by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead / September 26th, 2023
Man is born free but everywhere is in chains.
— Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract
Authoritarian control freaks out to micromanage our lives have become the new normal or, to be more accurate, the new abnormal when it comes to how the government relates to the citizenry.
This overbearing despotism, which pre-dates the COVID-19 hysteria, is the very definition of a Nanny State, where government representatives (those elected and appointed to work for us) adopt the authoritarian notion that the government knows best and therefore must control, regulate and dictate almost everything about the …
Grain is an old tool, weapon is the appropriate term, of imperialism. Once, the weapon was widely used by imperialism; and the weapon was used against countries in the Southern Hemisphere – to control, press and coerce the countries whenever the master of the world order desired. Use of the weapon created famines in countries – hundreds and thousands died. That was actually murder on a mass scale.
The weapon’s style of use depended on the type of governing system of the country targeted, and the ruling person’s inclination, trend, possible path in economy and politics. The type of use of …
The Biden administration has acknowledged neither its responsibility for the pipeline bombing nor the purpose of the sabotage
by Seymour Hersh / September 26th, 2023
A screen grab from Danish Defense shows the gas leak from the exploded Nord Stream pipelines causing bubbles on the surface of the Baltic Sea on September 30, 2022. / Photo by Swedish Coast Guard Handout / Anadolu Agency via Getty Images.
I do not know much about covert CIA operations—no outsider can—but I do understand that the essential component of all successful missions is total deniability. The American men and women who moved, under cover, in and out of Norway in the months …
I opened Nick McDonell’s new book, Quiet Street: On Privilege, (NY:Pantheon,2023), fully expecting to find an insider’s tell-all, enumerating all the advantages bequeathed to someone who’s within the rarified ranks of the upper class. I was not disappointed. The author spelled out how these privileges manifest themselves, both in terms of superior formal educational opportunities but even more, in the acquisition of the all-important cultural capital.
Given some of his earlier work, I also hoped against hope that McDonell had undergone a Saul-to-Paul experience and become a class traitor. …
I know it’s hard to fathom, but there really was a time when “Don’t Mess with Texas” actually meant something and not just in terms of litter.
It forewarned the uninitiated of bona fide badasses, legendary contrarians, daring dreamers, and serious politicians who had no qualms about taking fatuous pretenders out behind the proverbial woodshed and beating the living or figurative shite out of them.
Sam Houston once drubbed a U.S. congressman half to death with his cane in Washington, D.C., and practically walked away scot-free. (His lawyer was Francis Scott Key!) Then, …
Some days ago, Belgian Energy Minister Tinne Van der Straeten requested the European Union to reduce importing Russian gas and get rid altogether of fossil fuels by 2027. This after the Global Witness NGO released data showing that Belgium is currently the third-largest importer of Russian liquefied natural gas (LNG).
Belgium accounts globally for 17% of Russia’s exports, behind only China and Spain.
Later in an interview with the Financial Times, Van der Straeten said she was “not happy” about the fact that Russian gas kept flowing into Europe. She then understated Belgium’s share of Russian gas, indicating it was merely 2.8% of …
by Medea Benjamin and Marcy Winograd / September 25th, 2023
Last month CNN published a poll revealing 55% of people surveyed in the United States do not support spending more money on the Ukraine war. A tone-deaf White House responded by requesting another $24 billion, mostly for weapons and military training that would bring the Ukraine war tab for US taxpayers to nearly $140 billion.
CODEPINK, a member of the Peace in Ukraine Coalition that represents over 100 anti-war organizations, is committed to raising up the majority opinion that the U.S. needs to stop fueling this war. …
At this stage of the game, it looks like one of these folks will be our next President:
Or … DONALD J. TRUMP!
Now, if one of the “good guys” wins the presidential race — an individual who reports to the “people”, truly puts the the welfare of all citizens ahead of Wall Street, the big banks, the military-industrial complex, the ruling elite and other powerful special interests, thus serves the needs of the all citizens, not just the wealthy elite — then he …
If the people be led by laws, and uniformity sought to be given them by punishments, they will try to avoid the punishment, but have no sense of shame.
