Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Joe Biden in a virtual meeting on Tuesday discussed strategic and fundamental issues on the development of bilateral relations. The first face-to-face virtual meeting between the top two leaders lasted more than three hours. They opened their talks on a friendly note. Chinese observers said that the meeting will inject certainty into the[Read More...]
Refugee crises are often manufactured by governments. They can be done at the source: war, famine, rapacious institutions. They can also be manufactured by the refusal of governments to accept those seeking asylum, sanctuary and refuge. The latter is very much in evidence in Europe: governments of the European Union are staring down desperate humans keen to travel into the[Read More...]
This past weekend former US Army General and Trump ally Michael Flynn spoke at a Reawaken America rally in Texas. Flynn, a right wing conspiracy theorist, was ‘ front and center’ with the election fraud AKA Big Lie and of course the January 6th insurrection riot. One needs to wonder how many other ex military officers and lower level personnel[Read More...]
Nearly three years ago, as US-led coalition forces trapped a remnant of the Islamic State (IS) in a small enclave near the Syrian town of Baghuz, the US military committed a horrific atrocity. As Air Force officers watched the scene via drone cameras in real time, US warplanes murdered at least 80 unarmed women and children with 500- and 2,000-pound[Read More...]
Hundreds of protesters marched from the Thai capital Bangkok’s Pathumwan intersection to the German embassy on Sunday to submit a petition in response to a recent court ruling which determined that calls for reform of the institution was akin to treason. It was the largest protest the country has seen in months. Media reports said: The demonstrators gathered in response[Read More...]
In a provocative recent essay in the New York Times, the political historian Jon Grinspan places the distemper currently afflicting American politics in a broader context. In essence, he contends that we’ve been here before. Grinspan describes the period from the 1860s to 1900 as an “age of acrimony,” with the nation as a whole “embroiled in a generation-long, culturewide war over democracy.” Today,[Read More...]
Only a National Pension Plan can provide a suitable and secure financial arrangement for retirees. Fortunately, Social Security already has the framework for a National Pension Plan. Financial constraints indicate that Social Security (SS) has a precarious future. Ignored is that Social Security history shows built-in failures that cannot be constantly repaired. Only a National Pension Plan can provide a suitable[Read More...]
As if we needed any more evidence of the sorry state of our political system, the long-running battle over the ‘Build Back Better’ bill has provided it. As Senator Bernie Sanders pointed out, an early version of this bill included many proposals that would help Americans live with a sense of security. In addition, these proposals were strongly supported by[Read More...]
The UK government’s Behavioural Insights Team helped to push the public towards accepting the COVID narrative, restrictions and lockdowns. It is now working on ‘nudging’ people towards further possible restrictions or at least big changes in their behaviour in the name of ‘climate emergency’. From frequent news stories and advertisements to soap opera storylines and government announcements, the message about[Read More...]
The COP26 UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow has failed to requisitely respond to the worsening Climate Crisis with national action pledges promising a catastrophic plus 2.4 degrees Centigrade temperature rise. However COP26 has at least identified the worst culprits. Thus, unveiled at COP26, the 2022 Climate Change Performance Index has ranked climate criminal Australia worst in the world out[Read More...]
