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Customary Barbarity: Britain’s SAS in Afghanistan

The insistence that there is a noble way of fighting war, one less bloody and brutal, has always been the hallmark of forces self-described as civilised.  Restraint characterises their behaviour; codes of laws follow in their wake, rather than genocidal impulses.  Killing, in short, is a highly regulated, disciplined affair.

The failed wars and efforts of foreign powers in Afghanistan have destroyed this conceit.  Lengthy engagements, often using special forces operating in hostile terrain, have been marked by vicious encounters and hostile retribution.  Australia’s Special Air Services supplied a very conspicuous example. The 2020 report by New South Wales Court of …

The Goal of COVID Billionaires

Why the unceasing pressure for people to be injected with experimental s0-called vaccines?

Drought in the Horn of Africa: Worst in 40 Years

The Horn of Africa (HoA) is once again being battered by climate change induced drought, with the UN report, over “20 million people, and at least 10 million children facing severe drought conditions.”

Desperately needed support from UN agencies (World Food Programme (WFP), UNHCR and UNICEF) is limited due to lack of donations from member states. WFP have been forced to halve food rations due to the “lowest levels of funding on record”. Leading to what UNICEF describes as a “humanitarian catastrophe……. Urgent aid is needed to prevent parts of the region sliding into famine.” The disruption caused to …

Students, Campuses, and Dominant Corporate Power

When it comes to corporate power and control over their lives, now and into the future, today’s college students are perilously dormant. When it comes to putting pressure on Congress to counter the various dictates of corporatism, there is little activity other than some stalwarts contacting their lawmakers on climate violence.

Much of campus activity these days focuses on diversity, tuition, student loans, “politically correct” speech demands and conforming conduct.

This campus environment is strangely oblivious to the corporate abuses of our economy, culture and government. This indifference extends to the endless grip of corporate power over the educational institutions that the students …

China Surpasses US in Life Expectancy

News on China No. 107

This week’s News on China in 2 minutes.

• Protests after Henan bank closures
• Anti-asteroid radar system
• Philippine and China-US relations
• China surpasses US in life expectancy

Convincing the Vaccine Hesistant

What is the logic used to convince people to become vaccinated for COVID and get their boosters?

The Rise of BRICS: The Economic Giant that is Taking on the West

The G7 summit in Elmau, Germany, June 26-28, and the NATO summit in Madrid, Spain, two days later, were practically useless in terms of providing actual solutions to ongoing global crises – the war in Ukraine, the looming famines, climate change and more. But the two events were important, nonetheless, as they provide a stark example of the impotence of the West, amid the rapidly changing global dynamics.

As was the case since the start of the Russia-Ukraine war, the West attempted to display unity, though it has become repeatedly obvious that no such unity exists. While France, Germany …

What I Learned about Journalism as a Teenager

As some of you may know, I didn’t go to college. Sure, I took some classes at a local CUNY school but that was just to appease my parents. I decided early on to chart my own course and not spend most or all of my life with student debt.

I wasn’t a fan of traditional education anyway. I cruised through four years of high school without bringing home a book once. Got straight A’s. When I got to those college classes, I was faced with the reality that I’d have to …

Worsening Chaos: Israel’s Political Instability is Now the Norm

The collapse of the short-lived Israeli government of Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid validates the argument that the political crisis in Israel was not entirely instigated and sustained by former Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.

Bennett’s coalition government consisted of eight parties, welding together arguably one of the oddest coalitions in the tumultuous history of Israeli politics. The mishmash cabinet included far right and right groups like Yamina, Yisrael Beiteinu and New Hope, along with centrist Yesh Atid and Blue and White, leftist Meretz and even an Arab party, the United Arab List (Ra’am). The coalition also had representatives from …

Get Gota: Holding a War Criminal Accountable

The fall and ignominious retreat of Sri Lanka’s Gotabaya Rajapaksa has enlivened one distinct possibility.  Having formally resigned as Sri Lankan President, a point made via email from Singapore, those wishing to see him account for war crimes may get their wish.

There have been various efforts in train regarding a man who ruthlessly concluded his country’s civil war in an orgy of mass killing. The war itself, waged between the forces of Sinhalese Buddhist nationalism and the minority Tamils seeking independence, was the rotten fruit of discrimination, exclusion and ethnocratic politics heralded by the passage of the Sinhala Only …

Will Egypt Drain the World’s Second Largest Wetlands?

“With 35% loss globally since 1970, wetlands are our most threatened ecosystem, disappearing three times faster than forests. Wetlands’ services for climate mitigation, adaptation biodiversity, and human health outweigh all other terrestrial ecosystems.”  ((“Wetlands are Being Lost at Alarming Rates”, Global Wetland Outlook, 2021.))

