Wherever I look at US policy, foreign or domestic, I see only insanity, ignorance, and incompetence. Continue reading
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As reactors shut in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, nuke war rages in Ohio and New York
As the nuke power industry slumps toward oblivion, two huge reactors are shutting in Pennsylvania and Massachusetts. Continue reading
The cost of Trump’s trade war (and a better alternative)
We are now in a trade war with the second-largest economy on Earth. Continue reading
On the bear who spared my life
The bear’s large claws gently slid down my face, his mouth within inches of my own, and I recall a horrible stench in his breath. My back was pressed against a tree, and there was no escape, as the bear reared up on his hind legs to look me over, face to face. Continue reading
The curse of Donald Trump
Our ex-presidents should come forward to try to break the spell
I know that everyone’s talking about the final episodes of HBO’s Game of Thrones and some are comparing our current woes to the battle for the Iron Throne of the Seven Kingdoms. Continue reading
Trump’s ‘trade war’ is a war on you
“It’s not China that pays tariffs,” Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace pointed out on May 12. “It’s the American importers, the American companies that pay what, in effect, is a tax increase and oftentimes passes it on to U.S. consumers.” Continue reading
US a major global destabilizer, not its adversaries
The US, NATO, Israel, and their rogue partners constitute the greatest threat to world peace and stability. Continue reading
Trump’s encircling of Venezuela: A fool’s errand
Relying on the advice of neo-conservative war hawk John Bolton, pompous Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and Iran-Contra scandal felon Elliott Abrams, Donald Trump has embarked on the containment encircling of Venezuela. Trump is engaged in a fool’s errand of relying on the support of fascist leaders of Venezuela’s neighbors to pressure Venezuela’s president Nicolas Maduro to turn over power to a motley collection of Wall Street puppets who want to reverse the Bolivarian socialist policies of Maduro and his late predecessor, Hugo Chavez. Continue reading
The divider-in-chief
Donald Trump’s goal is, and has always been, division and disunion. It’s how he keeps himself the center of attention, fuels his base and ensures that no matter what facts are revealed, his followers will stick by him. Continue reading
Trump regime escalates war on whistleblowers
When governments criminalize truth-telling, on the phony pretext of protecting national security, tyranny replaces freedom. Continue reading
‘Humanitarian’ concerns increase wars, benefit only arms-producers
Unlike a regular corporation, the corporations that manufacture and sell weapons to their government are virtually 100% dependent upon their government and its military allies, for their own success; their markets are only those governments, not individuals (such as is the case for normal corporations). Consequently, either their government will control them, and those firms won’t have any effective control over their own markets, or else those firms will, themselves, control their government, and thereby effectively control their markets, via the government’s foreign policies—not only via expanding its military alliances (those firms’ foreign markets), but via its designating ‘enemy’ nations that it and its ‘allies’ (those arms-producers’ foreign markets) can then use those weapons against. Continue reading
D Is for a dictatorship disguised as a democracy
What characterizes American government today is not so much dysfunctional politics as it is ruthlessly contrived governance carried out behind the entertaining, distracting and disingenuous curtain of political theater. And what political theater it is, diabolically Shakespearean at times, full of sound and fury, yet in the end, signifying nothing. Continue reading
Beware the drug industry’s lucrative GMO drugs
The drug industry is employing several tricks to stay a Wall Street darling. Drugs priced at five and six digits like the Hepatitis C drugs, genetically engineered, injected drugs from Chinese hamster ovary cells (like Humira) and convincing healthy people they are “at risk” of serious diseases. All tactics are seen with the newer bone drugs. Continue reading
The two narratives of Palestine: The people are united, the factions are not
The International Conference on Palestine held in Istanbul between April 27-29 brought together many speakers and hundreds of academics, journalists, activists and students from Turkey and all over the world. Continue reading
How lies become ‘facts’ in U.S. ‘news’
On Fox News Channel’s May 2 edition of “The Story with Martha MacCallum” it was alleged, by the program host (at 2:45 in this video), that one reason we must invade Venezuela (if we will) is that “People have lost 24 pounds” there. So (her point was), if we invade, that’s not evil, it’s no coup, but instead it’s humanitarian (presumably like it was in Iraq in 2003, when we invaded that country, which likewise had never invaded nor threatened to invade the United States—it was raw international aggression, by our country, against Iraq). Continue reading
The DNC debates, the MSM and Tulsi
As some of the last minute Democratic presidential candidates scramble to qualify for the DNC’s upcoming June 26/27 primary debate, the latest poll results become more than nominally important given their elevated role in whether a candidate meets the requirements to participate. Continue reading
Trump impeachment pressure growing from within legal ranks
An unprecedented letter signed by over 720 nonpartisan and bipartisan former federal prosecutors and Justice Department career line attorneys states that Donald Trump’s conduct as president as described in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report “would, in the case of any other person not covered by the Office of Legal Counsel policy against indicting a sitting President, result in multiple felony charges for obstruction of justice.” Mueller cited current Justice Department guidelines in his decision to not indict a sitting president for obstruction of justice. The letter also serves notice on Attorney General William Barr that his conduct in representing Trump’s personal interests and not those of the American people violates a primary duty of the attorney general to carry out his oath and duties of his office. Continue reading
Will the Trump regime attack Venezuela and Iran?
