Articles by: Kim Petersen

Enabling the Warmaking of Empire- Part 1

Enabling the Warmaking of Empire- Part 1

It is understood by all that at least two sides are required in a war scenario. One side must be waging war on another side. It is not required that the aggressed side fight back. To surrender to a warmaker, however, means coming under the suzerainty of the warmaker. That is almost always anathema to a people since people cherish[Read More…]

by 22/02/2023 Comments are Disabled World
How Does America Perform on Biden’s Test?

How Does America Perform on Biden’s Test?

A slice of president Joe Biden’s State of the Union address that calls for closer analysis: Putin’s invasion has been a test for the ages. A test for America. A test for the world. Would we stand for the most basic of principles? Would we stand for sovereignty? Would we stand for the right of people to live free from[Read More…]

by 10/02/2023 Comments are Disabled World
Considering the Invasions of Panama and Ukraine

Considering the Invasions of Panama and Ukraine

The 26 January JTA Daily Briefing arrived in my mailbox with the subject: “Major Israeli Raid in Jenin Kills 9 Palestinians.” I was sadly dumbfounded by the imparted insensitivity and inhumanity. Would any humanity-loving organization blare such news about the killing of the Other? Supposedly, the Oslo accords were a movement toward peace, but Zionist Israel has continued to wreak[Read More…]

by 27/01/2023 Comments are Disabled World
China eliminated absolute poverty; now works toward common prosperity for all

China eliminated absolute poverty; now works toward common prosperity for all

Can you imagine walking downtown in Seattle, Vancouver, New York, Toronto, or any other burg in Canada or the United States and not seeing any panhandlers? This homelessness, begging, and dumpster diving is not confined to major urban centers. Last week, I was in Yellowknife, the capital of Denedeh (Home of the People; colonially designated as Northwest Territories), home to[Read More…]

by 02/01/2023 Comments are Disabled World
What is the Rules-Based Order?

What is the Rules-Based Order?

In fits of, what might well be termed, masochism, some of us now-and-then tune in to the legacy media. When doing so, one is likely to hear western-aligned politicians rhetorize ad nauseam about the linguistically vogue rules-based order. Now and then, the word “international” is also inserted: the rules-based international order. But what exactly is this rules-based order? The way[Read More…]

by 23/12/2022 Comments are Disabled World
China is Not Capitalist and it is Not Yet Communist

China is Not Capitalist and it is Not Yet Communist

There are many western commentators who, apparently in profound dismay that a country which holds up the banner of socialism could be so economically successful, tiresomely deny that China practises socialism and insist that it is instead capitalist. Author Jeff Brown wrote that China is “history’s most successful socialist and communist country.” This conflation of communism and socialism is common but inaccurate.[Read More…]

by 28/11/2022 Comments are Disabled World
Whither Musk’s Twitter

Whither Musk’s Twitter

It must be excruciatingly difficult having to decide whether to put some of one’s hundreds-of-billions of dollars, along with potential future profit, at risk to affirm one’s previous public declaration of support for the freedom of speech principle. That is the dilemma that Musk has before him. Musk finds Twitter threatened with an advertiser boycott. As I previously alluded to,[Read More…]

by 07/11/2022 Comments are Disabled World
 Justice in the Land of the FreeTM: The cases of Griner and Assange

 Justice in the Land of the FreeTM: The cases of Griner and Assange

I feel for American basketball player Brittney Griner. Did she break the law? Yes, she did, and she pled guilty at trial. But a sentence of nine years — to be spent in what the New York Times calls a “penal colony” — for bringing hashish into Russia for self-treatment (assuming this is true) seems overly harsh. But the law[Read More…]

by 05/08/2022 Comments are Disabled World
The US Boxes Itself in over Taiwan and Ukraine

The US Boxes Itself in over Taiwan and Ukraine

Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the United States House of Representatives, is reportedly scheduled to visit Taipei in August 2022. The stated purpose is supporting Asian democracy. The trip has more than irked the Chinese. The trip has obviously not been approved by the one recognized government of China in Beijing. Some may downplay the speaker of the US House of[Read More…]

by 27/07/2022 Comments are Disabled World
It is Not Love that Abandons Its Treaties

It is Not Love that Abandons Its Treaties

The Tsilhqot’in Struggle On 26 March 2018, Canada’s prime minister Justin Trudeau spoke of the six Tsilhqot’in chiefs who were arrested during a sacred peace-pipe ceremony and subsequently hanged for their part in a war to prevent the spread of smallpox by colonialists: “We recognize that these six chiefs were leaders of a nation, that they acted in accordance with[Read More…]

by 17/06/2022 Comments are Disabled World
NATO: Whose Security?

