When something is not working, abandon it. The policy maker and politician, the latter often inclined to populist temptation and the endless tapping for votes, will decide to make a state of wrongheadedness even worse. The evidence is starting to grow that Australia’s daft delving into the world of regulating a child’s access to social media (the arbitrary limit when social media virginity is shed is 16 years) is falling flat. Here, we have the continued, easy target that keeps nourishing the blundering, self-pleasuring prefects in Canberra: irresponsible companies with their social media platforms luring children into a cyberworld of …
It is time for research, media, politics and citizens to stop and think: What is it we do too much and what is it we do too little
by Jan Oberg / June 27th, 2026
We live in a time saturated with negative energy. Accidents dominate headlines, bad news is good news, and social media are full of outrage and empty of public education. Public debate has become a theatre of suspicion: one flaw is enough to condemn an entire achievement, one misstep enough to erase a lifetime of work. Commentators compete to predict catastrophe, and geopolitics and war talk of have disappeared every mention of peace.
It has become easier to do criticism and destroy than to appreciate, easier to promote fear than understanding, …
Rather frequently capitalism does something that shows us exactly what it is and how it works. For example, everyone with at least a single functioning brain cell has said capitalism allows the rich and powerful to devour an ever-growing amount of the world’s wealth. In an effort to prove all of us right, capitalism this month said, “Here’s a fucking trillionaire.”
Sure, Elon Musk’s net worth has dropped back to $970 billion as of this writing, but it will likely reach a trillion dollars again soon.
Chen Chieh-jen (Taiwan, China), Factory, 2003.
United States military bases are everywhere in the world: the US maintains some 750 to 800 military bases in roughly eighty countries or areas. Taiwan, China, is just one of them. The US military base in Taiwan was formally closed in 1979, though arms sales have continued ever since. But what receives far less scrutiny is ideological control. In Taiwan, the US did not only build bases – it built a systematic apparatus of ideological domination, one that has proved even more durable than …
Every society begins in a household. Before a child encounters a nation, a school, a doctrine, or a law, they encounter a family. The household is the first government a human being meets. It is the earliest site where power is exercised, where silence is taught, where truth is negotiated, and where harm can take on the shape of ritual long before anyone recognizes it as such.
Domestic harm rarely begins with deliberate cruelty. It begins with memory. A parent raised in fear may raise their child in fear—not out of malice, but out of inheritance. A child who grows up …
Former US national security advisor John Bolton and the President Donald J. Trump share traits neither probably knew they had. The latter, for one, is far more war mongering than he let on to American voters, evidenced by his recently failed, disastrous foray into attacking Iran. Bolton, on the other hand, has been a consistent war addict, the neocon’s preferred position in projecting US power through what the British used to call might. Earlier in June, Trump had the fantastic gall to say this about the man who had a brief stint as his own moustachioed national security …
Relishing in the defeat of Trump’s United States by the Islamic Republic of Iran may soothe the anxieties of those who anguished at U.S. complicity in assisting Israel continue its attacks on those who oppose its expansion and dominance, but may not be the proper approach to restoring political sanity, achieving peace, and stopping Israel from continuing its genocidal tactics. Recognizing the signed Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) as a defeat of the U.S. War Department is acceptable; not recognizing this could be a start for new leadership, for new directions, and for a new foreign policy is defeatism.
This analysis is based up on a report by the Independent International Commission of Inquiry in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem and Israel. The report details how Israeli authorities and security forces deliberately target Palestinian children, resulting in genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. This report was presented publicly at a press conference in Geneva, Switzerland, recorded below:
It should be clear that the genocidal and criminal actions described in the report are the inevitable result of the Zionist project to create an ethnically Jewish state in Palestine by emptying it of its existing population and replacing it …
When James Madison was elected to the Continental Congress in 1779, not yet thirty years old and a graduate of the College of New Jersey (now Princeton), he was introduced to the Scottish Enlightenment as religious freedom and ‘liberty of conscience’ ultimately became the world’s treasured First Amendment, he was stepping into a career as the American Revolution’s most brilliant legislator.
