Woman at rally supporting peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine in Berlin, Germany.  (Photo: Reuters)

When European Union leaders met in Brussels on February 6 to discuss the war in Ukraine, French President Emmanuel Macron called this time “a turning point in history.” Western leaders agree that this is an historic moment when decisive action is needed, but what kind of action depends on their interpretation of the nature of this moment.

Is this the beginning of a new Cold War between the U.S., NATO and Russia or the end of one? Will Russia and the West remain implacable enemies for the foreseeable future, with a new iron curtain between them through what was once the heart of Ukraine? Or can the United States and Russia resolve the disputes and hostility that led to this war in the first place, so as to leave Ukraine with a stable and lasting peace?

Some European leaders see this moment as the beginning of a long struggle with Russia, akin to the beginning of the Cold War in 1946, when Winston Churchill warned that “an iron curtain has descended” across Europe.

On March 2, echoing Churchill, European Council President Ursula von der Leyen declared that Europe must turn Ukraine into a “steel porcupine.” President Zelenskyy has said he wants up to 200,000 European troops on the eventual ceasefire line between Russia and Ukraine to “guarantee” any peace agreement, and insists that the United States must provide a “backstop,” meaning a commitment to send U.S. forces to fight in Ukraine if war breaks out again.

Russia has repeatedly said it won’t agree to NATO forces being based in Ukraine under any guise. “We explained today that the appearance of armed forces from the same NATO countries, but under a false flag, under the flag of the European Union or under national flags, does not change anything in this regard,” Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on February 18. “Of course this is unacceptable to us.”

But the U.K. is persisting in a campaign to recruit a “coalition of the willing,” the same term the U.S. and U.K. coined for the list of countries they persuaded to support the illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003. In that case, only Australia, Denmark and Poland took small parts in the invasion, Costa Rica publicly insisted on being removed from the list, and the term was widely lampooned as the “coalition of the billing” because the U.S. recruited so many countries to join it by promising them lucrative foreign aid deals.

Far from the start of a new Cold War, President Trump and other leaders see this moment as more akin to the end of the original Cold War, when U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev met in Reykjavik in Iceland in 1986 and began to bridge the divisions caused by 40 years of Cold War hostility.

Like Trump and Putin today, Reagan and Gorbachev were unlikely peacemakers. Gorbachev had risen through the ranks of the Soviet Communist Party to become its General Secretary and Soviet Premier in March 1985, in the midst of the Soviet war in Afghanistan, and he didn’t begin to withdraw Soviet forces from Afghanistan until 1988. Reagan oversaw an unprecedented Cold War arms build-up, a U.S.-backed genocide in Guatemala and covert and proxy wars throughout Central America. And yet Gorbachev and Reagan are now widely remembered as peacemakers.

While Democrats deride Trump as a Putin stooge, in his first term in office Trump was actually responsible for escalating the Cold War with Russia. After the Pentagon had milked its absurd, self-fulfilling “War on Terror” for trillions of dollars, it was Trump and his psychopathic Defense Secretary, General “Mad Dog” Mattis, who declared the shift back to strategic competition with Russia and China as the Pentagon’s new gravy train in their 2018 National Defense Strategy. It was also Trump who lifted President Obama’s restrictions on sending offensive weapons to Ukraine.

Trump’s head-spinning about-turn in U.S. policy has left its European allies with whiplash and reversed the roles they each have played for generations. France and Germany have traditionally been the diplomats and peacemakers in the Western alliance, while the U.S. and U.K. have been infected with a chronic case of war fever that has proven resistant to a long string of military defeats and catastrophic impacts on every country that has fallen prey to their warmongering.

In 2003, France’s Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin led the opposition to the invasion of Iraq in the UN Security Council. France, Germany and Russia issued a joint statement to say that they would “not let a proposed resolution pass that would authorize the use of force. Russia and France, as permanent members of the Security Council, will assume all their responsibilities on this point.”

At a press conference in Paris with German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, French President Jacques Chirac said, “Everything must be done to avoid war… As far as we’re concerned, war always means failure.”

As recently as 2022, after Russia invaded Ukraine, it was once again the U.S. and U.K. that rejected and blocked peace negotiations in favor of a long war, while France, Germany and Italy continued to call for new negotiations, even as they gradually fell in line with the U.S. long war policy.

Former German Chancellor Schröder took part in the peace negotiations in Turkey in March and April 2022, and flew to Moscow at Ukraine’s request to meet with Putin. In an interview with Berliner Zeitung in 2023, Schröder confirmed that the peace talks only failed “because everything was decided in Washington.”

With Biden still blocking new negotiations in 2023, one of the interviewers asked Schröder “Do you think you can resume your peace plan?”

Schröder replied, “Yes, and the only ones who can initiate this are France and Germany… Macron and Scholz are the only ones who can talk to Putin. Chirac and I did the same in the Iraq war. Why can’t support for Ukraine be combined with an offer of talks to Russia? The arms deliveries are not a solution for eternity. But no one wants to talk. Everyone sits in trenches. How many more people have to die?”

Since 2022, President Macron and a Thatcherite team of iron ladies – European Council President von der Leyen; former German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock; and Estonia’s former prime minister Kaja Kallas, now the EU’s foreign policy chief – have promoted a new militarization of Europe, egged on from behind the scenes by European and U.S. arms manufacturers.

Has the passage of time, the passing of the World War II generation and the distortion of history washed away the historical memory of two world wars from a continent that was destroyed by war only 80 years ago? Where is the next generation of French and German diplomats in the tradition of de Villepin and Schröder today? How can sending German tanks to fight in Ukraine, and now in Russia itself, fail to remind Russians of previous German invasions and solidify support for the war? And won’t the call for Europe to confront Russia by moving from a “welfare state to a warfare state” only feed the rise of the European hard right?

So are the new European militarists reading the historical moment correctly? Or are they jumping on the bandwagon of a disastrous Cold War that could, as Biden and Trump have warned, lead to World War III?

When Trump’s foreign policy team met with their Russian counterparts in Saudi Arabia on February 18, ending the war in Ukraine was the second part of the three-part plan they agreed on. The first was to restore full diplomatic relations between the United States and Russia, and the third was to work on a series of other problems in U.S.-Russian relations.

The order of these three stages is interesting, because, as Secretary of State Marco Rubio noted, it means that the negotiations over Ukraine will be the first test of restored relations between the U.S. and Russia.

If the negotiations for peace in Ukraine are successful, they can lead to further negotiations over restoring arms control treaties, nuclear disarmament and cooperation on other global problems that have been impossible to resolve in a world stuck in a zombie-like Cold War that powerful interests would not allow to die.

It was a welcome change to hear Secretary Rubio say that the post-Cold War unipolar world was an anomaly and that now we have to adjust to the reality of a multipolar world. But if Trump and his hawkish advisers are just trying to restore U.S. relations with Russia as part of a “reverse Kissinger” scheme to isolate China, as some analysts have suggested, that would perpetuate America’s debilitating geopolitical crisis instead of solving it.

The United States and our friends in Europe have a new chance to make a clean break from the three-way geopolitical power struggle between the United States, Russia and China that has hamstrung the world since the 1970s, and to find new roles and priorities for our countries in the emerging multipolar world of the 21st Century.

We hope that Trump and European leaders can recognize the crossroads at which they are standing, and the chance history is giving them to choose the path of peace. France and Germany in particular should remember the wisdom of Dominique de Villepin, Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schröder in the face of U.S. and British plans for aggression against Iraq in 2003.

This could be the beginning of the end of the permanent state of war and Cold War that has held the world in its grip for more than a century. Ending it would allow us to finally prioritize the progress and cooperation we so desperately need to solve the other critical problems the whole world is facing in the 21st Century. As General Milley said back in November 2022 when he called for negotiations between Ukraine and Russia, we must “seize the moment.”

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies.

Oof. The Trump/Musk "epic weekend bender" has wrought the "rapid tear-down of the nation’s constitutional structures" in a rampaging takeover of the machinery of government - treasury, health care, criminal justice, foreign aid - by an unhinged, unelected oligarch in the name of an idiot boss who (somehow still) has no clue. After years of dread, their coup has left we the people raging, reeling, with mere "tiny levers" to pull. Josh Marshall: "The calamity is upon us." Dig in.

Honestly, we're so gobsmacked by the relentless fascism reigning down we lack the stomach to revisit the nitty-gritty of every theft, abuse, baldly illegal outrage. Heather Cox Richardson does an admirable job of documenting it; so does Robert Reich, repeatedly, and Thom Hartmann. We'll settle for a brief, grim recap; by the time you read this, there'll probably be more. On Tyranny's Timothy Snyder likens today's "government" to a car falling prey to dodgy mechanics: "You might have thought the election was like getting the car serviced," he writes "Instead, when you come into the shop, the mechanics (tell) you they have taken the parts of your car that work and sold them and kept the money, (and) this was the most efficient thing to do."

As promised, the vengeful child-king first lashed out at all the mean law-abiding public servants who did their jobs and exposed his crimes. In a mass purge at the Justice Department, he feverishly fired or shut out scores of Jan. 6 prosecutors, FBI directors and agents, and any of the 6,000 participants in "witch hunts" and thought-crimes against him. As they were warned their names would be released so MAGA goons could doxx them to death - and while Nazi grifter Ka$h Patel was telling Congress he wouldn’t politicize the FBI - remaining agents had to vow, Stalin-like, to root out "subversives." And all that was just to open the door to a mad muskrat to start rooting around in federal agencies to find and gut whatever he personally dislikes, which yes is a coup.

Thus did a weird rich nerd with no authority or experience get handed "the keys to the kingdom," specifically both the data and systems of a Treasury Department that disburses almost $6 trillion a year - almost 90% of all federal transactions - and the financial information of millions of Americans who get it in dribs and drabs through Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, contracts, grants, loans, salaries, tax refunds etc. Musk and his DOGE goons illegally locked former workers out of the system, forced the highest-ranking official to resign when he refused to comply, vowed to unilaterally cancel hundreds of millions of dollars’ in "illegal" government grants, quickly boasted he had, and then moved on to storm and trash multiple other federal agencies.

He was accompanied, Wired eventually reported, by an upstart troop of juvenile former X staffers, arsonists and engineers "barely out of - and in at least one case, purportedly still in - college.” All 19-to-24 year old protégés of duel madmen Musk or Peter Thiel, they've been gleefully taking a wrecking ball to the computers of government agencies while understanding almost nothing of their government functions, surrounding laws or the repercussions of breaking them. In the supremely ironic name of security, his clueless little firestarters have only identified themselves with first names, but Wired did better: Their names are Akash Bobba, Edward Coristine, Luke Farritor, Gautier Cole Killian, Gavin Kliger, and Ethan Shaotran. Cool, man: Gamers 'R Us!

With his little band of outlaws, then, Musk moved on from Treasury to the U.S. Agency for International Development, a global behemoth that disburses up to $70 billion a year in humanitarian aid to about 130 countries. They provide clean water, medical supplies, field hospitals, landmine clearance, anti-terrorism programs; they feed hungry babies in war zones, refugee camps, disaster areas. Though their budget is less than 1% of the federal budget, one of Trump's first acts was to freeze almost all foreign aid, 'cause America First! But USAID gets its foreign policy guidance from the State Department, which means any breaching of their security systems or classified information would in turn render national intelligence insecure.

But Musk knows best: USAID is "a criminal organization.. a viper's nest. Time for it to die." Last weekend his delinquents barged in and accessed its classified info and security systems; when two officials tried to stop them, they were put on leave. Then DOGE closed the agency: Staff were locked out or told not to report to work, USAID logos were stripped, website and social media accounts went dark. "Secretary of State" Marco Rubio declared himself acting head of the agency to "ensure spending is in line with the president's agenda"; after an outcry, he may or may have exempted some humanitarian aid from the purge. Musk is unmoved. "We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper," he brayed. "Could (sic) gone to some great parties."

This week, in our new Wild East, Dems tried to enter the USAID building and were denied entry. A furious Jamie Raskin told Musk he may have illegally seized power over U.S. financial systems but, "You don’t control the money of the American people. Congress does...We don’t have a fourth branch of government called Elon Musk." Not yet. But he's busy: He "deleted" the IRS' Direct File system that let people file taxes free online; he scoped out for purges General Services, Commerce, Education, Small Business and NOAA - to Project 2025, a key part of the Marxist "climate change alarm industry” - and by trashing USAID, expert say he "sabotaged 80 years of U.S. goodwill." Even affable Canada is pissed: At an NBA basketball game, and at several NFL hockey games, fans booed America's National Anthem. Go Canada.

- YouTube www.youtube.com

While Elmo runs rampant, Orange Donald has mostly been golfing, watching Fox News, stubby-fingered-rage-posting and occasionally putting on his oompa-loompa make-up to flamboyantly, leeringly sign a blizzard of largely illegal executive orders for the cameras, often moronically holding them up in vengeful triumph like a deranged eight-year-old showing off his latest rambling crayoned manifesto ordering the Marxist lunch lady to put still more ketchup on his fries like he keeps asking her to dammit. But while a parade of his comic-book Cabinet nominees sidestep or decline the traditional pledge to refuse any illegal presidential orders, he's also been busy obliterating, with a mindless vindictive swoop of his sharpie, decades of social progress.

He shut down the CDC and NIH, effectively halting all cancer and other life-saving medical research vital to millions of people, though it's never done anything for him. He ordered all federal databases dedicated to public health - about 8,000 pages from a dozen websites - to go dark until they'd scrubbed any mention of nasty things like gender, drug use, mental health, sexual assault, disease, proclivities and their connections, from tracking/preventing HIV to treating STIs to prescribing contraception. In response, researchers have been scrambling to salvage information from Malignant Big Brother and archive it through the Wayback Machine. "Science is disappearing from US websites," they charge. "Hiding the facts puts lives at risk."

Then the King of Tariffs launched the “dumbest trade war in history” with Mexico, Canada, and China, slapping 10%-25% tariffs on goods for "virtually every sector of the American economy": produce from Mexico, cars China, energy, alcohol, lumber from Canada at the start of building season amidst a housing crisis. As Fox hosts burbled - "waste and fraud," "saving billions of dollars!" "fix the system so people can afford eggs and gas" - they endlessly scrolled through avocados, beef, bananas, tomatoes, Nissan, steel, beer, lumber - and the Stock Market plunged. "WILL THERE BE SOME PAIN? YES, MAYBE," from the guy who said there wouldn't be, but it will ALL BE WORTH IT for a country RUN WITH COMMON SENSE - "THE RESULTS WILL BE SPECTACULAR!!!"

Spectactularly swiftly, it all backfired. Trudeau slapped $100 billion in retaliatory tariffs on everything - U.S. beer, wine, fruit, juice, produce, appliances, duh lumber - and warned Americans the tariffs would hurt them. Provincial leaders halted massive buys of alcohol, Irving Oil, which heats New England, hiked prices 20%, and abruptly a "pause" for Mexico, then Canada, was announced after Mr. Art of the Deal, who never does his homework, won a pyrrhic victory asboth countries agreeed to do what they'd already done. Mexico would put 10,000 National Guard at the border who are there now via a 2021 deal with Biden, Canada would spend $1.3 billion on border security they agreed to with Joe in December; they'll also appoint a "Fentanyl Czar" for the 0.2% of fentanyl that crosses that border. Chortling Trudeau: "Sure Donnie, whatev." The triumphant idiot king then declared a "flawless victory in a pointless trade war" and, having claimed Biden's achievements as his own, went home to gloat.

