Suella Braverman has made beastliness a trait in British politics. The UK Home Secretary, fed on the mush and mash of anti-refugee sentiment, has been frantically trying to find her spot in the darkness of inhumanity.
Audaciously, and with grinding ignorance, she persists in her rather grisly attempts to kill the central assumptions of international refugee protection, flawed as they might be, elevating the role of the sovereign state to that of tormenter and high judge. In doing so Braverman shows herself to believe in the ultimate prerogative of the state to be decisively cruel rather than consistently humane. The …
Stuart Vyse is a psychologist and the author of one of the books I’ll be referencing called Believing in Magic: The Psychology of Superstition. In that book he used his students as guinea pigs for his research on superstition. Before taking one of his exams Vyse found the following superstitions for good outcomes among his student. These included if they:
Used a lucky pen, piece of jewelry or clothing – 62%
Wore sloppy clothes – 28%
Dressed up – 33%
Touched a lucky object – 36%
Sat …
At its fifteenth summit in August 2023, the BRICS (Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa) group adopted the Johannesburg II Declaration, which, amongst other issues, raised the question of reforming the United Nations, particularly its security council. To make the UN Security Council (UNSC) ‘more democratic, representative, effective, and efficient, and to increase the representation of developing countries’, BRICS urged the expansion of the council’s membership to include countries from Africa, Asia, and Latin America. The declaration specifically noted that three countries …
Capitalism gathered resources — land, labor, and capital to start an industrial revolution that brought prosperity and elevated standards of living to much of the earth’s inhabitants. Once in motion, it generated additional capital that gathered more labor and more resources in a perpetual cycle of increased production that constantly benefitted populations. The achievements did not occur smoothly, sputtering from periodic recessions that eventually solicited government policies to recharge the system.
Soviet-style socialism did not patiently wait for capitalism to provide capital formation, industrial development, allocation of resources, and prosperity for its population. The Soviets struggled to house, clothe, and feed, …
by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies / September 28th, 2023
President Gustavo Petro Urrego of Colombia addresses the UN General Assembly. Photo credit: UN
As it did last year, the 2023 United Nations General Assembly has been debating what role the United Nations and its members should play in the crisis in Ukraine. The United States and its allies still insist that the UN Charter requires countries to take Ukraine’s side in the conflict, “for as long as it takes” to restore Ukraine’s pre-2014 internationally recognized borders.
They claim to be enforcing Article 2:4 of the UN Charter …
What of our highly active, frenetic daily lives in the early 21st century? Substantial effort is expended in developing marketable skills, in order to earn money and survive. Yet, within the oppressive constraints imposed on us every day, each person may nonetheless nurture an inner, contemplative space, perhaps ultimately unshareable but all-the-more uniquely individual for that. In fact, as mega-corporate structures have tightened their control of people’s daily habits and inclinations (“algorithms,” “nudges,” surveillance, etc.), it becomes all the more imperative that each individual steadfastly cultivate an integrated self-identity, in which …
More than twenty years ago I published a study in which I argued that South Africa’s apartheid system was created by mission and land appropriation.1 This obviously implicated the Christian churches, including those that had claimed to be opposed to the British policy enshrined in the National Party programme when it came to power in 1947. This study received one review which confirmed the experience I had defending it as a dissertation—namely that my thesis was not understood. The problem was not the clarity or evidence. That was …
The India-Middle East-Europe transportation corridor may be the talk of the town, but it will likely go the way of the last three Asia-to-Europe connectivity projects touted by the west - to the dustbin. Here's why.
by Pepe Escobar / September 27th, 2023
The India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC) is a massive public diplomacy op launched at the recent G20 summit in New Delhi, complete with a memorandum of understanding signed on 9 September.
Players include the US, India, UAE, Saudi Arabia, and the EU, with a special role for the latter’s top three powers Germany, France, and Italy. It’s a multimodal railway project, coupled with trans-shipments and with ancillary digital and electricity roads extending to Jordan and Israel.
If this walks and talks like the collective west’s very late response to China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), launched 10 years ago and …
by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead / September 26th, 2023
Man is born free but everywhere is in chains.
— Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract
Authoritarian control freaks out to micromanage our lives have become the new normal or, to be more accurate, the new abnormal when it comes to how the government relates to the citizenry.
This overbearing despotism, which pre-dates the COVID-19 hysteria, is the very definition of a Nanny State, where government representatives (those elected and appointed to work for us) adopt the authoritarian notion that the government knows best and therefore must control, regulate and dictate almost everything about the …
Grain is an old tool, weapon is the appropriate term, of imperialism. Once, the weapon was widely used by imperialism; and the weapon was used against countries in the Southern Hemisphere – to control, press and coerce the countries whenever the master of the world order desired. Use of the weapon created famines in countries – hundreds and thousands died. That was actually murder on a mass scale.
The weapon’s style of use depended on the type of governing system of the country targeted, and the ruling person’s inclination, trend, possible path in economy and politics. The type of use of …
The Biden administration has acknowledged neither its responsibility for the pipeline bombing nor the purpose of the sabotage
by Seymour Hersh / September 26th, 2023
A screen grab from Danish Defense shows the gas leak from the exploded Nord Stream pipelines causing bubbles on the surface of the Baltic Sea on September 30, 2022. / Photo by Swedish Coast Guard Handout / Anadolu Agency via Getty Images.
