Medical martial law is liberalism’s final capitulation

In 2010 Chris Hedges declared the liberal class as dead as a doornail. He was late. Liberalism had died decades earlier. All that remains now is the separate components of the body of liberalism. The stinking compounds have decomposed into identity politics. Continue reading

‘Consciousness and the Quantum: The Next Paradigm’

At last a book that not only makes quantum physics understandable for general readers but shows how it has practical value for us. Author Dr. Robert M. Oates Jr. presents this abstract, theoretical topic in a step-by-step manner that makes it comprehensible. He explains the discoveries that are revolutionizing the way we see the world, and he captures the drama and conflicts involved in overthrowing the old scientific worldview and building the new. In conclusion he presents the benefits this knowledge can have for our individual lives. Continue reading

Trump’s vaccine deception

Trump is a congenital liar. Accept nothing he says at face value. Continue reading

Britons’ trust in Boris is wavering

Johnson’s decisions on lockdowns have been untimely and counterproductive

Britain’s prime minister, Boris Johnson, is gifted with a likeability quotient that’s off the charts. He is witty, eccentric with a mind as sharp as a diamond-cutter, yet charmingly self-effacing. Continue reading

The privileged and powerful in the pandemic

As America reopens for business, you might expect Jeff Bezos, the richest man in America, and his Amazon corporation, one of the most profitable corporations in America, to set the corporate standard for how to protect the health of American workers. Continue reading

What you need to know about the ICC investigation of war crimes in occupied Palestine

Fatou Bensouda, chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), has, once and for all, settled the doubts on the court’s jurisdiction to investigate war crimes committed in occupied Palestine. Continue reading

The online double-bind

The trap was set at least twenty-five years ago and the mice jumped at the smell of the cheese. I am referring to the introduction of the computer as a mass necessity and the Internet that followed. Continue reading

Back to work, or else: Trump administration tells states to pull unemployment benefits

WASHINGTON—GOP President Donald Trump’s Labor Secretary, Eugene Scalia, and his #2 who runs the agency that oversees jobless benefits want employers to report—and states to bar benefits from—workers who fear returning to their old jobs because their employers won’t protect them against the coronavirus. Continue reading

Supreme Court election year vacancy ‘would be different’ this time from Merrick Garland in 2016, says Lindsey Graham

‘These people don't even have an ounce of shame.’

Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee Sen. Lindsey Graham said in an interview airing Sunday that the public should not expect a vacancy on the Supreme Court to remain open this election year, despite what happened last time. Continue reading

The face of post-COVID geopolitics

The post-COVID international geopolitical structure may resemble that which followed the most lethal pandemic that affected the world—the highly contagious Black Death of the 14th century. The bubonic plague killed between 75 and 200 million people in Asia, Europe, and North Africa. It is believed the bubonic/pneumonic plague was carried by black rat flea parasites that travelled to Europe and the Middle East first via the Silk Road from China and then on Genoese merchant ships sailing from Crimea. The fleas spread from their rodent hosts to humans. An eerie connection to COVID-19 is that among the first victims of the Black Death were 80 percent of the population of Hubei province, including the town of Wuchang, present-day Wuhan. Continue reading

Civil disobedience, billionaire-style

Automaker mogul Elon Musk defends his ‘freedom’ to endanger the lives of his workers

Last week, billionaire Elon Musk defied local public health officials and reopened his flagship Tesla auto assembly plant in Fremont, California. Public safety officials had ordered that plant shut down—over Musk’s fierce opposition—almost two months earlier. Continue reading

My Beit Daras, my Nakba: Two Palestinian intellectuals reminiscing about their destroyed village

Dr. Ghada Ageel and Dr. Ramzy Baroud have more in common than their scholarly research on Palestinian history and politics. They are both refugees, and the direct descendants of Palestinian refugees who have been expelled from their historic village of Beit Daras at gunpoint during the catastrophic events that led to the Palestinian Nakba of May 15, 1948. Continue reading

The reluctant outsider

In the end, Sanders chose to keep his friends

It is sad to some, infuriating to others. The slow devolution and flame out of the Bernie Sanders 2020 campaign will go down in history as yet another article of indictment against the claim that capitalist parties can be reformed from within. This argument has been made time and again, only for it to resolve itself in the most odious and macabre fashion. Whether Henry Wallace, George McGovern, Jesse Jackson, or Bernie Sanders, progressives fail to change a party the historical role of which is to sideline progressivism. Progressives don’t change the Democratic Party; the Democratic Party changes progressives. Continue reading

The worst is yet to come: Contact tracing, immunity cards and mass testing

No one is safe. Continue reading

Reopening the economy is a death sentence for workers

The wealthy may be fine with sacrificing the vulnerable, but workers are fighting for the sanctity of human life.