Sudd is Africa’s largest freshwater wetland at roughly 3,500 square miles in an otherwise dry region of South Sudan. It’s under threat by a megaproject named Jonglei Canal that has the potential to devastate this ecological gem.

According to conservationists: “Even a partial loss of the Sudd would be an ecological disaster, desiccating the world’s second largest swamp …

The Right to Privacy

Laws are like the governments that write them: susceptible to vicissitudes.

US Climate Expropriation Impacts all Humanity


U.S.-attributable climate damages. (a) Ensemble mean GDPpc changes in each country attributable to U.S. emissions, over 1990–2014 with territorial emissions accounting and a short-run (contemporaneous) damage function. Missing data (white countries) denotes countries without continuous GDPpc data from 1990 to 2014. bc U.S.-attributable damages in the five countries with the greatest GDPpc percent decreases (b) and percent increases (c). The black lines show the mean, the boxes denote the 95% ensemble range, and the colored portions denote the additive fraction of each 95% range due to each.

With its carbon footprint from 1990 to …

Standardized Testing:  A Self-Contradiction

Did it ever strike you as odd that the foundation on which standardized testing is based is a self-contradiction?  Standardized testing embodies the assumption that only the learning that can be measured is better than learning which cannot be measured. The problem is, can that assumption itself be measured? No, it cannot. Can it even be proven? No, it also cannot because it’s a value judgment, which cannot be proven, nor can its converse.

It’s like claiming that “classical music is better than popular music,” or its converse that “popular music is …

Cosmology: Humanly Irrelevant

James Webb’s First Deep Field is galaxy cluster SMACS 0723, Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI

We have seen the startling images provided by the $10 billion James Webb telescope, images relentlessly hyped as an incredible scientific breakthrough by those involved in the research–but of no conceivable relevance or benefit to humanity as a whole. I would venture to say that, in a moral-humanistic sense, a single photo of a starving child (say, in Yemen) has more value than all the thousands of photos this “exciting” project will produce. Why? Because, as …

Will Our Children Be Literate? Will They Look Forward to the Future with Dignity?

Nú Barreto (Guinea-Bissau), A Esperar (‘Waiting’), 2019.

The world is adrift in the tides of hunger and desolation. It is difficult to think about education, or anything else, when your children are not able to eat. And yet, the sharp attack on education during this past decade forces us to consider the kind of future that young people will inherit. In 2018, before the pandemic, the United Nations calculated that 258 million, or one in six, school age children were out of school. By March …

How to Correct the Unconstitutional Rulings of the Current Supreme Court

OPTIONS. There are three means by which the unconstitutional rulings by the current Supreme Court could be lawfully corrected: (1) thru new legislation, or (2) & (3) thru changing the composition of the Court (either by adding 4 addition Judges or by removing and replacing the rogue Judges) followed by obtaining reconsideration of said rulings by the reconstituted Court.

(1) Corrective legislation is currently not achievable because the Senate majority is unable to muster the unity and will to reform the filibuster. Moreover, even if the Supreme Court’s rogue …

By making China the Enemy, NATO is threatening World Peace

NATO’s new posture towards Beijing brings into question its whole claim to be a ‘defensive’ alliance

As the saying goes, if you only have a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. The West has the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (Nato), a self-declared “defensive” military alliance – so any country that refuses its dictates must, by definition, be an offensive military threat.

That is part of the reason why Nato issued a new “strategic concept” document last week at its summit in Madrid, declaring for the first time that China poses a “systemic challenge” to the alliance, alongside a primary “threat” from Russia.

Beijing views this new designation …

Vicarious Zeal: Fighting to the Last Ukrainian

As the bloody conflict in Ukraine continues, the rhetoric from the imperial spear-holders in Washington and some allies is becoming increasingly fixated with one object: victory against Russia.  Such words should be used sparingly, especially given their binding, and blinding tendencies.  When the term “unconditional surrender” was first used by US President Franklin D. Roosevelt at the January 1943 Casablanca conference in the context of defeating Nazi Germany, not all cheered.  It meant a fight to the finish, climbing the summit and dictating terms from a blood-soaked peak.

With such language crowning the efforts of the Allies, the Axis powers …

Dismantling the Constitution

Police No Longer Have to Honor the Right to Remain Silent

That was when they suspended the Constitution. They said it would be temporary. There wasn’t even any rioting in the streets. People stayed home at night, watching television, looking for some direction. There wasn’t even an enemy you could put your finger on.

— Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

We are witnessing the gradual dismantling of every constitutional principle that serves as a bulwark against government tyranny, overreach and abuse.

As usual, the latest assault comes from the U.S. Supreme Court.

