Paranoia
Can it be a good thing?
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Build the Unity of the Youth of the World
The Thirtieth Newsletter (2023)
Angela Davis with DDR Minister of Education Margot Honecker and Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova, East Berlin, 1973. Credit: ADN-Bildarchiv.
From 28 July to 5 August 1973, eight million people, including 25,600 guests from 140 countries, participated in the 10th World Festival of Youth and Students in East Berlin (German Democratic Republic or DDR). The festival was a key activity organised by the World Federation of Democratic Youth (WFDY), formed at the World Youth Conference held in London (United Kingdom) in November 1945. …
Nicaragua Celebrates its Revolution While the US Plans New Sanctions Against It
“We are fighting against the Yankee enemy of humanity,” explained Nicaraguan Vice President Rosario Murillo, setting the tone of the 44th anniversary celebration of their revolution.
Later, her husband Daniel Ortega, the country’s president, elaborated in his hour and a half address: “When we use the term Yankee we mean those who have a racist, imperialist attitude, which is not the case with the US people…Indisputably, given the weight of the capitalist system, the weight of the military-industrial complex will bend any president, who despite many promises he makes then comes to occupy the presidency of the US.”
Are News Media and Academia Feeding Us a Pseudo-Reality While Ignoring Big Systemic Questions?
The newsreel is rolling, words are at an all-time cheap. The more they are talking, the less it means to me.
— Brand New Kind of Blue – Gold Motel
Culture is a plot to hide this fact from you…that there are doorways out of ordinary reality into worlds impossible to describe and too strange to suppose.
Commonplace dialog in politics, academia, and news-media feels like it’s missing something; leaving out rudimentary areas of investigation that have become taboo for polite society to question. Those aforementioned groups occasionally cite problems as “systemic,” but when …
Authoritarian Sadism in U.S. “Foreign Policy” (Part 2)
In the first part of this paper, “Authoritarian Sadism in U.S. “Foreign Policy” (Part 1),” Dissident Voice, July 25, 2023, I introduced some psychoanalytic concepts and explained their application in revealing the latent motivations of high-ranking policy-makers in recent U.S. presidential administrations. This approach was long ago studied by the eminent political scientist Harold Lasswell, who concluded that a political leader’s manifest “policies” are often a rationalization of his unresolved psychological conflicts.[efn_note]Harold Lasswell, Psychopathology and Politics. Viking Press, 1930.[/efn_note]
I have already examined, in relation to sadistic motivations, the personality of President Barack Obama (see: “Obama: ‘I’m Really Good …
Starmer is selling Labour to big business; in power he will do the same
Labour policy is shifting ever further rightwards. That won’t and can’t change as long as only tainted City money is filling the party’s empty coffers
What has happened to Britain’s opposition Labour Party under Keir Starmer? The familiar adage “follow the money” helps make sense of the party’s policy shifts ever further rightwards.
Labour plumbed new depths earlier this month when it conceded that, in power, it would maintain the government’s cap on child benefit, restricting financial help to the first two children in a family.
The cap, one of the Conservatives’ most socially regressive measures, was denounced as “heinous” and “obscene” by shadow cabinet ministers after it was introduced. Even Starmer called it “punitive” when he was trying to …
The Taylor Swift Exploitation Machine
She doesn’t love you, she doesn’t care for you, and she doesn’t know you. But does her team pretend to, confecting an image of faux empathy and interest, sorting out the wheat from the chaff. The predatory, fan sucking phenomenon of the Taylor Swift marketing machine is something to behold. Leaving aside the sort of music that will eventually be tinned like a footnote memento of history, Swift has become a corporate phenomenon, a Mammon beast of vast scale and proportion. And like most corporate phenomena, they tend to be predatory.
A central aspect to the Swift machine is the use …
Ignorance
For example.
Whether You Live in a Small Town or a Big City, the Government Is Still Out to Get You
There’s a meme that circulated on social media a while back that perfectly sums up the polarized, manipulated mayhem, madness and tyranny that is life in the American police state today:
If you catch 100 red fire ants as well as 100 large black ants, and put them in a jar, at first, nothing will happen. However, if you violently shake the jar and dump them back on the ground the ants will fight until they eventually kill each other. The thing is, the red ants think the black ants are the enemy and vice versa, when in reality, the real …
Summer
How are weather reports being weaponized?