As the 250th Birth of the Declaration of Independence is fast approaching, the Second Continental Congress on July 4th 1776 proclaimed the thirteen colonies separate from Great Britain. As Congress stalemates today into a lesser version of its former self, …
On March 30, 2026, the Israeli Knesset passed a new death penalty law, described as “one of the world’s most extreme death penalty laws.” Designed to apply only to Palestinians, the law is situated within a broader history of discriminatory laws imposed under Israel’s system of apartheid. This visual explores Israel’s new death penalty law, highlighting how Israel applies separate legal systems in the same territory—civil law for Israelis and military law for Palestinians. This legal dualism simultaneously strips Palestinians of the fundamental right to a fair trial and ensures that Israeli settlers …
Chatbots and search engine overviews bluff, hallucinate, and reproduce assumptions hidden in our prompts
by Shealeigh Voitl and Andy Lee Roth / June 26th, 2026
As large language models (LLMs), a new generation of AI chatbots, and other forms of generative AI (artificial intelligence) become more widely used as information sources, it’s no surprise that many people are taking advantage of the convenience of AI search engine overviews. According to a June 2026 Pew Research Center report, roughly 60 percent of Americans read AI search engine summaries, 30 percent reported that they don’t, and 10 percent said they “were not sure if [they’d] done so.” But what is more alarming is that many users may not realize that these prominent, commanding summaries …
National Rejuvenation and Its Vision for a More Equitable World
by Einar Tangen / June 26th, 2026
Economics and a compass: China and the world
The 105th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China is more than a historical milestone. It marks the evolution of one of the most consequential political institutions of the modern era. During its existence, the Party has guided China through national liberation, state-building, economic modernization and, increasingly, the shaping of international governance. Whether one agrees with China’s political system or not, its historical impact is undeniable.
China’s story is not simply one of economic growth. It is the story of …
Madrid resident traveling from Tucson to Portland, stops off in Lincoln County for a radio interview
by Paul Haeder / June 25th, 2026
Dear Pablo Haeder:
When I get to Spain, the relaxed travel mode ends and my head goes crazy…
I’m writing for two reasons. One is to apologize, and of course, if you’d like, we can pick up where we left off.
The other is that “La Nopalita,” my old Volkswagen, is still traveling through the United States with a friend, also named Pablo, and he’ll be passing through Cape Perpetua again in a few days.
Pablo is another great traveler, another very interesting person, and I think you’d like …
There is a mistake that warfighters sometimes make, and that wartalkers – diplomats, academics, journalists, podcasters – always make.
That’s the mistake which Carl von Clausewitz, Prussian staff officer and mercenary against France, made when he repeatedly told his superiors (between 1816 and 1832) that “war is no more than the continuation of politics by other means” (Der Krieg ist eine bloße Fortsetzung der Politik mit anderen Mitteln).
This was — still is — the line which small and middle-sized kings, states, and armies think when …
In an unprecedented move against the long-standing neoliberal project of school privatization in the U.S., “Governor Dan McKee [of Rhode Island] announced Thursday [June 18, 2026] he has signed a bill placing a three-year moratorium on new charter schools and permanently lowering the cap on their total number [from 35 to 28], despite his longstanding and once-outspoken support for charters.”
This is a rare and unusual move in the U.S. given how aggressively neoliberals have been imposing school privatization on the nation for the last few decades. It is also noteworthy …
The arrest of Alyssa Phillip, a leader in the Justice for Kaia Sealy movement, during the Labour Day celebrations in Fyzabad, Trinidad and Tobago, is a stark demonstration of how state power is being deployed to suppress legitimate, people(s)-centered demands for justice, and a troubling illustration of the government’s full alignment with the current U.S. regime’s abandonment of even the pretense of a commitment to internationally recognized human rights standards.
The Labour Day arrest was particularly egregious. Police in tactical gear surrounded Phillip and her mother, escorting her into a …
Although consciousness had returned some time ago, Ahmed refrained from opening his eyes. He was vaguely aware that he was lying on a blanket on the floor of the Al Shifa hospital. Pain was returning to his right leg. The pain was bearable… pleasurable even. It was a pain that held the fantasy that the doctors had been able to save his leg. Were he to open his eyes, that fantasy might dissolve into a bitter reality of loss. It was better to savour the illusion a little longer.
Many Americans may easily recall Presidential candidate Donald Trump’s promise during the 2024 US campaign to end Biden’s Ukraine war ‘on day one’. That ‘day one’ has not yet arrived.
