History has always treated harshly those tyrants and strongmen who have been gratuitously violent toward their subjects and citizens and believed in purposely creating misery for their charge. Donald John Trump, the third impeached president of the United States, decided to clear peaceful protesters gathered a full block from the White House, so he could have his photograph taken standing in front of a church. It was not any church, but St. John’s Episcopal Church, dubbed the “Church of the Presidents,” owing to the several chief executives who have worshiped there over the decades. Continue reading →
Ben Uliel and the murder of the Dawabsheh family
Israeli media and Zionist apologists everywhere are busy whitewashing Israel’s globally-tattered image using the rare indictment of an Israeli terrorist, Amiram Ben Uliel, who was recently convicted for murdering the Palestinian Dawabsheh family, including an 18-month-old toddler in the town of Duma, south of Nablus. Continue reading →
Across the globe, as scientists and doctors are working a breakneck speed to develop safe vaccines and therapies for the COVID-19 virus, modern-day magicians and voodoo purveyors are pushing all forms of quackery to swindle and sway an unsuspecting public. The most notorious wizard of woo is Donald Trump, who, on February 28, said of COVID-19, “It’s going to disappear. One day, it’s like a miracle, it will disappear.” Continue reading →
You have no rights. Continue reading →
Italian master thinker Giorgio Agamben has been on the—controversial—forefront examining what new paradigm may be emerging out of our current pandemic distress. Continue reading →
The post-COVID international geopolitical structure may resemble that which followed the most lethal pandemic that affected the world—the highly contagious Black Death of the 14th century. The bubonic plague killed between 75 and 200 million people in Asia, Europe, and North Africa. It is believed the bubonic/pneumonic plague was carried by black rat flea parasites that travelled to Europe and the Middle East first via the Silk Road from China and then on Genoese merchant ships sailing from Crimea. The fleas spread from their rodent hosts to humans. An eerie connection to COVID-19 is that among the first victims of the Black Death were 80 percent of the population of Hubei province, including the town of Wuchang, present-day Wuhan. Continue reading →
The power of endlessly repeated propaganda gets most people to believe almost anything—especially when pounded into the public consciousness by press agent establishment media. Continue reading →
WASHINGTON—Call it class conflict: The fight over the next economic stimulus bill will pit the representatives of the rich against the representatives of the rest of us. Continue reading →
We are fast becoming a nation—nay, a world—of book burners. Continue reading →
Author David Foster Wallace once said that America is, “One enormous engine and temple of self-gratification and self-advancement.” The spectacle of American consumerism comes galloping to mind. But the pageant of gluttony with which we sate ourselves on a weekly basis is a pale reflection, at least in its intensity, of American foreign policy. Continue reading →
While much of the corporate press has blamed Russia and China for the sudden failure of multiple longstanding nuclear treaties, experts put the blame on squarely on the Trump administration.
After pulling out of multiple international treaties designed to limit the global threat of atomic weapons, the Trump administration is now strongly indicating that it will also let the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) expire in February 2021. START is commonly described as “the last remaining arms control agreement constraining the arsenals of the two major nuclear weapons powers,” the United States and Russia. Continue reading →
How will the coronavirus transform the relationship between state and market? A look at oil, food, and finance.
You pay little attention to the systems of your body—circulatory, digestive, pulmonary—unless something goes wrong. Continue reading →
Despite all appearances to the contrary, martial law has not been declared in America. Continue reading →
Shortly after an agreement to form a “national emergency government” in Israel, leader of the Blue and White (Kahol Lavan) party, Benny Gantz, tweeted triumphantly that ‘democracy’ in Israel has been ‘safeguarded’. Continue reading →
WASHINGTON—Even as the coronavirus pandemic still rages through the U.S., the debate over the shape of society and the economy, post-virus, is heating up. Continue reading →
In today’s corporate pay environment, even a global pandemic can’t deny chief execs their windfalls
Sometimes calendars can be cruel. A regularly reoccurring event can suddenly reoccur at a most inopportune moment. Just ask Ronald Rittenmeyer, the chief executive of Tenet Healthcare, a for-profit colossus that runs 65 hospitals and over 500 smaller care centers across the country. Continue reading →
In the age of COVID-19, it’s even more obvious than it’s been for at least a couple of decades that capitalism is entering a long, drawn-out period of unprecedented global crisis. The Great Depression and World War II will likely, in retrospect, seem rather minor—and temporally condensed—compared to the many decades of ecological, economic, social, and political crises humanity is embarking on now. In fact, it’s probable that we’re in the early stages of the protracted collapse of a civilization, which is to say of a particular set of economic relations underpinning certain social, political, and cultural relations. One can predict that the mass popular resistance, worldwide, engendered by cascading crises will gradually transform a decrepit ancien régime, although in what direction it is too early to tell. But left-wing resistance is already spreading and even gaining the glimmers of momentum in certain regions of the world, including—despite the ending of Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign—the reactionary United States. Over decades, the international left will grow in strength, even as the right, in all likelihood, does as well. Continue reading →
Founded in 2017, Cooperation Humboldt was already incubating worker cooperatives, administering food sovereignty programs, advocating for public banking and participatory budgeting, and exploring housing cooperatives, an arts hub, and eco-villages—all before the pandemic arrived in the U.S.
