Category: Uncategorized

by DAVID SWANSON

In 2015, Alice Sabatini was an 18-year-old contestant in the Miss Italia contest in Italy. She was asked what epoch of the past she would have liked to live in. She replied: WWII. Her explanation was that her text books go on and on about it, so she’d like to actually see it, and she wouldn’t have to fight in it, because only men did that. This led to a great deal of mockery. Did she want to be bombed or starved or sent to a concentration camp? What was she, stupid? Somebody photoshopped her into a picture with Mussolini and Hitler. Somebody made an image of a sunbather viewing troops rushing onto a beach.[i]

But could an 18-year-old in 2015 be expected to know that most of the victims of WWII were civilians — men and women and children alike? Who would have told her that? Certainly not her text books. Most definitely not the endless saturation of her culture with WWII-themed entertainment. What answer did anyone think such a contestant would be more likely to give to the question she’d been asked, than WWII? In U.S. culture as well, which heavily influences Italian, a top focus for drama and tragedy and comedy and heroism and historical fiction is WWII. Pick 100 average viewers of Netflix or Amazon and I’m convinced a large percentage of them would give the same answer as Alice Sabatini, who, by the way, was declared the winner of the competition, fit to represent all of Italy or whatever it is Miss Italia does.

WWII is often called “the good war,” and sometimes this is thought of as principally or originally a contrast between WWII, the good war, and WWI, the bad war. However, it was not popular to call WWII “the good war” during or immediately after it happened, when the comparison with WWI would have been easiest. Various factors may have contributed to the growth in popularity of that phrase over the decades, including increased understanding of the Holocaust (and misunderstanding of the war’s relationship to it),[ii] plus, of course, the fact that the United States, unlike all the other major participants, wasn’t itself bombed or invaded (but that’s also true for dozens of other U.S. wars). I think a major factor was actually the War on Vietnam. As that war became less and less popular, and as opinions were deeply divided by a generation gap, by a division between those who had lived through WWII and those who had not, many sought to distinguish WWII from the war on Vietnam. Using the word “good,” rather than “justified,” or “necessary,” was probably made easier by distance in time from WWII, and by WWII propaganda, most of which had been created (and is still being created) after the conclusion of WWII. Because opposing all wars is considered radical and vaguely treasonous, critics of the war on Vietnam could refer to WWII as “the good war” and establish their balanced seriousness and objectivity. It was in 1970 that just war theorist Michael Walzer wrote his paper, “World War II: Why Was This War Different?” seeking to defend the idea of a just war against the unpopularity of the war on Vietnam. I offer a rebuttal to that paper in Chapter 17 of Leaving World War II Behind. We saw a similar phenomenon in the years 2002 to 2010 or so, with countless critics of the war on Iraq emphasizing their support for the war on Afghanistan and distorting the facts to improve the image of that newer “good war.” I’m not sure many, if anyone, would have called Afghanistan a good war without the war on Iraq or called WWII a good war without the war on Vietnam.

In July 2020, U.S. President Donald Trump — in arguing that U.S. military bases named for Confederates should not have their names changed — proclaimed that these bases had been part of “beautiful world wars.” “We won two world wars,” he said, “two world wars, beautiful world wars that were vicious and horrible.”[iii] Where did Trump get the idea that the world wars were beautiful, and that their beauty consisted of viciousness and horribleness? Probably the same place Alice Sabatini did: Hollywood. It was the film Saving Private Ryan that led Mickey Z in 1999 to write his book, There Is No Good War: The Myths of World War II, originally with the title Saving Private Power: The Hidden History of the “Good War.”

David Swanson for more

by YVES ENGLER

An extreme Jewish supremacist activist convinced the police to arrest me for criticizing her racist posts. She’s likely acting as a front for a vast Zionist ‘lawfare’ initiative hostile to embarrassing Canadian leaders.

Over the past 16 months I’ve annoyed many among the Jewish Zionist establishment. My writing, social media commentary and reporting on protests have circulated widely. But it’s a particular type of social media journalism/activism that’s had the widest impact.

