Recent Blogs
I never identified myself with leftwing politics until, sometime in the 1990’s, I read Noam Chomsky, and a short time after that, his friend and long time collaborator, Michael Albert. Much of the left, it had seemed to me, was riddled with bad ideas and hypocrisy. What these two guys, and a small group of others engaged in similar Read more…
Has nationalism captured the hearts and minds of the world’s people? It certainly seems to have emerged as a powerful force in recent years. Trumpeting their alleged national superiority and hatred of foreigners, political parties on the far right have made their biggest political advances since the 1930s. After the far right’s startling success, in Read more…
The North Korean government’s progress toward developing a long-range nuclear weapons capability, accompanied by bellicose pronouncements, has been alarming enough to spark worldwide public dismay and new sanctions by a unanimous UN Security Council. But even if, at the very best, sanctions (which, so far, have not worked) or diplomatic negotiations (which have yet to Read more…
Green Time TV Overcoming Irresponsibility by Don Fitz What are environmentalists to do when confronting irresponsible people with power? October 2017 Green Time episodes explore how to respond to a congress that will not provide medical care for all, a president who wants to destroy energy assistance for low income families and an economic system Read more…
The mocking headline to this Reuters article reads Venezuela’s new plan to beat hunger: Breed rabbits Mockery of the Maduro government in Venezuela routinely catches the approving and mirthful eyes of corporate journalists. The article states Maduro’s critics lampooned the idea. “Are you serious?” asked Henrique Capriles, a state governor and two-time opposition presidential candidate Read more…
Lilian Tintori is the wife of Leopoldo Lopez – a Venezuelan politician whom the western establishment has quite absurdly hailed as a hero. In her NYT op-ed from the other day Tintori wrote “We have no freedom of speech”. Here is lengthy interview Tintori gave in July on Venevision, a large private TV network that anyone in Read more…
In this op-ed from today in El Universal, a newspaper the international corporate media and NGOs like the Committee to Protect Journalists have depicted as having been taken over by the government in 2014, Julio Borges talks about his trip to Europe which was aimed at ramping up international pressure and condemnation of Venezuela’s government. Borges Read more…
Some whoppers were slipped into this transcript of an interview between Aljazeera’s Lucia Newman and the president of Venezuela’s Constituent Assembly (and former Foreign Minister) Delcy Rodriguez. Aljazeera says the “adapted” transcript has been “edited for clarity and brevity”. That’s an Orwellian way to put it. *** *** In the interview (the video) Rodriguez correctly Read more…
Alleged Venezuelan political prisoner (more on that below), Yon Goicoechea, had an op-ed published in the New York Times that made the following claim: A health minister was fired for releasing his department’s annual report, revealing that infant mortality has returned to 1950 levels. In 1959, Venezuela’s infant mortality rate (IMR) was 61.9 deaths per Read more…
RE Venezuela bars opposition activist from traveling to Europe An AP article reported the following today about the wife of jailed Venezuelan opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez. She is now part of a criminal investigation after 200 million Bolivares in cash were found in a car she owned. “Tintori said she kept such a large sum in Read more…
Nasir Khan, September 3, 2017 For many historians of the Indian subcontinent Mr Jinnah’s role both as a leader and a statesman in pre-partition India is controversial. Personally, I have never accepted even for a second his communalist perspective that led to the demand for Pakistan. Right from the start, the “Two Nation Theory” was Read more…
Missouri Green Party Convention Gets Weird by Don Fitz Happenings at the first Missouri Green Party (MOGP) convention since it obtained ballot status were unusual, to say the least. They issue warnings to state Green Parties across the US as well as for any group that seeks to empower members to make decisions collectively. While Read more…
— Nasir Khan, September 1, 2017 “A man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food; therefore, if he eats meat, he participates in taking animal life merely for the sake of his appetite.” — The great Russian writer Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) In this saying, the greatest Russian writer of all time had Read more…
Nasir Khan, The message of Jesus of Nazareth (c. 7-2 BC – c. 30-33 AD) was viewed as a challenge to the Roman Empire and a threat to the Jewish religious establishment. Jesus was a great teacher and revolutionary of those times. Even though our knowledge of this unique person is limited due to the Read more…
The OHCHR put out a press release a few weeks ago about violent protests in Venezuela in which the following words leapt off the page to anybody who has been following the situation without blinders on: “security forces are allegedly responsible for at least 46 of those deaths, while pro-Government armed groups, referred to as ‘armed Read more…
As I did near the end of May, I’ve taken detailed notes (see below) on an hour long newscast by Venevision – Venezuela’s most watched network for news – a network people in the country can watch for free. The biggest lie told over the past fifteen years about Venezuela is that its media is Read more…
