking up, filibustering and organizing town meetings. Numerous creative social media postings have helped to keep up people’s morale. Rachel Maddow on MSNBC five nights a week is playing an important role as have other TV/podcast/written reports and commentaries. And there have been a number of federal court filings, …
Cutting the Ghost Budget: Elon Musk versus the Pentagon
by Binoy Kampmark / February 11th, 2025
The rampaging antics of a querulous, sociopathic tech oligarch as he busies himself identifying which government departments to raid, trim, if not abolish altogether, understandably concerns those in the business of government. And there is much to be concerned about with Elon Musk’s merrily psychotic scything as chief of the US Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), notably in terms of security access to payment and data systems.
Established on the day of President Donald Trump’s inauguration via executive order, the new department is charged with implementing “the President’s DOGE Agenda, by modernizing Federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency …
Imagine: Truth on the News
by Allen Forrest / February 11th, 2025
What would be said? What would happen when it was back to the news as distraction?
Ethnic Cleansing or Genocide?
by Kim Petersen / February 10th, 2025
[A] coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves. The objectives of such a plan would be disintegration of the political and social institutions, of culture, language, national feelings, religion, and the economic existence of national groups, and the destruction of the personal security, liberty, health, dignity, and even the lives of the individuals belonging to such groups.
— Raphael Lemkin describes genocide1Raphael Lemkin, “Genocide.” In Axis Rule in Occupied Europe: Laws of Occupation — Analysis of Government — Proposals for Redress (Washington, …
Cutthroat Diplomacy in the Trump Era
by Paul Larudee / February 10th, 2025
Many people who never liked Donald Trump are predictably outraged by many of his actual and potential foreign policy changes. These include new tariffs on goods from countries with which the US had, until the current administration, enjoyed free trade or Most Favored Nation status, including Mexico, Canada, and the European Union. In addition, he announced imposition or intended imposition of increased sanctions against Iran, Russia and potentially other nations. He also ordered the suspension of all foreign aid except to Israel and Egypt. (The order is currently blocked in federal court.) But his most outrageous proposals are undoubtedly to …
Genocide and Real Estate
by Allen Forrest / February 10th, 2025
Congo: Do We Trace Genocide to Human Hatred or Corporate Profit?
by J.B. Gerald / February 10th, 2025
Rwanda has broken international law with the visible presence of Rwandan troops in the Democratic Republic of Congo alongside Rwanda’s covert M-23 militia. M-23 is reported to have captured Goma (again) and the civilians are in a state of emergency. This is familiar because M-23 previously took over the city in 2012 but had to withdraw because it wasn’t equipped to administer the city of two million. As the M-23 rebels and their allies increase their takeover of the East Congo with reported vows of advancing to the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo …
Mentally Ill or Criminal? Jails Have Become Mental Health Facilities Say Experts
by Martha Rosenberg / February 10th, 2025
To many, it is an unseen problem. People denied mental health services who end up homeless or incarcerated as criminals. A few year ago, the Kennedy Forum at Chicago’s Palmer House Hilton, addressed this and other aspects of the lack of a functional community mental health system in the United States.
The Kennedy Forum was founded to enlist business leaders and government agencies in fully implementing the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act of 2008, which was amended by the Affordable Care Act, to guarantee equal access to medical care and help …
A Thief’s Mentality: Trump, Real Estate and Dreams of Ethnic Cleansing
by Binoy Kampmark / February 10th, 2025
President Donald J. Trump likes teasing out the unmentionable, and the Israel-Palestinian situation was hardly going to be any different. With a touch of horror and the grotesque, he offered a solution to the issue of what would happen to Gaza at the conclusion of hostilities. In a White House press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, he declared that the United States “take over and own the Gaza Strip”, in the process promising to “create an economic development that will supply an unlimited number of jobs and housing for people of the area.”
The strip, one of the …
The Gaza “War” Was a Lie, as is the Ceasefire
Trump just told you
by Jonathan Cook / February 8th, 2025
During Netanyahu’s visit, Trump dropped Washington’s sugar coating of Israel’s 15-month genocidal destruction of Gaza. This was always about ethnic cleansing
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to the White House this week tore the mask off 16 months of gaslighting by western leaders and by the entirety of the western establishment media.
United States President Donald Trump finally dropped Washington’s sugar coating of Israel’s genocidal destruction of Gaza.
This was always, he told us, a slaughter made in the US. In his …
Hasbara’s Foot Soldiers
by Evan Jones / February 8th, 2025
On 3 February there appeared in the local paper of record, the Sydney Morning Herald (Independent. Always), a number of letters regarding Israel and Gaza. The first opines:
… the more often people hear lies and see troubling incidents like violence and vandalism associated with Jews, the more likely people are to blame Jews for causing those troubles, regardless of the truth.
A sub-editor attached an AP-credited photograph of a devastated Gaza with the caption ‘Destruction caused by the Israeli air and ground offensive in Gaza’.
Is this seeming carnage a fabricated Hamas photoshop of a functioning Gaza Strip, a propaganda …
A Progressive Radio Station Purges 2 Elected Board Members
by Daniel Borgström / February 8th, 2025
Two elected members were suspended from the KPFA Local Station Board (LSB) in a closed door session on November 16, 2024. It was a “show trial” that was not for show, not to be seen or even whispered about — a skeleton for the board’s closet, and an insult to the “free speech radio” spirit of KPFA.
