In 2010, U.S. President Barack Obama met privately in the White House with the democratically elected President of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, to get him to end Ukraine’s neutralist position ever since 1991 and join the U.S. Government’s EU and NATO alliances against Ukraine’s next-door neighbor Russia, but Yanukovych said no. And, then, Obama’s Secretary of State Hillary Clinton travelled in 2010 to Kiev to give this another try, and again Yanukovych said no. By the …
What a coup. Nakedly amoral but utterly self-serving in its saccharine minted glory. India’s showman Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who otherwise appears to have clerkish, desk-bound qualities, had what he wanted: an accommodating, possibly clueless guest in the form of the Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese; a common interest in India’s national sport cricket, and a show illuminating him as supreme Hindu leader presiding over a new age of politics. For Albanese, this was ill-fitting and disturbing but all in keeping with the occasion.
This month, Albanese, who has been held to the bosom of great powers of late, found himself …
Robin Waples: University of Washington (NOAA Fisheries, retired)
Topic: On the shoulders of giants: Under-appreciated studies in salmon biology with lasting influence.
In 1675 Isaac Newton wrote, “If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”
This idea epitomizes the way that science progresses by incremental steps, punctuated occasionally by major breakthroughs. But often it is the case that neither these ‘giants’ nor their research are well-known or even routinely recognized.
Arnold Bo?cklin (Switzerland), Isle of the Dead, 1880.
What constitutes a crisis worthy of global attention? When a regional bank in the United States falls victim to the inversion of the yield curve (i.e., when short-term bond interest rates become higher than long-term rates), the Earth nearly stops spinning. The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) – one of the most important financiers of technology start-ups in the United States – on 10 March presaged wider chaos in the Western financial world. In the days after …
Review of: The Private Life of Chairman Mao by Dr. Li Zhisui. Trans. Tai Hung-chao, New York: Random House, 1994.
by William Manson / March 23rd, 2023
The title of this acutely perceptive memoir is perhaps misleading: the American reader has come to expect lurid, “tell-all” biographies which spare no graphic details of the subject’s debaucheries and scandals. Some such unsavory details are of course revealed, but the author–Mao’s personal physician for the remaining 22 years of Mao’s life (1954-1976)–had a more ambitious purpose in mind: to present a shrewdly insightful character-study of Mao as a man, ideologue and ruler.
Mao Zedong in Dandong, China ? Photo by Kim Petersen
The young, likable Dr. Li, chosen …
The International Criminal Court should uphold an objective and impartial stance, respect the jurisdictional immunity enjoyed by the head of state in accordance with international law, exercise its functions and powers prudently by the law, interpret and apply international law in good faith, and avoid politicization and double standards.
— Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin
This commentary really should be part two from the piece I wrote last week in the run-up to the anti-war mobilization that took place March 18 which commemorated the 20th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. In that article I made a similar argument about …
Just watching the two major parties ruthlessly claw at and attempt to malign and delegitimize each other, then seeing people now excitedly lining up on one side or the other like opposing Ninja turtle teams is both amusing and frightening. We can count on the talking heads and modern media to regurgitate a story line familiar to devotees of Saturday morning cartoon shows to give substance to our political competitions and aspirations. Unfortunately, the narrative …
For some time, Washington has been losing its spunk in the Pacific. When it comes to the Pacific Islands, a number have not fallen – at least entirely – for the rhetoric that Beijing is there to take, consume, and dominate all. Nor have such countries been entirely blind to their own sharpened interests. This largely aqueous region, which promises to submerge them in the rising waters of climate change, has become furiously busy.
A number of officials are keen to push the line that Washington’s policy towards the Pacific is clearly back where it should be. It’s all part of …
by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead / March 21st, 2023
There is nothing more dangerous than a government of the many controlled by the few.
— Lawrence Lessig, Harvard law professor
It is easy to be distracted right now by the bread and circus politics that have dominated the news headlines lately, but don’t be distracted.
Don’t be fooled, not even a little.