If they be led by virtue, and uniformity to be given them by the rules of propriety, they will have the sense of shame, and moreover will become good.
— Analects, 1:3:1,2
This morning it occurred to me again that what we have seen in the past forty-fifty years was not the failure of the Left but its extermination behind façades maintained solely for the illusion that there was one still. I kept saying …
It was a short stint, involving a six-member delegation of Australian parliamentarians lobbying members of the US Congress and various relevant officials on one issue: the release of Julian Assange. If extradited to the US from the United Kingdom to face 18 charges, 17 framed with reference to the oppressive, extinguishing Espionage Act of 1917, the Australian founder of WikiLeaks risks a 175-year prison term.
Nationals MP Barnaby Joyce, Labor MP Tony Zappia, Greens Senators David Shoebridge and Peter Whish-Wilson, Liberal Senator Alex Antic and the independent member for Kooyong, Dr. Monique Ryan, are to be viewed with respect, their pluckiness …
The South and East China Seas are among China’s major security concerns in its neighborhood. Despite this, the US still hypes up competition with China in these regions to cover up the tendency of its hegemonic expansion.
The US Congressional Research Service (CRS) recently published a report which pointed out that the South China Sea in the past 10 to 15 years has become the arena of US-China strategic competition, while actions by …
Canada’s special envoy to combat antisemitism is actually a government emissary to promote Jewish supremacy. In a stark example of the Liberals’ anti-Palestinian policies, they have given public resources and prestige to an aggressive apartheid proponent.
Last Friday foreign affairs minister Mélanie Joly tweeted, “I spoke with Canada’s Special Envoy on Preserving Holocaust Remembrance and Combatting Antisemitism Irwin Cotler today, where I congratulated him on his Israel Presidential Medal of Honour. Irwin, Canada is stronger because of your work to advance human rights everywhere.”
Cotler was one of 13 individuals recently given a prize by President Isaac Herzog for making “…
The failure of Ukraine’s much-hyped counteroffensive – which began in June of this year and has stuttered for over three months – has by now become a universally recognized fact. It has been acknowledged not only by Russian officials, including President Vladimir Putin, but also by Western media and experts. However, the summer campaign has made the world reconsider not only the capabilities of Kiev’s armed forces, but also the power of the country’s main sponsor – the United States, when it comes to waging a large-scale …
Polarization of the American public reflects the polarization of its political Parties, both of whom strive for ascendancy by demeaning, contradicting, and formulating proposals to wrong the other; each Party wrongs itself and the American public.
The recent and periodic arguments concerning the proposed federal budget, an entrance for initiating threats to “close the government,” highlight how both political sides of Congress wrongly portray the fiscal deficits that have become implicit in federal budgets. Two wrongs do not make a right, and, in this case, they have caused misunderstandings and problems.
If Joe Biden will become the Democratic Party’s nominee for the Presidency, then almost any Republican nominee would likely beat him because he had committed America’s Government to victory in Ukraine — done it is such a way that there can be no going back on it that won’t strip him of the public’s respect for him on account of America’s loss in that war:
When the bureaucratic well runs dry, you as survivor of DV are on your own, especially when family and friends are riding in their own Private Idaho.
Preface: According to band member Kate Pierson, “Private Idaho” was inspired by the feeling of being trapped and isolated, like a prisoner in solitary confinement. The song …
Every healthy scientific contradictory debate starts with a clear definition. Illegal immigration is defined as the migration of people across national borders in a way that violates the immigration laws of the destination country.
The most common but informal term for “foreigner” in China is 老外 (lǎowài) It usually is respectful or neutral but sometimes, in certain circumstances, it can be impolite.
Scientific research on immigration in China
Prof. 续聆毓 Xù Língyù (Anhui University in Hefei) wrote that in China, there’s a variety of …
It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.