Every morning for the last two months, I’ve checked the news in my home state of Florida with growing concern. Continue reading

The “Stupid Rasputin” makes his move

Donald Trump’s son-in-law and special assistant in charge of everything and his “Stupid Rasputin,” Jared Kushner, has made his move. Kushner, who favors a return to economic normalcy during the Covid-19 pandemic, does not feel the same about the November 3 election. Continue reading

Arabs, UN must move to swiftly protect the status of Palestinian refugees

‘Heinous racism,’ is how the Geneva-based Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor described a recent decision by Lebanese authorities to bar Palestinian refugee expats from returning to Lebanon. Continue reading

Could the current serious economic recession evolve into a full-fledged global economic depression?

So far, it can be said that central banks and governments in most advanced economies have acted correctly to prevent the economic lockdown of large segments of the economy from turning into a total economic disaster. They have, at least, saved the day. Continue reading

Rewriting history is a US specialty

The power of endlessly repeated propaganda gets most people to believe almost anything—especially when pounded into the public consciousness by press agent establishment media. Continue reading

The real reason Trump wants to reopen the economy

Donald Trump is getting nervous. Internal polls show him losing in November unless the economy comes roaring back. Continue reading

Freedom Rider: New attacks on Venezuela

The Democratic Party’s “left” wing is mute on the latest US aggression against the people and government of Venezuela, thus giving assent to Trump by their silence. Continue reading

CEOs aren’t pigs. That’s unfair—to pigs.

Pigs are intelligent animals with a sense of social responsibility. CEOs are looting taxpayers funds meant for small businesses.

There’s a general sentiment today that multimillionaire corporate chieftains are pigs. But I think that’s unfair. To pigs. Continue reading

Mission imperative: Come November, Trump must go

In case you needed a reminder, the pandemic reveals everything rancid about this presidency.

There must be one mission above all, one goal supreme: Vote this monster out of the White House. And along with him, tow to the nearest dump the clown car of malefactors who gave him license to cripple our republic. Continue reading

Trump regime hardliners want Social Security and Medicare eliminated

Social Security and Medicare are insurance programs, not welfare—funded by equal worker-employer payroll tax deductions. Continue reading

Again finding US permit invalid, federal court upholds block on ‘climate-busting’ Keystone XL construction

‘Our courts have shown time and time again that the law matters.’

A federal judge on Monday denied the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ request to amend his earlier ruling regarding TC Energy’s Keystone XL pipeline, reaffirming that a permit issued by the Army Corps was invalid. Continue reading

The atrocities, documented

Trump’s Monday presser, after a weekend of rage-tweeting, was a wowzer. Yes, he stormed offstage after a racist, sexist meltdown, offering further welcome proof in this difficult time of his cool competence under fire. Continue reading

Republicans can’t seem to make up their minds about mail and voting

One laudable side effect of the COVID-19 panic is a nationwide effort to promote “vote by mail” as a universal alternative to standing in line at polling places. One reason that effort is laudable is that it would likely decrease vote fraud. Continue reading

Indifference toward public health and welfare in America

The US is the only developed nation without some form of universal healthcare coverage. Continue reading

The Trump administration’s “monstrous idea”: Direct payments in exchange for cuts to Social Security benefits

‘Donald Trump and his administration will stop at nothing to cut Social Security.’

Suddenly concerned about the growing national debt now that corporations have secured access to trillions of dollars in COVID-19 bailout funds with little oversight, Trump administration officials are reportedly considering several proposals purportedly aimed at reducing government spending—including a pair of plans that would provide Americans with cash payments in exchange for delays or cuts to their Social Security benefits. Continue reading

Class conflict rages in the fight over next stimulus bill

WASHINGTON—Call it class conflict: The fight over the next economic stimulus bill will pit the representatives of the rich against the representatives of the rest of us. Continue reading

The deathly tragedy of American exceptionalism

No other nation has endured as much death from COVID-19 nor nearly as high a death rate as has the United States. Continue reading

COVID-19: Natural world could be the winner in this war

Most of us must steel ourselves for more of the same in the months or years to come

Stuck inside my home in Egypt in between railing at the sun’s rays for bathing my neighbour’s terrace while skirting the edge of my balcony, my mind keeps wandering back to my early childhood in Wales where I lived with my parents in a whitewashed two-up, two-down cottage. Continue reading