Dotty Domains: The Pentagon’s Mali Typo Leak Affair
Fleet-footed agility and sharp thinking rarely characterise the plodding bureaucrat. An argument can be made that different attributes are prized: cherished incompetence, spells of inattentiveness, and dedication to keeping things secret with severity. What matters is not what you did, but what you pretended to do.
Even with maintaining secrecy, the plodding desk-job hack can face problems, all falling under the umbrella term of “human error”. Papers and files can stray. The occasional USB stick can find its way into unwanted hands. And then there is that damnable business about the cloud and who can access it.
Despite repeated warnings over a …
Authoritarian Sadism in U.S. “Foreign Policy” (Part 1)
Freudian depth-psychology remains an under-utilized tool in interpreting motivation and personality of recent American “leaders” who have chosen to deploy massively destructive military force on large civilian populations in places like Serbia, Iraq and Afghanistan. A president may deny (or repress) his own destructive hostility, projecting it onto “the other.” Splitting-and-projection readily enables a clear definition of an “enemy” nation, whose population as a whole may have to endure “collateral damage.” As psychoanalyst Vamik Volkan has elucidated, in extreme situations (such as the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks), both “leaders” and “followers” may regress to such splitting mechanisms: “we” are …
The Biggest Enslaver
And there is minimal resistance to the enslavement.
Unsmoking the World: The Philip Morris Rebranding Effort
God really must love Philip Morris.
— John Safran, Haaretz, November 29, 2021
John Safran is a scamp, but in the finest tradition of investigative ones. With the enthusiasm of a bloodhound, he gets wind of a scent and goes for it. Of recent interest to his gonzo style of comedic yet lethal line of inquiry was the tobacco giant, Philip Morris International (PMI), and the generally sinister behaviour of big tobacco. The result of his findings: Puff Piece: How Philip Morris set vaping alight (and burned down the English language).
While Puff Piece was published in 2021, it continues to be frighteningly …
Russia, Donbass and the Reality of The Conflict in Ukraine
I just returned from my third trip to Russia, and my second trip to Donbass (now referring to the republics of Donetsk and Lugansk collectively) in about 8 months. This time, I flew into lovely Tallinn, Estonia and took what should be about a 6-hour bus ride to St. Petersburg. In the end, the bus trip took me about 12 hours due to a long wait in Customs on the Russian side of the border.
Having a US passport and trying to pass the frontier from a hostile, NATO country into Russia during wartime got me immediately flagged for questioning. And …
Arming Taiwan is an Insane Provocation
For the sake of our survival it must stop
The Island of Taiwan has been turned into a “powder keg” by the infusion of U.S. weaponry, pushing the Taiwanese people into the “abyss of disaster.” These are the words of the Chinese Defense Ministry in reaction to the recent $440 million sale of U.S. arms to the island. And now the U.S.is also giving, not selling, arms to Taiwan, courtesy of the U.S. taxpayer.
The “First Island Chain” Strategy of the U.S.
Taiwan is but one in a series of islands along the Chinese coast, often called “The First Island Chain,” which …
Being Awake
How is it perceived?
China Strengthens BRI in Africa and BRICS
Carl Zha talks to RT about Chinese top diplomat Wang Yi visiting Kenya and vowing to strengthen trade ties and Belt and Road Initiative partnership. How China investing and infrastructures across Africa is strengthening BRICS and bringing on the multipolar world.
https://youtu.be/UjAFIFKkaGs
Neocons Want War with China
It was a photo op for the ages: a visibly well-disposed President Xi Jinping receiving centenarian “old friend of China” Henry Kissinger in Beijing.
Mirroring meticulous Chinese attention to protocol, they met at Villa 5 of the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse – exactly where Kissinger first met in person with Zhou Enlai in 1971, preparing Nixon’s 1972 visit to China. The Mr. Kissinger Goes to Beijing saga was an “unofficial”, individual attempt to try to mend increasingly fractious Sino-American relations. He was not representing the current American administration.
Congressional Concerns: Stalling Nuclear Submarines for Australia
Any security arrangement with too many variables and multiple contingencies, risks stuttering and keeling over. Critical delays might be suffered, attributable to a number of factors beyond the parties concerned. Disputes and disagreements may surface. Such an arrangement is AUKUS, where the number of cooks risk spoiling any meal they promise to cook.
