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Almost everything Biden Said about ending the Afghanistan war was a lie
While Americans hailed the announcement that the U.S. would withdraw troops from Afghanistan after nearly two decades of war, President Biden left out the most important details about the war and how it will in fact continue.
President Joe Biden, in announcing an ostensible end to the U.S. war in Afghanistan, is continuing his streak of paying eloquent lip service to progressive causes while maintaining the implied status quo. In a televised address from the White House on April 14, Biden said, “it’s time to end America’s longest war. It’s time for American troops to come home.” But just a day later, the New York Times reported without a hint of irony that “the Pentagon, American spy agencies and Western allies are refining plans to deploy a less visible but still potent force in the region.” This means we are ending the war, but not really. Continue reading
Americans’ minds are artificially intelligent
It is tempting to think that free-will exists. Unfortunately, it does not, particularly in America (tip of the hat to Baruch Spinoza writing in his Ethics). Taste in music (rap, rock, pop, etc.), fashion and food; political orientation whether left, right or center; what sports team to support, or vehicle to drive, or television series to watch is all supplied by media/corporations to American brains that are as malleable as silly putty. The mind easily succumbs to the totalitarian machinations of the American domestic/global capitalist network as its marketers, advertisers, and politicians/ideologues pound content into the brain via television news, hand-held computers/telephones, the world wide web, social media, and legacy media. Alberto J. L. Carrillo Canan believes that “the dominant technological forms determine the way we conceive reality, human life and mind.” Continue reading
Was there cancel culture before social media? Yes but it was slower
The cancel culture, rampant today, is defined as punishing public figures for their offensive behavior, whether boycotting their products and franchises or getting them fired. Today, when the Woke, virtuous and outraged demand the head of a miscreant on a platter it not only works, it works quickly thanks to social media. Continue reading
Biden’s appeasement of hawks and neocons is crippling his diplomacy
President Biden took office promising a new era of American international leadership and diplomacy. But with a few exceptions, he has so far allowed self-serving foreign allies, hawkish U.S. interest groups and his own imperial delusions to undermine diplomacy and stoke the fires of war. Continue reading
The United States’ extensive knowledge of the 1976 planned military coup in Argentina
While the released documents portray the U.S. as having knowledge of the coup as opposed to intervening overtly or covertly, the aftermath shows U.S. involvement was considerable.
Last March, on the 45th anniversary of Argentina’s descent into dictatorship, the National Security Archive posted a selection of declassified documents revealing the U.S. knowledge of the military coup in the country in 1976. A month before the government of Isabel Peron was toppled by the military, the U.S. had already informed the coup plotters that it would recognise the new government. Indications of a possible coup in Argentina had reached the U.S. as early as 1975. Continue reading
Comply or die: The only truly compliant person in a police state is a dead one
Americans aren’t dying at the hands of police because of racism. Continue reading
Freedom Rider: Gun violence starts at the top
If the state reserves the right to commit mass murder no one should be surprised that the people follow suit. Continue reading
A must read for any seeker of answers to the mysteries of life
In his new book, One Unbounded Ocean of Consciousness, Dr. Tony Nader has attempted something very difficult and achieved it very well. He overcomes the conceptual gap separating matter from mind, science from spirituality, the human from the divine and takes us beneath these superficial dualities into a fundamental synthesis establishing the wholeness of life. He conveys the unity underlying all diversity, and he deftly and convincingly resolves the apparent contradiction between free will and determinism. Nader writes in a clear, step-by-step manner that makes this knowledge understandable and shows how it can benefit us as individuals. Continue reading
Washington sanctions Cuba. Why not Saudi Arabia?
Cuba will remain one of Washington’s chosen enemies, while relations with the murderous autocratic Saudi regime will be “recalibrated.”
