Ralph Waldo Emerson once told about a guest who came to dinner and spent the entire evening prattling about his own integrity: “The louder he talked of his honor,” Emerson wrote: “the faster we counted our spoons.” Continue reading
All across America this past year-and-a-half 700,000 people have died an agonizing, terrifying, drowning-in-their-own-fluids death, their relatives helpless, saying goodbye using Zoom or FaceTime. Families broken and shattered; husbands, wives, children and grandchildren left bereft; doctors, nurses, and physicians assistants dying along with them or holding their hands as they draw their final, tortured breath. Many of those deaths were absolutely unnecessary. Continue reading
What PR genius came up with the catchy, dismissive moniker “fake meat”? The term, along with the euphemistic “protein plants” for slaughterhouses, shows just how threatened meat producers have become by the legions now embracing plant-based meat….and the prospect of cultured meat coming up the rear. Continue reading
I’m old enough to remember when the Republican Party stood for limited government—when Ronald Reagan thundered “Government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem.” Continue reading
The ghastliness of the new Texas abortion law is difficult to express in words. It prevents women from aborting their pregnancies after six weeks and creates legal avenues for the punishment of those who assist a woman in her efforts to obtain an abortion. Texas has opened a multidimensional Pandora’s box that threatens marginalized communities across the country. Continue reading
Barely a year ago, my colleagues Chuck Collins and Omar Ocampo noted the passing of “a disturbing milestone in the U.S. history of concentrated wealth and power.” On August 13, 2020, just twelve obscenely wealthy Americans held a combined $1.015 trillion. They called those twelve the “Oligarchic Dozen.” Continue reading
“Congress is gradually moving toward having only one bill per year,” former congressman Justin Amash (L-MI) tweeted recently. And that bill will have “everything stuffed into it, negotiated by just a few congressional leaders, completely behind closed doors, with no floor amendments permitted.” Continue reading
You’ve either seen the Netflix show Squid Game, considered watching the South Korean series before giving it a pass because of its violence, or read about it and wondered what all the fuss is about. You know, therefore, that this global hit is about hundreds of indebted Koreans competing against one another for a huge jackpot. The competitions are children’s games like tug-of-war and marbles. The penalty for losing is death. Continue reading
When Joe Biden was declared the winner in the US elections last November, expectations in Ramallah were high. A Biden administration, compared to the brazenly pro-Israel Trump administration, would surely be much fairer to Palestinians, was the conventional wisdom at the time. Continue reading
It comes as no surprise, of course, that several Republican members of Congress and White House staff were “intimately involved” in planning and executing the Jan. 6th Trump coup attempt. The detailed revelations published by Rolling Stone magazine this weekend, however, provide the opportunity to repeat something this publication has been saying ever since the day of the failed fascist insurrection: Expel the coup plotters from Congress, prosecute them, and jail them. Continue reading
Russell “Maroon” Shoatz has been granted compassionate release after 50 years in prison. The length of his sentence is outrageous but it is hardly unique. The United States not only has the dubious distinction of being the country with the largest population of incarcerated people, but it also has political prisoners held longer than anywhere else in the world. Shoatz is now 78-years old and suffering from cancer. To be blunt, he is being released so that he can die outside of prison walls. Continue reading
When world leaders gather in Scotland next week for the COP26 climate change conference, activists will be pushing for drastic action to end the world’s catastrophic reliance on fossil fuels. Consciousness about the climate emergency has skyrocketed in recent years, while government responses remain meager. But one aspect of extreme climate jeopardy—“nuclear winter”—has hardly reached the stage of dim awareness Continue reading
A man walking along the beach came upon a boy picking up starfish and throwing them into the water. Continue reading
On October 20 the U.S. State Department announced that “Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III met with Ukrainian Minister of Defense Andrii Taran and later with President Volodymyr Zelenskiy today in Kyiv. In both meetings, the leaders affirmed the strength of the U.S.-Ukraine strategic defence partnership, and Secretary Austin pledged continued U.S. support for Ukraine’s sovereignty, territorial integrity, and Euro-Atlantic aspirations.” According to Voice of America he “called on Russia” to “end its destabilizing activities in the Black Sea” (without mentioning that Russia has a Black Sea coastline of 800 km). Continue reading
“Mush” barks McConnell and forty-nine Republican Senators, as if tied to a dog sled obey. The malicious McConnell—easily the most powerfully brutish, corporatist, citizen-blocking, lawless, corrupt senator in modern American history—doesn’t even bother polling his senators for their yea or nay on a myriad of votes. The Republican senators are obedient automations obeying McConnell’s demands. Continue reading
As the dire threat of Havana Syndrome gains increasingly widespread acknowledgement, the US government employees who’ve been finding themselves targeted by these attacks are desperate for a way to protect themselves from this electromagnetic menace. Continue reading
