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The power to make decisions in society must remain primarily in the hands of a democratically elected government. In private hands, there is only one concern, and that is the bottom line. We have too much ‘bottom line’ directed policy as it is.
“There’s a striking difference between physicists and economists. Physicists don’t say, hey, let’s try an experiment that might destroy the world, because it would be interesting to see what would happen. But economists do that. On the basis of neoclassical theories, they instituted a major revolution in world affairs in the early 1980s that took off with Carter, and accelerated with Reagan and Thatcher. Given the power of the United States compared with the rest of the world, the neoliberal assault, a major experiment in economic theory, had a devastating result. It didn’t take a genius to figure it out. Their motto has been, “Government is the problem.”
That doesn’t mean you eliminate decisions; it just means you transfer them. Decisions still have to be made. If they’re not made by government, which is, in a limited way, under popular influence, they will be made by concentrations of private power, which have no accountability to the public. And following the Friedman instructions, have no responsibility to the society that gave them the gift of incorporation. They have only the imperative of self-enrichment.
Margaret Thatcher then comes along and says there is no such thing as society, just atomized individuals who are somehow managing in the market. Of course, there is a small footnote that she didn’t bother to add: for the rich and powerful, there is plenty of society. Organizations like the Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable, ALEC, all kinds of others. They get together, they defend themselves, and so on. There is plenty of society for them, just not for the rest of us. Most people have to face the ravages of the market. And, of course, the rich don’t. Corporations count on a powerful state to bail them out every time there’s some trouble. The rich have to have the powerful state — as well as its police powers — to be sure nobody gets in their way.”
Meghan Murphy doesn’t hold anything back as she decries the tomfoolery of the gender-magic on display from the US federal government.
“Yesterday, we witnessed a historic moment: US assistant health secretary Rachel Levine was sworn in as the first ever female four-star admiral of the Public Health Service Commissioned Corps. Wait, no. That’s not right… Let me start again.
Yesterday, the man President Joe Biden selected as assistant health secretary became the sixth man to be named four-star admiral of the Public Health Service Commissioned Corps.
Yesterday, America became a laughing stock, as the president elected by the good people of America (not to be confused with the bad people of America) and all of mainstream media presented the appointment of an old, fat white man (with long hair!) as admiral of the Public Health Service Commissioned Corps as a historic moment.
“Dr. Rachel Levine, the nation’s most senior transgender official, made history again Tuesday by becoming the first openly transgender four-star officer across any of the country’s eight uniformed services,” NBC News reported.
The New York Times went even further, tweeting:
“Dr. Rachel Levine was sworn in as the first female four-star admiral in the history of the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, a uniformed service of more than 6,000 health, science and engineering professionals.”
To be fair, they were only repeating what had been announced by the Biden administration, which was that “Admiral Levine now serves as the highest ranking official in the USPHS Commissioned Corps and its first ever female four star admiral.” But to also be fair, it is the job of the New York Times (and all media) to report the truth, not to simply parrot whatever the government feeds them. And, to be fair, Rachel Levine is not female and never will be. And, to be fair, everyone knows it.
What kind of planet are we living on wherein we all pretend putting yet another man into a role that has always been filled by men equates to “a giant step forward towards equality as a nation”? Or “a history-making show of diversity and inclusion”? Has there never before been a man who enjoys wearing women’s clothing in such a position? Do they screen men for fetishes before they can be appointed to admiral? Clearly they don’t screen them for having spent time as military officers, as Levine has not had any military career to speak of. I suppose his time spent in dresses makes up for his lack of service.”
The very last thing we need in the world is a military conflict with China, David Vine writes in Counterpunch about the folly of taking the Cold War path again.