We’re being subjected to the oldest con game in the books, the magician’s sleight of hand that keeps you focused on the shell game in front of you while your wallet is being picked clean by ruffians in your midst.
When will this hate-filled nonsense stop? Surveillance balloons treated like evocations of Satan and his card-carrying followers; other innumerable unidentified phenomena that, nonetheless, remain attributable in origin, despite their designation; and then the issue of spying cranes. In the meantime, there has been much finger pointing on the culprit of COVID-19 and the global pandemic. Behold the China Threat, the Sino Monster, the Yellow Terror.
In this atmosphere, the hawkish disposition of media outlets in a number of countries in shrieking for war is becoming palpable. The Fairfax press in Australia gave a less than admirable example of this …
“Always wanting more” is an operational definition of “hedonism.” This brief article is my “mea culpa.” Inexplicably, I overlooked hedonism per se as a trait in my “psychoscope” of the evil superpower elite in America’s corpocracy. ((Brumback, GB. KABOOM! Wolves in Suits Leading Humanity to Doomsday and How to Stop the Doomsday Clock and End Human Misery. Penguin BookWritersGroup, in press.)) In my defense, I did briefly allude to “greed” as an outgrowth of ambition.
Why “Always Wanting More?”
The ancient Greek poet Ovid had an answer, “the Goddess of Plenty.” America’s …
Once again, government socialism – ultimately backed by taxpayers – is saving reckless midsized banks and their depositors. Silicon Valley Bank (S.V.B) and Signature Bank in New York greedily mismanaged their risk levels and had to be closed down. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), in return, to avoid a bank panic and a run on other midsized banks went over its $250,000 insurance cap per account and guaranteed all deposits – no matter how large, which are owned by the rich and corporations – in those banks.
Permitting such imprudent risk-taking flows directly from the Trump-GOP Congressional weakening of regulations …
On March 20, Russia’s RT News reported, “The US Department of Defense announced on Monday that it will send Ukraine another $350 million worth of military aid. The further supplies come as Ukraine reportedly gears up for a spring offensive, despite suffering heavy losses in Donbass. The package is the 34th tranche of military aid doled out to Ukraine by the US since August 2021. … The US has given Ukraine more than $32.5 billion in military aid since last February, out of more than $110 billion allocated by the administration of US President Joe Biden for military and economic …
World famous feminist lawyer Gloria Allbucks revealed shocking details contained in previously unread biblical blogs from the Dead Ocean Scrolls which show that Mary Magdaline suffered outrageous sexual abuse from Jesus but was too frightened of his power to say anything at the time.
“Now that times have changed and brave people are coming forward we can speak out for her and finally show the world what really went on in the days before TV, the internet and lucrative litigation” said Allbucks, whose press conference was attended by hundreds of elected officials, dozens of paparazzi, several former clergy awaiting trial, and …
Failed to Lead a Single Jew to the Promised Land, ADL Fumes
by Michael K. Smith / March 21st, 2023
Plans to put Underground Railroad hero Harriet Tubman on the U.S. $20 bill have been permanently shelved due to her recently uncovered lifelong anti-Semitism, announced Fox Abramson of the Anti-Defamation League.
“It’s incredibly bad judgment that she was ever even considered as a candidate,” Abramson complained. “They called her ‘Moses’ but she didn’t lift a finger to help the victims of the 1859 Odessa pogrom in Russia, ignoring their plight and continuing to focus laser-like on black people out of pure spite,” he added.
“A more vicious hate crime could hardly be imagined.”
Psychologists are probing Tubman’s history of Jew-hatred to determine where …
People such as former US military men like Scott Ritter and Douglas MacGregor provide excellent analysis on the geopolitics and warring in Ukraine. Ritter and McGregor are two Americans apparently able to relay a perspective based on their own take of a situation, a take independent of government pronouncements and home media reports. Nonetheless, despite reporting their government’s involvement in a proxy war and being well aware of US imperialism and war crimes, these men feel the need to profess their love of country. This is despite their country stirring up wars abroad; stealing oil and wheat in Syria; …
Questioning Canada’s contribution to NATO’s proxy war is “hate” that must be shut down according to some Ukrainian groups mimicking Zionist organizations by promoting an identity politics laced cancel culture.
