Just who got Trump’s farm bailouts?

Rich families cashed in on over half the bailout money set aside for farmers hurt by Trump’s trade policies.

Donald Trump loves farmers. We know this because he says so. “Farmers, I LOVE YOU!” he declared in December. Continue reading

The 5-step CEO pay scam

Average CEO pay at big corporations topped 14.5 million dollars in 2018. That’s after an increase of 5.2 million dollars per CEO over the past decade, while the average worker’s pay has increased just 7,858 dollars over the decade. Continue reading

Jeffrey Epstein and the spectacle of secrecy

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

White supremacy before Trump: The U.S. conquest of Hawaii

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

Leaked audio shows oil lobbyist bragging about success in criminalizing pipeline protests

As a growing number of states move to pass laws that would criminalize pipeline protests and hit demonstrators with years in prison, an audio recording obtained by The Intercept showed a representative of a powerful oil and gas lobbying group bragging about the industry’s success in crafting anti-protest legislation behind closed doors. Continue reading

Trump regime threatens illegal sanctions on nations legally buying Iranian oil

The US under both extremist right wings of its war party is a rogue state by any definition. Continue reading

The oligarchy’s plans for our future keep getting dumber

It’s rare to get a billionaire to share their grand plans for the future, which is weird because billionaires pretty much rule the world. Whenever they do, though, it’s always something incredibly sociopathic, like replacing all jobs with billionaire-owned automation/AI and giving people a Universal Basic Income set by the billionaire-owned government. Or loading all the humans onto rocket ships and sending them to live on Amazon Space Dildos. Continue reading

Trump wants to buy Greenland, but it’s not for sale

Donald Trump wants to buy Greenland, an autonomous constituent part of the Kingdom of Denmark. If any other US president proffered such an idea, it would be viewed as a joke. But with Trump, it is a serious proposal, according to White House insiders who passed the information to The Wall Street Journal. Continue reading

‘Their racist, anti-immigration crusade knows no bounds’: Trump White House tried to stop immigrant kids from attending public schools

Led by President Donald Trump’s xenophobic top adviser Stephen Miller, the White House reportedly spent months attempting to devise a way to stop undocumented immigrant children from attending public schools in the United States. Continue reading

Is America crazy?

Mass shootings, economic inequality, a racist president: have we grown dangerously accustomed to a country gone mad?

The United States witnessed three mass shootings in one week recently in California, Texas, and Ohio. There have been more than 250 mass shootings so far in 2019, more than one a day. This year in America, more than 33,000 shooting incidents have killed more than 8,700 people. Continue reading

Iranian tanker leaves Gibraltar

Over 40 days after Britain illegally seized Iran’s Grace 1 super-tanker (renamed the Adrian Darya 1) on orders by the Trump regime, likely John Bolton—the vessel left Gibraltar late Sunday evening for a reported Mediterranean destination believed to be Kalamata, Greece, according to TankerTrackers.com. Continue reading

American capitalism is based on plunder

The plunder is getting worse

American capitalism is based on plunder. With the continental USA plundered, American capitalism hoped to continue enriching itself by plundering Russia as it did under Yeltsin, carefully including the Russian “Atlanticist Integrationists” in the spoils in order to have support from the liberal, progressive forces in Russia for stripping Russia of its assets. But Putin more or less put a halt to the American/Israeli rape of Russia, although it still continues through the neoliberal economics that Harvard brainwashed into the Russian central bank and economics profession. Brainwashed Russian economists are the main reason Washington is able to punish a powerful country such as Russia with economic sanctions. Continue reading

Former MSNBC reporter spills details on pro-establishment bias in media

The ridiculous corporate media freakout over Senator Bernie Sanders’ entirely legitimate accusations of pro-establishment bias continues today, with shrill, absurd new headlines like “Sanders campaign continues attacks on journalists” and “Bernie Sanders isn’t sorry” featuring hysterical MSM drama queens rending their garments over the suggestion that plutocrat-owned media outlets could be favorable to the plutocrat-owned establishment. Continue reading

Workers were reportedly ordered not to protest or show any ‘resistance’ at Trump rally in Pennsylvania

Workers in attendance at President Donald Trump’s rally at a Shell plant in Pennsylvania on Tuesday were ordered not to protest or do “anything viewed as resistance” during the event. Continue reading

Catch and hang live chickens for slaughter: $11 an hour possible!

Koch Foods, a giant chicken processor that supplies Burger King, Kroger and Walmart (not affiliated with the Koch brothers) lost no time in replacing the five busloads of undocumented workers taken from its Mississippi plants this month due to an ICE raid. It is already holding “job fairs” to replace the workers. Continue reading

A tire that should inspire fear in the heart of workers

This sad story is as old as NAFTA.

