Who Won?
Have the people spoken?
Latest articles
Hold onto Your Ethical and Intellectual Integrity with All Your Might
In the face of an avalanche of brain-numbing and spiritual-lobotomizing wrong “truths” and miseducated citizens, it is still incumbent upon the misinformed, ill-informed and uninformed to attempt to learn.
Deep learning deploys a set of lenses that takes the complexities of contradictions and not-so-self-evident truths and focus into some sense of why “they” are where “they” are economically, culturally and spiritually.
The US election is over (as of Nov. 5 midnight?), but the dangerous clown show of misanthropy and hegemony marches on. I am writing this for National American Indian Heritage Month (Nov.), because Native Peoples in this part of the world …
Our Fragile Infrastructure: Lessons From Hurricane Helene
Asheville, North Carolina, is known for its historic architecture, vibrant arts scene and as a gateway to the Blue Ridge Mountains. It was a favorite escape for “climate migrants” moving from California, Arizona, and other climate-challenged vicinities, until a “500 year flood” ravaged the city this fall.
Hurricane Helene was a wakeup call not just for stricken North Carolina residents but for people across the country following their tragic stories in the media and in the podcasts now favored by young voters for news. “Preppers” well equipped with supplies watched in helpless disbelief as homes washed away in a wall of water and mud, …
What the Air Force Doesn’t Want Us to Notice on Election Night
Much significance will happen at the end of Election Day, and a countdown will begin at 11:00 p.m. PDT on November 5th. While everyone’s attention will be on who our next president will be, the U.S. The Air Force will test-launch an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile with a dummy hydrogen bomb on the tip from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The missile will cross the Pacific Ocean and 22 minutes later crash into the Marshall Islands. The U.S. Air Force does this several times a year. The launches are always at night while Americans are sleeping.
This is what …
Ancient Tales to Modern Struggles
Day after day, we are all subjected to Europeans cosplaying as Israelites straight out of the Book of Joshua carrying out Old Testament massacres with 21st Century weapons. It should be noted that the massacres detailed within that book very likely did not happen—the archeology does not back them up.
These modern massacres, however, are all too real, as we’ve all seen waking nightmares live-streamed to us every day. In the coming years, the full horror of the Gaza Genocide will be known. There will be those who wonder how it could have happened, and there will be those who support …
Trust the Science
As recorded in Hansard, Canada’s prime minister Justin Trudeau, as he did on so many occasions without ever citing the scientific evidence, stated, “We will continue to trust the science.”
Last Minute “Closing Argument” to Vote Against the Genocidaire Harris
It has become a commonplace among disillusioned radicals and independents that today’s choice of Harris/Trump fails to pose any of the most pressing issues facing the human race: climate change, potential world war, resource poisoning/depletion, and so on. But the most critical issue of all is indeed on the ballot: the genocide in Gaza, which has become nothing short of a watershed in defining human consciousness in our time. Conservative estimates place the death toll in that calamity at some 43,000 (perhaps as high as 186,000, according to one study), more than half of them women and …
Disabilities and Bullying and the Harris-Trump Road Show
Remember this?
Oh, yeah, that Messiah, Mister Rapist, Grifter, Dirtier than Dirt Kushner-Guided, Roy Cohen-Trained TRUMP: “My Uncle Donald Trump Told Me Disabled Americans Like My Son ‘Should Just Die’”
Read the Time Magazine article written by his nephew.
Here, reality check for democrats and republicans:
Some legit writing here from me to be published in “legit” media around my area:
When the whole world is silent, even one voice becomes powerful
“I’d like to have enough resources, money, to take a trip somewhere. I don’t want to be homeless if housing finds out I have extra money in my bank account.”
Seems like a wish …
Who Should be the Next Emperor of the Violent Global Imperium?
As US voters go to the polls on November 5, they need to remind themselves that when the US elects its next domestic president, it is also selecting the emperor of a violent, global imperium. Choices made over sundry domestic issues have far reaching effects, far beyond local pocketbook or civil rights issues. They determine who lives and dies across the planet, and how much pain, harm and suffering the rest of the world will have to bear.
In this context, it’s fair to ask, who is the lesser evil? Trump or Harris?
The answer, of course, is “neither”. Like …
Malnutrition and Mortality in Gaza, One Year Later. Who’s Counting the Dead?
It’s a tragic sign of the times when little introductory narrative is needed to set the near-apocalyptic scene that exists in Gaza today. The world watches from a distance as Israel’s onslaught continues and the civilian death toll escalates to unimaginable levels. Now, the nightmare that Palestinian survivors are currently enduring is about to take on another dimension.
