Outcry across the Political Spectrum to Stop War Funding
by John V. Walsh / February 14th, 2023
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, …
by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead / February 14th, 2023
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 …
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, …
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 …
by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies / February 13th, 2023
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. “…
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 …
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 …
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. 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 …
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 …
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,
