Between September 11 and 13, the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre (MCEC) will play host to a bazaar of networking and deal making as part of a show that really ought to be called The Merchants of Death Down Under. And the times for these merchants are positively bullish, given that total global military expenditure exceeded US$2.4 trillion in 2023, an increase of 6.8% in real terms from 2022.
The introductory note to the event is, typically in the lingo of the industry, mildly innocuous, even dull. “The Land Forces 2024 International Land Defence Exposition is the premier platform …
The Korean War: A History, reviewed again and again
by T.P. Wilkinson / September 2nd, 2024
Critical cultural historical perspective is not easy to obtain. Yet its importance as an orientation is immeasurable. One episode in the past American century of war is still virtually unknown and/ or misrepresented, the longest single armed conflict in the history of the North American republic—its campaign against Korea. In terms of active hostilities conducted by military formations, the United States dba the United Nations fought in Korea between 1951 and 1953, until a ceasefire and armistice was agreed between the United Nations and the People’s Democratic Republic of Korea. In practice, war by other means has continued with scarcely …
We must speak the truth: therein lies our strength, and the masses, the people, the multitude will decide in actual practice, after the struggle, whether we have strength.
— VI Lenin, 1905
Hugo Chavez will live on as one of the most outstanding foes of US imperialism in our time. His defiance of successive US governments was truly remarkable. Situated in the US backyard, Venezuela — under Chavez’s leadership — brought joy and admiration to millions throughout the world and inspired others in Central and South …
Despite much grandstanding in the Biden administration about halting specific arms shipments to Israel over feigned concerns about how they might be used (inflicting death is the expected form), US military supplies have been restored with barely a murmur. In a report in Haaretz on August 29, a rush of weapons to Israel has been noticed since the end of July.
August proved to be the second busiest month for US arms deliveries to Israel’s Nevatim Airbase since the October 2023 attacks by Hamas. This has taken place alongside an increased concentration of US forces in the region since …
Max Weber (1864-1920) was a prominent German sociologist who developed influential theories on rationality and authority. He examined different types of rationality that underpinned systems of authority. He argued that modern Western societies were based on legal-rational authority and had moved away from systems that were based on traditional authority and charismatic authority.
Traditional authority derives its power from long-standing customs and traditions, while charismatic authority is based on the exceptional personal qualities or charisma of a leader.
According to Weber, the legal-rational authority that characterises Western capitalist industrial society is based on instrumental rationality that focuses on the most efficient means to …
The video obtained by GT shows how the Philippine side dangerously disrupted and intervened in China’s scientific research in waters off China’s Xianbin Jiao in the #SouthChinaSea. Similar actions occurred when China conducted marine ecosystem research in Ren’ai Jiao.
On 23 August 1927, in Anarchist History, Italian-American Immigrants Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were executed by electric chair near Boston, Massachusetts for allegedly robbing a factory and murdering a security guard and the paymaster 7 years earlier.
By all accounts their trial was a sham. They were found guilty even after somebody else confessed to the crimes.
Their funeral was attended by 10,000 people and the wreath over their casket read, “Waiting for the hour of vengeance.” Anarchists around the world would soon deliver on this promise of vengeance.
Actually, I limit my exposure to daily media considerably. My experience as a journalist, when there was still some conventional meaning assignable to that term, began in school. I had become the news editor of the school paper. Whereas previously the monthly student production was devoted to athletic events and other entertainments, I introduced reporting on issues both in the school and those off the school grounds that nonetheless were relevant for pupils and the routines to which we were all subject. My model in those days was The Economist, still …
The tiltrotor V-22 Osprey has a plagued, bloodied history. But blighted as it is, the aircraft remains a cherished feature of the US Marines, regarded as vital in supporting combat assault, logistics and transport, not to mention playing a role in search-and-rescue missions and delivering equipment for the Navy carrier air wings.
