As we saw in Part 1, in 1914 and again in 1939, millions of men and women welcomed war. Arnold Ridley and his pals did make this choice, but in reality the choice had been made for them by decades and centuries of the relentless ‘patriotic’ propaganda described by Tolstoy, which most people were powerless to resist.
The enthusiasm for war seems immensely significant. It tells us that, facing the ultimate test of self-interestedness – whether they were willing to risk being shot, burned, blasted and horribly mutilated in …
The name Arnold Ridley will be familiar to many viewers of ‘Dad’s Army’, one of Britain’s best-loved TV comedies, which ran a long time ago (1968-1977) but is still shown on prime time BBC TV.
Ridley played Private Godfrey, the loveable, most doddery member of a Second World War platoon of elderly Home Guard troops tasked with defending a stretch of the British coast ‘from the Novelty Rock Emporium to Stone’s Amusement Arcade’.
Godfrey would typically interrupt preparations to repel Nazi stormtroopers with observations such as, ‘My sister …
As the doctor approached with his scalpel and began performing ritual genital mutilation, I complained as loudly as an eight pound body is able, but my cries fell upon deaf and unsympathetic ears. Then They destroyed my first line of defense against disease-causing toxins by ripping out my tonsils and adenoids, and once again no one heeded my screams of agony. Then a white-coated monster called a dentist drilled away my new strong teeth, replacing vast enameled swaths with a lead-like substance. Then other white coats brought out the needles, and the “jab”, all too often followed by bouts of …
Few could have been slack-jawed at the first significant foreign policy speech of US President Joe Biden. It can easily be filed under the “America is back” label. Back as well, as if the previous administration had been incapable of it, was a promise for that practice unflatteringly called jaw-jaw. “Diplomacy,” the President states from the outset, “is back at the centre of our foreign policy.”
Doing so naturally meant much cap doffing to the US State Department, that long time enunciator of Washington’s imperial policies. President Donald Trump had held a rather different view of the department he generally …
Despite the long-awaited political change in Washington as Democratic President, Joe Biden, has officially become the 46th President of the United States, Europe is unlikely to resume its previously unhindered reliance on its trans-Atlantic partner.
The four years of Donald Trump were rife with tension and strife between the US and Europe – in fact, between the US and its traditional allies, including Mexico and Canada. However, the strain in the US-EU relationship long preceded Trump’s presidency.
Trump’s eccentric personal style – and often blunt rhetoric and action – was …
Oracle Park
The assets of Charles Johnson, the controversial chief owner of the San Francisco Giants, increased by $815 million during the COVID-19 pandemic. In March 2020, his net worth was a mere $4.2 billion dollars. By January 2021 he commanded a fortune of $5.015 billion, an increase just short of 20%.
Workers at Oracle Park, where the Giants play, have been taking it on the chin during the pandemic, but the pandemic apparently hasn’t taken any skin off Johnson’s nose.
These numbers come from a February 2021 report by …
In 2016, I attended an information session about First Nations in Lax Kxeen (colonial designation Prince Rupert), ((The city’s name is an eponym for Prince Rupert of the Rhine, a European elitist who never set foot on the Pacific coast. For the Ts’msyen: “Place names are usually rooted in the natural world and the land they refer to.” See Kenneth Campbell, Persistence and Change: A History of the Ts’msyen Nation (Prince Rupert, [sic] BC: First Nation Educational Council, 2005): 10. Author Kenneth Campbell commented, “By writing and saying the name name in [Sm’algyax, the Ts’msyen language], both the language and …
“The CIA and the media are part of the same criminal conspiracy,” wrote Douglas Valentine in his important book, The CIA As Organized Crime.
This is true. The corporate mainstream media are stenographers for the national security state’s ongoing psychological operations aimed at the American people, just as they have done the same for an international audience. We have long been subjected to this “information warfare,” whose purpose is to win the hearts and minds of the American people and pacify them into victims of their own complicity, just as it was practiced long ago by the CIA in …
Two dangerous things are happening simultaneously.
First, the official COVID narratives are mutating in ways that threaten to make it a forever phenomenon—unsurprisingly to anyone who’s been paying attention. Second, the titans of Hi-Tech, in league with the Deep State and its political lapdogs—are hell-bent on eliminating voices of dissent on various Internet platforms.
It seems to me that we have to fight extreme with extreme. But our extreme might be simple. Hard, yes, but a very direct action. Might we, for instance, begin our resistance by ditching our smartphones? In the one’s and two’s? Or in rallies where we dump them …
by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies / February 15th, 2021
Photo Credit: CODEPINK
As Congress still struggles to pass a COVID relief bill, the rest of the world is nervously reserving judgment on America’s new president and his foreign policy, after successive U.S. administrations have delivered unexpected and damaging shocks to the world and the international system.
