Category Archives: Commentary

It is discouraging to note just how the United States has been taking on the attributes of a police state since 9/11. Stories of police raids on people’s homes gone wrong are frequently in the news. In one recent incident, a heavily armed SWAT team was sent to a St. Louis county home. The armed officers entered the building without knocking, shot the family dog and forced the family members to kneel on the floor where they were able to watch their pet struggle and then die. The policemen then informed the family that they were there over failure to pay the gas bill. Animal rights groups report that the shooting of pets by police has become routine in many jurisdictions because the officers claim that they feel threatened. Continue reading →

It’s hard to believe we need to have this conversation in this day and age. But if we don’t keep having it, at some point we might not be allowed to have it. Continue reading →

When you’re a small kid the grownups tell you cute little lies. Lies about things like those presents under the Christmas tree coming from a hairy obese trespasser instead of your poor overworked mother, or that babies come from a man and a woman loving each other. Continue reading →

I remember, as a young man asking how do the Republicans win elections? After all, they are clearly in the minority and, yet, seem to fare well at the voting booths. I was unaware that for some elections, more than half the eligible voters, most of them working class people who realized that it mattered not who won, did not vote. Whether Republican or Democrat, their struggles remained unchanged. Continue reading →

In September 1993, Bill Clinton came to Congress to deliver an address on health care reform. But the wrong speech was in the teleprompter. This would have been an epic calamity for the current occupant of the executive mansion but President Clinton adroitly ad-libbed and remained on topic for some ten minutes while the problem was fixed. Continue reading →

As witnessed during Donald Trump’s recent attendance at the G20 Summit in Osaka and his side trip to the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) in Korea, relying solely on the counsel of one’s daughter and son-in-law resulted in Trump displaying for the world his total ignorance of the fundamentals of international relations and geopolitics. Trump insisted on placing his daughter, Ivanka Trump, and her husband, Jared Kushner, on center stage in Osaka for the G20 conclave and at Panmunjom for a hastily arranged meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Ms. Trump acted as if she was on some sort of sorority house outing and was keen to impress her friends with inane statements that stepping into North Korea with her father was “surreal.” Continue reading →

Power corrupts. Continue reading →

I was born here in the US, grew up and went to school here. Like everyone else, I was taught that I was fortunate because I lived in the greatest, most democratic country in the world. We are such a good people that we voluntarily intercede in other countries to ensure that the people’s freedom is maintained. Continue reading →

Those who are still hoping that the new American agenda on Palestine and Israel is temporary, or reversible, should abandon this false hope. Washington’s complete adoption of Israel’s messianic, extremist policies regarding Occupied Palestine has been a long time in the making. And it is here to stay. Continue reading →

The John Hagee-led Christians United for Israel (CUFI) is a lunatic-fringe, hard-right Christian fascist religious fundamentalist group—seeking theocratic dominion in the US, allying with neocons in Washington in pursuit of its objectives. Continue reading →

It amazes me that alternative journalists would spend even a minute writing about the ongoing Democratic Party debates. They are meaningless and they are not debates. How many times do we have to go through this ridiculous charade before this can be accepted once and for all? The “debates” are farces, total theater, as are the presidential elections. They don’t matter. The political quiz show of duopoly is fixed. Discussing who has won is the height of absurdity. It legitimizes the system of oppressive duopoly. It is political “jeopardy,” and only the fixers win when they suck us into watching and opining. One expects the corporate media to do their jobs and drone on endlessly about nothing, but not those who oppose this anti-democratic sham. Continue reading →

Russiagate is a scheme meant to give Democrats popular support without doing anything the public wants them to do. Continue reading →

I keep hearing that the Democratic party has moved “left” and that some Democratic candidates may be “too far left.” Continue reading →

The entire corporate media is in cardiac arrest over “socialists” it sees running for president as Democrats. None of them are actually socialists—not one has called for the control of the means of production to be put into the hands of the people, but facts never matter much in corporate media propaganda. Their job is to keep the masses as ignorant as possible on behalf of the ruling Forces of Greed (FOG)—the plutocrats and their subordinate oligarchic corporations. Continue reading →