— Upton Sinclair, I, Candidate for Governor: And How I Got Licked, 1935
In The Death of Expertise, national security expert Tom Nichols warns that knowledge is under attack by an ill-informed public determined to replace it with popular ignorance. Though this is not entirely possible – no society could survive such a transition – the breakdown in trust between experts and laypeople underlying this misguided ambition is making the U.S. …
For nearly thirty-five years, a small nonprofit organization in Washington, D.C. has been having an outsized impact on highway and auto safety. It is Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety and it is funded by a dozen or more property-casualty insurance companies; with a board composed of consumer leaders and insurance company representatives.
Its origins were truly unique. After this industry lost a bruising California referendum in 1988 to consumer advocates, that brought successful regulation to the industry – saving motorists over $150 billion to date – some company executives wanted to look better to their customer public …
The first time I heard the chant it was while helping to block the street in front of leading fossil fuel financer Black Rock in lower Manhattan last Wednesday the 13th: “We need clean air, not another billionaire!” The dozens of people I was taking action with also liked it, and we kept chanting loud and long while we watched the traffic back up and for when the police were going to move in on us.
Then there was the other one: “Tax the Rich, Tax the Mother-F—ing Rich!”, also a big hit all throughout the week of actions in New …
16 September to 27 October 2023: St Paul’s Cathedral in Melbourne holds 75th Nakba Exhibition
This year marks the 75th anniversary of the 1948 Nakba (Catastrophe) in which about 800,000 Indigenous Palestinians (57% of the Indigenous Palestinian population) were expelled from their homes and villages by Zionist colonizers.
From 16 September to 27 October 2023 there is a very moving Nakba 75th Anniversary Exhibition at St Paul’s Anglican Cathedral in central Melbourne (diagonally opposite to Flinders Street Railway Station).
Key numbers about the 1948 Nakba: Palestinians expelled (about 800,000 or 57% of the 1,400,000 total Palestinian population), massacres (over 70), people killed (15,000), villages …
The world is in turmoil. As the Western powers and their economic policies continue to tear apart the global whole, the countries of the South have united to demand justice.
This is a long story, one that continues and remains on a planet where human beings have gone straight into an invisible plane. Since the emergence of capitalism, we have witnessed the progressive destruction of people, their cultures, communities, their environment and their freedoms by oppressive forces that abuse in crescendo.
One particularly bad habit the news is afflicted by is a tendency to fall into discussions about itself. Its members, some of them at least, used to call it the “Fourth Estate,” an unelected chamber of scribblers supposedly meant to keep an eye on the other three, yet finding itself at times distracted, gossip-driven, and rumour filled by its own exploits.
The greatest distraction that weathered province falls is coverage of its own moguls and pop-representatives. When it came to covering, for instance, the wiles and frauds of Robert Maxwell, little could be trusted about the brow-beating bruiser’s exploits. You certainly …
Earth’s climate system is in a state of emergency. Emergencies are defined by four specific elements; i.e., (1) seriousness (2) unexpected (3) dangerous, and (4) requiring immediate action. Based upon a new YouTube broadcast by the inveterate commentator Dr. Peter Carter, all those elements are in-play in a very big way.
Dr. Carter, expert reviewer of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and director of the Climate Emergency Institute, posted a 26:33 minute YouTube update on the status of our climate system: Climate Emergency Update September 2023. In his broadcast, the elements of an emergency are clearly related to the …
So, I’ve been excommunicated from Michael Shellenberger’s global anti-censorship movement. It’s my own fault. I was sowing dissension. I engaged in harmful speech in the group chat. I was making people feel uncomfortable. I was not playing ball. I was not with the program.
The program, as you may recall, was launched in Westminster, London, in June, when Mike and Matt Taibbi and Russell Brand exposed the Censorship Industrial Complex …
… for 35 pounds sterling a head.
My readers may recall this piece I published about the secret gathering …