The prediction made one year ago of a man-made famine is about to be realised, though in truth, Gazans have suffered food insecurity for decades. Despite a heavy dependency on international agencies for humanitarian …
Ruthless Settlements: BHP, Brazil, and the Samarco Fundão Dam Class Action
The BHP Group, as with other mining giants, has much explaining to do in the way it has approached the environment. It has become a master of the greenwashing experiment, an adept promoter of sham environmental responsibility (take, for instance, its practice of merely selling its oil and gas business to Woodside Petroleum in 2021 rather than retiring them); and, it transpired recently, a ruthless negotiator and litigant over contentious claims.
After nine years of negotiations and attritive legal proceedings, BHP has reached a settlement with Brazilian authorities regarding its role in the Fundão tailings dam collapse in Mariana, Minas …
Kamala is the In-Girl
Everyone loves her
IMAGE/Monthly Review
The criteria for winning a presidential debate is very simple: the candidate who fumbles less, makes less mistakes, avoids too many verbal gaffes, etc., who is able to present a rosy picture for the future, and, who believes in people’s “ambition, the aspirations, [and] the dreams,” is the winner — provided all bullshitting is done with a serious face.
However, it’s entirely a different matter whether that person has any genuine solutions to the problems majority of the people face.
Exactly eight years ago, …
The Numbing Election
Before radio waves vibrated in Calvin Coolidge’s 1924 campaign, voters had scarce knowledge of candidates in presidential elections. Despite the limited communications, only a few presidents of the United States (POTUS) were disasters and most were more acceptable. The rapid growth of communications brought the faces and words of candidates into everyone’s living rooms; it did not improve the selection of chief executives who moved into the White House living room. The assortment remained the same — a few great, most acceptable, and some sub-standard presidents.
Donald trump is the only elected president who never held public office or …
Taxes
Defined by how the government apportions taxes collected.
Post-Election Truths: The Things That Won’t Change (No Matter Who Wins)
If voting could ever really change anything, it’d be illegal.
— Thorne, Land of the Blind (2006)
After months of handwringing and mud-slinging and fear-mongering, the votes have finally been cast and the outcome has been decided: the Deep State has won.
Despite the billions spent to create the illusion of choice culminating in the reassurance ritual of voting for Donald Trump or Kamala Harris, when it comes to most of the big issues that keep us in bondage to authoritarian overlords, not much will change.
Despite all of the work that has …
South Africa’s Memorial to the ICJ: More Evidence on Israel’s Genocide
The timing, as with so much in the ongoing wars in Gaza and Lebanon, was most appropriate. The Israeli Knesset had signalled its intent on crippling and banishing the sole agency of humanitarian worth for Palestinian welfare by passing laws criminalising its operations by 92 to 10 on October 28.
The attack on UNRWA also came with a contemporaneous legal effort, this time from South Africa. Pretoria had already made its wishes clear on December 28, 2023 in filing an application in the International Court of Justice alleging “violations by Israel regarding the [United Nations] Convention on the Prevention and …
Internationalism: Is It Dead or Dying?
It is difficult to think about Cuba without engaging emotionally. I couldn’t get back to sleep the other night, distressed over the tragic blackout of nearly the entire country with a hurricane approaching.
Yes, the genocide in Palestine and Lebanon evokes similar fits of emotion and sleeplessness; the actions of the Israeli government are obscenely bestial and criminal. Yet Cuba, because of its over six decades of defiance of US imperialism and its enormous sacrifices for other peoples, holds a special place for me.
No country with so little has done so much for others.
In the first half of the twentieth …
Disappeared Doctors
We are in some of the darkest days of this genocide. The Israeli military is currently carrying out a systemic extermination campaign in north Gaza, committing massacre after massacre while completely cutting off humanitarian aid and banning UNRWA.
On October 29, 2024, an Israeli airstrike killed 93 Palestinians in Beit Lahia, north Gaza. Those injured in the massacre have no access to medical care, because on October 26, 2024, Israeli forces attacked Kamal Adwan Hospital and abducted 44 of its 70 staff. Our …
In Gaza, the West Extols the Suffering of the Executioners
A CNN article on the suicide of an Israeli soldier who served in Gaza laments the psychological toll of the horrors inflicted by the occupying army — but not from the victims’ perspective, only that of the perpetrators. It even goes so far as to pity the soldier’s inability to eat meat after bulldozing over hundreds of Palestinians, dead or alive, without a second thought for the atrocity itself.
