People such as former US military men like Scott Ritter and Douglas MacGregor provide excellent analysis on the geopolitics and warring in Ukraine. Ritter and McGregor are two Americans apparently able to relay a perspective based on their own take of a situation, a take independent of government pronouncements and home media reports. Nonetheless, despite reporting their government’s involvement in a proxy war and being well aware of US imperialism and war crimes, these men feel the need to profess their love of country. This is despite their country stirring up wars abroad; stealing oil and wheat in Syria; …
Questioning Canada’s contribution to NATO’s proxy war is “hate” that must be shut down according to some Ukrainian groups mimicking Zionist organizations by promoting an identity politics laced cancel culture.
A Ukrainian student group sought to cancel my talk at Kings College in London, Ontario, on Thursday. In “Western Ukrainian Students’ Association Statement on The King’s University College Yves Engler Event”, they called me an “apologist to a bloodthirsty regime … who spreads disinformation and uses Russian propaganda talking points.” They also argued that I “endanger victims of colonialism everywhere” …
The arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court for Russian President Vladimir Putin came at an opportune moment. It was, if nothing else, a feeble distraction over the misdeeds and crimes of other leaders current and former. Russia, not being an ICC member country, does not acknowledge that court’s jurisdiction. Nor, for that matter, does the United States, despite the evident chortling from US President Joe Biden.
Twenty years on, former US President George W. Bush, former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, and Australia’s own John Howard, the troika most to blame for not just the criminal invasion of a …
When Australia – vassal be thy name – assumed responsibilities for not only throwing money at both US and British shipbuilders, lending up territory and naval facilities for war like a gambling drunk, and essentially asking its officials to commit seppuku for the Imperium, another task was given. While the ditzy and dunderheaded wonders in Canberra would be acquiring submarines with nuclear propulsion technology, there would be that rather problematic issue of what to do with the waste. “Yes,” said the obliging Australians, “we will deal with it.”
The Australian Defence Department has published a fact sheet …
On 10 March, Canada’s National Post headlined “Regime change in Moscow ‘definitely’ the goal, Joly says,” and reported that “Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly raises the possibility of regime change in Moscow. … ‘The goal is definitely to do that, is to weaken Russia’s ability to launch very difficult attacks against Ukraine. We want also to make sure that Putin and his enablers are held to account,’ she said. ‘I always make a difference between the regime and the people of a given country, which is fundamental.’”
Sociological, Psychological, Bioevolutionary and Physiological Foundations
by Bruce Lerro / March 18th, 2023
Orientation
In part I of this series, following the work of Judy J. Johnson in What’s so Wrong with Being Absolutely Right: The Dangerous Nature of Dogmatic Belief, we identified dogmatism — not as the content of a particular ideology but as a process of thinking, emoting and acting. We distinguished dogmatism from fanaticism and clarified the differences between dogmatism and open-minded thinking. I spent most the article defining 14 characteristics of dogmatism. Five are cognitive, four are emotional and five are behavioral.
“We weren’t there to kill human beings, really. We were there to kill ideology.” (Lt. William Calley)
Officially termed an “incident” (as opposed to a “massacre”), the events of March 16, 1968, at My Lai — a hamlet in South Vietnam — are widely portrayed and accepted to this day as an aberration. While the catalog of U.S. war crimes in Southeast Asia is far too sordid and lengthy to detail here, it’s painfully clear this was not the case.
In fact, on the very same day that Lt. William Calley …
Before the MH17 passenger plane was shot down over the civil-war zone in Ukraine on 17 July 2014, U.S. President Barack Obama needed to persuade 9 EU countries that were opposed to adding more sanctions against Russia — needed to force them to approve adding those sanctions. He needed to supply them with ‘evidence’ that Russia was doing heinous things in Ukraine’s civil war. On 15 July 2014, Russia’s RT headlined “9 EU countries ready to block economic sanctions against Russia,” and reported that:
by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies / March 17th, 2023
U.S. soldiers breaking into a home in Baquba, Iraq, in 2008 Photo: Reuters
March 19 marks the 20th anniversary of the U.S. and British invasion of Iraq. This seminal event in the short history of the 21st century not only continues to plague Iraqi society to this day, but it also looms large over the current crisis in Ukraine, making it impossible for most of the Global South to see the war in Ukraine through the same prism as U.S. …
A new 40-year study discovered the eye-opening fact that what happens in the Amazon Rainforest impacts the entire Earth system. This puts an exclamation point on the fact that the Amazon Rainforest, the planet’s most crucial source of life support [NASA and NOAA attribute about half of the oxygen production on Earth to the ocean, thanks largely to phytoplankton — DV ed], is in deep trouble mainly because of massive deforestation.
The Amazon River Basin is the world’s largest rainforest, larger than the next …
Patrick banishing the snakesMarch 17 is traditionally St Patrick’s Day, a day when ‘Irishness’ is celebrated all over the world. This date is traditionally held to be the date of the death of St Patrick (c. 385 – c. 461), the patron saint of Ireland. It is marked by parades through the main cities and towns of Ireland, and in recent years it has become popular as a festival around the world with famous buildings being lit up green and major rivers being dyed green.
