Blog

The Enemy of My Enemy

One of the most effective thought-terminating clichés is “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

It is particularly effective because it works on both people who are, let’s say, not extraordinarily intelligent, and on more intelligent people, people who you wouldn’t expect to fall for such simplistic tricks.

It is especially effective in hyper-polarized sociocultural environments, like the one we’re in currently, where people feel like they need to be on one or the other side of whatever.

If you’re unfamiliar with thought-terminating clichés, the term was popularized by Robert Jay Lifton in his seminal book about “thought reform,” i.e., brainwashing.

“The language of the totalist environment is characterized by the thought-terminating cliché. The most far-reaching and complex of human problems are compressed into brief, highly reductive, definitive-sounding phrases, easily memorized and easily expressed. These become the start and finish of any ideological analysis.”Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism: a Study of Brainwashing in China

Thought-terminating clichés you might be familiar with include, but are not limited to, “you’re either with us or you’re with the terrorists,” “trust the science,” “trust the plan,” “it’s not perfect, but it’s better than the alternative,” “it’s just common sense,” “freedom isn’t free,” “that’s just the way it is,” and the list goes on.

Thought-terminating clichés are designed to do exactly what it sounds like they are designed to do…terminate thought, particularly critical thought.

They are typically deployed against you when you are challenging some item of official propaganda, or dogma, or reprehensible action, associated with or perpetrated by whatever “party,” “side,” “team,” or “cult” people think you’re a member of, or are trying to get you to shut the fuck up about.

Keep reading

Federal REAL ID requirement takes effect Wednesday as airport delay worries grow

On Wednesday, Americans will need a REAL ID to board a domestic flight, enter secure federal facilities or access certain military bases, after the deadline has been pushed back multiple times over a 20-year period.

The requirement for REAL IDs comes from legislation passed by Congress in 2005. The legislation was a recommendation from a commission on terrorist attacks created after Sept. 11, 2001, and was intended to make IDs more difficult to fake. The REAL ID Act established minimum security standards for driver’s licenses and other forms of state-issued identification.

REAL IDs have enhanced security features like barcodes, holograms, and other anti-counterfeiting measures, but they also typically require more documentation to obtain than earlier forms of ID.

Most states require an applicant’s date of birth, proof of identity, proof of a Social Security number and two documents showing residency to issue a REAL ID. A valid U.S. passport or birth certificate, a Social Security card or other federally issued documents or tax documents often satisfy the identity and Social Security requirements.

Americans who don’t yet have a REAL ID can use a passport card or passport book, an enhanced driver’s license, a military ID or select other forms of ID to fly domestically. Minors accompanied by adults carrying acceptable forms of ID also aren’t required to have a REAL ID in order to board domestic flights.

REAL IDs aren’t required to enter federally owned or operated museums, obtain federal benefits or for access to health care, law enforcement or constitutionally protected activities.

Keep reading

The Perfidy of 60 Minutes

It is a truism, a trope, a meme, common knowledge, a cliché, as obvious as a nose on a face, an actual fact and something so apparent that it is impossible in any way, shape, or form to deny unless utterly delusional.

But, somehow, time and time again, the major media players defy actual reality and try and try to substitute their own absurd version and – even more incredibly, like a lunatic accusing the clouds in the sky of conspiring against him – demand everyone within earshot to believe that it is true.

Typically, pointing out media propaganda is the same as pointing out that air exists – it is an atmosphere that we all must breathe and is typically specifically unremarkable due to its omnipresence.

But sometimes, when it is so egregious, so absurd, so literally dangerous, it must be challenged.

Which brings us to Sunday’s episode of the once-vaunted, now vile 60 Minutes.

The show that once intentionally made bad actors deeply uncomfortable by asking difficult questions is a shadow of its former self, with its story on the National Institutes of Health (NIH) a perfect example of the depths to which it has fallen.

The NIH has a new director, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya. Even before he officially took over a few weeks ago, the Trump administration had already announced a few changes: dropping 1,200 probationary employees, putting new purchasing standards in place, and cutting the amount of “overhead” its research and academic “partners” can charge to conduct studies.

This, of course, led to much wailing and gnashing of teeth – not of course from the public, but from the staff, current, past, and future. 

Breaking down the segment into its constituent parts, one finds three main points.

