Manipulation
Many people don’t even recognize that they are being manipulated even when it is pointed out to them.
Latest articles
Beware of Economic Textbooks
Protests by British university economic students against neo-classical economics highlight the notion that economic education is dominated by theories that defy practical applications and applications that cannot predict, prevent, and ameliorate periodic crises. Students learn economics from unverified and outdated theories, many contradicting one another, which leads to a confused understanding of the discipline and complicated approaches to resolving problems. Adding to the dilemma is that textbooks in Middle Schools, High Schools, and universities lack updates with recent knowledge and contain dubious propositions. It is time to examine several propositions that are prominent and …
AUKUS, Congress, and Cold Feet
The undertakings made by Australia regarding the AUKUS security pact promise to be monumental. Much of this is negative: increased militarisation on the home front; the co-opting of the university sector for war making industries and defence contractors; and the capitulation and total subordination of the Australian Defence Force to the Pentagon.
There are also other, neglected dimensions at work here: the failure, as yet, for the Commonwealth to establish a viable, acceptable site for the long term storage of high-grade nuclear waste; the uncertainty about where the submarines will be located; the absence of skills in the construction …
When Anti-Government Speech Becomes Sedition
In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.
— George Orwell
Let’s be clear about one thing: seditious conspiracy isn’t a real crime to anyone but the U.S. government.
To be convicted of seditious conspiracy, the charge levied against Stewart Rhodes who was sentenced to 18 years in prison for being the driving force behind the January 6 Capitol riots, one doesn’t have to engage in violence against the government, vandalize government property, or even trespass on property that the government has declared off-limits to the general public.
To be convicted of seditious conspiracy, one …
Maskers
Those who obey their “higher ups” and believe without evidence.
Eye-witness Crimea
May of this year, we took the long, 27-hour train ride from Moscow to Crimea to see how life is there and what the sentiment of the people are as the US and Ukraine sharpen their threats to “recapture” this peninsula from Russia. And, while we were there, these threats were backed by a series of terrorist drone attacks in Crimea which, while doing little serious damage, signaled an escalation in the US/Ukrainian assault on Crimea.
Despite such threats and attacks, what we found in this historic peninsula on the Black Sea was a beautiful, almost idyllic place with a bustling …
The Phony War on American Culture
Bereft of an economic program, Republicans turn to social values, beliefs, and prejudices to gain votes and turn the clock back on the change that accompanies society’s development. The GOP can no longer convince a majority of voters to support tax cuts for the rich, eliminating government regulations and cutting programs for the poor. In desperation, they are conducting a war on changing American values.
Powerful and wealthy interests discovered that rural people fear the social changes that replace the white Christian power structure with more open, inclusionary, equal, and forward-looking values …
Meta and Privacy: The Economy of Data Transgressions
Meta, to put it rather inelegantly, has a data non-compliance problem. That problem began in the original conception of Facebook, a social network conceived by that most anti-social of types, Mark Zuckerberg. (Who claims that these troubled sorts lack irony?)
On May 22, the European Union deemed it appropriate to slap a $1.3 billion fine on the company for transferring the data of EU users to the United States. In so doing, the company had breached the General Data Protection Regulation, which has become something of a habit for information predators from Silicon Valley.
The data in question is …
It’s Time for Resistance Against Injustice This Memorial Day Week
The meaning of Memorial Day needs to be broadened.
We in the USA need to remember not just those who have died or risked death in one of the many wars the USA has been part of, going back to the original revolutionary war for independence from Britain. We also need to remember those who died or risked death or imprisonment in battles for the rights of workers to unionize, against Jim Crow segregation and for equal rights for all, for peace in Vietnam and against all imperialist wars, for the rights of women and lgbtq people, and against polluting industries …
“Free Trade” as Revealed in the China-United States Paradigm
Interview with author Wei Ling Chua
Free trade is much ballyhooed by the US and the capitalist world, but critics have been skeptical as to whether such trade freely takes place.
Investopedia provides a useful definition of free trade:
A free trade agreement is a pact between two or more nations to reduce barriers to imports and exports among them. Under a free trade policy, goods and services can be bought and sold across international borders with little or no government tariffs, quotas, subsidies, or prohibitions to inhibit their exchange.
The concept of free trade is the …
What a Giant Pile of Unsold Clothing in the Desert Can Teach Us about Real Resistance
According to this article:
“Chile’s Atacama Desert, the driest desert in the world, has been a dumping ground for fast fashion leftovers. A mountain of discarded clothing, including Christmas sweaters and ski boots, cuts a strange sight in the desert, which is increasingly suffering from pollution created by the fashion industry.”
