As you know, I’m a great admirer of political cartoonist Ted Rall. I’ve done many posts on him and his brilliant, scathing political cartoons (click the tag “Ted Rall”). Along with Mr. Fish, he’s one of the most provocative and truthful cartoonists out there. Continue reading
In a recent interview with Jon Stewart, Robert Reich made some interesting points when describing the economic state of our country. Continue reading
He was born and raised in a little town just outside of Licata, Sicily. By the time he was 18, the young man was accepted into university in Tunisia, a far more scholastically advanced place than the Sicily of the early 1900s. Upon graduating, he decided to do what many young Italians chose to do, and he immigrated to the United States. Continue reading
One of the main problems with the Affordable Care Act web site began with the Reagan administration, which has adversely affected government performance since then. At that time, the management habit of concentrating on your core capabilities and contracting out other processes was applied to government. Government, it was decided, should contract out such non-core capabilities as logistics, food services and information technology (IT). Continue reading
Liberal activists and academics are bent on worsening their nation’s woes. They claim to be guardians of the January 2011 revolution’s principles that had atop its list “freedom.” Continue reading
Imagine a robot hovering overhead as you go about your day, driving to and from work, heading to the grocery store, or stopping by a friend’s house. The robot records your every movement with a surveillance camera and streams the information to a government command center. Whether you make a wrong move, or appear to be doing something suspicious, even if you don’t do anything suspicious, the information of your whereabouts, including what stores and offices you visit, what political rallies you attend, and what people you meet will be recorded, saved and easily accessed at a later date. Continue reading
From the picture window of our family’s eighth floor apartment, at the intersection of 23rd Street and Avenue C, we have a view of the inhuman currents of the East River and the dehumanizing, vehicular currents of the FDR expressway. The tenor of the river is timeless while the FDR’s voice is mindlessly urgent . . . an addict on a dope run—evincing the urgency of an errand undertaken to relieve distress but trajectory hurtles towards annihilation. Continue reading
The latest punishment of Gaza may seem like another familiar plot to humiliate the strip to the satisfaction of Israel, Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestinian Authority, and the military-controlled Egyptian government. But something far more sinister is brewing. Continue reading
The news of Tarun Tejpal, the ex-editor-in-chief of Tehelka magazine, being accused of sexually assaulting a younger journalist was followed by something as sensational if not more, when the parents of the 14-year-old Aarushi Talwar were convicted and sentenced to life for murdering their daughter, apparently caught in an “objectionable” position with the male servant. I was amazed at how familiar names and faces in the media took sides as they continue to do in order not to seem inconsistent in their foolishness and mediocrity. Continue reading
Scanning the crowds of those in attendance at various John F. Kennedy assassination commemoration venues in Dallas it became apparent that those who continue to question the conclusions of the Warren Commission that a lone deranged gunman named Lee Harvey Oswald shot to death the President of the United States in broad daylight on a crowded Dallas street can rightfully be called “Cynical Baby Boomers” or CBBs. Continue reading
“Control oil and you control nations,” said US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in the 1970s. “Control food and you control the people.” Continue reading
A few weeks ago I caught wind of another nifty whiz-bang airport innovation guaranteed to make your journey even more onerous than it already is. And of course, it’s brought to you by our trusty friends at the TSA. Continue reading
Since the beginning of recorded history, mankind has struggled with the destructive forces of nature. Continue reading
Indeed, US President Barak Obama has gone a long way to earn his Nobel Peace Prize, which was prospectively and in advance awarded in 2009 to the 44th president of the United States while less than eight months in office. Continue reading
Today marks the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and other than the improbable official version, a.k.a. the Warren Commission Report, the questions of who killed him and why still remain. Continue reading
Friday afternoon in my upstate New York hometown, around 2 pm. I was a drummer in the junior high school band and after lunch in the cafeteria went to a rehearsal of the entire percussion section. A couple of bare light bulbs illuminated the stage; the rest of the auditorium was pitch black. Our teacher tapped his baton in time against the top of a music stand as we loudly banged away, reading the sheet music in front of us, the loud noise bouncing around the empty hall. Continue reading
The year was 1961. I was fourteen years old, the only child of blue-collar workers living in Peoria, Illinois. Lacking any great understanding of the winds of change that were blowing through our nation and the world, I sat transfixed in front of our small black-and-white television as John F. Kennedy delivered his inaugural address as the nation’s 35th president. The sound might have crackled and the picture wavered, but Kennedy’s message came through loud and clear. It was a message of hope, challenge and faith to an America that could be a beacon of freedom to the rest of the world. Continue reading
