The Resurrection of George Orwell
It seems George Orwell wasn’t prescient enough in his novel Nineteen Eight-Four.
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Child Trafficking Has Become Big Business in America
“Children are being targeted and sold for sex in America every day.”
— John Ryan, National Center for Missing & Exploited Children
It takes a special kind of evil to prostitute and traffick a child for sex, and yet this evil walks among us every minute of every day.
Consider this: every two minutes, a child is bought and sold for sex.
Hundreds of young girls and boys—some as young as 9 years old—are being bought and sold for sex, as many as 20 times per day.
The New York Times is Orwell’s Ministry of Truth
Ingsoc. The sacred principles of ingsoc. Newspeak, double-speak, the mutability of the past.
– George Orwell, 1984
As today dawned, I was looking out the window into the cold grayness with small patches of snow littering the frozen ground. As light snow began to fall, I felt a deep mourning in my soul as a memory came to me of another snowy day in 1972 when I awoke to news of Richard Nixon’s savage Christmas bombing of North Vietnam with more than a hundred B-52 bombers, in wave after wave, dropping death and destruction on Hanoi and other parts of North Vietnam. …
The Steppes Are Ablaze: Corruption and Protest in Mongolia
In December 2022, corruption revelations involving the state-owned Erdenes Tavan Tolgoi (ETT) mining company sparked enormous protests in Ulaanbaatar. What initially began as a backlash against an entrenched “coal mafia” snowballed into a trenchant critique of the government’s inability (and unwillingness) to provide a better future for Mongolia’s youth. Protestors told The Diplomat that suffocating air pollution, burdensome taxes, and humiliating unemployment are driving Mongolians to the brink of despair. Highly skilled and multilingual graduates juggle three dead-end jobs to survive as mining magnates steal millions without repercussions.
Mongolia’s woes date back …
Doltish Ways: Biden’s Documents Problem
Through the course of his political life, the current US president has often been injudicious. He has stumbled, bungled and miscalculated. His electoral victory was fortuitous, aided by a number of factors, not least the conduct of his opponent and the murderous gift of a global pandemic. Along with his fellow Democrats, he has made the issue of Donald Trump a matter of pathology rather than politics.
It is precisely that pathological approach that has come back to haunt his administration. While Trump continues to …
U.S. Now Considering to Invade Russia: NYT
An obliquely-written news-report in the New York Times on January 18th headlined “U.S. Warms to Helping Ukraine Target Crimea” and subheaded “The Biden administration is considering the argument that Kyiv needs the power to strike at the Ukrainian peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014.” It reported that, “the Biden administration is finally starting to concede that Kyiv may need the power to strike the Russian sanctuary, even if such a move increases the risk of escalation, according to several U.S. officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive debate. Crimea, between the Black …
Strong Militaries, Weak Society: The Missing Story in the Global Firepower Ranking
The Global Firepower ranking was published on January 6. The annual report classifies the world’s strongest militaries based on over 60 factors, including size, spending and technological advancements.
The report, which placed the United States military on top, followed by Russia, China, India and the UK, raised more questions than answers, with some accusing GFP, the organization that compiled the report, of being biased, sloppy and highly politicized.
For example, while Russia maintained its former position as the second strongest military in the world, Ukraine jumped by seven spots, …
Right & Left to Join in DC Protest: “Not one more penny for war in Ukraine.”
February 19, New Anti-Interventionist Coalition to March to White House from Washington Monument
On February 19, Washington, DC, will witness a protest against the war in Ukraine that marks a sharp departure from past demonstrations. The lead demand is simple and direct, “Not One More Penny for war in Ukraine.” It is a demand that emphasizes what we in the US can do to end the war, not what others can do. After all, the only government we have the power to influence is our own.
Above and beyond that demand, the potential power of this unique and promising movement arises from the nature of the sponsoring organizations – The Peoples Party, a …
When Good Refugees Turn Bad
When the first Russian forces began entering Ukrainian territory in February 2022, the instant reaction from Europe, the UK, Canada and Australia, was one of open commitment to Ukraine’s refugees. The relentless human trains heading westwards were initially embraced by Poles, whose history with Ukraine is, at best, tense and sketchy.
Across Europe, walls came down in dispensation for this new type of refugee, tolerated and tolerable by the populists and the border security types, all summed up by comments from the Bulgarian Prime minister Kiril Petkov, who declared the fleeing Ukrainians “intelligent” and “educated people”. They were certainly “Europeans” …
Business and Humanity
Vancouver's Clown Show
Most people have heard capitalism described unerringly as the “law of the jungle” and a “dog-eat-dog world.” The pathos of capitalism is currently playing out in Vancouver, where grown-up millionaires are playing a kids’s game called hockey.
