The rise of modern capitalism created and reflected the industrial technological revolution. The technology of the steam engine, coal, oil, and gas energy grids, and machinery, the railroads, automotive technology, and the telegram and telephone were all essential technological changes enabling the creation of the factory and industrial mass production. The new industrial technology shaped the nature of productive relations in the machine age, making possible both industrial production itself in the factory and the distribution of supplies and goods that sustained productive and market relations. Vast concentrations of capital and corporate power crystallized in the Robber Baron era of …
by John Perry and Roger D. Harris / July 23rd, 2025
With the Trump imperium passing the half-year mark, the posture of the US empire is ever clearer. Whether animated by “America First” or globalism, the objective remains “full spectrum dominance.” And now with the neocon capture of the Democrats, there are no guardrails from the so-called opposition party.
Call it the “new cold war,” the “beginning of World War III,” or – in Trump’s words – “endless war,” this is the era that the world has entered. The US/Zionist war against Iran has paused, but no one has any illusions that it is over. And it …
Leonardo da Vinci’s extensive studies of human anatomy were hundreds of years ahead of their time. (Image by Wikimedia Commons, Leonardo da Vinci.)
At the third assembly of the World Humanist Forum on July 19, Antonio Carvallo proposed the creation of a new working table on the theme of Personal Development. During his presentation, a spark caught my attention. He remarked that, for over 5,000 years, humanity has devoted nearly all its energy to understanding and developing the external world, while neglecting its own internal development as human beings.
Once again, the American police state is choosing to protect predators, not victims.
Jeffrey Epstein—the hedge fund billionaire/convicted serial pedophile and sex trafficker—may be dead, but the machinery that empowered and protected him is still very much alive.
You see, the Epstein case was never just about Epstein—it was about the entire edifice of power that shields the ruling class, silences victims, and erases accountability.
That the United States of America is controlled by a criminally perverse, two party ruling class should be obvious to any reasonable (not rational, for the above-named people are very rational) person not living in what Jean-Paul Sartre, the French existential writer, called bad faith (mauvaise foi).
Bad faith is based on Sartre’s premise that people are radically free despite social and biological constraints; in each person’s consciousness they sense this but choose to play games, to perform for themselves and others, and to act as if they have no choices when they do. They deny their freedom. This …
Book review: A Seat at the Table: The Making of Busboys and Poets
by Buff Whitman-Bradley / July 22nd, 2025
Finishing Andy Shalal’s autobiographical book A Seat at the Table (OR Books, 2025), I said to myself, “This fellow tells a great story.” I should have said many great stories, because this eminently readable and highly enjoyable volume is brimming over with terrific tales.
Anas Shallal’s family moved to Washington D.C. from Iraq in 1966, when he was 11 years old. His father had accepted a position with the U.S. office of the Arab League. Like any 11-year-old would be, Anas was overwhelmed by his new life in a new place, …
Impotence takes various forms. Before the daily massacres, incidents of starvation and dispossession of Palestinians taking place in the Gaza Strip with primeval cruelty, international impotence in the face of actions by the Israeli state has become a mockery of itself. The calls to end the war in Gaza grow in number, even among Israel’s allies, but little in substance is being done about it. What matters are statements that speak to a wounded conscience that do little to alter anything on the ground.
One such statement, released on July 21, proved to be yet another one of those …
Model, theatre artist, media influencer, and actress Humaira Asghar Ali IMAGE/24 News IMAGE/Humaira Asghar Ali Twitter/Duck Duck Go IMAGE/The Nation IMAGE/Humaira Asghar Ali Twitter/Duck Duck Go
Humaira Asghar Ali Chaudhry (1992 – 2025) was a Pakistani social media influencer, actress, model, reality TV star, and theatre artist who was linked with socially conscious theater …
And this brings me to what I referred to earlier as a reaffirmation of my views on the basic problem confronting the underdeveloped countries. The principal insights, which must not be obscured by matters of secondary or tertiary importance, are two. The first is that, if what is sought is rapid economic development, comprehensive economic planning is indispensable… if the increase in a country’s aggregate output is to attain the magnitude, of, say, 8 to 10 per cent per annum; if in order to achieve it, the mode of utilization of a nation’s human and material resources is to be …
At breakfast the tour guide warned us, “Ladies and gentlemen, take some croissants and pastries with you and a couple bottles of water because there’s not going to be food or anything to drink where we’re going today. Also remember to bring suntan lotion. In addition to direct photon bombardment there’s also the reflection from the water surface.”
The ocean was flat as a pond and paddling our sea kayaks at a good clip we reached the mysterious island in less than an hour.
“No human, and probably no other mammalian, has ever set foot here,” announced the guide. “The island is …
When the U.S. Constitution became operational on March 4, 1789, it didn’t include a people’s recall referendum/initiative for president and other federal officials. And still hasn’t. Only 19 states so far have voted them into their constitutions—beginning with Nebraska in 1897 and up to Mississippi, the last so far, in 1992.
We can only speculate why the Constitution’s Framers omitted a national recall in their lengthy deliberations in drafting the rules governing this young nation. They seem to have counted on a provision that a House impeachment and a Senate trial could oust a president. Somehow, they could …
In March this year, the Trump administration effectively shuttered the Voice of America, a broadcasting vehicle for the selective promotion of US policy and culture for over eight decades. Nearly all of its 1,300 staff of producers, journalists and assistants, including those working at the US Agency for Global Media, were placed on administrative leave. Kari Lake, President Donald Trump’s appointment to lead the Voice, was unflattering about that “giant rot and burden to the American taxpayer.” Last month, Lake confirmed that layoff notices had been sent to 639 employees.
