Thanks to humane scandals at Butterball, Aviagen Turkeys and House of Raeford, many are aware of the cruel handling in commercial turkey production. Fewer people are aware of the food additives and fast-growth methods that put both turkeys and the people who eat them at risk. Continue reading
The ceaseless brouhaha over the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. Obamacare, and President Barack Obama’s “sinking” approval ratings is comparable to a parent telling a child he must do something and when the child does, he is ridiculed and punished for doing it. Continue reading
Saturday night, I saw Bob Schieffer of CBS News, playing the role of senior uncle of US culture with tears in his eyes, tell us how much it affected him to see John F. Kennedy’s little boy “in his little boy suit” salute his father at his funeral. The CBS program also featured cameo shots of the likes of Walter Cronkite, Dan Rather and Jim Lehrer of PBS making pronouncements. Continue reading
At the time New Jersey established a ban on fracking, it seemed symbolic, much like the moratorium in Vermont, which has no economically recoverable natural gas; the Marcellus Shale, primarily in New York and Pennsylvania, doesn’t extend into New Jersey. Continue reading
It may be that the battered Muslim Brotherhood (MB) has finally concluded, “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em,” but is it too late? The day before the ousted President Muhammad Mursi appeared on the front page of the Egyptian Arabic daily Al-Masry Al-Youm in a white prison jumpsuit grinning fatuously, the MB-led Pro-Mursi Alliance has proposed “serious dialogue” toward ending the crisis based on these core premises: An end to the military takeover, constitutional legitimacy, retribution for those who’ve lost their lives, the return to air of Brotherhood satellite channels—and the right to peaceful protest. Continue reading
Why does a police department which hasn’t had an officer killed in the line of duty in over 125 years in a town of less than 20,000 people need tactical military vests like those used by soldiers in Afghanistan? For that matter, why does a police department in a city of 35,000 people need a military-grade helicopter? And what possible use could police at Ohio State University have for acquiring a heavily-armored vehicle intended to withstand IED blasts? Continue reading
NEW YORK—Given all the brouhaha over reforming stop-and-frisk, a first-of-its kind analysis, a report from the New York Attorney General’s office found that just 1.5 percent of stop-and-frisk arrests resulted in a jail or prison sentence longer than 30 days. Continue reading
Secret courts and trials, star chambers, and illegal detention may be the stuff of a Franz Kafka trial but in Alabama the court proceedings against an investigative journalist have reached and surpassed Kafkaesque dimensions. Continue reading
I read that six thousand people have been killed by sectarian violence so far this year in Iraq, surely a good rough measure of what America’s invasion achieved there. In Afghanistan, America’s chosen man publically disagrees with America’s ideas of what withdrawal means, how many occupying American forces should remain, and the role the Taleban should play. Killing remains a daily occurrence, including regular instances of American special forces murdering civilians, drugs flow freely through the country and out to the world, and most women still wear the burka. Libya is reduced to rag tag bands engaged in fighting like rival gangs of bandits. Syria writhes in agony as the victim of an artificially-induced civil war with even the use of nerve gas on civilians by America’s proxy fighters winked at and lied about. Continue reading
Want some health care? Need a place to live? Are you hungry? Need a gun? A politician? A drone missile? All those and more, much, much more, are available all day and all night at the marketplace and you don’t even have to leave your home to go downtown or to the mall to do your shopping. It’s all there for your consuming convenience on your computer, iPod, smart phone, dumb phone or other products that can be used to charge purchases to your plastic for anything and everything, anytime all the time. Nice? Continue reading
The United Nations reports a 50% increase in Afghan opium production, a record crop in 2013, and no end in sight for opium eradication. Continue reading
To the Israelis, any deal made between the world powers and Iran would be a bad deal. Continue reading
Even people who are not demonetarists, people who have not heard of it or who cannot conceive of a world without money, can act in today’s capitalist and market socialist societies in ways that reflect the values that a successfully demonetized society needs. Continue reading
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010, aka the Affordable Care Act, often referred to as “Obamacare” in derisive, scurrilous tones, is a complex piece of legislation having significant consequences for millions of people. Continue reading
Laura and Erma had a solution for my anxiety. “We’re calling a moratorium on reading news articles after dinner. Start The Walking Dead.” Continue reading
It’s hardly just corn growers who should be irate. Indeed, everyone with a conscience should be mad as hell at those in Congress who have signed up to a heartless farm bill proposal to begin cutting an additional $40 billion from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly known as food stamps). Their plan has begun to throw millions of people out of the program and cut benefits for millions more. Continue reading