“The Biden administration and the United States must do better than resuscitate the strategies of the nineteenth century and the Cold War era. Rather than further fueling a regional arms race with yet more bases and weapons development in Australia, U.S. officials could help lower tensions between Taiwan and mainland China, while working to resolve territorial disputes in the South China Sea. In the wake of the Afghan War, President Biden could commit the United States to a foreign policy of diplomacy, peace-building, and opposition to war rather than one of endless conflict and preparations for more of the same. AUKUS’s initial 18-month consultation period offers a chance to reverse course.
Recent polling suggests such moves would be popular. More than three times as many in the U.S. would like to see an increase, rather than a decrease, in diplomatic engagement in the world, according to the nonprofit Eurasia Group Foundation. Most surveyed would also like to see fewer troop deployments overseas. Twice as many want to decrease the military budget as want to increase it.
The world barely survived the original Cold War, which was anything but cold for the millions of people who lived through or died in the era’s proxy wars in Africa, Latin America, and Asia. Can we really risk another version of the same, this time possibly with Russia as well as China? Do we want an arms race and competing military buildups that would divert trillions of dollars more from pressing human needs while filling the coffers of arms manufacturers? Do we really want to risk triggering a military clash between the United States and China, accidental or otherwise, that could easily spin out of control and become a hot, possibly nuclear, war in which the death and destruction of the last 20 years of “forever wars” would look small by comparison.
That thought alone should be chilling. That thought alone should be enough to stop another Cold War before it’s too late.”
Hopefully this signals the beginning of the end of the pervaisiveness of gender ideology in the UK – a feat we need to replicate here in Canada ASAP.
“They [Stonewall] didn’t address any of the very serious questions raised by Nolan: questions about Stonewall’s undue influence inside and outside government, its misrepresentation of the law, its displacement of the law with its own interpretation of it (or hope for it) and its ability (through OfCom in particular) to effectively mark its own homework.
Stonewall has tried to pretend that it is above answering these very significant questions. But it is not. One clip from Nolan demonstrates this above all. It’s with Ben Cohen, the founder and Chief Executive of Pink News. The legacy online gay publication likes to act as a sort of ideological enforcer for Stonewall, pursuing their perceived opponents and otherwise engaging in activism in the guise of journalism. They attend the same black tie dinners and Downing Street receptions.
But worth the price of listening to the Nolan show alone is the moment in episode three when Nolan asks Cohen to define a couple of the gender-bollocks terms that Stonewall and others expect everyone in the UK, including BBC presenters like Nolan to be able to understand and all those “Diversity Champions” out there. What is “two-spirit?” Nolan asks Cohen. Cohen cannot explain. What about “genderqueer”? Again Cohen is stumped. While undeniably funny, this moment also represents something very serious in Stonewall’s wider collapse.
It is one thing that a group should be caught out in a dodgy money-making scheme. It is another that people should be seeing through their influence-peddling operations. Yet it is far worse when a clerical class cannot explain the doctrines of their own faith. A faith they have been busy trying to spew out across the whole of society, but which is so baseless, that even the priestly class doesn’t know what they are talking about. It is the end of the faith.”
Well I’d like to change the channel from the Pandemic Gloom & Doom to the similarly depressing and helplessness inducing topic of climate change. The actors in feel similar in both channels, for instance, the vaccinated can only sit by and watch as the ignorant anti-vax crowd spreads Covid-19 to each other and fills the ICU wards past capacity. Concomitantly we can observe China and the US vie for world dominance economically and militarily while continuing to put stunning amounts of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere, catastrophically heating the planet.
Micheal Klare sets out the bare-bones minimum guidelines to avert the upcoming climate catastrophe. Unfortunately said guidelines involve China and the US backing down from their military buildups, finding a peaceable solution to Taiwan, and focusing their economies on moving away from using fossil fuels.
