11 Comments

Dear Ben, You have brought such interesting discussions to my Inbox and I've enjoyed all the research, historians, specialists and hard work you brought to it. BUT Heather Cox Richardson???!!! Amazing and delightful. Thank you Thank you Thank you!!! Continue to make your mother proud.

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Thanks, Kate!!

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Skipper, sorry, are we taking on water? We're in some serious pickles thanks to both war happy parties and corporate captured politics. Antony Blinken just termed "meritless" South Africa's highly credible case against Israel before the ICJ. I have known you to be fair. Please provide fact based perspective grounded in broad international experience and historic research - please invite Professor Michael Hudson to talk about any of his books, especially the most recent that supply SKIPPED HISTORY in caps!

https://michael-hudson.com/books/

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Just to slighlty correct you, I don't think we're in serious pickles thanks to the inhumanity of both parties — I think we're in far deeper kimchi.

Thanks for the tip of Hudson's books. I plan to cover neoliberal nastiness a little later in the year, which it seems like he's covered a bit. You're pushing me to consider covering the U.S. support of South African apartheid... I'll look into that right now!

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Jan 14Edited

". . . . Support for government intervention has steadily risen since the first time we asked this question in 2018. In fact, the balance of opinion has tilted: Five years ago, Americans were more inclined to prioritize freedom of information over restricting false information (58% vs. 39%). . . .

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/07/20/most-americans-favor-restrictions-on-false-information-violent-content-online/

More of us will let others do our thinking, make our decisions for us?

What others with what interests not public interests, not for the good of the whole?

Freedom of information has what to do with democracy?

How would we know who influenced whose thinking on those Pew survey responses?

And what consequences for those committed to think for themselves?

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Jan 14Edited

Correction accepted! Beware bad bacteria. This kimchi one slow toxic ferment? S. Africa and parallel Israel, Ukraine, Taiwan apartheids also infected by bad imperial bacteria? Thinking of Jamal Khashoggi abduction/murder, most recent death of US Gonzolo Lira in Ukrainian prison, Julian Assange in British prison, whistleblower Daniel Hale and others in US prisons, all for revealing inconvenient facts and opinions that American citizens have what 1st Amendment right/responsibility to know for informed discussion/opinion (i.e., with reasoned defense of our position).

One thing about Hudson, his seamless integration of history, spiritual ethics, pragmatic finance via his exploration of proven effective debt forgiveness [later? the related perception/communication vein of apparent willful stupidity/cognitive dissonance/anti-critical thinking, propaganda (Bernays!), government/media censorship (Matt Taibbi, https://twitterfiles.substack.com/archive?sort=new ; Project Censored et al., The Media and Me; etc.)] [later? the related vein of national/global (corporate/private?} centralized control in violation of US federal laws and international legal obligations like the UN Charter, the Genocide Convention, numerous others]

Hope your revelations may include Medea Benjamin/Nicholas Davies, War in Ukraine: Making Sense of a Senseless Conflict; Fadi Lama, Why the West Can't Win; David Swanson, https://davidswanson.org/books/ - his 2018 Curing Exceptionalism has numerous examples of idiocies like the more recent $12 hobby balloon downed by a $440,000 US missile, or cheap Russian drones/decoys destroyed by what I think Andrei Martyanov (smoothieX12) called something like expensive American showroom weapons (beside his themes of incompetent western battlefield experience, training, strategizing). https://www.claritypress.com/book-author/andrei-martyanov/

https://www.youtube.com/user/smoothieX12/videos

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Digging into your suggested readings and viewings! David Swanson had me when I walked in and saw "The Monroe Doctrine at 200 and What to Replace it With"

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Jan 18Edited

Only one I know so far, Swanson's Curing Exceptionalism lays out US fraud, waste, abuse stats with bullseye deadpan skill. For nonviolent peace and diplomacy, World Beyond War's Global Security System: An Alternative to War, stuffed with resources hammer-nail-warmongers need to keep from us. https://worldbeyondwar.org/alternativepost/

For upbeat evenings, I'm into Kate Raworth's Doughnut Economics spotlighting the roles of Nature, domestic labor, life/liberty/happiness early economists knew that current money economics needs us blind to for their own power/lucre. agenda. https://www.kateraworth.com/about/

Ben Norton, Geopolitical Economy Report, concise perspective on power/money/history/news, with cite links, https://www.youtube.com/@GeopoliticalEconomyReport

Alfred de Zayas, global perspective, I can recommend Countering Mainstream Narratives https://www.claritypress.com/book-author/alfred-de-zayas/

And the perpetual question you sure help answer: what are we missing?

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Couldn't agree more. I would have happily listened for hours to the brilliance of HCR as she deftly unpacks history and lays out timelines. Equally happy to know the Skipper is nudging the conversation- and allowing us to share that wealth.

Thanks to both of you for

continuing to 'gossip about dead people...'

Bravo!!!!

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I could’ve gossiped for hours myself!

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Methods in the messaging, recent open source release, Propaganda and Neutrality: Global Case Studies in the 20th Century, Edward Corse and Marta García Cabrera (eds)

downloads here,

https://www.bloomsburycollections.com/monograph?docid=b-9781350325562

Interview with editors at Neutrality Studies posted today,

Study Reveals Massive Propaganda Efforts! | Dr. E. Corse & Dr. M.G. Cabrera

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u550EsSUebQ

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