On Monday the New York Timesargued in favor of continuing the war and supplying weapons for the war in Ukraine but not cluster bombs:
However compelling it may be to use any available weapon to protect one’s homeland, nations in the rules-based international order have increasingly sought to draw a red line against use of weapons of mass destruction or weapons that pose a severe and lingering risk to noncombatants. Cluster munitions clearly fall into the second category.
Since the end of the Cold War, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation has distinctly strayed from its original purpose. It has become, almost shamelessly, the vessel and handmaiden of US power, while its burgeoning expansion eastwards has done wonders to upend the applecart of stability.
From that upending, the alliance started bungling. It engaged, without the authorisation of the UN Security Council, in a 78-day bombing campaign of Yugoslavia – at least what was left of it – ostensibly to protect the lives of Kosovar Albanians. Far from dampening the tinderbox, the Kosovo affair continues to be an explosion in the …
There is a certain desperation in the logic of those who argue that a depraved solution has merit because it’s only slightly less depraved than that of the opponent. Torture is bad but should still be used because your adversary feels free to resort to it. Only do so, however, via judicial warrant. Bombing hospitals is terrible, but when done, select those with military personnel. Before long, one’s moral compass does not so much adjust as vanish into a horizon of relativist horror.
Much of this is evident in the Ukraine War, notably regarding weapons supply and deployment. Ukraine, the Biden …
China recently passed the Foreign Relations Law, which lays out foreign policy with an aim to “multipolarity.” The West is freaking out about it saying that it is a power grab. We have a guest to break down the anti-China rhetoric today. Carl Zha is the host of the “Silk and Steel Podcast” focusing on China, history, culture and politics. He explains how this is a reaction to Western sanctions and why the West is having a fit about it.
You may or may not like pizza. You may not eat it for health reasons or personal dietary reasons. I’m not here right now to debate anyone’s eating choices.
Among the most dangerous people in the US are those who actually once fervently believed the foundational myths of the country’s social and political order.
It’s the true believers — we who are schooled on republican virtues, democratic procedures, universal equality, and fair play that are said to be deeply embedded in the US experience — who become radical crusaders when their beliefs are shattered by the truth.
The true believers are cast as traitors to humanity, nation, race, or creed when they turn on those who foster a false loyalty or cheap patriotism based on lies or deception.
Though reluctant to admit it publicly, for the sake of morale and status, progressive citizen group leaders taking on the corporate supremacists and their political lackeys are in hard times. With few exceptions, they are neither adjusting with bolder strategies and tactics nor growing fast enough to spin off new divisions and groups. On the other hand, corporatists, driven by profits, have constant motivation and measurable yardsticks for defining their success. Corporatists, with their monetized minds, are not seized by internal worries and debates about how to address climate catastrophes, addicted customers (tobacco) and patients (Opioids). They are corrupting governments or …
Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research releases a new dossier on the need to revitalize theories of social development in the face of mounting human misery.
by Vijay Prashad / July 8th, 2023
Over the course of the past century, substantial changes have taken place in debates about social development. Dossier no. 66, The World Needs a New Socialist Development Theory, examines the historical evolution of development theory over four distinct eras, analyses the obstacles that stand in the way of development today, identifies processes that have the potential to advance genuine alternatives, and offers an outline of a new socialist development theory.
Enduring neocolonial structures in the world economy have made it difficult for countries in the Global South to pursue …
The internet was flooded with alarming images, showcasing an unprecedented backlash against the military establishment. Supporters of Imran from the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party, known as PTI supporters, engaged in destructive activities such as storming the General Headquarters and causing havoc at the Lahore Corps Commander’s residence. They also defaced military monuments and properties across the country. These actions were a stark contrast to the peaceful protests conducted by Mr. Khan and his party in the past, despite facing significant political harassment for over a year. In response, the military crackdown, fueled by anger, was …
If ever there was an instance of such a hideous failing in government policy and its cowardly implementation by the public service, Australia’s cruel, inept and vicious Robodebt program would have to be one of them.
Robodebt was a scheme developed by the Department of Human Services (DHS) and submitted as a budget measure by the then Minister for Social Services, Scott Morrison, in 2015. Its express purpose: to recover claimed overpayments from welfare recipients stretching back to the 2010-11 financial year. The automated scheme used a deeply flawed “income averaging” method to assess income and benefit entitlements, yielding inaccurate results. …
Will the world’s major coastal cities, such as NYC, survive escalating global heat conditions in Greenland? And what if both Greenland and Antarctica follow the recent very disturbing pattern of the world’s oceans? For the first time that scientists can recall, sea surface temperatures that always recede from annual peaks are failing to do so, staying high.
Climate change is getting dangerously worse, which is becoming a more common statement among scientists. Ecosystems are starting to fail right before our eyes. For example, in 2022 Europe experienced a big scare with temporary loss of full service for navigable commercial waterways, …
Social psychosis is widespread. In the words of the British psychiatrist, R. D. Laing, “The condition of alienation, of being asleep, of being unconscious, of being out of one’s mind, is the condition of the normal man.”
He was not referring to raving, drooling, hitting-your-head-against-the-wall lunacy but a taken-for-granted acceptance of a world long teetering on the edge of nuclear extinction, to take the most extreme example, but surely only one of many. The insouciant acceptance and support of psychotic rulers who promote first-strike nuclear war is very common. First strike nuclear policy is United States policy.