In a 6-3 ruling in Vega v. Tekoh, the Supreme Court took aim …

Beware the Prophets of Doom:  Organic Food, Fertilisers and Fossil Fuels 

As oil and gas prices rise so does the price of artificial chemical fertilisers – the lynch-pin of industrial agriculture’s claims to be ‘efficient’. In the UK, the price of nitrogen fertiliser has doubled over the past year to around £330 per tonne. With oil currently at over $130 a barrel and with OPEC warning it could reach $200 by the end of the year, it has been suggested that fertilisers could hit GBP 500 a tonne. At these prices, the claimed efficiency of fossil-fuel and fertiliser dependent industrial farming begins to collapse.

The above extract is from a 2008 Soil …

Nigeria is a Testing Ground for Digital IDs and Biometric Data Collection

Unless you wake up and stand up, you’re next

Nigeria is the most populous country in Africa. It has 206 million inhabitants and at least 200 million registered cellphones. Keep that fact in mind. It becomes relevant a little later in this post. For now, I want to demonstrate what I mean with all the writing and podcasting I’ve done about the Great Reset, digital IDs, cashless societies, World Economic Forum, etc.

The continent of Africa — particularly West Africa — has long been a laboratory of sorts for the Bill & …

Love and Dating

What is it like to date a human?

The Pink Tide Surges in Latin America

While the political balance between progressive and reactionary states south of the Rio Grande continues to tip to the left, even the corporate press pronounced Biden’s June Summit of the Americas meeting in Los Angeles a flop. Most recently, Colombia elected its first left-leaning president, following similar victories in Chile, Peru, and Honduras, which in turn followed Bolivia, Argentina, and Mexico.  And the frontrunner in Brazil’s presidential contest slated for October is a leftist. However, Nicaragua, Venezuela, and especially Cuba – countries led by explicitly socialist parties – are critically threatened by US imperialism, subjected to severe sanctions. …

No Starvation for Oil

Sana’a, Yemen (Photo credit: Rod Waddington via Flickr)
As President Joe Biden embarks on his trip to the Middle East, those of us back home must acknowledge that a “sensitive” trip would visit the victims rather than the butchers.

President Joe Biden’s foreign policy advisors are applauding themselves for devising a “sensitive” itinerary as he plans to embark on a trip to the Middle East on July 13.

In a Washington Post op-ed, Biden defended his controversial planned meeting with Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud …

Barely Legal: The Global Uber Enterprise

The lobbying of Uber should, along with those of other corporate giants, only surprise those prone to pollyannaish escapism.  Its hungry, desperate behaviour takes place in plain sight, and denials merely serve to emphasise the point.  It resembles, in some crudely distant way, the operating rationale of the notorious British sex pest Jimmy Savile, who preyed upon his victims with the establishment’s complicity.

In terms of the gig economy, there are few more ruthless buccaneers than this San Franciscan ride-share company that has persistently specialised in cutting corners and remaking them.  Those taken aback by the latest leaked files about …

One Year After July 11, 2021: Washington Carries On It’s Economic War Against Cuba Despite Political Isolation

[T]he heroism of normality in Cuba does not generate headlines.
— Cuban revolutionary journalist Rosa Miriam Elizalde

July 11, 2021 in Cuba quickly went from legitimate, valid, peaceful street protests to violent provocations and destructive acts directed by US clients in Cuba. Thousands of people in many cities, towns, and working-class neighborhoods took to the streets in response to harsh, deteriorating conditions — the worst of the Covid Delta infections, hospitalizations, and deaths on the island before the application of the Cuban-vaccines; the electricity blackouts in the scorching Cuban summer; on top of the existing shortages of food, gasoline, and medicines …

Where’s the outrage about antisemitism at pro-Israel rally? 

Flagrant antisemitism at a rally attended by leading politicians has been ignored because the targets of the racist attack stood with the oppressed.

At United Jewish Appeal Toronto’s May 29 Walk with Israel a group of Israel flag-waving individuals crossed the street to berate a half dozen Hasidic Jews holding a Palestinian flag. One woman waves a small Israeli flag at them yelling “shame on you” and “you’re a shame on Jewish people”. Another Zionist says, “Hitler made a big mistake, you should have been in the gas chambers. Too bad. We’re here and you’re gonna go to hell.” She states repeatedly, …

Crickets

What have crickets ever done to be so scorned?

Global Inflation and China’s Measures to Stabilize Her Economy

• This article was first published by the International Monetary Institute, China.

Under normal circumstances inflation occurs when too many monetary units (US-dollars, Euros, Chinese Yuan) chase too few goods. But we are not living in normal times. To the contrary. We are living in an increasingly divided world, not only in political terms – West vs. East / Global North vs. Global South – but also in monetary terms.

The gradual but ever faster faltering of the US-dollar hegemony, followed by related so-called hard currencies, like the Euro, the British Pound, the Japanese Yen, as well as the Australian and Canadian …