— (@)

In some truly "mad king stuff," Little Donnie also told the Army Corps of Engineers to turn on his magic faucet, open two dams in Central California, and let 2.2 billion gallons of water rush into dry lakebeds, which he celebrated by posting pastoral water images - "Beautiful water is flowing!" - even though experts say it is virtually impossible to move that water several hundred miles to fire-ravaged southern California, and now the water, which is usually needed by farmers in the hot, dry summer, will likely be wasted. "There is absolutely.no connection between this water and the water needed for firefighting in L.A." said one. "There is no physical connection." California's Adam Schiff on Donnie Firefighter's act: "Stupid. Ridiculous. Dangerous. Wasteful.'

Even at "work" in the Oval Office, Donnie King is not quite with it. Staff say to keep him focused in briefings they resort to pictures, bullet points, map and strategic mentions of his name as often as possible "because then he keeps reading." His understanding of governance remains iffy: Asked if he thinks he needs Congress' approval to topple agencies or freeze funding, he said, “I don’t think so. Not when it comes to fraud. These people are lunatics." Speaking of: There is no actual goal or "agenda" at work here, Robert Reich reminds us,, on foreign aid, immigrants, tariffs, "all of it." For a sociopath, "The point is the show. So the world knows he's willing to inflict harm," and, like any chaos agent or abusive spouse, to rule by sadistic unpredictability.

Confoundingly, his grip on a supine GOP remains so strong they've literally turned away from the torrent of abuses. On Musk's boy-raid on USAID and "the tofu-eating 'wokerati' (at USAID) screaming like they're part of a prison riot," Sen. John Foghorn Kennedy says, “My attitude is, if you’re upset by that, call someone who cares. Because that’s why we’re elected - to review the spending.” He added a rant about omelets and sex that likely didn't help businesses scrambling with ransacked data, non-profits closing or people trying to pay rent or swipe a once-secure card for groceries. "It's a hostile takeover of the U.S. happening in full view of the world," writes Tom Sullivan - and of "Democrats down the street just waking up and smelling the accelerants."

Somnambulant Dems need to use the "tiny levers" of power they're left with in what is "fundamentally a battle over public opinion," argues Josh Marshall. The larger political message: "You're about to lose a lot of stuff," from health care to savings, so billionaires can get a tax cut. Very slow and late, Dems in Congress have begun heeding AOC's demand to "stop playing nice." They've demanded the spending freeze be "choked off" before they'll help a fractious GOP meet a March funding deadline to keep government open, passed a bill blocking "unlawful access" to Treasury, placed a "blanket hold" on Trump's State nominees until USAID reopens, refusing to use the Senate's traditional "unanimous consent" power to slow down confirmations.

They've pivoted to messaging that tariffs will just "rip off" taxpayers, joined a protest at Treasury to "stop the corporate coup" and proclaim, "We choose to fight. Nobody elected Elon," vowed to go into Musk-rampaged buildings and "dare them to stop (us)." Federal judges have shut down the spending freeze, unions and Public Citizen have sued Elon to block him from accessing Treasury data, others have sued him for identity theft, and many more legal challenges are reportedly, finally in the works. In L.A. last weekend, thousands of immigrants and advocates turned out to protest ICE deportations and shut down the freeway; they waved Mexican flags and chanted the United Farm Workers' "Si Se Puede" - Yes, you can. Chicago and other cities held a day without immigrants, closing businessiness to show, "We’re united, we’re together, we’re strong."

In this loopy dystopia, far behind the Looking Glass, even the FBi is pushing back. Top officials and the FBI Agents Association have told members, “Do NOT resign or offer to resign." They've urged agents to not take McCarthyesque vows to name "subversives," refused to participate in Musk'a gang firings, and sued DOJ to stop the release of names from the Jan. 6/ Trump criminal cases. An assistant director in New York emailed his staff to say he's not quitting, and neither should they. In his impassioned plea, he recalled a time in combat in the Marines when he had to laboriously dig a foxhole with a two-foot folding shovel. "It sucked, but it worked when the bullets flew," he wrote, adding he had a similar feeling in this chaos. "I’m sticking around to defend you, your work, your families, and this team. Time for me to dig in."

- YouTube www.youtube.com

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Abby Zimet.

Greetings fellow dunderheads. And grim tidings.

We been slack and the repercussions are no longer hiding.

Most of us love us some Road Warrior, or Mad Max, Mad Max: Beyond the Thunderdome, or maybe even Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga. And what’s not to like? The setting and context transport us to a desolate afterworld that postdates us, comes along later, our absolution baked in.

There’s never a lot of talk about how we get there. The world simply becomes a hardly inhabitable, post-apocalyptic wasteland brought on by a systemic regimen of ecocide and a nuclear war over the dwindling resources (where, curiously—persons of color—in this case Australian aborigines, have no serious presence even though the entire Mad Max run is filmed in Australia!?).

You and I aren’t in the credits, but let’s not kid ourselves. The plot line for every iteration of the Mad Max movies has already begun.

You and I, we—us. We have pivotal, supporting roles.

We’re creating the before with every increasingly labored breath and every continued false step. We’re way past the prologue. We inhabit the little-explained, early backstory. We are the living precedent. The characters in the Mad Max films are simply navigating the after.

The pit-faced, cold-blooded rush on petrol has already begun. And fresh water.

We’re becoming more clannish and mistrusting. Chronically xenophobic. Definitely tribal.

We’re already more savage. We hiss at the growing homeless population. We pity the profit-mongers more than the poor or the myriad victims of the precursors of Immortan Joe, Dementus, or the earlier Lord Humungus. Capitalism requires a bad guy, an enemy or, ultimately, a denigrated “other” that can be openly and clandestinely exploited. And we can’t have the enemy being the entity behind the lucrative enterprises we are privileged to serve as dutiful cogs in. We do what we’re told. We don’t ask questions. Doubt might demand soul searching or have us reconsider our soullessness. It might even require us to be brave.

We’re not.

We already have some sense of this. It’s cliché, really.

We care more about our own self-preservation and personal comforts than our collective survival. We are a smirky gaggle of short-sighted miscreants more worried about retirement than reality and especially the future reality our descendants will inherit. Which is great news for gaming outfits and online streaming services.

The virtual world is an ingenious, uber-addictive escape. It’s about the only place we still have any real control. And we know more about our favorite characters on Netflix than we do about our neighbors or our own children—who were weaned on the same streaming services that we now rely on to decompress or vegetate.

We exist in a meticulously constructed and carefully monitored “dunderdome,” oblivious to the consequences of our apathy and willful ignorance.

A terrifying, unavoidable reckoning is already bearing down on us, of course. And bypassing the signs of the calamities to come are the occupation of the odious and reprehensible. But few of us know what either word means.  We’re 21st century troglodytes—a disgrace to our species.

We don’t care.

Disregarding our culpability obviously demands the abandonment of all conscience and decency, but even our binary political system is a sycophantic accomplice in plain sight. Our pep rally politics have utterly failed us. Pointing a finger in either direction is a half-measure because both roads lead to Rome. Both parties are well-polished sides of the same coin, and as long as the coin spends, we, again, don’t care. In fact, we prefer pandering spin that promotes and glorifies our spending rather than forthrightness or honesty.

The “pox-eclipse” has already started and there will be no “Tomorrow-Morrow Land.” In this coming November’s Dunderdome, we will chant “two men enter, one man leaves”—but we know they will both leave.

It’s all theater.

The spectacle masks the corporatocracy that pays for the stage. Our ambivalence and ambition doom the age.

Dr. Dealgood said it best: “Dyin’ time’s here.”

Welcome to the Dunderdome.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by E.R. Bills.

Eva Borgwardt is the national spokesperson for IfNotNow, a grassroots Jewish-American organization that is dedicated to ending U.S. support for Israel's apartheid system and demanding equality, justice, and a thriving future for all Palestinians and Israelis.

It's terrifying for Jews, for Muslims, for any marginalized community in the US—so many people would be vulnerable and under existential threat under a Trump presidency. And so I'm very clear-eyed about that. And I'm furious with President Biden, who seems to be willing to risk that scenario by insisting on sending unconditional aid and unconditional diplomatic support for this assault on the Palestinian people in Gaza led by Netanyahu's rightwing government.

Eva Borgwardt

There's a key concept that's happening—especially among young people—which is that you can't manufacture consent with a population that has social media and direct access to what Palestinians are experiencing…And the immediacy of that horrific situation is very, very clear for a much wider swath of the American public than has had access to that type of information before. 

Eva Borgwardt

Investors do not create corporations, they finance them. All corporations are created by the state. And that's often missed by the public in the description of private enterprise. It's viewed like it's sui generis—someone figures out a thing to produce or a service and goes around raising capital and starts a corporation. And what Ralph Estes is saying is the essence of the corporation—the reason why it's allowed to have limited liability for its shareholders, the reason why it has so many privileges and immunities—is because it was originally supposed to fulfill public purposes.

Ralph Nader

Dr. Ralph Estes is Emeritus professor of business and accounting at American University in Washington, D.C., organizer of the Stakeholder Alliance, co-founder and vice president of The Center for Advancement of Public Policy, and Emeritus Trustee at the Institute for Policy Studies. He is the author of several books, including Tyranny of the Bottom Line: Why Corporations Make Good People Do Bad Things and Fight the Corpocracy, Take Back Democracy: A Mad As Hell Guide for the 99%.

When I was in accounting, I learned one thing…Your goodwill, your persuasion, your humanness—these things, they've all got the lip service for it, they've got the words, but it doesn't cause action. I discovered what causes action is embarrassment. Corporate executives do not want to be embarrassed.

Dr. Ralph Estes

This content originally appeared on Ralph Nader Radio Hour and was authored by Ralph Nader.

Hyena on the Animal Wall, Cardiff Castle, Wales. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.

“If you’re not mad at the world, you don’t have what it takes.”

– Sun Ra

+ A trove of newly disclosed documents show how Robert Oppenheimer’s boss, the imperious Gen. Lesley Groves, repeatedly downplayed the risk of radiation exposure from atomic testing and the blasts at Hiroshima and Nagasaki themselves. Groves claimed those hit with lethal doses of radiation would die “without undue suffering. In fact, they say it is a very pleasant way to die.” It turns out that Oppenheimer himself was intimately aware of Groves’ deceptions about the dangers of radioactive fallout. But even after leaving the Manhattan Project, Oppenheimer kept quiet about the grotesque consequences of Groves’ lies.

+ Hideko Tamura Friedman, recalling the day her city was bombed, when she was 10: “On that day, August 6 in Hiroshima, the sun and the earth melted together. On that day, many of my relatives and classmates simply disappeared. I would never again see my young cousin Hideyuki, who had been like a brother to me, or Miyoshi, my best friend. And on that day of two suns, my Mama would not come home for lunch.”

+ Nagasaki Mayor Shiro Suzuki, both of whose parents were survivors of nuclear bombings, calls for the abolition of nuclear weapons on the 78th anniversary of the atomic destruction of Nagasaki: “Now is the time to show courage and make the decision to break free from dependence on nuclear deterrence.”

+ Forget going to see Christopher Nolan’s bloated exercise in sanitized nuclear hagiography and instead watch The Strangest Dream, Eric Bednarski’s compelling 2008 documentary on Joseph Rotblat, the Polish physicist, who resigned from the Manhattan Project in protest after it became clear that Nazi Germany had ended its nuclear weapons research program. Rotblat was a driving force behind the 1955 Albert Einstein-Bertrand Russell Manifesto, which called for nuclear disarmament and a negotiated end to the escalating Cold War. Rotblat went on to co-found the anti-nuclear Pugwash Conference on Science and World Affairs, with whom he shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 1995 “for efforts to diminish the part played by nuclear arms in international affairs and, in the longer run, to eliminate such arms.” Rotblat, along with Leo Szilard and Joseph Franck, was a consistent voice of sanity amid a throng of mad scientists. The film can be viewed here online courtesy of the National Film Board of Canada.

Rotblat’s Manhattan Project badge photo.

+ A military briefing in January disclosed that at least 9 former “Missileers” at the Malmstrom nuclear missile base in Montana have been diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a rare blood cancer, likely caused by high levels of PCBs unsafe levels detected at underground launch control centers.  The revelations prompted the Air Force School of Aerospace Medicine launch a study looking at cancers among the entire missile system, looking for possible of clusters of the disease. But the toxicity of the missile sites is something that environmentalists and veterans of the missile sites have long suspected, despite denials from the Air Force and Department of Energy. In fact, according a study by the Torchlight Initiative, at least 268 troops who served at nuclear missile sites, or their surviving family members, have self-reported being diagnosed with cancer, blood diseases or other illnesses over the past several decades.

+ Undeterred, in a project supported by Obama, Trump and Biden the US plans to spend more than $1.7 trillion well into the 2040s to operate and upgrade its 3,800 nuclear weapons and replace all our ICBMs, SSBNs, ALCMs, and most of its nuclear bombers. Cancers be damned.

+ In 2022, the top five Pentagon weapons contractor made $196 billion. According to an analysis by Responsible Statecraft, these companies got 71 percent of their total revenue from military contracts with Lockheed Martin leading the parade by pocketing 96 percent of its total revenue from military contracts.

+++

+ This is great news for the coup-plotters at the CIA, if true!

Fox News anchor Julie Banderas: "Hatching schemes to stay in office is not a crime. And claiming you won an election that you know you lost is not a crime." pic.twitter.com/pQcYPTQY4L

— Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona) August 7, 2023

+ According to Germany’s anitsemitism Czar (Commissioner for Jewish Life and the Fight against Antisemitism) Felix Klein: “To accuse Israel of apartheid delegitimizes the Jewish state and is therefore an anti-Semitic narrative.” Klein might want to run that assertion by the more than 570 Jewish Studies scholars, from both within and outside of Israel, have signed a statement explicitly stating the Occupation now amounts to apartheid.

+ Nevo Erez, outgoing commander of the Mossad’s Division of Operations: “We harmed people who we didn’t need to harm; we always knew that the [Supreme] Court would give us its backing. I’m worried about the moment when the international community won’t allow our courts to protect the army.”

+ The Australian government announced this week that it will use the term “Occupied Palestinian Territories” for West Bank and East Jerusalem and refer to Israeli settlements as “illegal.”

+ Meanwhile, Israeli Defense minister Yoav Gallant is in Curtis LeMay mode: “If there is a conflict, we will send Lebanon back to the Stone Age.”

+ More evidence has been disclosed showing the pressure applied by the US on Pakistan toward ousting Imran Khan as Prime Minister. A Pakistan government document “reveals both the carrots and the sticks that the State Department deployed…promising warmer relations if Khan was removed, and isolation if he was not.”