According to the geopolitical analysis site STRATFOR, sanctions are “a coercive tool to compel a targeted entity to adjust its behaviour” and can be effected in a number of ways and, indeed, applied for very different reasons. An intriguing aspect of sanctions’ imposition is that some of these reasons are not intended primarily to alter the target’s behaviour but rather to penalise it for failing to follow the policies of the punisher. Continue reading
The dirty campaign underlying Ecuador’s “free and fair” election
Ecuador’s April 11 election that led to a 5-point victory by conservative banker Guillermo Lasso over progressive candidate Andrés Arauz was not what it appeared to be. On the surface, it was a surprisingly clean and professional election, as our CODEPINK official observer delegation witnessed. But a fraud-free process for casting and counting ballots does not mean that the election was free and fair. Behind the scenes was a monumentally unequal playing field and dirty campaign designed to quash an Arauz win. Continue reading
A school for spooks: The London university department churning out NATO spies
Last week, MintPress exposed how the supposedly independent investigative collective Bellingcat is, in fact, funded by a CIA cutout organization and filled with former spies and state intelligence operatives. However, one part of the story that has remained untold until now is Bellingcat’s close ties to the Department of War Studies at King’s College London, an institution with deep links to the British security state and one that trains a large number of British, American and European agents and defense analysts. Continue reading
DeSantis signs ‘outrageous and blatantly unconstitutional’ anti-protest bill into law
"Every single Floridian should be outraged by this blatant attempt to erode our First Amendment right to peacefully assemble."
Florida’s Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis on Monday signed into law a bill that civil rights groups warn is designed to crack down on peaceful demonstrations and criminalize dissent by redefining “rioting” in an overbroad way and creating draconian new felonies for protest-related offenses. Continue reading
Amazon union vote shows why we need the PRO Act
In the face of intimidation by one of the largest companies in the world, Alabama workers bravely spoke out about the need for greater labor protections.
Following one of the most high-profile union votes in history, workers at an Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama—led by Black organizers—ultimately rejected efforts to form a union by 71 percent, according to the National Labor Relations Board. Continue reading
U.S. joins past empires in Afghanistan graveyard
President Biden announced a removal of all U.S. troops by September 11, but he failed to include some important details.
An Afghan taxi-driver in Vancouver told one of us a decade ago that this day would come. “We defeated the Persian Empire in the eighteenth century, the British in the nineteenth, the Soviets in the twentieth. Now, with NATO, we’re fighting twenty-eight countries, but we’ll defeat them, too,” said the taxi-driver, surely not a member of the Taliban, but quietly proud of his country’s empire-killing credentials. Continue reading
Home invasions: All the ways the government can lay siege to your property
Americans are not safe in their homes. Continue reading
Freedom Rider: Vaccine passports in a failed state
The non-vaccinated can be smeared and equated with MAGA hat wearing Trumpers, regardless of their religious or political affiliations. Continue reading
The secret wars of Africa’s Sahel: What is behind Mali’s ongoing strife
In a recent report, the United Nations Mission in Mali, known as MINUSMA, concluded that, on January 3, French warplanes had struck a crowd attending a wedding in the remote village of Bounti, killing 22 of the guests. Continue reading
What Einstein and Freud can teach us about the psychology of hate
We need to accept the grim truth that the haters among us aren’t going away.
The United States is awash in hate. From the shootings at three Atlanta-area spas to the avalanche of voter-suppression bills sponsored by Republican lawmakers in 43 states in the aftermath of the November election, racial minorities and historically oppressed communities find themselves, once again, the objects and victims of hate. Continue reading
The loutish lemmings of the GOP
Flailing into oblivion, the frat boy politics of the Republican party simply may end in its unseemly collapse—or national disaster.
Joe Biden is thinking about the complexities of racial and social justice in America, vaccinating the population against COVID-19, combatting domestic terrorism, rebuilding the country’s infrastructure, bringing back jobs and climate change. Donald Trump is thinking about money and revenge—and maybe about why his pal Vladimir Putin has all the luck. Continue reading
Consent that’s manufactured by propaganda is not informed consent
A March 9 Twitter post by Secretary of State Tony Blinken reads as follows: “We will never hesitate to use force when American lives and vital interests are at stake, but we will do so only when the objectives are clear and achievable, consistent with our values and laws, and with the American people’s informed consent – together with diplomacy.” Continue reading
State lawmakers are cracking down on speech
On the one hand, conservatives complain about “cancel culture.” On the other, they slash budgets for schools that teach “social justice.”
The Idaho legislature just cracked down on colleges teaching “social justice ideology.” They cut $409,000 from Boise State University’s budget and forced a number of “social justice”-related classes to move online and “asynchronous,” without any more live discussion. Continue reading
The government’s war on free speech: Protest laws undermine the First Amendment
It’s a given that the government is corrupt, unaccountable, and has exceeded its authority. Continue reading
All of humanity’s problems are caused by a lack of awareness
I write about humanity’s problems as a species in all sorts of ways in this space, but really if you want to get straightforward about things all we’re ever actually talking about here is a lack of awareness of what’s true and the need to eliminate that lack. Continue reading
Universal health care is a popular idea in America—will Biden keep enriching private insurance or ‘go big’?