Cautious international optimism toward President Biden is very much based on his commitment to Obama’s signature diplomatic achievement, the JCPOA or nuclear agreement with Iran. Biden and the Democrats excoriated Trump for withdrawing from it and promised …
Governments have an almost crippling trouble appreciating conflicts of interest. Since tentacle-heavy lobby groups decided to move into the world’s capitals to make the case for their clients, the revolving door has become the sickening feature of politics. Former bureaucrats, public service officials and elected representatives find few problems with joining the very lobby groups that once pressured them to change policy. This seamless movement of sewerage makes accountable governance a hag and transparency a bed-bound dream.
The indifference shown by political wonks and private sector lobbyists to this practice is reflected in an abundant literature that is enchanted by it. …
The social and economic destruction engulfing the U.S. and dozens of other countries remains out of everyone’s control and more chaos, instability, and insecurity now mark the global landscape.
The ruling elite have repeatedly shown their inability to tackle any serious problems effectively. They are at a loss for how to deal with current problems and refuse to consider any alternative to their obsolete economic system. The best they can do is recycle old ideas to maintain their class power and privilege. Their efforts to block the New focus mainly on promoting disinformation about “new and better forms of capitalism,” including …
The Liberals’ commitment to a neo-Duvalierist dictatorship in Haiti is being tested. Hopefully Black History Month offers opposition parties an opportunity to finally echo growing grassroots criticism of Canadian policy in the hemisphere’s poorest country.
Since Monday a squatter has been occupying the presidential palace in Port-au-Prince. On Sunday evening Supreme Court Justice Joseph Mecene Jean-Louis was appointed provisional interim President of Haiti by the opposition parties that say Jovenel Moïse’s mandate is over as the constitution states. But, Moïse has refused to leave, claiming another year on his mandate. …
In the morning of 5 February 2021, a distinguished gentleman, professional, in his early 70s, impeccably dressed in suit and tie (no name shall be mentioned) – was running to catch an 8 AM train at the Geneva principal railway station, Cornavin.
He was in a hurry not to miss the train, and was just about to put on the obligatory mask, when two gendarmes grabbed him, one on each arm, and told him about mask obligation. He responded that he was just about to put it on – which was visible to the police, as he held a mask in …
On 12 February, 2021, the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) adopted a resolution in which it criticized the removal of Myanmar’s democratically elected government by the military, locally known as Tatmadaw. The Council also called urgently for the immediate and unconditional release of all persons arbitrarily detained, including State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi and President Win Myint and others, and the lifting of the state of emergency.
As the international community condemns the coup and shows support for Suu Kyi, it is important not to whitewash …
Need an idea for a side hustle? Put sanctions on a country, pirate its oil exports, then sell it! That’s what the US did with a million barrels of Iranian oil.
Victoria Nuland exemplifies the neocons who have led US foreign policy from one disaster to another for the past 30 years while evading accountability. It is a bad sign that President Joe Biden has nominated Victoria Nuland for the third highest position at the State Department, Under Secretary for Political Affairs.
As a top-level appointee, Victoria Nuland must be confirmed by the US Senate. There is a campaign to Stop her confirmation. The following review of her work shows why Victoria Nuland is incompetent, highly dangerous and should not be confirmed.
Wall Street may own the country, as Kansas populist leader Mary Elizabeth Lease once declared, but a new generation of “retail” stock market traders is fighting back.
A short squeeze frenzy driven by a new generation of gamers captured financial headlines in recent weeks, centered on a struggling strip mall video game store called GameStop. The Internet and a year off in this shut down to study up have given a younger generation of investors the tools to compete in the market. Gerald Celente calls it the “Youth Revolution.” A group of New York Young Republicans who protested in the snow on …
Solar system.nasa.gov
If Oumuamua is the real deal, meaning an alien craft, then Earthlings are doing some really weird stuff on the scale of alien intelligence. Think about it… If it’s an alien craft or drone, there’s no way it entered the sun’s solar system, swooping within 15M miles of Earth, powered by fossil fuels.
Just imagine alien engineers 10.5 light-years away at “Aegir, aka: Epsilon Eridani b” fueling Oumuamua with cryogenic liquid methane and liquid oxygen (the fuel that powers Elon Musk’s SpaceX Raptor) for its big trip …
If firefighters fight fires, what do freedom fighters fight?
Once upon a time, in a place almost around the corner, a fire brigade arrived in a village in the middle of a snowstorm, at night. The firemen evacuated everyone from their houses crying that the village is on fire. Since it was nighttime everyone was in bed. They were rushed out of their homes with nothing but their bedclothes.
Everyone was standing in the cold, sub-zero night waiting, unable to see any fire, not even smoke– partly due to the …
Since January 4, 2021, student protests have been going on in Turkey. At Bogazici University in Istanbul, rectors are elected through free and fair elections by faculties. The only time in the institution’s history when these democratic processes were suspended was in the aftermath of the 1980 coup d’état. In today’s time, it is again being done.
