Highlighting Independent and Solidarity News

Two days ago, a list of individuals who, in many cases have absolutely no other alleged connections to each other, was produced by an activist and student named Kester Ratcliff . The "International Assadists Reference Dictionary," comprised of 151 separate figures, is based on absurd premises and lumps together individuals across the left-wing political spectrum - from social democrats to anarchists to communists to ecologists - with alt-right trolls like Mike Cernovich and UKIP's Paul Joseph Watson. While it has become increasingly common to identify a small sector of (largely American) leftists such as Caitlyn Johnstone as in cahoots with the far right on some issues, this list goes above and beyond that, identifying nearly all prominent figures who could reasonably be described as "left-wing," including Noam Chomsky, Owen Jones, Slavoj Zizek, Jill Stein, Vijay Prashad, Tariq Ali, Leila Khaled and countless others as Assadists before everything else...

IMMIGRANT CHILDREN TORTURED IN AMERICAN FACILITIES -NYTIMES ICE Minion Charged With Sexually Molesting Eight Children at Immigrant Shelter REPORT: Major Violations Of Freedom Of Expression And Activist Protest By Trudeau At G7 Quebec Summit Globalisation Is Unravelling: Preparing For A New Economic Order CORBYN: I Will Root Antisemites Out Of Labour – They Do Not Speak For Me Corbyn’s Capitulation: Lessons For The Left From UK Labour’s “Anti-Semitism Crisis" Standing With Corbyn And Weathering The Storm Of Lies And Slander RussiaGate Think Tank Funded By Neoliberals Claims #WeAreCorbyn Boosted By Bots EXPOSED: Influential Tory Peer Has Board Membership On Islamophobic, Anti-Refugee Think Tank Run By John Bolton Chomsky: US Trump-Connected Far-Right Marketing Firm Meddled In 2017 German Election, Helped AfD Owen Jones: The Far Right Is At Its Strongest Since The 1930s, And The Media Is Helping #FreedomFlotilla: Israeli Forces Hijack Second Civilian...

This is hardly the first or last article to come out this week- let alone this month or year- about the right-wing "classical liberal" who has been variously described as "the world's most influential public intellectual," the voice of a reborn conservatism, or a racist mythmaker. It is, however, I believe the first to be focused on a topic that rarely- if ever- receives attention as point of contention among "intellectuals." Jordan Peterson is, put simply, a denier of climate change. Going against the grain of 97 percent of scientists who have studied the matter, he has expressed the opinion that there has been "no warming over the past decade," and that "the planet appears to be cooling," truly unbelievable statements that any educated person should be frankly ashamed of believing. Peterson has pushed the ludicrous claim that "human emissions of carbon dioxide have saved life on Earth from inevitable starvation ...

The Establishment’s Question Times, commentators, and newspapers: how they long for a “sensible” and “responsible” opposition, and how the public vehemently rejects their every appeal. From the Centrist Dads’ knight in armour, David Miliband, to the ghost-like Liberal Democrats, the options on the table are unpopular at best and objects of ridicule at worst. Attempts at creating a prepackaged, out-of-the box neoliberal party along the lines of Emmanuel Macron’s En Marche have flopped, despite the best efforts of Renew and similar elitist watering holes. Seeing this situation, it is only natural that Tony Blair, whose supporters can’t even muster 5 percent of the vote in the party he nearly destroyed, is seething with anger. His pet think tank, The Tony Blair Institute For Global Change, described by the New York Times of all outlets as “a front for the restoration of the global elite,” has worked overtime railing against “extremism” and “ideology,” as if it were still 1991...

France, May 22: Day Of The Barricades – Against Parcoursup – For A Wild May! #ZAD #NDDL: The Multiplicity of Movement Against the Unity of the State Series of Occupations in #Berlin: #Squat! “The Fire is Catching”: Pipelines Faces Fierce Opposition Are You Funding Fracking And Nuclear Weapon Manufacturing? The Dispossession of Canada’s First Nations and the Kinder Morgan Pipeline The Corporate Occupation: European And British Teargas And Weapons Flood Into Israel VICE Gives Netanyahu Centre Stage as Gaza Coverage Is Relegated to the Margins   San Francisco: Arrests At Book Event In Protest Of Massacres In Occupied Palestine Back To The 80s? Alleged FBI Man Inside Trump Campaign, Stephen Halper, Has Ties To Neocon Propagandists  The FBI Informant Who Monitored the Trump Campaign, Stefan Halper, Oversaw a CIA Spying Operation in the 1980 Presidential Election Pompeo Says US Will 'Crush' Iran With 'Strongest Sanctions in History,' Dema...

The revelation that FBI utilised the Carter-era intelligence operative Stefan Halper to infiltrate the Trump campaign during the 2016 US presidential election is the latest development in a torrent of political and intelligence news harkening back to the early 1980s, where figures like Halper, Oliver North, Benjamin Netanyahu, Michael Ledeen, William Casey and organisations including the Heritage Foundation and the Center for Strategic and International Studies played a key role in the victory of Ronald Reagan in the 1980 election and the creation of a public discourse defined by rabid hostility towards the Soviet Union, Palestinians, left-wing media outlets, and, most of all, the newly founded Islamic Republic of Iran. Stefan Halper's return to the spotlight amid Republican allegations of a politicised FBI has created a renewed interest among left-wing and alternative media websites in his role in the so-called " October Surprise ," a political operation undertaken ...