Awesome. No problem. We got this…
“Only when China and the United States elevate the threat of climate change above their geopolitical rivalry will it be possible to envision action on a sufficient scale to avert the future incineration of this planet and the collapse of human civilization. This should hardly be an impossible political or intellectual stretch. On January 27th, in an Executive Order on Tackling the Climate Crisis, President Biden did, in fact, decree that “climate considerations shall be an essential element of United States foreign policy and national security.” That same day, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin issued a companion statement, saying that his “Department will immediately take appropriate policy actions to prioritize climate change considerations in our activities and risk assessments, to mitigate this driver of insecurity.” (At the moment, however, the thought that Republicans in Congress would support such positions, no less fund them, is beyond imagining.)
In any case, such comments have already been overshadowed by the Biden administration’s fixation on dominating China globally, as have any comparable impulses on the part of the Chinese leadership. Still, the understanding is there: climate change poses an overwhelming existential threat to both American and Chinese “security,” a reality that will only grow fiercer as greenhouse gases continue to pour into our atmosphere. To defend their respective homelands not against each other but against nature, both sides will increasingly be compelled to devote ever more funds and resources to flood protection, disaster relief, fire-fighting, seawall construction, infrastructure replacement, population resettlement, and other staggeringly expensive, climate-related undertakings. At some point, such costs will far exceed the amounts needed to fight a war between us.
Once this reckoning sinks in, perhaps U.S. and Chinese officials will begin forging an alliance aimed at defending their own countries and the world against the coming ravages of climate change. If John Kerry were to return to China and tell its leadership, “We are phasing out all our coal plants, working to eliminate our reliance on petroleum, and are prepared to negotiate a mutual reduction in Pacific naval and missile forces,” then he could also say to his Chinese counterparts, “You need to start phasing out your coal use now — and here’s how we think you can do it.”
Once such an agreement was achieved, Presidents Biden and Xi could turn to Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India, and say, “You must follow in our footsteps and eliminate your dependence on fossil fuels.” And then, the three together could tell the leaders of every other nation: “Do as we’re doing, and we’ll support you. Oppose us, and you’ll be cut off from the world economy and perish.”
That’s how to save this planet from a climate Armageddon. There really is no other way.“
“+ Over the last 20 years, we’ve heard dozens of rationales, justifications and excuses for the US occupation of Afghanistan, all of them now exposed as hollow (or worse). There’s been no “nation-building,” the status of women has not been elevated or protected, the army and security forces have not been “trained” and “modernized,” opium poppy production has not been eradicated, militant groups have not been eliminated, sectarian strife has not lessened, the influence of Pakistan’s ISI has not been blunted. But American contractors and weapons makers have made tens of billions, year after year, for two decades, on long-term, no-bid contracts, many of the companies run by retired officials from the Pentagon and CIA, with little to no oversight or accountability. The Afghan war and occupation was one of history’s longest gravy trains, feeding govt. guaranteed profits to some of the most unsavory operators in the country, as 1000s of Afghans perished, and every time someone tried to stop it, they were shouted down with one word: “terrorism.”
Noam Chomsky is 92 years old, yet his grasp of world and US politics remains a force to be reckoned with.
“The U.S. always portrays itself as the greatest force on the planet for peace, justice, human rights, racial equality, etc. Polls tell us that most other nations actually regard the U.S. as the greatest threat to stability. What in your view is the truth here?
Even during the Obama years, international polls showed that world opinion regarded the US as the greatest threat to world peace, no other country even close. Americans were protected from the news, though one could learn about it from foreign media and dissident sources. Sometimes illustrations are reported. Thus there has been some mention of the recent UN vote condemning the savage Cuba sanctions, virtually a blockade: 180-2 (US-Israel). The NY Times dismissed it as a chance for critics of the US to blow off steam. That’s quite normal. When there are reports of how the world is out of step, the usual framework is curiosity about the psychic maladies that lead to such pathological failure to recognize our nobility.
There’s nothing new about that stance. It’s typical of imperial cultures. Even such an outstanding figure as John Stuart Mill wondered about the world’s failure to comprehend that Britain was an angelic power, sacrificing itself for the benefit of the world – at a moment when Britain was carrying out some of its most horrifying crimes, as he knew very well.”
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