The EPA’s war on science continues

The EPA wants to ban research that doesn’t violate the privacy of its subjects. That means less science—and fewer rules for polluters.

The Trump EPA wants to introduce a new rule: Its scientists can only use studies that make all of their data public. Continue reading

Trump honors Native American Heritage Month with coup against Bolivia’s first Native American president

Donald Trump, who has a schoolboy’s view of Native Americans as having been “savages” who besieged wagon trains of “peaceful” European settlers, has chalked up on his record of seedy deeds the military overthrow of Bolivia’s first Native American president, Evo Morales, an ethnic Aymara. Trump has been eyeing Morales, the leader of Bolivia’s Movement toward Socialism (MAS) party, for some form of retribution ever since Morales scolded Trump in person during a meeting of the United Nations Security Council on September 26, 2018. Continue reading

Freedom Rider: Hybrid warfare in Bolivia and beyond

The violent coup in Bolivia, like all of Washington’s regime-change and dirty tricks operations, has been aided and abetted by corporate media’s masters of euphemism. Continue reading

The phony Anti-Defamation League’s genocide legislation

Why did I testify at the Massachusetts State House on Oct. 7 against legislation that would require public schools to teach the Jewish Holocaust, Armenian and Greek Genocides, and other genocides and “atrocities”? Continue reading

How surveillance and propaganda work in ‘the Free World’

A Bloomberg report of October 22 was concise and uncompromising in declaring Russia to be a surveillance state. Harking back to the good old days of the Cold War, as is increasingly the practice in much of the Western media, Bloomberg recounted that “The fourth of 10 basic rules Western spies followed when trying to infiltrate Russia’s capital during the Cold War—don’t look back because you’re never alone — is more apt than ever. Only these days it’s not just foreigners who are being tracked, but all 12.6 million Muscovites, too. Officials in Moscow have spent the last few years methodically assembling one of the most comprehensive video-surveillance operations in the world. The public-private network of as many as 200,000 cameras records 1.5 billion hours of footage a year that can be accessed by 16,000 government employees, intelligence officers and law-enforcement personnel.” Continue reading

Waiting on the wealthy

Low-wage jobs catering to the wealthiest Americans are now growing twice as fast as other jobs.

Are you there yet? Continue reading

Republicans, not Russians, threaten our elections

When turnout climbs, Republicans lose. No wonder they're closing polling places and purging voters all over the country.

Republicans are less likely to win elections when voter turnout is high. Continue reading

Third parties: Corporate Democrats should go the way of the Whigs

Some say the U.S. constitution is “gamed” in such a way that we can only have two political parties. Today those are the Democrats and the Republicans. People who oppose third parties say it would be too hard to build a viable third party. However, it’s useful to look at the history of the demise of the Whig Party and its replacement by one of the third parties of the time. Continue reading

Michael Bloomberg bought Gracie Mansion. Could he buy the White House?

With personal fortunes worth dozens of billions, modern American deep pockets can afford one of just about everything

The 220-year-old Gracie Mansion, the official residence of New York’s mayors since 1942, hosted billionaire Michael Bloomberg for three terms. The first term began after Bloomberg, then the Republican candidate for mayor, spent an incredible $74 million in 2001 to get himself elected. He spent, in effect, $99 for every vote he received. Continue reading

Washington has disassociated America from good and deprived her of a moral basis

Not long ago I read that a US assistant secretary of state, or perhaps it was a member of the National Security Council, said that now that Washington had reestablished control over Ecuador, it would not be long before the governments of Bolivia, Venezuela, and Cuba would be overthrown. Continue reading

NATO faces an unprecedented challenge

A cautious stance by the Transatlantic alliance is probably wise

During an interview published in the Economist France’s President Emmanuel Macron accused the White House of inflicting “brain death” on the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) and accused the US of “turning its back on us” citing America’s withdrawal of troops from northern Syria to pave the way for a Turkish incursion without consultation with allies. Continue reading

Our point remains: PBS should broadcast impeachment hearings in primetime

And not just on digital platforms but on your regular local station.

Okay, let’s be clear. The ad we took in this past Friday’s edition of The New York Times and an accompanying essay asked that PBS, the Public Broadcasting Service, do the right thing for the American people, the people PBS was created to serve. Continue reading

US staged coup d’état in Bolivia

The late William Blum documented CIA coups since WW II. Continue reading

Trump designates November as a de facto “white peoples’ month”

Not content with the annual November observance of National Native American Heritage Month, which has been promulgated by every president since George H. W. Bush in 1990, Donald Trump issued a proclamation, published in the Federal Register, also naming November as “National American History and Founders Month.” The White House observance of November to honor the white European settlers who initiated the genocide of the Native American peoples in North America fits into Trump’s championship of white nationalist causes and further erodes his relationship with America’s tribal nations and communities. Continue reading

Why the billionaires love candidates such as Pete Buttigieg

Pete Buttigieg is by far the billionaires’ top darling amongst all of the Democratic candidates who are running for president, and his stand on healthcare is one of the major reasons for this. Continue reading