+++

+ Coming this Fall from Crow’s Nest Press: How to Luxury Travel the World on Less Than a Dollar a Day by Clarence Thomas…

+ According to the Pro Publica report, one of Thomas’s long-time benefactors, the billionaires of the Horatio Alger Society, used him to literally auction off access to the Court building itself: “ProPublica examined boxes of the association’s historical archives, including financial records that show the group has required donations of at least $1,500 $7,500 for nonmembers – to attend the Supreme Court event. In 2004, those who donated $100,000 for a table at the main ceremony got 10 seats inside the Supreme Court.”

+ An Arkansas woman called 911. When the cops arrived, an officer was frightened by her Pomeranian, shot at the dog and missed, hitting the woman in the leg. The cop then tries to tell her the bullet hole in her leg is probably just a scratch from the dog.

+ Cops in Portland, Oregon have been telling city residents that their crime-fighting hands are tied by the reformist DA Mike Schmidt so frequently that Police Chief Chuck Lovell sent out an email to the entire police bureau telling them to stop doing so.

+ Last month, the Washington State Supreme Court struck down extended psychiatric holds “even when done for the person’s own good” as a form of involuntary detention without due process of law.

+ Percy Taylor spent more than 20 years in a Louisiana prison, after being convicted of selling marijuana and cocaine. Then after his legal release date, Louisiana officials kept in him in prison for another 525 days, even though they’d been informed multiple times by Taylor and his lawyers that he was being illegally detained. It turns out that Taylor was just one of several thousand prisoners illegally kept behind bars in Louisiana each year, a practice the state corrections department has been aware of for the last decade. In Taylor’s case, even after a commissioner ruled the state’s rationale for Taylor’s extended detention “manifestly erroneous,” and issued an official order for his release the state refused. It took another six months of legal wrangling for Taylor to finally walk out of prison.

+ People locked up in San Francisco’s rancid county jails have been forced to sue the sheriff in order to gain access to…sunlight.

+ According to a fascinating NPR report on the trade in illegal fentanyl nearly 90% is seized at official border crossings and “nearly all of that is smuggled by people who are legally authorized to cross the border, and more than half by US citizens. Virtually none is seized from migrants seeking asylum.”

+ Sure, blame it on LSD…

+++

+ How much is a teenager’s hand worth in America today? A thousand bucks and change. The owner of a meat business in western Michigan was ordered to pay $1,143 this week after a 17-year-old worker lost his hand in a grinder.

+ Amazon shelled out $14.2 million on anti-union consulting in 2022.

+ If you want data on the state of Covid in the US these days you have to look at data from sewage treatment plants or Walgreens. Both are on the rise. In fact, Walgreen’s Covid index is showing the highest Covid-19 positivity levels since May 2021.

+ Actor Alan Ruck (Conor Roy in Succession) from the picket lines of the SAG strike: Alan Ruck, killing it with this perspective. “It used to be Kings and Queens and Emperors, and now it’s Captains of Industry. And they think the world and everything on it and in it, everything in the air and in the ocean belongs to them…”

Alan Ruck supremacy. https://t.co/4NKKkokWS6 pic.twitter.com/cy5DhtnkXE

— Joanna Robinson (@jowrotethis) August 6, 2023

+ Over the last three decades, 80 percent of the world’s wealth has been generation by one-percent of the globe’s companies.

+ Bidenomics: The average share of household income spent on rent in America hit 30% in 2022, its highest proportion in at least 25 years, according to Moody’s…

+ Largely as a consequence of interest rate hikes by the Fed, the median monthly payment on a home in the US ballooned from $1,800 to $2,900 in only 2.5 yrs.

+ More and more Americans are living paycheck to credit card purchase. Aggregate credit card balances have risen above $1 trillion for the first time ever, according to a report by the New York Federal Reserve.

+ With a $53 billion endowment, Harvard is the world’s richest university. This week it advised struggling grad students to go on food stamps. Really, who would want to go here?

+ According to a story in Axios, the New York Times put its Baghdad bureau chief, Jane Arraf, on leave for paying her local reporters more than the $150-a-day limit set by the paper. (About a quarter of what the Times pays as a day rate to stateside reporters.) Of course, they didn’t put Judith Miller on leave for writing lies that led to the destruction of the entire country…

+ Last Sunday power prices in Texas surged by more than 800% as broiling heat sent demand toward record levels and strained supplies on the state grid. Electricity prices for the grid rose to more than $2,500 a megawatt-hour up from Saturday’s high of about $275.

+ The owner of  Aurora Pro Services, a home repair company in North Carolina, required his employees to recite the Lord’s Prayer in unison and requested prayers for poorly performing employees.

+ The Zoom Boom is officially over. Zoom is requiring its employees to return to the office.

+ It took Joe Friggin’ Biden, Senator from DuPont, to bring Communism to America! Eat your heart out, Gus Hall!

+ Trump’s lawyers have been fined nearly $1 million, been disbarred and had their license suspended, lost jobs at a high-end law firm and a law school, and been sued by him. One went to prison and two testified against him. Another 60 face bar complaints. Five are unindicted (as yet) co-conspirators in the J6 case.

+ In an ongoing attempt to suppress black voter turnout, the State of Mississippi does not provide an up-to-date, comprehensive list of polling places to the public. The state of Mississippi has moved the locations  of at least 161 polling places but if a voter asks where to cast their ballot, they may be told no one knows or get out of date information.

+ Move over Mayor PeteBot, let’s make Beyoncé Secretary of Transportation: Beyoncé’s tour is covering the costs for the DC Metro to run more trains and keep all 98 stations open for customers to exit amid weather delays.

+ Bribery, extortion, drugs, prostitution? They’re turning the doddering old man into the hippest president ever. Hell, even Corn Pop might end up voting for him before they’re done…

+ One of RFK Jr.’s super PACs has been paying thousands to a xenophobic outlet called Creative Destruction Media that blasts out alarums about the threat of “Black and brown invaders” with a “primitive culture”.  Not much of a surprise there. Last month, RFK Jr stood with the big irrigators in Arizona who are sucking the Colorado River dry and smeared immigrants for stepping on their arugula plantations….

+ Which imperial family’s disintegration has been more complete: the Windsors, Kennedys or Cuomos? According to a story in the NYT this week, Madeline Cuomo, the sister of former NY Governor Andrew Cuomo, worked with a pro-Cuomo group called We Decide New York, Inc. to smear and intimidate women who had accused Cuomo of sexual harassment.

+ DeSantis auditioning for the Joker in the next Batman reboot?

Just normal human stuff pic.twitter.com/25q3JYih4A

— Ken Klippenstein (@kenklippenstein) August 8, 2023

+ Is it any wonder he’s campaign is in free fall? DeSantis is now polling less than half of the support from people who pick a candidate not named Trump.

+ DeSantis, who was billed as the political Ken doll for the Moms of Liberty demographic, is now polling at 11% nationally among GOP women.

+ In a desperate effort to reverse his slide into political oblivion, DeSantis used his autocratic powers as Florida governor to remove the elected state attorney in Orlando, a black reformist prosecutor named Monique Worrell, saying she’d been weak on criminal prosecutions. Worrell responded by saying, “I am your duly elected state attorney and nothing done by a weak dictator can change that.” Meanwhile, DeSantis has taken no action against the DA of Jacksonville, despite the fact the city has the highest murder rate in Florida. Of course, he’s white and a Republican.

+ This latest action has means that DeSantis has nullified the electoral decisions of more than 15.5 percent of the voters in the state, leaving 3.3 million Floridians without their elected choice of prosecutor.

+ Here’s DeSantis defending his plan for death squads on the southern border:

+ “These people in Iraq at the time, they all looked the same.” This is certainly calls out for a deeper probe into DeSantis’ time in Fallujah, as well as Guantanamo.

+ As part of sanctions handed down in an employment case in Texas, Trump-appointed federal judge Brantley Starr has ordered lawyers for Southwest Airlines to undergo “religious-liberty training” from an ultra-right group called Alliance Defending Freedom, which wants to outlaw abortion, trans health care, same-sex marriage and sodomy.

+ A DC court ruled this week that anti-abortion activist Lauren Handy won’t be able to introduce into evidence and display before a jury the remains of five fetuses she stole from a clinic and stored in the refrigerator. Handy is on trial for invading an abortion clinic and chaining herself to a chair in the waiting room.

+ Nurses at Oakland Technical High School have been advising students about abortion bans in states where they will attend college and offering them long-term contraceptives that will last for four years or more.

+ A super-majority of Republicans in the Ohio legislature approved a ballot measure that would’ve made it nearly impossible to pass an abortion rights measure in November. It ended up being crushed by nearly 30%.  To date, all 7 times the question of abortion has been put to a popular vote–even in Red States–the pro-choice position has won, usually by a wide margin.

+ Instead of addressing the rightwing faceplant in the Ohio referendum, Sean Hannity is trying to blame the uptick in COVID (glad he noticed) on … Barbie!

+ Abortion rights are proving more popular than Trump, even in Red States…

Kansas 2020 election result: 42% Biden 56 Trump (-14)
Kansas 2022 abortion referendum: 59% no (lib side) 41 yes (+18)
Net Difference: 32

Ohio 2020 election result: 45% Biden 53 Trump (-8)
Ohio 2023 amendment referendum: ~60% no (lib side) – 40% yes (+20)
Net difference: 28

+ But they won’t be deterred. In Missouri, the Republican Party is suing to keep a proposed abortion legalization measure off the ballot by claiming it doesn’t estimate the potential state revenue lost from aborted fetuses which would otherwise go on to become future taxpayers.

+ The Wall Street Journal editorial board lashed out at the GOP for not being prepared for the backlash to Dobbs. Can you blame them? After all, isn’t that why Alito leaked his draft opinion?

+  Italian Marxist theorist Mario Tronti, who died this week: “The critique of political economy will never completely free itself of political economy. When you take up a position inside Capital, you’re sucked in. The only serious attempt to get out of this situation was to break the cage itself.”

+ I can’t wait to see how they Pragerize Malcolm and Huey Newton…

Of all the PragerU propaganda you've seen, this might be the worst.

Frederick Douglass takes a dig at BLM while praising the founding fathers as abolitionists and calling the Constitution a "glorious liberty document."

Florida is letting schools play this stuff. pic.twitter.com/WbS3CDBeNE

— David Heath (@davidhth) August 7, 2023

+Frederick Douglass: “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.”

+ Wait until those Florida kids, as they clean up the downed trees and mangled cars from the latest hurricane, get a look at PragerU’s climate videos, which argue that global heat records are merely the result of natural temperature cycles, portray climate activists as being like Nazis, and suggest that wind and solar power are dangerous and generate more pollution than oil and coal.

+ Last week Vivek Ramaswamy referred to Juneteenth as a “useless holiday,” which he vowed to cancel if elected. The fervency of Ramaswamy’s campaign to claim the US has cleansed itself of systemic racism is proof of its persistence. Note the emphasis on black basketball players in his lament in a New Yorker interview about how white men are being marginalized in elite schools like Harvard…

+ Try as he might, poor Vivek still hasn’t succeeded in selling himself to those whose support he most craves…

Right-wing activist Abby Johnson tells Christians that they cannot support Vivek Ramaswamy because he is Hindu: "Our God will not be mocked." https://t.co/s5sPXfxVCy pic.twitter.com/GJ1IuACpnF

— Right Wing Watch (@RightWingWatch) August 2, 2023

+ The editor of Christianity Today is warning that evangelical Christians are moving so far to the right that many pastors are preaching sermons that depict Jesus’s teachings as “too weak.” There’s not much new here. Jesus was considered too weak from the beginning of his Church. That’s why Paul was brought on board to toughen up the message of the Gospels, Constantine to equate the cross with a sword, and Athanasius and Eusebius to purge the canon of any “woke” Gnostic shit….

+ A San Diego teenager, who is accused of killing a homeless woman, sent a text to his friends saying, “I’m going hobo hunting with a pellet gun.”

+ Speaking of electioneering, on Brazil’s election day in 2022, Jair Bolsonaro’s Federal Highway Police set up 549 roadblocks to slow down people coming from the country to vote in towns where Lula was leading in the polls. The operation was overseen by Sidney Vasques, national director of the highway police at the time. Vasques was just arrested on charges of election tampering.

+++

+ Firestorms sweeping Maui, Lahaina in ashes, at least 53 people burned to death.  Hawai’i 2023.

+ Here’s a link to the Maui Food Bank. Folks are going to be struggling there for some time…

+ For 35 straight days this summer, every day the average temperature on the planet was hotter than every day on record in any previous year.

+ For the first time on record, Utqiaġvik (formerly Barrow), Alaska, has a 30-day running average temperature over 50F. Prior to this year, the highest 30-day average temp was 48.4F.

+ The heat index hit 158F at a Qeshm international airport in Dayrestan, Iran on Tuesday…

+ Steve Scalise: “By the way, we had hot summers 150 years ago, when we didn’t have the combustion engine. But they don’t want to talk honestly about science.” It was 103F in Paraguay last week in mid-winter.

+ Top 5 House recipients of oil & gas money:

1. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.)$616,563
2. August Pfluger (R-Texas) $550,221
3. Wesley Hunt (R-Texas) $415,445
4. Steve Scalise (R-La.) $368,291
5. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas) $354,69

+ In Hawai’i, people are “taking shelter” in the ocean from the ravages of climate change. In Florida, people are removing coral from the super-heated ocean to protect them from the ravages of climate change…

+ As the UAE prepares to hose the COP28 climate summit, the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company has planned for $150 billion in capital expenditure over the next five years towards expanding its oil and gas production, while earmarking only $15 billion for low-carbon and renewable spending over a longer period.

+ Tim Scott on Fox and Friends this morning: “This is ridiculous to talk about climate emergency when we have a border emergency right now.” Stay with me Tim, but what if one ’emergency’ is a consequence of the other?

+ The largest property insurer left in Florida is capable of paying out $16 billion in claims. Hurricane Ian alone inflicted $100 billion in damages.

+ Beef emits 31 times more CO₂ per calorie of food than tofu does.

+ A study published in Nature in 2022 found that between 2013 and 2021 there were an average of 60 pyrocumulonimbus (fire breathing) clouds recorded around the world by satellites each year. This year have already been 148 of the storms worldwide with 129 of them in Canada.

+ The EPA has approved a chemical additive to boat fuel made by Chevron at its Pascagoula, Mississippi refinery from plastic which has been shown to cause cancer in nearly everyone who comes in contact with it. The substance has lifetime cancer risk more than a million times higher than what the agency usually finds “acceptable.”

+ Last year, the average weight of a new vehicle sold in the US  was 4,329 pounds, over half a ton more than in 1980 and an increase of 200 pounds just since the beginning of the pandemic. And they’re about to get even heavier, in part because of the transition to EVs!

+ In the first six months of 2023, some 12 reintroduced Mexican grey wolves have been found dead.  While most of these deaths still under investigation, the most likely culprits are local ranchers, irate at the reintroduction of wolves to public lands in the Southwest.

+ Up in Alaska, at least 22 Steller’s Sea Lions, an endangered species, have been found dead in the Copper River Delta, most of them shot.

+ Wondering where the lions (were) are?

+ The chip war, like any other war, on China seems destined to backfire, in part because China possesses near sole access to materials that you can’t make but you need to manufacture the products needed to survive on a warming planet. As the FT notes: “China is responsible for the production of 90% of the world’s rare earth elements, 80% of all the stages of making solar panels and 60% of wind turbines and electric-car batteries. In some materials used in batteries, market share is close to 100%.”

