What the Government Does When It Doesn’t Want to Answer a Question
And what does a typical government response indicate.
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Vacation Autopsy
There’s something about a mass-market Luxury Cruise that’s unbearably sad. Like most unbearably sad things, it seems incredibly elusive and complex in its causes yet simple in its effect: on board the Nadir (especially at night, when all the ship’s structured fun and reassurances and gaiety ceased) I felt despair.
— David Foster Wallace, A Supposedly Fun Thing I will Never do Again, 1997Leopards break into the temple and drink all the sacrificial vessels dry; it keeps happening; in the end, it can be calculated in advance and is incorporated into the ritual.
— Franz Kafka, The Zürau Aphorisms, 1931
This will constitute …
John F. Kennedy on Ending the US War on Vietnam: His Own Words
With the advent of a new Kennedy running for president, new life was given to JFK’s World Peace speech on June 10, 1963, both among some progressives, and even the LaRouche Schiller Institute. Their thesis is that Kennedy was planning on making peace with the Soviet Union and was going to withdraw US troops from South Vietnam. They allege that JFK had undergone a profound change since the near nuclear war he provoked with the Soviet Union the previous October, and had transformed into a genuine liberal, who would fight for peace and social justice. JFK had morphed into …
Western Tales About China are Just Tales
Book Review of The East is Still Red, by Carlos Martinez
Introduction
Western media never stop warning us of China: it menaces Taiwan, threatens its neighbors and shipping lanes in the South China Sea, and sticks military bases on Cuba. China, we are told, spies on us by the most devious means, through TikTok, Huawei 5G, and weather balloons. And China, say our media, ensnares Africa with debt traps. Meanwhile, the US government and its media-echo decry China’s abuses of its own people. China, the US says, has committed “cultural” and literal genocide against Uyghur muslims in Xinjiang. As for the Covid-19 pandemic, the West with whiplash-inducing self-contradiction accuses China of mishandling …
What Do “Soft Nails” the US Encountered in South Pacific Indicate?
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken just wrapped up his visit to South Pacific island countries. During the visit, he tried to sow discord between China and these countries. In recent years, such practices have become the must-do and highlights of the visits by US officials such as Blinken and US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin. Nonetheless, Tongan Prime Minister Siaosi Sovaleni said he was not concerned about the large amount of money his country had borrowed from China; Foreign Affairs Minister of New Zealand Nanaia Mahuta shut the door on joining the AUKUS alliance; Prime Minister James Marape of Papua …
Trolls
The useless scourge of the internet.
Technocensorship: The Government’s War on So-Called Dangerous Ideas
There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches.”
— Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
What we are witnessing is the modern-day equivalent of book burning which involves doing away with dangerous ideas—legitimate or not—and the people who espouse them.
Seventy years after Ray Bradbury’s novel Fahrenheit 451 depicted a fictional world in which books are burned in order to suppress dissenting ideas, while televised entertainment is used to anesthetize the populace and render them easily pacified, distracted and controlled, we find ourselves navigating an eerily similar reality.
Welcome to the age …
The Day Australian Sovereignty Died
If a date might be found when Australian sovereignty was extinguished by the emissaries of the US imperium, July 29, 2023 will be as good as any. Not that they aren’t other candidates, foremost among them being the announcement of the AUKUS agreement between Australia, UK and the US in September 2021. They all point to a surrender, a handing over, of a territory to another’s military and intelligence community, an abject, oily capitulation that would normally qualify as treasonous.
The treason becomes all the more indigestible for its inevitable result: Australian territory is being shaped, readied, and purposed for war …
If Only …
Why did the people live happily ever after?
Let Them Eat Bugs: Challenging the WEF’s Corporate-Driven Food Reset
The prevailing globalised agrifood model is built on unjust trade policies, the leveraging of sovereign debt, population displacement and land dispossession. It fuels commodity monocropping and food insecurity as well as soil and environmental degradation.
It is responsible for increasing rates of illness, nutrient-deficient diets, a narrowing of the range of food crops, water shortages, chemical runoffs, increasing levels of farmer indebtedness, the undermining and destruction of local communities and the eradication of biodiversity.
The model relies on a policy paradigm that privileges urbanisation, global markets, long supply chains, external proprietary inputs, highly processed food and market (corporate) dependency at the expense …
The Second Coming of Literal Hitler
So, the quadrennial simulation of democracy in the USA is getting underway, and personally, I couldn’t be happier. It’s been a challenging few years for unincorporated political satirists like myself. The roll-out of the new global-capitalist totalitarianism hasn’t been particularly funny. In fact, it has been extremely not funny. Squeezing a little humor out of it has been like trying to suck a golf ball through a garden hose.
