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The downfall of preying upon Earthlings’ fear of the presence of extraterrestrials.

There is nothing more common than to confound the terms of the American Revolution with those of the late American war. The American war is over, but this is far from being the case with the American revolution. On the contrary, nothing but the first act of the great drama is closed.”   1787, Benjamin Rush
— the beginning of the book, Citizen Tom Paine, by Howard Fast, 1943

The writings below are primarily from a column I published on July 5, 2020. It was a review of the book, Citizen Tom Paine. I am writing this updated version of it again now …

The obsession, one verging on pathological, with political parties is producing its share of symptoms. These include, amongst others, cynicism, a general loathing by the electorate, a suspicion about a lack of independence among its parliamentary members, and the feeling that these machine types cannot be trusted and estranged. The independent representative is an antidote to this, a breath of the crispest, freshest air. Why, then, form a party of independents, thereby ceasing to be independent and forfeiting your very strength?

Well-meaning and well-intended, Zali Steggall and Allegra Spender, two formidable independent parliamentarians known in Australian politics as the “teals”, have …

A written interview with China Social Science Today, published by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing. Here is the Chinese version of May 29, 2026.
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Subject: An interview on the topic of “research productivity” from Chinese Social Sciences Today

INTRODUCTION
I served as the director of the Lund University Peace Research Institute, LUPRI, from 1983 to 1989. Then the social science faculty decided to close it down, together with a series of other studies, including environmental studies and human rights studies. The astonishing reason …

As Americans prepare to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, few are paying attention to a bill moving through Congress that could seriously impinge on our financial independence.
The Clarity for Payment Stablecoins Act, H.R. 4766, is slated to make privately issued stablecoins a major component of the U.S. monetary system. Supporters see stablecoins as a way to strengthen the dollar’s global role while creating a vast new market for U.S. Treasury securities. Critics see the rise of programmable private money that can be monitored, frozen, …

We live in a time saturated with negative energy. Accidents dominate headlines, bad news is good news, and social media are full of outrage and empty of public education. Public debate has become a theatre of suspicion: one flaw is enough to condemn an entire achievement, one misstep enough to erase a lifetime of work. Commentators compete to predict catastrophe, and geopolitics and war talk of have disappeared every mention of peace.

It has become easier to do criticism and destroy than to appreciate, easier to promote fear than understanding, …

Chen Chieh-jen (Taiwan, China), Factory, 2003.
United States military bases are everywhere in the world: the US maintains some 750 to 800 military bases in roughly eighty countries or areas. Taiwan, China, is just one of them. The US military base in Taiwan was formally closed in 1979, though arms sales have continued ever since. But what receives far less scrutiny is ideological control. In Taiwan, the US did not only build bases – it built a systematic apparatus of ideological domination, one that has proved even more durable than …

Every society begins in a household. Before a child encounters a nation, a school, a doctrine, or a law, they encounter a family. The household is the first government a human being meets. It is the earliest site where power is exercised, where silence is taught, where truth is negotiated, and where harm can take on the shape of ritual long before anyone recognizes it as such.

Domestic harm rarely begins with deliberate cruelty. It begins with memory. A parent raised in fear may raise their child in fear—not out of malice, but out of inheritance. A child who grows up …

Relishing in the defeat of Trump’s United States by the Islamic Republic of Iran may soothe the anxieties of those who anguished at U.S. complicity in assisting Israel continue its attacks on those who oppose its expansion and dominance, but may not be the proper approach to restoring political sanity, achieving peace, and stopping Israel from continuing its genocidal tactics. Recognizing the signed Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) as a defeat of the U.S. War Department is acceptable; not recognizing this could be a start for new leadership, for new directions, and for a new foreign policy is defeatism.

What we have …

When James Madison was elected to the Continental Congress in 1779, not yet thirty years old and a graduate of the College of New Jersey (now Princeton), he was introduced to the Scottish Enlightenment as religious freedom and ‘liberty of conscience’ ultimately became the world’s treasured First Amendment, he was stepping into a career as the American Revolution’s most brilliant legislator.

As the 250th Birth of the Declaration of Independence is fast approaching, the Second Continental Congress on July 4th 1776 proclaimed the thirteen colonies separate from Great Britain. As Congress stalemates today into a lesser version of its former self, …

As large language models (LLMs), a new generation of AI chatbots, and other forms of generative AI (artificial intelligence) become more widely used as information sources, it’s no surprise that many people are taking advantage of the convenience of AI search engine overviews. According to a June 2026 Pew Research Center report, roughly 60 percent of Americans read AI search engine summaries, 30 percent reported that they don’t, and 10 percent said they “were not sure if [they’d] done so.” But what is more alarming is that many users may not realize that these prominent, commanding summaries …

Just how far would some political wannabes go in order to curry the sympathy vote?

There is a mistake that warfighters sometimes make, and that wartalkers – diplomats, academics, journalists, podcasters  – always make.

That’s the mistake which Carl von Clausewitz, Prussian staff officer and mercenary against France,  made when he repeatedly told his superiors (between 1816 and 1832) that “war is no more than the continuation of  politics by other means” (Der Krieg ist eine bloße Fortsetzung der Politik mit anderen Mitteln).

This was —  still is —  the line which small and middle-sized kings, states,  and armies think when …

The arrest of Alyssa Phillip, a leader in the Justice for Kaia Sealy movement, during the Labour Day celebrations in Fyzabad, Trinidad and Tobago, is a stark demonstration of how state power is being deployed to suppress legitimate, people(s)-centered demands for justice, and a troubling illustration of the government’s full alignment with the current U.S. regime’s abandonment of even the pretense of a commitment to internationally recognized human rights standards.

The Labour Day arrest was particularly egregious. Police in tactical gear surrounded Phillip and her mother, escorting her into a …

Although consciousness had returned some time ago, Ahmed refrained from opening his eyes. He was vaguely aware that he was lying on a blanket on the floor of the Al Shifa hospital. Pain was returning to his right leg. The pain was bearable… pleasurable even. It was a pain that held the fantasy that the doctors had been able to save his leg. Were he to open his eyes, that fantasy might dissolve into a bitter reality of loss. It was better to savour the illusion a little longer.

He could …