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See Part 1.

What is the point of Star Trek? When examined under apposite practical context, the conclusion may validate the argument that Star Trek filmography cannot be separated from the business enterprise that created it. Consequently, it is no-brainer to deduce that special interests control the content, direction, and purpose of such films.

Star Trek (ST) sagas are fascinating—even addictive. One explanation could be that the modifier Star makes us feel good about a Trek that would take us far from problems afflicting our planet. …

Orientation

How effective is the socialist left at winning over people in public meetings who are not already socialists? I would think that being socialists would make the people practicing socialism very good at being social. How true is this? There are two purposes in this article. One is to identify the similarities and differences between six forms of information control. The second part is to assess how good leftists are in using the two forms of control called …

Photo credit:  ICAN (International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons)
Imagine this scenario:

A month before the vote on the federal budget, progressives in Congress declared, “We’ve studied President Biden’s proposed $753 billion military budget, an increase of $13 billion from Trump’s already inflated budget, and we can’t, in good conscience, support this.”

Now that would be a show stopper, particularly if they added, “So we have decided to stand united, arm in arm, as a block of NO votes on any federal budget resolution that fails to reduce military …

British justice is a splendidly odd animal.  Its miscarriage is one of those wonders of institutional repetition.  When textbooks are written on the subject, one will feature prominently.  On April 23 this year, the convictions of 39 former sub-postmasters were quashed by the criminal division of the Court of Appeal.  They had been accused, and convicted, for theft and dishonesty after the UK Post Office installed the wonky wonder of the Horizon IT system.

There were figures such as Seema Misra, convicted for stealing £74,000 in cash from the Post Office branch under her stewardship in West Byfleet in 2010.  At …

How did we ever get to this point … to the point where, as I put it in The Covidian Cult, “instead of the cult existing as an island within the dominant culture, the cult has become the dominant culture, and those of us who have not joined the cult have become the isolated islands within it?”

To understand this, one needs to understand how cults control the minds of their members, because totalitarian ideological movements operate more or less the same way, just on a much larger, societal scale.

“The Covidian Cult (Part II)” by C.J. Hopkins

I had a job …

Over the years, as more problems with charter schools have been exposed, analyzed, and critiqued, more people have come to see the need for opposing them and for defending public education and the public interest. Criticism and rejection of these privately-operated schools has become more mainstream in recent years and it is safe to say that opposition to charter schools will keep growing so long as neoliberals and privatizers impose more charter schools on society.

Public school boards and many different education advocacy groups, along with more legislators, former charter …

After neo-Nazis marched in Charlottesville, North Carolina, and then President Donald Trump responded by saying there were “good people on both sides,” people who abhor white supremacism stood up, took notice, and condemned the marchers. Anti-racists would be wise to do the same about the far-right march that took place last week in Jerusalem.

The situation in Jerusalem began with clashes between Palestinians and Israeli forces over restrictions placed on the Damascus Gate entrance to the Old City. Then, in response to TikTok videos showing two Palestinian youths slapping an ultra-Orthodox Jewish man, the far-right Jewish group Lahava called for a …

The television series Star Trek has appeared in several iterations with a few handfuls of movies thrown in that have fired the imaginations of viewers of all ages for nigh 55 years. In particular, Star Trek captured the viewership of many progressives because Star Trek was much more than science-fiction intrigues or the swashbuckling adventures of humans exploring outer space.

The flavor of the universe was now different. Star Trek: The Original Series (ST:TOS) was set in the 23rd century on a planet Earth where poverty and wars were atavistic …

Criticism of Israel’s policies towards Palestinians has always induced a defensive rage from its defenders and advocates.   A Threshold Crossed, a report by Human Rights Watch, lit several fires of rage and disapproval.  Israel, according to the authors, is responsible for apartheid policies.

The word, and the application of its meaning, is immemorially nasty.  This deeply though through policy of Afrikaans origin speaks to a hatred not merely of Black Africans but British imperialism and its carefree mixing of multiracial labour.  But apartheid has become an expression so singular it resists appropriation, adaptation and application.  This is all good from …

The New York Times carries a transcript of Ezra Klein interviewing the venerable professor Noam Chomsky. The interview in its entirety is illuminating. However, the anarchist professor’s take on China gives one pause. It seems ill-informed and requires further elucidation.

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Ezra Klein: How do you think about China as an economic and geopolitical competitor? Should they be seen as a threat to us? Should we not think about them in that context? How would you like to see our relationship with China look?

Noam Chomsky: I …

The Green New Deal has attracted perhaps the greatest attention of any proposal for decades. It would guarantee Medicare-for-All, Housing-for-All, student loan forgiveness and propose the largest economic growth in human history to address unemployment and climate change.

But the last of these hits a stumbling block. Creation of all forms of energy contributes to the destruction of nature and human life. It is possible to increase the global quality of life at the same time we reduce the use of fossil fuels and other sources of energy.  Therefore, a “deep” GND …

Israel has a long-standing interest in Lebanon. These interests have periodically manifested themselves in bloody attacks against the small Arab state. Two important sources on the Zionist plans for Lebanon are the diary of Moshe Sharett, who was the Prime Minster of Israel in 1954-1955 and who was considered a “soft Zionist”, and Livia Rokach’s “Israel’s Sacred Terrorism: A study based on Moshe Sharett’s Personal Diary, and other documents”. In the latter we find some very important information, and it is worth quoting at length:

Then he [Ben Gurion] passed on …

(Full article …)

On 9 April 2021, retired physician and health and environmental campaigner Dr Rosemary Mason wrote to the Danish Environmental Protection Agency (DEPA). She wanted to draw the agency’s attention to the findings that indicate the glyphosate-based herbicide Roundup causes high levels of mortality following contact exposure in bumble bees (glyphosate-formulated herbicides are the most widely used weedicides in agriculture across the globe).

This, Mason argued, has led to a decline of bumblebees in Denmark. She asked the agency why it had used “fraudulent science” on glyphosate from the European Commission and the European Chemicals Agency, which in turn take their …

An unresolved war in the north of the country; ethnic based violence some are describing as genocide in the West; random explosions of aggression in various regions: Ethiopia is trembling.

With around 117 million people, Ethiopia has the second largest population in Africa, made up of 80 or so tribal groups, all with their own cultures, language or dialect. Three big ones dominate: The Oromo (35% of population), Amhara (27%) and Tigrayan (6%). Historic disputes over land and power exist between these powerful groups; grievances which are being aggravated by pernicious elements attempting to destabilize the country.

On November 5th 2020 an …

A mass rally with the Free German Youth that marked the founding of the German Democratic Republic in the Soviet Occupation Zone, October 1949.

A full generation has elapsed since the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) collapsed in late 1991. Two years earlier, in 1989, the communist states of Eastern Europe dissolved, with the first salvo fired when Hungary opened its border. On 3 March 1989, Hungary’s last communist prime minister Miklós Németh asked the USSR’s last President …