A Suspicious Number
The chalkboard isn’t big enough for this number.
A Nanti woman and child. The Nanti were just one of many uncontacted and recently-contacted peoples whose survival was threatened by the bill. © Survival
In a dramatic reversal of fortune, a key Congressional committee in Peru has effectively blocked a draft law, labeled the “Genocide Bill” by Peru’s Indigenous people for the calamitous effects it would have had if approved.
The bill had been progressing through Congress, but the vote by the Decentralization Committee will now prevent it progressing any further.
Teresa Mayo of Survival International described this as “a …
The chalkboard isn’t big enough for this number.
On June 23, Jamison Cocklin headlined at Natural Gas Intelligence, “Venture Global Set to Become Germany’s Biggest Long-Term LNG Supplier” and reported: “Venture Global LNG Inc. has agreed to supply a state-owned German company with the super-chilled fuel for two decades as European offtakers continue to line up deals to replace Russian natural gas imports.” Upstream Energy simply bannered “Venture Global set to become Germany’s largest LNG supplier”. It’s a very big deal.
This is the culmination of an agreement that was signed just …
Context: In a recent historical post of mine, a kind subscriber named Elise commented: “If history is written by the victors, it gives one pause to think about who actually won the war to hide all this information.”
This inspired me to share the post below to expose even more of what is hidden by the “good guys.”
P.S. Fasten your seatbelts
It was at a February 1945 conference that State Department Political Advisor Laurence Duggan called for “An Economic Charter of …
When Truth Becomes Silence
In the UK, as in other western ‘democracies’, important truths are effectively being silenced. As we have written on many occasions, antisemitism was used as a weapon to destroy the chances of Jeremy Corbyn becoming the British Prime Minister. Labour HQ staffers, and even Labour MPs, actively conspired against him.
Mortality at sea is becoming a theme of late. The nature of how that mortality has been represented, however, has varied. The death of a billionaire on a quest to see the sunken ruins of the Titanic is treated with saturating interest; the deaths of those making their way across the Mediterranean to seek sanctuary receives a relative footnote of interest.
News has now emerged that the five occupants on the Titan submersible have perished, joining those other unfortunates already entombed in the watery ruins of the steamship that sank in April 1912 off the coast of Newfoundland. They include Stockton …
Can a Genocidaire Be a Trusted Ally?
On 3 April 2023, deputy Pentagon press secretary Sabrina Singh announced the United States expanding into four new military sites in the Philippines.
“In addition to the five existing sites, these new locations will strengthen the interoperability of the United States and Philippine armed forces and allow us to respond more seamlessly together to address a range of shared challenges in the Indo-Pacific region, including natural and humanitarian disasters,” said Singh.
A day later, 4 April, the US embassy in the Philippines announced a joint US-Philippines military exercise, Balikatan-2023, to …
Zoulikha Bouabdellah (Algeria), Envers Endroit Geometrique (‘Geometric Reverse Obverse’), 2016.
It is difficult to make sense of many events these days. France’s behaviour, for instance, is hard to square. On the one hand, French President Emmanuel Macron changed his mind to support Ukraine’s entry into the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). On the other hand, he said that France would like to attend the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) …
Recalling the wisdom of Carl Sagan.
The National Security police state now regards the Democratic Party as a more useful tool to criminalize opposition to US wars and maintain their control over the US government. We see this in the attack on the Uhuru Movement as being in the pay of Russia, in the imprisonment and torture of Julian Assange, in the jailing of numerous whistleblowers, in the censoring of hundreds of anti-war websites, claiming they spread Russian “disinformation.” Unfortunately, not a few who consider themselves on the left or liberals acquiesce to these attacks. Many actually repeat them.
Many more self-described leftists and …
Everybody killed in the cycle of bloodshed - Israelis and Palestinians alike - are victims of the occupation
On 20 June, the army invaded with great force the city of Jenin and killed several of its inhabitants. Today, Palestinians took an act of revenge and killed Israelis in the West Bank settlement of Eli. The cycle of bloodshed continues to turn and claim ever more and more victims, of both peoples. The Israelis killed today in the settlement of Eli, like the Palestinians killed yesterday in Jenin, are all victims of the continued and aggravated occupation.
Those who deepen the occupation and build ever more settlements are guaranteeing the continuation of bloodshed. Those who call for …
From time to time, I read articles defying any semblance of rationality. They are, in a nutshell, absurd and some frightening. My immediate impulse to rebut is thwarted because I either missed the deadline to respond or no opportunity to comment exists. This article is my opportunity to rebut!
I bear no malice toward the authors of absurdities. I honor their right to express their views publicly. Goodness knows, furthermore, I am sure many people have considered some of my published views to be absurd.
Absurdity Number 1. “Why Doing Nothing Is Good For You” by Olga …
Through a WhatsApp message from Portugal, my friend Eunice Neves asked to share a moment with me. She was with an Afghan couple, Frishta and Mohammad, and their baby son, Arsalan. The young family has resettled in Mértola, a small city in southern Portugal. They looked forward to celebrating World Refugee Day as part of a project which the Portuguese government lauds as a model for refugee resettlement.
I had first met Frishta in 2015 when she was a volunteer teacher, in Kabul, Afghanistan. At a school for “street kids” she helped …
System Fail 23
As guilt mounts over humanity’s inaction in the face of the climate crisis, industrialized capitalists have adapted their tactics to meet the demands of a more environmentally conscious market; by selling the image of sustainability!
Touted as the green transportation of the future, demand has exploded for electric cars. This has, in turn, increased the demand for lithium and other rare earth metals, with corporations rushing to open as many new mines as possible. Indigenous elders have been at the forefront of resistance to this latest wave of extractive capitalism, particularly in Peehee Mu’huh also known as Thacker Pass, Nevada, where …
Excitement around psychedelics continues to grow with thousands set to attend the Psychedelic Science conference in Denver this week. Proponents in the psychedelic space have promoted a strategy to focus on the “medicalization” to gain wider societal acceptance. But this could lead psychedelics to come under greater control, ensuring that they serve as profitable tools to maintain the status quo.
In 1972 Stanley K. Sheinbaum, chairman of the Pentagon Papers Fund, wrote with a hot pertinence that remains striking (at this time Julian Assange is facing grave prospects of being extradited to the United States) that both Daniel Ellsberg and Anthony Russo had “struck a blow for us all when they gave the Pentagon Papers to the press and to the Senate: against the war in Vietnam and against new adventures in Cambodia, Laos, or elsewhere”. And more besides, including striking against government secrecy in both domestic and foreign policy and directing a blow “for freedom of the …
Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.
— Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, Aphorism 146
We’re not dealing with a government that exists to serve its people, protect their liberties and ensure their happiness.
Rather, we are the unfortunate victims of the diabolical machinations of a make-works program carried out on an epic scale whose only purpose is to keep the powers-that-be permanently (and profitably) employed.
Case in point: the FBI.
The government’s henchmen have become the embodiment of how power, once acquired, can be so easily corrupted and abused. Indeed, far from being …
The Palestinian solidarity movement must seek to disrupt the ‘school to apartheid promotion pipeline’. It’s past time to challenge private schools indoctrinating young minds into worshiping a violent faraway state that oppresses millions.
A recent visit to Canada by Israel’s minister for Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism, Amichai Chikli, highlights a subject that requires far more critical attention. The Israeli Embassy Twitter account noted, “The purpose of Minister Chikli’s visit is to study unique examples of Jewish education in Canada and how this can be replicated across North …
Amid an unprecedented wave of censorship, many of our state legislators have left no mercy for LGBTQ+ Texans. Censorious legislation like House Bill 900 and Senate Bill 13 attempt to relate queer identity with sexual obscenity. The bills target educators’ expertise and diminish students’ right to …
Do what you are told.
Dear future students wishing to come to Australia and study: don’t. The gurgling, decaying system is, on a regular basis, being exposed for what it is. If it is not students being exploited, its academics being manipulated to the point of ruinous ill-health. True, not all universities are equally rotten in the constellation of corporate manipulation, but each one is rotten in a slightly different way.
The nature of the rot starts at the top – a conventional wisdom. And that rot features workloads of an unrealistic nature (too many classes; unrecognised grading efforts; questionable budgets), all padding for the bloated …
“Plans love silence. There’ll be no announcement of the start.” Photo credit: Ukraine Defense Ministry
As Ukraine prepared to launch its much heralded but long delayed counteroffensive, the media published a photograph of a Ukrainian soldier with his finger on his lips, symbolizing the need for secrecy to retain some element of surprise for this widely telegraphed operation.
Now that the offensive has been under way for two weeks, it is clear that the Ukrainian government and its Western allies are maintaining silence for quite a different reason: to conceal the brutal cost Ukraine’s brave young …
During the economic crisis in 2008, the United States sought China’s aid. US treasury secretary Hank Paulson conferred with Chinese officials, and China agreed to increase the value of the RMB and to stop selling US T-bills which it had been doing at that time.
Paulson said, “It is clear that China accepts its responsibility as a major world economy that …
(The name Henry Ford came up in a comment thread recently so I thought it’d be helpful to offer some lost context.)
Henry Ford, the autocratic magnate who despised unions, tyrannized workers, and fired any employee caught driving a competitor’s model, was also an outspoken anti-Semite.
In 1918, he bought and ran a newspaper, The Dearborn Independent, that became an anti-Jewish forum. The May 22, 1920 headline blared, “The International Jew: The World’s Problem,” and thus began a series of ninety-two articles, including “The Jewish Associates of Benedict Arnold” and “The Gentle …
What happens after government corruption is investigated?
The evidence is starting to build that all bets are off on predictions that humanity has a decade, or more, of clear sailing before global warming turns vicious enough to run roughshod over climate change deniers and the mean-spirited, anti-climate-change Republican Party. Voters better smarten up by 2024 or suffer the consequences. At least the Democrats enacted a partial baby-sized climate bill. Give’em credit.
Recent reports from Copernicus, the EU Earth Observation Programme, and Dr. James Hansen, Earth Institute Columbia University, point to the risks of an earlier than expected upside breakout …
The Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll taken during 14-15 June 2023, shows the following net approval rating (“Favorable” minus “Unfavorable”) for all of the listed possible candidates:
+21% Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
+9% Elon Musk
+9% Tim Scott
+8% Vivek Ramaswamy
+5% Ron DeSantis
+4% Nikki Haley
-1% Bernie Sanders
-3% Donald Trump, Doug Bergum, Ted Cruz
-6% Maryanne Williamson
-7% Kevin McCarthy, Mike Pence, Asa Hutchinson
-8% Chuck Schumer
-10% Kamala Harris, Joe Manchin, Gavin Newsom
-11% Joe Biden
-12% Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
-16% Chris Christie
-17% Hillary Clinton
-24% Mitch McConnell
Kennedy is tied with Trump for “Favorable” at 45% for each, but whereas Trump has …
Boris Johnson Resigns
Boris JohnsonThe agent of chaos is at it again. Boris Johnson, frontman of the Brexit disaster show, prime minister responsible for breaking regulations, rules and laws, and overall self-serving gross figure of indulgence, has decided to throw in the towel. He is leaving the House of Commons. The time had come for him to walk to the cricketing Pavilion, accepting the Umpire’s verdict.
Not that Johnson was exactly thrilled with the decision. The findings of the House of Commons Privileges Committee in what is known as …
Daniel Ellsberg has died at the age of 92. For those not fully familiar with his significance, I’ll reshare something I wrote six months ago:
Never forget the Pentagon Papers & the importance of brave resistance now
Mickey Z.
December 9, 2022
“The Pentagon Papers are mesmerizing, not as documentation of the history of the U.S. war in Indochina, but as insight into the minds of the …
News on China No. 151
This week’s News on China.
• US calls China “aggressive”
• Suez Canal investments
• Multinational pharmaceuticals in China
• History of bicycles in China