Commentary
Commentary
The imaging of Sagittarius A*: A monumental scientific achievement
Bryan Dyne: On Thursday, the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Collaboration released the imagery of the supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy, Sagittarius A*. ... More than 300 astronomers and hundreds of engineers and support staff from 60 institutions across 20 countries and regions on all seven continents made the observations, processed the data and maintained the technical infrastructure needed for such an immense undertaking. ... Five years of labor proved necessary to characterize and understand the results. ... the discovery “shows what we can achieve when we cooperate, when we work together...
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May 14, 2022, 11:20am
Commentary
The Sane Society?
Christopher Ketcham: “The fact that millions of people share...so many errors does not make the errors to be truths, and the fact that millions of people share the same mental pathology does not make these people sane.” - Erich Fromm ... He pronounced our collective worship of more goods, produced at bigger volume, at faster rates to be a form of regimented mass insanity. ... Fromm’s answer, which then as today has an air of utopian fantasy, was the devolution of mass automated consumerist society into small communities guided by what he called “humanistic communitarian socialism.”...
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May 11, 2022, 12:05am
Commentary
UKRAINE: The Real Zelensky
Natylie Baldwin interviews academic Olga Baysha about Ukraine’s president, a former TV actor who has become, since the start of the war, an A-list celebrity in the U.S. ... Baysha discusses Zelensky’s embrace of neoliberalism and increasing authoritarianism, how his actions contributed to the current war; his counterproductive and self-absorbed leadership throughout the war, the complex cultural and political views and identities of Ukrainians, the partnership between neoliberals and the radical right...
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Apr 30, 2022, 11:34am
Commentary
The Tao of Vladimir Putin
Julian Macfarlane: Since power equals force times speed… Thus, a smaller man who can swing faster may hit as hard or as far as the heavier man who swings slowly. — Bruce Lee, The Tao of Jeet Kune Do ... Lee described Jeet Kune Do as “fencing without a sword”, hence his characteristic stance and use of distance ... Feint, thrust, riposte — these are basics — which in Jeet are done almost simultaneously. ... These are also what Putin did — feint, thrust, and riposte. Like Lee, he is a learner...
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Apr 28, 2022, 12:42pm
Commentary
Policing Causes Violence, Not the Other Way Around
Sonali Kolhatkar: “We routinely overestimate the effectiveness of policing as a solution to our problems” ... Crime is related to many factors ... wealth disparities and the criminalization of poverty ... Studies have shown that when there are ample resources for community services such as mental health care, crime goes down ... the most important driver of copaganda ... is that “the problems of American society... [are] problems of individual and group moral failure that are best addressed through punitive interventions.” ... To admit that social problems are caused by the failures of capitalism would undermine the credibility of the very system that political and media elites rely on...
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Apr 25, 2022, 3:56pm
Commentary
Roaming Charges: Runaway Sons of the Nuclear A-Bomb
Jeffrey St. Clair: The US hasn’t won a major war since dropping nukes on Japan. ... But winning wars is no longer the point, prolonging them is–that’s where the money’s made and what the fog of war is meant to obscure. ... This goes for proxy wars too ... The Pentagon and its contractors want a prolonged war in Ukraine. ... But they don’t want the Russian military to be exposed as the inept force it appears to be ... That would be very bad for the procurement business, which requires the threat of an alleged “weapons gap” to thrive...
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Apr 22, 2022, 4:18pm
Commentary
War in Ukraine Could Be the Mother of All Energy Wars: But the Media Still Misses the Context
Charlotte Dennett: As never before, the connection between war and big power rivalry over oil and gas in Ukraine—and beyond—has become disturbingly tangible to average citizens, when it was once known only to world leaders, their militaries and spies, and their wealthy backers. Henry Kissinger, protégé of Nelson Rockefeller, once said, “you control the oil, you control the world.” ... So oil—and now natural gas—keep bubbling up as key factors in the war in Ukraine as it enters its second month. However, most Ukrainians dodging bombs and artillery—and arguably most global citizens—are still asking: “What’s this war all about?”...
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Apr 20, 2022, 12:42pm
Commentary
Now is the Time for Nonalignment and Peace
Roger McKenzie – Vijay Prashad: War is an ugly part of the human experience. Everything about it is hideous. ... Peace does not come merely because we wish for it. ... The political forces in power profit from war, and so they clothe themselves in machismo to better represent the arms dealers who want more war, not less. ... These people in the blue suits of bureaucracy are not to be trusted with the world’s future. ... We need to summon up the old spirits of peace and nonalignment and bring these to life inside mass movements that are the only hope of this planet...
