fw

thanks and links for 2024-W03

Some Unitarian Guiding Documents – 2024*

read the 1440 newsletter (!?) any day on their website*

the error that gives rise to all other errors (!g)

five richest men now twice as rich as in 2020*

“Joe Biden could end the slaughter in Gaza. He chooses not to.”*

a new regional/world war is under way*

###…2024-01-21T23−08*

thanks and links for 2024-W02

iron-air battery installation in 2025 rated 5MW/500MWh (!?)**

borders of Israel: explainer with dates and six maps*

UK’s chief rabbi on IDF personnel in Gaza: “our heroes”*

former US ambassador speaks from the heart on Gaza*

Bertrand Russell’s last message* – two days before he died

the MLK speech breaking the silence* – one year before he died

###…2024-01-14T23−08*

thanks and links for 2024-W01

Roger Waters – formerly of Pink Floyd – on universal human rights

Le Figaro column on Israel/Gaza

Blenheim Palace and the Churchills

Jerry Cone – professor emeritus, University of Chicago – on Unitarian Universalism

Stephen Batchelor – former traditional Buddhist – on Buddhism 2.0

###…2024-01-07T18−08*

Election-day countdown / James Fallows

Recording what it is like for us to live through this period – when so much of the nation’s future depends on each of us, but when none of us can know the outcome – is the aspirational theme for this upcoming series. A journal of the plague year, when we can’t yet assess the disease’s final toll. Periodic markers and measures of what people learned and said, of how they responded, of who did what in a time of maximum trial.…

Let us hope, as I put it seven years ago, that people will look back on these 300-plus days with chastened wonder, and with cautionary guidance about our steps ahead.

—James Fallows

###…2024-01-04T10−08*

beyond reason: a look back at Christmas, a look ahead at 2024 / see Paul Kingsnorth*

Religion is not, as atheists often assume and I once assumed too, a set of beliefs to be adhered to, or arguments to be made and defended. It is an experience to be immersed in. … It is hard, if not impossible to explain, and yet it is the simplest thing in the world. We have always done it. We always will.
—Paul Kingsnorth

as for a look ahead at 2024, subscribers to the free newsletter from george atherton can look forward to cross-posts as before – but maybe fewer of them – and most of them now of posts on fewer wurdz that say what others say, wherever they may say it

###…2023-12-29T09−08*

The biggest lie about the Gaza assault: That it’s necessary / Caitlin Johnstone

The demolition of Gaza is not necessary because there are real pathways to a true and lasting peace which do not require a single bomb to be dropped, and there are also very easy ways to return to the abusive status quo of October 6 without dropping a single bomb.

… Even after the October 7 attack as it actually occurred, no attack on Gaza was ever necessary. Israel could have fought off the attack, negotiated for the hostages, and then taken steps to ensure its military and intelligence services never repeat their massive faceplants which led to such losses.

—Caitlin Johnstone

###…2023-12-17T10−08*

Ukraine's percolating hatred of America / Matt Bivens

Several years before the horrific Russian invasion of 2022, the U.S. government was already pouring guns and ammo into the Donbas. It was Donald Trump’s team who greenlit hundreds of millions of dollars in weapons for that Ukrainian civil war — President Barack Obama had declined to do so. Obama’s reasoning was sound: Russia will always care more about its own backyard, and thus it will always match any escalation of violence we offer; we will never win at that, but the Ukrainian people will certainly lose.
—Matt Bivens

###…2023-12-11T10−08*

the unruly child, Bibi / see Bill Astore* and a Guardian “long read” by Joshua Leifer*

Biden and Blinken are those permissive parents who are dominated by an unruly child. Let’s call the child “Bibi.” They don’t dare tell Bibi to stop. They don’t dare punish him. They don’t dare make a scene, because Bibi will throw a tantrum and make their lives hell. So they allow Bibi to do whatever the hell he wants to do, except just a bit quieter, or slower, or less violent. They enable the child, in short, …
—Bill Astore

“Jewish history is in large measure a history of holocausts,” Netanyahu Sr once told the New Yorker’s David Remnick. For Netanyahu the son, that catastrophic vision of history has meant that nearly all matters of defence appear refracted through the lens of existential threat.
—Joshua Leifer

###…2023-12-04T09−08*

Israel and its allies are repurposing the goals and lies of 1948 / Jonathan Cook

It is astonishing to see that what was true in 1948 is equally true in 2023. Israel spreads lies and deceit. Western elites repeat those lies. And even when Israel commits crimes against humanity in broad daylight, when it warns in advance of what it is doing, Western establishments still refuse to acknowledge those crimes.

The truth, which should have been obvious long before, in 1948, is that Israel is not a peace-loving, liberal democracy. It is a classic settler colonial state, following in a long “Western” tradition that led to the founding of the United States, Canada and Australia, among others.

—Jonathan Cook

###…2023-11-25T09−08*

Liberty at the point of a sword: Lessons from Napoleon and Hitler / Bill Astore

As led by Adolf Hitler and his henchmen, Nazi Germany wasn’t interested in peace. These men knew only the feverish pursuit of total victory until it ended in their deaths and total disaster for Germany.  They were the original seekers of “full spectrum dominance” as they asserted Germany was the exceptional and essential nation.

We Americans were supposed to learn something from megalomaniacs like Napoleon and Hitler. Committed to democracy, we were supposed to reject war, to repudiate militarism and the warrior mystique, and to embrace instead diplomacy and the settlement of differences peacefully through international organizations like the United Nations.

—Bill Astore

###…2023-11-19T09−08*

The media's Nord Stream lies just keep coming / Jonathan Cook

The media has failed by every yardstick of what journalism is supposed to be there for, what it is supposed to do. And that is because the establishment media is not there to dig out the truth, it is not there to hold power to account. Ultimately, when the stakes are high – and they get no higher than the Nord Stream attack – it is there to spin narratives convenient to those in power, because the media itself is embedded in those same networks of power.
—Jonathan Cook

###…2023-11-14T09−08*

Letter to the children of Gaza / Chris Hedges – read by Eunice Wong

At night you lie in the dark on the cold cement floor. The phones are cut. The internet is off. You do not know what is happening. There are flashes of light. There are waves of blast concussions. There are screams. It does not stop.  

