Articles by Michael Brenner
We found 40 results.
Sinews of Peace
Michael Brenner, Vladimir Putin – TRANSCEND Media Service,
4 Nov 2024
29 Oct 2024 – This is a highly classified transcript of remarks made by Vladimir Putin to a select audience of Russian elites at the Kremlin. The secret conclave was held in Jun 2021 on the eve of his meeting with Joe Biden.
→ read full article
Artificial Intelligence – Eureka!
Michael Brenner – TRANSCEND Media Service,
2 Sep 2024
27 Aug 2024 – AI promises all sorts of wondrous things. We are told that it will add trillions to GDP; diagnosis, prescribe treatment and register cures for all manner of illnesses; relieve us of mind-numbing tasks at work and at home; and ensure that every one of us is better than average.
→ read full articleHumiliation Upon Request
Michael Brenner – TRANSCEND Media Service,
29 Jul 2024
25 Jul 2024 – Israel’s inhumane treatment of the Palestinians leaves Europeans unmoved. European political elites above all. Instead, they cheer on the Israelis in effusive displays of solidarity so that the IDF can better carry out their odious campaign.
→ read full articleHegemony or Bust
Michael Brenner – TRANSCEND Media Service,
15 Jul 2024
Hegemony. The term holds a central place in the present discourse about the United States’ place in the world: what it has been, its sustainability, and alternative ways of formulating the country’s national interests.
→ read full article
Nuclear War: Still Unthinkable?
Michael Brenner – TRANSCEND Media Service,
10 Jun 2024
8 Jun 2024 – The United State’s provocative actions are the principal reason the “unthinkable” possibility is becoming ever more likely.
→ read full articleEyeless on Gaza
Michael Brenner – TRANSCEND Media Service,
20 May 2024
13 May 2024 – Denial of civil liberties, punishment for exposing those violations, and the grotesque, brutal suppression of free speech on US university campuses is the iron fist of autocracy to intimidate, to hurt, to deter those who question the right of the powers-that-be to impose their concocted version of the truth on the public.
→ read full articleThe West vs. the Rest
Michael Brenner – TRANSCEND Media Service,
6 May 2024
30 Apr 2024 – Is the West launching an all-out war against global ‘South,’ against the BRICS – plus, against the ‘other’? Are we in the first stages of a civilizational struggle initiated by the U.S.-led assemblage we call the “collective West”? That would have seemed an absurd idea until very recently.
→ read full article
Likud Party Charter (1977) – Eretz Israel
Michael Brenner - TRANSCEND Media Service,
22 Apr 2024
The Right of the Jewish People to the Land of Israel (Eretz Israel) – Judea and Samaria will not be handed to any foreign administration; between the Sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty.
→ read full articleThe West’s Reckoning?
Michael Brenner – TRANSCEND Media Service,
11 Mar 2024
6 Mar 2024 – Western leaders are experiencing two stunning events: defeat in Ukraine, genocide in Palestine. The first is humiliating, the other shameful. Yet, their actions show vividly that those sentiments are alien to them – unable to penetrate the entrenched barriers of dogma, arrogance and deep-seated insecurities.
→ read full articleBeyond Hypocrisy
Michael Brenner – TRANSCEND Media Service,
8 Jan 2024
4 Jan 2024 – Every resolution, I guess, has its exemptions. Hence, the irresistible impulse to draw attention to a singular example of lying by omission committed by the usual suspects.
→ read full articleEurope-Jews-Muslims
Michael Brenner – TRANSCEND Media Service,
20 Nov 2023
15 Nov 2023 – Europe has an obsession about Jews. For nearly 2 millennia, it shunned them, despised them and persecuted them. Now, after a respite of a few decades, it condemns and abuses Muslims in a similar way – all in the name of supporting Jews.
→ read full articleThe Final Scene
Michael Brenner – TRANSCEND Media Service,
30 Oct 2023
27 Oct 2023 – The USA–its vassal train in tow–is committing moral suicide in Palestine. The political consequences will be profound, and as enduring as the complete discrediting of the country’s standing as a positive presence in world affairs.
