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Real Change Is Impossible While Our World Is Shrouded In Secrecy
Caitlin Johnstone: Julian Assange “all our political theories are to some extent “bankrupt” in our current situation, because our institutions are so shrouded in secrecy that we can’t even know what’s really going on in the world.” … The nature of our institutions is hidden from us, and that includes not only our government institutions but the political, media, corporate and financial institutions which control so much of our society. … the nature of our world is being so aggressively obfuscated from our view keeps us from knowing exactly what needs to change, and keeps us from effecting change … Read here …
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Has the Retreat Industry Contributed to Human Regression?
Martin LeFevre: A veritable retreat and spiritual guidance industry has sprung up in the last few decades in the West and spread around the world. Apart from the ethical questions of turning spirituality into business (a practice as old as both), there is the question: To what degree are all these retreats and religious teachers […]
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Profit-Driven Systems Are Driving Us To Our Doom
Caitlin Johnstone: It’s really heartbreaking to think about all the ways human potential is being starved and constricted by these ridiculous limitations we’ve placed on the way we operate as a collective. Resources being allocated based on how well they can turn a profit stymies technological innovation, because the most profitable model will always lose out to less profitable ones that are more beneficial to people and our environment. … As long as human behavior remains driven by profit, ecocide will continue, because ecocide is profitable. … Read here …
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The State’s Constant Attack on Black Liberation
Margaret Kimberley, Black Agenda Report: Indictments, disruptions, arrests, defamation, incarceration and even assassination are the weapons used to discredit Black people who act in opposition to the system and who call for liberation. They will always be targets of state persecution and prosecution. … Those who struggle domestically and internationally against the political duopoly and their handiwork of domestic and international oppression will always be attacked by these forces, as will those who support them in any way … As the U.S. decline accelerates, so will this process of targeting Black people. … Read here …
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Japan to dump Fukushima radioactive water into Pacific Ocean
Peter Symonds: The decision has provoked opposition and protests in Japan itself, as well as in neighbouring countries including China and South Korea, over the potential impact on the environment and human health … the plan, the radioactive water would be diluted using sea water to levels of tritium within international standards then discharged over several decades through a kilometre-long pipe into the sea … it was “choosing the easiest, cheapest, status quo way of simply dumping the contaminated water into the sea.” … Read here …
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Letter to a Friend About Meditation
Martin LeFevre: Perhaps because you have tried many different methods of meditation, you now see that methods are antithetical to meditation. As you said, “Meditation begins when ‘the me’ ends.” So without implying a method, how does one go from that intellectual understanding to experiencing its actuality? Here are some principles, and suggestions. They are […]
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Should There be a Supreme Court? Its Role Has Always Been Anti-Democratic
Michael Hudson: Vested interests create “checks and balances” primarily to make political systems non-responsive to demands for social reform. Historically, therefore, the checks are politically unbalanced in practice. Instead of producing a happy medium, their effect often has been to check the power of the people to assert their interests at the expense of the more powerful. … Any resilient society’s constitution should be responsive to the evolution of economic, technological, environmental and geopolitical dynamics. … Read here …
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Smart investors’ worst enemy is Big Oil
David Suzuki: Fossil fuel money is behind campaigns to ban the consideration of environmental and social risks in investment decisions. In fact, these considerations are necessary to make investments that are sustainable in the long run. … But companies with business models based on activities that create greater inequalities and cause harm to the air, water, and soil, are threatened by ESG (environmental, social and governance) investor policies. … It’s time to get fossil fuel money out of politics and leave the oil in the ground. … Read here …
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Sending cluster bombs to Ukraine, Washington makes clear it will stop at nothing
Andre Damon: Facing the failure of Kiev’s military offensive, the United States is desperately seeking to use the provision of ever more destructive and indiscriminate weapons to reverse its setbacks on the battlefield. … The aim of the decision to use cluster bombs—regardless of its long-term impact on civilians—is to kill as many Russian soldiers as possible. … the US-led war against Russia in Ukraine is a war for American global hegemony, in which Ukrainians are mere cannon fodder … Read here …
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US media covers up Israeli war crimes in Jenin
Patrick Martin: A United Nations panel … condemning Israeli military operations in Jenin and elsewhere on the West Bank … “amount to egregious violations of international law and standards on the use of force and may constitute a war crime.” … Here is the brutal reality in the West Bank under Israeli occupation: ongoing and systematic violence and repression against the Palestinians. … Israeli soldiers and ultra-right settlers are murdering people, shooting them down, destroying their homes, pillaging the land where they have lived for centuries. … Read here …
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The Supreme Court and Political Corruption
Margaret Kimberley, Black Agenda Report: The Supreme Court has always been a political institution. Racism, political expediency, and outright corruption have always dictated its decisions. … There is political malfeasance, cynicism and political corruption but the court itself is little more than a place for billionaires to buy the justice they want, literally and figuratively. … There are no saviors in congress, the white house or in the Supreme Court. … The Supreme Court is clearly undeserving of the reverence with which it is treated. It exemplifies everything that is wrong with this country… Read here …
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A Birthday Wish From America For Humanity on the 4th of July
Martin LeFevre: On July 4th the United States celebrates its 247th Independence Day. Or I should say, millions of people celebrate by trying to get away, resulting in many Americans voluntarily locking themselves up in crammed airports for days because of flight delays. As a leading pundit asks, “Is America toast?” The best thing one […]
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Rights Of Nature, Self-Owning Land, And Other Hacks On Western Law
David Bollier: Legislatures or courts in twelve countries have recognized the “rights of nature” at the state, local, and/or national levels in a dozen nations. … western jurisprudence generally privileges private property rights over nature, humanity over plants and wildlife, and individual rights over collective rights … “We’re talking about widening the portal of lawmaking to allow for an expansion of rights towards sustainability.” … instead of federal or state law acting as a ceiling of permissible lawmaking, it is merely a floor – a minimum legal requirement … Read here…
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A Step Toward Justice for the Community of Watts
: L.A.’s district attorney just charged a polluting plant with 22 felonies. … against Atlas Metals, alleging the plant illegally disposed of hazardous waste, some of which was deposited on the grounds of the high school. … The school has been around since 1923, and the plant since 1949. … testing commissioned by the district found lead concentrations in dust samples collected from campus were 75 times higher than what the Environmental Protection Agency defines as a hazardous threshold. … Read here …
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America has Just Destroyed a Great Empire
Michael Hudson: We are seeing not the End of History but a fresh alternative to U.S.-centered neoliberal finance capitalism and its junk economics of privatization, class war against labor, and the idea that money and credit should be privatized in the hands of a narrow financial class instead of being a public utility to finance economic needs and rising living standards … Read here …
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