When your father or mother hunts for food or water you wait. That terrible feeling in your stomach. Will they come back? Will you see them again? Will your tiny home be next? Will the bombs find you? Are these your last moments on earth? 

—Chris Hedges

###…2023-11-09T09−07*

More lethal ‘aid’ for Israel / Bill Astore

Last time I checked, Israel is a modern country with healthy finances and is capable of buying this “aid” if it really needed to. Why is the U.S. taxpayer footing the bill for more munitions to kill innocent people in Gaza? I don’t want my money going to ethnic cleansing and more death; do you?

Most Americans, roughly two-thirds, support an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. Our voices are simply ignored by “our” government, which of course shows us that “our” government truly isn’t ours. The owners and donors, the oligarchs, have their own priorities, and they are not ours.

—Bill Astore

###…2023-11-02T17−07*

Dominique de Villepin on Gaza / transcript translated by Arnaud Bertrand

We are not in 1973 or in 1967. There are things no army in the world knows how to do, which is to win in an asymmetrical battle against terrorists. The war on terror has never been won anywhere. And it instead triggers extremely dramatic misdeeds, cycles, and escalations. If America lost in Afghanistan, if America lost in Iraq, if we lost in the Sahel, it's because it's a battle that can't be won simply, it's not like you have a hammer that strikes a nail and the problem is solved. So we need to mobilize the international community, get out of this Western entrapment in which we are.
—Dominique de Villepin

###…2023-10-28T09−07*

Israel is caught lying time and again. And yet we never learn / Jonathan Cook

Fighting to hold Israel to account for killing hundreds at al-Ahli hospital comes at the price of shifting the focus away from the fact that Israel is actively carrying out an ethnic cleansing operation in Gaza and committing genocide against the Palestinian people there.

… Israel can live with the bickering over who hit the al-Ahli hospital. Because the storm will soon pass, and the Palestinian victims will still be dead.

—Jonathan Cook

###…2023-10-24T09−07*

Let them eat cement / Chris Hedges

Israel will not halt its genocidal campaign in Gaza against the Palestinians until there is a US arms embargo on Israel. Our weapons systems, munitions and attack aircraft sustain the slaughter. We must terminate the $3.8 billion in military aid that the US gives to Israel each year. We must support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement and demand suspension of all free trade and other agreements between the US and Israel. Only when these props are knocked out from under Israel will the Israeli leadership be forced, as was the apartheid regime in South Africa, to integrate Palestinians into one state with equal rights. As long as these props remain, the Palestinians are doomed. 
—Chris Hedges

###…2023-10-23T09−07*

This is another Iraqi WMD moment. We’re being gaslit / Jonathan Cook

Most of the people spreading these lies know they are lies, including the media, and most especially the Middle East and defence correspondents. At least a few, like the BBC’s Jeremy Bowen and Jon Donnison, are trying cautiously to suggest it’s unlikely a Hamas rocket could cause damage on the scale seen at the Gaza hospital. But it’s not unlikely. It’s impossible, and they know it. They just don’t dare say it.
—Jonathan Cook

###…2023-10-18T09−07*

The roots of Israel’s ethnic cleansing in Gaza / Aaron Maté

According to former Israeli Deputy Foreign minister Danny Ayalon, the Israeli plan is to force Palestinians into the “almost endless space in the Sinai desert, just on the other side of Gaza,” where they can live in “tent cities.” … Invoking the ethnic cleansing of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians before and after Israel’s founding in May 1948, known as the Nakba (“catastrophe”), Ariel Kallner, an Israeli parliamentarian, said that Israel has “one goal”: a “Nakba that will overshadow the Nakba of ’48.”
—Aaron Maté

###…2023-10-15T09−07*

War destroys history: The god of war consumes all / Bill Astore

War is the great and terrifying simplifier. We go to war shouting “Remember the Alamo!” or “Remember the Maine; to hell with Spain!” or “Remember Pearl Harbor!” with vengeance on our minds. There’s no need to think. There no need to seek any understanding. Who cares about history and context? It’s time to kill-kill-kill. That’s the only language *they* understand, because they’re pure evil even as we represent pure goodness. Our wrath is righteous and measured; their wrath is unbounded and insane, evil, the work of “human animals.”
—Bill Astore

###…2023-10-12T10−07*

What war does to us: It makes us hate; it leads us to slaughter / Bill Astore

Announcing a siege against all Palestinians in the Gaza Strip (no food, no power, mostly unsafe water) is the equivalent of launching a holocaust in slow motion. How is this in any way a proportionate and defensible response to the attacks by Hamas?

Meanwhile, as usual the U.S. government, showing its inherent unity and conformity, is 100% behind Israel, sending an aircraft carrier and issuing blank checks of unequivocal support. The mainstream media once again is telling Americans which side to hate. Think of the Palestinians as a gaggle of little Putins and you’ll be applauded for your right-think.

—Bill Astore

###…2023-10-10T09−07*

Why our popular mass movements fail / Chris Hedges

Once sections of the ruling apparatus – police, security services, judiciary, media, government bureaucrats – will no longer attack, arrest, jail, or shoot demonstrators, once they no longer obey orders, the old, discredited regime becomes paralyzed and terminal.

…

Revolutions are long, difficult projects that take years to make, slowly and often imperceptibly eating away at the foundations of power.

—Chris Hedges

/ violence is not how to deal with power, understanding and so diffusing it is*

/ see also Bertrand Russell on power: bit.ly/russellonpower

###…2023-10-03T09−07*

A year of lying about Nord Stream / Seymour Hersh

All of this explains why a routine question … led me to a truth that no one in America or Germany seems to want to pursue. My question was simple: “Who did it?” 

The Biden administration blew up the pipelines but the action had little to do with winning or stopping the war in Ukraine. It resulted from fears in the White House that Germany would waver and turn on the flow of Russian gas—and that Germany and then NATO, for economic reasons, would fall under the sway of Russia and its extensive and inexpensive natural resources. And thus followed the ultimate fear: that America would lose its long-standing primacy in Western Europe.

—Seymour Hersh

###…2023-09-26T18−07*

‘Ukraine, before and after’ / text of talk by Scott Ritter, posted by Patrick Lawrence

That war that’s taking place right now is a war that NATO cannot fight. And now the world knows it. NATO is a paper tiger. The world knows it’s a paper tiger. They know the United States cannot meet its stated desire to reinforce Europe. Ukraine has lost 400,000 men in battle, 40,000 to 50,000 in the last several weeks. It took America ten years to lose 58,000 in Vietnam and that broke our back. …

The fact of the matter is: We can’t win a war today in Europe. We’re not number one anymore. We’re not number two anymore. We might be number three.