Around two million watched an interview I did with the mayor of the Montreal suburb Hampstead, Jeremy Levi, in which he said he was okay with Israel killing 100,000 Palestinian children because “good needs to prevail over evil”. As with some of the other interventions, my post was reported on by the Montreal Gazette and international media such as RT and Middle Eastern Monitor. Many also watched my exposing Anthony Housefather, Mitch Garber and Heather Reisman as genocidal Jewish supremacists. Over 10 million watched a video I did mocking a McGill rally promoting genocide.

At the end of April, I questioned lawyer Neil ‘cancel man’ Oberman who has instigated over a dozen injunctions or legal threats against opponents of genocide, including the Palestine encampment at McGill university. (Oberman’s ‘lawfare’ is part of a vast legal effort in service of genocide detailed recently in a Canadian Jewish News article explaining that “CIJA’s new legal task force is suing the federal government, universities and school boards to ‘make people behave’.”) Subsequently, Oberman yelled at me in court. At that point I was on ‘ban who I can’ Oberman’s radar and he assisted extremist Zionist influencer Dahlia Kurtz.

Dissident Voice for more

by ANN GARRISON

John Legend’s concert in Rwanda signaled global elite support for Paul Kagame amid his bloody invasion of the DRC. The event was organized by Global Citizen, a pseudo-activist NGO backed by corporations hungry for Africa’s resource wealth.

On February 21st, as the Rwandan army deepened its invasion of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), John Legend took the stage in Rwanda’s capital, Kigali. There, the superstar singer-songwriter headlined a Move Afrika concert produced by Global Citizen, the international NGO front for global elites, NATO, and a corporate world order which bills itself as “the movement changing the world.” 

The future that Global Citizen heralds is a borderless network of public-private partnerships in which oligarchs, global corporations, and the World Trade Organization profitably manage the world in the name of equity, sustainability, and climate defense. It’s the future promised in the Davos Agenda and the UN Pact for the Future passed by the UN General Assembly in 2024. (Russia, Belarus, Iran, Nicaragua, North Korea, Sudan, and Syria opposed the pact as a threat to national sovereignty.)

Global Citizen doesn’t raise and disburse funds; it conducts global “awareness” campaigns to manufacture global consent – in this case, for the West’s decades-long proxy war for DRC’s unparalleled resource wealth, which has left millions of Congolese dead, and the rest of the country’s population with one of the world’s lowest per capita annual incomes. 

The NGO’s corporate “partners” include tech giants PayPal, Cisco, WorldWide Technology, Verizon, and YouTube (Alphabet/Google), all of which depend to a large extent on minerals extracted from the DRC. Others, including Citibank, are hardly known for commitment to human rights; Citibank is, in fact, implicated in the 2001 UN investigators’ report on illegal resource traffic in DRC.

Global Citizen’s Global Board of Directors includes executives from Citibank, Cisco, Delta, and a long list of global asset managers, along with the former prime ministers of Norway and Sweden, top UN agency officials, and officers of closely allied billionaire-backed NGOs like the Open Society Foundations of George Soros, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. 

Its Country and Regional Boards evince a special interest in Africa, the world’s most resource rich continent. Elites from Europe, Canada, Australia, and Africa are well represented there, but figures from Latin America and Asia are not, despite Global Citizen’s growing presence on those continents. In November 2025, the NGO will head to Brazil with “Global Citizen: Amazonia, the World’s First Impact Concert in the Amazon” at the UN’s 2025 COP. 

An impact concert? What kind of impact? So far, participants have been promised a collection of “global and local artists” who will “celebrate major COP commitments, spotlight Indigenous leaders, and amplify campaigns for climate action.” Beyond that, the details are vague. “More info coming soon,” Global Citizen declares. 

The consummately bland and meaningless language that fills the NGO’s website is clearly intended to gloss over any conflict or contradiction. But the blood-spattered backdrop to Global Citizen’s Kigali concert was impossible to ignore.

The Gray Zone for more

by CAIWEI CHEN

The new general AI agent from China had some system crashes and server overload—but it’s highly intuitive and shows real promise for the future of AI helpers.

Since the general AI agent Manus was launched last week, it has spread online like wildfire. And not just in China, where it was developed by the Wuhan-based startup Butterfly Effect. It’s made  its way into the global conversation, with influential voices in tech, including Twitter cofounder Jack Dorsey and Hugging Face product lead Victor Mustar, praising its performance. Some have even dubbed it “the second DeepSeek,” comparing it to the earlier AI model that took the industry by surprise for its unexpected capabilities as well as its origin.  