+ China is now the world’s leading car exporter, outpacing Japan for the first six months of 2023 by shipping more than 2.3 million vehicles, an increase of 76.9 percent from a year ago. Most of the electric vehicles were sold to Europe, while the Internal Combustion cars went to Russia.

+ I’m not sure that people have picked up on just how pronounced RFK, Jr’s Sinophobia has become. The renegade Kennedy has gone far beyond his allegations about COVID being a Chinese bioweapon aimed at American blacks and Caucasians to now include a Beijing plot to consolidate agricultural production in the US, with the goal of force-feeding Americans unhealthy foods that will make them obese and diabetic. It features a cameo by Bill Gates, of course.

Industrial-owned agriculture is not only giving us unhealthy food, it’s wiping out family farms and allowing China to take control of our landscapes. pic.twitter.com/ehCFrnw7uO

— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) August 2, 2023

+ It seems to have escaped the attention of the former environmental lawyer that consolidation of the agriculture industry began with the deregulation binge instigated by his Uncle Teddy in the late 1970s to the benefit of all-American corporations like Cargill (MN), ADM (Chicago), Simplot (Idaho), CHS (Minn.) Tyson Foods (Ark) and Smithfield (VA).

+ Junior has repeatedly claimed he’s never made a racist comment in his life. His diary suggests otherwise. In it he disparages Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, writing that they “give me the creeps.” Of Jackson he writes, “I feel dirty around him.” He calls Sharpton “a buffoon…[who] has done more damage to the black cause than George Wallace.”

+++

+ I was stunned by Robbie Robertson’s death. He always seemed younger than he was. I watched his recent documentary (Once Were Brothers) a few weeks  back and didn’t pick up on how sick he must’ve been at the time. The film didn’t strike me as a farewell, but a summary of the varied chapters of his career so far. I interviewed Robertson by phone a couple of years ago for a book I’ve been working on about John Trudell. His voice sounded a little rougher than usual, but his mind was sharp and his wit still caustic. Robertson openly credited Trudell as a major inspiration for his eponymous 1987 album. Beneath the artifice of the production, you can hear the influence in the spoken word delivery and Native American themes–even if the lyrics seem somewhat strained next to John’s and the vocals themselves lack Trudell’s urgency. From the rear-view mirror that record–which came out the year after AKA Graffiti Man–seems almost cinematic and perhaps signaled Robertson’s own attraction to the financial, if not artistic, possibilities of Hollywood…

Robertson was there to hold Dylan’s hand as he “went electric.” But as the music drove forward toward punk in the 70s, Robertson seemed to retreat deeper and deeper into the past. After all, it was this Canadian with indigenous roots who pretty much gave birth, for better or worse, to the genre of music now marketed as Americana. Go listen to “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.” Robbie may still be plugged into his Marshall amp, but the song unfurls as an anthem for the Lost Cause crowd. It’s a wonder it became so popular with the radical rockers and cultural leftists who worshiped at the feet of Dylan. I still cherish the immediacy and exuberance of “The Basement Tapes” and the haunting rusticity of “Music from Big Pink,” but The Band, propelled by Robertson’s slashing guitar attack, never sounded hipper or more daring than in those first live gigs with Dylan, dragging him along with them into the Now, for a few moments at least, until withdrawing back, as so many of the Sixties Generation did, into an idyllic sanctuary of the past…

+ Sorry pastor, it wasn’t Black Sabbath or Tales From the Crypt, but Milton’s “Paradise Lost” that seduced me into the ranks of Team Satan….

Pastor tells OAN audience that Satan is using people in the music industry, movies, media and children’s cartoons to brainwash people to worship demons and hate God. pic.twitter.com/aS55Ahh1vF

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) August 9, 2023

+ Brendan Behan: “A writer’s first duty is to let down his country.”

+ Leonard Cohen: “I’ve met some people; they’re not considered sane. They say they’re beaming the songs to me. One man actually asked for some of the royalties because he’d been beaming songs to me. I considered the possibility because I don’t really know where the songs come from.”

+ During an interview with the Paris Review in August 2007 Umberto Eco talked about his TV-watching habit, which included regular viewings of Starsky and Hutch, CSI, Miami Vice, and ER: “I suspect that there is no serious scholar who doesn’t like to watch television. I’m just the only one who confesses.” His favorite show? Columbo.

+ From Richard Burton’s diary: “At the Rothschilds’, La Baronne Thierry de Zuylen asked me which writer I considered the greatest of the 20th century. I said, ‘James Joyce.’ She said, ‘You really are the most perverse man, because when I last talked to you of James Joyce you said he was a phony and that Finnegans Wake was a wake only for James Joyce.’ I said, ‘Try me again and I’ll attack him with liberal quotations.’ She is very beautiful and is married to a most engaging man, splendidly-broken nose. They are some connection to the Rothschilds I think. Dutch.”

+ Ben Ratliff: This is really just a musical question. Are you a religious man?

Sonny Sharrock: Yeah, in that I think Coltrane is God. And so is Miles, and Bird. No, I’m not religious at all; I despise most organized religion; I think religion is dangerous and harmful to people.

+ In the Heat of the Night was the first major Hollywood film to be shot with real attention on how to feature the skin tones of black actors. Cinematographer (and longtime CounterPuncher) Haskell Wexler recognized that standard studio lighting resulted in too much glare on black and Hispanic actors and toned down the lighting to get a more realistic image of Sydney Poitier’s face. The film was mostly shot north of the Mason-Dixon line in Sparta, Illinois at the insistence of Poitier, after he and Harry Belafonte had nearly been killed by the KKK during a recent trip to Mississippi.  During a brief location shoot in Tennessee, where they filmed exterior scenes at a cotton plantation, the actors and crew received deaths and Poitier slept with a gun beneath his pillow.

+ Louis B. Mayer on the real function of the Academy Awards: “I found that the best way to handle [filmmakers] was to hang medals all over them. If I got them cups and awards, they’d kill themselves to produce what I wanted. That’s why the Academy Award was created.”

+ I don’t share Pauline Kael’s taste in films very much, but this quip on the interminable Renaldo & Clara (1978) is pretty funny and on the mark: “Bob Dylan wants to be buried in an unmarked grave. Of course. That’s why he’s made a four-hour movie about himself and his pilgrimage.”

+ Jaco Pastorius, 1978: “I hadn’t heard any of Weather Report’s music before I joined the group. My daughter’s almost 8, and from when she was born, I’ve had no time to listen. So I don’t what’s going on. I knew Miles Davis & Coltrane & James Brown & the Beatles.”

+ Q: What about Joe Strummer and his contribution to music?

Sinead O’Connor: Bono said that if it hadn’t been for him, U2 would never have existed. It’s the only thing I have a hard time forgiving Joe for.

After Sinead O’Connor was pelted with boos and catcalls at a concert celebrating Bob Dylan, Jim Page wrote this song about the disgraceful spectacle…

Booked Up
What I’m reading this week…

Kick Out the Jams: Jibes, Barbs, Tributes, and Rallying Cries from 35 Years of Music Writing
Dave Marsh
(Simon & Schuster)

Heretical Aesthetics: Pasolini on Painting
Pier Paulo Pasolini
(Verso)

The World of Sugar: How the Sweet Stuff Transformed Our Politics, Health and Environment Over 2,000 Years
Ulbe Bosma
(Belknap/Harvard)

Sound Grammar
What I’m listening to this week…

The Complete Atlantic Singles: 1972-1979
The Spinners
(Real Gone Music)

New Future City Radio
Damon Locks & Rob Mazurek
(International Anthem)

Love Hallucination
Jessy Lanza
(Hyperdub)

I Have an Irreverence for Anything Connected with Society

“I respect kindness in human beings first of all, and kindness to animals. I don’t respect the law; I have a total irreverence for anything connected with society except that which makes the roads safer, the beer stronger, the food cheaper and the old men and old women warmer in the winter and happier in the summer.” (Brendan Behan)

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Jeffrey St. Clair.

Photograph Source: Phillip Pessar – CC BY 2.0

Less than a week after its release, The Barbie Movie has garnered an intense reaction from the Right, from accusations of “delivering more lectures than laughs,” and “the most anti-man film ever made,” to a 43-minute rant by Ben Shapiro, during which he burned a Barbie, Ken, and a toy car, claiming the movie “undermines basic human values.”

In their urgency to crush a perceived feminist agenda, Right Wing commentators are missing the film’s remarkably balanced attempt to mend a rift in the cultural dialogue about gender and identity. Rather than heeding the critics who cry “woke”, conservatives would do well to see the film and judge for themselves.

Greta Gerwig’s Barbie explores themes that should appeal to conservatives, championing the value of motherhood — I challenge any parent to not get misty-eyed — refusing to dichotomize traditional femininity and professional achievement, criticizing the ironically anti-woman elements of internet feminism, and even acknowledging the struggle to achieve constitutional equality between groups. As a psychologist, however, what I found most interesting, and certainly most relevant to the right wing “discourse” surrounding the movie, is the film’s interaction with the psychological principle of “precarious manhood”.

Precarious manhood refers to the male tendency to measure their masculinity according to others’ estimation, rather than by personal or objective means. In other words, the respect of being a “real man” is something that is difficult to gain, easily lost, and must be constantly proved. Men who perceive their manhood as being threatened tend to respond aggressively, often posturing and blustering to appear tough and “manly.” This other-dependent masculinity is one of the central themes of the movie — and it’s the reason why many right wing critics are reacting so strongly.

Barbie’s Ken, played with Oscar-winning aplomb by Ryan Gosling, is a man-doll whose identity is entirely tied up in his desired relationship with Barbie. The narrator’s introduction perfectly summarizes Ken’s self-concept: “Ken only has a great day if Barbie looks at him.” When it becomes clear that Barbie isn’t interested, Ken’s threatened precarious manhood drives him to embrace “patriarchy,” conquer Barbieland, and brainwash the once-independent Barbies into wearing French Maid outfits and serving the Kens “brewski beers.”

Many across the ideological spectrum, including the American Psychological Association, feminist scholar Christina Hoff Sommers, and even Ben Shapiro’s fellow Daily Wire contributor Jordan Peterson, have all highlighted the dangers of this masculine insecurity. Lack of self-identity mixed with feelings of isolation — in other words, precarious manhood — drives men to dangerous beliefs and behaviors. Although Ken is the antagonist, the film treats him compassionately, and Ken resolves his crisis by realizing that he is “Kenough,” and must anchor his identity beyond his job (which is not a lifeguard, but simply “beach”) or desired romantic relationships. Instead, he must view himself as an individual with innate value. Sure it’s not quite Russell Kirk’s “The Conservative Mind,” but you’d think this positive depiction of individualism as the solution to a crisis of masculinity deserves some Right Wing approval.

The trouble is many conservative critics are afflicted by the same precarious manhood as Ken. For example, I’d suggest that setting toys on fire like Toy Story’s kid-nightmare Sid is not the behavior of someone secure in their masculinity. Modern conservative media is full of similar examples, from Donald Trump’s constant temper tantrums to supposed masculinity advocate Jordan Peterson’s refusing to apologize for sexist comments about swimsuit models. Testicle tanning Tucker Carlson takes the cake by sympathetically interviewing alleged sex trafficker and admitted sexual predator Andrew Tate as a part of his efforts to address his perception of society’s masculinity crisis.

Clearly there is a crisis of masculinity within our society, but solving it would require admitting that these problems exist, not just blame-shifting or melting down every time someone else points them out. Barbie’s critics are too consumed by their precarious manhood to do this — so much so that a movie affirming men’s need to source their identity in something stronger than female approval has provoked their ire and left them seeing an olive branch as a threat. Were these people more secure in their manhood — if they could only realize that they, too, are “Kenough” — then their response to Barbie would likely be very different. It would certainly involve less burnt plastic.

I won’t pretend that The Barbie Movie is perfect. For instance, I wish the father character had been less buffoonish. However, I didn’t perceive the film’s questions or jokes as a threat to men, but as opportunities to engage in important conversations. Greta Gerwig claims she intended the film as an “invitation for everybody” — men and women, liberal and conservative. The film simultaneously rejects toxic masculinity and extreme feminism, patriarchy and matriarchy, suggesting that answers to our culture’s ideological differences must lie somewhere in the middle. Like Barbie and Ken, the audience is left to work out our answers through our own self-examinations and discussions..

But those discussions can’t occur if we burn Barbie-mobiles instead of building bridges. Like Ken, we should abandon our precarious manhood and instead follow Barbie’s example: “do the imagining, don’t be the idea.” Go see the movie yourself (wear pink!) — you might be pleasantly surprised.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Dr. Aaron Pomerantz.

Photograph Source: Phillip Pessar – CC BY 2.0

Less than a week after its release, The Barbie Movie has garnered an intense reaction from the Right, from accusations of “delivering more lectures than laughs,” and “the most anti-man film ever made,” to a 43-minute rant by Ben Shapiro, during which he burned a Barbie, Ken, and a toy car, claiming the movie “undermines basic human values.”

In their urgency to crush a perceived feminist agenda, Right Wing commentators are missing the film’s remarkably balanced attempt to mend a rift in the cultural dialogue about gender and identity. Rather than heeding the critics who cry “woke”, conservatives would do well to see the film and judge for themselves.

Greta Gerwig’s Barbie explores themes that should appeal to conservatives, championing the value of motherhood — I challenge any parent to not get misty-eyed — refusing to dichotomize traditional femininity and professional achievement, criticizing the ironically anti-woman elements of internet feminism, and even acknowledging the struggle to achieve constitutional equality between groups. As a psychologist, however, what I found most interesting, and certainly most relevant to the right wing “discourse” surrounding the movie, is the film’s interaction with the psychological principle of “precarious manhood”.

Precarious manhood refers to the male tendency to measure their masculinity according to others’ estimation, rather than by personal or objective means. In other words, the respect of being a “real man” is something that is difficult to gain, easily lost, and must be constantly proved. Men who perceive their manhood as being threatened tend to respond aggressively, often posturing and blustering to appear tough and “manly.” This other-dependent masculinity is one of the central themes of the movie — and it’s the reason why many right wing critics are reacting so strongly.

Barbie’s Ken, played with Oscar-winning aplomb by Ryan Gosling, is a man-doll whose identity is entirely tied up in his desired relationship with Barbie. The narrator’s introduction perfectly summarizes Ken’s self-concept: “Ken only has a great day if Barbie looks at him.” When it becomes clear that Barbie isn’t interested, Ken’s threatened precarious manhood drives him to embrace “patriarchy,” conquer Barbieland, and brainwash the once-independent Barbies into wearing French Maid outfits and serving the Kens “brewski beers.”

Many across the ideological spectrum, including the American Psychological Association, feminist scholar Christina Hoff Sommers, and even Ben Shapiro’s fellow Daily Wire contributor Jordan Peterson, have all highlighted the dangers of this masculine insecurity. Lack of self-identity mixed with feelings of isolation — in other words, precarious manhood — drives men to dangerous beliefs and behaviors. Although Ken is the antagonist, the film treats him compassionately, and Ken resolves his crisis by realizing that he is “Kenough,” and must anchor his identity beyond his job (which is not a lifeguard, but simply “beach”) or desired romantic relationships. Instead, he must view himself as an individual with innate value. Sure it’s not quite Russell Kirk’s “The Conservative Mind,” but you’d think this positive depiction of individualism as the solution to a crisis of masculinity deserves some Right Wing approval.