—Scott Ritter

###…2023-09-19T09−07*

Libya’s floods: Why the media aren’t telling the whole story / Jonathan Cook

The West’s approach to Libya, as with Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan, has been to prefer that it be sunk into a quagmire of division and instability than allow a strong leader to act defiantly, demand control over resources and establish alliances with enemy states – creating a precedent other states might follow.

Small states are left with a stark choice: submit or pay a heavy price.

Gaddafi was butchered in the street, the bloody images shared around the world. The suffering of ordinary Libyans over the past decade, in contrast, has taken place out of view.

Now with the disaster in Derna, their plight is in the spotlight. But with the help of Western media like the BBC, the reasons for their misery remain as murky as the flood waters.

—Jonathan Cook

###…2023-09-15T09−07*

50 years ago: Henry Kissinger and the death of democracy in Chile / Robert Reich

In an eight-page secret briefing paper that provided Kissinger’s clearest rationale for regime change in Chile, he emphasized to Nixon that “the election of Allende as president of Chile poses for us one of the most serious challenges ever faced in this hemisphere” …

Not only were a billion dollars of U.S. investments at stake, Kissinger reported, but what he called “the insidious model effect” of his democratic election. There was no way for the U.S. to deny Allende's legitimacy, Kissinger noted, and if he succeeded in peacefully reallocating resources in Chile in a socialist direction, other countries might follow suit.

—Robert Reich

###…2023-09-14T09−07*

more Nato means more war: top strategic thinkers warned us … / see Arnaud Bertrand*

… we have to remember the background. The background was that President Putin declared in the autumn of 2021, and actually sent a draft treaty that they wanted NATO to sign, to promise no more NATO enlargement. That was what he sent us. And was a pre-condition for not invade Ukraine. Of course we didn't sign that. …

He wanted us to sign that promise, never to enlarge NATO. He wanted us to remove our military infrastructure in all Allies that have joined NATO since 1997, … We rejected that.

So he went to war to prevent NATO, more NATO, close to his borders.

###…2023-09-11T09−07*

If everyone understood that the US deliberately provoked this war / Caitlin Johnstone

The official mainstream narrative throughout the western world is that Putin invaded Ukraine solely because he is evil and hates freedom. That’s the actual, literal belief about this war that the western political/media class works to instill in the western public. Anyone who counters this self-evidently ridiculous assessment with facts and evidence gets branded a Russian agent and swarmed with pro-US trolls on social media and loses all hope of securing a major platform in any mass media.
—Caitlin Johnstone

###…2023-09-07T09−07*

Collective trauma is the road to tyranny / Chris Hedges

The classic works on trauma by Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, Dr. Gabor Maté and Dr. Judith Herman state bluntly that what is accepted as normal behavior in a corporate society is at war with basic human needs and our psychological and physical health. Huge segments of the American public, especially the tens of millions of people who have been discarded and marginalized, endure chronic trauma. … As Dr. van der Kolk writes, “trauma is when we are not seen and known.”

“Our culture teaches us to focus on our personal uniqueness, but at a deeper level we barely exist as individual organisms,” Dr. van der Kolk notes.

—Chris Hedges

###…2023-09-05T09−07*

the accountability gap / see piece on state-sponsored sociopathy by John Vaillant*

So, who decided that corporations were exempt from earthly consequences? And why do governments and voters tolerate it? The problem lies with the artificial, but sacred obligation to shareholders, which [fossil fuel company CEOs] have been charged with honouring at all and any costs. In this way, the profit motive, which has metastasized, cancer-like, into the pursuit of endless growth on the body of our finite planet, has attained the sanctity of an orthodox religion, defying logic, science, common sense, and common decency.
—John Vaillant

###…2023-09-03T09−07*

Tracking Orwellian change: The aristocratic takeover of ‘transparency’ / Matt Taibbi

Transparency for decades was understood to mean a pro-democratic concept giving ordinary citizens the power to see how their government operates, how taxes are spent, and whether or not public officials are complying with laws. It was not dystopian gibberish when the word became synonymous with the fight against abuse of power through organizations like Transparency International’s “Corruption Perceptions Index.” …

When elite politicians and media figures speak of “transparency” now, they mean giving government power to obtain “transparency” into the activities of private citizens.

—Matt Taibbi

###…2023-08-30T09−07*

In a world ruled by propaganda, the sane are always on the fringe / Caitlin Johnstone

It’s a well-documented fact that the rich and powerful pour vast fortunes into manipulating the political and media landscape in ways that serve their interests. Their control over the news media and Silicon Valley tech platforms is used to set the agenda and influence public perception by determining what issues will receive attention and which won’t in ways that preserve the political status quo they’ve built their empire upon, thereby shrinking the Overton window of acceptable debate down to a very narrow spectrum whose outcomes can’t threaten their interests in any way.
—Caitlin Johnstone

###…2023-08-26T09−07*

The crucifixion of Julian Assange / Chris Hedges

Prophets are notoriously difficult people. They are not saints. They are people of agony, as Rabbi Abraham Heschel writes, whose “life and soul are at stake.” The prophet is moved by human anguish. Prophets are not soothsayers. They do not divine the future. Injustice, for the prophet, “assumes almost cosmic proportions.” … The prophet says “No” to his or her society, “condemning its habits and assumptions, its complacency, waywardness, and syncretism.” And the prophet “is often compelled to proclaim the very opposite of what his [or her] heart desires.”—Chris Hedges

###…2023-08-23T09−07*

pick one: international law or the rules-based order / see article by John Dugard*

The RBO is something other than international law. It is an alternative regime outside the discipline of international law which inevitably challenges and threatens international law. … Unlike international law it does not seem to be a universal order. Instead, it is an order employed by the West, […] particularly the United States, to ensure its dominance.
—John Dugard

###…2023-08-21T09−07*

Proxy warriors keep whining that Ukrainian troops are cowards / Caitlin Johnstone

… empire managers are beginning to wonder if they should have heeded outgoing Joint Chiefs chair Mark Milley’s suggestion back in November that it was a good time to consider peace talks.