Coming soon to a theater near you: famine! The second film in The Hunger Games trilogy, “Catching Fire,” opens wide on November 22, based on the hugely popular novels of a post-apocalyptic world in which poverty and starvation force young people into a desperate but oh-so-glamorous, televised competition to the death. Continue reading
In Costa Rica, publicly-owned banks have been available for so long and work so well that people take for granted that any country that knows how to run an economy has a public banking option. Costa Ricans are amazed to hear there is only one public depository bank in the United States (the Bank of North Dakota), and few people have private access to it. Continue reading
It’s been two centuries since the US, barely three decades into nationhood, was already breeding crooked politicians more concerned with self-interests (or those of their political parties) than in democracy or an incorrupt body politic. Continue reading
In an initially pointless exercise that lasted nearly an hour, I flipped between two Palestinian television channels, Al Aqsa TV of Hamas in Gaza and Palestine TV of Fatah in the West Bank. While both purported to represent Palestine and the Palestinians, each seemed to represent some other place and some other people. It was all very disappointing. Continue reading
Two hundred and fifty years ago, the people of America were subject to an unrepresentative government controlled by powerful commercial interests. They rebelled and formed their own government, which has now come to be controlled by powerful commercial interests. Once again, “these are the times that try men’s souls.” What lessons can we learn from history to help us through this crisis? Continue reading
More than two years on since the “revolution” of Feb. 2011, the security crisis is exacerbating by the day threatening Libya with an implosion charged with potential real risks to the geopolitical unity of the Arab north African country, turning this crisis into a national existential one. Obviously the status quo is unsustainable. Continue reading
Ten years ago, when Moyers & Company guests John Nichols and Robert McChesney appeared on the series Now with Bill Moyers, they protested the lack of public involvement in decisions concerning mass media. “There are a handful of very interested parties who are deeply engaged,” Nichols said then, “ who think about it every day, who hire lobbyists, who spend a great deal of money, not merely to lobby Congress, but also, to lobby the FCC.” Continue reading
Inflation is, in fact, nothing more than taxation of everyone at a rate not announced by the government but estimated by its citizens. This inflationary process of printing money out of nothing and then using it to pay debts is camouflaged by calling it monetizing the debt. [1]. It is illegal for individuals to do it. Continue reading
Okay, all you loyal readers, I’d appreciate it if you would “Put your hands together” for today’s commentary. I want you to “give it up” for me. But, most of all, I want you to “show me some love.” Continue reading
Every year 1,000,000 tons of coal dust blows or washes onto Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. This has gone on for the past decade and is set to almost quadruple in the coming years as Australia accelerates its great coal rip-off. Continue reading
The first prophetic sign to follow CNN’s irrelevant Pandora’s Promise is this: the Dallas-based Luminant Power Company has cancelled two mammoth reactors. Continue reading
Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat had his faults but they do not detract from the fact that he was a perfect patriot, a man who devoted every waking hour to solving his people’s plight. He put his very life on the line, escaped various assassination attempts and courageously stood up to the US and Israeli pressure to sell the dreams of millions of Palestinians for a viable, contiguous, independent homeland with Jerusalem as its capital. Continue reading
I’ve been reading about Marinaleda for some time. A small village in the south of Spain, about 60 miles east of Seville, Marinaleda is a cooperative. A commune, a utopia, a socialist success story—take your pick of terminology. The point is that it is a thriving community where everyone has a job, a home, a place in life. Poverty has been banished. There is no police force. Continue reading
It’s hard to pinpoint what exactly is responsible for the growing spate of police shootings, brutality and overreach that have come to dominate the news lately, whether it’s due to militarized police, the growing presence of military veterans in law enforcement, the fact that we are a society predisposed to warfare, indoctrinated through video games, reality TV shows, violent action movies and a series of endless wars that have, for younger generations, become life as they know it—or all of the above. Continue reading
RSS
Fantasy versus reality in Afghanistan
Posted on November 21, 2013 by Kathy Kelly
I’ve been a guest in Colorado Springs, Colorado, following a weeklong retreat with Colorado College students who are part of a course focused on nonviolence. In last weekend’s Colorado Springs Gazette, there was an article in the Military Life section about an international Skype phone call between U.S. soldiers in Kandahar, Afghanistan, and sixth grade girls at a private school in Maryland. (“Carson Soldiers Chat With Friends” November 17, 2013 F4) Continue reading →