The trouble is many conservative critics are afflicted by the same precarious manhood as Ken. For example, I’d suggest that setting toys on fire like Toy Story’s kid-nightmare Sid is not the behavior of someone secure in their masculinity. Modern conservative media is full of similar examples, from Donald Trump’s constant temper tantrums to supposed masculinity advocate Jordan Peterson’s refusing to apologize for sexist comments about swimsuit models. Testicle tanning Tucker Carlson takes the cake by sympathetically interviewing alleged sex trafficker and admitted sexual predator Andrew Tate as a part of his efforts to address his perception of society’s masculinity crisis.

Clearly there is a crisis of masculinity within our society, but solving it would require admitting that these problems exist, not just blame-shifting or melting down every time someone else points them out. Barbie’s critics are too consumed by their precarious manhood to do this — so much so that a movie affirming men’s need to source their identity in something stronger than female approval has provoked their ire and left them seeing an olive branch as a threat. Were these people more secure in their manhood — if they could only realize that they, too, are “Kenough” — then their response to Barbie would likely be very different. It would certainly involve less burnt plastic.

I won’t pretend that The Barbie Movie is perfect. For instance, I wish the father character had been less buffoonish. However, I didn’t perceive the film’s questions or jokes as a threat to men, but as opportunities to engage in important conversations. Greta Gerwig claims she intended the film as an “invitation for everybody” — men and women, liberal and conservative. The film simultaneously rejects toxic masculinity and extreme feminism, patriarchy and matriarchy, suggesting that answers to our culture’s ideological differences must lie somewhere in the middle. Like Barbie and Ken, the audience is left to work out our answers through our own self-examinations and discussions..

But those discussions can’t occur if we burn Barbie-mobiles instead of building bridges. Like Ken, we should abandon our precarious manhood and instead follow Barbie’s example: “do the imagining, don’t be the idea.” Go see the movie yourself (wear pink!) — you might be pleasantly surprised.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Dr. Aaron Pomerantz.

The Washington Post (6/1/23) holds that the debt deal was “minor” because its cuts come from “a relatively small range of discretionary budget items, rather than structural change to the real drivers of debt and deficits: health care and retirement programs.”

If there’s one thing the Washington Post doesn’t like about the debt ceiling deal—which expanded work requirements for food stamp recipients (FAIR.org, 6/9/23) and took a knife to social spending more broadly—it’s that it didn’t cut Social Security.

As the editorial board (6/1/23) lamented, following the passage of the debt ceiling bill in the House of Representatives:

Most of the projected roughly $1 trillion in savings over 10 years comes from proposed spending caps on a relatively small range of discretionary budget items, rather than structural change to the real drivers of debt and deficits: healthcare and retirement programs.

In other words, why are we doing these little tweaks when we should be screwing over seniors?

This is the message the Post has been promoting for the last few months. With a looming showdown over the debt ceiling, the paper owned by one of the world’s richest men saw an opportunity. While various commentators were pushing the Biden administration to attempt to side-step negotiations and unilaterally bypass the debt ceiling, the Post evidently thought to itself, why not take advantage of this situation to remind Congress that it needs to cut Social Security? ‘Cause, you know, the elderly are a real pain in the budget.

On March 9, the Post editorial board kicked off a new series with an article (3/9/23) headlined “The United States Has a Debt Problem. Biden’s Budget Won’t Solve It.”

The premise was suspect from the start: If the US does have a debt problem, it’s really hard to see it. This is how Mark Copelovitch, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, explained the situation a couple of years ago (emphasis in original):

Let’s assume for the moment that the CBO [Congressional Budget Office] projections are accurate. In that case, in 30 years, US debt will reach 195% of GDP. In other words, there is some possibility that the US debt level, three decades from now, will be less than that of Greece now and more than 50% of GDP below the level that Japan has sustained, with absolutely no difficulty, for the last decade. If these countries can sustain debt levels 50–150% higher than our current levels, then the question of whether we can do so has already been answered. Indeed, it does not even need to be asked.

Nevertheless, the premise that the federal government has a debt problem is so taken for granted in corporate media that the Post felt little need to defend its claim. Instead, it turned its attention to criticizing the shortcomings of Biden’s proposed budget. This plan would generate around $3 trillion in net savings over the next decade, primarily through higher taxes on the rich. In response, the Post’s wise council muttered in unison: Not enough! Their preferred savings would be closer to $8 trillion. And, the council announced, they would be gifting the readership with “the solutions…in an upcoming series of editorials.”

Sparing the super-rich

The Washington Post (3/16/23) proposes “fixing” Social Security in ways that won’t be painful at all to the very wealthy.

The first two pieces focused on the programs the board later faulted the debt ceiling bill for failing to cut: Social Security and Medicare.

For Social Security, the Post (3/16/23) outlined a plan to keep the program solvent for the next 75 years. According to data from the Congressional Budget Office, this could be fully accomplished by hiking taxes on high earners. Gradually removing the cap on payroll taxes, which currently prevents taxation of earnings over $160,200, would plug around 72% of the projected shortfall through 2096. And a tax on investment income would cover another 56% of the shortfall, meaning the two together would cover costs with money left over.

But why would Jeff Bezos’ paper argue for plugging the deficit through higher taxes on himself and his buddies? Instead, the Post editorial opted for some more modest tax increases—most amusingly, subjecting 90% (rather than the current 84%) of wages to payroll taxation, which would hike taxes somewhat on higher earners, but would mostly leave the wealthiest be.

Meanwhile, the Post was quite pleased to offer up some benefit cuts. The most impactful would be to slow benefit growth for the top half of earners (so hitting the top 50%—as of 2021, anyone with a wage over $37,586—with cuts, rather than more seriously targeting the rich). But two others would reduce spending substantially as well.

First, raising the retirement age—which is a misnomer, because what is being proposed is not changing the age at which you can retire; instead, you would be able to retire over the same range of ages, only with a lower benefits at each age (Extra!, 12/12). This is more accurately described as “cutting benefits.”

As the Social Security retirement age has been rising, US life expectancy has been dropping  (People’s Policy Project, 2/27/23).

And, though the Post references gains in life expectancy in its advocacy for increasing the retirement age, life expectancy in the US has actually been falling even as the official age of retirement has been rising. In 2000, when the “full retirement age” was 65, people in the US lived an average of 76.8 years. Over the next 21 years, as that retirement age approached the target of 67 years, life expectancy dropped to 76.4 years. This hasn’t prompted calls in establishment media for lowering the retirement age, however.

Second, the Post would tie cost-of-living adjustments, which shield benefits from the effects of inflation, to a different measure of inflation, called chained-CPI (FAIR.org, 12/19/12). Using this measure would mean benefits would be increased more slowly over time, leading to cuts for all Social Security recipients, with the oldest recipients being hurt the most. This would harm not just seniors but the millions of disabled workers who rely on Social Security as well.

These cuts are, of course, completely unnecessary. But pushing Congress to inflict unnecessary hardship is a celebrated tradition at the Post (FAIR, 2/24/23).

Hands on Medicare

The Washington Post (3/23/23) calls for “modest sacrifice from beneficiaries”—and quietly rejects Biden’s proposed tax increase on income over $400,000 that would require a modest sacrifice from its owner.

The Post’s suggested reforms to Medicare are less objectionable, though the headline leaves something to be desired (3/23/23): “A Fiscally Responsible Government Cannot Keep Its Hands Off Medicare.”

The main cost savings come from reforming Medicare Advantage (the insurance industry carve-out within Medicare), cracking down on excess payments to hospitals, and applying an investment tax to a broader base. Some savings do come from increasing Medicare beneficiaries’ cost-sharing burden, but the added hardship here doesn’t come close to that of the cuts to Social Security benefits.

What’s notable is that the Post never once mentions Medicare for All in its discussion of containing healthcare costs, though transitioning to this sort of system would be much more effective at containing costs than anything the Post outlines. One study conducted by Yale epidemiologists “found that Medicare for All would save around 68,000 lives a year while reducing US healthcare spending by around 13%, or $450 billion a year.” If we’re talking about cutting costs, why’s that not in the discussion?

The best support is less support

Social Security and Medicare may have been at the top of the list of the Post’s targets. But the board didn’t stop there. Its next piece (4/3/23) took the bold step of calling for cuts to veterans’ disability benefits. As the board put it, “If we owe our veterans every support, we also owe them a measure of fiscal responsibility.” In other words, we owe our veterans every support, including less support.

Veterans weren’t too pleased with this editorial, with one writing in a letter to the editor (4/6/23):

Go ahead—tell the soldier who is missing both legs that it’s just too expensive to compensate him for his disability. Tell the Marine with burns over 60% of her body that her service-connected disability is hurting the national debt.

The next piece (5/4/23) called for reducing subsidies to wealthy farmers, not an unreasonable request, but not one with much of an impact on the national debt either. The Post cobbled together a little over $100 billion worth of savings in this piece, or about 1/72th of the $7.2 trillion in total savings it wants to see.

The board followed that up with an editorial (5/25/23) advocating cuts to the military budget, in welcome contrast to another major newspaper’s recent whining (Wall Street Journal, 6/2/23) about reducing it. Exactly how much the Post wants to cut is unclear, but the piece does seem to suggest savings in the range of several hundred billion dollars.

‘Looking in the wrong place’

The Washington Post (5/31/23) says that “budget experts across the political spectrum” agree that we need to cut Social Security—citing a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute as its lone example.

In the final installment (5/31/23) of its series before the signing of the debt ceiling legislation, the Post expressed its frustrations with the shortcomings of the negotiations between Republicans and Democrats. Its first paragraph contained the core message:

The top expenses worsening the national debt in the years to come are the rising costs of Social Security, Medicare and interest. Unfortunately, President Biden and congressional leaders refuse even to discuss these key drivers.

As the Post opined further down, Social Security and Medicare are precisely the sort of programs “where the bulk of the change should occur.”

That doesn’t mean the Post sees no room for changes to other spending—it puts forward other ideas for cuts in this piece, including rescinding student debt forgiveness—but the board is clear on the point that this is not where the real meat is. The headline says it all: “Politicians Keep Looking in the Wrong Place to Fix the Debt Problem.”

This sort of reasoning—that growth in the national debt means we need to cut Social Security—doesn’t have any basis in hard economic truths. It’s the reflection of the pro-rich ideology of a paper owned by a billionaire. More than that, though, it’s a predictable outgrowth of the sort of rhetoric pushed by the media more broadly.

The New York Times, for instance, has repeatedly emphasized that Social Security and Medicare will be the major factors in federal debt going forward (FAIR.org, 5/17/23).

After legislators cemented a deal to raise the debt limit, the Times ran an article (6/2/23) with the headline “The Debt-Limit Deal Suggests Debt Will Keep Growing, Fast,” which reported, “Early in the talks, both parties ruled out changes to the two largest drivers of federal spending growth over the next decade: Social Security and Medicare.” Would it be at all surprising if a person read this piece and got the impression that spending on retirement benefits is out of control?

The Times at least has Paul Krugman (3/10/23) to point out that the rising costs of these programs can be addressed without cutting benefits. But at Bezos’ paper, calls for cuts are on full blast. Because if money can’t buy happiness, it can at least buy a media outlet dedicated to defending your wealth.

ACTION ALERT: You can send a message to the Washington Post at letters@washpost.com, or via Twitter @washingtonpost.

Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective. Feel free to leave a copy of your message in the comments thread here.

The post WaPo Mad That Debt Ceiling Deal Didn’t Cut Social Security appeared first on FAIR.

This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by Conor Smyth.

The situation Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant has taken a turn for the worse as Russia has begun evacuating 18 settlements in the Zaporizhzhia region, including Enerhodar.

The BBC has cited as Ukrainian official as saying this has sparked a "mad panic" - and traffic jams have been observed as thousands of people pack up and head out of the city.

The exiled mayor of Melitopol, Ivan Fedorov, wrote on Telegram that shops in the evacuated areas had run out of goods and medicine. He also said hospitals were discharging patients into the street amid fears that electricity and water supplies could be suspended.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA ) experts still at the plant site are continuing to hear shelling on a regular basis, including Friday night. Ukrainian authorities on Sunday said that a 72-year-old woman was killed and three others were wounded when Russian forces fired more than 30 shells at Nikopol, a Ukrainian-held town neighboring the nuclear plant.

The situation is “becoming increasingly unpredictable and potentially dangerous,” the head of the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog said Saturday.

International Atomic Energy Agency Director-General Rafael Mariano Grossi said in a statement :

“The general situation in the area near the Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant is becoming increasingly unpredictable and potentially dangerous."

"I’m extremely concerned about the very real nuclear safety and security risks facing the plant."

"We must act now to prevent the threat of a severe nuclear accident and its associated consequences for the population and the environment. This major nuclear facility must be protected."

"I will continue to press for a commitment by all sides to achieve this vital objective, and the IAEA will continue to do everything it can to help ensure nuclear safety and security at the plant,” he said.

The expected Ukrainian spring counter-offensive is viewed as likely to take in the Zaporizhzhia region, around 80% of which is controlled by Russian forces.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Common Dreams staff.

I feel like I was going there, honestly, when I was a kid. Even before I got sick, I would go out into the woods—and scare my parents to death, because I would just wander off on my own and disappear when they weren’t looking—and I would talk to the trees. I remember hearing this inner voice inside. It was this meditative, trance-like state I would get in. And I lost that part of myself growing up. You just begin to not believe in it, because we’re told by society or in one way or another, that’s just not real. That just isn’t true. Brains aren’t capable of that.

And so when I became sick in my late teens and had just gotten into college, I started to slip into that in-between state, because I was having to lie still for the first time in years in bed, just really, really ill. I felt like I was spinning—almost like a dizziness, and then everything would become clear and I realized that I wasn’t in my body anymore. I was somewhere else. And then that somewhere-else started to become clearer and clearer to me the more I started to tap into it.

And in this space is where the secondary characteristic of Mad Gallica came to be, correct?

Yes, exactly. This is where I began to hear music, and I really felt like I was going mad. I realized I had had this inside of me all along, since I was a kid. And I feel like we all do, but we push it down and we’re not allowed to embrace it. I mean, still to this day I shut it down a little bit. I’ll say, “Oh, it was a fever dream. I was sick. It was creativity.” And I’ll still say that, because it kind of was in a way, but that doesn’t exclude the magic in it, and the magic that I feel we all have inside of us.

Would you say that Mad Gallica is an alter ego? Is it a separate persona completely? Is it a part of yourself? Is it outside yourself?

I think Mad Gallica, the name, in essence, describes who I am at the core of my being. Not just Dylan, this human role that I’m playing on Earth. It is the essence, it’s the seed inside of me, inside of my soul, my very being that always was and always will be. I think that’s how I would explain who Mad Gallica is.

So really, Dylan is the alter ego.

Exactly. And I feel like that can be said for anyone. Who are you? That’s what I want to do with my music, is inspire people to go into the vortex and go to the beyond within, and explore who they are outside of themselves.

