“PCR is separate from that. It’s just a process that’s used to make a whole lotta somethin’ outta somethin. That’s what it is.”
Latest articles
The Decline of Summer Festivals
How the Nuclear Family, Globalisation of Food Production, and International Trade and Travel has changed our relationship with Nature
Bonfire Night, St. John’s Eve by Jack Butler Yeats (Ireland)
Traditional summer festivals have always revolved around the solstice and bonfires on the feast of St. John (24 June) in many countries. Maypole dancing was also an important aspect of some rural and agricultural summer events, and other summer festivals like Ferragosto (15 August), involved celebrating the early fruits of the harvest and resting after months of hard work. The summer solstice was seen as the height of the powers of the sun which has been …
US Seizes Venezuelan Jet Plane Confirming who is the Rogue Nation
The Biden/Harris administration is renewing its attacks on Venezuela. On Monday, September 2, US officials seized a jet plane belonging to the Venezuelan government when it was in the Dominican Republic for servicing, then flew it to Florida.
Contrary to a false report in the NY Times, the plane was not “owned by Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro”. It is owned by the Venezuelan government and used for travel by various Venezuelan officials in addition to the president.
The NYT article claims, “The Biden administration is trying to put more pressure on Mr. Maduro because of his attempts to undermine the results of …
Humans Rescue Doomsday Glacier?
Rolling Stone
It was only 3 years ago when a group of distinguished climate scientists led by Erin C. Pettit (Oregon State University) said Thwaites Eastern Ice Shelf of the Thwaites Glacier/Antarctica, aka: Doomsday Glacier, could collapse “within as little as 5 years.” (Source: C34A-07 Collapse of Thwaites Eastern Ice Shelf by intersecting fractures, American Geophysical Union, December 15, 2021)
Assuming they nail it, what happens around the year 2026? Sea levels start rising more than previously but nobody is sure by how much as millions of people could …
Six takeaways from the UK’s decision on arms sales to Israel the media are hiding
British Jewish leaders are incensed by the 8% cut in weapons to Israel. Judged by the very rules Starmer imposed on Labour, that makes him a proven antisemite
The Guardian reported this week a source from within the Foreign Office confirming what anyone paying close attention already knew.
By last February, according to the source, Britain’s then Foreign Secretary, David Cameron, had received official advice that Israel was using British arms components to commit war crimes in Gaza. Cameron sat on that information for many months, concealing it from the House of Commons and the British public, while Israel continued to butcher tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians.
Several points need making about the information provided to the Guardian:
1. …
Eradication of Diseases
What is Big Pharma’s secret?
Holding the Press and White House Accountable: Solomon’s Afterword on the Gaza War
In Norman Solomon’s new Afterword in the paperback edition of his book War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine, the author excoriates the White House for arming a genocide with assistance from a negligent press. Solomon tracks events following Hamas’ killings and kidnappings of Israelis on October 7th, a few months after publication of the book in hardcover. The 31-page Afterword indicts the Biden administration for complicity in Israel’s genocide, a horror facilitated by Pentagon media stenographers who covered up, ignored …
Who Wants to Kill and Die for the American Empire?
“It’s brave to admit your fears” – Ukrainian recruiting poster. Photo credit: Ministry of Defense, Ukraine.
The Associated Press reports that many of the recruits drafted under Ukraine’s new conscription law lack the motivation and military indoctrination required to actually aim their weapons and fire at Russian soldiers.
“Some people don’t want to shoot. They see the enemy in the firing position in trenches but don’t open fire. … That is why our men are dying,” said a frustrated battalion commander in Ukraine’s 47th Brigade. “When they don’t use …
Give Me Missiles: Gina Rinehart and the Pathologies of Mining
Power should only ever be vested carefully, and certainly not in the hands of mining magnate Gina Rinehart, a creature so comically absurd as to warrant immediate dismissal in any respectable commentary. But Australia’s richest human being demands to be noticed, given the insensible influence she continues to exert in press and policy circles. Rants of smelly suggestion become pearls of perfumed wisdom, often occasioned by large amounts of largesse she disgorges on her sycophantic following.
Of late, she has been busy in her narcissistic daftness. At the National Bush Summit held last month, she proved particularly unstoppable. While advertised …
DNC 2024 and Gaza
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (left) with US Vice President Kamala Harris IMAGE/Independent/MSN/Duck Duck Go
A quote, wrongly attributed to Abraham Lincoln, reads:
You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.
