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The US presidential doctrine is an odd creature.  Usually summoned up by security wonks and satellite personnel who revolve around the President, these eventually assume the name of the person holding office.  They are given the force of a Papal bull and treated by the priest pundits as binding, coherent and sound.

Much of this is often simple mythmaking for the imperial minder in the White House, betraying what are often shallow understandings about global politics and movements.  Clarity and details are often found wanting.  Variety in such doctrinal matters, the Soviet Union’s veteran diplomat Andrei Gromyko noted in casting …

Despotism has become our new normal.

Digital tyranny, surveillance. Intolerance, cancel culture, censorship. Lockdowns, mandates, government overreach. Supply chain shortages, inflation. Police brutality, home invasions, martial law. The loss of bodily integrity, privacy, autonomy.

These acts of tyranny by an authoritarian government have long since ceased to alarm or unnerve us. We have become desensitized to government brutality, accustomed to government corruption, and unfazed by the government’s assaults on our freedoms.

This present trajectory is unsustainable. The center cannot hold.

The following danger points pose some of the greatest threats to our collective and individual …

In this video I speak about the illogicality of the modern day human rights activist, particularly those funded by the US government. In many of my videos I debunk much of the anti-China narrative being pushed globally, but in this video, I take a step back, use a different approach, and explore the idea of targeting China from the perspective of accepting these narratives at face value.

This video was inspired by DiEM25’s Christmas special with Noam Chomsky and Yanis Varoufakis. I’ll also address the fact that they seem to accept the narratives against China as truth. Their …

At the outset, the Israeli military decision to revise its open-fire policies in the occupied West Bank seems puzzling. What would be the logic of giving Israeli soldiers the space to shoot more Palestinians when existing army manuals had already granted them near-total immunity and little legal accountability?

The military’s new rules now allow Isreali soldiers to shoot, even kill, fleeing Palestinian youngsters with live ammunition for allegedly throwing rocks at Israeli ‘civilian’ cars. This also applies to situations where the alleged Palestinian ‘attackers’ are not holding rocks at the time of the shooting.

The reference to ‘civilians’ in the revised …

Consider this article as a postscript to my earlier psychological portrait of Barack Obama as “The Ultimate Status-Seeker” (Dissident Voice, May 5, 2012).  Many unanswered questions remain about Obama: the nature of his emotional life and attachments, his primary motivations for becoming president, and his ultimate values and principles (if any). Here was a man who planned, decades ahead of time, his ascent to the pinnacle of power – and hewed single-mindedly to that single-track goal until he attained it. As president, he was at once a compulsive compromiser – even with …

Much of the independent media have provided coverage of the horrendous plight suffered by WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange. Some corporate media have even pointed out how five purported democracies conspired to entrap Julian Assange and, with the acquiescence of most of the western monopoly media, are complicit in the slow-motion assassination of the brave journalist.

The deaths of at least 27 people who drowned as they tried to cross the Channel in an inflatable dinghy in search of asylum have quickly been overshadowed by a diplomatic row engulfing Britain and France.

As European states struggle to shut their borders to refugees, the two countries are in a war of words over who is responsible for stopping the growing number of small boats trying to reach British shores. Britain has demanded the right to patrol French waters and station border police on French territory, suggesting that France is not up to …

P.S. Jalaja (India), We Surely Can Change the World, 2021.

Bittersweet is the passage of this year. There have been some immense victories and some catastrophic defeats, the most terrible being the failure of the Global North countries to adopt a democratic attitude towards confronting the COVID-19 pandemic and creating equitable access to key resources, from life-saving medical equipment to vaccines. Tragically, by the end of this pandemic, we will have learnt the Greek alphabet from the …

Photo credit: peace-justice.org
This year, 2021, began with a huge sense of relief as Trump left office. We hoped to emerge from the ravages of COVID, pass a hefty Build Back Better (BBB) bill, and make significant cuts to the Pentagon budget. But, alas, we faced a January 6 white nationalist insurrection, two new COVID mutations, a sliced-and-diced BBB bill that didn’t pass, and a Pentagon budget that actually INCREASED!

It was, indeed, a disastrous year, but we do have some reasons to cheer:

1. The U.S. survived its first major …

As I walk around my neighborhood of Astoria or in Manhattan or ride the subway, I’m in a perpetual state of astonishment and disappointment. New York City is virtually indistinguishable from 12 months ago at this exact time, e.g.:

Long, socially-distanced lines (wrapped around the block) of double-masked folks waiting to become a useful statistic by taking the frighteningly flawed Covid test
People dramatically yank their masks up to cover their nose and mouth when I approach
Store owners and employees demanding you wear a mask to enter
Sneers and dirty …

Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the South African anti-apartheid icon, has died at the age of 90. In 1984 Desmond Tutu won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work fighting to end white minority rule in South Africa. After the fall of apartheid, Archbishop Tutu chaired the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, where he pushed for restorative justice. He was a leading voice for human rights and peace around the world. He opposed the Iraq War and condemned the Israeli occupation in Palestine, comparing it to apartheid South Africa. We re-air two interviews Archbishop Tutu did on Democracy Now!, as well …

Is Omicron an anagram?

Charter by definition means contract, a legally binding agreement between two or more parties to do or not do something within a specified period of time. Typically, contracts also enshrine a set of rewards and punishments.

Contracts are the quintessential market category. They govern how relations work in the marketplace and ensure exchange relations occupy center-stage in contemporary capitalist societies. Contracts are a key mechanism used often to outsource and privatize public services, programs, and enterprises. Contracting, especially in the neoliberal period, is a way to expand the claims of private interests on public funds, assets, and authority while restricting the …

Imagine if Nicolás Maduro’s vice president quit and called for his government to be disbanded. Or if Venezuela’s opposition won a landslide in regional elections or if 90% of member states voted against the government’s UN credentials. The Canadian media would have splashed this news on front pages, but the shoe was on “our guy’s” foot so they’ve been silent.

The dominant media has all but ignored the collapse of Canada’s unprecedented bid to create an international coalition to support a parallel Venezuelan government. It’s quite a turnaround from when the media published puff pieces about Ottawa’s central role in …

“You know what I think?” she says. “That people’s memories are maybe the fuel they burn to stay alive. Whether those memories have any actual importance or not, it doesn’t matter as far as the maintenance of life is concerned. They’re all just fuel. Advertising fillers in the newspaper, philosophy books, dirty pictures in a magazine, a bundle of ten-thousand-yen bills: when you feed ’em to the fire, they’re all just paper. The fire isn’t thinking ‘Oh, this is Kant,’ or ‘Oh, this is the Yomiuri evening edition,’ or ‘Nice tits,’ while it burns. To the fire, they’re nothing …

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