This was a Zoom session, a meeting in cyberspace; twenty two board members attended; four Pacifica National Board directors were here as observers, and there were several technicians and some others, in all, thirty people. The accused persons were Elizabeth Milos and Steve Zeltzer. …
Christ in the Classroom?
by Vern Loomis / February 8th, 2025
Lawyers and judges know it all too well: If parsed with proper eloquence, the intent of words and phrases can be twisted to one’s own purpose or made meaningless. It’s no secret that particular judicial interpreters (judges/justices) are championed by special interest groups and then appointed by politicians in anticipation of how eloquently the U.S. Constitution or Bill of Rights will be argued in support of a desired position. To that end, a state court in Texas or even the Supreme Court of the United States may soon be called upon …
The Future of Sea Level Rise
With Professor Peter Wadhams
by Robert Hunziker / February 8th, 2025
All of these changes, we can plot them and if we look exponentially, we see really catastrophic effects in the next few years, certainly in the next decade or two the world will be completely different… I think we’re at the last minute now.
— Peter Wadhams
PM Margaret Thatcher’s 1989 speech to the UN General Assembly made reference to Peter Wadhams, Head of Polar Ocean Physics, Cambridge as her British scientist on board a ship in the Arctic Ocean: “The lesson of these Polar processes is that an environmental or climatic change produced by man may take on a self-sustaining or ‘runaway’ quality …
Disconnect
by Allen Forrest / February 8th, 2025
How the U.S./UK Empire Works — as in the Middle East
by Eric Zuesse / February 8th, 2025
It’s shown with remarkable clarity, in the first 14 minutes of this video from Vanessa Beeley, on February 6. It is titled “Trump in Gaza, Jolani self-proclaimed president, south Lebanon and Russia to pay reparations, not Israel: My reports for UK Column yesterday”.
Whereas all of its first 14 minutes — the entirety of Beeley’s report — is extremely insightful into what’s now happening in the Middle East (especially Israel, Palestine, Syria, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the U.S. regime that has been running the show there ever since at least the 1970s), …
Heads Up, the Revolution is Already Here
It’s Revolution or Death, Part 2
by subMedia / February 8th, 2025
State and market solutions to the ecological crisis have only increased the wealth and power of those on top, while greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise. Nearly all the experts and professionals are invested, literally, in a framework that is only making things worse. With so much power concentrated in the very institutions that suppress any realistic assessment of the situation, things seem incredibly bleak. But what if we told you that there’s another way? That there are already people all around the world implementing immediate, effective responses that can be integrated into long-term strategies to survive these …
Veterans Oppose Mass Deportation and Domestic Military Deployments
Veterans Oppose Mass Deportation and Domestic Military Deployments
by Veterans for Peace / February 7th, 2025
Veterans For Peace strongly objects to the Trump Administration’s racist campaign of mass deportation of undocumented workers, who are our friends, neighbors and even our fellow veterans. We condemn the violent raids that are sowing fear and terror in communities across the United States. As veterans, we are particularly opposed to the misuse and abuse of U.S. military personnel, including their illegal deployment to the U.S. border with Mexico.
Since Donald Trump’s inauguration, about 1,000 U.S. Army personnel and 500 Marines have been sent to the border, in addition to 2,500 National Guard members already there. Helicopter units are being sent along …
Black History Month and the Nobodies
by Paul Haeder / February 7th, 2025
Since his second inauguration, the billionaire, known for his highly discriminatory anti-immigrant mentality and behavior, has taken the toughest measures in favor of a “cleansing” that will have terrible consequences, even for unborn children.
And here we go with a continual slide into fascism, and, yes, a fascist nation turns on its own people. Fascism can also come into the light of the 21st century as techno-feudalism, another form of elite billionaires and their ground troops strangling the working class, even professional managerial …
Under Cover of Sanction
by Seth Meldon / February 7th, 2025
The degree of restraint and investigative rigor employed by Washington, NATO, and their media allies when ascribing guilt to Russia for any indiscretion bears little relation to how NATO’s actions are assessed. This has long been standard operating procedure, but the events in the Baltic Sea over the past two years take this pattern further.
Acts of aggression where the US or its allies motives are clearest must be most obfuscated, with logical conclusions displaced in headlines by nefarious sounding, circumstantial evidence that points elsewhere. The framing for the public of any reporting regarding Russia’s war with Ukraine must always note …
The New Normal
by Allen Forrest / February 7th, 2025
What is perceived to be normal in the age of increasing technology.
How to Understand the Change of Government in Syria
by Vijay Prashad / February 7th, 2025
Houmam al-Sayed (Syria), Namle, 2012.
One of the most stunning events of the past few months has been the fall of Damascus. This fall had initially been expected over a decade ago, when rebel armies funded by Qatar, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and the United States crowded around the edges of Syria and threatened then President Bashar al-Assad’s government. These armies, backed by rich and powerful countries, were comprised of a range of actors, including:
swaths of people who were angered by the economic distress caused by the opening up of …
We Know How This Will End …
by John Rachel / February 7th, 2025
What if the citizens of Germany during the 1930s somehow could have known in advance how World War II was going to end? Would they have bought into the lies of Hitler and the Third Reich? Would they have gone along with the wanton aggression knowing it was a suicide mission and would turn their beloved homeland into a pile of rubble and put nearly 9,000,000 of them in early graves?
What about Japan? Before World War II, Japan was securely locked down. No dissent from the …
Why Jimmy Carter Pardoned Draft Resisters
by Gerry Condon / February 7th, 2025
The passing of Jimmy Carter has been duly noted in ubiquitous remembrances and commentaries on his four-year presidency, 1977-1981. Carter is lauded more for his post-presidential humanitarian projects, while his presidency is deemed a mixed bag by left and right alike. For many Vietnam War resisters – myself included, it is more personal. Jimmy Carter’s first act as president was to pardon draft resisters. He then established a program for military deserters like me, who were able to return from exile or up from “underground” without going to prison.
President Carter’s pardon took a certain amount of courage and compassion, and …