Let us pause for a commercial

Sports have become so commercialized and militarized that I often am tempted to shut my Tv and retire to a state of depression. First, we have what was once a game become a vehicle to sell products. For example, a one hour (that’s 60 minutes) football game has been remade into a 3 to 4 hour commercial. The game has become incidental. The same can be said for basketball, baseball, and hockey. There is rarely a moment when play stops and there is no commercial or commercials to tolerate. Continue reading

PBS, televise the impeachment hearings for all to see

Why we took out that ad in The New York Times

The House of Representatives has announced that public hearings in the impeachment inquiry will begin on Wednesday, November 13. We believe that for the sake of the nation, public television should not only broadcast them live as they happen but repeat them in primetime so that Americans who work during the day have a chance to watch and judge for themselves Donald Trump’s guilt or innocence. Continue reading

Is the run on the dollar due to panic or greed?

What’s going on in the repo market? Rates on repurchase agreements (“repo”) should be around 2%, in line with the fed funds rate. But they shot up to over 5% on September 16 and got as high as 10% on September 17. Yet banks were refusing to lend to each other, evidently passing up big profits to hold onto their cash—just as they did in the housing market crash and Great Recession of 2008-09. Continue reading

A new disease Big Meat doesn’t want you to know about

Have you ever heard of African swine fever (ASF) caused by the African swine fever virus (ASFV)? A fourth of the world’s pigs have died from it just this year—half of all of China’s pigs—but like previous food animal pandemics, Big Meat has managed to keep it out of the news. Continue reading

Explainer: No, House Democrats aren’t violating Trump’s rights

“If the facts are your side,” famed attorney and former law professor Alan Dershowitz instructed his students, “pound the facts into the table. If the law is on your side, pound the law into the table. If neither the facts nor the law are on your side, pound the table.” Continue reading

US coup plot to oust Bolivia’s Evo Morales

The late William Blum documented how Washington toppled numerous sovereign governments, assassinated legitimate leaders, and removed others by coups d’état. Continue reading

Neoliberalism’s children rise up to demand justice in Chile and the world

Uprisings against the corrupt, generation-long dominance of neoliberal “center-right” and “center-left” governments that benefit the wealthy and multinational corporations at the expense of working people are sweeping country after country all over the world. Continue reading

In Kentucky, a strong hint of things to come?

Frankfort, the capital of Kentucky, which most people get wrong in trivia contests, may soon be in the headlines around the world. What Republican state Senate President Robert Stivers said about the close gubernatorial election that saw Democratic Attorney General Andrew Beshear edge out a close victory over Republican incumbent Matt Bevin, a Trump loyalist, should normally shock the nation. But in the era of Trump, taking non-democratic actions to maintain political power is the new reality. Continue reading

A new kind of tyranny: The global state’s war on those who speak truth to power

All of us are in danger. Continue reading

Microsoft should not fund Israeli spying on Palestinians

The act of Palestinian activists covering their faces during anti-Israeli occupation rallies is an old practice that spans decades. The masking of the face, often by Kufyias—traditional Palestinian scarves that grew to symbolize Palestinian resistance—is far from being a fashion statement. Instead, it is a survival technique, without it, activists are likely to be arrested in subsequent nightly raids; at times, even assassinated. Continue reading

What’s Joker’s joke?

It’s not funny, that’s for sure. Continue reading

The ruling class, its “Deep State” servants, and us

The present mind management program obsessingly distracting us with impeachment bulletins by the micro second is part of the consciousness controlling dictatorship which has kept the majority of Americans focused on our feet while our heads are filled with propaganda, what some ruling class servants called “tittytainment,” and anything but the most serious problems of a system decomposing faster than ever and threatening to come down on all our heads while we scrupulously study our feet. Continue reading

We are all expendable

Almost daily, I am confronted by an article and/or photo of starving Yemen children and the destruction of their homes. I keep learning that such an attack on the civilian population is against international law. I would like to know, how often or when the US felt the obligation to abide by international or even domestic law. The reality is that they are the bully on the block and they are not obligated to follow any laws. After all, who has the chutzpah (nerve) to challenge them? Continue reading

Mexico: One failed US war doesn’t justify another

On November 4, ten dual US-Mexican citizens—members of an offshoot sect of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints — died in a highway ambush, apparently the latest casualties of rampant and violent drug cartel activity in northern Mexico. Continue reading

Freedom Rider: America needs protest

A thousand young people demonstrated in Brooklyn, jumping over turnstiles in solidarity with others arrested and brutalized by the cops. Continue reading

You’re paying Big Oil to pollute

Big oil companies are drilling public oil for free, thanks to a ‘temporary’ loophole that’s stayed open for 25 years.

The one thing you never want to hear your dentist say is “oops!” It’s also alarming to hear from a former U.S. senator—25 years after he passed a temporary oil subsidy for Big Oil. Continue reading

America’s education system: Teaching the price of everything and the value of nothing

I am a substitute teacher (grades K-12) in a public school system located in Virginia, a state on the eastern seaboard of the United States. For many years prior to becoming a substitute teacher, I also taught at a private school in Virginia. Tuition and fees at the private school are approximately $42,000 (USD), the public schools are, of course, tuition free. Continue reading