What was your main take-away from this year’s State of the Union speech? That the leader of the (theoretically) most enlightened and democratic country in the world is a liar, a bigot, a blasphemer and a war criminal? Or that Rep. Pelosi might have cajones after all? Well, sure, that too. Continue reading
As Dear Leader wound up his State of the Union, and Nancy Pelosi tore its pages in quarters as she stood behind him, I had the same reaction that many colleagues out in the Twitter universe had. We all instantly recalled George W. Bush’s words at the end of Donald Trump’s inaugural address in 2017: “Well, that was some weird shit.” Continue reading
Our society has coined expressions like “philanthropist” to encourage and hail people’s charitable spirit. Continue reading
Ten of the first twelve presidents of the United States were slave holders. This is just one of many historical facts that this columnist discovered while researching and writing Prejudential: Black America and the Presidents . The newly published book is an exploration of black American history viewed through the prism of the presidency. Continue reading
I wasn’t going to comment on Trump’s lie-filled State of the Union message but the whoppers were so big—especially on the economy—that I feel compelled. Continue reading
Hardly a day passes but some new and usually disturbing light is cast on President Donald Trump, and a recent illuminating glimpse came from publication of a recording that showed yet more of his expansive bluster. The video/sound evidence of his performance showed him at a dinner table “in a private suite in his Washington hotel with a group of donors, including two men at the centre of the impeachment inquiry, talking about golf, trade, politics, and removing the United States ambassador to Ukraine.” Continue reading
On January 12, Deutsche Welle (Germany’s public broadcaster like BBC, PBS, NPR, and RT) headlined “Mayor’s resignation highlights threat to German leaders: Arnd Focke, the Social Democratic mayor of a town in Lower Saxony, was regularly threatened by nationalists. Now he has resigned. Regional officials have repeatedly faced threats across Germany.” He quit for his safety, because carrying out Germany’s compassionate policies toward the flood of mainly Middle-Eastern refugees has produced a backlash that is becoming increasingly organized and dangerous to Germany’s democracy. Continue reading
On Friday, I was in Washington, DC. No, not to witness the final throes of the Senate’s impeachment trial of Donald Trump, but to be at the memorial service for a former colleague, newsman Jim Lehrer. Continue reading
Since Harry Truman in May 1948 was first among world leaders to recognize the new Jewish state on stolen Palestinian land, the US, other Western nations, and their establishment media one-sidedly supported its ruling regimes—ignoring their high crimes of war, against humanity, and persecution of long-suffering Palestinians. Continue reading
I write a lot about government secrecy and the importance of whistleblowers, leakers and leak publishers, and for good reason: governments which can hide their wicked deeds from public accountability will do so whenever possible. It’s impossible for the public to use democracy for ensuring their government behaves in the way they desire if they aren’t allowed to be informed about what that behavior even is. Continue reading
Is Israel US property? In many ways, yes. Despite its willful ways, Israel is always pushing the envelope with the US. It has been getting away with murder since it was founded, abetted and funded by the US. But the US has failed, and Jared Kushner is the perfect envoy for this latest ultimatum, crafted by Netanyahu for his buddy Donald and his Orthodox Jewish son-in-law. Continue reading
Having just recently celebrated the annual reductive canonization of Martin Luther King by deservedly extolling his work for human solidarity but with hardly anyone quoting his criticisms of capitalism, his fellow revolutionary Malcolm’s words are still timely as well in going far beyond current identity group divisions and addressing humanity as a whole. At the time, Malcolm was played as the divisive force by racists and protectors of the system he was most critical of, and in unity with MLK about. That system they were working against—and why they were murdered—has not changed in essence since Marx analyzed it in the 19th century, but the 21st has brought it, and us, closer to disaster than at any previous point. While billions of the colonized, enslaved and class diminished have suffered over the ages, now all are threatened as never before. Continue reading
There’s so much going on in US politics right now that it’s hard to know what to write about. With all the shouting about the election, impeachment, Trump’s bogus Palestine “deal” and so many other important political issues competing for airtime with Kobe Bryant’s death and coronavirus fear porn, it feels like we’re already at white noise information saturation. Things are going to get a whole lot noisier this month when the Democratic presidential primaries (and all the establishment manipulations that will necessarily accompany them) get underway, and Julian Assange’s extradition trial begins. Continue reading
The epicenter of China’s coronavirus outbreak is widely thought to be a wet market in Wuhan. At such markets, seafood, chicken, and other conventional foodstuffs are on sale alongside live animals. You can buy more than just dogs and cats there. Local epicures also shop for more exotic fare like foxes, badgers, civets, and snakes. Continue reading
This is a make or break year for many migrants seeking to improve their families’ financial conditions. They say they’re being persecuted in their homeland, yet they fear being vilified for crossing the border. What to do? Continue reading
