Latest articles


Dreams Come True

The nightmares that are reality.

Irresponsible Politics: Australia’s B-52 Nuclear Weapons Problem

It is not farfetched to make the point that delivery systems capable of deploying nuclear weapons will lead to them carrying those very same weapons. Whatever the promises made by governments that such delivery systems will not carry such loads, stifling secrecy over such arrangements can only stir doubt.

That is the problem facing the AUKUS alliance which makes Australia a central point of reference for Washington and its broader ambitions in curbing China. The alliance is increasingly being characterised by a nuclear tone. First came the promise to furnish Australia with nuclear powered submarines, absent nuclear weapons. Then came the …

Why Is Israel Struggling to Maintain a Coherent Position in Russia, Ukraine?

Active "Neutrality"

For a whole year, Israel has struggled in its attempts to articulate a clear and decisive position regarding the Russia-Ukraine war. The reason behind the seemingly confused Israeli position is that it stands to lose, regardless of the outcome. But is Israel a neutral party?

Israel is home to a population of almost one million Russian-speaking citizens, one-third of them arriving from Ukraine shortly before and immediately following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Those Israelis, with deep cultural and linguistic roots in their actual motherland, are a …

We Need a Huge Rage against the War Machine

We urgently need to spark a mass mobilization antiwar movement in North America. There have been good antiwar demonstrations in recent months, but they have been very limited. We need to rapidly expand tenfold.

The Rage Against the War Machine initiative, which is organized by a diverse group of anti-war forces, could do just that. The demands and overall speaker list are very good.

For example, Demand 1 is “Not one more penny for War in Ukraine”. They explain, “The Democrats and Republicans have armed Ukraine with tens of billions of …

Propaganda Translator

What every citizen needs to understand their politicians.

First National Rally Against War in Ukraine

Outcry across the Political Spectrum to Stop War Funding

We in the United States are on the brink of war with a major nuclear power, Russia. If that is not a dire emergency, an acute existential threat, what is? This situation has persisted for a year now without a national protest to stop the slide to Armageddon.

Given the proximity of nuclear Armageddon, the reaction that sanity dictates has now materialized for the first time. On February 19 in Washington DC, a demonstration against the war, RageAgainstWar, will take place, with sister rallies occurring in cities distant from DC, …

Don’t Bow Down to a Dictatorial Government

America Is a Prison Disguised as Paradise

If all that Americans want is security, they can go to prison. They’ll have enough to eat, a bed and a roof over their heads. But if an American wants to preserve his dignity and his equality as a human being, he must not bow his neck to any dictatorial government.

— President Dwight D. Eisenhower

The government wants us to bow down to its dictates.

It wants us to buy into the fantasy that we are living the dream, when in fact, we are trapped in an endless nightmare of servitude and …

Let the Bandwagon Play On!

How do I then deftly move from housing as a human right (my last piece in DV is about housing, a job, my interviews, and getting the boot, i.e., not getting hired for a job I am perfect for — What’s It All About, Alfie?), and from the discrimination of this culture on all levels, but also in housing, against the non-White non-Hispanic, into the next and the next topic on my mind?

Vaccination Bandwagon gone rogue

How will I be able to tie in what I have expressed in THAT piece into something around the issues, …

Ballooning Rhetoric: Aliens, Escalation and Airborne Surveillance

Things are getting rather bizarre at the US Northern Command and the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD). Its increasingly prominent commanding chief, one General Glen VanHerck, has abandoned any initial sense of frankness in discussing the destruction of an alleged Chinese surveillance balloon on February 4.

Since that disproportionately violent event, more public relations than sense, three other objects have also been destroyed. “We’re calling them objects, not balloons, for a reason,” the general said cryptically in remarks made on February 12. The briefing came in the aftermath of the downing of an octagonal-shaped object over Lake Huron on …

How Spin and Lies Fuel a Bloody War of Attrition in Ukraine

Fresh graves at a cemetery near Bakhmut, December 2022. – Photo credit: Reuters

In a recent column, military analyst William Astore wrote, “[Congressman] George Santos is a symptom of a much larger disease: a lack of honor, a lack of shame, in America. Honor, truth, integrity, simply don’t seem to matter, or matter much, in America today… But how do you have a democracy where there is no truth?”

Astore went on to compare America’s political and military leaders to the disgraced Congressman Santos. “…

ChatGPT: Boon for the Lazy Learner

Inside the beating heart of many students and a large number of learners lies an inner cheat. To get passing grades, every effort will be made to do the least to achieve the most. Efforts to subvert the central class examination are the stuff of legend: discreetly written notes on hands, palms and other body parts; secreted pieces of paper; messages concealed in various vessels that may be smuggled into the hall.