NATO: Whose Security?

Insanity has often been defined as trying the same thing over and over and getting the same result. Case in point, Ukraine was seeking NATO membership to bolster its security. This membership would have come at the expense of Russian security, as Russian president Vladimir Putin made clear. To thwart NATO’s (i.e., the US’s) hegemonic ambitions and preserve its own[Read More…]

by 16/04/2022 Comments are Disabled World
A Comparison of Who the New York Times Deems Worthy and Unworthy of Propping up

A Comparison of Who the New York Times Deems Worthy and Unworthy of Propping up

The New York Times continues to selectively promote news that fits the Establishment narrative. The NYT portrays the nine-year sentence of the Russian “opposition leader” Aleksei Navalny to a high-security prison as a travesty of justice. Was it unjust? If so, justice must be demanded. What I can comment on is a factual inaccuracy by the NYT: Navalny is not the[Read More…]

by 28/03/2022 Comments are Disabled World
The Imperialists’ and Proxies’ War against Syria

The Imperialists’ and Proxies’ War against Syria

Review of World War in Syria by A.B. Abrams On 30 August 2021, the United States’ 20-year military occupation of Afghanistan came to an end when the removal of American forces was completed. Although the withdrawal was botched, it was the correct move. The withdrawal is ignominious because it turns out that the much ballyhooed US fighting forces were, in[Read More…]

by 28/01/2022 Comments are Disabled Book Review
Skeptic’s Alert: Washington and NYT Expose Russian False Flag

Skeptic’s Alert: Washington and NYT Expose Russian False Flag

On 14 January, a breaking news story from the New York Times informed its readers: “U.S. Says Russia Sent Saboteurs Into Ukraine to Create Pretext for Invasion.” Unsurprisingly, Washington “did not release details of the evidence it had collected.” Why did the NYT not question the withholding of evidence? Why even deign to report what so easily could be dismissed,[Read More…]

by 16/01/2022 Comments are Disabled World
The Battle at Lake Changjin: An Anti-war War Film

The Battle at Lake Changjin: An Anti-war War Film

For decades, Hollywood has produced a plethora of films extolling American military prowess in warfare. Aside from Oliver Stone films and a few others, e.g., Casualties of War, usually these Hollywood films depict the United States as a force for good defeating fascists and other evildoers. Never-ending US militarism has provided a cornucopia of potential war scripts for Hollywood. Currently[Read More…]

by 15/01/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
What Does the Statement of the Five Nuclear-Weapon States on Preventing Nuclear War Tell Us?

What Does the Statement of the Five Nuclear-Weapon States on Preventing Nuclear War Tell Us?

The Doomsday Clock has been sitting the past year at 100 seconds to midnight, the closest it has ever been to civilization-ending apocalypse. The United States has done little to quell doomsday apprehensions by ratcheting up tensions with China over Taiwan and its warships in the South China Sea, as well as with Russia over Ukraine, further NATO expansion, and[Read More…]

by 05/01/2022 Comments are Disabled World
Canada’s Head-of-State Honors a War Criminal

Canada’s Head-of-State Honors a War Criminal

The only place I want to hear him speak is in the dock at the Hague at the International Criminal Court facing trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity. — George Galloway, former British MP and the director of The Killing$ of Tony Blair Canada’s head of state, also the queen of Canada, has made the war criminal Tony[Read More…]

by 04/01/2022 1 comment World
 Flags mark the spot where the remains of over 750 children were buried at former Marieval Indian Residential School in Saskatchewan, June 25 © AFP / GEOFF ROBINS

What Does It Mean for the Dispossessor to “Compensate” the Dispossessed?

Settlers enjoyed a seeming free permission: to dispossess natives at will of all the best land, turn them out of traditional fishing locations, disrespect elders, women, children and religion, leave whole communities without political representation and punish men for breaking laws which they could have no means of knowing existed. It was inconceivable that all this change could happen overnight[Read More…]

by 17/12/2021 1 comment Human Rights
Have British Politicians No Shame?

Have British Politicians No Shame?

  The UK government is considering boycotting China’s winter Olympic Games to be held in Beijing. The British foreign office cites “international efforts to hold China to account for its human rights violations in Xinjiang.” “It is the longstanding policy of the government that the determination of whether genocide has taken place should be made by a competent court with[Read More…]

by 02/12/2021 Comments are Disabled World
 Flags mark the spot where the remains of over 750 children were buried at former Marieval Indian Residential School in Saskatchewan, June 25 © AFP / GEOFF ROBINS

What Do an Apology, Reconciliation, and a Sacred Obligation to Constitutionally Guaranteed Rights of First Nations Look Like in Canada?

