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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
• 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”
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 …
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 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, …
Its Construction, Dissemination, and Internalization
by Bruce Lerro / February 10th, 2023
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 Propagandathinks 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.
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. …
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:
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 …
by The Real News Network (TRNN) / February 9th, 2023
When Stefania Maurizi first received a call from WikiLeaks in 2009, she had little clue how drastically her life was about to change. 14 years later, the revelations from WikiLeaks about the extent of US surveillance, espionage, extrajudicial killing, and corruption have rippled across the world. Within the US, however, they are often downplayed or outright ignored. Stefania Maurizi joins The Chris HedgesReport to share her insider perspective on one of the centuries biggest stories, as well as her encyclopedic knowledge of the horrific truths revealed in WikiLeaks’ hundreds of thousands of leaked files. Stefania Maurizi is an …
It was a Sunday in early December a few years ago and I was out helping homeless women, as per my project. I noticed a homeless woman on the downtown platform of a cavernous NYC subway station. She was standing directly in front of an empty wooden bench, apparently facing the bench with a massive plastic bag over her hair (I assumed she had dreadlocks beneath).
For the record, I decided early on to not approach any homeless woman who wasn’t actively panhandling. There’s no reason to …
Psychologist Solomon Asch carried out conformity experiments for a group on a test comparing the length of three lines. The study participants were found to be more likely to conform to obviously wrong answers first given by other participants, who were actually working for the experimenter.
Recently, Maryland swore in its first Black governor, Wes Moore, in a “historic” ceremony cemented with a tearful introduction by Oprah Winfrey and a hand on Frederick Douglass’ Bible. The Black elite flocked to fill the rooms of the inauguration to witness the third elected Black governor in U.S. history. Yet, this “first Black” gubernatorial win is history repeating itself.
African/Black communities have witnessed “first Blacks” consistently continuing over-policing, surveillance, criminalization and austerity policies.
As Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) member organization Ujima People’s Progress Party understands,
There is nothing Gautam Adani will not do for money. In this sense, he is admirably dedicated to greed, so much so he has become its foremost caricature worthy of permanent enthronement. Mark this man’s name in the scriptures of eternity: There was nothing he did not do for the filthy lucre.
For the unfamiliar reader, the $218 billion Adani imperium, one specialising in transport, infrastructure, and mining, is vast, with far reaching feelers, prongs and tentacles that have made their mark in a number of countries. Along the way, Adani’s companies have made quite a name for themselves. Employment …
Though Israel’s past wars on Gaza have often been justified by Tel Aviv as a response to Palestinian rockets or, generally, as acts of self-defense, the truth is different. Historically, Israel’s relationship with Gaza has been defined by Tel Aviv’s need to create distractions from its own fractious politics, to flex its muscles against its regional enemies and to test its new weapons technology.
Though the Occupied West Bank – in fact, other Arab countries, too – has been used as a testing ground for Israel’s war machine, no other place has …
Since 1998 charter schools in New York state have deprived under-funded public schools of billions of dollars and greatly enriched the private interests that operate these segregated schools.
Not surprisingly, poor academic performance, regular school closings, corruption, scandal, and controversy have been the norm in the crisis-prone charter school sector in New York State for the past 25 years. It has been the norm nationwide for 32 years.
As expected, promoters of these outsourced schools governed by unelected private persons remain relentless in their efforts to expand and multiply charter schools. There is …
by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead / February 8th, 2023
Step away from the blinders that partisan politics uses to distract, divide and conquer, and you will find that we are drowning in a cesspool of problems that individually and collectively threaten our lives, liberties, prosperity and happiness.
These are not problems the politicians want to talk about, let alone address, yet we cannot afford to ignore them much longer.
From time to time, academics, and journalists from the Global South, express their disappointment with what they call Western progressive intellectuals. These “progressive intellectuals” are accused of criticizing the imperialist policies of their governments and the propagandist nature of the mainstream media in general terms while relying on the same misinformation and disinformation that the media disseminate and endorse the same imperialist policies that their governments pursue in the Global South, especially against the states and nations which resist Western hegemony.
The response, of these so-called progressive intellectuals to recent socio-political unrest in Iran, expressed in two …
The insanity of America just never slips, as the men and women who have done an amazing bunch of PSYOPS on the American public since, oh, hell, before Randoph Hearst’ and Pulitzer’s Yellow Journalism, are coming at us like gangbusters. The military wars being plotted now, the economic wars of old and present, the war against nature, the war against people through agriculture and chemical bombs, these are all colluding and connected issues. We are in a War Regime. Let’s try and blast away and look as some of the wars waged from different silos and see if we (I) …
Hysteria over balloons is a strange thing. Hot air balloons made their appearance during the Napoleonic era, where they served as delivery weapons for bombs and undertook surveillance tasks. High altitude balloons were also used by, of all powers, the United States during the 1950s, for reasons of gathering intelligence, though these were shot down by the irritated Soviets. Somehow, the US imperium and its noisy choristers have managed to get worked up over a solitary Chinese balloon that traversed the United States for over a week before it was shot down by the US Air Force.
1 in 3 women on the planet will be beaten or raped during her lifetime
by Paul Haeder / February 7th, 2023
Note: This piece has been sent to the local newspaper, Newport News Times, which is not a shadow of a shadow at once a week hard copy. Imagine that, no? Death of newspapers because? Social Media? Internet? No more readers? Bad management? Gutting of newspapers for stock holders? What the heck?
Valentines Day, for me, is that Vagina Monologues. Sure, we are on the brink of nuclear disaster with this great Grand Old Flag land pushing and pulling for Russia responses for all that shaking going on in Ukraine and Russia….
As a general principle “education” about racism and the horrors a vile ideology has inflicted upon the world is a good thing and should be encouraged. But as is the case with many things the devil is in details. This is especially true of history.
For example, over many decades children were taught that Scottish Highlanders fleeing clearance by evil landlords and poor Irish fleeing famine found refuge and a new home in Canada. While this history is accurate as far as it goes, teaching it in a way that presents the …
In 2022 Melbourne University (MU), formerly Australia’s top university, succumbed to racist Zionist subversion by falsely defaming anti-racist Jewish and non-Jewish staff and students as anti-Semitic for criticism of Israeli Apartheid. MU has now adopted the false, racist and defamatory International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) Definition of anti-Semitism that is anti-Jewish anti-Semitic, anti-Arab anti-Semitic, and near-comprehensively genocide-ignoring and holocaust-ignoring.
Not content with merely falsely defaming anti-racist students and staff as “anti-Semites” for criticizing Israeli Apartheid, the Melbourne University Management (MUM) administers a Code of Conduct that now implicitly includes the false, racist, …
