Author: nick

Amid a lot of patriotic rah-rah, predictable writing, and subpar acting, the Netflix movie War Machine manages to convey at least one interesting point about America’s bloated military budget. Director Patrick Hughes’ film stars Alan Ritchson as an Army staff sergeant who watches his brother get killed in action in Afghanistan. The death inspires Ritchson’s character to honor a pact he made with his brother and become an Army Ranger himself. To graduate from Ranger School, Ritchson and the other final candidates must complete a mission together in the wilderness—a mission that goes awry when a strange, robotlike machine appears from outer…

In one of the scariest moments in modern history, we’re doing our best at ScheerPost to pierce the fog of lies that conceal it but we need some help to pay our writers and staff. Please consider a tax-deductible donation. Gregory Shupak for FAIR Since October 2023, Israel has occupied vast stretches of territory in Gaza, Syria and, most recently, Lebanon. Corporate media have been reluctant to use clear, direct language to characterize US-backed Israeli land grabs in each of these places, preferring to describe Israel’s policies with euphemistic terminology. “Buffer” is chief among these. For instance, a Wall Street…

Photo: Marlboro/ While pundits argue about who had the upper hand during the recent summit between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping, with the inevitable talk of rising and declining powers (the Thucydides Trap), there are much deeper political undercurrents. Marlboro cigarettes, long a symbol of rugged American masculinity, are under attack. The New York Times recently ran an op-ed entitled “How American Cool Dies.” For decades, American influence rested not only on economic and military strength, but on cultural domination — soft power. Today’s contest may no longer be over who rules the world, but who defines it. America may…

After becoming the target of police harassment, the Chinese artist and journalist Ai Weiwei left his homeland for good in 2015. In a new book, On Censorship, he writes about how censorship and surveillance go hand in hand. Like a dealer who can see all the cards, Ai argues, an all-seeing government has an “absolute advantage” over dissidents. The nexus between surveillance and censorship has a psychological aspect as well. “A primary aim of censorship is to normalize itself, to present itself as natural and essential,” Ai warns. He cites an ancient Chinese saying that “the great affairs of the state…

Book Cover The Yellow Vests and the Battle for Democracy:  In one of the scariest moments in modern history, we’re doing our best at ScheerPost to pierce the fog of lies that conceal it but we need some help to pay our writers and staff. Please consider a tax-deductible donation. Ida Susser Adapted from The Yellow Vests and the Battle for Democracy:  Taking to the Streets of Paris in the 21st Century. In June 2019, a group of Yellow Vests, the diverse protest movement that broke out a year earlier, and their families set to work constructing a cabin…

Image by ‪Salah Darwish. “It’s got no anything,” President Donald Trump said of Somalia in a recent xenophobic rant. “All they do is run around shooting each other.” As is true of so much with this administration, every accusation is also a confession. U.S. troops have been shooting Somalis since the early 1990s, after lame duck President George H. W. Bush launched an ostensibly humanitarian intervention there that would be embraced by his successor, Bill Clinton. By June 1993, U.S. and U.N. troops had begun attacking various targets in Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, linked to warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid, who had helped overthrow…

KEY EVENTS Ukrainian strikes on Russian targets are falsely framed as cover for domestic political scandals. Europe is again portrayed as standing in the way of peace. Old “Ukrainian biolabs” conspiracy theories make a comeback. LAST WEEK IN REVIEW Last week’s Russian FIMI activity centred heavily on strikes exchanged between Ukraine and Russia. Reporting on Russian strikes in Ukraine largely ignored civilian casualties and presented attacks as legitimate military actions, while Ukrainian strikes were framed as deliberate attacks on civilians, often with claims linking them to EU support. Hardline voices continued to call for escalation, while Russia was portrayed as…

Image by Pierre Bamin. This week in the Anthropocene I’ve seen dead birds. Dozens of them. Washed ashore in various stages of decay, lining the beaches of Southern California. Seagulls, cormorants, pelicans, puffins, loons. All of the most glorious of California’s seabirds. They are often emaciated and frail, as if they’ve starved. This week, we began to understand what may be causing these deaths. Researchers at Scripps in La Jolla have a theory. Warmer ocean temperatures reduce what’s called upwelling, the process by which nutrients rise from the depths. Fewer nutrients at the ocean’s surface mean there are fewer nutrients for…

Police in Arlington, Texas, arrested a fellow officer who allegedly sexually assaulted a woman he met while responding to a call for help at her home. Investigators say Officer Derreck Dean returned to the woman’s house three times while on duty, even though there were no calls for service, and that he covered his body camera during all three visits. One of those visits allegedly involved inappropriate sexual contact. Dean now faces charges including sexual assault and oppression. The Arlington Police Department placed him on administrative leave during the investigation and said it is looking into whether there may have…

Still from Fritz Lang’s The Testament of Dr. Mabuse. “President Xi said America is a nation in decline. And I said, ‘You’re right.’” – Donald Trump + NPR interviewed a Trump voter in Georgia who said he thought the President was doing “an A+ job.” When asked how his family was dealing with rising food prices, the man replied, “My wife and I fast.” What’s the cure for this mass mesmerism that induces people to be willing to suffer extreme deprivations in order to enhance the fortunes, political and financial, of their billionaire leader? Trump’s like Fritz Lang’s Dr. Mabuse,…