They send a hundred RCMP to go protect a pipeline and not protect people’s lives so we need to push back. They put industry, they put fracking, they put gas and oil over everyone’s lives. — Eve Saint, a Wet’suwet’en land defender In the nineteenth century, Gilbert Malcolm Sproat, a colonial official, wrote an account — The Nootka: Scenes and[Read More…]

by 22/11/2021 1 comment World
The Baghuz Massacre Underlines the Necessity for Freeing Julian Assange

The Baghuz Massacre Underlines the Necessity for Freeing Julian Assange

The implications of the Baghuz Massacre should deeply underscore the integrity, morality, and vital importance of WikiLeaks and its heroic publisher and political prisoner Julian Assange. The Baghuz Massacre was a failed cover-up by the United States. WikiLeaks is the journalistic enterprise that shines a spotlight on the egregious crimes of states. Assange is imprisoned under tortuous conditions because he[Read More…]

by 21/11/2021 Comments are Disabled World
 Planning for a New, Better Future – A Review of No Bosses

 Planning for a New, Better Future – A Review of No Bosses

As the world prepares to depart 2021 and head into 2022, it is clear that the United States is a declining economic power and that China continues its rapid upward trajectory. While homelessness and poverty sully the debt-laden US, China has eliminated extreme poverty. What is the American response to economic disparities domestically? Institute a guaranteed minimum income? Andrew Wang[Read More…]

by 15/11/2021 Comments are Disabled Book Review
Does Repeatedly Calling China a Threat Reify It?

Does Repeatedly Calling China a Threat Reify It?

Hegemony requires a coordinated mechanism to be in place for a belligerent entity to designate enemies, attack the leader(s) of the designated enemy, control the narrative (i.e., lie), launch unprovoked attacks that murder a citizenry, destroy the economic basis of the named enemy, loot its resources, topple the enemy’s leadership, and replace the leadership with one deemed acceptable to the[Read More…]

by 08/11/2021 Comments are Disabled World
Should One Stand up for Western Values?

Should One Stand up for Western Values?

What are western values? One often hears a representative of a western country praising its western values. In a 2017 statement Canada’s prime minister Justin Trudeau adumbrated Canadian values as “openness, compassion, equality, and inclusion.” Given the psychological torture that Julian Assange has been subjected to over the years at the hands of western nations like the Britain, the United[Read More…]

by 02/11/2021 1 comment World
Human Rights are for Everyone! Including Julian Assange

Human Rights are for Everyone! Including Julian Assange

Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind, and the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people … The General Assembly, Proclaims this Universal[Read More…]

by 31/10/2021 Comments are Disabled Human Rights
Photograph: Yander Zamora / EFE

Targeting Cuba and China: Disinformation against Communism

I was the CIA director. We lied, we cheated, we stole. — Mike Pompeo, former US secretary of state on how the United States conducts its business One of the filters in the Propaganda Model propounded by professors Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky was stoking a fear of communism. [1] The establishment’s anti-communism has never abated in the United States.[Read More…]

by 10/08/2021 1 comment World
BBC, Free Media, and Julian Assange

BBC, Free Media, and Julian Assange

A video in which Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev is interviewed by Orla Guerin has resurfaced; the interview took place in November 2020. (The BBC version.) Revealing is what is not seen in the BBC version. When Aliyev held up the mirror to Guerin’s “accusation” that there was no free media in Azerbaijan, the BBC responded by censoring Aliyev’s reference to[Read More…]

by 09/05/2021 Comments are Disabled Human Rights
Storms of Protest in Washington and Hong Kong

Storms of Protest in Washington and Hong Kong

The coverage of groups of people, described as mobs, rioters, or protestors depending on one’s prejudice or adherence to accurate reporting, who “stormed” the Capitol in Washington and the Legislative Council in Hong Kong is revealing for how media and politicians react. The American media ran headlines such as: “Trump supporters storm Capitol,” Washington Post “Inside the mob that swarmed[Read More…]

by 11/01/2021 Comments are Disabled World
 Are There Any Good Cops?

 Are There Any Good Cops?