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Apr 19, 2022, 12:31pm
Commentary
Operation Gladio: How NATO Conducted a Secret War Against European Citizens and Their Democratically Elected Governments
Cynthia Chung: Operation Unthinkable is a prime example of the sort of thinking that was ruminating within Britain and the United States post-Roosevelt. ... After NATO was established in April 1949, the secret armies gradually came under the direct control of the new military alliance. ... they were to be used against the people ... by staging false-flag operations that were blamed on communists ... would send voters flocking to the welcoming arms of a secure Right-wing government ... Operation Gladio, which used the tactic Strategy of Tension, functioned on three basic levels. ... guerilla war to be fought primarily on the streets ... NATO inspired conspiracies .... assassination...
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Apr 14, 2022, 4:58pm
Commentary
War is the Crime. Its Perpetrators Seldom Face Justice.
Thomas Knapp: “To initiate a war of aggression,” reads the Judgment of the International Military Tribunal, convened to prosecute accused Nazi war criminals at the end of World War Two, “is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.” ... By that standard, Vladimir Putin is a war criminal ... Zelenskyy himself, as well as Biden, are guilty of continuing wars of aggression initiated by their predecessors...
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Apr 9, 2022, 12:33pm
Commentary
Eye-Witness Report from Donbass: How the War Looks From the Russian Side
Sonja Van den Ende: As the war in Ukraine rages on, I visited the republics of Donetsk and Luhansk as an embedded reporter with the Russian army. ... Both of the republics are the trigger of the current conflict. ... Horlivka (Gorlovka) ... We visited a school that was attacked by the Ukrainian army a few days ago. The school was partly destroyed and two teachers died instantly, again by a rocket attack. ... When you drive and walk to the city, you can see that the city has been the scene of fierce battles. It has been on the frontline since 2014...
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Apr 7, 2022, 12:29pm
Commentary
NATO’s Neverending Wars
Ramzy Baroud: If more lethal weapons were the answer, the conflict in Ukraine would have been resolved years ago ... The country needs help finding non-violent solutions. ... the West’s attitude towards Ukraine is different from its attitude towards victims of western interventions ... Ukraine needs peace and security, not perpetual war that is designed to serve the strategic interests of certain countries or military alliances. ... turning Ukraine into another convenient zone of perpetual geopolitical struggle between NATO and Russia is not the answer...
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Apr 6, 2022, 10:16am
Commentary
Save the Planet! Behead the Pentagon Budget!
Robert C. Koehler: Americans “need to imagine their vote has an impact on policy, an illusion the media encourages them to believe in.” ... Why, why, why, as our ecosystem collapses, as millions of refugees flee the horrors of war and poverty, as the pandemic continues, as World War III and the possibility of nuclear Armageddon rears its evil head, as the planet trembles, does ever-expanding, global militarism remain our primary national purpose?...
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Apr 1, 2022, 4:47pm
Commentary
Oliver Stone Documents the Past to Illuminate the Present - JFK: Destiny Betrayed
Edward Curtin: While Kennedy was the last U.S. president to genuinely seek peace at the cost of his life, his successors have all been lackeys in love with war ... It is therefore essential to understand why JFK was assassinated by the U.S. national security state ... the true nature of U.S. foreign policy and intense anti-Russia hatred ... JFK: Destiny Betrayed, a four-hour, four-part follow-up to Oliver Stone’s two hour feature film JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass ... the old Cold War has become the new old Cold War ... Ukraine is no anomaly; it fits the propaganda neatly ... President John F. Kennedy was killed by the national security state for seeking peace...
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Apr 1, 2022, 4:35pm
Commentary
We Should Be Fighting the Climate Emergency, Not Another War
Andrea Mazzarino: As that Russian invasion continues so disastrously, what should be obvious to all of us is that any war will only further exacerbate another killer on this planet — and that killer, of course, is climate change. ... Consider the massive amounts of energy expended to fly fighter jets, or fire missiles, or move and supply soldiers, or send a convoy of tanks toward Kyiv. ... All of that, devastating in itself, now also becomes part of another war entirely, the human war that’s heating this planet and already affecting ever more of its nearly eight billion inhabitants...
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Mar 30, 2022, 12:35pm
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