I do not know much about covert CIA operations—no outsider can—but I do understand that the essential component of all successful missions is total deniability. The American men and women who moved, under cover, in and out of Norway in the months …
I opened Nick McDonell’s new book, Quiet Street: On Privilege, (NY:Pantheon,2023), fully expecting to find an insider’s tell-all, enumerating all the advantages bequeathed to someone who’s within the rarified ranks of the upper class. I was not disappointed. The author spelled out how these privileges manifest themselves, both in terms of superior formal educational opportunities but even more, in the acquisition of the all-important cultural capital.
Given some of his earlier work, I also hoped against hope that McDonell had undergone a Saul-to-Paul experience and become a class traitor. …
I know it’s hard to fathom, but there really was a time when “Don’t Mess with Texas” actually meant something and not just in terms of litter.
It forewarned the uninitiated of bona fide badasses, legendary contrarians, daring dreamers, and serious politicians who had no qualms about taking fatuous pretenders out behind the proverbial woodshed and beating the living or figurative shite out of them.
Sam Houston once drubbed a U.S. congressman half to death with his cane in Washington, D.C., and practically walked away scot-free. (His lawyer was Francis Scott Key!) Then, …
Some days ago, Belgian Energy Minister Tinne Van der Straeten requested the European Union to reduce importing Russian gas and get rid altogether of fossil fuels by 2027. This after the Global Witness NGO released data showing that Belgium is currently the third-largest importer of Russian liquefied natural gas (LNG).
Belgium accounts globally for 17% of Russia’s exports, behind only China and Spain.
Later in an interview with the Financial Times, Van der Straeten said she was “not happy” about the fact that Russian gas kept flowing into Europe. She then understated Belgium’s share of Russian gas, indicating it was merely 2.8% of …
by Medea Benjamin and Marcy Winograd / September 25th, 2023
Last month CNN published a poll revealing 55% of people surveyed in the United States do not support spending more money on the Ukraine war. A tone-deaf White House responded by requesting another $24 billion, mostly for weapons and military training that would bring the Ukraine war tab for US taxpayers to nearly $140 billion.
CODEPINK, a member of the Peace in Ukraine Coalition that represents over 100 anti-war organizations, is committed to raising up the majority opinion that the U.S. needs to stop fueling this war. …
At this stage of the game, it looks like one of these folks will be our next President:
Or … DONALD J. TRUMP!
Now, if one of the “good guys” wins the presidential race — an individual who reports to the “people”, truly puts the the welfare of all citizens ahead of Wall Street, the big banks, the military-industrial complex, the ruling elite and other powerful special interests, thus serves the needs of the all citizens, not just the wealthy elite — then he …
If the people be led by laws, and uniformity sought to be given them by punishments, they will try to avoid the punishment, but have no sense of shame.
If they be led by virtue, and uniformity to be given them by the rules of propriety, they will have the sense of shame, and moreover will become good.
— Analects, 1:3:1,2
This morning it occurred to me again that what we have seen in the past forty-fifty years was not the failure of the Left but its extermination behind façades maintained solely for the illusion that there was one still. I kept saying …
It was a short stint, involving a six-member delegation of Australian parliamentarians lobbying members of the US Congress and various relevant officials on one issue: the release of Julian Assange. If extradited to the US from the United Kingdom to face 18 charges, 17 framed with reference to the oppressive, extinguishing Espionage Act of 1917, the Australian founder of WikiLeaks risks a 175-year prison term.
Nationals MP Barnaby Joyce, Labor MP Tony Zappia, Greens Senators David Shoebridge and Peter Whish-Wilson, Liberal Senator Alex Antic and the independent member for Kooyong, Dr. Monique Ryan, are to be viewed with respect, their pluckiness …
The South and East China Seas are among China’s major security concerns in its neighborhood. Despite this, the US still hypes up competition with China in these regions to cover up the tendency of its hegemonic expansion.
The US Congressional Research Service (CRS) recently published a report which pointed out that the South China Sea in the past 10 to 15 years has become the arena of US-China strategic competition, while actions by …
Canada’s special envoy to combat antisemitism is actually a government emissary to promote Jewish supremacy. In a stark example of the Liberals’ anti-Palestinian policies, they have given public resources and prestige to an aggressive apartheid proponent.
Last Friday foreign affairs minister Mélanie Joly tweeted, “I spoke with Canada’s Special Envoy on Preserving Holocaust Remembrance and Combatting Antisemitism Irwin Cotler today, where I congratulated him on his Israel Presidential Medal of Honour. Irwin, Canada is stronger because of your work to advance human rights everywhere.”
Cotler was one of 13 individuals recently given a prize by President Isaac Herzog for making “…
The failure of Ukraine’s much-hyped counteroffensive – which began in June of this year and has stuttered for over three months – has by now become a universally recognized fact. It has been acknowledged not only by Russian officials, including President Vladimir Putin, but also by Western media and experts. However, the summer campaign has made the world reconsider not only the capabilities of Kiev’s armed forces, but also the power of the country’s main sponsor – the United States, when it comes to waging a large-scale …
Polarization of the American public reflects the polarization of its political Parties, both of whom strive for ascendancy by demeaning, contradicting, and formulating proposals to wrong the other; each Party wrongs itself and the American public.
The recent and periodic arguments concerning the proposed federal budget, an entrance for initiating threats to “close the government,” highlight how both political sides of Congress wrongly portray the fiscal deficits that have become implicit in federal budgets. Two wrongs do not make a right, and, in this case, they have caused misunderstandings and problems.
If Joe Biden will become the Democratic Party’s nominee for the Presidency, then almost any Republican nominee would likely beat him because he had committed America’s Government to victory in Ukraine — done it is such a way that there can be no going back on it that won’t strip him of the public’s respect for him on account of America’s loss in that war:
