On March 12, the New York Federal Reserve announced a $1.5 trillion injection of money into the US financial system. Three days later, it cut its benchmark interest rate to zero and announced it would be buying at least $500 billion in government bonds and another $200 billion in mortgage securities. Continue reading
I was only introduced to the term ‘Chilestinians’ last February at a conference in Istanbul, during a presentation by the Director of the Palestinian Federation of Chile, Anuar Majluf. Continue reading
Coronavirus and globalism will teach us vital lessons. The question is whether we can learn vital lessons that do not serve the ruling interest groups and ideologies. Continue reading
The jury is still out on which of two things—COVID-19 or the panic over COVID-19—will cost more lives and do more damage to the global economy. My money’s still on the latter. In the meantime, I’ve developed a surefire, Groundhog Day type test for whether the emergency is over. Continue reading
When dealing in matters of war and peace, shouldn’t a president sort of know what he or she is doing? But that’s not Donald Trump’s way. Continue reading
Pharma has already discovered the huge profits in labeling school children, toddlers and adults with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Now, according to some reports, it has discovered “geriatric ADHD.” Continue reading
Are you planning to vote for Joe Biden? Sure, why not, go for it. Since 2001, you’ve already voted for Bush, Obama and Trump—so Joe is totally the logical next choice. Like his three predecessors before him, Biden is totally willing to escort America’s oligarchs just one more giant step up their fabulous Stairway to Heaven. Apparently Americans just love them some Deep State. Continue reading
Monied interests and government officials serving them at the federal, state, and local levels comprise America’s ruling class. Continue reading
I noticed disturbing signs. Then I’d look for positive signs to dispute those disturbing ones. Continue reading
Last week, Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (MBS), Saudi Arabia’s 34-year-old de facto ruler, was on a tear. He arrested members of his own royal family and initiated an oil price war with Russia that has sent the price of oil—and the world’s stock markets—plummeting. Behind the headlines, however, another critical event will take place in Saudi Arabia starting March 18: women’s rights activist Loujain al-Hathloul, who was arrested almost two years ago for advocating the right to drive, is due in court. The diabolical MBS wants the world to believe he is the Arab world’s liberal reformer and took credit for eventually granting women the right to drive, but he is also the one who had al-Hathloul and nine other women thrown in prison, charging them as foreign agents and spies. The imprisonment of these peaceful women activists exposes the brutal nature of MBS’s regime and the duplicity of the Western democracies that continue to support him. Continue reading
It is perhaps unusual to have a government that has as much disregard for what most would consider to be the truth as does the current group of rascals running the United States of America. To be sure, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is as shameless a liar as has ever been seen on any public platform while the president himself appears to make things up as he goes along, particularly if a certain embellishment makes him look good. Nevertheless, it is important to recognize that lying and government have a long history, possibly going back to when the first cave dwellers elected a leader to guide the tribe on a mastodon hunt. Continue reading
Merely two weeks after Palestinian Authority President, Mahmoud Abbas, declared that the PA will suspend all ‘security coordination’ with Israel, Palestinian security forces in the West Bank killed unarmed teenager, Salah Zakareneh. Continue reading
When the World Health Organization announced on February 24 that it was time to prepare for a global pandemic, the stock market plummeted. Over the following week, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped by more than 3,500 points or over 10%. In an attempt to contain the damage, on March 3 the Federal Reserve slashed the fed funds rate from 1.5% to 1.0%, in their first emergency rate move and biggest one-time cut since the 2008 financial crisis. But rather than reassuring investors, the move fueled another panic sell-off. Continue reading
Back in 1992, while running for re-election, President George H.W. Bush was speaking at a New Hampshire town hall and accidentally read aloud some stage directions handed to him by his staff: “Message: I care.” Continue reading
Rejecting “loose talk” from corporate Democrats, the media, and insurance industry that a single-payer system would be unaffordable, twenty leading U.S. economists on Tuesday released an open letter endorsing Medicare for All as the best way to reduce soaring national healthcare costs, significantly cut expenses for most U.S. households, and save countless lives. Continue reading
This is a test. Continue reading
The Wile E. Coyotes of the Internet—US Senators Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT)—are sure that THIS time they’ve finally found a made-to-order tool that can take out the Roadrunn … er, those meddling ki … er, the First Amendment and Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Continue reading
Tuesday results in six states for Dems largely replicated Biden’s pre-scripted week ago Super Tuesday triumph over Sanders. Continue reading
“In a dark time,” poet Theodore Roethke wrote, “the eye begins to see.” Continue reading
The United States has none of the systems or infrastructure that would allow it to accomplish what China has done to fight mass infection. Continue reading