Review of Tom Swanky's The Smallpox War against the Haida
by Kim Petersen / July 7th, 2023
[S]ettlers in thrall to colonial ideology saw every unfenced meadow as waste land free for the taking, especially the most fertile land supporting native self-sufficiency.
— Tom Swanky, The Smallpox War against the Haida (p 67).
July 1, was recently celebrated in “Canada” as Canada Day by “Canadians.” The Dominion of Canada was formed by the joining of three British North American colonies in 1867. It would serve as an Anglo bulwark against the French presence, and a bulwark against the American presence to the south. Over subsequent years, settler-colonialists spread from the …
Fan Wennan (China), 中国 2098: 太阳照常升起 (‘China 2098: The Sun Rises Just the Same’), 2019–2022.
At the 2012 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development held in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), member states decided to replace the Millennium Development Goals (established in 2000) with Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The first SDG was to ‘end poverty in all its forms everywhere’. Despite the enthusiastic verbiage, it was clear that poverty was simply not going to be ended across the world. …
A 2-inch (50.8 mm) gallium oxide wafer is displayed at Hangzhou International Science and Technology Innovation Center of Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province on May 30, 2022. Photo: VCG
The measures taken by China in recent years to safeguard national security and interests have often been subjected to excessive interpretation and reaction from the US and Western countries. The recent decision by China to implement export …
by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead / July 5th, 2023
Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.
How many Americans have actually bothered to read the Constitution, let alone the first ten amendments to the Constitution, the Bill of Rights (a quick read at 462 words)?
Take a few minutes and read those words for yourself—rather than having some court or politician …
While the monopoly-controlled media incessantly promotes disinformation, incoherence, and irrationalism about the U.S. economy, real people are experiencing harder economic conditions with each passing month. Below are 30 recent statistics that bear this out.
*****
“More than half — 54% — of American millennials and Gen Z are still financially dependent on their parents, according to a survey from credit bureau Experian released on Monday [June 26, 2023].”
What are the English other than their excruciatingly worn class, kitted out with a code of manners revocable at an instant? A streak of traditional Englishness, as A. A. Gill wrote, stresses bullying. It made them great in the hope of making others small. A towering creature like Charles James Fox may well have added his worth to the abolition of slavery, but he was an inveterate, stinking bully. And there was much of this recently in the normally staid atmosphere at the so-called home of cricket, a game invented to preserve an Englishman’s sense of providence and eternity.
Why are we at Media Lens utterly terrified by climate collapse while other people we know are mildly concerned, blithely indifferent or cockily contrarian?
The simple answer is that we are doing this full-time and ‘doing this’ includes reading the unfiltered reports and thoughts of top climate scientists on social media all day, every day.
Whenever we take a break from social media, the tendrils of the corporate body-snatchers again start to insinuate themselves. We are soothed by entertainment, by infotainment, by presstitute prestidigitation normalising the unthinkable. Despite a mountain of evidence, we …
Reflections on the Security State and the Anti-war Movement
by Roger D. Harris / July 3rd, 2023
Daniel Ellsberg marches in the San Francisco Pride Parade to free whistleblower Chelsea Manning, June 29, 2014 (Photo by R.D. Harris)
Daniel Ellsberg died on June 16, fighting to the end to warn of the existential threat of nuclear war. The 92-year-old whistleblower left a legacy of peace activism dating to his courageous release of the Pentagon Papers in 1971. Given the advancing security state and the atrophying peace movement, could his accomplishments be repeated today in this time of war in Ukraine?
The icy wind was working up to a squall when King Hamlet (Sr.), contentedly stretching after enjoying a sumptuous luncheon repast, sauntered outside to his garden — his favorite spot to lie down for a siesta. Of course, such outdoor naps, even when bundled-up, were not always advisable on his remote, rocky Danish jutland of Elsinore Castle. But he was a fresh-air fiend, and no foe to the rigors of damp, rheumatic conditions. After all, he lived in a badly-heated castle — not much firewood available on that rocky promontory!
What happened next is uncertain. Two hours later, he was found …
The humourless comedian Hannah Gadsby has much to thank one of the twentieth century’s titans of art. By placing him in the stockade of feminist disapproval, the Australian was picking the easiest target and avoiding the most profound questions of his oeuvre. To be so personal, and play the man with such indignation, is the first refuge of the talentless.
While Gadsby’s Netflix run known as Nanette happily dabbled with Picasso as the problem figure for women, a mere phallic “kaleidoscope filter” who was “rotten in the face cavity”, another frontier needed to be conquered. Art graduate credentials stirred. Dangerously, Gadsby …
According to this article (sent to me by Allyn in New Zealand), “the number of Victoria Police employees self-identifying as ‘gender neutral’ has more than quadrupled since last year as the force confirms it is investigating reports some of its officers are gaming the HR system in order to gain an extra $1300 a year.”
ACANB? (all cops are non-binary)
“In its annual report last year, Victoria Police only had 32 employees who were so-called ‘self-described’ …
In virtually every country that’s allied with the U.S. Government against Russia and against China, there is a low public job-approval-rating for its head-of-state and for its Government, and a rating that is far lower than is the public job-approval for the leaders of the countries that the U.S. gang are trying to regime-change. If a given nation’s leader’s net public job-approval rating (% who approve, minus the % who disapprove) is above 0%, or positive, then that is an indication the nation’s Government is a democracy, because then that leader …
