by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies / December 9th, 2021
Protest by students in Thailand. AP
President Biden’s virtual Summit for Democracy on December 9-10 is part of a campaign to restore the United States’ standing in the world, which took such a beating under President Trump’s erratic foreign policies. Biden hopes to secure his place at the head of the “Free World” table by coming out as a champion for human rights and democratic practices worldwide.
The greater possible value of this gathering of 111 countries is that it could instead serve as an “intervention,” or an …
President Biden, in full mood of marking “red lines” against Russia and Ukraine in a virtual meeting with Vladimir Putin, does not forget the importance of boycotting China’s Winter Olympic Games. It’s a diplomatic boycott only, so says Madame Jen Psaki, White House press secretary. Nevertheless, she and Biden are wishing the US sport-participants best of luck and they will support them throughout. So, they say. US athletes are allowed to part-take in the games. It’s the US diplomacy that is held back. It’s a hypocrisy that only Washington – and perhaps Brussels as EU and NATO headquarters – …
With his extraordinary new book, The Real Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health, RFK, Jr. has made it very clear that he will not allow Orwell’s 1984 totalitarian boot to stamp on his face. His is a very rare moral courage, and he is asking us to join him, before it is too late and we enter into a new dark age, in recognizing and resisting the evil forces intent on stamping out democracy around the world. He is not pulling …
The private video call which lasted two hours on Tuesday was eagerly anticipated around the world amid mounting tensions and fears of a military confrontation over Ukraine.
The next day headlines in Western media outlets were laden with dramatic “warnings” reportedly given by Biden to Putin, telling the Russian leader to abandon nefarious plans for a military invasion of Ukraine.
America’s NPR reported: “In a two-hour-long call with Putin, President Biden warned that the U.S. …
For whatever reason, some mistakenly perceive the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, as liberal, progressive and even ‘pro-Palestinian’. Of course, none of this is true. This misconstrued depiction of an essentially Zionist and anti-Palestinian newspaper tells of a much bigger story of how confusing Israeli politics is, and how equally confused many of us are in understanding the Israeli political discourse.
On November 28, newly-elected Israeli President, Isaac Herzog, stormed the Ibrahimi Mosque in the Palestinian city of Al-Khalil (Hebron) with hundreds of soldiers and many illegal Jewish settlers, including the who’s who of Israel’s extremists.
The scene was reminiscent of a similar occurrence …
Making moral statements in the blood and gristle of international relations can often come across as feeble. In doing so, the maker serves the worst of all worlds: to reveal a false sense of assurance that something was done while serving no actual purpose other than to provoke. Anger, and impotence, follow.
The Biden administration is proving to be particularly good on that score. Since taking office US President Joe Biden has nipped at the heels of China’s Xi Jinping with moral urgency. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan has lectured Beijing on human rights abuses with mistaken clarity. The Pentagon …
Huge media coverage has been devoted to allegations, and now serious evidence, that a Christmas party was held at 10 Downing Street on 18 December 2020. London was then in a strict lockdown with social events banned, including parties.
In leaked footage obtained by ITV News, senior Downing Street staff are shown four days later, laughing and joking about the party being a ‘business meeting’ with ‘cheese and wine’. Allegra Stratton, then Boris Johnson’s press secretary, was leading a mock televised press briefing and, …
Ironically, it is today’s British rulers who are reaping the bitter fruit from the ongoing Brexit debacle with the European Union. The problem of an Irish border and its recurring messiness for the British Conservative government extricating from the EU is …
Currently, the West and its monopoly media are inordinately fixated on an allegation of a crime against an individual in another country, a country that is denigrated as a threat. The alleged crime serves as a pretext to punish that individual’s country, as if the country were the perpetrator or an accomplice in the alleged crime, or involved in a cover-up of the alleged crime.
The New York Timesheadlined a piece, “The Tennis Chief Taking on China Over Peng Shuai.” The Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) chief Steve Simon has suspended tournaments in …
Nuclear waste is an interminable curse that eternally haunts the future of civilization for hundreds/thousands of years.
The challenge of making nuclear power safer doesn’t end after the power has been generated. Nuclear fuel remains dangerously radioactive for thousands of years after it is no longer useful in a commercial reactor. ((Nuclear Waste, Union of Concerned Scientists, April 22, 2016.`))
There are 440 nuclear power plants in the world, all of which use nuclear fission, prompting one simple question: Is the process of generating heat via nuclear fission with a byproduct of extremely toxic radioactive waste lasting hundreds, or more, years for …
A very popular error: having the courage of one’s convictions; rather, it is a question of having the courage for an attack on one’s convictions!!!