At this date in the conflict, it is essential to understand the root of the Ukraine Russian war can be found in NATO’s long standing plan since 1990 to move east along the Ukraine-Russian border. As a historic matter of dispute and antagonism, former Russian President Mikhail Gorbachev was assured by US Secretary of State James Baker that there would be no eastward NATO movement.
What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious …
It is one of the most remarkable ways to fall from grace. Leading British Labour to a deceptively crushing victory over diddling, muddling, decrepit fools. Asserting a period of stable rule, if not exactly dull then at least reliable after several stints of lunacy under the Conservatives gone to the bad. But it was not to be. Sir Keir Starmer, who announced his resignation as Prime Minister on June 22, turned out to be inept in several ways, not being able to communicate well, not being particularly fluent (fudging …
Israeli defense personnel and politicians might not be top billing in the boardrooms and reception halls of many countries at the moment, but that hardly bothers Australia’s richest (and continuously enriched) figure, Gina Rinehart. With a conscience shriveled by the dig-for-commodities mantra and a world view desiccated by inherited wealth, the mining magnate has little time for what might be broadly called the commonweal. She does, however, have much time for Israeli defense prowess.
In her flatulent address at the 2024 News Corp Australia National Bush Summit, held in Port Hedland, Western Australia, the executive chair of Hancock Prospecting had …
by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies / June 22nd, 2026
The 60-day extension of the ceasefire between the United States and Iran may lead to lasting peace, or it may be over within a week, doomed by the dysfunctional alliance between the US and Israel. If it holds, it could mark the beginning of a transition away from the doctrine of “low-intensity conflict” that has shaped U.S. foreign policy for decades.
Talks between the US, Iran, Pakistan and Qatar began in Switzerland on June 21st. But Iran was firm that it holds the United States responsible for Israel’s violations of the US-Iran memorandum and cannot move forward with other …
The fear that artificial intelligence will replace us has become one of the defining anxieties of the twenty‑first century. Yet this fear reveals less about machines and more about the human condition itself. A machine can simulate intelligence, accelerate labor, and reorganize information at planetary scale, but it cannot replace what is autochthonous in the human being — the native moral ground, the interior origin from which meaning arises, the untransferable depth of consciousness that no algorithm can inherit.
The panic surrounding AI is not a technological crisis. It is an existential one.
Donald Trump has accepted the fact that the US cannot win a war with Iran. In fact, he will probably agree that it was a mistake, though perhaps not publicly. The image of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu sitting at the head of the table in the White House situation room, with Trump and his team around the rest of the table, and David Barnea, Director of Mossad and other Israeli military and intelligence leaders on screen behind Netanyahu, is now etched in Trump’s mind as the moment when he was duped into the Iran war with …
Whatever the high-minded rhetoric and spirited calls to guarding civilisation against oriental barbarism, the ongoing support and funding of Ukraine in its military struggle with Russia, is becoming a less than harmonious one. A hard sceptic of the Kyiv Appreciation Society in the form of Hungary’s former Prime Minister Viktor Orbán may have been vanquished in recent domestic elections, but European doubters did not dissipate with his defeat. Most telling of all is the increasingly fractious relationship between Poland and Ukraine, countries awkwardly, even tenuously aligned in their grievances against Russia.
Initial solidarity for Ukraine’s cause in Poland following the February …
In his 2005 Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech, anti-racist Jewish British playwright Harold Pinter stated re the US Alliance-imposed Iraqi Genocide: “How many people do you have to kill before you qualify to be described as a mass murderer and a war criminal? One hundred thousand? More than enough, I would have thought. Therefore, it is just that Bush and Blair be arraigned before the International Criminal Court of Justice”.
Pauline Hanson has been a fixture of Australian politics since 1996, when she appeared with piercing, shrill bravado as the federal member for Oxley, having been disendorsed for making remarks about Aboriginals by the Liberal Party that may, in time, be slain by her current fortunes. Since then, she has been attacked for her bigotry, her class, her sex, her shock of red hair, her speech, her general crassness, her fantastic imperviousness to reading (she is napalm to libraries, a virus to erudition), and any claim that she would ever engage, at any length, with something resembling the grand idea. …