First, a grad student is worried she may not get a job because of the looming budget cuts.

Second, a woman in an Alzheimer’s research study worries she will be negatively impacted by the cuts.

These two bits are rather silly but very heartstring tuggy. In the case of the grad student, she’s complaining about what may or may not be, as if she were entitled to a position somewhere.

In the case of the Alzheimer’s patient, it is rather telling – and may even be terrifyingly true – that she is worried that the study she is part of may face an overhead cut.

As the show notes – moments after her worried statement – the NIH has cut the amount it pays for overhead – administrators, paper clips, etc. – to institutions from an overhead of about 28% to 15%.

Note – the cut is not for the research project itself, but just to the administrative overhead. Second note – the much-vaunted Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (like almost every other funder of medical research) has always capped its overhead costs at 15%.

So, ironically, what the patient is – even if she does not know it – really worried about is whether or not the folks that run the study (being done by Duke University and UNC jointly) could actually prioritize paying administrators over caring for patients.

Keep reading

Ukraine’s battlefield position is deteriorating fast

The election of U.S. President Donald Trump changed U.S. policy toward Ukraine from “as long as it takes” to seeking a negotiated peace settlement. These negotiations will be driven by the battlefield reality. The side holding the biggest advantage gets to dictate the terms. This gets more complicated if there is no ceasefire during the negotiations and the battlefield remains dynamic. Belligerents may conduct offensive operations while negotiations are progressing to improve their bargaining position. Historically in many conflicts, peace negotiations lasted years, even as the war raged on, such as during the Korean and Vietnam wars. Thus, the balance of power, measured in resources, losses and quality of strategic leadership are critical to the outcome of negotiations.

For Western powers, this carries serious consequences. They have staked their reputation on this conflict and with it, the fate of the rules-based world order. The Global South and the multipolar world order is waiting in the wings to take over. Failure to achieve victory has the potential to fatally undermine that order and remove the West from global leadership, which it has enjoyed for the last several centuries.

Keep reading

The Department of Empire, and Its Bloated Imperial Budget

Language and repetition of the same is so important. We hear about the Department of Defense (DoD) and the Pentagon budget and we think little of it. The DoD, of course, used to be called the Department of War until 1947, a far more telling and accurate name, and there wasn’t a Pentagon until we built one during World War II. In the old days, the Army fought the Navy for which service would get more money in the War Budget, with the Navy usually winning as America sought to control the seas as a means of dominating trade and “intercourse” among nations.

Those were more honest times when retired generals like Smedley Butler wrote in the 1930s that he’d served as a “gangster” for capitalism. Butler was a Marine who was twice awarded the Medal of Honor, so it wasn’t easy for the imperialists to smear him, though they certainly tried (as they did to David M. Shoup, another Marine Corps general and Medal of Honor recipient who turned against the Vietnam War in the 1960s).

Anyhow, I just saw at Antiwar.com that President Trump is proposing a $1.01 trillion budget for the Pentagon for FY2026, a 13% increase in imperial spending. Trump, of course, is proud of reaching the Trillion Dollar threshold. Big numbers have always appealed to him.

It doesn’t seem to matter who is president, whether it’s Biden or Trump, Democrat or Republican, when it comes to the Department of Empire and its bloated imperial budget. For that is what it is, a budget that seeks to sustain and enlarge America’s imperial domain. If you add other costs related to imperial dominance, such as interest on the national debt due to war spending, VA costs, nuclear weapons, and the like, the true imperial budget soars toward $1.7 trillion yearly.

No matter. A trillion here, a trillion there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money.

The Pentagon tries to disguise the enormous waste of this imperial budget by speaking of it as an “investment,” but imagine an “investment” that you’re involved in which fails seven audits in a row. How likely would you be to see this as anything other than theft?

Keep reading

“We Are At A Tipping Point”: Shale Giant Diamonback Says US Oil Output Has Peaked, Slashes CapEx Amid OPEC Price War

The OPEC price war has made landfall in the US.

Following our report earlier that Saudi Arabia has declared a new price war on OPEC+ quota-busters such as Kazakhstan, and non OPEC+ members such as US shale producers, today after the close Diamondback Energy, the largest independent oil producer in the Permian Basin, made a historic pronouncement today when it said that production has likely peaked in America’s prolific shale fields (something we also mentioned earlier in the day) and will decline in the months and years ahead after crude prices plummeted.