Professional sports serve as a microcosm of rampant capitalism — a, perhaps necessary, distraction for the masses.
Many Vancouverites live and die along with the fortunes of their National Hockey League team, the Vancouver Canucks. Unfortunately, the season so far has been a disappointment, as the team finds itself outside of a playoff spot. The 2021-2022 NHL season saw a mid-season coaching change …
Historic Population Decline
This week’s News on China in 2 minutes.
• GDP increased 3% in 2022
• Historic population decline
• Nearly 60,000 COVID-19 related deaths in the last month
• The ‘Three Body Problem’ debuts on TV
“Amazon Clinic” is Here
Healthcare without the health or the care
Post-pandemic Blues
Innocence destroyed.
A Hard-Edged Rock: Waging Economic Warfare on Humanity
Why is much modern food of inferior quality? Why is health suffering and smallholder farmers who feed most of the world being forced out of agriculture?
Mainly because of the mindset of the likes of Larry Fink of BlackRock – the world’s biggest asset management firm – and the economic system they profit from and promote.
In 2011, Fink said agricultural and water investments would be the best performers over the next 10 years.
Fink stated: “Go long agriculture and water and go to the beach.”
Unsurprisingly then, just three …
Social Media: “Who Would You Like Me to Be?”
Way back in the 1830s, the brilliant Alexis de Tocqueville, visiting the American experiment of “democracy,” found a nation of persons afraid to disagree with the “tyranny of the majority.” Despite Ralph Waldo Emerson’s inspiring Self-Reliance of 1841, there remained very few free-thinking individualists to be found. Some 10 years later, when Thoreau published Walden and “Life Without Principle,” he found very few readers indeed.
The 1950s was a time of mass conformity. Americans thought, acted, and looked the same.It took another century, but post-WW2 social scientists became increasingly …
Solving the Debt Crisis the American Way
Our forefathers turned their debts into currency. That Constitutional approach could work today.
On Friday, Jan. 13, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen wrote to Congress that the U.S. government will hit its borrowing limit on Jan. 19, forcing the new Congress into negotiations over the debt limit much sooner than expected. She said she will use accounting maneuvers she called “extraordinary measures” to keep U.S. finances running for a few months, pushing the potential date for default to sometime in the summer. But she urged Congress to get to work on raising the debt ceiling.
Lifting it above its current $31.385 trillion limit …
Fukushima’s Toxic Dumping Flashpoint
“We must remind Japan that if the radioactive nuclear wastewater is safe, just dump it in Tokyo, test it in Paris and store it in Washington, but keep our Pacific nuclear-free.” (Vanuatu’s celebrated former ‘Turaga Chief’ Motarilavoa Hilda Lini)
In the face of considerable worldwide criticism, TEPCO is moving ahead with its well-advertised plans to dump contaminated water from storage tanks at the Fukushima-Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant disaster zone into the Pacific Ocean. They are running out of storage space and the Pacific Ocean is conveniently right next door.
The Japanese government is courting trouble, as a contracting party to: (1) …
More than a “Syndrome”: Trauma, Distress, and Pain
I can’t even produce a metaphor for the drug world anymore. I don’t even like the phrase the drug world since the phrase implies a different world.”
? Charles Bowden, Down by the River: Drugs, Money, Murder, and Family
You don’t need a thousand hours studying what trauma is, what forms it might take, delving into wars and conflicts, from the great war, when the psychologists in Europe attempted to study (sic; sick) shell shocked veterans, and, of course, how many civilians are there in that process of witnessing the most horrific treatment of humans and animals at the hands of, well, …
The Slavophile Russian Cosmists
Reds, Scientists and Mystics
This beautiful Earth is no more than a brief resting place between the sea of salt where we were born and the sea of stars which we must now. venture forth
— Arthur C. Clarke Profiles of the Future
Orientation
In cross-cultural psychology, the major world divisions are between the West and the East. But what about Russia? Is it closer culturally to Europe or to China and India? As you will find out in this article, the answer is neither.
Absence of a bourgeois spirit, specialization, rationalism or empiricism in Russia
For political and economic reasons, …
How They Get Away with It
Those who have no empathy or moral compass.
A Civic Investment for the Ages in a Just Society
The super successful mega-investor, Warren Buffett, CEO of the giant conglomerate Berkshire Hathaway, was heard to say: There are only 535 members of Congress, why can’t 300 million Americans control them? That’s a pretty fundamental question since our senators and representatives are given their sovereign power by the people. Remember the preamble to our Constitution?
Buffett is a generous philanthropist. Among his contributions, he has given the Gates Foundation (public health projects) about $3 billion each year for over a decade. That’s over $30 billion dollars! Just one $3 billion contribution, devoted …
When the People Have Nothing More to Eat, They Will Eat the Rich
Maruja Mallo (Spain), La Verbena (‘The Fair’), 1927.