“We may have missed a window to push for earlier talks,” one anonymous official says, adding, “Milley had a point.”

… Oh well, it’s only Ukrainian lives.

Imagine reading through all this as a Ukrainian, especially a Ukrainian who’s lost a home or a loved one to this war. I imagine white hot tears pouring down my face. I imagine rage, and I imagine overwhelming frustration.

—Caitlin Johnstone

###…2023-08-19T09−07*

Amid ‘staggering’ Ukrainian toll, Biden seeks billions more for war / Aaron Maté

For the benefit of weakening Russia, enriching US military contractors and serving as a NATO “testing ground,” Ukrainian lives are not the only staggering sacrifice. According to the Wall Street Journal, “between 20,000 and 50,000 Ukrainians … have lost one or more limbs since the start of the war,” a scale unseen for a Western military since the First World War, and a potential undercount “because it takes time to register patients after they undergo” surgery.
—Aaron Maté

###…2023-08-15T09−07*

John Mearsheimer: Ukraine war is a long-term danger / interview by Aaron Maté

So, we are playing, we – meaning the West – are playing a key role here in incentivizing the Russians to destroy Ukraine.  It makes absolutely no sense to me from a strategic point of view or from a moral point of view.  You think of the death and destruction that's being wrought in Ukraine, and you think that this could have easily been avoided.  It makes you sick to your stomach just to contemplate it all.
—John Mearsheimer

###…2023-08-09T09−07*

Don’t give up on the dream of a liberal Israel / Michael Walzer

a call for a nation-state, not for a religious state, a call for a state based on

values that derive from the historical experience of the Jewish people; they are the values of the Labor Zionists, the founders of Israel in the 1940s; they are forcefully expressed in Israel’s Declaration of Independence, with its promise to “ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race, or sex.”

—Michael Walzer

###…2023-08-07T09−07*

Rudolph Giuliani and broken windows / Robert Reich

Giuliani served as mayor of New York City from 1994 to 2001. During those years, he led New York’s so-called “civic cleanup” by applying what was known as the “broken windows” theory of crime control.…

As crime rates fell steeply in New York City, well ahead of the national average pace, Giuliani was widely credited. But the […] “broken windows” policy was highly selective. It did not include white collar crime.

Two decades later, Giuliani was engaged in one of the worst window shattering acts in American history – an attack on democracy and the rule of law itself.

—Robert Reich

###…2023-08-05T09−07*

MSM journalists: Cloistered Ivy League–educated trust fund kids / Caitlin Johnstone

“The whole intellectual culture has a filtering system, starting as a child in school. You’re expected to accept certain beliefs, styles, behavioral patterns and so on. If you don’t accept them, you are called maybe a behavioral problem, or something, and you’re weeded out.”* (Noam Chomsky)

The people who make it through this filtering system are the ones who are elevated to the most influential positions in our civilization. All the most widely amplified voices in our society are the celebrities, journalists, pundits and politicians who’ve proven themselves to be reliable stewards of the matrix of narrative control which keeps the public jacked in to the mainstream worldview.

—Caitlin Johnstone

###…2023-08-03T09−07*

the machine appeared in the distance … / see piece by Richard Wolff*

Earlier income and wealth gaps in the U.S., worsened by the export and automation of high-paying jobs, undermined the economic basis of that “vast middle class” that so many employees believed themselves to be part of. … Making matters worse, mass media celebrated the stupefying wealth of those few who profited most from neoliberal globalization. … Many in the U.S. feel betrayed after being abandoned by capitalism. Their differing explanations for the betrayal exacerbate the widely held sense of crisis in the nation.

—Richard Wolff

###…2023-07-31T09−07*

Humans suck at seeing into the future / Freddie deBoer

Sure, opposition by stupid people sank nuclear energy, not its safety or efficiency. But stupid people are the most powerful force in the world, and they will follow us into the future no matter what we do. They’re one of a myriad of chaos agents that bend the course of human history, unpredictably and in defiance of all of our extrapolation. Betting on nuclear power’s large-scale adoption would have been a very smart thing to do, back in 1957. It just also would have turned out to be a losing bet, against all sense. Sometimes history rolls snake eyes.

—Freddie deBoer

###…2023-07-30T09−07*

US admits to pushing Ukraine into a fight it can’t win / Aaron Maté

Nearly one month into Russia’s invasion, the New York Times quietly abandoned any pretense that the US aim was to defend Ukraine and bring the war to a quick end. The White House, the Times reported, “seeks to help Ukraine lock Russia in a quagmire without inciting a broader conflict with a nuclear-armed adversary or cutting off potential paths to de-escalation.”

Eighteen months later, the desired quagmire has been achieved. This is due not only to a massive influx of NATO weaponry, but a Western blockade of every tangible path to de-escalation, most notably the April 2022 Ukraine-Russia peace deal that Boris Johnson nixed.

—Aaron Maté

###…2023-07-29T09−07*

Across the West excess deaths are way up, and no one is asking why / Jonathan Cook

The consistent and markedly elevated death rates each month across most of the Western world are not due to Covid and are far above the seasonal five-year average before the pandemic.

Such deaths have been significantly raised since late 2020 or mid-2021. That is all the more surprising because, after early waves of Covid killed off those who were already sick and vulnerable, the expectation was that excess deaths would fall, not rise. That anomaly needs explaining – scientifically.

—Jonathan Cook

###…2023-07-25T09−07*

There are very few good films about war – 20 Days in Mariupol is one / Chris Hedges

The documentary … of the first 20 days of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, captures what I witnessed as a war correspondent in Central America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans …

War is ugly and tawdry. Violence creates nothing. It only destroys – human beings, animals, schools, homes and apartment blocks, hospitals, bridges. It is the purest expression of death. All the forces that nurture and sustain life – familial, civil, social, cultural, ecological – are slated for obliteration. 

—Chris Hedges

###…2023-07-24T09−07*

The persecution of Jeremy Corbyn / Asa Winstanley interviewed by Chris Hedges

Jeremy Corbyn’s ascendance to the leadership of the UK Labour Party in 2015 offered hope for a revival of the British left … Corbyn was uniquely positioned to bring the Labour Party back from its neoliberal turn. But this was not to be – just five years later, Corbyn was ousted from the Labour Party and his supporters were purged. The political opposition to Corbyn was accompanied by a media vilification campaign that conflated support for Palestinian rights with anti-Semitism.

