Category Archives: Commentary

Lin Yutang wrote, “What is patriotism but the love of the food one ate as a child?” Born in Fujian, Lin also lived in the U.S., France, Germany, Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan, where he’s buried. Whatever attachment Lin had to his childhood stews, fish balls, snails, clams and tofu, it didn’t prevent this remarkable author and inventor of the first Chinese typewriter from globetrotting to improve his mind then, finally, to save his own ass, as his favored Kuomintang and got routed by bad-assed Mao. Continue reading →

Innumerable Hollywood films begin with or contain scenes that can be roughly described as follows: family of settlers (whether pastorally or agriculturally engaged) are found dead, including women and children of course. Indications of “native” activity, i.e., arrows are found either in the corpses or in various places on the set. Often flames or smouldering ruins appear. Then someone with authority enters the scene to summarise the events making it clear that “Indians” have attacked and murdered an innocent settler family. This inevitably leads either to police, military and or vigilante retribution. Continue reading →

No matter what the politicians say about how great America is and how we, as a people, will always triumph, the fact is that the nation seems to be imploding. Continue reading →

Norman Finkelstein, the fiery American critic of Israel, was interviewed recently by Paul Jay on The Real News Network. Finkelstein related how he had been a Maoist in his youth and had been devastated by the exposure and downfall of the Gang of Four in 1976 in China. “It came out there was just an awful lot of corruption. The people who we thought were absolutely selfless were very self-absorbed. And it was clear. The overthrow of the Gang of Four had huge popular support.” Continue reading →

America’s states, fifty stars orderly represented over a background of blue in our flag, may be said to be united . . . but the folks who populate them certainly are not. We may claim to be the United States of America, but rest assured that we are definitely not the United People of America; never have been, and likely never will be, no matter what the pledge of allegiance might deceitfully say, or the colorful fantasy-pens we utilize in writing our history . . . or the misinformation in which we, fat-dumb-and-happy, live. Continue reading →

Barrett Brown, Kathy Kelly, and Bonny Mahoney are the kind of people who are imprisoned in America. It is not the perjurers and liars, the torturers, war criminals and mass murderers. It is the good people who peacefully protest the crimes of those who control the US government and its policies. Continue reading →

The Bureau of Prisons contacted me today (January 22), assigning me a prison number and a new address: for the next 90 days, beginning tomorrow, I’ll live at FMC Lexington, in the satellite prison camp for women, adjacent to Lexington’s federal medical center for men. Very early tomorrow morning, Buddy Bell, Cassandra Dixon, and Paco and Silver, two house guests whom we first met in protests on South Korea’s Jeju Island, will travel with me to Kentucky and deliver me to the satellite women’s prison outside the Federal Medical Center for men. Continue reading →

The Espionage Act was a nearly 100-year-old historic relic until Barack Obama came to office. The legislation was used by his predecessors in only three whistle-blower prosecutions after it was enacted in 1917. Obama has used it in seven prosecutions in six years in office and never for actual instances of espionage. Continue reading →

Remember Arseniy Yatsenuk? The Ukrainian whom US State Department officials adopted as one of their own in early 2014 and guided into the position of prime minister so he could lead the Ukrainian Forces of Good against Russia in the new Cold War? Continue reading →

François Hollande is not a popular president. No matter how hard the ‘socialist’ leader tries to impress, there never seems to be a no solid constituency that backs him. He attempted to mask his initial lack of experience in foreign affairs with a war in Mali, after his country enthusiastically took on Libya. While he succeeded at launching wars, he failed at managing their consequences as the latest attacks in Paris have demonstrated. Continue reading →

Much of the buildup to President Obama’s State of the Union address made it sound as if he were going to read chapter and verse from French economist Thomas Piketty’s book, Capital in the 21st Century—you know, last year’s 700-plus page best seller, the one that was unexpectedly all the rage as it argued that vast economic inequality is as much about wealth (what’s owned) as it is about income (what’s earned). That one. Continue reading →

Okay, Barack, from one Brooklyn guy to one Chicago guy, let’s talk straight and pull no punches. I don’t care how nice of a guy you want to be, or how intelligent and articulate . . . ya blew it, kiddo! Just like with your predecessors, especially Clinton and Junior Bush, you simply are a stooge of the wizards who control this empire. Continue reading →

We all know they’re here. Everyone tries to deny it: to pretend they don’t exist. But they’re out in plain sight all the time and every once in a while remind us of they’re existence. We try to ignore them. Sometimes we even try to pretend they’re not alien at all. We incorporate parts of their culture into our own. But only parts of it. We may listen and sing along with their music. Heck, heard but not seen is nearly acceptable when it comes to this unwanted presence. But we wouldn’t invite them say to a sit-down dinner inside our homes. Continue reading →

Who is Chris Kyle? Well, if you’re a movie fan, Chris Kyle is the man whose life and experiences are used for the film, “American Sniper.” He is the man that Clint Eastwood chose to be the hero of his film. Continue reading →

