Journalist and documentary filmmaker John Pilger dies at 84. “Throughout his career, Pilger was a strong critic of western foreign policy and his native country’s treatment of Indigenous Australians. ….He covered conflicts in Vietnam, Cambodia, Bangladesh and Biafra, and was named journalist of the year in 1967 and 1979. Pilger had a successful career in documentary film-making, creating more than 50 films and winning a number of accolades includes honours at the Baftas. ….Pilger was a vocal supporter of Julian Assange and visited the WikiLeaks founder in the Ecuador embassy in London where he sought asylum after facing charges related to the publication of thousands of classified documents.” https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/dec/31/john-pilger-campaigning-journalist-dies-aged-84 This is from a November article which was probably the last, or one of the last, Pilger wrote. “In [Sen. Joseph] McCarthy’s time, there were bolt holes of truth. Mavericks welcomed then are heretics now; an underground of journalism exists (such as [Consortium News]) in a landscape of mendacious conformity. Dissenting journalists have been defenestrated from the ‘mainstream’ (as the great editor David Bowman wrote); the media’s task is to invert the truth and support the illusions of democracy, including a ‘free press’. Social Democracy has shrunk to the width of a cigarette paper [separating] the principal policies of major parties. Their one subscription is to a capitalist cult, neoliberalism, and an imposed poverty described by a U.N. special rapporteur as ‘the immiseration of a significant part of the… population’. War today is an unmoving shadow; ‘forever’ imperial wars are designated normal. Iraq, the model, is destroyed at a cost of a million lives and three million dispossessed. The destroyer, [former U.K. prime minister Tony] Blair, is personally enriched and fawned over at his party’s conference as an electoral winner. Blair and his moral counter, Julian Assange, live 14 miles apart, one in a Regency mansion, the other in a cell awaiting extradition to hell. According to a Brown University study, since 9/11, almost six million men, women and children have been killed by America and its acolytes in the ‘Global War on Terror’. A monument is to be built in Washington in ‘celebration’ of this mass murder; its committee is chaired by the former president, George W. Bush, Blair’s mentor. Afghanistan, where it started, was finally laid to waste when President Biden stole its national bank reserves.” https://consortiumnews.com/2023/11/09/john-pilger-we-are-spartacus/
Japan breathes sigh of relief after possible 3 meter tsunami fails to materialize along its west coast. “A 0.4 metres (1.3 feet) high tsunami was recorded near the world’s largest nuclear power plant, Kashiwazaki-Kariwa NPP in Japan’s Niigata Prefecture, the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) said. No emergencies have been recorded at the plant’s nuclear facilities, the Fukui prefecture Security Committee said, reported Sputnik. A tsunami threat has been issued for all the western coast of Japan from the northern island of Hokkaido to the southern island of Kyushu while a threat of the great tsunami has been declared in the Ishikawa prefecture after a number of earthquakes, the agency reported. Starting from 16:06 local time (07:06 GMT), nine earthquakes with magnitudes ranging from 4.3 to 7.6 took place in the area of Ishikawa and Niigata prefectures.” https://www.nst.com.my/world/world/2024/01/996178/tsunami-04-metres-height-recorded-near-worlds-largest-nuclear-reactor
NYPD sergeant suspected of shooting wife and kids before committing suicide. “The responding cops entered the home around 12:20 a.m. and found all four people dead from apparent gunshot wounds. Police later identified the parents as Watson Morgan, 49, and Ornela Morgan, 43, and said the boys were ages 10 and 12. According to the department, the 49-year-old father was a police sergeant with the Bronxville Police Department. ‘At this phase of the investigation it is believed that Watson killed his wife and two children, prior to killing himself,’ an updated release from police said.” https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/family-of-four-found-dead-in-ny-home-from-apparent-murder-suicide/4992390/
Life in a developed market economy: Woman loses hands and feet after kidney stone operation. “Lucinda Mullins, 41, a mother of two young boys, went to get a kidney stone removed from her body but it got infected and became septic. She was first taken to Fort Logan Hospital in Stanford and from there to a University of Kentucky hospital in Lexington on an ambulance. But doctors had to amputate both of her legs and informed her she would lose both of her arms below her elbows too.” https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12913813/Smiling-pain-Kentucky-nurse-41-wears-heartbreaking-smile-leaves-hospital-bed-time-waking-routine-kidney-stone-surgery-shed-QUADRUPLE-amputation-sepsis.html