Phoney “anti-Trump” hero Vicente Fox eagerly does Trump’s dirty work against Venezuela. In this video Fox says of President Maduro that “that dictator will either resign or leave feet first, in a box” Fifteen yeas of relentless propaganda against Venezuela have made any kind of despicable behaviour permissible. Will be interesting to see if any Read more…
The guy who wrote this blog post is a self-described “Fifth year medical student at ULA-Mérida. Dinosaur enthusiast.” He hopes that U.S. government military threats will scare the Venezuelan military into ousting President Nicolas Maduro. Dinosaur enthusiast indeed. As he sums it up his own piece “So please, Mr. Trump, don’t send the Marines…just make Read more…
RE: President Maduro strips Venezuela’s parliament of power Legislative powers taken from opposition-led parliament, as country’s fugitive attorney general alleges Maduro corruption links Dear Mr. Pritchard (Observer readers’ editor) First of all, article’s headline is false as even the article itself reveals. Venezuela’s constituent assembly (ANC), not President Maduro, took over various National Assembly functions. Nowhere does the article Read more…
Green Time TV Shaping Up by Don Fitz September 2017 Green Time episodes say it’s time to shape up on a personal level, shape up environmental problems, and shape up social systems so we can confront individual and environmental issues. Why would energy efficiency building codes be important? In the first September Green Time, host Read more…
Excerpts below from a Spectator editorial entitled “Jeremy Corbyn still cannot bear to condemn his fallen idols in Venezuela “ with a few comments of mine interspersed. Hysterical, dishonest and incompetent as you’d expect from this outlet, but also supported by the entire establishment media, corrupted NGOs etc…fifteen years into a vilification campaign against Venezuela. Read more…
What kind of civilization have we developed when two mentally unstable national leaders, in an escalating confrontation with each other, threaten one another―and the world―with nuclear war? That question arises as a potentially violent showdown emerges between Kim Jong Un of North Korea and Donald Trump of the United States. In recent years, the North Read more…
Nasir Khan, August 9, 2017 We were told by the US president George W. Bush that god had assented to his invading Iraq in 2003, a war in which the American invaders killed hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis and destroyed Iraq, plundered its wealth and its historical heritage. Now the preachers of the same Read more…
According to a UN statement that was widely reported by the media today, it is “unclear” if opposition rioters in Venezuela have killed a single person over the past four months. The OHCHR press release said it had “remote” investigators study the situation in Venezuela. The following is the key quote from the press release: Read more…
With Blairites, among many others, pressuring Corbyn to try to get him to join the establishment herd in a one-sided position on Venezuela (and to drop the principled one he has taken condemning violence on “both sides”) it is worth recalling how the Blairites responded to the 2002 coup in Venezuela that briefly set up the only dictatorship Read more…
UPDATE BELOW Nick Casey, who blocked me on twitter last year even though I barely interacted with him, wrote an article that ran with the headline “Venezuela’s New Leaders Begin Their March Toward Total Control” In a contentious election on Sunday, Mr. Maduro instructed Venezuelans to choose delegates from a list of allies in the Read more…
Overall Greg Grandin wrote a good piece about Venezuela but there are a few significant weak spots in it. His [Maduro’s] poll numbers are low, though not significantly worse than those of the presidents of Brazil and Colombia. Not “worse” at all actually. They are quite a lot better – actually remarkable given the enormous economic crisis. Maduro Read more…
This Guardian article stated Security agents have since seized two opposition leaders from their homes after they called for protests against the vote. Umm no. Leopoldo Lopez – while already under house arrest -made a video in which he called for military coup. Don’t try this while under house arrest in the UK, where you Read more…
George Eaton, who writes for the New Statesman in the UK, tweeted that there has been a 10,000% increase in Venezuela’s’ infant mortality because of its economic crisis. You have to question the sanity, not just the intelligence, of somebody willing to make this claim. Here are UNICEF figures for Venezuela’s infant mortality rate in Read more…
“Neoliberalism is in the first instance a theory of political economic practices that proposes that human well-being can best be advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial freedoms and skills within an institutional framework characterized by strong private property rights, free markets, and free trade.” – David Harvey Hyper-individualism is the inevitable byproduct of neoliberal ideology. It is Read more…
Fascism is not revealed by shining the light of history on its current motley manifestation. Looking backward only reveals the fears and expectations of today, not the hot furnace of resentment and rage, the enduring resistance to modernism that feeds fascism. What must be seen is invisible, a multitude of tiny formations that have Read more…
Nasir Khan, July 17, 2017 A lot of stories about Donald Trump’s lascivious ventures, adventures and fantasies are still being tossed around. It seems he had little control over his sexual thoughts and inclinations! In my respectful opinion of the man and his great potential as a political game changer, he should even at this Read more…
