I thought scientists were going to find out exactly how everything worked, and then make it work better. I fully expected that by the time I was twenty-one, some scientist, maybe my brother, would have taken a colour photograph of God Almighty — and sold it to Popular Mechanics magazine. Scientific truth was going to make us so happy and comfortable.
What actually happened when I was twenty-one was that we dropped scientific truth on Hiroshima.”
— Kurt Vonnegut, Bennington College Address (1970)
Things did not go so well this time around. When the worn Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy turned up banging on the doors of Washington’s powerful on September 21, he found fewer open hearts and an increasingly large number of closed wallets. The old ogre of national self-interest seemed to be presiding and was in no mood to look upon the desperate leader with sweet acceptance.
Last December, Zelensky and Ukrainian officials did not have to go far in hearing endorsements and encouragement in their efforts battling Moscow’s armies. The visit of the Ukrainian president, as White House Press Secretary …
• Syrian president returns to China after almost 20 years
• 19th Asian Games started in Hangzhou
• Particle accelerator to produce semiconductors
• ‘Comfort women’ film debuts in Japan
In the midst of so much bad news in the media, it is always good to be alert to rays of sunlight that civic action can build upon.
First, let’s start with the sun, which is receiving increased respect these days by Earthlings. Various forms of solar energy – thermal, photovoltaic, wind, and passive (architecture) are winning the price competition against new fossil and nuclear fuels by large and growing margins around the world. The oil, gas, coal and nuclear lobbies, unable to compete on economics, resort to government subsidies, bailouts, tax breaks and propaganda to entrench themselves and their omnicidal …
Since the end of the Cold War, important, profound changes in the relations between capitalist states, coupled with equally sharp changes in the content of those relations, have seduced left-wing intellectuals and academics to embrace those countries whose governments clash– for untold reasons– with the political or economic demands of the US and its allies. They began to uncritically see these countries as fellow combatants in the struggle for social justice, for example, as anti-imperialists. Even upstart rivals for spheres of interest were seen as anti-imperialist, if they opposed US hegemony. Stated crudely, they present the enemy of their …
“Climate breakdown has begun. Our climate is imploding faster than we can cope,” UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres. (Source: “2024 Likely to be Hottest Year on Record,” Phys.org, September 6, 2023)
A report from the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR) released by the Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting in Berlin in the spring of 2023 reveals how surprisingly fast the icy continent is changing and its impact on the world. At current levels of global warming, the planet is already committed to approximately 16 inches of global sea level rise, “which turns what was once considered a one in 100-year coastal …
To start with an anecdote of my personal intellectual history, I have to recall reading The Gulag Archipelago as a youth. There were two things that impressed me about this work although I later came to view much of the author’s assertions to be questionable and distorted. However, if one reads the entirety of Solzhenitsyn as literature there are still remarkable insights to be gleaned, even if the excessive attacks on the Soviet Union should be taken cum grano sale. The first point was formal— the use of footnotes in a literary text to comment on what had been written in the …
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 …