In the fight against such cunning devilry, vigilant invigilators have pursued such efforts with eagle eyes, attempting to ensure the integrity of the exam answers. Of late, the …

US Interference in Canada Far Greater than Alleged Chinese Interference

The US is a far bigger threat to Canadian sovereignty and democracy than China but you’d never know it from following the dominant media.

In recent days a CIA-linked firm got the federal government to stop research with a Chinese university, a State Department funded group convinced parliament to criticize China and the Pentagon’s panic over a balloon prompted Global Affairs to summon China’s ambassador. But even media critic Canadaland prefers to focus on Chinese interference in Canada.

According to “Big Trouble with Meddling China”, a 45-minute Canadaland podcast released last week, “the Chinese state has infiltrated Canadian democracy at …

Reminder: The Greatest Generation™ Deliberately Bombed Civilians

Marshal Arthur Harris, the director of England’s Bomber Command decided, in mid-1941, to abandon the illusion of surgical strikes. Harris, nicknamed “Bomber,” mastered the ins and outs of committing war crimes from his insidious instructor, Winston Churchill.

The year was 1919. The Royal Air Force asked Churchill for permission to use chemical weapons “against recalcitrant Arabs as an experiment.” Churchill, secretary of state at the war office at the time, promptly consented. “I am strongly in favor of using poisoned gas against uncivilized tribes,” he explained. Bomber Harris, an up-and-coming …

The Invaders

“The Invaders. Alien beings from a dying planet. Their destination: the earth. Their purpose: to make it their world.

“David Vincent has seen them. For him, it began one lost night on a lonely country road, looking for a shortcut. It began with a closed, deserted diner, and a man too long without sleep to continue his journey. It began with the landing of a craft from another galaxy.

“Now, David Vincent knows that the Invaders are here, that they have taken human form. Somehow he must convince a disbelieving …

What’s It All About, Alfie?

Set in postwar London, Alfie features Michael Caine as a chauffeur bent on promiscuity. After impregnating his girlfriend he takes off on vacation. He continues his life of womanizing, but he can’t hide forever. A misfortune strikes and Alfie is forced to face the product of his ways.

This not the crux of the question, since I was a monogamous dater and monogamous husband. It’s more centered around the discordance and dissheveled nature of humanity in the Western world, which unfortunately is the litmus test for much of the world now, which is another conundrum for me: why the hell would …

An Objective Look at U.S. Foreign Policy

Interview with Matthew Hoh

Events continue to unfold at a quickening pace. Facing an alarming escalation in tensions around the world, we asked Matthew Hoh for his current thoughts. We focus on the realities of the international power struggle unfolding in real time, specifically addressing the role of the U.S. in the tensions and its capacity to reduce them.

We are grateful to Matthew Hoh for sharing his invaluable knowledge and insights. The interview was arranged by John Rachel, Director of the Peace Dividend Project. The Peace Dividend strategy is not a meme or a bumper sticker. It is an …

A Month’s Notice: Why Burkina Faso Ordered French Troops out of the Country

Though it was clear that Burkina Faso was eventually going to follow in the footsteps of Mali and the Central African Republic (CAR), Ouagadougou’s decision to break military ties with France was not as simple as media sound bites want us to believe.

The conventional wisdom is that these countries are walking away from their former colonial master, France, to forge alternative alliances with a new ally, Russia. These convenient analyses are largely shaped by the geopolitical tug-of-war between old and new superpowers: The US and its NATO …

Russia is Taking on All of NATO plus Ukraine

… NATO doesn’t respect anything about Russia. NATO knows no limits.

Scott Ritter

It is difficult for the person-on-the-street to get a proper handle on what is happening in a war. Regarding the current fighting between Russia and Ukraine, the monopoly media in the “West” has often pointed to Ukraine winning. Other independent sources will state the opposite. Who should one believe?

Beware. The aphorism “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me” cautions against too readily believing a known source of disinformation. To do so runs the risk of being made to look …

Signs of Early Onset Activist Syndrome

In my very young days, I lived in a fourth-floor apartment in a five-story, pre-war, walk-up building. On the second floor, you’d find an older Italian couple: Mr. and Mrs. Larucci. (I say “older” because that’s how they appeared to me at the time. I’m probably older now than they were then.)

Anyway, the two Laruccis were the first cat people I had ever encountered. They religiously fed the local strays — rain or shine, in sickness and in health — in an alcove behind the building. Their diligence, effectiveness, and focus clearly inspired …

Mental Health Illness: A Global Tragedy by Design

After being ignored and scoffed at for generations, there is now growing awareness of the legitimacy and seriousness of mental health illness; of the debilitating, often suffocating, impact conditions such as depression and anxiety have on individuals, as well as the broader societal impact.
Mental health illness is a modern-day tragedy of global proportions; while individual patterns and circumstances vary, widespread interwoven causes within contemporary society function as major trigger of …

Chinese Weather Balloon over the U.S.

