Author Archives: John Stanton

Back in January 2017, I wrote that President Donald Trump should not be too hastily compared to Benito Mussolini, the fascist dictator of Italy who would come to an ignominious end. Well, I was dead wrong about that. America’s reasonable facsimile for Mussolini is Donald Trump. His mannerisms, posture and facial expressions, all call to mind the Italian dictator. Trump’s call for a military parade, being dutifully carried out by the Pentagon, closes the case for Trump-as-Mussolini. Continue reading →

President Donald Trump’s pathological behavior at home is evidenced in his tweets and speeches. His communication with the “outside world” is typically acerbic and vengeful. His recent “fire and fury” threat to North Korea was belligerent, foolhardy and dangerous. The president simply does not understand, or care, that his words matter. In this instance, financial markets around the world were rattled for a time. Moreover, Trump’s biblical sounding threat came a day before the US dropped the second atomic bomb on Nagasaki. Continue reading →

CS Lewis has a great point. Everywhere in the United States the disease of subjectivism is present. The evidence abounds: The polarization of the political system; the dismissal of history because of discomfort with historical facts; “trigger” warnings for literary texts that offend sensibility; the vicious censure befalling authors for developing literary characters of a different race or ethnic experience, applying the rules of law for some and not others; or disavowing a higher spiritual power of some sort. Continue reading →

Coincident to the Pentagon’s request for thousands more US soldiers to be shipped off to Afghanistan comes the massive vehicle borne improvised explosive device (VBID) attack in Kabul that has killed nearly 100 and wounded 400 others. Among the wounded are said to be about a dozen US citizens who, likely, are defense and support contractors. The Taliban vehemently denied any involvement in the attack. The Islamic State, or an affiliated group, is the likely suspects. Meanwhile in London during the first weekend in June terrorists there driving a van mowed down pedestrians and then went about stabbing random victims. The result? 7 dead, 21 critically wounded. Continue reading →

It is a bright sunny day in the Washington, DC, metropolitan region. The sky is clear blue and the air is cool. It’s definitely a windows-down driving day as I get in my ’99 Camaro and set off to work from Arlington, Virginia to 16th and K Street in downtown Washington. It is just about six miles to get from home, near the Pentagon and Fort Myer, to the office. Continue reading →

Chelsea Manning’s leaked information made WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange, a household name. It also made them permanent enemies of the US State. In 2010, Assange released a video that he called Collateral Murder. The video shows an airstrike in which Iraqi journalists are killed. Other releases based on Manning’s leak were known as the Afghan Diary and Iraq War Logs. The diplomatic cables exposed some of the silly machinations of the US State Department and the over classification of documents. Continue reading →

The 20th century Korean War, from 1950–1953, pitting US-led United Nations coalition forces against the North Korean and Chinese militaries has been in pause mode for 64 years. The Korean Armistice was signed on July 27, 1953, by the United States, China and North Korea. It called for a cessation of hostilities until a lasting peace agreement between the warring parties could be negotiated and signed. Continue reading →

Jefferson held that a little revolution now and then in a democratic republic was a necessary evil, not unlike severe seasonal storms that come each year. Those storms can cause extensive damage to life and property but communities rally and rebuild. Often they develop improved protocols to deal with storms ranging from disaster response to revised building codes that might withstand the next big storm. Continue reading →

The electromagnetic/digital storm emanating from television, computer and cell phone screens flood the neural pathways of the brain drowning synapses. The ferocious digital winds from the storm twist and rattle axons, neurons and dendrites like the winds from a powerful thunderstorm that shears leaves off of trees and bends branches to and fro. The lightning strikes from this digital storm randomly sever connections in the cerebral cortex, just as a lightning strike violently amputates the limbs from a tree. And, at times, the electromagnetic field and its constituents, now having translated itself into images, sounds and text, crash into the cerebral cortex send shock waves through the entire structure of the brain down to the base of the spinal cord. The cerebral cortex has been trashed. Continue reading →

All right then, let’s not be too hasty in comparing President Donald J. Trump to Mussolini. It is too soon for that as Pope Francis said recently. Continue reading →

Interest groups and lobbyists have been busy peddling their client’s interests since 1816 when Delaware manufacturer Isaac Briggs teamed up with his colleagues in an attempt to convince federal lawmakers to impose tariffs on the import of foreign made manufactures. Continue reading →

In the early 1990s, scores of studies were conducted by the US government, think tanks, consulting firms, defense contractors, futurists and military thinkers on the likely threats to the US military’s electronic communications systems. Those analyses often encompassed commercial networked systems. Continue reading →

Law enforcement officers were ambushed and killed in Baton Rouge and Dallas by those using guerilla warfare style tactics. Is this any different that the Sunni “terrorists” who killed U.S. soldiers in Iraq? Continue reading →

Just about one half of the year 2016 is in the world’s history books. The 16th year of the 21st Century, a century that was supposed to usher in a new era of democracy, opportunity, “green thinking,” and income for all, has thus far been a bust for much of the citizens of the world. Some 40.8 million displaced people roam the continents of the world due to the effects of climate change and the fallout from varying degrees of conflict/war ranging from the War on Terror and War on Drugs, to covert-overt regime changes in Brazil, Ukraine, Egypt, Paraguay, Iraq, Libya and Honduras. Syria remains a work in progress. Continue reading →

The system is broken. Continue reading →

Culturally engineered humans are being produced to meet the design specifications of the neoliberal capitalist system. Those specifications call for the production of psychologically modified individuals to view human and non-human life like the stock that is traded on Japan’s Nikkei or the New York Stock Exchange. Concepts such as emotion, gender, ethics, morals, sex, religion, living, dying, war, soul, spirit or work are relevant only in as much as they have value to capital. More importantly, such individuals must be made to believe that their worth, and their “meaning in the universal scheme of things,” is as human capital, as living tradable stock, nothing more. Continue reading →

When did my genes and “I” become guilty of thinking that they were white? Continue reading →

Oh, it’s out there. It is the US government’s Selective Service/Draft program that currently requires all males 18 years of age to willingly sign up for the opportunity to have the US government force them, under penalty of law, to work for the government in a killing and maiming capacity (military employment), or in a supporting role for those who are on the front lines doing the US government’s dirty work in faraway lands and, who knows, perhaps here in the USA. Continue reading →