Some further explanation from another article:
“Sadly, the desert is also a dumping ground for cheap, unsold clothing. Shein party dresses, H&M sweaters, and more are all heaped in growing mounds. The site contains an estimated 60,000 tons of clothes from …
A Question about Censorship
If disinformation (i.e., lying) is a crime against peace and humanity, then why aren’t such lies censored?
Supremes Declare War on Wetlands
Image credit: Boreal Conservation
The Supreme Court is effectively axing a major component of the Clean Water Act, rolling back 50 years of wetland protection in a declaration of war against nature by changing a word in the text of the Clean Water Act.
Seldom, if ever, will repercussions of a Supreme Court decision be so far-reaching and detrimental to life for the planet. It’s a dagger strike deep into the heart of the world’s most significant life source. Sauel Alito changing the text of the Clean Water Act …
Urgent: CGL Causes Heartbreaking Damage to Our Rivers
TC Energy, in the construction of the Coastal Gaslink Pipeline (CGL) has been reported by the Narwhal and a Citizen Monitoring Group as “having committed numerous environmental infractions, including slope failures, flooded worksites, and sediment entering wetlands and waterways.”
Helicopter flyovers of the area revealed heartbreaking footage of the destruction of our territory, currently otherwise inaccessible to us due to the ceaseless harassment of our people by the CIRG and CGL security and by gates put up to limit our access.
CGL received permits to construct a “trenchless crossing” of the Gosnell Creek and surrounding …
Peace Dollars: Putting Our Economic House In Order
The total federal deficit at $31+ trillion?
Maybe it’s time for some creative thinking — a totally unique strategy that benefits all Americans, not just capitalist predators.
Special use currency is not unprecedented.
Abraham Lincoln used “greenbacks” — the paper currency shown above, backed by nothing more than confidence in the government — to finance the Civil War. He printed $449,338,902 of this currency, a lot of money at the time.
A century later, on June 4, 1963, John F. Kennedy signed Executive Order 11110 which set in motion the issuance of silver certificate notes, currency backed by silver …
War and Friendship in a Time of War
Reflections on The Mercenary by Jeffrey Stern
Salman Rushdie once commented that those who are displaced by war are the shining shards that reflect the truth. With so many people fleeing wars and ecological collapse in our world today, and more to come, we need acute truth-telling to deepen our understanding and recognize the terrible faults of those who have caused so much suffering in our world today. The Mercenary: A Story of Brotherhood and Terror in the Afghanistan War (Public Affairs, 2023) has accomplished a tremendous feat inasmuch as every paragraph aims to tell …
China Suspends Sales of U.S. Company Micron
This week’s News on China in 2 minutes.
• China suspends sales of U.S. company Micron
• China’s food security faces the challenge of an aging rural workforce
• Two Ming Dynasty ships found in South China Sea
• Tibetan village turned into a large Buddhist art factory
The US and Never-ending War
Review of The U.S. and Perpetual War
John Rachel, in his book The U.S. and Perpetual War: Interviews and Commentary (Independently published, May 16, 2023, available at Peace Dividend/Books and Amazon) has compiled a unique, concise and astonishingly compelling collection of leading left, liberal, conservative and heterodox thinkers each answering the same fifteen precisely composed questions. The questions concern the current nature of the US empire, putative US democracy, and, most important, what is to be done.
The distinguished roster of 22 respondents from politics, academia, media, law, and social activism includes Noam Chomsky, Larry Wilkerson, …
Henry Kissinger Turns 100
HAK Birthdays
Once you’ve been to Cambodia, you’ll never stop wanting to beat Henry Kissinger to death with your bare hands.
— Anthony Bourdain, A Cook’s Tour (2002)
If a heavy resume of crimes is a guarantee of longevity, then surely Henry A. Kissinger (HAK, for short), must count as a good specimen. The list of butcheries attributed to his centurion, direct or otherwise, is extensive, his hand in them, finger fat and busy. There were the murderous meddles in Latin America, the conflicts in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. (The interventions in Laos and Cambodia are said to have left 350,000 Laotians and 600,000 …
Luddite, or Cantankerous, or Naysayer, or Devil’s Advocate, Backward, or …
Photo: Ludd, drawn here in 1812, was the fictitious leader of numerous real protests. Granger Collection, New York.
The question is, To be or not to be or not to be …
(from Hamlet, spoken by Hamlet)
To be, …
After COVID
Do the wrong-minded conformists know who they are?