News on China No. 134

This week’s News on China in 2 minutes.

• 4 new U.S. military bases in the Philippines
• Chinese weather balloon over the U.S.
• “Peace Ark”, the Navy’s hospital ship
• Chinese scientists cloned three “super cows”

New US Immigration Policies’ Effect on Nicaragua

Brain Drain and Deportation

On Jan. 5, the Biden administration announced new legal pathways to the US which include expanding the “Parole Process” for Venezuelans to Nicaraguans, Haitians, and Cubans, a policy that will favor richer migrants. Migration from these countries has dropped since then.

The Sandinista party won the presidency of Nicaragua in January 2007 and from that time through 2020 there was only a trickle of migrants to the US – at most a few hundred a month. But that began to change in 2020 when Nicaraguans who crossed into the US and …

Resistance is Necessary

No human wants to be a slave. And when one realizes that one is a slave, then one has woken up and knows resistance is necessary.

Rescue Our Democratic Society: Constitutionally Render Corporations Unequal to Humans

No other institutions consistently Rule over as Much in the World as the Giant Global Corporations – not governments, not armies, not religions and certainly not trade unions. These fictional corporate entities have largely achieved transcendent imperial status, as they amass coordinated control over capital, labor, technology and governments because they have secured the rights bestowed upon human beings. In a confrontation or a conflict or even a contract, it is no contest: mere people don’t have a chance.

As Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis warned in 1933, we have created a “Frankenstein monster” in our midst, whose unifying lust …

The Danish Government’s Last Visit to Ukraine – the West’s Last or Penultimate War?

The Danish foreign, defence and the prime minister is greeted by President Zelensky (right)

The West/NATO has always lacked a long-term strategy. After all, it was militarily, economically and politically superior and could impose its will. Didn’t have to think.

Hoping Ukraine would join NATO without fuss was hubris-ridden wishful thinking, and stupid to boot, in that it’s been convincingly documented that Russia’s leaders, …

Thirteen Commandments of Propaganda

Its Construction, Dissemination, and Internalization

Orientation

Definition of propaganda and the purpose of this article

Are the chances better that you’d read this article if I called it The Ten Commandments of Propaganda? The author of the book The Ten Commandments of Propaganda thinks so because you have deep collective associations with the Ten Commandments because of the centuries of propaganda by the Catholic and Protestant Churches. Because this article is rhetoric and not propaganda, I will take my chances, identifying thirteen commandments of propaganda.

In my last article,

The Arctic’s Iceless Upheaval

Dehcho, Denedeh Image: K Petersen

Anybody who closely follows global warming knows that the Arctic has been clobbered 2-3 times beyond the impact on the planet. And knowledgeable sources also know that what happens in the Arctic doesn’t stay in the Arctic. After all, for millennia Arctic ice steadfastly served as the planet’s numero uno biggest reflector of solar radiation by reflecting 80%-90% of sunlight back to outer space.

But what if the ice is gone?

Where does all the heat go?

It’s a problem that threatens life as we know it. …

Does Anyone Believe the US’s Denial of Carrying out the Nord Stream Pipeline Sabotage?

The exposure has been denied by the Empire. But does anyone believe the denial? Not today, none. People across the world have come across such denials many times, and each time all the denials turned out to be lies.

The latest denial is related to the incident of explosion in the Nord Stream pipelines.

The famous journalist Seymour Hersh’s investigation found that the US destroyed the Nord Stream pipelines in the Baltic Sea in a covert operation.

Citing a source with direct knowledge of the planning of the operation, the legendary investigative reporter, said in an article:

Explosives were planted at the pipelines in …

How Does America Perform on Biden’s Test?

A slice of president Joe Biden’s State of the Union address that calls for closer analysis:

Putin’s invasion has been a test for the ages. A test for America. A test for the world.

Would we stand for the most basic of principles?

Would we stand for sovereignty?

Would we stand for the right of people to live free from tyranny?

Would we stand for the defense of democracy?

“Would we stand for the most basic of principles?”

It is important to parse what Biden said. Notice how this is spoken as a series of questions. Biden is not saying that the US stands for the most …

The United States Wants to Make Taiwan the Ukraine of the East

Kawayan De Guia (Philippines), Nature of Currency, 2017.

On 2 February 2023, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. of the Philippines met with US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin at Malacañang Palace in Manila, where they agreed to expand the US military presence in the country. In a joint statement, the two governments agreed to ‘announce their plans to accelerate the full implementation of the Enhanced Defence Cooperation Agreement (EDCA)’ and ‘designate four new Agreed Locations …