Separately, the Texas company trimmed its own full-year production forecast Monday, and said that it expects onshore oil rigs across the entire US industry to drop by almost 10% by the end of the second quarter and fall further in the months after.

“This will have a meaningful impact on our industry and our country,” Diamondback Chief Executive Officer Travis Stice wrote. “We believe we are at a tipping point for U.S. oil production.”

The outlook from Diamondback, one of the industry’s most prominent producers, marks a key shift for expectations within the sector. Before oil prices started plunging last month, most banks and research firms had forecast US shale production would grow this year and next before plateauing later in the decade. The Permian, they said, was apt to peak in the late 2020s or early 2030s depending on prices.

Not any more.

As Bloomberg notes, the US shale fields have been the engine behind the surge in US crude output over the past 15 years, making the country the world’s top producer and largely energy independent, much to the horror of OPEC. The ability of companies like Diamondback to quickly bring new wells online using hydraulic fracturing, also known as fracking, has bedeviled OPEC. But the prospect that shale may now have reached its peak and is facing years of painful decline, poses a huge threat to US President Donald Trump’s goal to turbocharge fossil fuel production.

While analysts and pundits have long said repeatedly that US shale is poised to peak, the industry had managed to prove them wrong by innovating and driving output to fresh records year after year. 

So the assertion by Diamondback that the moment has finally come is extremely noteworthy.

“Today, geologic headwinds outweigh the tailwinds provided by improvements in technology and operational efficiency,” said Stice, who will step down as CEO at the company’s annual shareholder meeting later this month.

US oil futures, pricing in a global demand recession, have dropped about 20% since the start of April when Trump announced wide-ranging tariffs that triggered a global trade war. At the same time, OPEC and its allies have surprised markets with plans to increase oil supplies more than expected later this year in response to internal bickering, and particularly the unwillingness of some members such as Kazakhstan to comply with set production quotas.

It’s led to frustration spilling out both privately and in public comments from America’s oil bosses. US Energy Secretary Chris Wright sought to reassure the industry during a visit to Oklahoma last month, saying turmoil from the president’s trade war is likely to be fleeting.

“We can’t help but wonder if the last ‘letter to stockholders’ written by outgoing CEO Travis Stice was intended as much for government leaders in Washington, DC as it was for FANG shareholders,” Tim Rezvan, an analyst at KeyBanc Capital Markets wrote in a note to clients.

Keep reading

Will We See Mushroom Clouds Over Kashmir?

One of the world’s, oldest and most dangerous conflicts went critical this past week as nuclear armed India and Pakistan traded threats of war. The Kashmir conflict is the oldest one before the UN.

In my book `War at the Top of the World’ I warned that the confrontation over Kashmir, the beautiful mountain state claimed by both Islamabad and Delhi, could unleash a nuclear war that could kill millions and pollute the planet.

After three wars and many clashes, it seemed the two bad neighbors had allowed the Kashmir dispute to fade into the background as their relations slightly improved.

Then came the murder last week of 26 Indian tourists at Pahalgam, a Kashmir beauty spot, by Muslim insurgents. Kashmir was roughly divided between India and Pakistan in 1947. The larger part of Kashmir was annexed by Indian troops as the entire region was scourged by massacres and rapine.

As a result, India’s portion of Kashmir became the only Muslim majority state in India. Kashmiri Muslims have waged a bloody struggle since the 1980’s to leave India or join Pakistan. Today, 500,000 Indian troops and an equal number of paramilitary police garrison the restive province.

I’ve been under fire three times on the Line of Control that separates the two Kashmirs and at 15,000 feet altitude on the remote Siachen Glacier. I was with Pakistani President Musharraf after he tried to seize Kargil which lies above Kashmir.

The outside world cared little about the India-Pakistan conflict until both Delhi and Islamabad acquired nuclear weapons. Their ‘hatred of brothers’, as I called it, pits fanatical Hindus against equally ardent Muslims who share centuries of hatred and are being whipped up by politicians.

Right wing Hindu militants in Delhi demand reunification of pre-1947 ‘Mother India.’ Pakistan has about 251 million citizens; India has 1.4 billion and a much larger GDP. Pakistan would be unable to resist a full-bore attack by India’s huge armed forces. So, it relies on tactical nuclear weapons to compensate for the dangerous imbalance.