The upbeat song identified with President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, “Happy Days Are Here Again,” wafted across the city’s waters at the recent dedication of the stunning F.D.R. memorial honoring his vision of a world founded on four essential freedoms, articulated during World War II. A bell tolled as the four were cited—freedom of speech and worship and freedom from want and fear—at the new four-acre park gleaming at the southern tip of Roosevelt Island. Continue reading
Iran has never invaded or occupied another nation, it hasn’t killed civilians with drones, it never had any colonies, nor did it enslave millions of people or keep a huge portion of its population behind bars. Its political system is run by a class of conservative clerics and can’t be called democratic in the classic sense. Then again, the same can be said for countries who only choose leadership from among those given a stamp of approval by the wealthiest 1%. Despite these attributes, Iran is demonized by forces in the West who want that nation to exist only as a vassal state. Continue reading
While Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is “the world’s most influential Jew,” Bernard Henri Levy is number 45, according to an article published in the Israeli right-wing newspaper the Jerusalem Post, on May 21, 2010. Continue reading
Rule by the people participating on an equal footing via their elected representatives is a worthy concept but, in practice, it is severely flawed—even within so-called democratic nations whose people have been indoctrinated to believe it is the gold standard in governance. Continue reading
I’ve been a guest in Colorado Springs, Colorado, following a weeklong retreat with Colorado College students who are part of a course focused on nonviolence. In last weekend’s Colorado Springs Gazette, there was an article in the Military Life section about an international Skype phone call between U.S. soldiers in Kandahar, Afghanistan, and sixth grade girls at a private school in Maryland. (“Carson Soldiers Chat With Friends” November 17, 2013 F4) Continue reading
The ceaseless brouhaha over the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. Obamacare, and President Barack Obama’s “sinking” approval ratings is comparable to a parent telling a child he must do something and when the child does, he is ridiculed and punished for doing it. Continue reading
Saturday night, I saw Bob Schieffer of CBS News, playing the role of senior uncle of US culture with tears in his eyes, tell us how much it affected him to see John F. Kennedy’s little boy “in his little boy suit” salute his father at his funeral. The CBS program also featured cameo shots of the likes of Walter Cronkite, Dan Rather and Jim Lehrer of PBS making pronouncements. Continue reading
It may be that the battered Muslim Brotherhood (MB) has finally concluded, “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em,” but is it too late? The day before the ousted President Muhammad Mursi appeared on the front page of the Egyptian Arabic daily Al-Masry Al-Youm in a white prison jumpsuit grinning fatuously, the MB-led Pro-Mursi Alliance has proposed “serious dialogue” toward ending the crisis based on these core premises: An end to the military takeover, constitutional legitimacy, retribution for those who’ve lost their lives, the return to air of Brotherhood satellite channels—and the right to peaceful protest. Continue reading
Why does a police department which hasn’t had an officer killed in the line of duty in over 125 years in a town of less than 20,000 people need tactical military vests like those used by soldiers in Afghanistan? For that matter, why does a police department in a city of 35,000 people need a military-grade helicopter? And what possible use could police at Ohio State University have for acquiring a heavily-armored vehicle intended to withstand IED blasts? Continue reading
NEW YORK—Given all the brouhaha over reforming stop-and-frisk, a first-of-its kind analysis, a report from the New York Attorney General’s office found that just 1.5 percent of stop-and-frisk arrests resulted in a jail or prison sentence longer than 30 days. Continue reading
I read that six thousand people have been killed by sectarian violence so far this year in Iraq, surely a good rough measure of what America’s invasion achieved there. In Afghanistan, America’s chosen man publically disagrees with America’s ideas of what withdrawal means, how many occupying American forces should remain, and the role the Taleban should play. Killing remains a daily occurrence, including regular instances of American special forces murdering civilians, drugs flow freely through the country and out to the world, and most women still wear the burka. Libya is reduced to rag tag bands engaged in fighting like rival gangs of bandits. Syria writhes in agony as the victim of an artificially-induced civil war with even the use of nerve gas on civilians by America’s proxy fighters winked at and lied about. Continue reading
Want some health care? Need a place to live? Are you hungry? Need a gun? A politician? A drone missile? All those and more, much, much more, are available all day and all night at the marketplace and you don’t even have to leave your home to go downtown or to the mall to do your shopping. It’s all there for your consuming convenience on your computer, iPod, smart phone, dumb phone or other products that can be used to charge purchases to your plastic for anything and everything, anytime all the time. Nice? Continue reading
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010, aka the Affordable Care Act, often referred to as “Obamacare” in derisive, scurrilous tones, is a complex piece of legislation having significant consequences for millions of people. Continue reading
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Netanyahu calls a nuclear pact with Iran “a terrible mistake”
Posted on December 5, 2013 by Jerry Mazza
Once more, on Nov. 24, 2013, Israeli PM Benjamin Bibi Netanyahu made the terrible mistake of mouthing Israel’s deep-rooted hypocrisy on nuclear weapons. I’m surprised the seasoned investigative journalist Pepe Escobar didn’t mention it. So I thought I’d slip into this dialogue and fill in a few facts in Escobar’s otherwise excellent interview. Continue reading →