Freedom Rider: American terror is not new

The casual, endemic and racist violence that characterizes American behavior at home and abroad cannot be laid at the doorstep of the current buffoon in the White House. Continue reading

The difference between climate change caused by humans and those of Milankovitch Cycles

As I knew would happen, my review of the very serious and heavily documented book, “Unprecedented Crime” resulted in condemnations from the fossil fuel industry’s trolls and from libertarians who think that global warming is a scheme for government to seize more power over private industry. Personally, I wish the fossil fuel trolls and libertarians were correct, but there is scant, if any, evidence on their side. I must say that I am discouraged that the oligarchs’ disinformation campaigns are again taking precedence over fact. Continue reading

It is a new era, but China’s balancing act will fail in the Middle East

Although ties between Washington and Tel Aviv are stronger than ever, Israeli leaders are aware of a vastly changing political landscape. The US’ own political turmoil and the global power realignment—which is on full display in the Middle East—indicate that a new era is, indeed, in the making. Continue reading

Bannon takes charge of Nazi International

The former chief strategist and campaign manager for Donald Trump, Steve Bannon, likes to use the term “globalist” in his zeal to create a worldwide, read that as “global,” movement of fascist, neo-Nazi, and racialist political parties. Bannon, the anti-globalist far-right obese version of Adolf Hitler, initially, had few takers for his plan for a Nazi Internationale. Unfortunately, for the entire planet, that has changed. Continue reading

A tragedy in three parts: Corporations, coups, and crazies

Imagining that Trump is the cause of our complete dysfunctionality is folly. He is merely a symptom

Nearly 40 years ago, in his first inaugural address, Ronald Reagan said, “In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” Continue reading

From poverty to student debt to gun violence to climate crisis, Trump’s America is seriously stressing people out

A new survey by the American Psychological Association found that 62 percent of Americans are stressed by the current political climate and 69 percent are anxious about the future

While deep anxiety about mass shootings, falling standards of living, inadequate pay, and lack of healthcare long predate the Trump era, a survey by the American Psychological Association (APA) published on Tuesday found that President Donald Trump—with his bumbling incompetence, immense cruelty, and plutocratic economic agenda—has intensified the stress Americans feel about their financial situation, the U.S. political system, the climate crisis, and a variety of other issues facing the nation and the world. Continue reading

Rutherford Institute denounces Trump administration’s unconstitutional proposal to terminate birthright citizenship by way of executive order

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va.—President Trump’s announcement that he intends, through issuance of an Executive Order, to terminate birthright citizenship, which confers citizenship to children of noncitizens who are born in the U.S., is in direct conflict with the plain terms of the United States Constitution, namely the Fourteenth Amendment, which states: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United Statesand of the State wherein they reside.” Continue reading

Trump’s trick or treat

The president's games of Let’s Pretend and vilification have dire consequences.

This is not who we are. We are better than this. Continue reading

The return of the Latin American caudillos

Latin America’s “springtime of socialism” is at a close. After over a decade of progressive socialist presidents putting people ahead of cronyism, Latin America’s oligarchs, through the abuse of the courts, parliaments, and electoral systems, have put caudillos in office throughout the region. Unlike the past, when local generals, with a wink-and-a-nod from the local Central Intelligence Agency station chief, would call out the tanks and troops to oust democratically-elected presidents, today’s fascist leaders have discovered that social media, coupled with corrupt judges and legislators, can mount what are, essentially, soft “constitutional coups.” Continue reading

Lawsuit charges Trump Organization a ‘racketeering enterprise that defrauded thousands of people for years’

A new federal lawsuit charges that President Donald Trump, his company, and his three eldest children—Don Jr., Ivanka, and Eric—deliberately defrauded working-class Americans by convincing them to invest hundreds or thousands of dollars in sham business opportunities and training programs. Continue reading

Fascism triumphs in Brazilian presidential election

In Sunday’s runoff presidential election, hardline Social Liberal Party (PSL) candidate Jair Bolsonaro defeated Workers Party (PT) aspirant Fernando Haddad with 55% of the vote. Continue reading

Middle Easterners aren’t America’s problem

It is a mistake for vote-hungry politicians to scapegoat illusory Middle Easterners while playing down the danger posed by far-right nationalists and white supremacists

The US president recently attempted to ramp up the fear factor to galvanise his faithful voting base with one of his own snippets of fake news. He asserted that among the migrant caravan of thousands heading to the US southern border hoping to request asylum are “unknown Middle Easterners,” a claim supported by Vice-President Mike Pence who said his boss had “very good information.” Continue reading

The climate crisis is back in the news

The prospect of drastic climate change is back in the news. But, for all too many people it is just that, a news item. It is like other eye-grabbing stories: a bit scary, but also happening somewhere else and at some other time. Of course, if you happen to be at that other place or approximate to that time (the latest examples would be the Florida Panhandle in mid-October and Mexico’s southwestern coast in late October), things get more immediate, more real. But otherwise it is theory. Examine your own sense of urgency as you read on. Continue reading

Neocon and alt-right alliance proves to be a deadly combination

The Trump administration alliance of the neoconservatives and their penchant for false flag terrorist attacks and the alt-right, which has no problem with carrying out terrorist attacks and claiming credit for them, has proven to be a deadly combination. Continue reading

The Trump regime launched a nuclear arms race

In response to the Trump regime’s unilateral Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty pullout, former Soviet Russia President Mikhail Gorbachev said the move signals the beginning of a nuclear arms race. Continue reading

Bolton lacks stones more than olives

The biggest warmongers are generally the biggest cowards. They hide behind rhetoric and other people’s blood, sweat and toil to advance their personal agenda. John Bolton’s arrival in Moscow with, as he said, “no olive branches” in hand, should come as zero surprise because Bolton is nothing if not a coward. Continue reading

#YouToo!?

