1. Sun Tzu said: In the practical art of war, the best thing of all is to take the enemy’s country whole and intact; to shatter and destroy it is not so good. So, too, it is better to recapture an army entire than to destroy it, to capture a regiment, a detachment or a company entire than to destroy them.
2. Hence to fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting.
— Sunzi, “Chapter 3: Attack by Stratagem,” The Art of War
So, the Germans are putting me on trial for my thoughtcrimes, and, apparently, I’ve already been found guilty and sentenced. Bear with me and I’ll try to explain.
The Berlin District Court has issued a so-called “penalty order” or “order of punishment,” in which I am advised that I am now officially a criminal in Germany, for tweeting two Tweets. According to my attorney, a trial will now be scheduled, at which my attorney will argue the case before the judge that just issued the “order of punishment.” At this trial, the judge will listen attentively to the arguments my attorney …
Peter Koenig (PressTV Interview – Transcript
23 August 2023
Background
The BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) are holding arguably one of their most important Summits from 22 to 24 August 2023 in Johannesburg, South Africa. Several new countries – up to 40 it is said, including Iran – would like to join the bloc and were invited to attend the South African Summit.
Iran applied for BRICS membership already in 2022. Iranian President Ebrahim Raeisi has also been invited to Johannesburg to take part in the summit. BRICS is a consensus-based organization. Every five members must agree on the principle of …
Cosmopolitan — ‘world politics’, ‘world citizen’ — people of many races under a world empire. The word became a meme in the 1890s as British empire blossomed, supposedly the world now united around principles of the free market. Sounds cool. The market is the proven way to run economies. It is neutral, no favorites, harsh but just, making us work hard, the state ensuring people don’t cheat and undermine the sacred system. For if belief in all this wavers, the loss of faith in the market would spell doom for all, …
On critical matters, our medical authorities have no interest in settling the science. Instead, battles are won in the arena of smear and insinuation
by Jonathan Cook / August 23rd, 2023
The reality is that most of us are not ready for the truth. We want reassurance. We cling to our comfort blankets because the idea that we live in a world in which our and our families’ interests are not paramount is too disturbing.
The idea that our fates are entirely dependent on a giant Ponzi scheme that might come crashing down at any moment from any one of multiple design flaws – an ecological crisis, a nuclear catastrophe, a pandemic or a hubristic mis-step with Artificial Intelligence – is simply too terrifying.
Or is it just gullibility? Such as unquestioning acceptance of what authorities say without providing any evidence. Or is gullibility a variant of stupidity?
Are we witnessing the slow, inexorable decay of the human spirit? A human life–or rather, its degraded facsimile–has become cheap, even contemptible, in 21st century American “society,” an aberrant place where freakish celebrities are role-models and sociopathic mega-billionaires are revered. Wealth-concentration has now reached such extremes that, in the U.S. alone, over 500 billionaires ride roughshod over the hapless, wage-frozen populace, a populace largely condemned to lifelong indebtedness in its elusive (illusive?) quest for long-term financial security. Even so, a single ray of hope penetrates such gloom in the newly energized, militant resolve …
What happens when the looters are looted? Perhaps that strange sense of satisfaction called justice, an offence cancelled by another. One therefore greets the realisation that the British Museum has been suffering a number of such cases with some smugness. What makes them even more striking is the inability of staff to have picked up on the matter in the first place. When they did come to light, the habitual tendency to bury, or deny matters as best as possible, also found form.
by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead / August 23rd, 2023
Make no mistake about it…your DNA can be taken and entered into a national DNA database if you are ever arrested, rightly or wrongly, and for whatever reason.”
Whatever skeletons may be lurking on your family tree or in your closet, whatever crimes you may have committed, whatever associations you may have with those on the government’s most wanted lists: the police state is determined to ferret them out.
In an age of overcriminalization, round-the-clock surveillance, and a police state eager to flex its …
Australia’s funding priorities have been utterly muddled of late. At the Commonwealth level, there is cash to be found in every conceivable place to support every absurd military venture, as long as it targets those hideous authoritarians in Beijing. It seemed utterly absurd that, even as the Australian federal government announced its purchase of over 200 tomahawk cruise missiles – because that is exactly what the country needs – there are moves afoot to prune and cut projects conducted by the Australian Antarctic Division (AAD).
On July 10, an email sent to all staff by the head of division, …
Direct Energy Weapons (DEW) Create Forest and Bush Fires, Destroying Entire Cities and Igniting Boats in the Sea
by Peter Koenig / August 21st, 2023
Climate change – climate change – climate change – the world is burning. The Global North with the CO2 emission is the culprit. Weather maps in Southern Europe and Australia are deep red. Add an invented degree or two, and they are going to be black.
News are talking about 48 to 50 and more degrees C in Spain, Southern Italy, Sicily, Greece. Scary. Hardly anybody notices and reports that the temperatures are largely exaggerated by the media, to cause a fear and guilt effect. Possibly a precursor to heat-lockdowns.
Meteorologists are part of the lie-game. Often, for fear and shock effect, …
History tells us that a Third Party has never been successful. The American Federal system, majority rule, Electoral College, and voter perception that a third alternative serves as a spoiler, hinder the eagerness for a Third Party. The possibility of dividing the Electoral College vote so that no candidate gains the required 270 majority deters public endearment for a Third Party. Bringing the selection of POTUS to the House of Representatives, where the President is elected from the three Presidential candidates who received the most electoral votes, is not democracy in action.
Could we face collective decisions so fundamental that discourse itself buckles under conceptual strain? If so, maybe this is such a time and it would accordingly be wise to map it in the most reliable tradition, which prioritises agreed facts and valid inference from them.
This also befits a need to be incisive, given the gravity of the issue which is likely acknowledged by all, though in different ways with respect to details and priorities.
Such precision, however, might be well-prefaced with a stylistic counterpoint by way of a short story to set the scene in …
• Restrictions on US investment China’s tech sector
• Investment in R&D doubled in the last 5 years
• Anti-corruption campaign in healthcare
• Provincial renewable energy targets
In a historic referendum, people in Ecuador have voted to block oil drilling on uncontacted tribes’ land in the Yasuní National Park.
Leonidas Iza, President of Ecuador’s national Indigenous organization CONAIE, said today:
The Ecuadorian people, mindful of life, in solidarity with our uncontacted Tagaeri, Taromenane and Dugakaeri brothers and sisters, said “Yes to Yasuní” in this referendum on August 20th. We have saved their territory, their lives, their food sovereignty, and their medicines in the sacred Yasuní forest”. …
This is slavery, not to speak one’s thoughts.
– Euripides, The Phoenician Women, 410 BCE
Some time ago on a Sunday evening when my wife and I had just sat down to dinner, our phone rang. Since I didn’t recognize the phone number and it was dinnertime, I hesitated to answer it, but for some chance reason I did. The voice on the other end was agitated, intense, and asked for me.
Could he visit immediately because he had urgent news for me? he asked. He told me his name, one I was not familiar with, and said he was a big fan …
Climate change litigation is falling into pressing fashion. In Australia, the 2021 case of Sharma, despite eventually failing before three judges in the Federal Court in 2022, suggested that ministers had been put on notice regarding a potential duty of care regarding the consequences of approving fossil fuel projects.
The lower court decision had shaken the fossil fuel industry with its finding in favour of the eight children and their litigation guardian, an octogenarian nun. Justice Bromberg found that considering the potential harm arising from carbon dioxide emissions was a mandatory consideration of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act. …
“Jill and I send our deepest condolences to the families…” buh buh bup bup buhhh.
“…our prayers are with those who have seen their homes…” yada yada yada.
“…grateful to the brave firefighters and first responders…” wretch, gag, hurl.
Weak. fucking. tea.
And it took this papier-mâché president of ours a day AFTER the Hawaiian Congressional delegation BEGGED him to send help to get around to declaring the Maui fires a disaster and start directing federal resources to assist with evacuation and fire suppression efforts.