But both sides nuclear arsenals are on hair-trigger alert and pointed at the subcontinent’s major cities. A decade ago, the US think tank Rand Corp estimated an India-Pakistan nuclear exchange would kill three million immediately and injure 100 million. Such damage would pollute most of the region’s major riverine water sources all the way down to Southeast Asia.

Keep reading

‘Bright Line In The Sky’: Florida Passes Bill To Ban, Criminalize Geoengineering

The Florida House of Representatives last week passed a bill to ban and criminalize geoengineering and weather modification, Newsweek reported.

The bill makes it a third-degree felony to release any chemical, substance or apparatus into Florida’s atmosphere to affect the weather or climate.

It imposes a penalty of up to $100,000 for any person or corporation and up to $5,000 and five years in prison for an aircraft controller or pilot involved in such releases.

It also requires Florida’s Department of Environmental Protection to develop protocols to investigate reports of geoengineering and directs the department to send the reports to other state agencies, including the health department, when appropriate.

The bill has cleared both the House and the Senate and awaits Gov. Ron DeSantis’ signature.

“There is a lot of unauthorized activity that is currently not regulated, both at a federal and a state level, and this is where we wanted to start,” Sen. Ileana Garcia, who introduced the bill, told members of the Senate.

GreenMedInfo’s Sayer Ji praised the bill on his Substack. “Florida has drawn a bright line in the sky: It will not allow corporate interests, climate interventionists, or covert operations to tamper with its atmosphere or pollute its environment.”

Since the bill was introduced, the Florida Legislature has received more than 100,000 emails demanding action on geoengineering, Ji reported.

Keep reading

With Florida Marijuana Legalization Measure Circulating, DeSantis Signs Bill Making It Harder To Qualify Ballot Initiatives

Fresh changes to Florida law on ballot initiatives will create new hurdles for advocates aiming to put legislative proposals before voters—including, potentially, the renewed effort to legalize marijuana in the state.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) on Friday signed a measure into law that tightens requirements around citizen-initiated measures. Among other requirements, it mandates that supporters post a $1 million bond before commencing signature gathering, prohibits the use of out-of-state and noncitizen petitioners and narrows the window during which which signatures must be submitted to election officials.

The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Jenna Persons-Mulicka (R), contends the ballot initiative process “has been taken over by out of state fraudsters looking to make a quick buck and by special interests intent on buying their way into our Constitution.”

“The bill seeks to root out the problem and provide assurances that only those with a stake in our Constitution can change it to that end,” she said at a hearing in March.

DeSantis, for his part, said on social media over the weekend that the bill will “combat petition fraud and prevent the special interest-abuse of our constitutional amendment process.”

Changes under the new law will also prevent Floridians with felony convictions from collecting petition signatures unless they’ve gone through the process of restoring their voting rights.

Residents will also have to provide personal details—including their driver’s license number, voter ID card number or the last four digits of their Social Security number—in order to fill out a petition. The form itself will then become a public record, raising potential privacy concerns.

Campaigns also have less time to return petitions to election officials, and they’ll face harsher fines for errors.

The new obstacles to placing a proposal on the statewide ballot come on the heels of two contentious constitutional amendments that went before voters last year, including one—Amendment 3—that would have legalized marijuana for adults 21 and older, and another on abortion rights.

Keep reading

Hawaii Bill To Support Psychedelic Therapy—Passed By Both Senate And House—Is Dead For The Session

A Hawaii bill to support research into psychedelic-assisted therapies that had passed both chambers of the legislature in different forms missed a legislative deadline and is now dead for the session, its sponsor tells Marijuana Moment.

SB 1042, from Sen. Chris Lee (D), was scheduled for a conference committee meeting, with lawmakers from both legislative chambers set to hammer out differences between versions of the bill passed by the House and Senate.

“Unfortunately, we ran out of time was the bottom line,” Lee said in a brief phone interview. “And that happened to a slew of bills, not just this one.”

While the proposal won’t move forward this year, the senator said the conversation this session will set the stage for a renewed effort in 2026.

“The great thing is, we had agreement on the final language in the bill,” Lee said. “So I think picking up next year from there will give us the ability to identify a clear path forward.”

Keep reading