The Biggest Enslaver
And there is minimal resistance to the enslavement.
Latest articles
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 …
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.
The Afghanistan Lithium Great Game
While the United States, along with its allies, left Afghanistan in August 2021 in spectacularly humiliating circumstances, the departure was never entirely complete, nor bound to be permanent. Since then, Washington has led the charge in handicapping those who, with a fraction of the resources, defeated a superpower and prevailed in two decades of conflict.
In a fit of wounded pride, the United States has, in turn, sought to strangulate and asphyxiate the Taliban regime, citing human rights and security concerns. The Taliban’s Interim Foreign Minister, Mawlawi Amir Khan Muttaqi, makes the not unreasonable point that “the ongoing crisis is …
If Everybody’s Going to Join NATO, Then Why Have the United Nations?
The Twenty-Ninth Newsletter (2023)
Bassim Al Shaker (Iraq), Symphony of Death 1, 2019
The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) held its annual summit on 11–12 July in Vilnius, Lithuania. The communiqué released after the first day’s proceedings claimed that ‘NATO is a defensive alliance’, a statement that encapsulates why many struggle to grasp its true essence. A look at the latest military spending figures shows, to the contrary, that NATO countries, and countries closely allied to NATO, account for nearly three-quarters of the total annual global expenditure on weapons. Many …
Trinity’s Shadow
I sit here in the silence of the awakening dawn’s stillness stunned by the realization that I exist. I wonder why. It is my birthday. The first rays of the rising sun bleed crimson over the eastern hills as I imagine my birth. The house and my family sleep.
Someday I will die and I wonder why. This is the mystery I have been contemplating since I was young. That and the fact that I was born in a time of war and that when my parents and sisters were celebrating my first birthday, my country’s esteemed civilian and military leaders …
“A Death Sentence for People and Ecosystems”: The Climate Emergency, Governments and the Public Enemy
On a trip to Japan in 2014, approaching the third anniversary of the Fukishima nuclear disaster, Noam Chomsky told an audience that:
‘Governments regard their own citizens as their main enemy.’
What he meant was that states do not wish their own populations to know and understand the details of government policies, for fear of provoking an adverse public reaction that would limit or derail the state’s ability to do whatever it wants.
Chomsky cited the example of the Iraqi city of Fallujah that was twice …
Getting Back to Normal
What is normal?
The CIA: Up Close and Personal
An interview with Douglas Valentine
Nicholas Schou interviews Douglas Valentine about his new book, Pisces Moon: The Dark Arts of Empire, published in May of this year by Trine Day.
Listen To This Story
Introduction by Nicholas Schou:
In the early 1990s, when the US began to normalize relations with Vietnam, Douglas Valentine, then a young author and historian of US foreign policy based in New England, saw an opportunity to travel to Southeast Asia on a …
Deserved Cancellations: Victoria Rejects the Commonwealth Games
Hosting sporting events has always been a government’s formula to distract their seducible subjects. It’s the secular version of smells and bells, the warbling of the church choir turned into flesh and performance. If such occasions are of sufficient scale, they might even be political promotions, body beautiful types paraded and performing before clapping and glorifying spectators. Sponsors also have their share of exposure. Horrendous expenses can thereby be justified, raids on the treasury written off in the name of improving society’s spiritual being.
For all their heralded merits, mega sporting events usually have two clear outcomes: the budget blowout followed …
Mental Health Round-Ups: The Next Phase of the Government’s War on Thought Crimes
Get ready for the next phase of the government’s war on thought crimes: mental health round-ups and involuntary detentions.
Under the guise of public health and safety, the government could use mental health care as a pretext for targeting and locking up dissidents, activists and anyone unfortunate enough to be placed on a government watch list.
If we don’t nip this in the bud, and soon, this will become yet another pretext by which government officials can violate the First and Fourth Amendments at will.
This is how it begins.
In communities across the nation, police are being empowered to forcibly detain …
The Cycles and Spirals of Capitalism
The Rise and Fall of Italy, The Netherlands, Britain and Yankeedom
Orientation
How long has capitalism existed? Has it always been with us all the way back to tribal societies or is it a product of the modern age? Is there any pattern to its evolution? Is it cyclic, spiral-like or random? What is the nature of capitalist crises? Why does capitalism grow flush in certain parts of the world, die out in others and yet seemingly reignite itself in another part of the world? What can world-systems theory tell us about the current battle between the Anglo-American empire and the multipolarists of …
Across the West, people are dying in greater numbers: nobody wants to learn why
There’s only one plausible explanation for continuing silence on excess deaths: governments, media and regulators are frightened of what the research may uncover
During the pandemic, the challenge for each of us was to maintain critical distance: spurning both the tribalism of those insisting Covid was a hoax and the counter-tribalism of those who demanded complete acquiesence to a corporate-political agenda dictated by Big Pharma under the mantle of “Follow the science”.
Fear of living under Big Brother or of dying from plague drove many people not only into the arms of one of these two oppositional camps but fuelled a pandemic mania in which reason and compassion were replaced with either extreme cynicism or …