If Biden really wants to go big and bold, he could start by pushing for a truly universal health care system, instead of pouring tax dollars into private insurance companies.
As the coronavirus pandemic continues to wreak havoc on people’s lives, President Joe Biden has been on a victory tour to promote the American Rescue Plan, a hefty $1.9 trillion spending package that not only sends direct stimulus payments to struggling Americans, but also greatly expands health care options through the Affordable Care Act (ACA). “We’re becoming a nation where health care is a right and not for the privileged few,” said Biden in his remarks at a hospital on the campus of Ohio State University. Eleven years after the ACA was first passed into law as President Barack Obama’s signature health care reform, it has survived relentless Republican attacks in the form of legal challenges and defunding attempts. Preserving and expanding it under Democratic leadership certainly constitutes a win against Republican obstructionism and a refusal to offer better alternatives. But this latest strengthening of the ACA is first and foremost a victory for the health insurance industry. Continue reading
The end of trickle-down economics
The past year has laid waste to the arguments behind “trickle down” theory. Instead, let’s have wealth “percolate up.”
The past year proves that a lot of conventional economic wisdom is neither true nor wise. Continue reading
Freedom Rider: The U.S. can’t control the world
Slow-witted Joe Biden appears to think that we’re still in the age of the sole superpower, when in fact that era has come and gone. Continue reading
Bannonism: A clear and present danger to the planet
The sooner the nations of the world awake to the threat posed by fascists abusing electoral systems to gain dictatorial power, the possibility of a repeat of the fascist rise to power during the 1920s and 1930s can be snuffed out.
With the financial support of Mercer Family Foundation far-right heiress financier Rebekah Mercer, exiled Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui, U.S.-based Falun Gong cult leader Li Hongzhi, and the Dignitatis Humanae Institute, which is associated with the fascist Opus Dei Roman Catholic sect, Donald Trump’s sporadic political adviser, Steve Bannon, has implemented a multi-pronged approach to enabling fascist control of governments around the world. Bannon’s ideological approach to furthering fascism globally can be called “Bannonism.” Continue reading
The ongoing calamity: US collective punishment of the Venezuelan people must end
Recent statements made by US officials suggest that Washington will continue to pursue a hardline policy on Venezuela. The new Biden administration, however, needs to urgently rethink its approach. Continue reading
Perfidy meets putty—congressional Democrats betray voters
Where is the outcry among Democratic politicians to reverse completely the corporate takeover of Medicare?
Do you remember the promises made by the Democratic Party’s presidential and Congressional candidates on universal health insurance? You can forget their pledges and somber convictions now that your votes put the Democrats in charge of the House and the Senate. The Democrats’ leaders are abandoning their promises and retreating into a cowardly corporatist future. Continue reading
Ring out the old; ring in the old
While our sacred democracy was allegedly being served by a stupid attempt to unsuccessfully impeach an ex-president for the second time and essentially tell more than 70 million Americans that they might as well vote for Pavlov, FDR, Hitler or Oprah Winfrey since any alleged exercise of supposed freedom on their part would be meaningless in the rape of language we call a democracy. You know, the one with a billionaire class getting richer by the second and Americans across the board sinking lower by the minute. But enough good news, let’s move on to the even better signs of our political economic progress against logic, morality and majority rule, something that vanished in practice the moment our euro ancestors arrived and the people who’d lived here for millennia were brutally forced out of their homelands. Continue reading
Where does the buck stop in Texas?
Texas Republicans took money from the utilities they failed to regulate. Now they’re pointing the finger elsewhere for power failures.
There is a weasel word that politicians use whenever something goes wrong on their watch: “unacceptable.” Continue reading
The incompetent, negligent, mishandling, miscalculating elite blunderers
Posted on April 27, 2021 by Edward Curtin
You’ve heard of them, no doubt, the U.S. rulers who can’t rule too well and are always getting surprised by events or fed bad advice by their underlings. Their “mistakes” are always well intentioned. They stumble into wars through faulty intelligence. They drop the ball because of bureaucratic mix-ups. Continue reading →