Ohio stumbles, with a Team Trump nudge, toward nuclear and coal

Defying all laws of competitive economics, climate change, and technological progress, the Ohio House has voted in a ratepayer-funded bailout for two aging nuclear power plants on Lake Erie, and two even older coal burners, one in Indiana, but owned by the Ohio Valley Electric Corporation, based in Piketon. According to Politico, a senior adviser to the Trump reelection campaign, Bob Paduchik, pressured at least five members of the Ohio House of Representatives to vote “yes” on the bill. Continue reading

Contracts reveal how the DEA exercises control over television, film productions

Nearly 200 pages of Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) contracts show how the agency exercises control over TV and film productions

Nearly 200 pages of Drug Enforcement Administration contracts with producers were obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. They show for the first time how the agency interacts with television and film productions. Continue reading

Trump’s harebrained tariffs strategy

Trump’s imposition of tariffs on Chinese imports with more threatened failed to get its ruling authorities to bend to his will—just the opposite. Continue reading

Putting values into action

Earlier in May, two North Carolina Republicans intro’d state legislation that would place obstacles in the path of renewable energy development. Senate Bill 843, sponsored by Senators William Cook and Andrew Brock, leaves anyone with even semi-decent cognitive functioning asking WTF(?). Despite the unquestionable obviousness of the why of that What, you still can shake your head no, no, no in amazement, outrage, disbelief. Continue reading

Julian Assange’s gravely deteriorating health

Involuntary confinement in Ecuador’s London embassy for nearly seven years, compounded by his unlawful arrest and isolation under appalling conditions in Britain’s Gitmo, gravely harmed Assange’s physical and emotional health. Continue reading

Technotyranny: The iron-fisted authoritarianism of the surveillance state

Red pill or blue pill? You decide. Continue reading

Fighting for colonial footprints: a very British thing

Great Britain is determined to never see the sun set on the remnants of the old British empire. However, the United Nations General Assembly recently delivered a stinging rebuke to Britain over its continued occupation of the Chagos Islands, which it cleaved from its colony of Mauritius in 1965 in order for the United States to build a major military base on the island of Diego Garcia. The General Assembly voted 116 to 6, with 56 abstentions, against Britain’s continued control of the Chagos Islands. Continue reading

Resurrecting the PLO is Palestine’s best response to the ‘Deal of the Century’

Palestinian groups, Fatah, Hamas and others should not confine themselves to simply rejecting the Trump administration’s so-called ‘Deal of the Century.’ Instead, they should use their resistance to the new American-Israeli plot as an opportunity to unify their ranks. Continue reading

Washington’s mighty warriors: draft dodgers and scoundrels

Remember Shakespeare’s line “he jests at scars that never felt a wound?” That epithet could have been written with National Security Advisor John Bolton in mind. Bolton was notoriously a draft dodger during the Vietnam War, like his current boss, not due to any scruples regarding what was occurring, but out of concern for his own sorry ass. He is now credibly believed to be the driving force behind the punishment being meted out to Venezuela and, far more dangerously, of the creeping escalation that is taking place in the Middle East that is seeking to draw Iran into a misstep that would lead to war. Bolton, who has received the “Defender of Israel” award, has long been an outspoken advocate for attacking Iran and now he has the power to do just that. Continue reading

Freedom Rider: No chemical attacks in Syria

The corporate media is concealing a leaked UN agency report that shows Syrian government innocence in an alleged chemical attack. Continue reading

Fossil fuel subsidies mean using public money ‘to destroy the world’: UN chief

U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres's comment follows call by Pope Francis to "keep it in the ground"

As Pope Francis called on global financial leaders to help keep dirty energy in the ground, the United Nations chief said Tuesday that fossil fuel subsidies amount to “using taxpayers’ money… to destroy the world.” Continue reading

Taking farmers for a ride

Trump’s trade disruptions are inflicting real pain, but they’re also exposing the frailty of an agriculture economy built for big business.

Over the last year, President Trump has taken farmers on a roller coaster ride that’s finally gone off the rails. Continue reading

Manufacturing a nonexistent Iranian threat

If all nations were governed like Iran, peace and stability would replace global wars everywhere, swords turned into plowshares. Continue reading

What does oligarchy mean?

“Oligarchy” means government of and by a few at the top, who exercise power for their own benefit. It comes from the Greek word oligarkhes, meaning “few to rule or command.” Continue reading

Trump’s very un-American Memorial Day

Donald Trump chose to spend the Memorial Day weekend hobnobbing with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, a man who consistently honors his nation’s dead war criminals from World War II. Make no mistake about it, Abe is a right-wing nationalist and that is what makes him attractive to the racist Trump. Continue reading

Will the Trump regime target Venezuela’s food distribution program for elimination?

President Nicolas Maduro initiated Local Provision and Production Committees (CLAPs) in early 2016. Continue reading

Trump’s trade war has probably permanently damaged America’s tech leadership position

On May 15, US president Donald Trump issued an “Executive Order on Securing the Information and Communications Technology and Services Supply Chain.” Continue reading

Trump’s upcoming Yankee Doodle disaster

I was there the last time a president and his pals tried to use the Fourth of July for partisan purposes.

Years ago, I was interviewing the college roommate of a famous politician who told the story of being sent to a shop by the pol to pick up a large impressive trophy. It would be presented at an official school dinner that night. Is this for the university president, the roommate asked? No, the politician replied, without missing a beat, it’s for me. Continue reading

Putting Good Samaritans behind bars

Border authorities arrested a Texas woman for stopping to help bedraggled teenagers who desperately needed it.

Let us now contemplate the morality tale of the Good Samaritan. Continue reading

Latest ‘dodgy dossier’ not even original in context

One thing for which the right-wing neoconservatives specialize is the production of dodgy dossiers and “official” reports. England has been ground-zero for the production of many dodgy dossiers, including the latest passed to NBC News’s resident “useful idiot,” Richard Engel, by a Mikhail Khodorkovsky-funded entity in London called the Dossier Center. Continue reading

North Korea calls John Bolton a ‘war maniac’ who is ‘wrecking peace and security’ across the globe

‘After all, it will be fit to call Bolton not a security adviser striving for security but a security-destroying adviser.’

North Korea on Monday called U.S. national security adviser John Bolton a “war maniac” who is undermining global security and diplomacy after Bolton accused Pyongyang of violating international law with missile launches earlier this month. Continue reading

Elections Canada 2019: Justin’s battered beanstalk

We left off our saga of Justin and the Beanstalk with the young wunderkind’s triumph over the giant ogre (Prime Minister Harper), as he swept away the broken democratic shards littering his kingdom in the sky, to the cries of joy from the Canadian peasants. Justin began energetically fulfilling at least some of his many promises. He rejoined the Paris Agreement on Climate. Scientists breathed a sigh of relief as their withered vines received nourishment after 10 years of drought, and the muzzle on their right to speak about the perils of global warming was removed. Continue reading

‘This is big’: 76 retired US generals and diplomats warn Trump against war with Iran

‘We have witnessed first-hand how quickly disputes can spiral out of control.’

President Donald Trump often says he listens to military generals more than anyone else, and, as the White House prepares to send 1,500 soldiers to the Middle East, that claim is being tested by a Friday letter from the American College of National Security Leaders. Continue reading

Brexit: Britain is sleepwalking to self-harm

UK lawmakers must wake up and revoke Article 50 to save the nation from ruining itself

The UK is undergoing its severest crisis since the Second World War. The country is rudderless. Its politicians are self-serving and at each other’s throats. The people are divided, angry and confused. The world looks on aghast at the mess created three years ago when Prime Minister David Cameron’s reckless bet to appease his Conservative rivals failed to pay off. There’s no other way of putting it. Great Britain has become a global laughing stock. Continue reading

The geography of war: No Iraq…? No Iran!

No other country in the Middle East is as important in countering America’s rush to provide Israel with another war than Iraq. Fortunately for Iran, the winds of change in Iraq and the many other local countries under similar threat, thus, make up an unbroken chain of border to border support. This support is only in part due to sympathy for Iran and its plight against the latest bluster by the Zio-American bully. Continue reading

Major media on Julian Assange

Major media cheered his unjustifiable April 11 police state arrest, shifting his loss of freedom in Ecuador’s London embassy to incarceration at Britain’s Gitmo—prelude to handing him over to Trump regime hardliners for unjustifiable crucifixion. Continue reading

How the US regime uses sanctions to soften a country up for invasion

On May 13, Reuters headlined “Iran insists on ramping up oil sales to stay in nuclear pact” and reported that “EU officials … estimate Iran needs to sell 1.5 million bpd to keep its economy afloat. A drop below 1 million bpd could bring hardship and economic crisis.” Continue reading

Peace with Iran is a good thing

After weeks of drama with Iranian ‘threats’ and having conducted classified briefings with Congress on Tuesday, acting Pentagon chief Patrick Shanahan, with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo by his side, informed a press briefing that “there will be no war with Iran” and the US had “deterred an Iranian attack based on our reposturing of assets, deterred attacks against American forces” and that now the “focus is to prevent an Iranian miscalculation. We do not want the situation to escalate. This is about deterrence; not about war. We’re not about going to war.” Continue reading

War crimes pardons: A terrible Memorial Day idea

On May 16, 2008, near the town of Baiji in Iraq, 1st Lieutenant Michael Behenna, US Army, murdered a prisoner. That was the verdict of the jury in his 2009 court martial, anyway. He was sentenced to 25 years in prison, but paroled in less than five. On May 6, 2019, US president Donald Trump pardoned Behenna. Continue reading

How to survive the journey ahead: A graduation message for a terrifying age

Those coming of age today will face some of the greatest obstacles ever encountered by young people. Continue reading

A US foreign policy in three simple words: do no harm

When it comes to the worldwide destruction of democracy, Trump is the enabler supreme.

“The global trend is sour.” So says Larry Diamond, senior fellow at Stanford University’s conservative Hoover Institution. Continue reading

What and who gave us Trump?

Why did Trump look around and think, ‘Hey, I can get away with this.’? Well, take a look around.

Donald J. Trump’s presidential ambition has simmered for decades. He was and is a regular TV watcher and saw the changing political landscape. One by one, previous presidents diminished the integrity of the presidency and violated the rule of law, paving the way for Trump’s candidacy. Continue reading