During one week in late September, U.S.-led forces killed at least 70 civilians in two incidents in Afghanistan. A U.S. drone strike on September 19 killed at least 30 farmers harvesting pine nuts in Nangarhar province. Then on September 23, at least 40 civilians, including women and children, were reported killed in a combined U.S.-Afghan attack on a village in Taliban-controlled territory in southern Helmand province. Continue reading
Think twice before you call the cops to carry out a welfare check on a loved one. Continue reading
Tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran are escalating to new heights, drawing the United States into a confrontation with the Islamic Republic after a sophisticated attack targeted Saudi Arabia’s Aramco oil facility—the largest oil processing facility in the world—knocking out half of the country’s oil capacity, or more than 5 million barrels a day, and leaving the oil fields in flames. Continue reading
On orders from Washington, Julian Assange is being slowly killed—by UK and US dark forces in cahoots with each other. Continue reading
On 17 January 1961, US President Dwight Eisenhower famously introduced the phrase “military-industrial complex”, referring to what he said might become a threat to American democracy—a takeover of the US government by a “complex,” composed of generals and other national-security brass on the one side, and corporations such as Lockheed and their financiers, on the other. That warning turned out to have been prophetic. Continue reading
This is how freedom dies. Continue reading
The global rise of white nationalist violence proves that the threat of fascism is not just about one community—it threatens all communities: white people, black people, Muslims, Jews, and beyond. Continue reading
Among the frontrunners in the Democratic Party presidential primary, Senators Warren and Sanders not only have the most progressive domestic agenda, but also the most anti-war, pro-diplomacy foreign policy agenda. The sharpest distinction between them is that Sanders has voted against over 80% of recent record military spending bills in the Senate, while Warren has voted for two thirds of them. Continue reading
Israeli Jewish settlers are on a rampage in the occupied Palestinian West Bank. While settler violence is part of everyday routine in Palestine, the violence of recent weeks is directly linked to the general elections in Israel, scheduled to be held on September 17. Continue reading
The American criminal justice system has long been a sharp painful thorn in the nation’s consciousness as if to remind us of a major flaw in the American way of life. Mostly, that awareness has focused on the inequities of prosecution and sentencing between the privileged upper-class elites, the have-nots of the blue collar underclass and our nation’s minorities. Continue reading
The main problem with the US economy is that globalism has been deconstructing it. The offshoring of US jobs has reduced US manufacturing and industrial capability and associated innovation, research, development, supply chains, consumer purchasing power, and tax base of state and local governments. Corporations have increased short-term profits at the expense of these long-term costs. In effect, the US economy is being moved out of the First World into the Third World. Continue reading
When phrases such as “the deep state” and “conspiracy theory” become staples of both the corporate mainstream media and the alternative press, we know the realities behind these phrases have outlasted their usefulness for the ruling elites that control the United States and for their critics, each of whom uses them refutably or corroboratively. These phrases are bandied about so often that they have become hackneyed and inane. Continue reading
August 21 marks the sixtieth anniversary of Hawaiian statehood. Many Americans know little more than package tours and “Pearl Harbor” about the fiftieth state, and few realize that when the U.S. naval base was attacked by the Japanese, it was not at the time U.S. territory. Even fewer have any idea how Hawaii came to have an important American naval base capable of triggering a world war. James Baldwin called our perpetual “ignorance” of vital historical matters American “innocence,” the inability to face or even recognize ugly facts about ourselves. In relation to Hawaii such innocence continues to render us oblivious of the imperial power grab that robbed the islands of their national independence 126 years ago. Continue reading
Writing under the title of “If the El Paso shooter had been Muslim,” Moustafa Bayoumi stated the obvious. Continue reading
If you wanted to see international politics in action, where would you go? Maybe the UN headquarters in New York to see diplomats debating resolutions of global import? Or drop in on one of the world’s many financial hubs, where trading shapes international markets and determines the success or failure of nations. But you probably wouldn’t visit a toilet in a Glasgow pub, would you? Continue reading
We’ve been down this road many times before. Continue reading
Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress claim that America spends too much on things like food stamps, welfare, and foreign aid. Continue reading
