The major lesson of Vietnam will never be learned

January 30 was the 50th anniversary of the launch of what is known as the Tet Offensive, Tet being the name of the Vietnamese New Year. The forces of the National Liberation Front and the North Vietnamese army launched a concerted attack on US and South Vietnamese all over South Vietnam and even right in the heart of Ho Chi Ming City (then called Saigon), including the headquarters of the South Vietnamese General Staff, the Independence Palace, the US Embassy, the Navy Headquarters, and the National Radio Station.
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Puzzling things about the Invisible Man

Some of you may have read H. G. Wells’s novel The Invisible Man. There have been several films based on it that I have not seen but as a young boy, I was fascinated by a TV show that was based on the same idea but is set in modern times and is otherwise nothing like the book. In this show, as in the book, a scientific experiment gone wrong makes a man completely invisible, so he goes around wearing clothes, gloves, sunglasses, hat and with his face fully bandaged in order to keep his invisibility secret and make his presence visible and not freak people out.
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Unprincipled loyalty switching

Today the Intelligence Committee of the House of Representatives finally released the so-called Nunes memo, so named after the chair of the committee. I have rarely seen such an extended period of hype over whether the memo would be released or not, with speculation extending for weeks. To be honest, this is the kind of absurd Washington kabuki that I abhor and tend to ignore because it is almost invariably much ado about nothing. If you are interested you can read the four-page memo here and read about it here.
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The ‘Palestine exemption’ to free speech

The BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) Movement has as its goal to “end international support for Israel’s oppression of Palestinians and pressure Israel to comply with international law.” An overview of its mission states:

Israel is occupying and colonising Palestinian land, discriminating against Palestinian citizens of Israel and denying Palestinian refugees the right to return to their homes. Inspired by the South African anti-apartheid movement, the BDS call urges action to pressure Israel to comply with international law.

BDS is now a vibrant global movement made up of unions, academic associations, churches and grassroots movements across the world. Eleven years since its launch, BDS is having a major impact and is effectively challenging international support for Israeli apartheid and settler-colonialism.

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Film Review: Shakespeare Behind Bars (2005)

This documentary looks at a program with that title that has prisoners tackle Shakespeare’s plays. The program began in 1998 and has spread to several prisons. Each year the inmates work on a single play, starting in the fall and rehearsing through the year before performing it the following spring, both for members of the community and for other inmates in their own prison and at other prisons. This documentary looks at the 2003-2004 year at a prison in Kentucky
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Police propaganda and deception

That the state of policing in the US is appalling is pretty much a given. Their propensity to use excessive, even lethal, force in situations that do not demand it, especially when they are dealing with poor people or people of color, has been well documented. They then close ranks, aided by prosecutors, to prevent any justice being meted out to the offending officers so that it is big news when a police officer is even fired or indicted, let alone convicted of a crime.
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What might a matriarchy look like?

All societies tend to be male dominated in pretty much all walks of life, such as running the government and businesses. Governments that differ widely in ideology are often similar when it comes to the subordinate roles played by women. Given that the world is not in great shape, it is natural to speculate how things might be different if women ran things. Unfortunately there are no models of such structure.
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