Not that the New Normal Reich is history … on the contrary, it is just getting started. Yes, the shock-and-awe campaign is over. It’s been over for the better part of a …
Could the US Realistically Use Taiwan to Fight a Proxy War with China?
Interview with antiwar writer John Walsh
John V. Walsh (@JohnWal97469920) is an antiwar writer who is well versed on China. Recently, he wrote an article titled “Arming Taiwan is an Insane Provocation.” Insane, yes, but it is also a blazing sign of desperation. A plethora of American words and actions touching on mainland China reveal a jittery seat of empire — nervous because the empire seems to be tottering. Meanwhile, China’s prominence continues to rise. But China doesn’t want an empire; it doesn’t aspire to a number one ranking as a powerful …
The Agenda’s Next Phase
Was COVID just a warm-up?
AUSMIN and Assange: The Great Vassal Smackdown
It was there for all to see. Embarrassing, cloying, and bound make you cough up the remnants of your summit lunch, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin III stopped by one of the vassal states to make sure that the meal and military service was orderly, the troops well behaved, and the weapons working as they should. On the occasion of 2023 AUSMIN meetings, the questions asked were mild and generally unprovocative; answers were naturally tailored.
Seeing that Australia is now rapidly moving into the US orbit of client status – its minerals will be …
Democracy vs. Repression: Guess What Ottawa Supports in Peru?
Last week tens of thousands took to the streets of Lima. Thousands traveled from across the country to Peru’s capital to participate in the Third Takeover of Lima since elected president Pedro Castillo was overthrown in December. The protesters are calling for the removal of deeply unpopular usurper president Dina Boluarte.
Eight months since Castillo’s ouster demonstrations continue despite significant state violence. About 70 have been killed and Castillo remains in prison. Two months ago Amnesty International released “Lethal racism: Extrajudicial executions and unlawful use of force by Peru’s security forces”, which documents the post-coup repression. “The grave human …
China-Russia Scientific Cooperation Increases
News on China No. 157
This week’s News on China.
• Fewer Chinese researchers in the US
• Shenzhen magnetic resonance machine
• Relics affected by climate change
Coutts Four Denied Bail, in Prison in Canada for over 500 Days without Trial. Are they Political Prisoners?
Over five hundred and twenty-five days ago, between the evening of February 13 and afternoon of February 14, 2022, four men were arrested for their participation in Freedom Convoy protests at the Alberta border town of Coutts.
They were charged with conspiracy to commit murder of police officers in support of a plot to overthrow the Government of Canada. They have been dubbed the ‘Coutts Four.’
The accused are self-employed fisherman Chris Carbert, who ran a landscaping and fencing business with nine employees. A Lethbridge, Alberta, resident, 42-year-old Carbert is a single father who has been raising his son since the …
A Conversation with Miko Peled on the State of Israel and the Palestinians
[This is a partial transcript of an interview aired on 11 April 2023 on Berks Community Television.]
Faramarz Farbod: Can you explain what you mean by Zionism?
Miko Peled: To put it as simply and succinctly as possible, Zionism is an ideology that says the Jewish people all over the world have a right to Palestine at the expense of Palestinians. It created a theory that because all Jewish people around the world are descendants of ancient Hebrews a few thousand years ago, they have a right to return. And that …
No Let-Up In U.S. Economic Decline
As the mainstream media continues to make irrational and diversionary statements about the economy, facts show and experience confirms that people’s living and working standards continue to steadily decline. The economy continues to move in the wrong direction. Poor economic conditions persist, which is why the vast majority remain pessimistic about the economy and recognize that the current direction is unsustainable. The 30 statistics below speak volumes about actual economic conditions and cut through the worn-out media disinformation that “the economy is doing great.”
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“28 million Americans still lack health insurance.”
“21 million workers are still paid less …
The Cold War, Desegregation, and Affirmative Action
Desegregation – A Brief History of Civil Rights in the United States – Howard University School of LawAs the US Supreme Court aspires to drive a nail into the coffin of affirmative action, it is important to recognize how the Cold War helped to shape the mid-twentieth-century civil-rights people’s victories and the consequent policy of Affirmative Action in education.
Some may find that connecting the conflict between the US and the USSR to the formal establishment of African American citizen rights is far-fetched.
But the facts speak …
The Past Is Prologue
Just viewed, for the first time, the 2012 ESPN documentary Ghosts of Ole Miss written by Wright Thompson and directed by Fritz Mitchell. The film covered the 1962 segregationist riot at the University of Mississippi in opposition to the first African American student being enrolled there, James Meredith. Interspersed into it all was the undefeated Ole Miss football team and how they had to maneuver through all this mayhem. Their coach made sure to keep the players, as best he could, secured in their dorm rooms while the violent mob fought with the federal Marshalls. One player, whose name now …
The Lies that Launched Black Lives Matter
(and other "movements")
A photo I took during the early days of BLM.
