We are living in an age of civil war. Civil wars were almost nonexistent until the twentieth century. Except in a handful of cases—the American and English civil wars, the French Revolution—it was rare for citizens to mobilize soldiers to fight for control over their government. This didn’t mean that violence didn’t break out. Average citizens engaged in all sorts of brutality against one another; they assaulted strangers, neighbors, spouses, children, and members of their community. They just didn’t tend to fight over political control.

BY Barbara F. Walter

Can the World Feed Itself? Historic Fertilizer Crunch Threatens Food Security

A run-up in prices and shortage of man-made nutrients are forcing the agriculture industry to adapt, and the impact could be severe.

For the first time ever, farmers the world over — all at the same time — are testing the limits of how little chemical fertilizer they can apply without devastating their yields come harvest time. Early predictions are bleak.

[back in February 3, 2022] President Joe Biden spoke of the United States having a “new hope” and “a moment of renewal” as the nation observes the National Day of Prayer.

In a proclamation issued the day before the observance, Biden explained that, on the Day of Prayer, “we recognize the healing power of prayer, especially as we recover from the trauma and loss of the COVID‑19 pandemic.”

“Today we find ourselves in a moment of renewal — of lives saved, of new jobs created, and of new hope for rebuilding America,” stated Biden.

The recent pact between China and the Solomon Islands has exposed the manifest hypocrisy with which the United States and Australia view their relationship with smaller members of the Pacific community. The Solomon Islands have recently signed a security deal with China. The details of the arrangement have not been publicly disclosed, but it is believed to provide for periodic visits by Chinese warships to the small Pacific Island nation, and for the provision of Chinese assistance in maintaining public order.

BY James O’Neill

The visit to India on April 21-22 by UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson is not an ordinary event for either side.

As far as India is concerned, the way its leadership has developed relations with each of the leading players in the current phase of the Great Game, one of which is the former metropole, does not contradict New Delhi’s overall (relatively) neutral positioning at the world’s gaming table. However, this positioning itself is subject to a number of serious challenges, with the main one stemming from the complex nature of relations with the second global power, which today is the People’s Republic of China.

Ukrainian Ambassador to Germany Andriy Melnyk sparked a culinary-themed diplomatic dispute by calling Olaf Scholz an unstatesmanlike “liverwurst sausage” over the chancellor’s refusal to visit Kiev. Scholz said Monday that he had no plans to travel to Ukraine for the time being due to Kiev’s snub of President Frank-Walter Steinmeier last month.

Senior Free Democratic Party politician and Bundestag Vice President Wolfgang Kubicki has stepped out in defence of his coalition ally Scholz, insisting that the chancellor is not a sausage.

The Nuremberg Rallies (officially Reichsparteitag, meaning Reich Party Congress) refer to a series of celebratory events coordinated by the Nazi Party in Germany.

During hurricane Harvey that hit Texas in 2017, there was major flooding in many locations. What I was going to write used the word “ludicrous", but I will restrain this to “quaint”, to describe the rescue boats that were flying the American flag — as if the safety of people depended on the American dream in which Americans are American first, otherwise why bother exist unless one is American. And the American dream is embodied in the American flag. It is a symbol of belonging to America. We might be drowning in American induced rain-water, but the flag is flying proudly like a beacon of patriotic hopeful godly American pride of American existence.

let’s make a useless detour into a "historical hurricane", just for fun….

----------

May 4, 2001 marks the day when the US was voted off the United Nations Commission on Human Rights. The decision should have provided the superpower with a much-needed wakeup call. Instead, it just became more reckless on the global stage.

KATIE HALPER: Professor Michael Hudson, thank you so much for joining us. We’re really excited to have you.

We wanted to start off by asking you if you could provide an overview of what the economics driving this conflict are—and by conflict, I mean the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, and, of course, with the rest of the world, or really the conflict between Russia and US, and the economic fallout.

In two months, the Russian special military operation against the Banderites has turned into a real war between the Russians and the Donbass People’s Republics on the one hand and the Nato-backed Ukrainians on the other.

A Ukrainian victory would be a blow against Russia and a Russian victory would mark the death of NATO. Neither of the two protagonists can back down. So all moves are allowed.

First, the Banderites saw their former allies from the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations (ABN) and the World Anti-Communist League (WACL) [1], such as 3,000 militiamen from the Turkish Grey Wolves, flocking to Ukraine.

Let me tell you about the most brazen assault on Australia’s secular democracy you have probably never heard about.

It’s the Seven Mountains Mandate. And it’s quietly creeping from America into Australian political life, with the express purpose of taking control of all the institutions of power.

The Morrison government's election campaign is a disaster, but the real story is still the state of the press

At the halfway point of the election, inside one of the most pockmarked government terms in modern history, Anthony Albanese comes back from a week incapacitated with COVID. Live in Perth, at an important time in the nation’s history, he stands before the media to take questions. After weeks of gotchas at the expense of genuine questions on policy… “where’s Tanya?”, they ask.

Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche wrote: “Underneath this reality in which we live and have our being, another and altogether different reality lies concealed.”

What does this mean at a democratic level? 

It could mean (and it does) that the government of the people by the people is a surface distraction.

THIS IS WHAT we EXPOSED in the cartoon about the devious inauguration speech by George H W Bush (https://yourdemocracy.net/drupal/node/43837):