The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed all of the inconvenient truths about life in the United States. It is no longer possible to hide the disconnect between myths of a great and advanced society with scenes of long lines for food pantries, millions of workers suddenly unemployed and a political system that gives a one-time maximum payment of $1,200 in a time of severe economic crisis. The already marginalized are at greatest risk of death as black and brown people constitute the majority of coronavirus victims in large cities like New York, Detroit and Milwaukee. Continue reading →
Little by little, Americans are understanding just how badly our government has let us down by its belated and disastrous response to the Covid-19 pandemic, and how thousands more people are dying as a result. But there are two other crises we face that our government is totally unprepared for and incapable of dealing with: the climate crisis and the danger of nuclear war. Continue reading →
At least 70 countries have signed on to the March 23 call by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres for a worldwide ceasefire during the Covid-19 pandemic. Like non-essential business and spectator sports, war is a luxury that the Secretary General says we must manage without for a while. After U.S. leaders have told Americans for years that war is a necessary evil or even a solution to many of our problems, Mr. Guterres is reminding us that war is really the most non-essential evil and an indulgence that the world cannot afford—especially during a pandemic. Continue reading →
The U.S. public—and increasingly the business community—are becoming acutely aware of the rising costs and inadequacies of our current for-profit system, particularly as the current epidemic unfolds. There is no other choice but Medicare for All.
Over the past two weeks, the explosive growth of the coronavirus pandemic has forced nearly 10 million Americans to file for unemployment benefits. Along with their jobs, many have lost their health insurance, if they had any to begin with. Aside from possibly spelling disaster for these newly unemployed workers and their families, this situation puts both the public health and economic wellbeing of our country at great risk. A clearer rationale for universal, affordable, lifetime health coverage as exemplified under a Medicare For All framework would be hard to find. Continue reading →
Seven ‘pro-contagion activities’ by Trump increased the coronavirus death toll in the United States.
Trump ridiculed, then minimized, then delayed the federal government’s response to the coronavirus for weeks. Then finally he wrapped his boastful, confused ego around reality. But Trump is actively pushing programs that will endanger more Americans. Continue reading →
As U.S. COVID-19 cases double every few days and the death toll mounts, the U.S. seems to be caught in a “worst of both worlds” predicament: daily life and much of the U.S. economy is shut down, but no real progress has been achieved in its efforts to contain or eradicate the virus. Continue reading →
The United States has become the new center of the global coronavirus pandemic, with over 80,000 cases, more than China or Italy. More than a thousand Americans have already died, but this is surely only the very beginning of this deadly collision between the U.S.’s exceptionally inadequate public healthcare system and a real pandemic. Continue reading →
You can always count on the government to take advantage of a crisis, legitimate or manufactured. Continue reading →
Trump’s message to governors on lifesaving medical equipment—“get it yourselves”—is grimly appropriate in a country without national health care.
A crisis, according to self-help and leadership books, reveals much about a person’s character. The same can be said of a nation’s character. Continue reading →
COVID-19 is not just a health emergency. It has exposed the causes of inequality and suffering in this country. Continue reading →
While the world is consumed with the terrifying coronavirus pandemic, today, March 19, the Trump administration will be marking the 17th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq by ramping up the conflict there. After an Iran-aligned militia allegedly struck a U.S. base near Baghdad on March 11, the U.S. military carried out retaliatory strikes against five of the militia’s weapons factories and announced it is sending two more aircraft carriers to the region, as well as new Patriot missile systems and hundreds more troops to operate them. This contradicts the January vote of the Iraqi Parliament that called for U.S. troops to leave the country. It also goes against the sentiment of most Americans, who think the Iraq war was not worth fighting, and against the campaign promise of Donald Trump to end the endless wars. Continue reading →
The United States’ National Security Strategy is based on foundational Instruments of National Power (INP). The INP consists of Diplomacy, Informational, Military, Economic, Financial, Law Enforcement, Information. Combined with the INP’s support, they combine to protect an economy and society that has an annual Gross Domestic Product of nearly $20 trillion (USD) and a per capita income of almost $60 thousand according to the CIA’s World Factbook. In that publication, the CIA notes that “US firms are at or near the forefront in technological advances, especially in computers, pharmaceuticals, and medical, aerospace, and military equipment…” Continue reading →
The Spanish flu helped herald the collapse of the first wave of modern globalization. A century later, could the coronavirus do the same?
At a dinner party in mid-February, an architect told me that he was having a problem finishing his building projects. It was the carpets. Continue reading →
What can we do to protect America’s young people from sexual predators? Continue reading →
After several postponements, US President, Donald Trump, has finally revealed the details of his Middle East plan, dubbed ‘Deal of the Century’, in a press conference in Washington on January 28. Continue reading →