Mickey Ray Williams keeps a Goodyear tire in his Gadsden, Alabama, conference room. Made in Mexico and imported to Gadsden, that tire induces fear. Continue reading

Punishing the world with sanctions

Sanctions are economic warfare, pure and simple. As an alternative to a direct military attack on a country that is deemed to be misbehaving they are certainly preferable, but no one should be under any illusions regarding what they actually represent. They are war by other means and they are also illegal unless authorized by a supra-national authority like the United Nations Security Council, which was set up after World War II to create a framework that inter alia would enable putting pressure on a rogue regime without going to war. At least that was the idea, but the sanctions regimes recently put in place unilaterally and without any international authority by the United States have had a remarkable tendency to escalate several conflicts rather than providing the type of pressure that would lead to some kind of agreement. Continue reading

Who inflicts the most gun violence in America? The U.S. government and its police forces

Yes, gun violence is a problem in America, although violent crime generally remains at an all-time low. Continue reading

The right wing love affair with Ayn Rand ties conservatism to one of the most disturbing sociopathic killers

There’s a direct link between a sociopathic killer in 1927 and the GOP’s willingness to embrace a sociopathic president like Trump. That link runs through the work of Ayn Rand. Continue reading

Manifestos of hate: What white terrorists have in common

Writing under the title of “If the El Paso shooter had been Muslim,” Moustafa Bayoumi stated the obvious. Continue reading

Manufacturing normality

If people could see the world with fresh eyes, as though they were viewing it for the very first time, they would suddenly find themselves smashed between two equally strong yet wildly different experiences. Continue reading

Fifty years after Woodstock, we are caught in the devil’s bargain

The anniversary reminds us of the best and worst of 1969—and today.

The 16th century theologian John Calvin remarked that if you went to every cathedral in Europe and took away all the pieces of the true cross of Christ they claimed to possess, you’d have enough wood to fill a ship. Continue reading

Fake news about Venezuela and the power of propaganda

Public ignorance and indifference about major issues let US authorities get away with mass murder and much more. Continue reading

Trump’s war on children now extends to defenseless animals

Further pushing his cruelty from caged migrant children separated from their families at the southern border to yet other children coming home from school in Mississippi to find their parents having been hauled off by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to detention centers, Donald Trump has now turned his attention to needlessly harming animals. Trump is a well-known critic of pet owners, including his own vice president, referring to them as “low class.” Continue reading

Freedom Rider: No racism, just Russians

The absurd claim that Russians have orchestrated US racial strife is designed to nullify black outrage and discredit those who fight oppression. Continue reading

‘Gold over life, literally’

The decision by Alaska’s governor, Mike Dunleavy, and US President Donald Trump to sacrifice the environment for a gold mine is an extremely bad one, but I understand why it has happened. The offshoring of Americans’ jobs to Mexico and Asia has put millions of Americans into a situation in which their livelihood is not assured. Continue reading

Where’s the beef in NAFTA 2.0?

Trump’s new trade deal would encourage multinational meat packers to abandon America’s family ranchers.

“MAGA,” blusters Donald Trump—Make America Great Again! Continue reading

Killing Julian Assange slowly

Since April 11 when unlawfully dragged from Ecuador’s London embassy to captivity, Assange has languished under draconian conditions in a UK dungeon at the behest of the Trump regime, wanting him tried in the US for the “crime” of truth-telling journalism. More on this below. Continue reading

‘Disgusting and disturbing’: Trump guts Endangered Species Act in gift to big business

‘This administration seems set on damaging fragile ecosystems by prioritizing industry interests over science.’

Environmentalists denounced the Trump administration for crashing a “bulldozer” through the Endangered Species Act on Monday after the Interior Department finalized a series of rollbacks to the 46-year-old law that will further imperil hundreds of vulnerable animal and plant species while paving the way for business development projects. Continue reading

Bulletin for the comfortable class: Mass murder was Americana before Trump was born!

The recent anniversary of the mass murder that took place in Hiroshima, followed three days later by another mass murder in Nagasaki, would have dominated the consciousness of a nation in remorse for past horrors committed under the degenerate belief of justifiable homicide as long as it’s warfare. As the comment above helps make clear, these particular acts of dreadful violence were only unique in that one bomb was used for each city, instead of the thousands used to set fire to entire cities in Japan and Germany and immediately burn tens of thousands of their inhabitants to death. Continue reading

Are hate crimes linked to mind control?

Trump asks the death penalty

As part of remarks by President Trump on mass shootings in Texas and Ohio on August 5, Trump announced, “Today, I am also directing the Department of Justice to propose legislation ensuring that those who commit hate crimes and mass murders face the death penalty, and that this capital punishment be delivered quickly, decisively, and without years of needless delay.” Continue reading

A urinal in a Scottish pub reveals why toilets matter in international politics

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