→ read full articleDefeat
Michael Brenner – TRANSCEND Media Service,
25 Sep 2023
21 Sep 2023 – The United States is being defeated in Ukraine. One could say that it is facing defeat or that it is staring defeat in the face. Neither formulation is appropriate, though. The U.S. doesn’t look reality squarely in the eye. We prefer to look at the world through the distorted lenses of our fantasies.
→ read full article
Risen Word
Michael Brenner – TRANSCEND Media Service,
8 May 2023
7 May 2023 – A divide between elites and the populace is a feature of society that has been true without exception since the abundance by agriculture/husbandry encouraged the growth of early Neolithic bands. A key to elite dominance always was the superior group’s monopoly – or quasi monopoly – of crucial knowledge.
→ read full articleOde to LGBTQ
Michael Brenner – TRANSCEND Media Service,
1 May 2023
Soliloquy
→ read full articleUkraine and the ‘Thucydides Trap’
Michael Brenner – TRANSCEND Media Service,
27 Mar 2023
22 Mar 2023 – The importance of Ukraine, in the eyes of US officials, goes far beyond the country’s intrinsic geopolitical or economic value. The crisis is rooted in Washington’s preoccupation with Russia. It has very little to do with Ukraine per se. That benighted country has provided the occasion, not the cause of the current confrontation.
→ read full articleTanks & Tragedy
Michael Brenner – TRANSCEND Media Service,
30 Jan 2023
26 Jan 2023 – Never has it been so daunting to figure out what’s going on during a major international crisis as with the Ukraine affair, due to total absence of truthful reporting and honest interpretative analysis by the MSM. We are served falsity, fantasy and farrago whose relation to reality is tenuous.
→ read full articleNeo-Cons: Genesis to Ascendency
Prof. Michael Brenner – TRANSCEND Media Service,
18 Jul 2022
15 Jul 2022 – All or nothing, Hegemony or Armageddon: A logical outcome of a 40-year progression.
→ read full articleLast Tango in La-La Land
Michael Brenner – TRANSCEND Media Service,
20 Jun 2022
15 Jun 2022 – Although admittedly Ukraine is mentioned, this piece is not about that benighted country. It is about another place: La-La Land. That locale is a densely populated mental space inhabited by Western rulers and the vast majority of our political class. Fata Morgana–by my GPS reckoning.
→ read full articleVladimir Putin
Michael Brenner – TRANSCEND Media Service,
9 May 2022
Vladimir Putin is a formidable personality who leads a great country that has been experiencing an historic transformation. We will have to deal with him and with it, one way or another. Simply shouting to the skies: “genocidal killer” is dangerous, counter-productive – and, frankly, childish.
→ read full articleOn Humiliation
Michael Brenner – TRANSCEND Media Service,
7 Mar 2022
28 Feb 2022 – Russia’s actions in the Ukraine, to a great extent, are the culmination of the numerous humiliations that the West, under American instigation, has inflicted on Russia’s rulers and the country as a whole over the past 30 years.
→ read full articleLowering USA’s Delusion Throne
Michael Brenner – TRANSCEND Media Service,
10 Jan 2022
When Pompey the Great made his triumphant return to Rome in 61 BCE, a spectacular ceremony was planned. The centerpiece was to be a towering throne where Pompey would pass through a Victory arch. But a small problem arose: the throne was 4 feet taller than the height of the arch. That is a neat metaphor for the uneasy position in which Uncle Sam finds himself these days.
→ read full article
Mind &/or Brain
Michael Brenner - TRANSCEND Media Service,
15 Nov 2021
8 Nov 2021 – The question of what constitutes ‘thinking’ overlaps the issues of MIND/BRAIN. Defining, delineating and explicating self-awareness, rationality, and logic has been a perplexing challenge since time immemorial. ‘’Discovery’ of the subconscious has enormously complicated these tasks. Advances in neurology add a new dimension to the discourse.
→ read full articleMoralizing AI Weaponry
Michael Brenner - TRANSCEND Media Service,
1 Mar 2021
23 Feb 2021 – The Congressional panel, National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence, recommends that the US military launch a major program to develop autonomous weapons powered by artificial intelligence software. Panel leader, former Google chief executive Eric Schmidt, wants $20-30 billion in the program. Vice-chairman Robert Work said: “It is a MORAL IMPERATIVE to at least pursue this hypothesis,” he said.
