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Karen Paulina Biswell (Colombia), Nama Bú (We Exist), 2015.

Those who do not live in war zones or in suffocated countries are forced to live life as if there is nothing strange about what is happening around us. When we read about war, it is disconnected from our lives, and many of us want to stop listening to anything about the human misery caused by weapons or by sanctions. The scholasticism of the academic and the hushed tones …

The demonization of Russia among Western journalists has gotten so perverse, if Vladimir Putin were to jump in an erupting volcano and rescue a family of four Americans, carrying them on his back hobbling along on the melted stumps of his legs to a hospital 50 miles away, the mainstream media in the U.S. would report that Vlad the Impaler in some disconnected attempt to reconstruct the Soviet Empire had personally kidnapped four defenseless U.S. citizens and was holding them in a labor camp in the Siberian tundra.

Nothing good about Russia …

An immediate UN Security Council vote to grant Palestine permanent membership in the UN next month would put an end to Israel’s zealous delusions of permanent control over Palestine. It cannot happen without US backing.

President Donald Trump wants a Nobel Peace Prize, and his efforts toward peace in Ukraine, if successful, could possibly help him earn one—but only if he also ends US complicity in the ongoing genocide in Gaza. Under Trump, as under former President Joe Biden, the US has served as Israel’s partner in mass murder, annexation, starvation, and the escalating torment of …

A few days ago, Armenia and Azerbaijan published the text of the peace agreement, brokered by the United States. On paper, both sides pledged to respect each other’s territorial integrity and formally end the decades-long conflict. However, it remains a mystery, whether the countries will actually sign the agreement. Numerous mutual claims and disputes, the resolution of which cannot be expected in the near future, call into question the readiness for reconciliation demonstrated by Armenia and Azerbaijan. Moreover, the draft itself, as well as the additional agreements, raises many doubts about who would really benefit from a potential truce.

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To get to the venue involves a calming, if early, ritual. Uneasy sleep beforehand, given the morning slot. Eagerness to prepare for the topic to be discussed in the global affairs segment, accompanied by that childish sense of worry that approval means something. Then, getting on a tram to the venue, which, as luck would have it, is positioned just at the end of the tramline in East Brunswick. This is Melbourne, and the destination is one of the city’s most heart-throbbing venues of community radio, Triple R.

The trio of radio hosts on the program Breakfasters has already grown callouses …

Completely absent in any of the governmental efforts for the last three and a half years to end the war in Ukraine is the issue of self-determination as it relates concretely to where the on-the-ground war and the huge percentage of casualties are primarily happening.
The principle of nations having the right to make decisions about the form and nature of their governments goes back over 100 years and has long been upheld by the United Nations and most of the world’s governments.
When it comes to the Russia/Ukraine war, this principle clearly applies to Ukraine’s …

AI verifies our status as free individuals.

It is a curious feeling to see a government, let alone any politician, suddenly find their banished backbones and retired principles. The spine, on being discovered, adds a certain structural integrity to arguments otherwise lacking force and credibility. The recent spat between Israel and Australia suggests that Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s often insecure and often overly cautious administration is starting to show some muscle and certitude.

The cancellation of Simcha Rothman’s visa by the Albanese government was something of a minor revelation. Rothman is a member of Mafdal-Religious Zionism, a party led by Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich that has made its …

Twenty-four-hour news networks have demonstrated that surfeit kills discretion. The search for fillers, distractions, and items that will titillate, enrage, or simply sedate is an ongoing process. Gone are the days when discerning choices were made about what constituted worthy news, an admittedly difficult problem that would always lead to priorities, rankings, and judgments that might well be challenged. At the very least, news could be kept to specific time slots during the day, meaning that audiences could be given some form of rationing. Such an approach culminated in that most famous of occasions on April 18, 1933, when …

The UAE, the United Arab Emirates, is a cancer spreading in Africa. This cancer has infected much of east Africa and is spreading into northern, central, and western parts of the continent.

The worst outbreak of this disease, the UAE disease, has been in Sudan where the ruling Emirates family instigated an attempted coup d’etat 3 years ago, backing a warlord and his army, Gen. Mohamed Hamdan “Hemedti” Dagalo and the Rapid Support Forces, also known as the Janjaweed since the war in Dafur/west Sudan from 2003-2005.

When he launched the attempted coup, Hemeti’s fighters quickly scored major victories against …

Healthy societies revel in who they are. Unhealthy societies view themselves in terms of either an ignominious past, current enemies who endanger them, or internal elements degrading the true, virtuous nature of the commune and sapping its strength. The United States through most of its history was in the first category. Today, it is clearly in the second. Therein lies our national tragedy – and our precipitous slide into Fascism American style.

This historic shift – with profound implications – has not been driven by tangible factors, originating within itself or externally, but strikingly by intangibles. The country has not experienced any …

Has there been an increase in hearing ambulance sirens?

It is crystal clear that millions of US Americans are prepared to organize and take action to fight the efforts of the Trump regime to impose a form of 21st Century fascism on the USA. From the first youth-led, #50501 actions in all 50 states on February 5 to the more than five million people who came out in over 2,200 localities on June 14, No Kings Day, and everything in between and since, it is unquestionable that there is a mass resistance movement that is not giving up.

History is calling upon us to step up, and we are doing so.

This …

Write, but do not offend. Speak and comment, but do not divide. Observe cruelties, barbarities and murder, yet refrain from having an opinion. This is the constipating, stifling regime being put in place via suggested codes of conduct for organisers of writer events in Australia. The object of this intellectual veiling: discussing the exterminating war in Gaza. Across the country, the straitjacket of forced social harmony is being applied.

The Bendigo Writers Festival, being held in Victoria, Australia, is the latest case point, joining the Sydney Writers Festival, Melbourne Writers Festival, the Perth Writers’ Weekend, the Sydney Opera House’s All …

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