One of my favorite New Testament stories can be found in John 2:13-16:
When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the Temple courts, he found men selling cattle, sheep, and doves and others sitting at tables exchanging money. So he made a whip out of cords and drove all from the Temple, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. To those who sold doves, he said: ‘Get out of here.’
On 24 February 2023, the Chinese Foreign Ministry released a twelve-point plan entitled ‘China’s Position on the Political Settlement of the Ukraine Crisis’. This ‘peace plan’, as it has been called, is anchored in the concept of sovereignty, building upon the well-established principles of the United Nations Charter (1945) and the Ten Principles from the Bandung Conference of African and Asian states held in 1955. The plan was released two days after China’s senior diplomat Wang Yi …
This free eBook — The Pentagon’s B-Movie: Looking Closely at the September 2001 Attacks (rat haus reality press, 15 March 2023) — by Graeme MacQueen contains a collection of his articles and essays on the attacks of September 11, 2001, the subsequent anthrax attacks, and analyses of other false flag operations. They are profoundly important and shatter the official versions of those events. No one reading this book can come away from it not convinced that the U.S. government is a terrorist state. …
Brick-and-mortar charter schools are notorious for being low-performing schools, even though they often cherry-pick their students to get the “best test results.” Poor academic performance is one of the three main reasons charter schools, which are privately-operated, close every week, leaving many parents, students, and teachers high and dry. Mismanagement and financial malfeasance are the other two key reasons charter schools close every few days. All three usually occur together. Not surprisingly, such chaos and anarchy leave a bad taste in the mouths of many.
But virtual charter schools, also known as cyber charter schools, perform even worse than …
He was standing before a lectern at Downing Street. The words on the support looked eerily similar to those used by the politicians of another country. According to UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, Stop the Boats was the way to go. It harked back to the same approach used by Australia’s Tony Abbott, who won the 2013 election on precisely that platform.
The UK Illegal Migration Bill is fabulously own-goaled, bankrupt and unprincipled. For one thing, it certainly is a labour of love in terms of the illegal, as the …
As hundreds of thousands, throughout Israel, joined anti-government protests, questions began to arise regarding how this movement would affect, or possibly merge, into the wider struggle against the Israeli military occupation and apartheid in Palestine.
Pro-Palestine media outlets shared, with obvious excitement, news about statements made by Hollywood celebrities, the likes of Mark Ruffalo, about the need to “sanction the new hard right-wing government of (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu”.
Netanyahu, who sits at the heart of the current controversy and mass protests, struggled to find a single pilot for the flight carrying him …
The levels of wealth inequality we are currently witnessing in this country are unprecedented and alarming. The very richest among us have succeeded in grabbing ever more of the proverbial pie, and the trend is only worsening. Wealth inequality is proving disastrous for America. On both collective and individual levels, we are suffering because of the ever-growing concentration of wealth in the hands of a tiny few. What is to be done? As we explain below, raise taxes on the topmost bracket of earners, and begin realizing the potential and promise …
by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead / March 15th, 2023
I know the capability that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see to it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision, so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return.
— Senator Frank Church on Meet The Press, 1975
If you give the government an inch, it will always take a mile.
This is how the slippery slope to all-out persecution starts.
Martin Niemöller’s warning about the widening net that ensnares us all, a warning issued in response to …
Bill Gates is not a medical doctor, not a virologist, not a scientist and not even a college graduate, yet we as a society hang on his every word when it comes to proper response to a viral pandemic. Why? It probably has something to do with the millions of dollars he’s “donated” to the World Health Organization and otherwise spent to become a go-to mouthpiece for a range of financial interests, from food to vaccines. Jimmy and guest Robert F. Kennedy jr. discuss how Gates made $500 million off of the COVID vaccines he was wildly promoting, then cashed …
Likewise, an incompetent, historically ignorant, politically naive, diplomatically challenged, shallow, impulsive, narcissistic reality show host elected by a conned citizenry to the highest office in the land can occasionally get a few things right as well.
I won’t get into a spitting contest over whether the election was rigged to an extent necessary to “steal” it from Trump. Every election is rigged, to varying degrees. To deny that is to be out of touch with how fundamentally corrupt our electoral system is at all …
One year in Italy with their eyes open would be worth more than three at Oxford; and six months in the fields with a platyscopic lens would teach them strange things about the world around them that all the long terms at Harrow and Winchester have failed to discover to them. But that would involve some trouble to the teacher.
What a misfortune it is that we should thus be compelled to let our boys’ schooling interfere with their education!
— Grant Allen, Post-Prandial Philosophy, 1894 ((See the Quote
It is comical how easily one can be ignored for pointing out that new technology is dangerous and fetishistic. So-called “smart” cell phones are a prime example. For years I have been pointing out their dangers on many levels. To say most people are devoted to them is an understatement. Maybe it is an exaggeration to say they revere them, but if asked, they will say they couldn’t live without them. It’s sort of like saying I don’t revere my partner but couldn’t live without her or him. Ah love!
But what’s love got to do with it? Love and romance are out of date. Sex …