The confected Gaza ‘scandals’ are designed to browbeat the BBC into even greater cravenness. If it was reluctant before to give Palestinians a voice, now it will avoid doing so entirely
by Jonathan Cook / July 19th, 2025
After months of a confected furore over a BBC documentary supposedly demonstrating pro-Hamas bias, followed by the shelving of a second film on Gaza, an independent review found last week that the broadcaster had not breached impartiality guidelines.
A long list of complaints against Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone – all pushed for months by the Israel lobby, and amplified by the British establishment media – were dismissed one after the other by Peter …
In the 1970s, during the height of the farmworker movement, United Farm Workers leader César Chávez often rallied supporters with the phrase “Sí se puede” (“Yes we can”)—a slogan coined by UFW co-founder Dolores Huerta in 1972 during Chávez’s 25-day fast in Phoenix, Arizona. Today, as undocumented farmworkers face aggressive immigration enforcement in California’s fields, a darker refrain might be more fitting: “Cuidado con ICE”—watch out for ICE.
Farmworkers say they feel like they are being “hunted like animals,” as they desperately try to avoid getting swept up …
The peoples of the Earth, led by the United States, are concentrating wealth in the hands of a small percentage of the people. You may ignore this more than you deny it, but even if you deny it, as time passes, you go on having less and less of the wealth — and suffering as a result. You do not deny or ignore that result. Consequently, you’ll likely want to find something or someone to blame other than those …
The ticket -- tax the murderers rapists starvation experts the polluters the maiming cartels, the corporate Mafia, sure sure
by Paul Haeder / July 19th, 2025
“Those people … ” Donald said, trailing off. “The shape they’re in, all the expenses, maybe those kinds of people should just die.” — Donald TRUMP
Trump’s buddy:
This figure corresponds to the number of inmate deaths since the “State of Emergency” was implemented in March 2022. “These were people awaiting trial who had not been convicted,” said …
In Gaza’s emergency rooms, doctors now face a wave of patients suffering not from injury, but from hunger. The Ministry of Health confirmed that unprecedented numbers of people, from infants to the elderly, are arriving at hospitals in extreme exhaustion due to starvation.
The cause is not a drought or a natural disaster. It is the direct result of Israel’s full blockade, now in its 139th consecutive day. And the death toll is rising.
So far, 69 children have died from malnutrition. Another 620 patients have died …
China is a modern superpower, as is the US, but a qualitatively different superpower. The US uses military aggression, coups, and sanctions to impose US corporate interests worldwide. China is a peaceful power that respects national sovereignty, mutual development, and non-interference.
Despite opposing imperialism, a tendency in the Western left is to recycle Western anti-China narratives that liken Chinese trade relations to Western imperial conduct, as in Sri Lanka and the Congo. Others have written of Chinese investments in the Occupied West Bank, …
One day, a young prince died in the city of Unch in the Indian subcontinent. The boy had had great respect and love for a Shia Ismaili Pir Shams. (Pir means saint and Shams means Sun – Saint Sun.) The king was devastated; he ordered his magistrates and jurists to get a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad because only he could revive the prince. Failure to do so would result in severe punishment for them and their families. They went to Pir Shams and begged …
A new study published in Earth’s Future by researchers from Uppsala University with Belgian, French, and German universities have shown that climate change is morphing into a full blown ogre of destruction as several regions of the world are no longer affected by isolated events, instead, several different events occur concurrently or in quick succession. These multi-series events are a new phenomenon that typically overwhelms society with unparalleled suddenness, speed, and ferocity, increasingly striking urban areas as well as the hinterlands.
It’s happening more frequently with more ferocity than ever before, for example, massive LA Fires (Jan. 2025); village of …
The odious idea of a camp within a camp. The Gaza Strip, with an even greater concentration of Palestinian civilian life within an ever-shrinking stretch of territory. These are the proposals ventured by the Israeli government even as the official Palestinian death toll marches upwards to 60,000. They envisage the placement of some 600,000 displaced and houseless beings currently living in tents in the area of al-Mawasi along Gaza’s southern coast in a creepily termed “humanitarian city”. This would be the prelude for an ultimate relocation of the strip’s entire population of over 2 million in an area that will …
“War,” the veteran mutters in his defense. “Maybe I’m not smart enough to explain.”
“What war?” the prosecutor bellows. “Mr. Copland, the last war ended eight or nine years ago. Frankly, I don’t even remember when exactly or what it was about. Also, kind of a sorry excuse, especially from a man who never served a single day in the military, didn’t enroll in ROTC basic training in college, and as far as I can tell never went target shooting in a rifle range. For god’s sake, you haven’t even lived near an army base. Mr. Copland, how on earth …
You ever have a dream where during the dream you really think you are getting some insight, things figured out, maybe a revolutionary idea, concept and you know you are going to remember it when you wake up and you know it’s still going to be amazing in the morning? It’s not really one of those “Is This Heaven No It’s Bangladesh” things, it’s different.
Well …
This is about an NDE, near-death experience, or, it’s about a dream. I can’t say for sure which, not sure we will ever know. The documents …
The New York Times has published an op-ed by a genocide scholar who says that he resisted acknowledging the truth of what Israel is doing in Gaza for as long as he could, but can no longer deny the obvious.
It’s an admission that may as well have come from The New York Times itself.
In an article titled “I’m a Genocide Scholar. I Know It When I See It.”, a Brown University professor of Holocaust and genocide studies named Omer Bartov argues that “Israel is literally trying to wipe out Palestinian existence in Gaza,” and denounces his …
