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Here we go again, playing God and toying with Promethean fire.  Having done a comprehensively brutal job of killing off the thylacine, known in popular parlance as the Tasmanian Tiger, along with a growing number of other species, there is interest in reviving and ultimately returning them to the wild.  And, as with any deity, the choice resides in the god figure, all deciding and omniscient.  The killer becomes the chooser, the executioner, the salvager.

Interest in this venture was piqued and spurred by a A$5 million donation from a philanthropist to a research team engaged in a partnership with …

Occupy Wall Street: October 8, 2011
Douglas Rushkoff has an article (based on his latest book) called “The super-rich ‘preppers’ planning to save themselves from the apocalypse,” in The Observer.

This excerpt gives you an idea of how the barbaric brain of a billionaire operates:

Finally, the CEO of a brokerage house explained that he had nearly completed building his own underground bunker system, and asked: “How do I maintain authority over my security force after the event?” The event. That was their euphemism for the environmental collapse, …

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Well, gosh, this is kind of embarrassing. For approximately the last two and a half years, I have been documenting, analyzing, and occasionally satirizing the so-called “New Normal,” i.e., the new, pathologized, official ideology that has been rolled out all across the planet by the global-capitalist ruling classes under the pretext of combating an apocalyptic pandemic … or at least that’s what I thought was going on.

As it turns out, I was totally wrong.

Apparently, the global-capitalist ruling establishment (or “GloboCap,” as I often refer to the unaccountable, supranational network of global …

Turn on the television. Move to the screen.  Switch on the device – if you ever left it off.  Queen Elizabeth II may have passed, but she is everywhere in very lively fashion, a spectral manifestation that has utterly controlled large chunks of a transfixed global media system.

It helps that she has captured the media mecca that is the United States, where anything outside its coverage is either, in self-described terms, irrelevant or non-existent.  In the centre of the imperium, without a shade of irony, she and the British royal family have exercised a spiritual and celluloid existence almost abnormal …

On March 10, 2003, I gave a very well-attended lecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology — yeah, a high school grad speaking to post-doctoral students and faculty at M-I-friggin-T. (I also gave a talk at Yale later that year but that’s for another article.) Please allow me to introduce some context.

I once had a reasonably large global audience for my writing and commentary. My articles covered a lot of ground. I didn’t like to be pigeonholed so I wrote about virtually everything — and still do.

One of my most popular …

Global, personal, individual.  The reactions to the death of Queen Elizabeth II seemed to catch even unsuspecting republicans off guard.  In Australia, former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, who had led the Australian Republic Movement, was a mess of reflection on the passing.  The old enemy France glowed with a distant familial warmth.  In the United States, monarchical fetishism reasserted itself.

Not all the reflections were rosy. In South Africa, the Economic Freedom Fighters party admitted no mourning for the passing of the monarch of seven decades, “because to us her death is a reminder of a very tragic period in …

How to collect your 30 pieces of silver.

When will these unforgivable cretins of modern cultural exhaustion leave decent self-harming people alone?  It’s that time of the year again, when sponsored pretend moralists molest, disturb and upset people who have reached that state of despair largely for the reasons these bargain basement priests are pestering them for.

There is nothing grand about topping yourself, though there is an astonishing, proud literature for those who wish to leave the world of the living.  This is not understood by the R U OK brigadistas who seem, on closer inspection, to look like demented barnacles in search of a solid pier.

In 2009, …

US special presidential envoy for hostage affairs Roger Carstens is on a case which could lead to freeing Venezuelan diplomat Alex Saab. Pressure is building on the Biden administration to swap Saab for some American citizens currently incarcerated in Venezuela.

Alex Saab targeted in the US economic war against Venezuela

Alex Saab, who has been confined for over two years, is a victim of the US economic war calculated to achieve regime-change in Venezuela. He has been targeted because of his role in helping circumvent the sanctions imposed on Venezuela by the US. These measures, really collective punishment, are intended to make …

Ali Imam (Pakistan), Untitled (Deserted Town with a Black Sun), 1956.
Calamities are familiar to the people of Pakistan who have struggled through several catastrophic earthquakes, including those in 2005, 2013, and 2015 (to name the most damaging), as well as the horrendous floods of 2010. However, nothing could prepare the fifth most populated country in the world for this summer’s devastating events, which began with high temperatures and political chaos followed by unimaginable flooding.

Cascading frustration with the Pakistani state defines the public mood. Taimur Rahman, the general secretary of …

What is it about Australian diplomacy that makes it so clumsy and dunderheaded?  Is it the harsh delivery, the tactless expression, or the inability to do things with subtle reflection?  On September 6, Australian diplomacy gave another display of such form with Foreign Minister Penny Wong’s remarks about the Solomon Islands elections.

Things have been testy for the government of Manasseh Sogavare, who has rolled out the red carpet to pestiferous officials of virtually all ranks from Beijing to Washington.  Most, if not all this interest, has been triggered by Sogavare’s signing of a security pact with the People’s Republic …

Enter the Matrix: the New World Order Global Surveillance Documentary

I’ve written about this so much and have gotten students to research some of the direct and indirect topics tied to: Who are your masters, and how far will you go to get and keep a job? One solution for one issue — say, looking at crops and regulating soil wetness with a drone is good, but what are the negative consequences of drone tech and drone community college programs? CIA, NSA, FBI, ATF, Cops, and other deals? Is there always a trade off, you know, Fat Man and Little Boy, the consequences of pursuing “science” with the $$ coming …

Golden Rule on San Francisco Bay (Photo: Gerry Condon)
The sailboat Golden Rule will embark on a 15-month, 11,000 mile voyage near Stillwater, Minnesota this September to raise awareness about the growing danger of nuclear war and build support for abolishing nuclear weapons.

Referred to as the Great Loop, the crew will make 100 ports of-call along the Mississippi River, coastal cities and around the Great Lakes before heading back to San Francisco through the Panama Canal. Planned community events that link environmental, and peace and justice concerns to anti-war issues …

Peace talks in Turkey, March 2022. Photo credit: Murat Cetin Muhurdar / Turkish Presidential Press Service / AFP
Six months ago, Russia invaded Ukraine. The United States, NATO and the European Union (EU) wrapped themselves in the Ukrainian flag, shelled out billions for arms shipments, and imposed draconian sanctions intended to severely punish Russia for its aggression.

Since then, the people of Ukraine have been paying a price for this war that few of their supporters in the West can possibly imagine. Wars do not follow scripts, and Russia, Ukraine, the …