It was December 4, 2014.
Black Lives Matter had sprung up almost four months earlier after the events in Ferguson, Missouri. The remnants of Occupy Wall Street immediately latched onto this Movement™ as if it were life support.
Our plan that night was to stage a “die-in” inside Saks Fifth Avenue during the holiday shopping crush. Dozens of “activists” (of all ethnicities) entered the posh department store and pretended to be shoppers.
When we got the signal, we were supposed to plop down …
Tell Congress More Work, Less Vacation
Thursday, several colleagues and I, sent an open letter to all 535 members of Congress about reducing their five-week vacation and remaining in Congress to address crucial long-delayed tasks.
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July 27, 2023
Open Letter to Members of Congress: Crises Demand More Work Time Shorter Vacation
The Congress is about to embark on the longest of its annual numerous “recesses” – some would call these five weeks until after Labor Day in September a vacation from your Washington, D.C. workplace. Does it seem reckless not to be in session, holding hearings, floor deliberations, personally communicating with one another, and legislating at …
Data Harvesting
Do you care if your data is harvested? If not, then why not?
Humanity Forsaken
I have written ad nauseam about experts’ predictions of one form or another of Doomsday later this century, less than three generations away.[efn_note]Brumback, G.B. Pp. 150-151. “911!” KDP, 2019.[/efn_note] I have made appeals for super rich people whose wealth was not ill-begotten to fund my comprehensive strategy to end war and human misery while emphasizing that I had no financial interest and would play the role of a non-paid consultant in the background. This brief article shares with readers the deafening and deadening silence that met me.
The Movie and the Moment
An Oppenheimer Review Through the Lens of an Anti-War Activist
The ground-breaking movie Oppenheimer, despite its unsympathetic protagonist, packs a powerful anti-nuclear punch that makes it hard, if not impossible, to sleep after watching the film.
For this reason alone, the movie should be shown on the floor of Congress and in the White House as required viewing by all in DC bent on spending $1.7 trillion over the next decades to build new nuclear weapons to kill us all.
Only those with a global death wish or on the payroll of Northrop Grumman, the military contractor with the nuclear …
WAR Is The Crime, Not How It Is Committed!
While the bluster about cluster bombs covers the subject of murder with liberal prattle about how it’s committed, one of humanity’s oldest but ever more dangerous problems continues as a major profit creator while adding to humanity’s losses. Hairs are split over how skulls are shredded and bodies made unrecognizable as though its all okay if allegedly civilized people just obey “rules based societies” teaching about how to maim, slaughter, destroy, reduce cities to wreckage and bodies to pulp the proper way, in adherence to higher education taught forms of mass murder which can be performed in civilized ways, according …
Congressional Investigation Reveals Top-Secret Evidence of Crashed “Alien” Spacecraft
(and their non-human occupants)
On July 26, 2023, as the House Subcommittee on Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAPs) continued its ongoing hearings, several witnesses with sound scientific and military background testified to the frequent sightings of strange flying objects that “defy the laws of physics as we know them.” One highly credible witness, not at liberty to disclose the full facts, nonetheless informed the Committee of the discovery of crash-sites in which “non-biologics”– evidently the remains of non-human occupants of these craft–had been identified:
Committee members were thunderstruck: had the combined armed forces and intelligence agencies hidden this astounding discovery from the American citizenry? And why? …
Barbie Pathologies: It’s All About a Doll
As the ancient Greeks reminded us, bone cold definitions as starting points are essential in any discussion. One current discussion, insignificant to posterity but amusing for advertisers and the presently bored, is the ludicrous reactions to a plastic doll rendered into celluloid form. And as a doll, it can be no other. Mattel’s Barbie has become, courtesy of Greta Gerwig, a talking point so silly it deserves to be treated trivially. But money, advertising, and Mattel, won’t allow that.
Commentators, whatever their ilk, cannot help themselves. Jourdain Searles, evidently struggling to earn a crust or two, asks two banal questions. …
The Nuclear Energy Trap
Nuclear reactors are directly in the line of fire of global warming.
In fact, nuclear reactors cannot survive global warming. But that’s only the start of serious issues with the world’s newly found love affair with nuclear energy. This article examines the likelihood of nuclear energy as a fixit for global warming, or is it a victim?
The world is turning to nuclear energy as one solution for raging global warming, which has been in the news on a real time basis drying up commercial rivers, depleting major reservoirs and spreading wildfires like there’s no tomorrow. Yet, that’s only a sampling of …