Easy explanations are suspect for the simple fact that they end up being facile generalizations. Internet technologies have made it impossible to make statements beyond what is dreadfully obvious. Do we live in a male-dominated, patriarchal, sexist and misogynistic society? The answer is a resounding “yes!” Continue reading

The American social contract

With divisions this deep, it can often feel like we can’t agree on anything. Continue reading

Will the Caravan Coup be Trump’s ‘October Surprise’ & Reichstag Fire to cap a week of horror?

Treasonous “October Surprises” gave Republicans the presidency in 1968 and 1980. A staged 1933 Reichstag fire gave Hitler his dictatorship. Continue reading

About politicians who befriend criminals in power

As a politician, Donald Trump is the image of the United States government, which attempts to maintain the American military-industrial complex. He needs “enemies.” He seems to need “enemies” to establish his own political identity and to possibly deflect attention from his own flaws. He has no adversaries; he has “enemies,” whom he brands “enemies of the people.” Continue reading

Global warming is real. The threat is real. Ecocide is on the horizon.

The tobacco companies’ response to the US Surgeon General’s report in 1964 linking smoking to lung cancer was countered by the tobacco companies setting up propaganda organizations to create a controversy by generating doubt over the link. This strategy staved off the inevitable for more than two decades. Continue reading

America’s worst ever ecological disaster?

Frequent oil spills, GMO seeds, chemical, and other toxins poison planet earth worldwide—humanity’s survival threatened by ecocide or nuclear war. Continue reading

The apocalypse not now

It was balmy and breezy by the bench where I sat outside a public library east of Atlanta, Georgia, brooding about the state of the world. It seemed like the end times, and I had just attended a fire and brimstone sermon, not perused the mainstream and alternative press. I had just spent a few hours on the Internet, noting so many articles that announced that the world as we know it was coming to an end, or maybe just the world. The American Empire was collapsing, the U.S.A. was a failed state, climate change would soon destroy the world if nuclear war didn’t do it first, etc. Many of these articles were predicting that soon the elites who run the U.S. would be getting their comeuppance because of hubris and overreach and, like the Roman Empire, the die had been cast and disaster was on the horizon. Such prognostications were appearing in publications that covered the political spectrum. All of it was fear-inducing, notwithstanding one’s political beliefs. Left, right, and center had reasons to be depressed or elated by the claims, depending on one’s politics and existential reality. And, need I surmise, the writers of these jeremiads were probably writing from a position of personal privilege, not scrounging for their next meal. Continue reading

Has America become a dictatorship disguised as a democracy?

We’re living in two worlds, you and I. Continue reading

‘Disaster waiting to happen’ as Trump quietly approves massive oil drilling project in Arctic waters off Alaska coast

Ignoring once more the existential necessity of keeping fossil fuels in the ground and transitioning to a global energy system powered by renewable sources, the Trump administration on Wednesday delivered another major victory for Big Oil by quietly approving a Texas company’s plan to drill in federal Arctic waters six miles off the coast of Alaska. Continue reading

‘A cruel choice’: Why Israel targets Palestinian schools

Several Palestinian students, along with teachers and officials, were wounded in the Israeli army attack on a school south of Nablus in the West Bank on October 15. The students of Al- Sawiya Al-Lebban Mixed School were challenging an Israeli military order to shut down their school based on the ever-versatile accusation of the school being a “site of popular terror and rioting.” Continue reading

The triumph of evil

The murder of Jamal Khashoggi inside the Saudi Arabian embassy in Turkey is unprecedented in its audacity. The response from Washington and the Canadian government is to sell more weapons to Saudi Arabia, weapons that are being used by the Saudis in their destruction of the Yemeni population. The Russian response, if the report I saw was not fake news, is to sell the Saudis the S-400 air defense system. Continue reading

The insidious wiles of foreign influence: Trump, Bin Salman, and Netanyahu

Even if the Saudi monarchy or Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in particular did not murder journalist Jamal Khashoggi, that regime is an especially evil one in both its domestic and international conduct. Continue reading

Freedom Rider: The migrant caravan and U.S. policy

Washington blames “socialism” when Venezuelans flee their country’s US-created economic crisis, but defame Honduran refugees fleeing the misery created by the US in that country. Continue reading

On UN Day, Trump threatens pullout from second oldest global organization

October 24 is marked around the world as United Nations Day, the anniversary marking the founding of the world body in 1945. However, in Washington, Donald Trump’s administration, which he described as “nationalist” at an October 22 Houston campaign rally for Texas Senator Ted Cruz, is planning for further U.S. withdrawal from various international organizations. These include the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), a specialized agency of the UN that has been in existence for 153 years. Continue reading

Illegal US presence in Syria assures endless war

Wherever US forces show up, mass slaughter, destruction, and human misery follow—the same thing happening in all its war theaters, endless violence continuing, what imperial rage is all about. Continue reading

It is like a Western movie: A showdown is in the making

It has taken the US military/security complex 31 years to get rid of President Reagan’s last nuclear disarmament achievement—the INF Treaty that President Reagan and Soviet President Gorbachev achieved in 1987. Continue reading