I find it really interesting that you mentioned going out into the woods when you were a kid and how your youth factored into where you’re at today. I’ve also read that your childhood was spent in part touring with your family, playing Appalachian music. I mean, if this is traditional Appalachian music that we’re talking about, that’s typically a very folkloric and rooted culture with a lot of tradition, yeah?

Yes. Yes, it is. It’s really cool because all of the songs have so many different versions and they’re passed down from generation to generation. And so, one song will have two different pronunciations of the name. For instance, the murder ballad “Tom Dula.” Some people say it’s “Tom Dooley.” There’s certain verses that some people created and some that are omitted. It’s like the telephone game over a generation’s generation. So it’s really cool whenever you sit down with a group of musicians who play all of that, which version you’re going to hear, which version you’re going to do, and sometimes it’s all new. You’ve never heard this version. That’s always a part of who I am as an artist too, and my roots and just being able to play music with my family is such a gift from an early age.

Where do you see there being bridges between the more traditional folk music of your early years as a performer versus the more futuristic music that you’re making now?

I write many different styles of music, and people are going to hear that all come out in another album I’ve written – and I’ve written many different albums. I’m just ready to get them all out. But as far as Enter the Vortex that I’m currently working on, I think music is all storytelling. And Appalachian music, it is storytelling in its essence. I’ve always drawn inspiration from that. And I think it’s really important to have live instruments for a project. I want to bring the rawness that I felt sitting around the campfire, people bringing out their fiddles and their guitars. You can hear all the imperfections of the strings and the scraping of the bow and the click of the fingernails against the guitar. That in its essence is inspiring me to really take this project to the next level and have the live instrumentalists, and have that storytelling element that is a part of my roots and my musical heritage.

You mentioned having lots of different albums in the can, and stuff that you’re ready to work on or release. You have such a prolific skillset, such a diverse background, in terms of your musicianship—a vocalist, multi-instrumentalist, producer, a costume developer and designer. And of course, per your own bio, a work for hire musician doing keys and backup vocals for one of the biggest bands in rock. Can you tell us a bit about life as a touring musician, especially right now when the landscape is so far out for touring musicians?

It’s definitely something that I think everyone who’s touring right now has experienced over the past few years. It is a very different landscape than it was in 2018, for instance, with COVID and everything. But I was really excited because touring last year, it started out where there’s so many unknowns. And as the year went on, and more and more people started to become comfortable with coming out to the shows, it was an emergence of joy for people who had been shut away for so long during the pandemic. It was more beautiful than I’ve ever experienced, the joy on people’s faces, how powerful music is, and how healing it is. And every time I got on stage it would be a celebration, which, I don’t think I’d had that level of gratitude before for what the experience of performing live music is like and what it feels like. It’s always been exciting, but there’s just this new level of joy coming out after the pandemic.

And you’ve had a lot of touring experiences and a lot of live music experiences over the years. I know in the past you’ve worked with some all-time greats, like Metallica and System of A Down. How have those experiences helped shape who you are today as a musician, but also just as a person in the world? I have to imagine it’s a pretty impactful experience to be on the same stage as Serj.

It is. I just keep having all these pinch-me moments, and I couldn’t be more grateful to have those experiences. I’ve talked about this before, but I struggle with a lifetime of chronic doubt in myself. And when you have moments like that, when you walk off of a stage and realize where you are, who you’re with and what you’re doing, it’s profound. It’s just profound. And I don’t want to ever get used to that, even though I… I don’t want to ever get used to that. I don’t want to ever take that for granted. It just shows me every time, this is what I’m here to do, and I can’t imagine any other life. It’s just amazing.

What is it about this new project of yours, Enter the Vortex, that you thought made it a good candidate for public funding on Kickstarter? What is it about this project that made you want to take the leap and do it publicly?

When I do something, I like to do it all the way. I don’t like to half-ass anything. I don’t want to waste anyone’s time. I just want to do it exactly how I hear in my head. And this project is massive – not just hiring an orchestra, but the story, the imagery, the costumes, the characters, the live show experience, the animated film that I want to have that I see along with this music. I just felt like, there’s no way I can do this. There’s just absolutely no way. Why even try? And so I just kept shoving that music down, but it stayed with me. That idea did not give up on me, even though I gave up on it.

During the pandemic we were all experiencing that the world was ill, it was going through this really sad illness, and we had to go back to being quiet again, we had to go within ourselves. And I started to go back into myself, and the music was still there, and I started hearing it again, and it started driving me crazy. I would be hearing it on repeat in my head all the time. I would go to bed, I’d wake up at three in the morning, it would be there playing. My mind was just starting to work on it again 24/7. And also during the pandemic, I left a very toxic relationship and I was writing a lot of music about that too. That’s a whole other album. I have all of this music that I was sitting on and I was like, “Okay, I have to go. Which one do I do?”

I toured with one of my dearest friends, Hayden Scott, who is just an incredible person and drummer and orchestrator and all the things. I pitched him a ton of music. I mean, I probably overwhelm him with dozens and dozens of songs. But I didn’t send him Enter the Vortex because I was like, “I’m crazy. I am absolutely out of my mind to think that this can actually happen.” And it’s weird music. It’s non-formulaic. It’s all over the place. It’s just nothing that I’ve heard on the radio or top 40. And it doesn’t need to be there. It doesn’t need to be there to be successful. But I’d been turned down by so many producers or just they tried to turn me into things or they would say, “Dumb your music down. You dumb it down.”

So in my mind I’m thinking, “Well, this is just never going anywhere.” But I played it for one of my best friends who I admire greatly, and she said, “You have to send this to him. This is something I’ve never heard before. I’ve never heard music like this. You need to give this a chance. You need to give yourself a chance.”

And so I played it for him. I talked with him a little bit later, and that’s the project that he wanted to do out of all the music I’d sent. And I was shocked. I was shocked because I just didn’t believe that this could be possible. How am I going to get money for this? It’s a huge idea. That’s when I started researching Kickstarter. It’s showing me just in the first day that, “Wow, this project maybe does have an audience. Maybe there really are people that this project can reach.” And it’s been building on itself since then. And every day I see people donate or comment on the little sound bites I send out. I get more affirmation that I did the right thing. And it’s more and more exciting to me every day that we’re doing this.

I mean, I don’t think it’s going to be a shocker to anyone who ends up reading this that in addition to being the person doing the interview, I’m also the head of music at Kickstarter. And so from that perspective, you are in a lot of ways my Platonic ideal of a creator who would come to this site. It’s not just for bands who don’t have enough music to get a record deal yet, who need to get the money to make a first record. It’s for incredibly skilled musicians such as yourself who need to get the resources together to further their artistic ambitions in ways that a traditional label wouldn’t necessarily even support.

Oh my gosh, it’s so true. The thing I love about it is that I don’t think I could give it to a label, and they would really understand it. It’s a great idea, but it’s a lot of money to risk on something like this. I couldn’t guarantee that I could have the creative freedom that I need to get this music out in the way that Hayden and I envision it.

And I know I’ve said this before on my website, I really feel like I’m working for the backers. They are my label. They are my team. Halfway through my Kickstarter, I had a Kickstarter backer’s appreciation Zoom party because I wanted to see the people who were backing my project. I wanted to talk with them. I wanted to hear, “Where would you like to see this project go from here? Because now we can look at stretch goals. Now that we’ve reached our goal, what else do you want to create?” It was such a beautiful thing to, first of all, say thank you to everyone face to face as far as Zoom allows, but also to hear, “Okay, what does my team think about this? Where would you like to see this go?” Because that’s who I’m working for. And it was, it’s a beautiful thing to be able to connect with them in that way.

Another thing that Kickstarter’s really helped with is, I’m promoting this project now before it’s even out. It’s getting incredible momentum. We’re going to release it months from now, but it already has people talking about it and creating cool fan art about it and talking about the costumes and who their favorite is. And they haven’t even heard the all of the music yet. It blows me away.

Then there’s people who are offering their skills. “Hey, do you want any designs? Let me do this for you. I’m a costume designer. Can I help you? I make cool key chains. Can I help you with your rewards?” It is unreal. I really feel like it is a community. It really is a community platform. It’s so much more than the money that’s going to get the product out there and made.Now I have a community of believers in this project that have my back in this. And I’m so grateful for all of them.

Do you think of yourself in this way as a world-builder? Is that a word that you relate to your particular creative act?

Yes. And I actually mentioned that on my Kickstarter, that we’re not just creating music. We are world building together. Because music is not just an auditory experience; it’s mental, it’s visual, it’s visceral. It is all encompassing. And the world that I’m building with Enter the Vortex is the world that I entered when I was in my sickness, my illness, where my creativity lives. And so in essence, yes. It’s a community theater. You’re going to a show on Broadway that’s telling a story that really reaches out to the audience. And they can go into the vortex themselves and they can discover who they are inside of it and what their alter ego is. Or as you brilliantly put it, maybe they are the alter ego to their soul or their being and their energy. And so Kickstarter really helps with world building. We are building this world together and I’m really excited to see where it goes.

This content originally appeared on The Creative Independent and was authored by Meredith Graves.

I feel like I was going there, honestly, when I was a kid. Even before I got sick, I would go out into the woods—and scare my parents to death, because I would just wander off on my own and disappear when they weren’t looking—and I would talk to the trees. I remember hearing this inner voice inside. It was this meditative, trance-like state I would get in. And I lost that part of myself growing up. You just begin to not believe in it, because we’re told by society or in one way or another, that’s just not real. That just isn’t true. Brains aren’t capable of that.

And so when I became sick in my late teens and had just gotten into college, I started to slip into that in-between state, because I was having to lie still for the first time in years in bed, just really, really ill. I felt like I was spinning—almost like a dizziness, and then everything would become clear and I realized that I wasn’t in my body anymore. I was somewhere else. And then that somewhere-else started to become clearer and clearer to me the more I started to tap into it.

And in this space is where the secondary characteristic of Mad Gallica came to be, correct?

Yes, exactly. This is where I began to hear music, and I really felt like I was going mad. I realized I had had this inside of me all along, since I was a kid. And I feel like we all do, but we push it down and we’re not allowed to embrace it. I mean, still to this day I shut it down a little bit. I’ll say, “Oh, it was a fever dream. I was sick. It was creativity.” And I’ll still say that, because it kind of was in a way, but that doesn’t exclude the magic in it, and the magic that I feel we all have inside of us.

Would you say that Mad Gallica is an alter ego? Is it a separate persona completely? Is it a part of yourself? Is it outside yourself?

I think Mad Gallica, the name, in essence, describes who I am at the core of my being. Not just Dylan, this human role that I’m playing on Earth. It is the essence, it’s the seed inside of me, inside of my soul, my very being that always was and always will be. I think that’s how I would explain who Mad Gallica is.

So really, Dylan is the alter ego.

Exactly. And I feel like that can be said for anyone. Who are you? That’s what I want to do with my music, is inspire people to go into the vortex and go to the beyond within, and explore who they are outside of themselves.

I find it really interesting that you mentioned going out into the woods when you were a kid and how your youth factored into where you’re at today. I’ve also read that your childhood was spent in part touring with your family, playing Appalachian music. I mean, if this is traditional Appalachian music that we’re talking about, that’s typically a very folkloric and rooted culture with a lot of tradition, yeah?

Yes. Yes, it is. It’s really cool because all of the songs have so many different versions and they’re passed down from generation to generation. And so, one song will have two different pronunciations of the name. For instance, the murder ballad “Tom Dula.” Some people say it’s “Tom Dooley.” There’s certain verses that some people created and some that are omitted. It’s like the telephone game over a generation’s generation. So it’s really cool whenever you sit down with a group of musicians who play all of that, which version you’re going to hear, which version you’re going to do, and sometimes it’s all new. You’ve never heard this version. That’s always a part of who I am as an artist too, and my roots and just being able to play music with my family is such a gift from an early age.

Where do you see there being bridges between the more traditional folk music of your early years as a performer versus the more futuristic music that you’re making now?

I write many different styles of music, and people are going to hear that all come out in another album I’ve written – and I’ve written many different albums. I’m just ready to get them all out. But as far as Enter the Vortex that I’m currently working on, I think music is all storytelling. And Appalachian music, it is storytelling in its essence. I’ve always drawn inspiration from that. And I think it’s really important to have live instruments for a project. I want to bring the rawness that I felt sitting around the campfire, people bringing out their fiddles and their guitars. You can hear all the imperfections of the strings and the scraping of the bow and the click of the fingernails against the guitar. That in its essence is inspiring me to really take this project to the next level and have the live instrumentalists, and have that storytelling element that is a part of my roots and my musical heritage.

You mentioned having lots of different albums in the can, and stuff that you’re ready to work on or release. You have such a prolific skillset, such a diverse background, in terms of your musicianship—a vocalist, multi-instrumentalist, producer, a costume developer and designer. And of course, per your own bio, a work for hire musician doing keys and backup vocals for one of the biggest bands in rock. Can you tell us a bit about life as a touring musician, especially right now when the landscape is so far out for touring musicians?

It’s definitely something that I think everyone who’s touring right now has experienced over the past few years. It is a very different landscape than it was in 2018, for instance, with COVID and everything. But I was really excited because touring last year, it started out where there’s so many unknowns. And as the year went on, and more and more people started to become comfortable with coming out to the shows, it was an emergence of joy for people who had been shut away for so long during the pandemic. It was more beautiful than I’ve ever experienced, the joy on people’s faces, how powerful music is, and how healing it is. And every time I got on stage it would be a celebration, which, I don’t think I’d had that level of gratitude before for what the experience of performing live music is like and what it feels like. It’s always been exciting, but there’s just this new level of joy coming out after the pandemic.

And you’ve had a lot of touring experiences and a lot of live music experiences over the years. I know in the past you’ve worked with some all-time greats, like Metallica and System of A Down. How have those experiences helped shape who you are today as a musician, but also just as a person in the world? I have to imagine it’s a pretty impactful experience to be on the same stage as Serj.

It is. I just keep having all these pinch-me moments, and I couldn’t be more grateful to have those experiences. I’ve talked about this before, but I struggle with a lifetime of chronic doubt in myself. And when you have moments like that, when you walk off of a stage and realize where you are, who you’re with and what you’re doing, it’s profound. It’s just profound. And I don’t want to ever get used to that, even though I… I don’t want to ever get used to that. I don’t want to ever take that for granted. It just shows me every time, this is what I’m here to do, and I can’t imagine any other life. It’s just amazing.

What is it about this new project of yours, Enter the Vortex, that you thought made it a good candidate for public funding on Kickstarter? What is it about this project that made you want to take the leap and do it publicly?

When I do something, I like to do it all the way. I don’t like to half-ass anything. I don’t want to waste anyone’s time. I just want to do it exactly how I hear in my head. And this project is massive – not just hiring an orchestra, but the story, the imagery, the costumes, the characters, the live show experience, the animated film that I want to have that I see along with this music. I just felt like, there’s no way I can do this. There’s just absolutely no way. Why even try? And so I just kept shoving that music down, but it stayed with me. That idea did not give up on me, even though I gave up on it.