Asa Winstanley joins The Chris Hedges Report for an autopsy of Corbyn’s leadership.

—Chris Hedges

###…2023-07-23T09−07*

animal husbandry: maybe the beginning of the end / see piece by Peter Singer*

One day, we may look back on 2023 as the year when it became apparent that the gigantic industry of raising animals for food was heading the same way as the industry that for most of the twentieth century dominated how we record and store images. Is this year the equivalent, for animal production, of 1989, when the first digital camera aimed at the general public was launched?

There are signs that it might be, starting with the Israeli Ministry of Health’s approval …

—Peter Singer

###…2023-07-21T09−07*

Ordinary people by the millions / Tom Frank interviewed by Seymour Hersh

… a political prophet who two decades ago saw what others could not glimpse and published What’s the Matter with Kansas?, a bestseller that told how and why the working-class folks of Kansas, once radical progressives, have moved farther and farther to the right in recent years. It was a profound book that foretold much about our current political woes.

In 2016, the sweet-faced Frank put a shiv into the heart of the Democratic establishment in Listen, Liberal, a devastating account of the failures of the party. In 2020 he …

—Seymour Hersh on Tom Frank

###…2023-07-20T09−07*

Capitalism is a giant scam / Caitlin Johnstone

“Let the market decide” really means let the manipulators decide, because … in reality both supply and demand are manipulated constantly with extreme aggression … Capitalism gives us a civilization that is dominated by trickery … It's a scam competition … And the biggest scam of all is the narrative that this system is totally working and is entirely sustainable. That's the overarching scam holding all the other scams together.

—Caitlin Johnstone

“Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men for the nastiest of motives will somehow work for the benefit of all.”
—John Maynard Keynes (attributed – mistakenly – see Quote Investigator)

###…2023-07-18T09−07*

Cornel West and the campaign to end political apartheid / Chris Hedges

The Republican and Democratic parties have no intention of allowing independents and third parties into their exclusive club. A series of arcane laws and rules governing elections make it extremely difficult for outsiders … Third parties and independents are effectively disenfranchised, although 44 percent of the voting public identify as independent. This discrimination is euphemistically labeled “bipartisanship,” but the correct term, as Theresa Amato writes, is “political apartheid.”

—Chris Hedges

###…2023-07-16T09−07*

The censorship regime takes a hit / Patrick Lawrence

What liberal authoritarians impudently dismissed as a kooky “conspiracy theory” on 3 July is in a judicial stroke written into the record as an ugly reality to be eliminated. What’s not to like?

Then came the insidious reaction to the Louisiana ruling among mainstream liberals and in our corporate media, which stand on the wrong side of every one of the illegalities …

—Patrick Lawrence

Patrick Lawrence, formerly a longtime International Herald Tribune correspondent, is a well-informed independent reporter on world affairs.

###…2023-07-14T08−07*

Profit-driven systems are driving us to our doom / Caitlin Johnstone

It’s really heartbreaking to think about all the ways human potential is being starved and constricted by these ridiculous limitations we’ve placed on the way we operate as a collective. Resources being allocated based on how well they can turn a profit stymies technological innovation because the most profitable model will always win out over less profitable ones that are more beneficial to people and our environment. Someone could invent a free energy machine that lasts forever and costs next to nothing, and even though it would save the world, you can be certain …

—Caitlin Johnstone / writes about the end of illusions*

thorium (!*)

Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist. (!quoteinvestigator)
—Kenneth Boulding, 1910–1993 (!?)

###…2023-07-13T09−07*

The dissolution of NATO may be the only way to prevent WWIII / Dennis Kucinich

Here are (at least) 10 reasons why NATO ought to be disbanded:

1.     NATO, formally known as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, (headquartered in Brussels, Belgium) was formed April 4, 1949, to protect Europe against the Soviet Union.  The Soviet Union ended on December 25, 1991.  NATO fulfilled its founding purpose thirty-two years ago. …

7.     NATO’S global pretensions are on full display.  On July 10, 2023, it presumed to deliver a warning to China. NATO’s Secretary General Jen Stoltenberg, said “The Chinese government’s increasingly coercive behavior abroad and repressive policies at home challenge NATO’s security, values and interests.” …

—Dennis Kucinich (!?)

###…2023-07-11T15−07*

John Bolton accidentally explains why US policy … is wrong / Caitlin Johnstone

The point of highlighting hypocrisy is not that being a hypocrite is some special crime in and of itself, it’s to show that the hypocrite is lying about their motives and behavior, and to dismantle their arguments defending their positions. If the US would interpret a Chinese military presence in Cuba as an incendiary provocation, then logically the far greater military presence the US has amassed on the borders of Russia and China is a vastly greater provocation by that same reasoning, and the US knows it. There exists no argument to the contrary that doesn’t rely on baseless “well it’s different when we do it” assertions.

—Caitlin Johnstone / writes about the end of illusions*

###…2023-07-09T20−07

a change in consciousness – not the End of History / see piece by Michael Hudson*

What has occurred is a change in consciousness. We are seeing the Global Majority trying to create an independent and peacefully negotiated choice …

The upshot will be civilizational in scope. We are seeing not the End of History but a fresh alternative to U.S.-centered neoliberal finance capitalism and its junk economics of privatization, class war against labor, and the idea that money and credit should be privatized in the hands of a narrow financial class instead of being a public utility to finance economic needs and rising living standards.

—Michael Hudson, Institute for the Study of Long-term Economic Trends*

###…2023-07-07T09−07

Ask who benefits: Notes from the edge of the narrative matrix / Caitlin Johnstone

We self-righteously look down at our noses at other nations and pity their lack of freedom and political sophistication, when in actuality we’re all deeply enslaved …

Ask who benefits from the continued emphasis on culture wars over class war. 

Ask who benefits from your beliefs about what’s possible and what’s impossible.

…

Ask who benefits from each of your beliefs about the world. 

Ask who benefits from each of your beliefs about humankind.

—Caitlin Johnstone / writes about the end of illusions*

###…2023-07-06T19−07

Weaponized anti-Semitism: First the political left, now the cultural / Jonathan Cook

We have reached the seemingly absurd point that a political leader famed for his anti-racism, a rock star whose most celebrated work focuses on the dangers of racism and fascism, and a renowned film maker committed to socially progressive causes are all now characterized as anti-Semites. 