A Ukrainian student group sought to cancel my talk at Kings College in London, Ontario, on Thursday. In “Western Ukrainian Students’ Association Statement on The King’s University College Yves Engler Event”, they called me an “apologist to a bloodthirsty regime … who spreads disinformation and uses Russian propaganda talking points.” They also argued that I “endanger victims of colonialism everywhere” …
The arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court for Russian President Vladimir Putin came at an opportune moment. It was, if nothing else, a feeble distraction over the misdeeds and crimes of other leaders current and former. Russia, not being an ICC member country, does not acknowledge that court’s jurisdiction. Nor, for that matter, does the United States, despite the evident chortling from US President Joe Biden.
Twenty years on, former US President George W. Bush, former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, and Australia’s own John Howard, the troika most to blame for not just the criminal invasion of a …
When Australia – vassal be thy name – assumed responsibilities for not only throwing money at both US and British shipbuilders, lending up territory and naval facilities for war like a gambling drunk, and essentially asking its officials to commit seppuku for the Imperium, another task was given. While the ditzy and dunderheaded wonders in Canberra would be acquiring submarines with nuclear propulsion technology, there would be that rather problematic issue of what to do with the waste. “Yes,” said the obliging Australians, “we will deal with it.”
The Australian Defence Department has published a fact sheet …
On 10 March, Canada’s National Post headlined “Regime change in Moscow ‘definitely’ the goal, Joly says,” and reported that “Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly raises the possibility of regime change in Moscow. … ‘The goal is definitely to do that, is to weaken Russia’s ability to launch very difficult attacks against Ukraine. We want also to make sure that Putin and his enablers are held to account,’ she said. ‘I always make a difference between the regime and the people of a given country, which is fundamental.’”
Sociological, Psychological, Bioevolutionary and Physiological Foundations
by Bruce Lerro / March 18th, 2023
Orientation
In part I of this series, following the work of Judy J. Johnson in What’s so Wrong with Being Absolutely Right: The Dangerous Nature of Dogmatic Belief, we identified dogmatism — not as the content of a particular ideology but as a process of thinking, emoting and acting. We distinguished dogmatism from fanaticism and clarified the differences between dogmatism and open-minded thinking. I spent most the article defining 14 characteristics of dogmatism. Five are cognitive, four are emotional and five are behavioral.
“We weren’t there to kill human beings, really. We were there to kill ideology.” (Lt. William Calley)
Officially termed an “incident” (as opposed to a “massacre”), the events of March 16, 1968, at My Lai — a hamlet in South Vietnam — are widely portrayed and accepted to this day as an aberration. While the catalog of U.S. war crimes in Southeast Asia is far too sordid and lengthy to detail here, it’s painfully clear this was not the case.
In fact, on the very same day that Lt. William Calley …
Before the MH17 passenger plane was shot down over the civil-war zone in Ukraine on 17 July 2014, U.S. President Barack Obama needed to persuade 9 EU countries that were opposed to adding more sanctions against Russia — needed to force them to approve adding those sanctions. He needed to supply them with ‘evidence’ that Russia was doing heinous things in Ukraine’s civil war. On 15 July 2014, Russia’s RT headlined “9 EU countries ready to block economic sanctions against Russia,” and reported that:
by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies / March 17th, 2023
U.S. soldiers breaking into a home in Baquba, Iraq, in 2008 Photo: Reuters
March 19 marks the 20th anniversary of the U.S. and British invasion of Iraq. This seminal event in the short history of the 21st century not only continues to plague Iraqi society to this day, but it also looms large over the current crisis in Ukraine, making it impossible for most of the Global South to see the war in Ukraine through the same prism as U.S. …