Manus claims to be the world’s first general AI agent, using multiple AI models (such as Anthropic’s Claude 3.5 Sonnet and fine-tuned versions of Alibaba’s open-source Qwen) and various independently operating agents to act autonomously on a wide range of tasks. (This makes it different from AI chatbots, including DeepSeek, which are based on a single large language model family and are primarily designed for conversational interactions.) 

The next big thing is AI tools that can do more complex tasks. Here’s how they will work.

Despite all the hype, very few people have had a chance to use it. Currently, under 1% of the users on the wait list have received an invite code. (It’s unclear how many people are on this list, but for a sense of how much interest there is, Manus’s Discord channel has more than 186,000 members.)

MIT Technology Review was able to obtain access to Manus, and when I gave it a test-drive, I found that using it feels like collaborating with a highly intelligent and efficient intern: While it occasionally lacks understanding of what it’s being asked to do, makes incorrect assumptions, or cuts corners to expedite tasks, it explains its reasoning clearly, is remarkably adaptable, and can improve substantially when provided with detailed instructions or feedback. Ultimately, it’s promising but not perfect.

Technology Review for more

by CALVIN SCHERMERHORN

If there was anyone who knew the rewards of slavery, it was George Washington.

Over a period of about 50 years, the nation’s first president enslaved about 577 Black Americans, starting when he was 11 years old.

One of them was a Black man named Morris who was skilled in carpentry and became an overseer of other enslaved men and women working on a farm at Washington’s Mount Vernon estate in Virginia. Though Morris’ skills afforded him a few extra benefits, he was still unable to buy what he coveted most – freedom.

Despite the existence of voluminous public records that reveal Washington’s treatment of Morris and other human property he owned, Florida officials want public school educators to instead emphasize Washington’s efforts to abolish slavery.

As a scholar of slavery in the U.S., my research has shown that Washington’s efforts to free Black people pale in comparison to how he fought to keep Black people enslaved.

Washington’s benefits from slavery

After marrying the widow Martha Custis in 1759, Washington had big plans for Mount Vernon.

Not content to grow only tobacco, he diversified, planting over 60 crop varieties and producing value-added products like flour, beer and whiskey.

In addition to operating five separate farming units, Washington wanted to nearly triple the size of his Mount Vernon mansion from 3,500 square feet to 11,000. To accomplish that goal, Washington put skilled enslaved carpenters like Morris to work.

Washington hadn’t paid anything for Morris or his carpentry training. Morris was born enslaved to Martha Custis’ first father-in-law, and when Custis and Washington got married, the fruits of Morris’ labor became Washington’s property.

By the time Washington brought him to Mount Vernon in Virginia’s Fairfax County, Morris was 30 years old and had already trained as a carpenter in nearby New Kent County.

The Conversation for more

by BENJY BARNETT

It took centuries for people to embrace the zero. Now it’s helping neuroscientists understand how the brain perceives absences

When I’m birdwatching, I have a particular experience all too frequently. Fellow birders will point to the tree canopy and ask if I can see a bird hidden among the leaves. I scan the treetops with binoculars but, to everyone’s annoyance, I see only the absence of a bird.

Our mental worlds are lively with such experiences of absence, yet it’s a mystery how the mind performs the trick of seeing nothing. How can the brain perceive something when there is no something to perceive?

For a neuroscientist interested in consciousness, this is an alluring question. Studying the neural basis of ‘nothing’ does, however, pose obvious challenges. Fortunately, there are other – more tangible – kinds of absences that help us get a handle on the hazy issue of nothingness in the brain. That’s why I spent much of my PhD studying how we perceive the number zero.

Zero has played an intriguing role in the development of our societies. Throughout human history, it has floundered in civilisations fearful of nothingness, and flourished in those that embraced it. But that’s not the only reason it’s so beguiling. In striking similarity to the perception of absence, zero’s representation as a number in the brain also remains unclear. If my brain has specialised mechanisms that have evolved to count the owls perched on a branch, how does this system abstract away from what’s visible, and signal that there are no owls to count?