The main dish here comprises the nuclear-powered submarines that are meant to make their way to Australian shores, both in terms of purchase and construction. It marks what the US, UK and Australia describe as the first pillar of the agreement. Ostensibly, they are intended for the island …
Does Putin Understand that Russia Is at War?
This morning Russian media sources reported that a Ukrainian followup attack to the one on the Crimea bridge by 28 drones was defeated by Russian air defenses. In response, Russia destroyed the manufacturing sites of the drones and fuel storage facilities that provide fuel for Ukraine’s military. The two words, “in response” tells us what is wrong with Putin’s conduct of the war. Why did it take a Ukrainian attack on Crimea for Russia to do what any other country at war would have done a long time ago—destroy its enemy’s armaments factories and fuel depots? It is …
China Plans to Reach the Moon in 2030
News on China No. 156
This week’s News on China.
• US companies call for end to sanctions on China
• China’s GDP grows 5.5% in the first half of 2023
• China plans to reach the Moon in 2030
• Shijiazhuang: City of Rock
What Are They Shoveling?
Why are they shoveling?
No Child Was Safe around Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs
Anyone watching Sound of Freedom might wonder how such evil has become so embedded in human culture. One method involves the world of “entertainment” and the individuals we’re conditioned to view as heroes.
For example, below you will find a brief glimpse at two writers who enjoy places of honor in the American literary canon.
Trigger warning: Please don’t keep reading if you wish to avoid discussions of deviant and criminal behavior.
Click here to learn more about Allen Ginsberg than you probably know now:
Allen Ginsberg: poet, …
Assassination in Kinshasa
One week ago, on Thursday, July 13, Congolese opposition figure Chérubin Okende was found dead in his car riddled with bullets. Mr. Okende is a former transportation minister in the Tshisekedi Administration, member of parliament and spokesperson for presidential candidate Moise Katumbi’s Ensemble Pour La Republique political party.
Okende was reported kidnapped from the front of the Constitutional Court on July 12th, the day before his assassination. He was summoned by the court to declare his assets upon having stepped down from his post in the …
The Unsettling Settlers
Severely Damaging Americans
Unimpeded Jewish settler violence has left the Palestinian people in desperation. “Between 2010 and 2019, nearly 3,000 Israeli settler attacks killed at least 22 Palestinians and injured 1,258 others across the occupied West Bank.” “Data collected by the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reveals that there have been at least 570 attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank in the first six months of 2023 – an average of three attacks a day.” With the settler attacks intensifying, the plight of the Palestinians grows more menacing….
The Cost of Re-Enforcing Political Monocultures
In nature, monocultures are not so resilient to predators or other ravages that exploit their inherent vulnerabilities. Farmers have known this characteristic of monocultures forever. (Agribusiness doesn’t care as much, given its short-term profit outlook.)
Democratic voters are at risk from the increasing political monocultures that are weakening resistance to the GOP and Big Business demands.
There are four such groups that are exhibiting similar monoculture symptoms of deteriorating power.
1. The Democratic Party itself is led by pathetic sinecurists controlling its formal national, state, and local Party structures. At the top is the PAC-greased Democratic National Committee (DNC) whose chief strategists, over …
Free Press, Propaganda and Censorship
In war, truth is the first casualty.
— Aeschylus, Greek tragic dramatist (525 BC – 456 BC)
How many of us learn about Russia from a Russian point of view? Or about Syria from a loyal Syrian? Or Cuba from a Cuban supporter? Or Iran, Nicaragua, North Korea, China or many others on our current list of adversaries, from the point of view of those adversaries? We supposedly pride ourselves on listening to both or many sides of an issue before forming an opinion (or, better still, a sound analysis). It’s the core of our system of justice, however flawed. It’s why …
Antarctica’s Threatening Winter
Rolling Stone
In the dead of winter, the Antarctic Peninsula, an 800-mile extension of the Antarctic continent, temperatures hit 32°F. [efn_note]”It’s Even Hot in Antarctica, Where it’s Winter”, Vox, July 13, 2023.[/efn_note]
Global warming has been on a hot streak, accelerating its record-setting impact on the planet over the past couple of years. And even though it’s winter down below, Antarctica has joined the party. The icy continent, as large as the U.S. and Mexico combined, is the coldest continent on Earth with a mean annual interior temperature of -71F.
According …
Experimenting with Drugs?
Different trips.