Garland Nixon
with
LAITH MAROUF

Garland Nixon
Streamed live on Nov 20, 2024
Laith and Garland comment on current events in the Middle East, the Ukraine, and US politics. Laith and Garland's shows are being severely censored—shadowbanning and other forms of "algorithmic deletion"—are being applied, with the result that their platforms have lost considerable traffic. Only after some energetic protests did the invisible censors in charge of YouTube, Twitter, etc. relented some, but the ultimate outcome is still obscure. Commenting on the war in Gaza and Lebanon, Laith offers invaluable news and clarifications not found on regular media channels. He notes that key information and political personnel of pro-Palestinian and Hezbollah organisations continue to be assassinated, Israel's favourite way of fighting. He also notes that America's special envoy, Hochstein, who expected a complete cave-in by Lebanese leaders, a surrender, was practically given the finger by Lebanese authorities and went home empty-handed. Laith stresses that the IDF is not making much headway into Lebanon, despite their massive use of firepower, etc. Meanwhile, Israel's campaign to invade and occupy Lebanon is costing Tel Aviv (and Washington) dearly in terms of equipment and personnel. The Axis of Resistance continues to attack Israeli targets, while the Zionist/American alliance increases its pressure on all parties in hopes of breaking the anti-Zionist forces. Speaking about the Ukraine situation, and how it plays globally, Laith opines that Biden's permission to Ukraine to attack Russia in depth did Trump a favor, as Trump may now use that fait accompli as a reason to continue the escalation. "We are already in a World War," notes Laith, even if the two sides do not care to announce it like that. Meanwhile, it’s clear that the US is not capable of winning a war conventionally, especially with a peer adversary, hence the high risk Washington will soon be tempted to use nuclear weapons. 

Frank Scott
•
OPEDS

Proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that the only thing intellectually lower than Trump is his opposition, he was re-elected by a more solid margin than last time. After one of the dumbest and most slanted hit jobs on American consciousness, with tens of thousands of photos of Harris beaming as in contemplation of dinner dishes filled with food instead of animal waste, and Trump in an equal number looking as though he has not had a comfortable bowel movement in thirty or forty years, the public was expected to react as their keepers, in their incredibly bigoted stupidity, expected. The most dreadful outcome for the owners and operators of market democracy is that actual working people may be closer to some power than ever since the new deal, though one should hardly expect anything nearly that good since there were socialists and communists in the government back in those days and now we’re lucky to have a handful of “progressive” reps left of the American Nazi party. At least slightly.

As further proof of complete failure for privileged class expressions of our great democracy Trump was even outspent in the electoral market which is where Americans shop for the illusion of some constitutional or biblical expression of a supposed gift to the world brought by Europeans who savagely attacked indigenous people here hundreds of years ago and transformed earth into real estate while introducing freedom and other good stuff even before Israelis thought of it hundreds of years later in Palestine. Rejoice, be glad and continue taking drugs, spending trillions to brutalize humanity and destroy nature while the ruling class continues teaching us that swallowing sewage is a form of healthy dining and having our heads filled with mental puss makes us worthy of therapy.

Most recently, the outgoing president who has long left any hint of intelligence for the dung heap, warmly offered Ukraine the use of weapons to attack Russia and now, as often, we have to rely on Putin’s humanity and intelligence not to unleash nuclear weapons on the usa when such weapons are used on Russia.

While the USA sinks more deeply in a global political economic cesspool and the rest of the world rises and moves in the direction of a global and cooperative real democracy, a relative handful of capitalist commissars here and in colonial corporations desperately try to hang on to power and in so doing threaten the entire human race and not just their tiny if incredibly wealthy ruling class and are bringing us closer to ruin. The professional servant class which has served as supporting capital in its fading time now assumes even more desperate behavior and the media air contaminated by consciousness controllers becoming more dimwitted and murderous with each passing second threaten to speed up messages of blatant idiocy that may serve to make Trump look less ignorant if that is possible.

Those who speak of losing something that has never existed since euros got here – democracy – strengthen the foolish idea that voting assures the existence of majority rule no matter the fact that in America and as in most other market electoral arenas those with the most heavily financed products/candidates usually win though this case was a slight blip on the blurred screen of a degenerate form of democracy to make the one by which Nazis took power in Germany look close to ideal. While popular comic book formed conception might be that evil Germans took control of the country by marching in with guns and taking over that is fiction. They were elected to power in a more democratic though hardly ideal form of elections in which achieving a minority vote got you at least some power while here in narcoleptic inspired America less than 50 percent gets you booted out with nothing. But lest we become more deeply submerged in oceans of blather about fascism and not notice that millions of us live under it without it being given that name we might consider that millions of Americans are poor, without health care and hundreds of thousands of us have no place to live. This while we spend trillions on war and mass murder and tens of billions on the health and well being of our pets with many of us sleeping in their warm embrace due to lack of any human intimacy in our lives. Meanwhile Trump and many of his innocent supporters speak of Democratic Party members as Marxists thereby proving that he and they have no idea of Grouch’s thoughts on humor let alone Karl’s on political economics. But whether motivated by biblical tales of chosen people and virgin births or modern and less believable nonsense about celebrities and other influencers who make Trump seem almost thoughtful by comparison, news from the material world is that capitalist economics are destroying nature in all its forms and while the obliteration of air, water and other stuff in existence from long before we came along, the threat of nuclear destruction of all of us all at once grows with each new expression of mindless private profit seeking with more murderous policies and weapons that bring billions of dollars to some while offering to destroy billions of lives among the enormous majority of humanity made to absorb the murderous bill until such time as we create real global democracy and end the system before it destroys all of us.