U.S. Navy sinks three Houthi ships attempting to board container vessel. “The naval battle occurred around 0330 GMT on Sunday as the attackers sought to board the Singapore-flagged Maersk Hangzhou, Maersk and U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) said. Helicopters from the USS Eisenhower and USS Gravely joined the ship’s security team in repelling the attackers after receiving a distress call, CENTCOM said. ….A spokesman for the Houthis said the group carried out the attack because the ship’s crew refused to heed warning calls. He said 10 Houthi naval personnel were ‘dead and missing’ after their boats were attacked by U.S. forces in the Red Sea.” https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/maersk-pauses-red-sea-sailings-after-houthi-attack-container-ship-2023-12-31/ “Helicopters from two U.S. ships — the USS Eisenhower and the USS Gravely — responded and issued verbal calls to the small boats, U.S. officials said. While the helicopters were ‘in the process of issuing verbal calls to the small boats, the small boats fired upon the U.S. helicopters with crew served weapons and small arms,’ Central Command said. Service members aboard the Navy helicopters returned fire and sank three of the four small boats, killing the crews, U.S. officials said. The fourth boat fled the area.” https://abcnews.go.com/International/us-navy-sinks-3-houthi-boats-attacking-merchant/story?id=106016731
Israel’s finance minister advises residents of Gaza to leave, so Israelis can replace them. “One of the senior figures in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition called on Sunday for Palestinian residents of Gaza to leave the besieged enclave, making way for Israelis who could ‘make the desert bloom’. ….’What needs to be done in the Gaza Strip is to encourage emigration,’ [Bezalel] Smotrich told Army Radio.” https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israeli-minister-repeats-call-palestinians-leave-gaza-2023-12-31/
Consulting firm McKinsey & Company agrees to $78 million settlement over marketing advice to opioid manufacturers. “Plaintiffs accused McKinsey of contributing to the deadly drug crisis by helping drug manufacturers, including Purdue Pharma – the maker of OxyContin – create deceptive marketing strategies to increase sales of painkillers. Insurers said these tactics forced them to pay for prescription opioids instead of safer, non-addictive and lower-cost drugs, including over-the-counter pain medication, and that they had to pay for the opioid addiction treatment that followed as a result. McKinsey did not admit wrongdoing and said in a statement that it maintains that its past work was lawful. The group also said it had committed in 2019 to no longer advise clients on any opioid-related business.” https://www.foxbusiness.com/economy/consulting-firm-mckinsey-pay-78m-u-s-opioid-settlement-health-insurers-company-benefit-plans
Federal agencies reportedly using White House to evade limits on warrantless surveillance. “…it was recently revealed that the White House, relying on a set of privacy loopholes, has been sidestepping the Fourth Amendment by paying AT&T to allow federal, state, and local law enforcement to access – without a warrant – the phone records of Americans who are not suspected of a crime. This goes way beyond the NSA’s metadata collection program. Operated during the Obama, Trump and now the Biden presidencies, this secret dragnet surveillance program (formerly known as Hemisphere and now dubbed Data Analytical Services) uses its association with the White House to sidestep a vast array of privacy and transparency laws. According to Senator Ron Wyden, Hemisphere has been operating without any oversight for more than a decade under the guise of cracking down on drug traffickers. ….More than a trillion domestic phone records are mined through this mass surveillance program every year, warrantlessly targeting not only those suspected of criminal activity but anyone with whom they might have contact, including spouses, children, parents, and friends. It’s not just law enforcement agencies investigating drug crimes who are using Hemisphere to sidestep the Fourth Amendment, either. Those who have received training on the program reportedly include postal workers, prison officials, highway patrol officers, border cops, and the National Guard. …. The Fourth Amendment was intended to serve as a protective forcefield around our persons, our property, our activities, our communications and our movements. It keeps the government out of our private business except in certain, extenuating circumstances. Those extenuating circumstances are spelled out clearly: government officials must have probable cause that criminal activity is afoot (a higher legal standard than ‘reasonable suspicion’), which is required by the Constitution before any government official can search an individual or his property. Unfortunately, all three branches of government—the legislatures, courts and executive offices – have given the police state all kinds of leeway when it comes to sidestepping the Fourth Amendment.” https://original.antiwar.com/jwhitehead/2023/12/31/the-white-house-goes-rogue-secret-surveillance-program-breaks-all-the-laws/
The radicalization of Karl Marx: Press censorship, privatization of forests and a worker uprising. “No one is born a Marxist — not even Karl Marx. ….Starting with a love of freedom and confronting the limits of liberalism in a class-divided society, Marx’s life course is a model of how young people become radicalized, one which many continue to follow today.” https://jacobin.com/2023/12/young-karl-marx-hegel-liberalism-social-democracy
Progressive News Service 