In March this year, V-22 flights were again permitted after a three-month pause following a fatal crash on November 29 of an Air Force CV-22B off Yakushima Island, Japan and the grounding of all V-22S aircraft in early December. Col. Brian Taylor, program manager for the V-22 Joint Program …
During a week of action focused on UN potential to end Israel’s genocidal attacks, I was part of a coalition that met with twelve different permanent missions to the United Nations. We urged that if countries that are parties to the Genocide Convention or the Geneva Conventions stop trading with Israel as international law demands, (cf. the July 19th advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice), the genocide will end quickly.
In each encounter at a Permanent Mission to the UN, its staff asked if we, as U.S. citizens, have addressed our government’s unwavering support for the genocide against …
As an observer of foreign affairs, I’ve often written about the hypocrisy of Liberal and Conservative governments’ failure to uphold “an international rules-based order” despite claims of its importance. In the case of Israel, the duplicity is even more glaring. Our governments, past and present, repeatedly fail to uphold Canadian law.
Activists have long shown how arms sales and military recruitment to Israel violates the law. But Global Affairs, Minister of Justice, RCMP and other government agencies have generally ignored their legal responsibilities when it comes to the genocidal apartheid state.
Issuing arms permits to Israel contravenes Canada’s Export and Import Permits …
Luxury SUVs carried important people into important buildings for important events. And between us and the importance, there were police with rifles strapped to their chests.
by Danaka Katovich / August 29th, 2024
This blog originally appeared here on Proof That I’m Alive.
A couple of weeks ago, I plunged into Lake Michigan. Unlike usual, the water felt warm. It was easy to run all the way in and easy to float over the waves. Montrose beach was crowded with families, pitching tents to keep out of the sun. Children played, laughed, and cried. Midwesterners who still hadn’t made it out into the sun crisped their pale shoulders. It would have been a perfectly relaxing day, but fighter jets circled above everyone’s heads — doing dives and turning every which …
On 8 August 2024, a 31-year-old doctor at the RG Kar Medical College in Kolkata (West Bengal, India) finished her 36-hour shift at the hospital, ate dinner with her colleagues, and went to the college’s seminar hall to rest before her next shift. The next day, shortly after being reported missing, she was found in a seminar room, her lifeless body displaying all the signs of terrible …
On the political stage, Canada often seems to trail behind the US. After the US government’s announcement in May of imposing high tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles (EV) and steel, the Canadian government has now decided to follow suit.
On Monday, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Ottawa would impose a 100 percent tariff on imports of Chinese EVs and announced a 25 percent tariff on imported steel and aluminum from China. These measures align with the tariffs set by the US.
Zhou Rongyao, director of the Canadian Studies Center …
From Unconscious Sleeping Giants to Conscious Builders of Barricades Part I
by Bruce Lerro / August 27th, 2024
Orientation
One purpose of this article is to get you to think of creativity in a whole new way. Our notion of creative today is baked with the assumptions of a Romantic theory of art. These have their good points but they also limit us. In this article I want to argue that the most powerful forms of creativity are collective, not individual. One problem is that with the evolution of society into social classes the collective creativity of workers and peasants is buried in their alienated social-historical unconscious. Making this collective …
On August 12, 1949, the four Geneva Conventions were adopted, laying the basis of a normative standard in international humanitarian law. As Balthasar Staehelin, personal envoy of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) president to China, stated at an anniversary event at the Swiss Embassy in Beijing, “In the past 75 years, the four Geneva Conventions have been fundamental in protecting persons affected by armed conflict, and international humanitarian law remains as relevant today for contemporary armed conflicts, as it was 75 years ago.”
The Nazi Hunters was a US television docu-drama miniseries in 2009, that described the exploits of Zionist (mostly Mossad) pursuers of Nazi criminals post-WWII. It was made into a film in 2022.