And in a further irony, those behind the accusations do not appear to have made a priority of anti-racism themselves – not, at least, until it proved an effective means of defeating their political enemies.

—Jonathan Cook, award-winning independent journalist and author*

###

The darkness ahead: Where the Ukraine war is headed / John Mearsheimer

It should be apparent by now that the Ukraine war is an enormous disaster that is unlikely to end anytime soon and when it does, the result will not be a lasting peace. A few words are in order about how the West ended up in this dreadful situation.

The conventional wisdom about the war’s origins is that Putin launched an unprovoked attack on 24 February 2022, which was motivated by his grand plan to create a greater Russia.

—John Mearsheimer (!?)

###

Fifteen useful facts / Caitlin Johnstone

15. A sincere devotion to knowing the truth is the path toward happiness, health and harmony, for humans as individuals and for humanity as a collective. Knowing what’s true about ourselves uncovers our inner dysfunctionality and leads to healing and enlightenment. Knowing what’s true about our world leads to an understanding of the abusive nature of our power structures and societal systems. Continually striving toward the light of truth will bring us all home.

—Caitlin Johnstone / writes about the end of illusions*

###

They lied about Afghanistan. They lied about Iraq. And they are … / Chris Hedges

I reported from Eastern and Central Europe in 1989 during the breakup of the Soviet Union. …

It was universally understood … that NATO expansion was unnecessary and a dangerous provocation. It made no geopolitical sense. But it made commercial sense. War is a business.

… The pimps of war knew the potential consequences of NATO expansion. War, however, is their single-minded vocation, even if it leads to a nuclear holocaust with Russia or China.

The war industry, not Putin, is our most dangerous enemy.

—Chris Hedges, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and author

###

Prigozhin’s folly / Seymour Hersh

The looming disaster in Ukraine and its political implications should be a wake-up call for those Democratic members of Congress who support the president but disagree with his willingness to throw many billions of good money after bad in Ukraine in the hope of a miracle that will not arrive.

—Seymour Hersh, Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative reporter (!?)

related: Sy Hersh, interviewed – with respect! – by George Galloway, 2023-06-11*

###

Why Julian Assange must be freed / Matt Taibbi – speaking in London

Why do we have so many secrets? Julian Assange told us why.

…

When governments become authoritarian, they inspire resistance. Techniques must then be developed to repel that resistance. Those techniques must then be concealed.

In short: the worse a country is, the more secrets it has. We have a lot of secrets now.

—Matt Taibbi, award-winning author and investigative reporter

###

The elite war on free thought: Prepared text for a talk in London / Matt Taibbi

The idea behind the sweeping system of digital surveillance combined with thousands or even millions of subtle rewards and punishments built into the online experience is to condition people to censor themselves.

After enough time online, users will lose both the knowledge and the vocabulary they would need to even have politically dangerous thoughts. This is really just the institutionalization of orthodoxy, a vast, organized effort to narrow our intellectual horizons. 

—Matt Taibbi, award-winning author and investigative reporter

###

Your efforts make a difference, and we can win this thing / Caitlin Johnstone

Ultimately what we're looking at is humanity's journey toward becoming a conscious species. One that's no longer driven by unconscious animal impulses and the flailings of illusory egoic constructs in our psyches, and is instead driven by a lucid perception of reality …

We can all play a role in this … It won't often unfold in a way that is elegant and linear and egoically pleasing, but it will unfold. And if it unfolds enough, positive change becomes inevitable.

—Caitlin Johnstone / writes about the end of illusions*

###

Trump wanted to overthrow Venezuela’s government and take its oil / Ben Norton

“When I left, Venezuela was ready to collapse. We would have taken it over; we would have gotten to all that oil; it would have been right next door,” Trump said […] on June 10, at a speech for a convention organized by the North Carolina Republican Party.

…

Venezuela has the world's largest known oil reserves – although its crude is very heavy, and in order to be used it must be mixed with lighter crude or diluents, which the country is often incapable of importing due to illegal, unilateral US sanctions.

—Ben Norton / see bio on author website*

###

“It’s the judiciary, stupid”: America as a failing state / Patrick Lawrence

I recall thinking, after the Supreme Court stole the 2000 election to hand it to George W. Bush, “This society has lost its capacity to self-correct.” I wish the confirmations of this that followed were not so numerous. Citizens United in 2010, when corporations were declared people (!?) – it is still strange to type that phrase – was a mile marker.

…

What is being done to our judiciary is as we see it. And it lands us in the gravest circumstance of my lifetime.

—Patrick Lawrence

Patrick Lawrence, formerly a longtime International Herald Tribune correspondent, is a well-informed independent reporter on world affairs.

###

First people sickened by Covid-19: Chinese scientists at WIV / Michael Shellenberger

“Ben Hu is essentially the next Shi Zhengli,” said Alina Chan, a molecular biologist at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, and coauthor with Matt Ridley of Viral: The Search for the Origin of Covid-19. Shi is known as “the bat woman of China,” and led the gain-of-function research at the WIV.

…

Jamie Metzl, a former member of the World Health Organization […] who raised questions starting in early 2020 about a possible research-related pandemic origin, said, “It’s a game changer if it can be proven that Hu got sick with COVID-19 before anyone else. That would be the ‘smoking gun.’ Hu was the lead hands-on researcher in Shi’s lab.”

—Michael Shellenberger*

###

Requiem for our species / Chris Hedges

The awful truth is that even if we halt all carbon emissions today there is so much warming locked into the ocean’s deep muddy floor and the atmosphere, that feedback loops will ensure climate catastrophe …

The hardest existential crisis we face is to at once accept this bleak reality and resist. Resistance cannot be carried out because it will succeed, but because it is a moral imperative, especially for those of us who have children. We may fail, but if we do not fight against the forces that are orchestrating our mass extinction, we become part of the apparatus of death.

—Chris Hedges, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and author

###

Ukraine’s phantom Nazis: The ones before our eyes / Patrick Lawrence

Ukrainian soldiers wearing Nazi insignia, idolizing Jew-murdering, Russophobic collaborators with the Third Reich, gathering ritually in Nazi-inspired cabals, marching through Kiev in Klan-like torch parades are not what you think … They look like neo–Nazis, they act like neo–Nazis, they dress like neo–Nazis, they profess Fascist and neo–Nazi ideologies, they wage this war with the Wehrmacht’s visceral hatred of Russians—O.K., but whyever would you think they are neo–Nazis?