The British political establishment is in a state of panic. A poll revealed last week that “a quarter of Jews in Britain have considered leaving the country in the last two years and well over half (58%) feel they have no long term future in Europe.” This could be a potential disaster for British political parties. Eighty per cent of the Tories are members of the pro Israeli lobby, The Conservative Friends Of Israel (CFI), and a similar percentage of Labour and Libdem MPs have vowed their allegiance to Israel through their respective Jewish Lobby groups. The Jews are clearly a vital source of funding for British politicians. In fact, it has become hard to imagine what British politics would look like without Jewish Lobby’s money. Though the vast majority of British MPs are friends of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, it has not been established how many of our MPs are friendly with Manchester and Hartlepool. Continue reading →

As unlikely a pair as Pope Francis and Charlie Hebdo founder have weighed in on the flagrant incitement of believers of a major religion with the intent of causing violence. On his way to the Philippines, the Pope said, “You cannot provoke. You cannot insult the faith of others. You cannot make fun of the faith of others.” He also said that if someone insulted his mother, he “could expect a punch” in return. Continue reading →

When a suicide bomber blows away the lives of students and other civilians in an Israeli café, my eyes fill with tears. When Israeli Apache helicopters blast away the lives of innocent Palestinians, more tears flow. Terrorism has no parameters. It sucks no matter who does the killing and who does the dying. Continue reading →

Jeffrey Epstein is currently infamous for his conviction for soliciting a fourteen-year-old girl for prostitution and for allegedly orchestrating underage “sex slave” orgies at his private Virgin Island mansion, where he purportedly pimped out underage girls to elite political figures such as Prince Andrew, Alan Dershowitz, and probably Bill Clinton as well (he also traveled to Thailand in 2001 with Prince Andrew, probably to indulge in the country’s rampant child sex trade). Continue reading →

Despite all the reporting and commentary on the terrorist attacks on the Paris offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, political pundits and mainstream media have failed to shed any light on some of the submerged factors that might have provoked those heinous attacks. Indeed, the simplistic and politically expedient explanations such as “incompatibility” of Islam with the modern world or “good vs. evil” have shed more heat than light on the issue. Continue reading →

If 2014 was the year of militarized police, armored tanks, and stop-and-frisk searches, 2015 may well be the year of technologized police, surveillance blimps and scan-and-frisk searches. Continue reading →

Here is a video of the execution of Amedy Coulibaly. It is a German website with the actual live French video of the police assault on the deli. There are three videos. The first one repeatedly shows Coulibaly with tied hands containing no weapons shot down and killed when he could easily have been captured. It is as if the order was to make sure that there is no live suspect whose story might have to be explained away. The first video also repeatedly shows the execution in slow motion. Commentary in French accompanies the video. Continue reading →

If the stand-up-for-freedom by paying to see a lousy film about Korea wasn’t enough to send you to the vomitorium, the murders in Paris should have done the job. The global 1% is moving us towards more bloody warfare as salvation for capital while growing sectors of the 99% wonder if we can afford to tolerate this madness much longer and hope to survive as a race. Continue reading →

Oscar season may be upon us, when movies, actors, actresses, directors, etc. get recognized for their achievements, but never let it be said that our hardworking civil servants, who do so much to Keep Us Safe, go unnoticed. Continue reading →

Readers, with the exception of neoconservative William Kristol, appreciated the questions I raised about the Charlie Hebdo affair. Europeans sent me videos and news reports from Europe. Continue reading →

Even had I not had the flu, I would not have attended or participated in the mass psychosis billed as “Je Suis Charlie” following the murder of journalists, cops, and deli patrons last week in Paris. But I did watch a lot of the live tv coverage of these strange events, and a few images keep coming back to mind. Continue reading →

I read several articles that Stanford researchers have found a cure or “potential treatment” for Alzheimer’s. And, yes, there’s the possibility of reversing the mind-robbing disease. Continue reading →

Don’t kill white people. After all is said and done, the Charlie Hebdo outrage, the hashtags, and the million person marches amount to that simple but very powerful dictum. In the eyes of the governments that do most of the killing on the planet and the corporate media who act as their scribes, there is nothing worse than targeting even a handful of white people for death. Continue reading →

Washington runs things in Ukraine. It newest colony. Kiev’s illegitimate puppet government serves its interests. Ruthlessly exploiting its people in the process. Continue reading →

I was sitting in the Friendly Lounge, one block from my Philly apartment. Next to me was a 59-year-old man, Robert. Seeing my wedding band, he confided, “You’re lucky to have somebody to go home to. I always had a lover, a boyfriend, but I haven’t had anybody in ten years. And it’s not the,” and he suddenly dipped his head down near my crotch, “but the support, you know. I can’t just go home and say to somebody, ‘Bitch, I love you!’” Continue reading →