— Friedrich Nietzsche, Critique of Religion and Philosophy, Walter A. Kaufmann, 1958, page 34
Is it necessary to say that this article is not about critical thinking and intellectual integrity (which Nietzsche, in a better moment, so eloquently described in the above-quotation)? Rather, it is about the inverse–about people, tens-of-millions of people, who seldom, if ever, roamed the shelves of a public library in the quest for deeper, nuanced understanding of complex areas of knowledge. It is …
Forget any notions of juicy carrots; the stick approach of savage punishment is in vogue with the Greek government in pushing vaccination rates. It is far from the only one. Across a number of countries in Europe, governments wishing to drive up levels of COVID-19 vaccination have decided to abandon suasion and the generous supply of medical information in favour of penalties and punishments.
In Austria, Chancellor Alexander Schallenberg was very much a standard bearer for that cause, citing stubbornness on the part of the citizenry of his country. (Only 69% of those eligible have received at least one dose, …
by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies / December 6th, 2021
Despite a disagreement over some amendments in the Senate, the United States Congress is poised to pass a $778 billion military budget bill for 2022. As they have been doing year after year, our elected officials are preparing to hand the lion’s share – over 65% – of federal discretionary spending to the U.S. war machine, even as they wring their hands over spending a mere quarter of that amount on the Build Back Better Act.
The U.S. military’s incredible record of systematic failure—most recently its final trouncing by the Taliban …
Events are unfolding at a quickening pace. Facing an alarming escalation in tensions around the world, we are looking to our most respected and renowned thought leaders for an honest assessment of both U.S. foreign and military policy to offer their most current thoughts and insights. We know they have some ideas for improving the prospects for peace.
Finian Cunningham has written extensively on international affairs, with articles published in several languages. He is a Master’s graduate in Agricultural Chemistry and worked as a scientific editor for the Royal Society of Chemistry, Cambridge, England, before pursuing a career in newspaper journalism. …
Review of Evermore by Mihaela Melnic and Scott Thomas Outlar
by Vatsala Radhakeesoon / December 6th, 2021
Evermore by Mihaela Melnic and Scott Thomas Outlar is a poetry and prose collection that focuses on reality as it is – a society that is hectic, engrossed in shallowness and mimicry, blinded by trend- guiding forces and people being followers like flocks of sheep in their daily routine life.
This book opens with Mihaela Melnic’s short prose-writing of how an island was born out of the union of two monkeys swinging on a ray of light. “Not sure if there was wisdom” and a paradise for fools was formed. The Monkey …
Stick to the script: owe that duty of care to your population, so the legal experts in government tell you. Self-interest pays, if in small amounts. These rigid, formulaic assumptions have done wonders to harm and deter any spirit of cooperation regarding dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic.
History’s record of humanity’s response to plagues, pandemics and disease is one of isolation, marginalisation, and exclusion. The infected shall be kept away and sealed off from the healthy and wealthy. This, inevitably, results in partiality, prejudice and distinctions. Omicron, having been pumped with the prestige of a potential COVID super variant, has given …
There has been much speculation about why Israel was allowed in 1967 to intentionally bomb the USS Liberty and slaughter 34 American soldiers on that ship which the U.S. Government has covered-up. And there also is much speculation about why, as reported to Congress by the Congressional Research Service on 7 August 2019, “Israel is the largest cumulative recipient of U.S. foreign assistance since World War II. To date, the United States has provided Israel $142.3 billion (current, or noninflation-adjusted, dollars) in bilateral assistance and missile defense funding. Almost all U.S. bilateral aid to …
Rights groups have declared Israel an apartheid state, but the Labour and Tory parties are now competing to be its best friend
by Jonathan Cook / December 4th, 2021
British politics is lurching backwards when it comes to Israel. Gains won over many decades that made it possible to critique Israel and its belligerent rule over Palestinians are being undone almost overnight – and on both sides of the supposed political divide.
A rash of recent incidents illustrate how quickly the rot has set in:
• Both the ruling Conservative and opposition Labour parties vehemently denounced a street protest this month against Tzipi Hotovely, Israel’s hard-right ambassador to the UK, a champion of its illegal settlements and denier of Palestinian history.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt in his 1938 message to Congress warned that when private power becomes stronger than the democratic state itself, we have Fascism. There are many ways to witness the intensifying domination toward a corporate state. One way is to compare exposé books in the 1960s and the present.
Within a span of five years, there were three books in the sixties that put forces in motion leading to significant reordering of our society’s priorities. They were Silent Spring by Rachel Carson (1962), my Unsafe at Any Speed (1965), and The Other America by Michael Harrington (1962).
The message of these bestselling books was expanded by …
Meeting in Dakar, Senegal, China announces that it will donate 600 million doses of vaccines for African countries and produce 400 million doses in partnership with African countries. China will send 500 specialists for ten agriculture and poverty alleviation projects on the continent, among other commitments.
Macao tightens regulations on casino operators. The ex-Portuguese colony overtook Las Vegas in 2006 as world’s largest gambling hub while Xi’s 2014 anti-corruption campaign targeted money laundering and capital outflows; tycoon Alvin Chau is among 11 people recently arrested for illegal gambling practices.