We have all seen films and read books about Nazis and the holocaust. Sometimes they went too far, such as the fanciful stories of human skin lampshades and victims made into soap, but the long (semi-permanent) and extensive public awareness campaign was immensely successful in creating not only a widely shared awareness, but also a strong revulsion against genocide. To that end, the United Nations Convention on the Prevention …
Zuckerberg’s confession comes in the wake of a series of court rulings that turn a blind eye to the government’s technofascism.
In a 2-1 decision in Children’s Health Defense v. Meta, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed a lawsuit brought by Children’s Health Defense against Meta Platforms for restricting CHD’s posts, fundraising, and advertising on Facebook following communications between Meta and federal government officials.
Alaa Jamal’s pain and suffering is wound so tightly around her heart that it shields it from all the horrors she’s lived through. So even though she’s in the crosshairs of Netanyahu’s hatred’s sights, her heart beats unceasingly, in defiance of what the Occupation has done to her. Otherwise, she wouldn’t be able to keep the remnants of her family alive: a one year old son named Eid and a three year old daughter named Sanaa. Alaa calls her daughter Princess, an apt nickname for Alaa’s life has always been a fairytale, just one punctuated by war every …
It began as a devastating, confined storm off the coast of Sicily, striking the luxury yacht Bayesian in the form of a devastating water column resembling a tornado. Probability was inherent in the name (Thomas Bayes, mathematician and nonconformist theologian of the 18th century, had been the first to use probability inductively) and improbability the nature of the accident.
It also led to rich speculation about the fate of those on the doomed vessel. While most on the sunk yacht were saved (the eventual number totalled fifteen), a number of prominent figures initially went missing before being found. They included British …
The problem with satellite states and subject powers is that their representatives are rarely to be trusted, especially on matters regarding security. Their idea of safety and assurance is tied up in the interests of some other power, one who supposedly guarantees it through a promised force of arms come the place and come the time. The guarantee is often a sham one, variable in accordance with the self-interest of the guardian. In the case of the United States, the island continent of Australia is only useful as an annexure of Washington’s goal: maintaining less the illusion of a Pax …
Washington’s intent was not to encourage a free and fair democratic process, but to delegitimize the one already in place.
by Roger D. Harris / August 23rd, 2024
Don’t ask what business the US had in backing a candidate in Venezuela’s July 28 presidential election. Certainly that was not a question that the corporate press ever asked.
Of course, the US should never have been meddling in Venezuelan elections in the first place. But given the machinations of the hemisphere’s hegemon, it is instructive to examine why and who Washington backed.
Insurrectionary rather than democratic strategy
It came as no surprise that the US-backed opposition called the 2024 Venezuelan presidential election fraudulent when they lost. They had announced that intention before the election.
Cries of fraud have been the far-right’s practice in …
Major planetary boundaries that support life are at risk of collapse. This is happening at speeds that climate scientists never thought possible. What are the consequences and what, if anything, can be done?
Johan Rockström, Potsdam Institute for Climate Research, Germany, recently gave a 20-mimute TED speech: The Tipping Points of Climate Change. He is a world-class climate scientist specializing in planetary boundary frameworks. Of note, Dr. Rockström is one climate scientist that other scientists pay attention to when he talks.
A summation of what should be categorized as “one of the most important speeches of 2024” is included herein.
On 16 August 2024, the Organisation of American States (OAS), whose 1948 formation as a Cold War institution was instigated by the United States, voted on a resolution regarding the Venezuelan presidential elections. The nub of the resolution proposed by the US called upon Venezuela’s election authority, the National Electoral Council (CNE), to publish all the election …
In 2007, the writer Tal Nitsán isolated instances where Israeli male combatants systematically used sexual violence against Palestinian women to the war of 1948. In essentially marking off such conduct from more contemporary practices, she relied on media accounts, archival sources, the reports of human rights organisations and the testimony of 25 Israeli reserve male soldiers.
Seven years later, the American feminist legal scholar Catharine MacKinnon, following a lecture in Israel in 2014, had this to say: “I spoke to Palestinian women, and they testified that there are no attacks of rape by Israeli soldiers. And that, again, is …