→ read full articleThe Psychosis of Hegemony
Michael Brenner – TRANSCEND Media Service,
7 Dec 2020
4 Dec 2020 – So pervasive is this consensus that the foreign affairs community has developed something that approximates herd immunity to critical thinking. Political elites, think tankers, and consultancy gurus all sing in chorus from the same hymnal. Such differences as exist are barely noticeable variations on the fundamentally same threat assessments or on tactics for countering those alleged threats.
→ read full articleFailing to Succeed
Michael Brenner – TRANSCEND Media Service,
29 Jun 2020
28 Jun 2020 – In a time of quarantine, isolation and anxiety, most literate isolates already have plowed through Decline & Fall, War & Peace, the complete set of Shakespeare’s dramas, and the Iliad. So, now the choice is between you and Paradise Lost – which is not everybody’s cup of tea. Widespread social disorder can be the expression of various conditions: civil war, sectarian strife, economic collapse, natural disasters, external incursions, etc. All of these situations are explicable by the application of some kind of causal logic.
→ read full article
Snowden
Michael Brenner – TRANSCEND Media Service,
1 Jun 2020
Edward Snowden’s book is not a ‘coming-of-age’ saga. It is necessary to say that at the outset. One of the peculiarities of our times is the penchant for rendering everything in terms of so-called ‘human interest.’ The most profound events, the most penetrating analysis, the most stirring ideas – all are reduced to personality. Whether it is the personality of the author, a representation of the subject, or some background character.
→ read full articleHacking COVID-19
Michael Brenner – TRANSCEND Media Service,
25 May 2020
23 May 2020 – Hacking is back in the headlines. The Chinese are accused of breaking into the computers of unnamed American labs – corporate &/or non-corporate – doing research on a coronavirus vaccine. The operative words are ‘China/Chinese’ and ‘hacking’. The two go together like gin & tonic.
→ read full articleRanting in a Time of Plague
Michael Brenner – TRANSCEND Media Service,
20 Apr 2020
14 Apr 2020 – Overriding all else is the spectacle of a President, DULY ELECTED BY THE AMERICAN PEOPLE, who is a malicious psychopath with not a single redeeming trait. A physical, intellectual and emotional spectre, he has gathered around him a witch’s coven of scoundrels, crooks and crackpots as bereft of mind and ethics as he is. This man is viewed favorably by 46% of the public. THAT REALITY ECLIPSES EVERYTHING ELSE. What Have We Learned?
→ read full article
Arendt, Eichmann and the Banalization of Blame
Michael Brenner | HuffPost – TRANSCEND Media Service,
17 Feb 2020
Hannah Arendt, who originated the term “banality of evil” in her provocative writings, was not interested in explaining Eichmann’s blandness per se. She had more profound thoughts to convey. He was a symbol of something much deeper. Her forcefully argued conclusions that ordinary people can commit horrific crimes created a furor – a blazing fire of argument and recrimination whose embers smoldered for decades.
→ read full articleEurope Agonistes
Michael Brenner – TRANSCEND Media Service,
9 Dec 2019
If America in the late eighteenth century was born against others’ history, Western Europe in the mid-twentieth century succeeded in liberating itself from its own history.
→ read full articleThe Kurdish-Turkish Crisis
Michael Brenner – TRANSCEND Media Service,
14 Oct 2019
12 Oct 2019 – Here we are again: a major series of events in the Middle East accompanied by thin and misleading MSM coverage. It is the background, context and interpretation of implications that are distorted and prejudiced; also, spiked with a drizzle of lies. Par for the course.
→ read full articleThe Psychosis of Hegemony
Michael Brenner – TRANSCEND Media Service,
17 Jun 2019
‘Negotiated truth’ has become the standard currency. Robert Mueller’s manner of handling his relations with the Department of Justice fits the pattern. In declaring that William Barr’s gross misrepresentations of his report’s conclusion were ‘well intentioned,’ while making it obvious that Trump had obstructed justice, is a prime example. In this instance, Mueller negotiated the truth among his sense of professional duty, his conscience and his keen desire to maintain a certain standing among his fellow Republicans. In the end, he tilted toward the last while hiding behind the first. Par for the course.