Yes, there is a pandemic. And, yes, the COVID-19 numbers and deaths are rising in certain locales. In the Canadian province of Alberta, lockdown measures were put into effect that include shutting all casinos, gyms, dine-in restaurants, and bars. Mask wearing, despite what science says, has been mandated. As well, all outdoor and indoor social gatherings have been banned. As[Read More…]

by 24/12/2020 Comments are Disabled World
Picture of Aussie soldier gulping beer from ‘prosthetic leg of dead Taliban fighter’

Freedom of Expression: Good for the Western Goose, Forbidden for the Muslim Gander

When French president Emmanuel Macron was pilloried in some quarters for defending freedom of expression as a French value, Australian prime minister Scott Morrison backed his European counterpart: “We share values. We stand for the same things.” This professed French/Australian value for freedom of expression has now come back to bite the backside of the Australian prime minister. When it[Read More…]

by 08/12/2020 Comments are Disabled World
 A Comparison of Respect for the Sanctity of Mosques in France, the US, and China

 A Comparison of Respect for the Sanctity of Mosques in France, the US, and China

France has seen a spate of attacks carried out by radicalized Muslims. The attacks and killings must be denounced. But more so must one denounce the terrorism and killings carried out by the French state against Muslims in its wars abroad. In a move that gives a strong inkling of French values, the French state has targeted 76 mosques for[Read More…]

by 04/12/2020 Comments are Disabled World
 The Slow-motion Assassination of Julian Assange – People of Conscience Must Stop It

 The Slow-motion Assassination of Julian Assange – People of Conscience Must Stop It

Another Iranian nuclear scientist has been assassinated. Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was killed by an elaborately planned and executed ambush. The complexity of the attack and the resources required to carry it out strongly indicate a state actor. Fingers of blame quickly pointed at a likely assassin: Israel. The United States was probably in some form of collaboration since it is widely[Read More…]

by 30/11/2020 2 comments Human Rights
Who and What Should One Remember on Remembrance Day?

Who and What Should One Remember on Remembrance Day?

Education is supposed to encourage critical thinking. However, if critical thinking ever were a part of the education curriculum, it usually goes out the window around Remembrance Day. Take, for instance, Canada Remembers Times the Veterans’ Week Special Edition (5-11 November 2020). It is published by Veterans Affairs Canada and made available in BC provincial elementary schools. On page one[Read More…]

by 19/11/2020 2 comments World
The Ramblings of a Self-confessed Liar, Cheater, and Thief

The Ramblings of a Self-confessed Liar, Cheater, and Thief

On 10 November 2020, the United States secretary-of-state Mike Pompeo, he of the ill-famed confession “We lied, we cheated, we stole,” spoke at the Ronald Reagan Institute. The liar Pompeo can even speak candidly, “I’ve talked about American exceptionalism. I did so in Brussels; I did it in Cairo; I did it in Jakarta, and every opportunity that I’ve had[Read More…]

by 13/11/2020 1 comment Imperialism
Terrorism and French Values- Sowing and Reaping?

Terrorism and French Values- Sowing and Reaping?

There have been some horrendous, despicable killings by Muslim extremists in France. Such killings must be condemned. French president Emmanuel Macron played the victim card, saying that France “will not give into terrorism.” Yet when 21st century France engages in overseas militarism, otherwise known as state terrorism, in places with large Muslim populations – places that never attacked France —[Read More…]

by 30/10/2020 Comments are Disabled World
70 Years after China and the DPRK Defeated the United States in Korea

70 Years after China and the DPRK Defeated the United States in Korea

There is a piece of news on an important anniversary missing from western state and corporate news. This year, 2020, is the 70th anniversary of the Chinese People’s Volunteers (CPV) army entering the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) to help in, what the Chinese call, the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea. It is described by the[Read More…]

by 27/10/2020 Comments are Disabled World
The Communist Party of China: Putting the People First

The Communist Party of China: Putting the People First

Wherever we lift one soul from a life of poverty, we are defending human rights. And whenever we fail in this mission, we are failing human rights. — Kofi Annan, former United Nations Secretary-General Among other items “proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people,” the preamble to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that “… human beings[Read More…]

by 20/10/2020 3 comments World
The Neverending Holocausts of the Neoliberal Order

The Neverending Holocausts of the Neoliberal Order

Biochemist, writer, humanitarian activist, and artist, Gideon Polya has had a selection of his essays gathered into a compendium titled US-Imposed Post-9/11 Muslim Holocaust & Muslim Genocide (Korsgaard Publishing, 2020). The compendium is important because it brings to the forefront, for anyone who cares an iota for peace and social justice, the horrible crimes of the “mendacious and politically dominant[Read More…]

by 12/09/2020 Comments are Disabled Book Review