Archives
Given the fact that nuclear war means the virtual annihilation of life on earth, it’s remarkable that many people continue to resist building a nuclear weapons-free world. Is the human race suicidal? Before jumping to that conclusion, let’s remember that considerably more people favor abolishing nuclear weapons than oppose it. Public opinion surveys—ranging from polls Read more…
An event revealing a great deal about the kind of government Americans want occurred this March, when members of the U.S. Congress voted on the American Rescue Plan. This legislation, staunchly supported by the Democrats, provided federal funding for the provision of life-saving vaccines, the re-opening of public schools, expanded benefits to the unemployed, a Read more…
This superb speech by Venezuelan-Canadian scholar Maria Páez de Victor should soon be up on www.NoSanctions.org , but I decided to post it here so I can spreading it around right away. **** Talk given in Webinar: US/Canada: HANDS OFF VENEZUELA, END SANCTIONS ON VENEZUELA NOW! March 5th 2021 Today is the 8th anniversary of the untimely Read more…
The world is currently engulfed in crises—most prominently, a disease pandemic, a climate catastrophe, and the prevalence of war—while individual nations are encountering enormous difficulties in coping with them. These difficulties result from the global nature of the problems. An individual nation is unable to institute adequate measures to safeguard public health because diseases spread Read more…
Two related events—the 75th anniversary of the January 24, 1946 UN General Assembly Resolution 1 (which established a commission to plan for the abolition of nuclear weapons) and the January 22, 2021 entry into force of the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (designed to finally implement that goal)—should be a cause for Read more…
Trump incited his supporters to violently storm the Capitol Building in Washington DC in an attempt to revive his failed efforts to overturn the results of the election. Five people are dead as a direct result of the attack, including one police officer (ironically a Trump supporter) who was beaten to death [UPDATE: The cause Read more…
It’s clear that technical departments within the UN sometimes have their work corrupted by the US government and its allies. Consider recent reporting by the Grayzone on OPCW whistleblowers who exposed manipulation of an investigation into alleged chemical weapons use in Syria in 2018. Or recall an example from further back: Hans Blix, the Swedish Read more…
One of the reasons people may get duped into seeing Venezuelan politician Leopoldo López as a victim is his trial which began in 2014, when he finally went to jail after supporting a fourth US-backed attempt to violently overthrow Venezuela’s democratically elected government. Overthrowing the late Hugo Chavez (who was first elected in 1998 and Read more…
Defense of the Easily Defensible By Dave Markland In 2018 Haymarket Books published Rohini Hensman’s Indefensible: Democracy, Counter-revolution and Anti-imperialist Rhetoric. Its focus is on left journalists and analysts like John Pilger and the late Edward S. Herman who have committed the inexcusable sin of being overly suspicious of United States foreign policy. Many readers Read more…
Anil Eklavya: The Impossibility Conjecture of Humanoid Artificial Intelligence and the Non-Benign SingularityAbstract [A Rough Draft of a Work-in-progress.] The idea of machines which are almost identical to human beings has been so seductive that it has captured the imaginations of the best minds as well as laypeople for at least a century and half, perhaps more. Right after Artificial Intelligence (AI) came into being, it was Read more…