Imperial madness defines US geopolitics under Republicans and undemocratic Dems, seeking dominion over planet earth, its resources and populations. Continue reading
Freedom Rider: Facebook and the Farrakhan distraction
In banning the only living person who can summon a million Black people to a meeting, Facebook is doing the bidding of the real fascists in the deep imperial state. Continue reading
Predator cops, guilty of sex crimes against women and children, are a menace to society
How could this be happening right under our noses? Continue reading
Rubber and metal with your chicken? Tyson obliges
Rubber and metal are some of the recent surprise “ingredients” found in Tyson chicken. In January, 36,420 pounds of Tyson chicken nuggets were recalled due to rubber contamination. In March, a recall for possible metal contamination of ready-to-eat Tyson chicken strip products began which continues–now encompassing 12 million pounds. Tyson Foods is the world’s second largest processor and marketer of chicken, beef, and pork, operating the Jimmy Dean, Hillshire Farm, Sara Lee, Ball Park and other well known brands. Continue reading
Are you ready for a worse dystopia than ‘1984’?
I have been lonely in my concern with the dire economic implications of robotics, but now Clarity Press has provided me with some company by publishing The Artificial Intelligence Contagion by David Barnhizer and Daniel Barnhizer. It is telling as to the irrelevance of the economics profession that the coauthors are lawyers. Continue reading
Running for president is a cash bonanza
Running for president of the United States has turned into a cash cow for several politicians. The reason is that the Federal Election Commission (FEC), which was created in 1974 to disclose campaign finance information; to enforce the provisions of the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971, including the limits and prohibitions on contributions; and to oversee the public funding of Presidential elections is all but out of business. Continue reading
Polishing a fatberg
Father time and mother nature must be looking askance at the motherfucking arrogance that has given us Anglo-Zionism and global capitalism. The mere fact that Donald Trump, Mike Pompeo, John Bolton, Hilary Clinton, Benjamin Netanyahu and the AIPAC fifth column have brought a neo-liberal crypto-fascist zeitgeist into the Greco-Roman pantheon attests to the fact that Western culture is being privatised in every conceivable way to serve the needs of an investment-class in pursuit of ever more opportunities to garner wealth from the public domain. In fact, the insidious activity of global capitalism, and the means used to secure its objectives can be observed if we stop a moment to ponder the collaborative institutional strategies that have come into existence to secure…privatise…the public domain. Continue reading
Is the United States a democracy?
There are many partisan responses to this question. Of course, internationally, the United States is regarded by many people to be the gold standard of what constitutes a democracy (perhaps because the U.S. was the first nation that was born out of a successful revolution against an existing dictatorship and that quickly produced a written Constitution, which endorses many democratic principles and which lasts proudly until the present day). However, that reputation is not a substantive answer to the question as to whether the United States is today a democracy. There are dictatorships that have democratic written constitutions. Furthermore, the way that a constitution is enforced or not enforced can determine whether or not the nation’s constitution is real or whether it’s instead more of a mere formality than a reality. Continue reading
The US desperately needs a new secretary of state
The ignorant warmonger masquerading as an American secretary of state should be arrested for his impersonation of an American government official. Mike Pompeo cannot possibly be the US secretary of state, because not even Donald Trump would appoint an idiot to this high position who thinks that Article 2 of the Constitution gives the president the authority to declare war and invade other countries. Continue reading
France and the EU recognizing yet supporting apartheid reality in Palestine
A recent statement made by the outgoing French ambassador to the US regarding the nature of Israeli apartheid accentuates a larger ailment that has afflicted the European Union foreign policy. Continue reading
Ladies, got an extra $21,000 a year? Here’s Big Pharma’s latest bone nostrum
Poor Pharma. Until 15 years ago, hormone replacement therapy (HRT) was a right of passage for older U.S. women and Pharma raked in billions. While HRT did prevent osteoporosis, it was also found to increase the risk of breast cancer, stroke, blood clots, hearing loss, gall bladder disease, urinary incontinence, asthma, the need for joint replacement, melanoma, ovarian, endometrial and lung cancers, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and even dementia according to medical findings. In the first year that millions of women quit HRT in 2003, U.S. breast cancer fell seven percent and 15 percent in women with estrogen fed tumors. Continue reading
The anniversary waltz
In these turbulent times more than ever, memory is a blessing and a curse.
Nostalgia isn’t what it used to be, the saying goes, but as you get older, milestone years become more significant and resonant, especially if your own memories of them remain vivid. Continue reading
The essence of evil: Sex with children has become big business in America
Children, young girls—some as young as 9 years old—are being bought and sold for sex in America. The average age for a young woman being sold for sex is now 13 years old. Continue reading
Having admitted to ‘lying’ and ‘cheating’ while CIA director, Pompeo drops another whopper after failed Venezuelan coup
The lack of scrutiny given by the mainstream media to Bolton and Pompeo’s claims is yet another troubling sign of the transformation of many mainstream media outlets into faithful government stenographers.
WASHINGTON—Just a week after the former CIA director and now secretary of state admitted that the agency prior to and under his direction “lied,” “cheated” and “stole,” Mike Pompeo has delivered another claim that, despite his recent admission of dishonesty, has been regurgitated with little scrutiny by a variety of media outlets. Continue reading
800+ retired justice department lawyers demand Trump’s impeachment
Posted on May 15, 2019 by Eric Zuesse
As of this writing, 802 former federal lawyers—all of them former federal prosecutors working for the U.S. Department of Justice—have signed a public letter headlined on May 6th “STATEMENT BY FORMER FEDERAL PROSECUTORS”, which states the charges they all think should be passed by the U.S. House of Representatives in an indictment of the president, which then would be considered by the U.S. Senate in a possible forced removal of him from office, which would immediately make the current vice president, Mike Pence, the nation’s president for the remainder of the existing president’s term, which ends on 20 January 2021. Continue reading →