Global

With some help we did two days of work to harvest the five olive trees in
our home garden (total 240 kilos) followed by six days to harvest the many
trees in the museum garden (still two trees left). Jessie, Zohar, and I
were thus harvesting for eight days. I counted 44 people who helped at
different times over these days (including Israelis and internationals). I
especially want to thank Mohammad Najajreh who was there throughout the
days of harvest at the museum garden and is now helping his family harvest
their olives in Nahhalin. While muscles are aching and skin is darkened,
the psychological boost of harvesting olives and the physical gain of
exercising is hard to describe. I did write one article many years ago on
the deeper meaning of the olive tree which was reprinted last year here:

Noam Chomsky is right when he says that, in the US, sports creates the necessary “fantasy world” required to shield people from understanding, organizing, and attempting to “influence the real world”.  

Referring to sports commentary and phone-in shows, Chomsky, in an interview with AlterNet, marveled at the intellectual and analytical skills of people engaged in the sports culture. Ultimately, however, this culture “has no meaning and probably thrives because it has no meaning, as a displacement from the serious problems which one cannot influence and affect because the power happens to lie elsewhere,” he said. 

There are certainly several threatened catastrophes that might greatly reduce the global population of humans. In a thermonuclear war, followed by nuclear winter, a large part of the world's population might perish.

It is not often that one can agree with the pronouncements made by former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director John Brennan, but his tweeted comment on the killing of Iranian scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh suggesting that the incident “…was a criminal act & highly reckless. It risks lethal retaliation & a new round of regional conflict. Iranian leaders would be wise to wait for the return of responsible American leadership on the global stage & to resist the urge to respond against perceived culprits” was both restrained and reasonable. Or it was at least so until sentence two, which was clearly intended to attack Donald Trump and praise the incoming Joe Biden administration, which Brennan just might be seeking to join.

Right-wing Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has nothing to worry about as the man who will directly handle America’s foreign policy in the Middle East is a loyal friend of Israel. Crisis averted. 

President-elect, Joe Biden’s appointment of Antony J. Blinken as his Secretary of State was a master stroke, according to the Biden Administration. Blinken is a State Department veteran, a strong believer in a US-led Western alliance and a true friend of Israel. 

Do you like to believe that scientists are studying the evidence – whether in relation to Covid-19 or anything else – and delivering high quality knowledge that can be used to guide public policymaking so that it might better serve the interests of ordinary people?

It is certainly a comforting idea, isn’t it?

After all, we have long been told that science is an ‘evidence-based approach’ to understanding particular phenomena and thus providing accurate guidance on how to proceed to achieve productive outcomes.

Unfortunately, this claim is just propaganda for the unwary.

In his 2005 study of the validity of published medical research, John P. A. Ioannidis, a professor of medicine who also studies scientific research itself, explained why ‘It can be proven that most claimed research findings are false.’ Most? False? Here is what Professor Ioannidis concluded but you can read his entire article, cited below.

Once again, Europe's top diplomats expressed their ‘deep concern’ regarding Israel’s ongoing illegal settlement expansion, again evoking the maxim that Israeli actions “threaten the viability of the two-state solution”. 

No matter who ends up winning Senate confirmation for top positions on President Biden’s “national security” team, an ominous dynamic is already underway. Some foreign-policy specialists with progressive reputations are voicing support and evasive praise for prospective Cabinet members -- as though spinning through revolving doors to broker lucrative Pentagon contracts is not a conflict of interest, and as though advocating for an aggressive U.S. military posture is fine.

Rationalizations are plentiful, but the results are dangerous. It’s an insidious process -- helping to set low standards for the incoming administration. Enablers now extol potential Cabinet picks who’ve combined pushing for continuous war and hugely expensive new weapons systems with getting rich as dealmakers for the military-industrial complex.

One of the holiest days of the year is fast approaching. Are you ready? Remember the true meaning of Pearl Harbor Day!

The U.S. government planned, prepared for, and provoked a war with Japan for years, and was in many ways at war already, waiting for Japan to fire the first shot, when Japan attacked the Philippines and Pearl Harbor. What gets lost in the questions of exactly who knew what when in the days before those attacks, and what combination of incompetence and cynicism allowed them to happen, is the fact that major steps had indisputably been taken toward war but none had been taken toward peace.