The FCC, the telecoms and cooperating MSM continue their resolute PR campaign to sell 5G to an unsuspecting American public as if the technology is up and running at effortless full capacity. The truth is that even as ‘spotty’ coverage is being established in large urban markets, the telecoms are well aware that there are fundamental uncertainties yet to be addressed which may take years before widespread distribution can be accomplished. Continue reading
Despite the finger-pointing and outcries of dismay from those who are watching the government discard the rule of law at every turn, the question is not whether Donald Trump is the new Adolf Hitler but whether the American Police State is the new Third Reich. Continue reading
Most often when White House officials step down, they were sacked, usually allowed to submit a resignation letter—likely the fate of former Senator/Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Dan Coats. Continue reading
Historically, liberalism started with John Locke, whose philosophy is here superbly summarized, explained, and referenced to its sources, as I shall place in quotes from that article. Continue reading
Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law and the person Trump appointed to broker a Middle East peace agreement recently called Palestinians “hysterical and stupid.” That is particularly galling language coming from a notorious New Jersey, New York, and Maryland slumlord and the son of a federally convicted criminal. Kushner’s father and real estate mogul, Charles Kushner, spent fourteen months in prison after being convicted of tax fraud and witness tampering, among other crimes. Jared Kushner believes his father was wrongly convicted and imprisoned. But the wunderkind son-in-law of Trump has no problem in maintaining the status quo in the Middle East, one that has led to the large-scale incarceration of the people of the Gaza Strip in virtual desert ghetto. Continue reading
Tuesday, Hong Kong’s Chinese anointed leader of the Legislative Council, Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-Ngor, assured protesters that the controversial extradition bill was ” dead.” Previously she had assured the protesters that the same bill was “suspended.” The protesters ain’t buying it. Continue reading
Spies, femmes fatales, deadly plots, killings, bombs, knives, guns, and an array of unique murderous weaponry that would make James Bond and “Q” envious. All this, combined with dozens of unapologetic and brutal cloak and dagger assassinations in foreign locales worldwide? Sounds like the makings of a great spy thriller. Continue reading
One of the obvious signs of fascism is the co-option by a despot of the legal system, which includes law enforcement and the judiciary. The Weimar Republic of Germany enjoyed a robust and relatively fair legal system prior to the rise of the Nazis. After Adolf Hitler came to power, the German legal system was steadily replaced by one based on the Führerprinzip, which deemed that Hitler was above the law. German citizens who were designated by the Nazis as being outside the German community (Volksgemeinschaft) were not afforded any legal rights under the Third Reich. Continue reading
Please spare me the media hysterics and the outrage and the hypocritical double standards of those whose moral conscience appears to be largely dictated by their political loyalties. Continue reading
Half of the responders to an innovative new survey of 3,000 Americans conducted by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and the British research firm YouGov reported that they would support a nuclear strike against North Korea if it tested a long-range missile capable of reaching the continental United States. A third said they’d actually prefer such a strike over other hypothetical responses. Continue reading
How do you persuade a populace to embrace totalitarianism, that goose-stepping form of tyranny in which the government has all of the power and “we the people” have none? Continue reading
Tread cautiously: the fiction of George Orwell has become an operation manual for the omnipresent, modern-day surveillance state. Continue reading
George Bernard Shaw once wrote, “We are more gullible and superstitious today than we were in the Middle Ages, and an example of modern credulity is the widespread belief that the Earth is round. The average man can advance not a single reason for thinking that the Earth is round. He merely swallows this theory because there is something about it that appeals to the twentieth century mentality.” Continue reading
U.S. and allied intelligence agencies are concerned that Donald Trump and his closest White House advisers, including his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, have and are revealing sensitive diplomatic and intelligence information gleaned by U.S. intelligence personnel from foreign sources to hostile parties. Continue reading
Hardly a week goes by without another story in the media covering a family somewhere in America dealing with an outrageous medical bill. Yet, in more and more cases, these families don’t have junk insurance, or lack coverage altogether. Indeed, they have what Americans would consider decent coverage, either through their employer or an Affordable Care Act marketplace. They also followed, or so they thought, the rules of their insurance policy requiring them to seek care inside their provider network. Yet, they are slapped with surprise bills, and often threatened by bankruptcy. Continue reading
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