→ read full articleU.S. Government Seeks NGO Help for Removing Iran from Syria
Michael Brenner – TRANSCEND Media Service,
3 Jun 2019
29 May 2019 – The U.S. Department of State is offering a grant of $75 million to non-government-organizations to help it to further meddle in Syria. Americans have intoxicated themselves for two and a half years on the vapors emanating from the alleged Russian ‘interference’ in the 2016 election affair–never proven. The strongest odor, if one bothers to inhale, is from the stench of hypocrisy.
→ read full articleNeo-Cons: Origin of the Species
Michael Brenner – TRANSCEND Media Service,
20 May 2019
18 May 2019 – Before embarking on an etymological exploration, a few prefatory remarks are in order. One, neo-conservativism is as much a state of feeling as it is a state-of-mind. Two, such logical thinking as occurs among its devotees is deductive – downplaying empirical data and encouraging ad hominem conclusions and pronouncements. Finally, it is a highly adulterated species of doctrine. It has interbred with several other intellectual and ideological entities to produce a hybrid.
→ read full articleWhen Conquer We Must, When Our Cause It Is Just
Michael Brenner – TRANSCEND Media Service,
13 May 2019
12 May 2019 – Bellicosity pervades Washington’s ruling circles. Cartoon images of the enemy are disseminated everywhere. He is alien and menacing. The target is portrayed as a clear and ‘imminent’ threat to America who is beyond reason. Fictive provocations are conjured up. No evidence is presented to substantiate the claims – it’s speculation rooted it’s super-secret classified Intelligence. To question is to traffic in ‘fake news’ and disinformation, to serve as ‘useful idiot’ who is handmaiden to the terrible trio of Russia, Syria and Iran… Let’s step back a couple of generations to Vietnam.
→ read full articleSatanic Venezuela vs Saintly America
Michael Brenner – TRANSCEND Media Service,
6 May 2019
5 May 2019 – America’s entire political class, its foreign policy community in particular, agrees that Maduro ‘has to go.’ Just as Assad ‘had to go’, Gaddafi ‘had to go,’ and before them Saddam ‘had to go.’ With the Ayatollahs high on the to-do list. The only debate is on the method. Tactics are discussed endlessly on Op Ed pages, on the talk shows, on think tank row without any reference to why he ‘must go’ – with what implications. It’s little different from the agitated post-game yapping about an NBA play-off game: why did team ‘X’ fail to execute their pick-and-roll as planned, why this match-up rather than that, what adjustments will the coach make before the next game.
→ read full articleCatechism for America
Prof. Michael Brenner – TRANSCEND Media Service,
7 Jan 2019
1 Jan 2019 – Donald Trump experienced an epiphany during his lonesome Christmas at the White House. Riveted by the telecast of the midnight Mass at the Vatican, it came unto him a blinding light that awakened his spirit. The troubled soul of America needed a patriotic version of the Church’s ancient catechism. He set about commissioning a composition modeled on the NICENE CREED and the Roman Catholic Catechism to serve as a devotional paean to America.
→ read full article
Syria – Tell Me It Ain’t So
Michael Brenner – TRANSCEND Media Service,
24 Dec 2018
22 Dec 2018 – It is daunting to find polite words for describing American foreign policy- such is its incoherence. Purpose is obscure, logic is invisible. There is no approximation to orderly process – in thought, in deliberation, in decision. These truths have been highlighted by Trump’s stated intention to withdraw (some) American troops from Syria – and by the reaction to it. The harsh reality that it is not the White House alone that lacks anything resembling a strategy in the Middle East. That holds for their critics, too, both inside and outside the government.
→ read full articleAn Ongoing Liability: The CIA’s Dirty Wars
Michael Brenner - CounterPunch,
13 May 2013
The errant actions of the C.I.A. are by now so evident that they are a staple of Washington conversion. Like the weather, though, it is the topic everybody talks about, but does nothing about.
→ read full article