Negotiating with the US on major issues is an exercise in futility. Continue reading
During the George W Bush administration it was popular in conspiracy circles to speculate that events might be orchestrated which would allow the Bush family to complete a coup against the US Constitution and hold on to power indefinitely. Continue reading
Without enforced suppression of truth, there would be no way that the U.S. and its allied regimes could continue hiding the lies that were behind their invasions of Iraq in 2003, and of Syria since 2012, and their coup against Ukraine in 2014, and also of their takeovers and attempted takeovers of other countries that had refused to be bullied by the U.S. regime into complying with its obsessive anti-Russian demands—America’s subterranean continuation of the Cold War, even after Russia had quit the Cold War in 1991. Continue reading
On October 16, 1939, Hollywood director Frank Capra premiered Mr. Smith Goes to Washington before an audience of US senators and House members, Supreme Court justices, journalists and assorted other DC dignitaries. It was an all-star event, sponsored by the National Press Club and held at Constitution Hall. Some 4,000 were in attendance. Continue reading
Details of the US president’s much-touted ‘Deal of the Century’ are scheduled to be announced at the White House today to coincide with visits by Israeli political rivals Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Benny Gantz, leader of the Blue and White centrist alliance. Continue reading
We live in a fabricated reality where the visible world became nearly meaningless once the screen world became people’s “window on the world.” An electronic nothingness replaced reality as people gleefully embraced digital wraparound apparitions. These days people still move about in the physical world but live in the electronic one. The result is mass hallucination. Continue reading
In 1963, Hannah Arendt wrote a 368-page book called On Revolution—It is a hard slog to get through but basically boils down to one sentence. “It takes a village to raise a democracy.” Continue reading
Is there another country, other than the US, that assumes they have the right to send drones across the border of a sovereign country in order to assassinate a prominent political and military figure of another sovereign country? Of course, I’m referring to the recent US assassination of Iranian General Soleimani while he was visiting in Iraq. Continue reading
On the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Trump was asked if cutting Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security is on his agenda. Continue reading
Sixty-one years ago, Walter M. Miller Jr. published A Canticle for Leibowitz. The story spans thousands of years as humans rebuild civilization after a devastating nuclear war. Among the episodes is a conflict between warring nomads and a settled people who rely on cunning instead of arms and introduce hoof and mouth disease into the herds of the nomads. I was reminded of this as I read this account in RT of what appears to be a worsening situation with the coronavirus in China. China’s President Xi Jinping has described the situation as “grave” with the spread of infection accelerating. Continue reading
As long as the Internet is in private hands it should be seen as a “frenemy”—a useful resource that can also be wielded as a weapon. Continue reading
Billions of US taxpayers’ money will continue to be funneled into Israel in the next fiscal year, and for many years in the foreseeable future. Republican and Democratic Senators have recently achieved just that, passing a bill aimed at providing Israel with $3.3 billion in annual aid. Continue reading
To say that there has been some strange stuff coming out of the White House lately would be an understatement. If President Donald Trump knew a bit more about history, he would understand that countries that rent out their national armies to serve as mercenaries usually wind up holding the short end of the stick. There is the example of Pyrrhus of Epirus in the third century B.C., for whom the expression “Pyrrhic victory” was coined, and, more recently there was the British employment of 30,000 Hessian and other German soldiers in the American revolution. Hessian regiments were rented out by their prince to the King of England to pay the expenses of his government. The use of mercenaries by the British was cited by the colonists as one of their principal grievances and the Hessians became the losers in one of the few early colonial victories at Trenton. Continue reading
Ten years ago, in January 2010, the Supreme Court released its disastrous Citizens United decision. The court, either through remarkable naivety or sheer malevolence, essentially married the terrible idea that “money is speech” to the terrible idea that “corporations are people.” Continue reading
As the Senate debates Donald Trump’s future, chief executives, financiers and politicians have assembled in Davos, Switzerland, for their annual self-congratulatory defense of global capitalism. Continue reading
We all showed up naked, slimy and clueless in a world of inexplicable sensory input we couldn’t make head or tail out of. We were then taught what’s what by people who showed up under the exact same circumstances a blink of an eye earlier. Continue reading
RSS
The vengeful, lawless, corporate toady Trump explodes
‘The egomaniacal Trump is inebriated with his disgraceful acquittal, convinced of his own innocence, despite the clear evidence of his guilt.’
Posted on February 28, 2020 by Ralph Nader
The day after his acquittal by the Republican Party in a trial that banned witnesses, the unhinged Donald Trump gloated for over an hour on all the television networks. Trump flattered his courtiers, one by one, and fulminated against his congressional adversaries, Hillary Clinton and ex-FBI chief James Comey. Continue reading →