It’s tempting to say that President Biden missed an opportunity to climb on board the side of ecological right and …
The atomic bomb created the conditions of contingent catastrophe, forever placing the world on the precipice of existential doom. But in doing so, it created a philosophy of acceptable cruelty, worthy extinction, legitimate extermination. The scenarios for such programs of existential realisation proved endless. Entire departments, schools of thought, and think tanks were dedicated to the absurdly criminal notion that atomic warfare could be tenable for the mere reason that someone (or some people) might survive. Despite the relentless march of civil society against nuclear weapons, such insidious thinking persists with a certain obstinate lunacy.
by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies / August 19th, 2023
President Biden speaks to General Mark Milley after his 2023 State of the Union speech.
(Photo credit: Francis Chung/Politico) President Biden wrote in the New York Times in June 2022 that the United States was arming Ukraine to “fight on the battlefield and be in the strongest possible position at the negotiating table.”
Ukraine’s fall 2022 counteroffensive left it in a stronger position, yet Biden and his NATO allies still chose the battlefield over the negotiating table. Now the failure …
The mass media is reluctant to recognize civic heroes unless they display physical bravery such as rushing into a burning building to save a child. The media also lavishes vast coverage on sports heroes and entertainers.
Unnoticed by the mass media was how it came about that the Illinois legislature, overcome by corporate lobbyists, passed legislation allowing punitive damages for wrongful death disasters, and sent the bill to Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker who signed it last Friday.
In the words of one state lawmaker, this effort started with “that lady from New England who drove down here (to Springfield, Illinois) and shamed us all.” …
Having spent the first 40+ years of my life paying tribute to landlords, this writer knows the crime of it all. I am not referring to the system of One landlord-One Tenant that many of the neighborhoods in baby boomer Brooklyn consisted of. That was in the 50s and 60s of my youth. It made sense, as the landlord used the rental payments of his tenant to fulfill his mortgage obligation. Yes, some landlords were selfish and did as little as possible to properly maintain the tenant’s apartment. In many cases …
Al Gore, former US VP, recently held a TED talk in anticipation of COP28, the upcoming Conference of the Parties, aka: UNFCCC or 2023 United Nations Climate Conference, November 30th – December 12th, 2023, to be held at Expo City, Dubai. It increasingly looks to be a freakish show of multi-dimensional illusions and fakery that the world of climate science is falling for. After all, a crowd of 80,000 is expected to gather to resolve the climate crisis hosted by an active climate crisis participant named Abu Dhabi National Oil Company.
It should be noted that COPs have been annual events …
What did Canada’s prime minister Justin Trudeau repeat ad nauseam about COVID-19 and imposing mandates? That the “government has been focused every step of the way on following the best science”? And did he ever provide any scientific evidence to follow? Critical thinking demands that people demand evidence for questionable claims, and that is a sine qua non of science.
Mao Xuhui (China), ’92 Paternalism, 1992
In 2003, high officials from Brazil, India, and South Africa met in Mexico to discuss their mutual interests in the trade of pharmaceutical drugs. India was and is one of the world’s largest producers of various drugs, including those used to treat HIV-AIDS; Brazil and South Africa were both in need of affordable drugs for patients infected with HIV as well as a host of other treatable ailments. But these three countries were barred from easily trading with each other because of strict intellectual …
During a so-called COVID-19 pandemic, many governments issued a lockdown on the citizenry. Many protested the violations of their lost freedoms given that evidence to support the lockdowns was scanty at best, but the masses were obedient and identified with their government jailers.
Globe and Mail omissions enable its wild foreign policy claims. By failing to mention crucial history Canada’s ‘paper of record’ can claim the military spreads the “democratic gospel” in Africa.
A recent front page Globe story headlined “Honduran women risk death and imprisonment as they try to access reproductive care” discussed the plight of women in the Central American country. Adding political context the article noted, “In 2009, then-president Manuel Zelaya was ousted in a coup by Honduras’s army with the support of powerful political elites. Religious leaders took on prominent positions in politics and condemned emergency contraception — …