—Patrick Lawrence

Patrick Lawrence, formerly a longtime International Herald Tribune correspondent, is a well-informed independent reporter on world affairs.

###

Why mass media employees act like propagandists / Caitlin Johnstone

That this extreme bias occurs is self-evident and indisputable to anyone who pays attention, but why and how it happens is harder to see …

So as you can see, the news media are subject to pressures from every conceivable angle on every relevant level which push them toward functioning not as reporters, but as propagandists. This is why the employees of the western mass media act like PR agents for the western empire and its component parts: because that’s exactly what they are.

—Caitlin Johnstone / writes about the end of illusions*

###

Cornel West announces he is running for President / Chris Hedges

Cornel said he seeks “a paradigm shift,” a realignment of “the ideological landscape.” He calls on us to redirect the focus of governing institutions from the demands of markets and corporations, the military machine, empire and the ruling oligarchs, to poor and working people.

“What we need is a recognition that the corporate duopoly, both parties, constitute major obstacles and impediments for the kind of spiritual awakening and moral reckoning that focuses on poor and working people,” Cornel said.

He is calling, in short, for a political revolution and the overthrow of the ruling corporate class.

—Chris Hedges, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and author

###

On the continuing carnage in Ukraine / Paul Street

The United States, as Gabriel Kolko argued in his brilliant 2002 book Another Century of War? “reacts to the complexity of world affairs with its advanced technology and superior firepower, not with realistic political response and negotiation.” The results of this “vainglorious and irrational” predisposition – imperialism cloaked as idealism – are catastrophic now as in the past.

—Paul Street, historian, journalist, speaker, and author of nine books*

###

The BBC isn’t exposing disinformation. It’s peddling it / Jonathan Cook

It is worth remembering that it was the BBC’s all-too-real Ministry of Information, where George Orwell worked during World War Two, that became the model for the fictional “Ministry of Truth” in his dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. The Ministry of Truth’s slogan ran: “Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.”

A state broadcaster telling the public that it has special insights into truth – and anyone who disagrees is dangerously promoting “disinformation” – has a long and ugly pedigree.

—Jonathan Cook, award-winning independent journalist and author*

###

What neo-Luddites get right – and wrong – about Big Tech / see piece by Tim Harford*

Say what you like about Lord Byron, he knew how to turn a phrase. Here he is, speaking in the House of Lords in 1812. His topic is the foolishness of the factory-storming, machine-breaking Luddites: “The rejected workmen, in the blindness of their ignorance, instead of rejoicing at these improvements in arts so beneficial to mankind, conceived themselves to be sacrificed to improvements in mechanism.”*

—Tim Hartford, writer, columnist for the Financial Times*

###

Biden okays F-16s for Ukraine, US weapons to attack Crimea / Caitlin Johnstone

Moscow has considered Crimea a part of the Russian Federation since its annexation in 2014, meaning efforts to recapture it would – at least in theory – be treated the same as an invasion of any other part of Russia. It was only by way of an arbitrary bureaucratic fluke that Crimea wound up a part of Ukraine after the fall of the Soviet Union, and Crimeans overwhelmingly prefer to be a part of the Russian Federation. That we may soon be staring down the barrel of a nuclear third world war over something so pedantic is a very dark shade of absurd.

—Caitlin Johnstone / writes about the end of illusions*

###

British warmongering driving Europe toward catastrophe in Ukraine / Jonathan Cook

No. 10 has made clear that Sunak’s purpose is to build “a new Ukrainian air force with Nato-standard F-16 jets” and that the prime minister believes “Ukraine’s rightful place is in Nato”…

It is hard to imagine that the UK is heading off-script. More likely, the Biden administration is using Britain to make the running and soften up Western publics as Nato becomes ever more deeply immersed in the military activities of Russia’s neighbour.

Ukraine is being gradually turned into the very Nato forward base that first set Moscow on course to invade.

—Jonathan Cook, award-winning independent journalist and author*

###

Thoughts on the NYT ad plaintively advocating peace talks for Ukraine / Matt Bivens

“Omigod,” my wife said. “They’ve blown up Khmelnytskyi.”

[…]

Russian drones had struck “critical infrastructure” – it may or may not have been a Ukrainian/NATO ammunition depot – with explosions so terrifyingly huge, the authorities felt compelled to check afterwards for increased radioactivity.

—Matt Bivens, MD

Matt Bivens is a full-time ER doctor – board-certified in emergency and addiction medicine – and an EMS medical director for 911 services. He is also a former Russia-based foreign correspondent, newspaper editor, and Chechnya war correspondent. And a reluctant student of nuclear weapons.

###

Why the conspiracy theory about Trump and Russia won’t go away / Chris Hedges

The liberal media during the Trump-Russia saga, including the New York Times and the Washington Post, […] provided thousands of stories and reports that falsely painted the Trump administration as a tool of Russia. Their readers, like the viewers of CNN and MSNBC, were fed a comforting myth. When you feed a public consoling myths – the most absurd being that America is a good and virtuous nation – there is no accountability. Myths make us feel good. Myths demonize those blamed for our self-created debacles. Myths celebrate us as a people and a nation. But it is like handing heroin to junkies.

—Chris Hedges, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and author

###

Nakba at 75: Israel’s state-building project is unravelling from within / Jonathan Cook

Benjamin Netanyahu’s bombardment of Gaza in recent days, killing dozens of Palestinians, […] is one more indication of Israel's internal crisis.

Once again, the Palestinians are being used in a frantic bid to shore up an increasingly fragile “Jewish” unity.

Israel's long-term problem is underscored by the current, bitter stand-off over Netanyahu’s plan for a so-called judicial overhaul. The Israeli Jewish population is split down the middle, with neither side willing to back down. Rightly, each sees the confrontation in terms of a zero-sum battle.

—Jonathan Cook, award-winning independent journalist and author*

###

If there is no economic democracy, there is no democracy / Michael Moore

… the constant demand for corporate and consumer “growth” and overconsumption is the drug that will kill us because we failed to live by the adage and the imperative that less is more.

