President Biden has announced that America’s forever war in Afghanistan is finally coming to an end. He says that US forces will exit the country by next September 11. That’s a good thing. And it is long overdue. But there is one big problem with Biden’s timetable: It violates an agreement that the US government entered into with the Taliban to exit the country by May 1 of this year. Under that agreement, the Taliban agreed not to attack US troops prior to their scheduled departure on May 1....

One of the hallmarks of totalitarian systems is the criminalization of dissent. Not just the stigmatization of dissent or the demonization of dissent, but the formal criminalization of dissent, and any other type of opposition to the official ideology of the totalitarian system. Global capitalism has been inching its way toward this step for quite some time, and now, apparently, it is ready to take it. Germany has been leading the way. For over a year, anyone questioning or protesting the...

I once thought the internet would have the same effect on corporate media gatekeepers as the AK-47 had on colonial empires in Africa. That was before Big Tech turned that promise of freedom into the second coming of feudalism. Wednesday’s decision by Facebook’s “oversight board” – a transparent attempt to outsource responsibility for censorship to an international committee – to extend the ban on 45th US President Donald Trump is just the latest example, but by no means the most egregious....

Earlier this month, the conservative magazine known as The Spectator published an article with the absurd title “The Libertarian Case for Vaccine Passports.” The online version now bears the title “Vaccine Passports Are a Ticket to Freedom,” but the physical print version is perhaps more descriptive of what the author is trying to do. The author, a former Conservative politician named Matthew Parris, apparently believes that the forever lockdowns are an inescapable feature of reality, and that...

Maybe I would have better luck looking for Bigfoot in the forest than for an “old normal’ college or university in America. Attending a college or university has been very different for students in America over the last year-plus of coronavirus panic. There has been a huge increase in college students taking courses over the internet, missing out entirely on the experience of in-person classes and campus life. Yet, in some ways these students are the lucky ones. Students on college campuses...

One of the primary plagues of corporate journalism, which I have documented more times than I can count, just reared its ugly head again to deceive millions of people with fake news. When one large news outlet publishes a false story based on whispers from anonymous security state agents with the CIA or FBI, other news outlets quickly purport that they have “independently confirmed” the false story, in order to bolster its credibility (oh, it must be true since other outlets have also...

Trofim Lysenko was a government-sponsored agronomist and biologist favored by Stalin and the CCCP. By favored, I mean put in charge, given power to define the terms and settle the science, and by government edict, was not to be criticized by man or beast. You know, like Tony Fauci. In the Lysenko era, from 1927 through Stalin’s death in 1953, Soviet academia, media, and party publicly rejected the ideas of Darwin’s natural selection and Mendelian genetics in favor of the early 1800’s ideas of...

Aggression, in international politics, is commonly defined as the use of armed force against another sovereign state, not justified by self-defense or international authority. Any state being described as aggressive in foreign or international reporting, therefore, is almost by definition in the wrong. It’s a word that seems easy to apply to the United States, which launched 81 foreign interventions between 1946 and 2000 alone. In the 21st century, the United States has attacked, invaded or...

Even if “won,” endless wars like our 20 year assault on Afghanistan would not benefit our actual national interest in the slightest. So why do these wars continue endlessly? Because they are so profitable to powerful and well-connected special interests. In fact, the worst news possible for the Beltway military contractor/think tank complex would be that the United States actually won a war. That would signal the end of the welfare-for-the-rich gravy train.In contrast to the end of declared...

It is not in dispute that the CIA is in possession of Julian Assange’s legal and medical files seized from the Ecuadorean Embassy, including correspondence and drafting by his lawyers on his defence against extradition to the USA on Espionage charges. The defence submitted evidence of this in court. After Julian was arrested in the Ecuadorean Embassy and removed, all of his personal possessions were illegally seized by the Ecuadorean authorities, including his files and his IT equipment. These...

It’s one thing to have policies against violence, abuse, and harassment. But in “protecting” users, Twitter is hell-bent on censoring voices that rock the boat, even when all they have tweeted is a peer-reviewed scientific paper. Last week, Simon Goddek, who has a PhD in biotechnology and researches system dynamics, tweeted a link to a scientific study titled, “Is a Mask That Covers the Mouth and Nose Free from Undesirable Side Effects in Everyday Use and Free of Potential Hazards?” Some time...

A report from the US Agency for International Development’s (USAID) watchdog found that aid allocated for Venezuela in 2019 was used as part of the Trump administration’s failed regime change effort. In January 2019, the US and many of its allies recognized Juan Guaido as the interim president of Venezuela in an attempt to unseat Nicolas Maduro. As part of this policy, USAID started coordinating aid deliveries with Guaido. The report from USAID’s Inspector General reads: “In January and...

The Director of National Intelligence has ostensibly created a new “center” for the sharing and analysis of information and intelligence about foreign interference in US elections. Its real focus is much more nefarious. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) announced in a statement on Monday that it was creating a new intelligence “center” focused on tracking so-called “foreign malign influence,” reported Politico. This new entity, known as the Foreign Malign Influence...

Mark Twain once wrote that “It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.” Some developments over the past several weeks would certainly support that judgement if one regards a country’s legislative body as a mechanism intended to benefit the public that it is elected to serve. The hypocrisy of America’s two major parties is something to behold, with corruption at a level that is rarely attained in most third world...

President Biden’s first speech to Congress last night hit all the pandemic hot buttons. Even though most members of Congress are vaccinated, all of the 200 attendees in the Capitol were required to wear masks and “socially distance.” The Hill reports that the “ imagery will underscore how the pandemic is still gripping the nation despite the availability of vaccines and hope for inching back toward a semblance of normalcy.” But the speech looked as sparsely attended as a Biden campaign rally...