Inverted Corporate Capitalism: Blocking Their Owner-Shareholders
It is the season of annual shareholder meetings for giant corporations when CEOs go through the motions of elections for their Board of Directors and approval of other resolutions. People who own stock in General Motors (GM) receive the “GM Meeting Information” in an envelope emblazoned with this disingenuous message: “Your Voice/Your Vote/Be Heard. Every Vote Matters.”
When you look inside, you learn that this virtual meeting is on June 20, 2023, “live via Webcast.” No more in-person shareholder meetings, where at least for a couple of hours a year, the GM CEO, officers …
Does China Have a Huge Problem Despite Impressive Economic Development?
Interview with author Wei Ling Chua
The G7 has recently wound up its meeting in Hiroshima, and the participants joined to affirm their fear of the Threat of China. British media reported that prime minister Rishi Sunak said: “China poses the biggest challenge to global security and prosperity of our age with the ‘means and intent to reshape the world order’.” The global septet spoke of “de-risking” rather than “de-coupling” from China. This was prudent because decoupling from the world’s leading manufacturing base would risk plunging all economies into recession. China leads the world in …
Censorship of Indigenous Australians and Palestinians, Stan Grant, Julian Assange, and Truth Tellers
Eminent Australian and Indigenous journalist, Stan Grant, was recently driven to resign from the ABC (the tax-payer-funded Australian equivalent of the UK BBC) as compere of the high-rating Q+A TV program by a flood of devastating racist abuse after he participated in a frank and truthful ABC discussion of the British Crown and genocidal colonialism on 5 continents that prefaced the ABC coverage of the Coronation of King Charles III. Stan Grant, please come back, decent Australia loves you and needs you.
The 235 year and ongoing settler-colonial Australian Aboriginal Genocide has been associated with about 0.1 million violent deaths and 2 …
Nuclear Turns Fashionable
Small Modular Reactors (SMR) are the new nuclear craze, especially with the U.S. Congress, as America’s representatives see SMRs as a big answer to energy needs and reduction of greenhouse gases, advertised as a green deal for clean energy that skirts the heavy costs of paying the Middle East billions upon billions. However, the devil in the details is dangerously overlooked.
Notable nuclear accidents: NRX (1952) Kyshtym (1957) Windscale (1957) SL-1 (1961) Wood River Junction (1964) K-27 (1968) Three Mile Island (1979) Constituyentes (1983) Mohammedia (1984) K-431 (1985) Chernobyl (1986) Tokai (1997, …
Cold, Hard Stats
What does looking at the straight, unadulterated numbers tell thinking people?
In 2014, NATO Authorized Ukraine to “Exterminate” Opponents of the Newly U.S.-installed Ukrainian Government
As will be detailed here: NATO held a press conference on 3 June 2014 by the Acting Minister of Defence of Ukraine, Mykhailo Koval, who had been appointed on 25 March 2014 by Ukraine’s Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, who had been selected on 27 January 2014 by Victoria Nuland, who had been appointed by Barack Obama to run Obama’s Ukrainian coup d’etat, which Obama had started planning by no later than June 2011, after Ukraine’s …
Doing Squats with John Gotti’s Lawyer
My first personal trainer job was a doozy.
I launched my career at New York City’s decadently scandalous Vertical Club — sort of the Studio 54 of gyms. On a nightly basis, I interacted with the Big Apple’s financial/social elite (and their myriad hangers-on).
As for celebrities, it was always veritable who’s who — from Arnold to Liza, Dr. J to Mr. T., Mick Jagger to Bianca Jagger, Clint Eastwood to Tom Hanks, Stallone to S.I. Newhouse, Fabio to Martina, Alec Baldwin to Alice Cooper, Bill Cosby to Mike Tyson, and …
Second-Hand, Third-Hand, Vicarious Trauma
I’ve been helping my friend from another country navigate the legal system, green card in hand, and a husband who attempted to suffocate her to death. The people in both camps — defense and prosecution — are interestingly together bedfellows, working the “system” hard, juggling which judge is this or that (pro- or con-), and using all the ugliness of a legal system that is stacked against, well, JUSTICE for one, …
The True Meaning of Debt
In debating the validity of raising the debt limit, the United States Congress has not carefully analyzed the reasons for government debt and the meaning of all debt. The true meaning of debt has the modern capitalist system as a debt-driven system. All new money supply is debt and the money supply is the energy that sustains the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Historically, without expansion in the available money supply (debt), the capitalist system stagnates and withers.
Demystifying the mystery of debt starts with postulates ? accepted concepts that form a starting position for reason and discussion. The modern capitalist system …