During the pandemic we were all experiencing that the world was ill, it was going through this really sad illness, and we had to go back to being quiet again, we had to go within ourselves. And I started to go back into myself, and the music was still there, and I started hearing it again, and it started driving me crazy. I would be hearing it on repeat in my head all the time. I would go to bed, I’d wake up at three in the morning, it would be there playing. My mind was just starting to work on it again 24/7. And also during the pandemic, I left a very toxic relationship and I was writing a lot of music about that too. That’s a whole other album. I have all of this music that I was sitting on and I was like, “Okay, I have to go. Which one do I do?”

I toured with one of my dearest friends, Hayden Scott, who is just an incredible person and drummer and orchestrator and all the things. I pitched him a ton of music. I mean, I probably overwhelm him with dozens and dozens of songs. But I didn’t send him Enter the Vortex because I was like, “I’m crazy. I am absolutely out of my mind to think that this can actually happen.” And it’s weird music. It’s non-formulaic. It’s all over the place. It’s just nothing that I’ve heard on the radio or top 40. And it doesn’t need to be there. It doesn’t need to be there to be successful. But I’d been turned down by so many producers or just they tried to turn me into things or they would say, “Dumb your music down. You dumb it down.”

So in my mind I’m thinking, “Well, this is just never going anywhere.” But I played it for one of my best friends who I admire greatly, and she said, “You have to send this to him. This is something I’ve never heard before. I’ve never heard music like this. You need to give this a chance. You need to give yourself a chance.”

And so I played it for him. I talked with him a little bit later, and that’s the project that he wanted to do out of all the music I’d sent. And I was shocked. I was shocked because I just didn’t believe that this could be possible. How am I going to get money for this? It’s a huge idea. That’s when I started researching Kickstarter. It’s showing me just in the first day that, “Wow, this project maybe does have an audience. Maybe there really are people that this project can reach.” And it’s been building on itself since then. And every day I see people donate or comment on the little sound bites I send out. I get more affirmation that I did the right thing. And it’s more and more exciting to me every day that we’re doing this.

I mean, I don’t think it’s going to be a shocker to anyone who ends up reading this that in addition to being the person doing the interview, I’m also the head of music at Kickstarter. And so from that perspective, you are in a lot of ways my Platonic ideal of a creator who would come to this site. It’s not just for bands who don’t have enough music to get a record deal yet, who need to get the money to make a first record. It’s for incredibly skilled musicians such as yourself who need to get the resources together to further their artistic ambitions in ways that a traditional label wouldn’t necessarily even support.

Oh my gosh, it’s so true. The thing I love about it is that I don’t think I could give it to a label, and they would really understand it. It’s a great idea, but it’s a lot of money to risk on something like this. I couldn’t guarantee that I could have the creative freedom that I need to get this music out in the way that Hayden and I envision it.

And I know I’ve said this before on my website, I really feel like I’m working for the backers. They are my label. They are my team. Halfway through my Kickstarter, I had a Kickstarter backer’s appreciation Zoom party because I wanted to see the people who were backing my project. I wanted to talk with them. I wanted to hear, “Where would you like to see this project go from here? Because now we can look at stretch goals. Now that we’ve reached our goal, what else do you want to create?” It was such a beautiful thing to, first of all, say thank you to everyone face to face as far as Zoom allows, but also to hear, “Okay, what does my team think about this? Where would you like to see this go?” Because that’s who I’m working for. And it was, it’s a beautiful thing to be able to connect with them in that way.

Another thing that Kickstarter’s really helped with is, I’m promoting this project now before it’s even out. It’s getting incredible momentum. We’re going to release it months from now, but it already has people talking about it and creating cool fan art about it and talking about the costumes and who their favorite is. And they haven’t even heard the all of the music yet. It blows me away.

Then there’s people who are offering their skills. “Hey, do you want any designs? Let me do this for you. I’m a costume designer. Can I help you? I make cool key chains. Can I help you with your rewards?” It is unreal. I really feel like it is a community. It really is a community platform. It’s so much more than the money that’s going to get the product out there and made.Now I have a community of believers in this project that have my back in this. And I’m so grateful for all of them.

Do you think of yourself in this way as a world-builder? Is that a word that you relate to your particular creative act?

Yes. And I actually mentioned that on my Kickstarter, that we’re not just creating music. We are world building together. Because music is not just an auditory experience; it’s mental, it’s visual, it’s visceral. It is all encompassing. And the world that I’m building with Enter the Vortex is the world that I entered when I was in my sickness, my illness, where my creativity lives. And so in essence, yes. It’s a community theater. You’re going to a show on Broadway that’s telling a story that really reaches out to the audience. And they can go into the vortex themselves and they can discover who they are inside of it and what their alter ego is. Or as you brilliantly put it, maybe they are the alter ego to their soul or their being and their energy. And so Kickstarter really helps with world building. We are building this world together and I’m really excited to see where it goes.

This content originally appeared on The Creative Independent and was authored by Meredith Graves.

REVIEW: By Pat Baskett

In the days before mobile phones and emails, there were telephone trees. They grew and spread messages like leaves, thriving on the fertile ground of common beliefs and support for a particular cause.

It worked like this: one member of a group phoned 10 others who phoned another 10, each of whom phoned 10 more. On and on . . . The caller was never anonymous, relationships were established — or you simply said, “no thanks”.

The task of spreading information, before the internet, was time-consuming and labour intensive. Photocopiers, which became widely used only in the late 1970s, replaced an invaluable machine called a duplicator. You cranked the handle, one turn for each page, hoping the paper wouldn’t stick. How long did it take to do a thousand?

• READ MORE: Other reports about Peacemonger Owen Wilkes

Next came the mail-out — folding, stuffing envelopes, sticking on stamps if funds allowed, or delivering them by hand into letterboxes.

The process was convivial, the days were busy but there was always time. There needed to be, because the issue was urgent.

The Cold War, that period of perilous mistrust between the communist Soviet Union and the “free” West, led by the United States, engulfed us in fear of a nuclear holocaust. Barely a generation separated us from the end of World War II when nuclear bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan.

The mutually assured destruction (MAD) these weapons promised was a fragile pseudo peace. In our neighbourhood peace groups, we understood the devastation a nuclear winter would bring and we worked out the radius of death and damage from a bomb dropped on our own cities.

An essential step
Yet more than nuclear weapons was, and still is, at stake. The movement was called the Peace Movement because banning nukes was considered the essential step in ensuring world peace.

The stockpile of nuclear weapons held by each side was more than enough to eradicate all, or most, life on earth — and it still is.

Those existential threats have a familiar ring, though the cause we face today adds another dimension. So far, the benefits of almost instant communication and dissemination of information haven’t enabled the world to devise for climate disruption what activists, uniquely in New Zealand, achieved — the 1986 nuclear weapons-free legislation.

Passed by the Labour government of David Lange, it prohibits not just weapons but nuclear-powered warships — including those of our former ANZUS allies, namely the United States.

There has never been any question of rescinding this act. It remains in safe obscurity — to such an extent that I wonder how many of our Gen X contemporaries are aware of its existence.

Yet more than nuclear weapons was, and still is, at stake. The movement was called the Peace Movement because banning nukes was considered the essential step in ensuring world peace.

In 1984, 61 percent of the population were living in 86 locally declared nuclear-weapons-free zones. Academic activists came together to form Scientists Against Nuclear Arms (SANA) and Engineers for Social Responsibility (ESR – this group now focuses on the climate disruption).

The medical fraternity formed a local branch of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW).

Extraordinary sleuthing talent
Much of the information which fuelled the work of all these groups was brought to light by the extraordinary sleuthing talent of one man. Owen Wilkes is described as ” . . . the intellect behind New Zealand’s anti-nuclear stance” in a recent book, Peacemonger: Owen Wilkes international peace researcher, published by Raekaihau Press in association with Steele Roberts Aotearoa.

An unconventional, highly talented individual

The book consists of 12 essays by friends and collaborators, themselves experts in their individual fields and who leave their own legacies of contribution to the knowledge that led to the anti-nuclear legislation.

They include physicist Dr Peter Wills who was instrumental in setting up SANA and Auckland University’s Centre for Peace Studies; investigative journalist and researcher Nicky Hager; and veteran peace and human rights activist Maire Leadbeater. Two contributions are by Wilkes’s colleagues at the Peace Research Institute in Oslo Norway, Dr Ingvar Botnen and Dr Nils Petter Gleditsch.

Wilkes spent six years from 1976 working in Oslo and also at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).

The work is edited by Mark Derby and Wilkes’s partner May Bass. While a traditional biography with a single author may have avoided the repetition of information, the various personal anecdotes and responses result in the portrayal of an unconventional, highly talented individual.

In his introduction, Derby sums up Wilkes’s life: “Although invariably non-violent, politically non-aligned and generally law-abiding, Owen encountered official opposition, harassment and intimidation in various forms as he became internationally known for the quality and impact of his peace research.”

Wilkes was born in Christchurch in 1940 and died in Kawhia in 2005. In his early adult years he worked as an entomologist on various projects supported by the US military, including at McMurdo base in the Antarctic. These, he discovered, were connected with a US military germ warfare project.

Using official information laws
His gift was to see through, and behind, the information government made public about our relationship to our official allies, essentially the US. To do this he used our own official information laws and the American equivalent, plus any public reports to congress and US budget reports he could lay hands on.

Rubbish bags also feature in a couple of accounts.

What now may be stored as megabytes of information consists of boxes and folders of carefully catalogued material, the bulk of which is lodged at the Alexander Turnbull Library (with information also at the university libraries of Auckland and Canterbury).

The truth Wilkes was committed to appears, in retrospect, somehow simpler than that of the struggle towards a fossil-free future and a liveable planet for all. Peace is a part of this and the nukes are still there.

Wilkes documented how in many cases what was billed as civilian also had profound military implications. This was nowhere more clear than in the anti-bases campaign which Murray Horton chronicles — bases being sites in remote locations for monitoring or receiving satellite information, some of which new technology has rendered obsolete.

These include Mt St John near Lake Tekapo and Black Birch near Blenheim, and those still operating at Tangimoana in the Manawatu and at Waihopai, also near Blenheim.

Wilkes’s unconventional appearance and lifestyle — he famously wore shorts in sub-zero temperatures when skiing in Norway — made him a target for accusations of being a communist, a not uncommon slander of the peace movement.

Having sharp eyes
Maire Leadbeater, in her account of his long investigation by the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service, suggests his only “crime” was “to have sharp eyes and the ability to put two and two together”.

Yet there were more conventional sides to his interests. One was archaeology, beginning in his 1962 when he worked as a field archaeologist for the Canterbury Museum. This continued after he left the peace movement in the early 1990s and worked for the Waikato Department of Conservation in a variety of jobs including filing archaeological and historical records.

The truth Wilkes was committed to appears, in retrospect, somehow simpler than that of the struggle towards a fossil-free future and a liveable planet for all. Peace is a part of this and the nukes are still there.

• Peacemonger – Owen Wilkes: International Peace Researcher, edited by May Bass and Mark Derby. Published by Raekaihau Press in association with Steele Roberts Aotearoa (2022). This article was first published by Newsroom is republished with the author’s and Newsroom’s permission. Asia Pacific Report editor David Robie is one of the contributing authors.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

The post So Long as There are Nukes, We Had Better Hope We Live in a MAD World appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Thomas Knapp.

In the White Mountains of New Hampshire, I gathered last week with a group of antiwar activists where we talked of the grim issues confronting the globe. Nuclear war, conventional war, drone war, Climate Catastrophe, American Imperialism, our Culture of Militarism. The world is in a dire, cataclysmic state. We are, it seems, a hairsbreadth from annihilating ourselves.

No, it’s just us, random groups of citizens around the world trying to save our species from extinction.

One speaker presented on the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in Ukraine that has come under shelling. It has six reactors. Any one of them, if hit by artillery, would explode with more destructive force than ten Chernobyls combined. If they aren’t hit by shelling, the power grid keeping the nuclear rods cooled could be knocked offline by shelling in the area. This would cause a meltdown. Or the workers at the plant could flee the area because they are working in the middle of a deadly war zone, thereby leaving the plant without the necessary technicians to keep it running safely.

This was just one of the issues raised last week.

We also spoke of hypersonic missiles which fly at five times the speed of sound, are low flying and evasive and thus cannot be detected by radar making it a highly destabilizing instrument of war; the deployment of tactical nuclear warheads to be used as part of a conventional attack under the absurd assumption that a limited nuclear war can be fought; and, the $1.5 trillion to be spent on modernizing the U.S. nuclear force rebuilding every leg of the nuclear triad. 

Is this not some form of planetary madness?

I looked around the room at our hard-working, well-informed, occasionally disorganized group from various backgrounds and asked myself, It’s up to us to save humanity? Groups like this are to pull us back from the brink? Shouldn’t there be some vast international organization of Nobel laureates with global support and authority doing this? Some world agency with endless resources working every day at this? After all, we had trouble arranging the picnic tables in an orderly fashion.

No, it’s just us, random groups of citizens around the world trying to save our species from extinction. My mind reeled, spun. I eventually found footing in the reassuring fields of art, poetry, music, beauty. I thought of dance.

The dance of sympathy refers to the idea that our bodies feel compelled to move in response to the music we hear. Music evokes a sympathetic connection and our bodies, regardless of where we are from, move as a result. From a waltz to a samba to Afro Dance, we come together on the floor, unknown to each other a moment before but now sharing space, swaying to the tempo, rhyming without words.

The dance of sympathy says our emotions connect us, makes two strangers rise in a room and begin to dance in unison, both responding to the music they hear. Similarly, a poem, a painting, a sculpture causes comparable outbreaks of emotional bonding. Like it or not, we are all connected, sympathetic kin transcending borders, ethnicities, and religions. This group of peacemakers in the White Mountains knew that, lived it, worked to implement it. We did not all rise and dance, thank goodness, but our hearts and minds moved in unison.  

Our world is perpetually at war, injustice is rampant, and suffering is too commonly accepted or overlooked. Greed drives this malevolent chaos, corroding the spirit, emptying the heart, distorting the mind. Greed disdains beauty and art, cannot reconcile itself to fellowship, its insatiable appetite inevitably consuming all those within its reach.

Art creates order out of such chaos, brings form and shape to pain, outrage, and injustice. It also affirms love, compassion, and a shared humanity. It says, you are not alone, whether in pain or joy we travel together.

Working for peace and justice is not only the moral and right thing to do, but is also a creative expression of what it is to be human, an effort to eliminate war by bringing order to chaos and replacing violence with harmony. It is to dance in sympathy with all people. Conversely, to be a warrior, to kill, or to ignore the deeds of warriors, requires an act against self, a contraction of spirit, a shutting down. It is an isolating act, self-immolating, burning up any connection to humanity.

One night during my stay in the mountains, a woman from outside our group read from a book of poetry she had recently published. The poems were about things she should have said to her son who lost his battle with drug addiction. The subject was difficult, the poems wrenching and beautiful. One of them had the refrain, “Why did I pour so much love into every bath?” Why, if this was to be the result? She used precise rhyming schemes, sonnets and villanelles, to help order her outrage, give form and shape to her suffering. Her artistry had led her to a personal peacemaking, with herself, with her son, and the world.