United States demands that Iran promise to halt pursuit of nuclear weapons and ballistic missile developments distract from the real intent of the US actions. Knowing that the Islamic Republic is not pursuing nuclear weapons and will react aggressively to sanctions, the US ploy deters other nations from establishing more friendly relations with Iran and from changing their perspectives on the causes of the Middle East crises. Continue reading →

Bush/Cheney aggression on Iraq destroyed the cradle of civilization. Along with over a dozen years of genocidal sanctions, millions of Iraqis perished. Continue reading →

It appears that the information revolution is redefining cultural aspirations at a time when mass production has become a concave-convex supernova offering everybody (in theory) the right to ‘have everything,’ regardless of the cost to fellow beings or to nature itself. Continue reading →

In mid-May, San Francisco, California became the first American city to ban use of facial recognition surveillance technology by its police department and other city agencies. That’s a wise and ethical policy, as a July 7 piece at the Washington Post proves. Continue reading →

Where is the international outcry in response to reports that asylum seekers, among them children and newborns, are being crammed tightly into detention centres on America’s southern border without basic facilities? Does American exceptionalism extend to treating 2,500 human beings worse than animals with impunity? Continue reading →

Even though we’re heading toward levels of inequality not seen since the days of the 19th century robber barons, conservatives keep lying about what’s happening and what to do about it. Here are their four biggest lies about inequality, followed by the truth. Continue reading →

For a nation that was founded by some of the most intelligent people who then lived on the planet—Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine, to name but a few—the United States has plummeted into a new age, not one of enlightenment, but one of stupidity. Continue reading →

Had Friday’s 7.1 earthquake and other ongoing seismic shocks hit less than 200 miles northwest of Ridgecrest/China Lake, ten million people in Los Angeles would now be under an apocalyptic cloud, their lives and those of the state and nation in radioactive ruin. Continue reading →

On March 12, 1938, the vaunted German army was to make its triumphant entry into Austria—the infamous Anschluss by which a compliant Austrian government surrendered to the Nazis without a shot. Continue reading →

U.S. President Donald Trump is trying to add to the U.S. census a question as to whether the respondent is a U.S. citizen, but that would be illegal for him to do, at present, and not because the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled on the matter (which it really hasn’t yet), but because the U.S. Constitution itself states in clear and unambiguous terms that he can’t do any such thing, and because no president in U.S. history has even tried to do it without having received prior explicit authorization from the Congress to do it (which is what Trump is trying to do—do it without an act of Congress)—perhaps all of them who preceded Trump had (as Trump seems not to have) read the Constitution, which makes unambiguously clear that they’re simply not allowed to add any new question, unless a law has been passed allowing him/her to. Continue reading →

It’s time to declare your independence from tyranny, America. Continue reading →

Europe’s “Scramble for Africa” began in earnest in 1881, but never ended. The attempt at dominating the continent using old and new strategies continues to define Western relationship with this rich continent. Continue reading →

There were already thousands of concentration camps in the United States before Donald Trump began his reign of terror over asylum seekers. They are called prisons. Continue reading →

There are monsters among us. Every day I read about an American “plan” to either invade some place new or to otherwise inflict pain to convince a “non-compliant” foreign government how to behave. Last week it was Iran but next week it could just as easily again be Lebanon, Syria or Venezuela. Or even Russia or China, both of whom are seen as “threats” even though American soldiers, sailors and marines sit on their borders and not vice versa. The United States is perhaps unique in the history of the world in that it sees threats everywhere even though it is not, in fact, threatened by anyone. Continue reading →

While attention has been focused on the Democratic debate – in which most contenders are pushing progressive policies – congressional Democrats have moved in the opposite direction. They caved on an emergency border supplemental appropriation that can now be used by Trump to make the border situation worse, not better. Continue reading →