The Russians are up to no good and we must prepare to protect Ukraine. Moscow interferes in US and Canadian elections. That’s what Washington, Ottawa and their media sycophants claim. But is this just another case of accusing others of doing the things you do? An age-old propaganda technique designed to deflect attention away from your misdeeds?
For example, amidst claims the Russians may invade the Ukraine or overthrow its government, Ottawa says it is considering a military response. According to the Globe and Mail, Canada may deploy fighter jets currently in Romania to the Ukraine or send (again) a …
Trees are not re-growing in burned-out forests. This strange occurrence is becoming more frequent as global warming turns verdant flora into flammable tinder, causing more and bigger wild forests fires.
This article will examine the science behind failure of trees to regrow in burned-out forests. Additionally, and as a collateral issue, this puts one more distorted face on the consequential impact of the multi-billion dollar business called “woody biomass,” which burns trees in place of coal to meet carbon neutral protocols.
As a consequence, between the twin impacts of burned-out forests failing to regrow and woody biomass chopping down mature trees that …
“A lawyer with his briefcase can steal more than a hundred men with guns.” (Vito Corleone)
Vaccinologists consider the Stanley A. Plotkin Award to be the equivalent of a Nobel Prize in their lucrative field. To qualify for this accolade, the nominee should be “an individual who has made significant contributions to the field of ‘vaccinology’ [their quotation marks, not mine] or areas of related science that have impacted the lives of children and the specific area of pediatric infectious diseases.”
Sounds noble. This Plotkin dude sure must be special to …
The history of humanitarian or policing missions is a history of taking sides, disruptive partiality and the forfeiture of the very object powers claim when intervening in another country. Things become particularly absurd when the individual or government pleading for such help to an outside force is struggling to survive yet making grand statements about democracy and the like.
Take Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare of the Solomon Islands, who has made full use of the security agreement with Australia, signed in 2017 to make future meddling in his country a smooth affair. That understanding had been reached after fourteen years, when …
Almost every single child on the planet (over 80% of them) had their education disrupted by the pandemic, according to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural (UNESCO) agency. Though this finding is startling, it was certainly necessary to close schools as the infectious COVID-19 virus tore through society. What has been the impact of that decision on education? In 2017 – before the pandemic – at least 840 million people had …
If you want to know who is likely to be at war, just look at who is given the Nobel Peace Prize by the Norwegian (NATO) Parliament. Obama got it just days into office before he escalated the war in Afghanistan. Henry Kissinger got it in the 1970’S. And two years ago the Prime Minister of Ethiopia Abiy Ahmed got the prize for making “peace” with Eritrea. Within a year, the much-praised peace deal between Abiy Ahmed and Eritrea’s dictator, President Isaias Afwerki, the two had united to wage war against the Ethiopian Tigray people in the province bordering Eritrea. …
The amount of amnesia, and outright smoke and mirrors and juking the people, for and by and with the corporation at the helm, it is almost a death sentence trying to be a creative writer — a bloody novelist, no less — in this world of mass hysteria, a thinner door creaked open for legit novelists, and, well, all the world is a stage — podcasts, TikTok creations, blogs, e-zines, and on and on and on, as that Amazon Vanity Press is the new normal for those who want to get “published.”
What happened to news about Afghanistan? After their spectacular sweep of the entire country and overnight victory, there is no news now. And Taliban websites remain closed. Just human interest stuff about traitors/ cowards/ whatevers fleeing to the US or wherever. A convening of Afghan women parliamentarians, holding a mock Afghan parliament in exile (a Greek refugee camp). The hysteria about girls schooling ignores the well-documented but little known fact that almost all the schools (80%) that were supposedly educating girls throughout the country were non-functioning or even non-existent. And those teachers who were actually being paid were just pocketing …
How Psychoanalysis and Humanistic Psychology Ignore Scientific Research and How the Public Pays For It
by Bruce Lerro / December 3rd, 2021
Why is anger a motivation for writing this book? Because the rapid growth and professionalization of my field…has led it to abandon a commitment it made at the inception of that growth. That is to establish mental health base on research findings The practice would ignore the research…Instead, too many mental healthcare professionals rely on trained clinical intuition… it is often no different from the intuition of people who have had no training whatsoever… What our society has done is to license such people to do their own thing while simultaneously …
The Belgian government’s decision on November 25 to label products made in illegal Israeli Jewish settlements is welcome, although it will ultimately prove ineffectual.
Belgium has historically shown solidarity with Palestine if compared to other European countries, for example, Britain, Germany and France. From the cancellation of trade missions to Israel, to the effusive support by Belgian civil society, artists, scholars and ordinary people, Belgium has demonstrated the desire to play a constructive role in ending the Israeli occupation of Palestine.
Obviously, it will take more than symbolic solidarity and political statements to force Israel to respect international law, to …