Reactions to the incredibly debt-ridden Ponzi Scheme that passes for thriving global capitalism range from joy over its positive nature in the cartoon version of reality presented by corporate media, to near panic over its pending doom from the best informed sources of the financial community. The sudden intrusion of a global health emergency beyond the normal one of people unable to afford health care has led to a sooner than expected market crisis with Wall Street fluctuations making president Trump’s intellectual state seem almost normal. The market drops a thousand points one day, rises two thousand the next, with sales of psychiatric drugs showing tremendous growth though only a few can afford to buy them. Continue reading
Every four years, ruling elites aligned on either side of the two-party duopoly choose their most important political official, the president, to defend and protect their interests. Ordinary Americans are taught that the electoral process is a shining example of democracy at work. No other elected politician in the United States is more mythologized than the American president. George Washington couldn’t tell a lie. Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves. Historians, educators, and the mass corporate media have for centuries portrayed presidents as heroes of the people and the most powerful representatives of the “land of the free” and “home of the brave.” Continue reading
Donald Trump filed his paperwork to run for reelection only hours after his inauguration in January 2017, setting a presidential record, the first of his many dubious achievements. For a man who relished the adulation and bombast of campaigning, it should have surprised no one that he charged out of the starting gate so quickly for 2020 as well. After all, he’d already spent much of the December before his inauguration on a ”thank you” tour of the swing states that had unexpectedly supported him on Election Day—Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin—and visited Florida for a rally only a couple of weeks after he took the oath of office. In much the same way that Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky once embraced “permanent revolution,” Donald Trump embarked on a “permanent campaign.” Continue reading
The myth of moderate Joe belies his hardline agenda throughout a near-half century of public life as US senator and vice president. Continue reading
Economists and progressive advocacy groups are warning that President Donald Trump’s proposal to cut or temporarily suspend the payroll tax in an effort to mitigate the economic impact of the coronavirus is “a Trojan Horse attack on our Social Security system” that will do little to help most U.S. households. Continue reading
The Age of Enlightenment had a pretty good run from the 17th to 19th centuries. It led to the Industrial Age and, in concurrence, the Space and Information Ages. These historical epochs advanced humanity to crowning breakthroughs in science, medicine, information exchange, and quality of life. Today, all of humankind’s advancements are being threatened by those who would have society return to an age marked by superstition, belief in magic and miracles, ignorance, racial and religious intolerance, and abject sexism. Continue reading
Operation Palladium has begun. Hundreds of agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have entered New York and other sanctuary cities in a fresh attempt to round up undocumented immigrants. The directive, according to officials, is simple: arrest as many undocumented immigrants as possible and “flood the streets” with officers. Beginning a 24/7 surveillance and detention program, ICE leadership has requested over 500 special agents who normally work fighting trafficking and organized crime to bolster the agency’s numbers. This follows an earlier decision to deploy immigration SWAT teams to round up undocumented immigrants in sanctuary cities. Continue reading
Hillary Clinton, of course, received the Democratic Party nomination in 2016 and was widely expected to beat Trump but she lost to him (though she won California by 4,269,978 in the popular vote, and so beat Trump by 2,864,974 in the nationwide popular vote, while she lost all other states by 1,405,002 votes, and so she would have been California’s president if she had won, but the rest of the nation wouldn’t have been happy). Continue reading
The political left in the US is a political minority that is constantly misrepresented and abused. While the capitalist has captured the media and the political arena, flooding the country with its messages about the wonders of capitalism and the “American Dream” and the dangers of socialism and communism, the left has struggled to get its message out to the American people. Continue reading
We can’t seem to have an election these days without “exit polls.” News organizations—on every big ballot-box day—now routinely stop voters exiting polling places to ask who they voted for. Continue reading
CEOs of the major Wall Street banks have been summoned to the White House to discuss the coronavirus its economic fallout. I’m told Trump administration is considering more corporate tax cuts, tax cuts targeted to the airlines and hospitality industries, and a temporary payroll tax cut. Continue reading
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Why coronavirus drives some people bonkers
Logically it is hard to tell how many people are suffering from the virus worldwide
Posted on March 18, 2020 by Linda S. Heard
I’m beginning to feel as if I’ve woken up in an alternative universe. It’s hard to fathom that a bowl of bat soup consumed in a Chinese market could result in millions of humans being forcibly quarantined en masse at pain of arrest or that family pets, wrongly suspected of being virus carriers, being thrown out of windows to their death. Continue reading →