Where is cancel culture when you need it? Ted Nugent’s racist remarks got him banned from performing in Muskegon, Michigan, Fort Knox and removed from Long Island’s “Back the Blue Demonstration” performing line-up just last year. Though he claims to be a patriot, he has bragged about being a draft dodger and pedophile (later recanting the claims). Continue reading
“Malevolent Mitch” McConnell—Senate Republican leader from Kentucky—is driving U.S. democracy into the ditch of history. Of course, he’s got a lot of help. Continue reading
For the first time in years, American workers have enough bargaining leverage to demand better working conditions and higher wages—and are refusing to work until they get them. Continue reading
Earlier this year I felt I was going blind and decided that I might have to give up the love of my life, writing, since I could no longer stare at a computer screen. Living alone, I would not be able to drive a car and thereby get groceries or take care of the many other things necessary for survival in the modern world if my eyesight diminished further. I considered suicide. Continue reading
Senator Joe Manchin, echoing the right-wing billionaire’s think-tanks’ PR and every Republican in Congress, recently said his objection to free college for students and eyeglasses for seniors was that such things created an “entitlement society,” a slur that means “a nation of welfare recipients.” Continue reading
Public outrage immediately followed the enactment of the new Texas law designed to undermine abortion rights. While the law bans abortions beyond six weeks into a pregnancy, it, perhaps most perniciously, allows private citizens to collect bounties from anyone who helps a person obtain an abortion. The category of persons who “knowingly… [engage] in conduct that aids or abets the performance or inducement of an abortion” potentially extends from the doctor who performs the procedure to the rideshare driver who transports the patient to the facility to abort the pregnancy. Continue reading
General Secretary Xi Jinping’s congratulatory statement above was directed to the People’s Education Press-Publishing House (PEP). PEP is responsible for pushing out much of the educational texts produced in China. It describes itself in this way: “PEP is under the direct leadership of the Ministry of Education (MOE) of the People’s Republic of China. The People’s Publishing House, found on September 1st, 1921, and re-established on December 1st, 1950, is the important publisher of the Party and state in the politics sector since the founding of the People’s Republic of China and the country’s first large publishing agency specializing in philosophy and social science publications. Chairman Mao wrote the title inscription for the “People’s Publishing House”. The logo was then extensively used on all publications put out by “People’s Publishing Houses” at both the state and provincial levels…” Continue reading
The pro-Israel crowd on social media was quick to pounce on award-winning Irish novelist, Sally Rooney, as soon as she declared that she had “chosen not to sell … translation rights of her best-selling novel, ‘Beautiful World, Where Are You’ to an Israeli-based publishing house”. Continue reading
On October 19, 96-year-old Irmgard Furchner appeared in a German court to answer charges of aiding and abetting 11,412 murders. The murders took place between 1943 and 1945 at the Stutthof concentration camp, where a much younger Furchner worked as secretary to the camp’s commandant. Continue reading
Right now, the United States is locked in a contentious debate over the Build Back Better plan, which will make a significant difference in the lives of millions of individuals and families. Continue reading
While no one deserves to die from either COVID-19 or complications brought on by COVID and co-morbidities, the eulogies for General Colin Powell—who recently died from COVID and which had been made worse by multiple myeloma and Parkinson’s—have been a bit over the top. Powell had stated that as secretary of state in the George W. Bush administration his having lied to the United Nations Security Council in 2003 over Saddam Hussein’s alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction was a “blot” on his career. Actually, it was one of many. Continue reading
Much has been said about the Biden administration’s rejoining international institutions, after former U.S. President Donald Trump broke away from the standardised participation in international agreements and consensus. Notably, the international community singled out the U.S. under Trump for the so-called “deal of the century”, which veered away from the two-state paradigm that has steered international diplomacy on Palestine and Israel for decades. Continue reading
The fact that Tanzanian novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah has won the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature is welcome news, especially as the Swedish Academy is historically known for lacking in diversity, as if intellectual creativity is largely confined to Western intellectual circles. Continue reading
Excuse me but I have to vent. Continue reading
On October 5, former Facebook product manager Frances Haugen testified before the US Senate, decrying her former employer’s “destructive impact” and warning that “without action, divisive and extremist behaviors we see today are only the beginning.” Continue reading
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The West’s China complex: Beijing as the enemy and the savior
Posted on November 4, 2021 by Ramzy Baroud
“Could China’s economy collapse?” was the title of an October 15 article published by QUARTZ magazine. The article makes an ominous case of a Chinese economic crash and its impact on China’s and global economies. Continue reading →