I am a substitute teacher (grades K-12) in a public school system located in Virginia, a state on the eastern seaboard of the United States. For many years prior to becoming a substitute teacher, I also taught at a private school in Virginia. Tuition and fees at the private school are approximately $42,000 (USD), the public schools are, of course, tuition free. Continue reading
Canettii argues in his book that the most dangerous individual holding power is someone who views him/herself as a Survivor, or someone who can survive at the expense of others. Canetti notes that the Survivor, with access to nuclear weapons, can obliterate a hefty chunk of mankind. The president of the United States, as commander in chief, has the option to use those weapons presumably only under the most dire of circumstances. President Donald Trump’s proximity to the nuclear weapons trigger has been noted with trepidation by non-military observers from the beginning of his presidency and that matter is always lurking in the background, particularly as the US modernizes its Nuclear Triad. But the checks and balances in the use of the Nuclear Triad can’t be discounted as it is likely that military commanders would refuse to carry out Trump’s orders to use nukes even in spite of revised doctrine appearing to make it easier to do so. Continue reading
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
Who, exactly, are the people that the Republicans in the US Congress represent? Or, should we ask, do they have the best interests of their local constituents in mind? Continue reading
The Federal Prison Industries (FPI) under the brand UNICORE operates approximately 52 factories (prisons) across the United States. Prisoners manufacture or assemble a number of products for the US military, homeland security, and federal agencies according to the UNICORE/FPI website. They produce furniture, clothing and circuit boards in addition to providing computer aided design services and call center support for private companies. 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
And so it came to pass that on the 1st month of the 20th day in the year of our Lord 2017, Emperor Twitteritus Trumparonious, born in the 6th month of the year of our Lord 1946, improbably snatched the reins of the glorious American Empire from Queen Hilliarious Clintoniosis whom the empire’s military commanders, media propagandists, and many citizens hoped would rule over them. Queen Clintoniosis was guaranteed victory by all the most powerful soothsayers of the land and the court jesters of the day variously known as ‘comedians and journalists. 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
The world knows that the 2016 US presidential horse race features two cartoonish characters that are perhaps the most polarizing figures in American national politics. Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump appear at a tenuous moment in the world’s history as economies struggle, infrastructure collapses, nations crumble, and the political systems, at least in the US and Europe, are viewed with disdain by a majority of citizens. 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
According to Counterpunch (November 16, 2007) editors Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair: “The desire for secrecy is one of Mrs. Clinton’s enduring and damaging traits . . . Befitting a Midwestern Methodist with a bullying father, repression has always been one of Mrs. Clinton’s most prominent characteristics. Hers has been the instinct to conceal, to deny, to refuse to admit any mistake. Mickey Kantor, the Los Angeles lawyer who worked on the 1992 [presidential] campaign, said that Hillary adamantly refused to admit to any mistakes. Since Vietnam, there’s never been a war that Mrs. Clinton didn’t like. She argued passionately in the White House for the NATO bombing of Belgrade. Five days after September 11, 2001, she was calling for a broad war on terror . . .”I’ll stand behind [George W.] Bush for a long time to come,” Senator Clinton promised, and she was as good as her word, voting for the Patriot Act and the wide-ranging authorization to use military force against Afghanistan . . . Of course she supported without reservation the attack on Afghanistan and, as the propaganda buildup toward the onslaught on Iraq got underway, she didn’t even bother to walk down the hall to read the national intelligence estimate on Iraq before the war.” Continue reading
The New York Times and East Coast Chicken Littles would have you believe that U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump is some sort of fascist from the swamp. He is anything but. According to Forbes Magazine, his worth is estimated to be approximately $4.5 billion—the fruit of his efforts in the New York real estate industry and the U.S. mainstream media. 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
How involved is the US national security machinery in Ukraine? The answer to that question is contained in a sampling of information available from the US Embassy in Ukraine and the Pentagon’s contract awards announcements. Other publications (links provided below) have also been consulted. Continue reading
A typical United States history text used by American public and private high schools (grades 9-12) has this to say about President Richard Nixon’s resignation: “Main Idea: President Richard Nixon’s involvement in the Watergate scandal forced him to resign from office. The Watergate scandal raised questions of public trust that still affect how the public and media skeptically view politicians.”—The Americans, McDougal and Littell, 2005. Continue reading
According to Carol Greenwald writing at American Thinker on 27 August 2015, Washington Post writer “[Carol] Morello does not mention how incredible it was that a few people, mostly a woman named Marsha Halteman from New Orleans, in one week could get 190 flag officers to sign a public letter stating that “the JCPOA [Iran Deal] would threaten the national security and vital interests of the United States and, therefore, should be disapproved by the Congress.” Continue reading
When did my genes and “I” become guilty of thinking that they were white? Continue reading
The US Army Human Terrain System (HTS) will become a “shining star, you’ll see” said a music critic, part-time divinity professor, retired military officer, and former HTS contractor. He was incensed that with the alleged demise of the US Army program, it having been murdered, killed and defeated, the HTS suddenly has new life thanks to “those pro-HTS intellectuals authorized, by somebody higher up in their organizations to take up the HTS cause. Continue reading
The US defense secretary, Ashton Carter, is the face of all that is wrong in Washington, DC. But he is “Mr. Right” for the varied capital interests and ideologies he represents: the fusion of neoliberalism and neoconservatism, state-sponsored corporate welfare, the revolving door, opportunism and greed, the “free market,” and a science and technology that is first and foremost in the service of weapons and war. Continue reading
It is easy to severely criticize the state of many things in the United States of America: the US president and Congress bowing to the demands of the national security community to exempt their $1 trillion (US) spending from sequestration mandates. The demise of Detroit, Michigan, and another round of water shut-offs scheduled for April that will affect nearly 100,000 residents (the Detroit bankruptcy case judge’s ruled that residents have no inherent right to clean water). The geopolitical brinkmanship with Russia and China that, if pushed too far, could lead to World War III. The odious double standards applied to “leakers” of classified military and intelligence information js repulsive: former US Army general and CIA director David Petraeus gets no jail time for passing off military secrets to his lover Paula Broadwell, yet former CIA analyst John Kiriakou gets two years in federal prison. Continue reading
RSS
The United States: A nation on suicide watch
Posted on September 11, 2019 by John Stanton
“The Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan required major shifts in national resources from civilian to military purposes and contributed to the growth of the budget deficit and public debt. Through FY 2018, the direct costs of the wars will have totaled more than $1.9 trillion, according to US Government figures. Pollution is a serious issue. The United States (US) is a “large emitter of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels; deals with water pollution from runoff of pesticides and fertilizers; has limited natural freshwater resources in much of the western part of the country that require careful management. Deforestation; mining; desertification; species conservation; and invasive species (the Hawaiian Islands are particularly vulnerable) are widespread. Long-term problems for the US include stagnation of wages for lower-income families, inadequate investment in deteriorating infrastructure, rapidly rising medical and pension costs of an aging population, energy shortages, and sizable current account and budget deficits.” Continue reading →