The mystery shared between the perception of absences and the conception of zero may not be coincidental. When your brain recognises zero, it may be recruiting fundamental sensory mechanisms that govern when you can – and cannot – see something. If this is the case, theories of consciousness that emphasise the experience of absence may find a new use for zero, as a tool with which to explore the nature of consciousness itself.

Aeon for more

by PRANAY SOMAYAJULA

At the dawn of a second Trump era, American Hindu supremacists are increasingly aligning themselves with the MAGA far right.

On the evening of January 19, 2025, the American Hindu Coalition — a pro–Donald Trump group whose stated mission is to “build a stronger America through Hindu Enlightenment Principles” — joined forces with several right-wing Latino organizations to host a joint Hindu-Latino inaugural ball in downtown Washington, DC. Among those who gathered in the ballroom of the swanky Mayflower Hotel, rubbing shoulders with Argentina’s far-right president Javier Milei, was Rajiv Pandit, who serves on the Board of Directors of the Hindu American Foundation (HAF) — a Washington, DC–based advocacy group that proudly professes to be the “largest and oldest education and advocacy organization and the pre-eminent voice for Hindu Americans.”

A video uploaded to YouTube by the Indian diaspora-focused news outlet India Abroad shows Pandit, alongside several other attendees, being interviewed by a bearded man in a white blazer. This man, whom Pandit addresses in the interview with the honorific “Krishnaji,” is none other than Krishna Gudipati — a local leader in the Hindu supremacist Vishwa Hindu Parishad of America (VHPA), who infamously waved an Indian flag among the crowd of rioters during the January 6 insurrection.

At first glance, this may seem surprising. As a damning 2024 report by the Savera: United Against Supremacy coalition and Political Research Associates details, HAF maintains extensive ties to the broader Hindutva (Hindu nationalist or supremacist) ecosystem in the United States. HAF’s founding leaders all cut their teeth in Hindu supremacist groups like the VHPA, and the organization continues to share key funding sources with other right-wing Hindu groups. However, as the report also highlights, HAF has historically sought to obscure these reactionary links by presenting an ostensibly “respectable” public face, couching its advocacy in the language of civil rights and multiculturalism and taking mainstream center-left positions on issues like climate change, reproductive justice, and LGBTQ rights. Given this ostensibly liberal positioning, the fact that a senior HAF leader appeared alongside a January 6 insurrectionist at Trump’s inaugural ball to enthusiastically declare that “we as Hindu Americans are very excited about the Trump 2.0 administration” may, on its face, strike many as incongruous.

Closer examination of the facts, however, reveals that the Hindutva movement and the MAGA movement are hardly strange bedfellows. In fact, Pandit’s appearance at Trump’s inaugural ball is the natural culmination of a yearslong process of convergence between the Hindu supremacist ecosystem in the United States (of which HAF is one key node) and the broader American far right — a convergence that has intensified in recent years — particularly in the run-up to and aftermath of the 2024 US presidential election, as Hindu supremacist groups have grown increasingly vocal in championing Trump as an ostensibly reliable ally of so-called “Hindu interests.”

Jacobin for more

by CECI GARCIA & SUSI MARESCA

A massive march took the streets Saturday in the city of Buenos Aires for the Federal Anti-Fascist and Anti-Racist LGBTQIA+ Pride March. The protest is part of a rising tide that began in Buenos Aires and echoed throughout Argentina and beyond. 

The action downtown Buenos Aires got going around 4 o’clock. It was over 30 degrees outside, but the atmosphere was energetic, protest organizers said millions attended throughout the country. Entire families pulled out their hand-painted signs and hugged each other on street corners. People came together without fear: artists wheatpasting posters, others arriving covered in glitter, or wearing green handkerchiefs, spreading a sense of collective performativity through the heart of the city. 

There have been two key protests that have mobilized across social sectors since Javier Milei took office a year and two months ago.* The first was the March in Defense of Public University, which took place in October, and the second was on Saturday.

Organizing against Milei’s hate

The massive march last weekend was diverse and intersectional. It was led by members of a collective of travesti-trans and non-binary people, mothers and grandmothers of the disappeared, Black-anti-racist activists, racialized and Indigenous peoples, migrants, differently abled folks, elders and children. Behind them came the Antifascist Assembly, followed by trade union organizations, with members of political parties bringing up the rear.