Well, that may be true but what is also true is that you can fool most of the people (followers of politicians, political parties, religions, celebrities, stars, social media influencers, businesspersons, and so …
Craven Tokenism: The UK Suspension of Arms Export Licenses to Israel
The government of Sir Keir Starmer, despite remaining glued to a foreign policy friendly and accommodating to Israel, has found the strain a bit much of late. While galloping to victory in the July elections, leaving the British Labour Party a heaving majority, a certain ill-temper could be found among the ranks on his attitudes regarding Israel’s war in Gaza.
Mish Rahman, a member of the Labour Party’s National Executive Committee, summed up the mood by professing embarrassment “about my affiliation with Labour” in light of the party’s response to the killings in Gaza. “It was hard even to tell …
The People Who Never Learn
“Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.” So the saying goes.
The idea is found in a book written by Anthony Weldon in 1651 titled The Court and Character of King James. Weldon writes, “The Italians have a Proverb, ‘He that deceives me once, it’s his fault. He that deceives me twice, it’s my fault.’”
— Don McMinn
The Democratic Party Conventional Convention
Did the real Kamala Harris Standup?
President Joe Biden read the tea leaves, and, from the periphery of the political system, Vice President (VP) Kamala Harris abruptly emerged as the Democratic candidate for President of the United States of America. The American public knew that Kamala Harris was VP, was not sure of how to pronounce her first name, and was not familiar with her voyage to the top spot. By announcing that the convention theme “’For the People, For Our Future,”’ will further introduce Vice President Kamala Harris and Governor Tim Walz to the nation and …
The Vietnam War Protest Songs are as Relevant Today as When They Were Written
The Vietnam War protest movement left us with a number of timeless anti-war songs, which are, despite the absence of a draft and large numbers of American soldiers dying, still extremely pertinent as they underscore the growing dangers posed by Washington’s pathological addiction to war.
Country Joe McDonald’s “I Feel Like I’m Fixin to Die” let loose a volley of vitriol directed against conscription, the war on students, and American oligarchs who have long sought to solve all problems with violence. The song makes use of humor and sarcasm to remind listeners that imperialist wars are invariably rooted in hubris …
Corporate Globalist Lingo
What do corporate globalists call their program?
What It Means to Go Back-to-School in the American Police State
Every day in communities across the United States, children and adolescents spend the majority of their waking hours in schools that have increasingly come to resemble places of detention more than places of learning.
—Investigative journalist Annette Fuentes
It’s not easy being a child in the American police state.
Danger lurks around every corner and comes at you from every direction, especially when Big Brother is involved.
Out on the streets, you’ve got the menace posed by police officers who shoot first and ask questions later. In your neighborhoods, you’ve got to worry …
“Intellectual Hick”: Sorting Out Our Complex Identities
I am from rural America, sort of. I’m an intellectual, sort of. I’m certainly on the political left, but some comrades believe I’ve turned conservative.
Like many people, I don’t fit easily into conventional labels used in today’s polarized political debates. To understand me—and anyone else—takes some sorting out. Here’s how I sort myself out.
I was born in North Dakota and grew up mostly in the big city of Fargo (well, it’s the largest city in the state). I never lived in a rural area, but I was a part of a larger rural culture, in which most everyone had some …
Mirages
I am sitting on the beach at the National Seashore, a forty-mile long stretch of the Atlantic Ocean seashore on Outer Cape Cod, established in 1961 by President Kennedy. The wind is whipping hard and the waves are running wildly high against the shore, and, to paraphrase Thoreau – the sand is rapidly drinking up the last wave that wets it. I am looking far out to the horizon where the sun shimmers on what seems to be the world’s watery edge, creating a strange mirage that I wonder at but …
Killing Bazaars: The Land Forces Expo Down Under
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 …
Another War Diary Entry
The Korean War: A History, reviewed again and again
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 …
Venezuela: Where Next?
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 …
Collision Course with Disaster
How did philosopher Joh Lennon explain it?
A Return to Form: Expediting US Arms to Israel
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 …
The War on Food and the War on Humanity: Platforms of Control and the Unbreakable Spirit
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 Philippines Disrupts China’s Scientific Research in Xianbin Jiao
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.
Anarchist History: The Execution of Sacco and Vanzetti
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.
War Diary: An Appreciation of Legacies
Unbecoming American
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 …
Why Sow Confusion?
Who wants to confuse the masses?
Protecting the Widow Maker: The US Marines Exonerate the Osprey
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 …