Curtailing Academic Autonomy
On January 1, 2021, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan appointed a rector to Bogazici without any consultations with the university staff or students. The appointee, Professor Melih Bulu, has been a member of the governing Justice and Development Party (AKP) …
One morning in early 2011, 75-year-old grandmother Hayastan Shakarian left her house in the village of Armazi, Georgia, armed with just a shovel. She was on the hunt for valuable metals – copper, in particular – hoping to scavenge unused wire and sell it for scrap.
On finding some subterranean cables near a railway track, the pensioner diligently set to work. Little did she know, however, that she was hacking through a crucial piece of infrastructure: a fibre optic cable bringing internet to the entire neighbouring country of Armenia. She would unwittingly leave the population of that neighbouring country – more …
Image: Anadolu AgencyMandatory masks continue to be the standard operating procedure for many counties, regions, districts, states and nations worldwide, as the COVID cult agenda progresses. In many places, while COVID vaccines are not yet mandatory, authorities are rushing to prepare to make them so, by setting up schemes like immunity passports, vaccine certificates and mandatory tracking databases which log who has taken the shot and who has not. Meanwhile, inherent sovereign human rights are being limited to …
by Medea Benjamin and Ariel Gold / February 11th, 2021
Credit: CODEPINK
Under Donald Trump’s presidency, Egypt, as well as Saudi Arabia, Israel, the UAE, and other repressive regimes, had virtually free reign to commit unchecked human rights abuses without worry that they might be chastised or lose U.S. diplomatic and financial support. But when Joe Biden won the 2020 election, President Sisi of Egypt started to worry. That’s when he contracted lobbying powerhouse Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck for $65,000 a month.
The pro-Cairo lobby team includes a number of former politicians, including former Republican congressman Ed Royce, who …
With changes of presidential administrations, radical departures in policy are always exaggerated. Continuity remains, for the most part, a standard feature. It is precisely that continuity being challenged by groups fearful of the continuing prosecution of Julian Assange.
The effort by the US Justice Department to extradite Assange from the UK on eighteen charges based on the Espionage Act and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act met a stumbling block in the courts on January 4 this year. The decision by District Judge Vanessa Baraitser proved exceedingly unsympathetic to the press and to Assange in general, but found his “the …
Israeli anxiety was palpable when it was reported that Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was not contacted by the new American President, Joe Biden, for days after the latter’s inauguration. While much is being read into Biden’s decision, including Washington’s lack of enthusiasm to return to the ‘peace process’, Moscow is generating much attention as a possible alternative to the United States by hosting inner Palestinian dialogue and conversing with leaders of Palestinian political groups.
Indeed, a political shift is taking place on both fronts: the US away from the …
Rifts in the Palestinian coalition party in Israel have helped further the prime minister’s agenda, and may yet foil his corruption trial
by Jonathan Cook / February 10th, 2021
For six years the Joint List had served as a beacon of political hope. Not just for the large Palestinian minority in Israel it represented, but also for a global Palestinian audience disillusioned by years of infighting between Fatah and Hamas that has sidelined the national cause.
But last week, the Joint List’s coalition of four Palestinian parties split asunder, weeks ahead of an Israeli general election that will focus on the fate of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The List’s component parties, representing a fifth of the Israeli population, had found it impossible to set aside their long-running …
On February 4, in his first major foreign policy address, President Joe Biden announced “we are ending all American support for offensive operations in the war in Yemen, including relevant arms sales.” Speaking of the Saudi-led coalition that has been at war in Yemen since 2015, creating what he called “a humanitarian and strategic catastrophe,” Biden declared: “This war has to end.”
Stating an intention is not fulfilling it and considering Biden’s further pledge, “to continue to support and help Saudi Arabia defend its sovereignty and its territorial …
A key feature of disinformation is that it robs people of an outlook, not just ideas and views, but a coherent world outlook that enables and empowers them to make sense of the world, figure out what is going, avoid illusions, and take actions that favor the public interest and restrict the unjust claims of owners of capital.
Joe Biden’s Economic Dream Team
Such disinformation is evident in a January 6, 2021, BBC News article titled: “Joe Biden: The team he hopes can fix the US economy.”
How exactly will the rich and their political representatives fix their obsolete economic …
Globally, there is an ongoing trend of a handful of big companies determining what food is grown, how it is grown, what is in it and who sells it. This model involves highly processed food adulterated with chemical inputs ending up in large near-monopoly supermarket chains or fast-food outlets that rely on industrial-scale farming.
While the brands lining the shelves of giant retail outlets seem vast, a handful of food companies own these brands which, in turn, rely on a relatively narrow range of produce for ingredients. At the same time, this illusion of choice often comes at the expense of …
