Righting wrongs. It’s often quite subjective. In the United States it’s the province of fantasy superheroes or government torturers. Elsewhere it took the form of a window decal I was too bashful to photograph, a life-sized bin Laden standing tall with that hebephrenic grin and three airliners zooming toward us over his head, fluffy contrails in perspective.
I’ve written before on the subject of ‘false flag’ events1;2 – events which get their name from the early days of piracy on the high seas and naval warfare (often the same thing), when a ship could be attacked by another ship which had been able to get close enough to its victim by flying flags which lied about the real nature of the attacking ship.
The darkness to which I refer is something largely unanticipated in political studies and even in science fiction, a field which definitely enters this discussion, as readers will see. There have been many examples of national tyrannies and even stories of global autocracies, but the Hitler-Stalin-Mussolini type of tyranny is an antiquated model for advanced states despite its applying still to many third-world places. A unique set of circumstances now works towards a dystopian future in advanced states with no need for jackboots or brutal faces on posters.
John Chuckman
One of the most widely used explanations for why the United States had to be involved in Vietnam during the 1960s/70s was that communism had to be stopped in its tracks, that if communists were allowed to “take over” Vietnam the rest of South East Asia would quickly follow. It was called the Domino Theory to suggest the image of how a row of domino tiles, placed on their edges and near to each other, could all be made to topple over by simply knocking the first one over onto the second.
The fate of Malaysian Airlines flight MH370, which disappeared over the South China Sea on Saturday, continues to baffle the authorities of ten countries involved in the search and rescue missions. Some 40 ships and 34 aircraft have been involved in the effort so far (Business Insider, March 11). False alarms have been registered – the report of an oil slick, and the appearance of various objects (passenger life jackets; an airplane door). A salvaged object retrieved by a Vietnamese rescue helicopter provided false assurance – it was not a life raft from the plane.
Everywhere you look in the West, you find political pygmies rather than statesmen. In France, we see a pathetic man whose own people intensely dislike him, François Hollande, attempt to speak as though he were something other than a dry, pompous school teacher-like purveyor of American views. Almost forgotten are the strong, independent voices of a de Gaulle or a Chirac.
President Maduro, slanderous Western media, promoting war and violence for capital gains of the mercilessly amoral, automaton functioning, speculative interest banking industry, has put you in their spotlight to better target you with defamation. This is, then, your opportunity to be heard world-wide. In telling the truth about the USA, you will be protecting all of us, Venezuela included.
President Kennedy never foresaw that the chickens would come home to roost so soon…
— Malcolm X, December 1, 1963
In 1928, Ho Chi Minh was in Thailand while his Chinese wife, Zeng Xueming, remained in Canton. He sent her this letter:
From the day we parted, already more than a year.
I miss you with such anguish, it needn’t be said.
Borrowing rosy wings, I send a few lines to reassure you.
Such is my desire, and I wish your mother ten thousand good lucks.
Clumsily yours.