The spark of resistance turned into fire after a speech given by Javier Milei at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on January 23. Milei linked homosexuality with child abuse, argued that feminism distorts equality, and called “wokeism” an epidemic that must be excised like a cancer. His comments had the effect of fanning the fire.

Ojala for more

by VICTOR GROSSMAN

For good people these are times to weep, rage and, above all, to fight back! But sometimes we may allow ourselves a laugh. Such a time arrived this past weekend in Brussels and at the Security Conference in Munich. Though the big shots present were in no laughing mood—but in shock!

The reason for an all too rare happy moment for some like me was strangely due to the words of two men I have absolutely no love for, JD Vance and his colleague, for whom probably nobody has any love, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Nor do I have a grain of affection for their fearsome boss back home—or should I say two bosses?

How could one stop grinding teeth—and laugh? Despite many complexities, one thing has been clear in recent years; the main ruling powers in Europe, most menacingly its strongest, Germany, have shown a greed, indeed a craving, for military adventurism, for spending ever more euro-billions on armaments, frightful air power, naval maneuvers in all surrounding waters, Baltic outposts. All are based on eastward expansion, with one declared enemy, whose ruler is denounced, derided, and demonized daily in most of the media. Hardly a page or newscast fails to warn that Russia, if it wins out in the Ukraine, is an awful threat not only to Poland, the Baltic countries, all its neighbors but even to “our Germany” which, though without a common border, seems to somehow want to feel equally threatened. The result: calls for a new military draft, even for women, for air-raid shelters, school air-raid drills and for strengthened bridges and highways if leading eastwards. Almost audible is the hand-rubbing and heel-clicking among the generals, nationalists, and imperialists generally. Hardly less audible; the clinking of champagne glasses at offices of armament firms like Rheinmetall, which are already raking in armament billions like never before, all paid for with money stolen from the living standards of most German and European civilians. And they want more!

This “readiness for war” demanded by Germany’s bloodthirsty Defense Minister Boris Pistorius and backed by the equally belligerent Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock (whose declared aim is to “ruin Russia”) was carried out under the aegis of the USA, the great protector of “rule-based international order”, democracy and anti-authoritarianism (also called anti-totalitarianism). Therefore: weapons for Zelenskyy, bigger, stronger, further-reaching missiles, the Ukrainians must be aided until all territories are regained (or all Ukrainians dead). And Washington demanded 2% more of the budget, then 3.5%, maybe 5%.

Then suddenly an unloved vice-president and even more repugnant Secretary of Defense came to Europe with the news that Trump had telephoned with Putin and the two wanted to negotiate on peace in the Ukraine. The greatest danger to Europe, they were told, was not Russia, not China, but the “danger from within.”

The shock was visible in their faces. What? Peace? Has the USA gone completely off its rocker? How can we justify our build-up? Our strategies? Our maneuvers? To make matters worse, Vance not only threatened with peace, but criticized the European countries for repressing oppositional ideas. True, the object of his concern and support was the far-rightist Alternative for Germany (AfD), with whom Musk has become so chummy. For its own reasons, the AfD also supports a swift end to the Ukraine war. Though Musk chose a nasty object for his affection (and open intervention in a foreign election campaign), it is true that many German leaders do want to get the AfD verboten—not because of its antagonism toward all “foreigners,” which they increasingly echo, but because it is polling in second place, at over 20%. There is indeed increasing repression of dissent in Germany and Europe. It is directed against any criticism of Netanyahu’s Israel and its fearful annihilation in Gaza, killing up to a hundred thousand Palestinians. No, Vance wasn’t against that! But thus far mention of any form of repression in “our freedom-loving Germany” has been mostly leftist, hence taboo. But now suddenly from our Big Brother! Unheard of! That is why those who want peace above all, from whatever quarter, could laugh at those stony faces and enjoy their consternation when their bellicosity and hypocrisy were so suddenly exposed, like never before. Our joy fits the word “Schadenfreude”!

Of course, they hastened to shape up a counter-attack! In Paris the worried leaders of Europe sought ways to put a spoke in the peace wheel. “No negotiations without us!” they cried. “We must also be involved! Oh yes, with Zelenskyy too of course!”, they recalled.

Monthly Review Online for more