And the democracy we seek will never survive until we all finally admit that the Earth is now in its sixth mass extinction event and that every living being must join hands with each other immediately and halt this insanity.

We must acknowledge that love and kindness and a helping hand is our way out and our light forward, the motivating force in the pursuit of happiness for all.

—Michael Moore, “Writer. Filmmaker. Podcaster. Eagle Scout. Citizen.”

###

In Turkey the stakes are just too high / Francisco Toro

Erdoğan’s government has slowly strangled Turkey’s democratic institutions, replacing judges, investigators and, yes, elections administrators with loyal allies. Erdoğan has been at the forefront of a global trend towards elected autocracy, consolidating his power through what the writer Moisés Naím calls the three Ps: populism, polarization, and post-truth. The space to peacefully challenge him for power has been closing slowly but surely with each passing election, leaving plenty of secular Turks with the sense that this could be their last chance.

—Francisco Toro, content director for the Group of 50*

###

As Arab states seek peace, US insists that Syrians suffer / Aaron Maté

US officials apparently see no contradiction in expressing concern for the Syrian people while imposing policies that inflict mass suffering on them. According to the United Nations, Syria’s “economic and humanitarian situation is at its worst since the start of the conflict” in 2011. This includes an “800 per cent rise in food prices since 2020.” As US officials openly brag, US sanctions – particularly under the bipartisan [and ironically named] 2019 Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act – have played an instrumental role.

—Aaron Maté, journalist

Maté shared the 2019 Izzy Award for outstanding achievement in independent media

###

Why did CNN do it? / Robert Reich

Malone has said he wants CNN to be more like Fox News because, in his view, Fox News has “actual journalism.” Malone also wants the “news” portion of CNN to be “more centrist.”

It’s unlikely that Malone instructed Zaslav to tell Licht to fire Stelter. Power isn’t exercised that clumsily in large corporate media bureaucracies.

It’s more likely that Licht knew what Zaslav wanted, and Zaslav knew what Malone wanted. …

When you follow the money behind deeply irresponsible decisions at the power centers of America today, the road often leads to right-wing billionaires.

—Robert Reich, professor, writer, secretary of labor 1993–97 (under Clinton)

###

Why AI will never rival human creativity / William Deresiewicz

AI operates by making high-probability choices: the most likely next word, in the case of written texts. Artists—painters and sculptors, novelists and poets, filmmakers, composers, choreographers—do the opposite. They make low-probability choices. They make choices that are unexpected, strange, that look like mistakes. Sometimes they are mistakes, recognized, in retrospect, as happy accidents. That is what originality is, by definition: a low-probability choice, a choice that has never been made.

—William Deresiewicz, essayist, critic, and author of five books

###

Why did Israel kill Shireen Abu Akleh? / Asa Winstanley

From the 190 metre distance that the killing shot was fired, the Israeli solider behind the scope would have very easily seen the “PRESS” markings on the journalists’ flak jackets. It would have been impossible for the shooter to mistake them for Palestinian fighters (who were not in the area in any case).

Despite the fact that Shireen was a US citizen, American politicians and officials have been conspiring in the Israeli cover-up for the whole year.

—Asa Winstanley / London-based, writes mainly on Palestine and the Israeli lobby

###

WWIII on the installment plan / Dennis Kucinich

President Biden, like President George W. Bush in the Iraq War, will seek to burnish his Commander in Chief status as a wartime president, beginning in the later part of 2023. Going into 2024, the American people will be told not to change presidents in the middle of a manufactured war.

—Dennis Kucinich

Dennis Kucinich was a Democratic Congressman from 1997 to 2013 and stood for nomination as the Democratic candidate for President in 2004 and 2008.

###

The “excellent sheep” of the American Elite / William Deresiewicz (Yascha Mounk)

University presidents, editors of major publications, heads of foundations – why won't they stand up for what their institution is supposed to be about? Well, because they haven't clawed their way up the greasy pole just to lose their job for the sake of some damn ideal or belief. They make whatever compromises they have to make. Because that's what got them where they are.

—William Deresiewicz, author, essayist, and critic – former English prof at Yale

/ power manifests as – and cannot exist without – hierarchies of enablers:

https://misc.posthaven.com/power-enabled-by-consent-disabled-by-dissent

###

Patrick Lawrence: Europe’s fate / see Patrick Lawrence*

I have long viewed parity between the West and non–West, as I put it in the columns, to be a 21st-century imperative. This is now becoming a reality we must face, whether we have assistance or no assistance in this from our press and our public institutions.

—Patrick Lawrence

Patrick Lawrence, formerly a longtime International Herald Tribune correspondent, is a well-informed independent reporter on world affairs.

###

America, the single-opinion cult / Matt Taibbi

The enemy from within (audio, text) / Eunice Wong, Chris Hedges

The Elect: The threat to […] America from anti-Black antiracists / John McWhorter

Eleven minutes of media falsehoods, just on one subject, … / Matt Orfalea, Matt Taibbi

Report on the censorship-industrial complex / Matt Taibbi

Tech would be fine if we weren’t ruled by monsters: Notes … / Caitlin Johnstone

Free those who expose government misdeeds, jail those who … / Caitlin Johnstone

Why the media don't want to know the truth about Nord Stream / Jonathan Cook

Taking back our universities from corporate apparatchiks / Chris Hedges

The crackdown cometh: Leaks for me, not for thee / Matt Taibbi

No war with Russia / Paul Street

Logical fallacies: What they are and why people make them / David Cycleback

The hypocrisy of the Christian Church / Chris Hedges

Chomsky on signs of hope / see Tom Engelhardt*

Washington says journalism is not a crime, and yet … / Caitlin Johnstone

Reclaiming our country / Chris Hedges

Dear President Carter / Michael Moore

I once admired George Monbiot. But … / Jonathan Cook

Why shipyards may be the future of fission / Robert Bryce … thorium (!*)

Einstein’s letter to a grieving father / see especially further notes here (scroll down)

From Iraq into the abyss? / Dennis Kucinich: Iraq plus 20 (continued)

Iraq plus 20: Lies as weapons of mass destruction / Dennis Kucinich

How America took out the Nord Stream pipeline / Seymour Hersh

The Donald Trump problem / Chris Hedges

People can win / Matt Taibbi

nothing / the subject of the first issue

preamble last edited 2024-01-14