As a member of one these scattered, random groups of dissident peacemakers, we try to do the same, practicing our nonviolent art, writing our saving works, using hopeful artistry to bring order to chaos and lead us through these dark, cataclysmic days so that love lurches on, cleansing, healing, restoring. May we all rise, cross our invented borders and meet in sympathetic connection. May we all be poets and peacemakers, ending this planetary madness.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Brad Wolf.

In the White Mountains of New Hampshire, I gathered last week with a group of antiwar activists where we talked of the grim issues confronting the globe. Nuclear war, conventional war, drone war, Climate Catastrophe, American Imperialism, our Culture of Militarism. The world is in a dire, cataclysmic state. We are, it seems, a hairsbreadth from annihilating ourselves.

No, it’s just us, random groups of citizens around the world trying to save our species from extinction.

One speaker presented on the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in Ukraine that has come under shelling. It has six reactors. Any one of them, if hit by artillery, would explode with more destructive force than ten Chernobyls combined. If they aren’t hit by shelling, the power grid keeping the nuclear rods cooled could be knocked offline by shelling in the area. This would cause a meltdown. Or the workers at the plant could flee the area because they are working in the middle of a deadly war zone, thereby leaving the plant without the necessary technicians to keep it running safely.

This was just one of the issues raised last week.

We also spoke of hypersonic missiles which fly at five times the speed of sound, are low flying and evasive and thus cannot be detected by radar making it a highly destabilizing instrument of war; the deployment of tactical nuclear warheads to be used as part of a conventional attack under the absurd assumption that a limited nuclear war can be fought; and, the $1.5 trillion to be spent on modernizing the U.S. nuclear force rebuilding every leg of the nuclear triad. 

Is this not some form of planetary madness?

I looked around the room at our hard-working, well-informed, occasionally disorganized group from various backgrounds and asked myself, It’s up to us to save humanity? Groups like this are to pull us back from the brink? Shouldn’t there be some vast international organization of Nobel laureates with global support and authority doing this? Some world agency with endless resources working every day at this? After all, we had trouble arranging the picnic tables in an orderly fashion.

No, it’s just us, random groups of citizens around the world trying to save our species from extinction. My mind reeled, spun. I eventually found footing in the reassuring fields of art, poetry, music, beauty. I thought of dance.

The dance of sympathy refers to the idea that our bodies feel compelled to move in response to the music we hear. Music evokes a sympathetic connection and our bodies, regardless of where we are from, move as a result. From a waltz to a samba to Afro Dance, we come together on the floor, unknown to each other a moment before but now sharing space, swaying to the tempo, rhyming without words.

The dance of sympathy says our emotions connect us, makes two strangers rise in a room and begin to dance in unison, both responding to the music they hear. Similarly, a poem, a painting, a sculpture causes comparable outbreaks of emotional bonding. Like it or not, we are all connected, sympathetic kin transcending borders, ethnicities, and religions. This group of peacemakers in the White Mountains knew that, lived it, worked to implement it. We did not all rise and dance, thank goodness, but our hearts and minds moved in unison.  

Our world is perpetually at war, injustice is rampant, and suffering is too commonly accepted or overlooked. Greed drives this malevolent chaos, corroding the spirit, emptying the heart, distorting the mind. Greed disdains beauty and art, cannot reconcile itself to fellowship, its insatiable appetite inevitably consuming all those within its reach.

Art creates order out of such chaos, brings form and shape to pain, outrage, and injustice. It also affirms love, compassion, and a shared humanity. It says, you are not alone, whether in pain or joy we travel together.

Working for peace and justice is not only the moral and right thing to do, but is also a creative expression of what it is to be human, an effort to eliminate war by bringing order to chaos and replacing violence with harmony. It is to dance in sympathy with all people. Conversely, to be a warrior, to kill, or to ignore the deeds of warriors, requires an act against self, a contraction of spirit, a shutting down. It is an isolating act, self-immolating, burning up any connection to humanity.

One night during my stay in the mountains, a woman from outside our group read from a book of poetry she had recently published. The poems were about things she should have said to her son who lost his battle with drug addiction. The subject was difficult, the poems wrenching and beautiful. One of them had the refrain, “Why did I pour so much love into every bath?” Why, if this was to be the result? She used precise rhyming schemes, sonnets and villanelles, to help order her outrage, give form and shape to her suffering. Her artistry had led her to a personal peacemaking, with herself, with her son, and the world.

As a member of one these scattered, random groups of dissident peacemakers, we try to do the same, practicing our nonviolent art, writing our saving works, using hopeful artistry to bring order to chaos and lead us through these dark, cataclysmic days so that love lurches on, cleansing, healing, restoring. May we all rise, cross our invented borders and meet in sympathetic connection. May we all be poets and peacemakers, ending this planetary madness.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Brad Wolf.

In the White Mountains of New Hampshire, I gathered last week with a group of antiwar activists where we talked of the grim issues confronting the globe. Nuclear war, conventional war, drone war, Climate Catastrophe, American Imperialism, our Culture of Militarism. The world is in a dire, cataclysmic state. We are, it seems, a hairsbreadth from annihilating ourselves.

No, it’s just us, random groups of citizens around the world trying to save our species from extinction.

One speaker presented on the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in Ukraine that has come under shelling. It has six reactors. Any one of them, if hit by artillery, would explode with more destructive force than ten Chernobyls combined. If they aren’t hit by shelling, the power grid keeping the nuclear rods cooled could be knocked offline by shelling in the area. This would cause a meltdown. Or the workers at the plant could flee the area because they are working in the middle of a deadly war zone, thereby leaving the plant without the necessary technicians to keep it running safely.

This was just one of the issues raised last week.

We also spoke of hypersonic missiles which fly at five times the speed of sound, are low flying and evasive and thus cannot be detected by radar making it a highly destabilizing instrument of war; the deployment of tactical nuclear warheads to be used as part of a conventional attack under the absurd assumption that a limited nuclear war can be fought; and, the $1.5 trillion to be spent on modernizing the U.S. nuclear force rebuilding every leg of the nuclear triad. 

Is this not some form of planetary madness?

I looked around the room at our hard-working, well-informed, occasionally disorganized group from various backgrounds and asked myself, It’s up to us to save humanity? Groups like this are to pull us back from the brink? Shouldn’t there be some vast international organization of Nobel laureates with global support and authority doing this? Some world agency with endless resources working every day at this? After all, we had trouble arranging the picnic tables in an orderly fashion.

No, it’s just us, random groups of citizens around the world trying to save our species from extinction. My mind reeled, spun. I eventually found footing in the reassuring fields of art, poetry, music, beauty. I thought of dance.

The dance of sympathy refers to the idea that our bodies feel compelled to move in response to the music we hear. Music evokes a sympathetic connection and our bodies, regardless of where we are from, move as a result. From a waltz to a samba to Afro Dance, we come together on the floor, unknown to each other a moment before but now sharing space, swaying to the tempo, rhyming without words.

The dance of sympathy says our emotions connect us, makes two strangers rise in a room and begin to dance in unison, both responding to the music they hear. Similarly, a poem, a painting, a sculpture causes comparable outbreaks of emotional bonding. Like it or not, we are all connected, sympathetic kin transcending borders, ethnicities, and religions. This group of peacemakers in the White Mountains knew that, lived it, worked to implement it. We did not all rise and dance, thank goodness, but our hearts and minds moved in unison.  

Our world is perpetually at war, injustice is rampant, and suffering is too commonly accepted or overlooked. Greed drives this malevolent chaos, corroding the spirit, emptying the heart, distorting the mind. Greed disdains beauty and art, cannot reconcile itself to fellowship, its insatiable appetite inevitably consuming all those within its reach.

Art creates order out of such chaos, brings form and shape to pain, outrage, and injustice. It also affirms love, compassion, and a shared humanity. It says, you are not alone, whether in pain or joy we travel together.

Working for peace and justice is not only the moral and right thing to do, but is also a creative expression of what it is to be human, an effort to eliminate war by bringing order to chaos and replacing violence with harmony. It is to dance in sympathy with all people. Conversely, to be a warrior, to kill, or to ignore the deeds of warriors, requires an act against self, a contraction of spirit, a shutting down. It is an isolating act, self-immolating, burning up any connection to humanity.

One night during my stay in the mountains, a woman from outside our group read from a book of poetry she had recently published. The poems were about things she should have said to her son who lost his battle with drug addiction. The subject was difficult, the poems wrenching and beautiful. One of them had the refrain, “Why did I pour so much love into every bath?” Why, if this was to be the result? She used precise rhyming schemes, sonnets and villanelles, to help order her outrage, give form and shape to her suffering. Her artistry had led her to a personal peacemaking, with herself, with her son, and the world.

As a member of one these scattered, random groups of dissident peacemakers, we try to do the same, practicing our nonviolent art, writing our saving works, using hopeful artistry to bring order to chaos and lead us through these dark, cataclysmic days so that love lurches on, cleansing, healing, restoring. May we all rise, cross our invented borders and meet in sympathetic connection. May we all be poets and peacemakers, ending this planetary madness.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Brad Wolf.

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There was plenty of condemnation of New Zealand’s occupation of Parliament in the media at first — but this week some media painted a much more palatable picture of the protesters and their motivation.

However, those who track the far-right and the media channels they use warn that ignores and obscures the protest’s dark undercurrents.

When the convoy converged on Parliament last week, Newshub vox-popped Wellingtonians who called the protest “ridiculous and disruptive”.

Offshore, Al Jazeera’s headline quoted residents who called the protesters “‘stupid’ and ‘selfish’”.

Many in the media were at pains to point out the protesters were not just a minority, but a mere fraction of the anti-vax element.

There was also sympathy for the police being confronted by angry and aggressive crowds — and public anger about children being there, even through a record-breaking wet southerly blast and the Speaker’s sprinkler stunt last weekend.

Media highlighted unpleasant conditions
And as the occupation dragged on, media highlighted increasingly unpleasant conditions underfoot.

“The [police] superintendent described the situation as squalor,” TVNZ’s 1News viewers were told last Monday.

“He said there’s faeces on the ground and children are playing in the mud.”

That amplified calls for the convoy crowd to stop blocking the streets — and the drains.

But Newstalk ZB’s political editor Barry Soper told listeners the poo problem was a fiction.

“There’s no faeces anywhere. They’ve got portaloos down there,” he said.

Soper went on to tell ZB’s Drive host Heather du Plessis-Allan the protesters were not as bad as they had been painted.

“They’re Kiwis. A lot of them have been mandated out of their jobs,” Soper said.

‘Do they have a point?’
“Do they have a point?” du Plessis-Allan asked rhetorically.

“Yes they have a point. They insist this is an anti-mandate protest and reporters on the ground say this appears to be the case. Now don’t confuse anti-mandate with anti-vax,” she warned listeners.

In fact, many reporters on the ground stressed that vaccine misinformation seemed near-universal among the occupiers — and amplification of irrational rhetoric, nooses, calls to “hang em high” and Nuremberg imagery were plain to see.

On the same ZB show soon after, NZME head of business Fran O’Sullivan said it was time to engage with them — even though there were no publicly-acknowledged leaders or mainstream political backers at that point.

“Not all people on that lawn are crazy. There’s a lot of people who are pretty ordinary folk who for one or another reason find themselves out of jobs,” she said.

Several commentators declared they were impressed by the pop-up infrustructure and support for what had earlier been described in the media as a leaderless and random occupation.

ZB’s Mike Hosking told listeners of his show the convoy deserved credit.

“I admire people who want to give up a lot of time and travel and hunker down and presumably get some sort of sense of personal accomplishment,” he said.

‘Too many nutters’
That’s quite a shift from the previous Friday, when Hosking dismissed the occupation as a waste of time with “too many nutters, and too many angry people”.

“Didn’t work. Protests make a point — but this one just pissed everyone off,” he said.

Back in 2019, he condemned those occupying Ihumātao as time-wasters too.

“Is it time in lieu you think they’re taking or annual leave they’re taking?” he said.

Politics lecturer and pundit Dr Bryce Edwards told ZB aggression at the protest had evaporated. He described protesters as merely “eccentric”.

The same day Edwards also told RNZ’s Morning Report the protesters had been unfairly smeared as “far right” — even though far right material and broadcasts were still clearly present at the protest.

“Bryce is quite wrong to gloss over the far right influence,” countered another commentator on Morning Report, academic Morgan Godfery.

Known far-right figures were among the first setting up and attending fresh occupation protests in Christchurch.

Watching their channels
Byron C Clark, who researches New Zealand’s far-right and conspiracy theory scene, told Mediawatch that reporters and commentators declaring the protest peaceful and reasonable were ignoring some of its dark undercurrents.

“If you want a full picture, you need to be engaging with people on the ground but also be in the social media channels and watch their own media,” he said.

Extreme and sometimes violent messages are still being posted on apps like Telegram, and media channels like Counterspin, he said.

“They are talking to people who are saying different things to what they say to mainstream media journalists.”

TVNZ’s Cushla Norman also confronted Counterspin frontman Kelvyn Alp orchestrating the coverage outside Parliament last week. In a story that aired on 1News on Thursday TVNZ’s Kristin Hall found messages in stark conflict with the peaceful vibe many of the protesters were projecting publicly.

Protesters have been asking me all week for “evidence” of volatility towards the Wellington public so here it is. https://t.co/mhJNcXlMrF

— Kristin Hall (@kristinhallNZ) February 19, 2022

“The Nuremburg 2.0 trials have started, why is no one reporting on that? You know, that’s the crimes against humanity and treason,” one protester told her.

Hall also pointed to Counterspin’s Kelvyn Alp telling ACT leader David Seymour he was “lucky they haven’t strung [him] up from the nearest bloody lamppost” after offering to mediate.

Common alt-right messages
Clark said those kinds of messages were common in parts of the movement.

“It’s not the case that everyone at the protest is a committed member of the alt-right movement, but it’s certainly the case that the alt-right has a presence in this movement and is trying to influence the direction it takes,” he said.

‘“On Telegram we’ve got people calling for trials and executions of politicians. On Counterspin Media, the hosts are telling people to read the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. To not report on that almost seems like part of that disinformation at this point in time.”

Many protesters identified as liberal or progressive, while being increasingly influenced by extreme content, Clark said.

“You might be skeptical of vaccines for left-wing reasons. You might be distrustful of the pharmaceutical industry. Then when you go into these anti-vax groups online, you’re going to be experiencing conversations about other conspiracy theories, and people will be saying, ‘yes, the media is lying to you, not just about this but also about these other things’.”

“You’re going to be influenced by a lot of these ideas and even if you continue to call yourself a liberal or left-wing, if you’re going to these protests that are shaped by the far-right, are you part of a far-right movement without realising it? I think that’s the case with a lot of the protesters,” he said.

‘Research these fringe elements’
Clark said the convoy was the culmination of years of activity on social media channels like Telegram, where thousands of people were still being radicalised.

He urged reporters to follow his lead and infiltrate those channels, so at the least they are not surprised when another movement emerges.

“I think some of our newsrooms should be putting more resources into researching these groups. Researching these fringe elements. Because we should know after Christchurch in 2019, it doesn’t mean it’s not going to burst out into the real world,” he said.

“These thousands of people have all been chatting to each other on Telegram for months if not years — so this wasn’t something that nobody saw coming. But it’s something the media is struggling to come to terms with,” Clark told Mediawatch.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.