Most recently the outgoing president who has long left any hint of intelligence for the dung heap warmly offered Ukraine the use of weapons to attack Russia and now, as often, we have to rely on Putin’s humanity and intelligence not to unleash nuclear weapons on the usa when such weapons are used on Russia. But of course good and decent Americans are reduced to claiming Putin is horny for world domination while the U.S. has hundreds of military bases surrounding Russia, China and much of the world but these are all about democracy and peace. Of course, and rapists are only concerned that their victims not be sexually frustrated. Trump’s election may well be another sign of the end of American imperial domination of the planet and whether his blatant ignorance and honesty assure positive or negative result, America and the planet will possibly benefit much more than great masses of us were lead to believe.

Meanwhile the usual suspects will fill the air with mental smog accusing any and all of fascism, genocide and even newer synonyms for whatever has been going on before our eyes while they learned memes and performed mimes and qualified as capital’s professional class of well paid servants whose checks may begin bouncing sooner than 2025 gets old.

ALJAZEERA

Al Jazeera English

Nov 16, 2024 #maccabitelaviv #israel #amsterdam

In the wake of an ugly eruption of violence on the streets of Amsterdam, the media coverage of the story has been put under the microscope with editors scrambling to revise headlines, rework narratives, and reframe video content.

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Contributors: 
Dana Mills – Writer, Local Call and +972 Magazine
Marc Owen Jones – Associate professor, Northwestern University Qatar
James North – Editor-at-large, Mondoweiss
Samira Mohyeddin – Founder, On The Line Media

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On our radar: Incoming president Donald Trump has appointed Elon Musk - one of his most vocal supporters - to co-lead the brand-new Department of Government Efficiency. Meenakshi Ravi looks at Musk's new role and how he could use his influence to get favourable government treatment for his companies. The Headline Fixer Throughout Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, critics have been tearing apart the media coverage - especially by news outlets in the United States. Feature blurb: Israel's genocidal war on Gaza has shone an often-unflattering spotlight on media coverage by mainstream US news outlets. Such failings jump out at us because they often come in the form of headlines.
Historian Assal Rad explains the mission she has undertaken to "fix" misleading headlines. Featuring:  Assal Rad – Author of State of Resistance: Politics, Culture and Identity in Modern Iran

Jason Hickel
Transnational Institute

Transnational Institute
Oct 10, 2024
Jason Hickel: Why is Palestine at the center of the climate and colonial struggle? How are capitalism and the ecological crisis linked? Who really benefits from the exploitation of resources in the Global South? At the Transnational Institute's Ignite Festival in 2024, Jason Hickel argues that the Global North—the “Imperial Core”—is responsible for the excess emissions and resource extraction driving the climate breakdown. He believes that achieving economic democracy and sovereignty in the South is essential to dismantling the colonial power structures at the root of both climate change and imperial exploitation.

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Watch the whole event here:    • IGNITE: Festival of Radical Ideas 

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IGNITE: Festival of Radical Ideas

Transnational Institute

Streamed live on Sep 27, 2024
Jason Hickel - Abir Kopty - Jayati Ghosh - Jerome Roos - Aderonke Ige - Laura Flanders Music by Shishani

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Global activists and thinkers, dreamers and doers came together during IGNITE! to chart a path towards a society built on justice, equity, democracy, peace, and liberation. The Transnational Institute celebrated its 50th anniversary with a festival of radical ideas! We live in dark times — obscene levels of inequality, uncontrolled corporate greed, rampant militarization, a rising far-right, and ecological breakdown. Most disturbing of all, Western governments' complicity with the ongoing genocide in Palestine has normalised brutal levels of dehumanisation with profound consequences for all vulnerable people worldwide. We need radical, systemic change. A spark has ignited. People are taking to the streets, occupying institutions, connecting across continents, questioning systems of power, and building an inspiring global force for change. These movements tap into deep popular discontent and a desire for profound transformation.

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At Ignite!, we explored what this system change looked like and how we could achieve it together.

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