On 8 January, large crowds of people dressed in colours of the Brazilian flag descended on the country’s capital, Brasília. They invaded federal buildings, including the Congress, Supreme Court, and presidential palace, and vandalised public property. The attack, carried out by supporters of former President Jair Bolsonaro, came as no surprise, since the rioters had been planning ‘weekend demonstrations’ on social media for days. …
My God, My God, Why Hast Thou Forsaken Me?
You’ve stood by me through everything. You didn’t flinch when I grabbed them by the pussy. When I revealed that Obama was born in an African shithole country, you nodded approvingly. When I pointed out that rapists, child-molesters, and drug smugglers were sneaking into Texas, you had my back. When I told my people to unmask, and urged their sluggish doctors to slice them open, slosh their insides with bleach, and stick them in tanning beds, you were right there with me. Even back in 2017, when I signed the God-given right of crazy people to express themselves with guns, …
Harry the “Traitor” and Lynch “The Grinch”
The Corporate Media's Automatic Smear Machine
If we were to choose a hill to die on, it would probably not be in defence of a British prince.
In truth, we don’t need to like or support – and may even abhor – the targets of media bias highlighted in our analyses. Our goal is simply to provide examples that most clearly expose the propaganda function of ‘mainstream’ media. Inevitably, that involves our focusing on thorns in the Establishment’s side.
It should be no surprise that there is actually much that divides us from, say, the fiercely patriotic and …
It Has Always Been a “Religious War”
On Ben Gvir and the Adaptability of Zionism
In a self-congratulatory article published in the Atlantic in 2017, Yossi Klein Halevi describes Israeli behavior at the just-conquered holy Muslim shrines in Occupied East Jerusalem in 1967 as “an astonishing moment of religious restraint”.
“The Jewish people had just returned to its holiest site, from which it had been denied access for centuries, only to effectively yield sovereignty at its moment of triumph,” Halevi wrote with a lingering sense of pride, as if the world owes Israel a ton of gratitude in the …
A New Year’s Eve to Remember
“You leave fragments of your spirit here and there over the years.
These pieces are glued — like barnacles on a ship — to various
places, objects, people, memories, and unfinished business.
Although detaching from them can be extremely difficult,
detachment is a far more natural practice for your soul
as well as emotions and mental health than holding on
to the dead zone of your past.”
–from “Entering the Castle,” by Caroline Myss, p. 92
Today is the 40th anniversary of the quadruple terror bombing of December 31, 1982, when I happened to be serving a short sentence on the 5th floor of the Metropolitan Correction Center …
How Police Use Public-Private Partnerships to Spy on Americans
360 Degree Surveillance
We live in a surveillance state founded on a partnership between government and the technology industry.
— Law Professor Avidan Y. Cover
In this age of ubiquitous surveillance, there are no private lives: everything is public.
Surveillance cameras mounted on utility poles, traffic lights, businesses, and homes. License plate readers. Ring doorbells. GPS devices. Dash cameras. Drones. Store security cameras. Geofencing and geotracking. FitBits. Alexa. Internet-connected devices.
There are roughly one billion surveillance cameras worldwide and that number continues to grow, thanks to their wholehearted adoption by governments (especially law enforcement and military agencies), businesses, and individual consumers.
With every new surveillance device …
Allegations of Genocide Return to Peru
The Peruvian Prosecutor’s Office has placed she who claims the country’s presidency, Dina Bolurate under investigation for crimes including genocide, resulting from her government’s treatment of protesters who prefer the elected President Pedro Castillo. Now much of her government is under investigation for genocide (“genocide, qualified homicide and serious injuries”): Alberto Otarola (the prime minister who just resigned), minister of defense Jorge Chavez, minister of the interior Victor Rojas, a previous prime minister Pedro Angulo and previous Minister of the Interior Cesar Cervantes. ((“Genocide investigation opened against Peru president after protest deaths,” Agence France-Presse, Jan 11, 2023, Guardian.))
How did this happen? …
The Uninvolved
What it means to stand on the sidelines while others do the heavy lifting.
Aiding Myanmar’s Military Regime
A Picture of Global Complicity
International relations remains the sum game of vast hypocrisies, a patchwork of compromises and the compromised. Every moral condemnation of a regime’s conduct is bound to be shown up as an exercise in double standards, often implicating the accusers. In the case of the military regime in Myanmar, double standards are not only modish but expected.
A number of international declarations and measures have targeted Myanmar’s regime for its blood-soaked brutality, its genocidal practices against the Rohingya, and its general contempt for the human rights of its citizenry. In a statement last November, US Secretary of State, Antony …