An awful lot of Americans are skeptical about the value of their nation’s corporate executives. As a 2016 nationwide survey reveals, 74 percent of Americans believe that top corporate executives are overpaid. This public dismay with CEO compensation exists despite the fact that Americans drastically underestimate what top corporate executives are paid every year. In Read more…
Green Time TV Averting Climate Catastrophe by Don Fitz Already altering the physical world, climate change threatens human health, our ability to grow food, and the survival of many species, including us. August 2017 Green Time episodes explore efforts by environmental activists, organizations and local governments to combat climate change. In February, 2017 the US Read more…
http://www.mwcnews.net/focus/politics/66834-fanatics-distort-the-essence-of-religion.html
UPDATE below in bold Venezuela’s long time Attorney General, Luisa Ortega, has recently entered into open conflict with Maduro’s government. Lucas Koerner just wrote up an excellent account of the dispute that (I believe) will end up with her being fired from her post. In fact, Ortega believes this herself according to what she has told her Read more…
The other day ZNet ran an interesting article by one Miss E, who writes from Berlin and offers some insightful reflections on the activist scene there. In “The right way to be ‘left‘,” Miss E seconds the notion put forward by another speaker that we ought to avoid perfectionism in left wing activist culture since it feeds Read more…
I wrote this based in part on my undergraduate thesis, “Power in Interpersonal Relationships: A Synthesis of Popular Approaches,” University of Northern Iowa, Department of Individual Studies, May 1978. This paper was used as chapter 8 of Rural CRA Organizing: A Manual for Using the Community Reinvestment Act in Rural Communities, Iowa Citizens for Community Read more…
Nasir Khan, June 29, 2017 In response to one of my articles, one commentator wrote a short comment. As the matter he touched needed my short response, I’m reproducing his comment followed by my reply: DhanushDhari Misra: Mahatma Gandhi created Pakistan based on religion while he kept on fooling people saying “Pakistan … over my Read more…
Five principles for fighting the toxic President Rolf Auer, Tuesday 20 June 2017 US President Donald J. Trump is toxic because: • He is anti-democratic. He claims massive voter fraud in the election which made him President, while there is no evidence of this. He incited his followers at his rallies with chants of “Lock Read more…
I recently published a new book titled Practical Utopia with PM Press who I thank for accepting it and doing such a nice job of producing it. I just received my advance copies in the mail. Noam Chomsky did the preface and had this to say in it: “It is true that ‘the new cannot Read more…
Green Time TV Responsibility and Food by Don Fitz Showing stewardship of the Earth and providing food are intimately connected. July 2017 Green Time episodes explore humanity’s duty to protect nature and how failure to do so threatens our food supply. How can Christian congregations approach problems such as species extinction, fossil fuels and food Read more…
For as long as they have existed, nations have clung to the illusion that their military strength guarantees their security. The problem with this kind of thinking is that the military power that one nation considers vital to its security fosters other nations’ sense of insecurity. In this climate of suspicion, an arms race ensues, Read more…
One could on and on about the many ways this article by Stephanie Nolan is hideously biased in favor of the Venezuelan opposition, like 99% of everything you’ll see in the corporate media. But sometimes, because of that very bias, journalists are uninhibited enough to let some explosive truths be stated – deep into articles anyway. Read more…
Nasir Khan, June 10, 2017 All credit for the recent electoral gains in the United Kingdom goes to the election campaigners, party activists, left-wing writers and bloggers, ordinary members, including the students and old-age pensioners, and the leaders of the Labour Party for their hard work to achieve such surprising results. The role Jeremy Corby Read more…
Nasir Khan “If I were a dictator, religion and state would be separate. I swear by my religion. I will die for it. But it is my personal affair. The state has nothing to do with it. The state would look after your secular welfare, health, communications, foreign relations, currency and so on, but not Read more…
Nasir Khan, June 7, 2017 “Sacrificing the earth for paradise is giving up the substance for the shadow.” — French writer Victor Hugo (1802-1885) Many people are more concerned with the afterlife than this life. Who can blame them? In any case, when we see how the vast majority of human beings exists and suffers Read more…
Nasir Khan, June 4, 2017 Whatever reasons and political grievances any followers of Islamist ideology may have, their latest attack on innocent people on London Bridge was an act of indiscriminate killing of innocent people. If the facts are as reported in the media, and no false flags are involved, then I condemn this barbarous Read more…
Most of us can agree that ISIS is an evil outfit. But does that mean that the fight against ISIS is always a good one? Not when it involves brutality and torture at the same level as the Islamic State. Thanks to an Iraqi journalist named Ali Arkady, we have a glimpse into acts of Read more…
The British Conservative leader has set their snap elections for 8th June 2017. No further information from them is forthcoming. Oh wait, the Home Secretary Amber Rudd is struggling with a solution to the problem of old people living longer. Just in time she remembered her human audience and quickly added ‘& Thats great news’ Read more…