Comment: “It was out of this same kind of ‘compassion’ for men mentally disturbed by mass shootings in …
To Turn a Secular Democracy into a Jewish Autocracy
Review of Dan Steinbock's The Fall of Israel
I am always leery of hubris. It may be true that all people of good now want ‘the fall’ of Israel, after a century of lies, deceit, killing and more killing, first by the British and European Jews, then by the US and European Jews, now by Britain-US-EU-Israel and European and Arab Jews. But compassion does not pay the bills. The stakes keep mounting, along with high tech death toys, and it’s very hard to image Israel on the verge of collapse. It, and world Jewry, have never been so rich, …
Doubling Down on “Too Much Heat”
A recent Arctic News headline on October 4, 2024 refers to one of the most significant climate-related studies this year. It describes in detail the worldwide all-encompassing danger of loss of sea ice: “Double Blue Ocean Event, 2025”? It demands attention.
A casual reading of climate change literature reveals several mentions of ecosystem impairment or collapse of one sort or another occurring in various timeframes this century. In that context, nothing quite compares to a Double Blue Ocean Event. This event, should it occur, changes everything. It has the potential to be the “holocaust of climate change” with uncontrollable self-propelled rapid …
A Deeper Meaning to Delusional
An alien viewpoint.
“Too Much Evidence” of Genocide
South Africa’s legal team has submitted hundreds of documents containing what it calls “undeniable evidence” as part of its ongoing genocide case against the state of Israel, with the South African representative to The Hague telling Al Jazeera that “The problem we have is that we have too much evidence.”
The Israeli outlet Haaretz reports that IDF soldiers are actively blocking the return of Palestinians they have driven out of northern Gaza as part of the so-called “General’s …
Cross-Cultural Comparative Politics
Social Science or Cold War Propaganda?
Nine Questions for Determining What is Politics
In Part I of my article Seven Theories of Politics I posed ten questions for narrowing down what the range for defining what is politics.
Temporal reach
How far back into human history does politics go? Does politics go back to pre-state societies? Or does politics begin with state societies? Is politics possible before there were political parties?
Cross species scope
Is politics confined to the human species or does it ooze into the life of other species? If so, which ones? If politics crosses species, …
A Secret to Staying Optimistic
What is the secret?
Venezuelan Dissidents Supporting Israel Receive Human Rights Award: European Parliament’s Sakharov Prize Goes to US-backed Opposition
The world’s peoples recoil in shock over the previously unimaginable barbarity of the US-Zionist assault on Palestine. The European Parliament is not impervious to what is transpiring. On the contrary, the body normalizes the cruelty by awarding its highest human rights award, the Sakharov Prize, to dissident Venezuelan genocide supporters.
This is an example of how Western “democracies” fail to respect democracy in the Global South. “Human rights” are weaponized and used to repudiate Venezuela’s right to choose its own leaders, while rewarding those who sell out their country. The US-aligned camp has a clear …
The Greatest Man in Gaza
When Koko (cuteness for Kareem) and Momo (cuteness for Mohammad) hear the bombs explode over eastern Rafah they are filled with joy. They don’t know any better, for they are not yet three years old and their father, Omar, tells them the bombs are fireworks.
“The people are celebrating,” he says. So now, when the explosions illuminate their bedroom at night like lanterns in the sky, his children get excited.
“It’s better than them being scared,” he tells me over video chat. “Besides, if the bombs fall on our house, we will all die instantly, so they’ll never know what hit them.” …
Iran and the Axis of Resistance
Two years ago, Western media and academics reported that Iran was about to begin a new revolution in order to abolish the current political system, a legacy of the 1979 revolution. They dubbed this ‘new revolution, Woman, Life, Freedom,’ and described it as a feminist and democratic revolution. But as the Iranian public saw that the so-called leaders of this “new revolution” couldn’t organize a few thousand Iranians in a street demonstration and realized that the so-called leaders were not sovereign individuals who were dedicated to Iran, but Western-Israeli puppets, this “revolution” disappeared. The Iranian public soon found out that …
Russia threatens EU country with racism lawsuit
Moscow has accused Latvia of violating the International convention on racial discrimination and infringing on the rights of Russians
Closeup of the Latvian flag hanging above the AB dam …
Electoral College in the US: How It Came about and How It Works
The Oddities of the Founding Fathers' Electoral System that elects the US President
The most ideal title should be: “How the Electoral College in the USA came about and how it works, which even ordinary Americans completely fail to understand.”
We will indirectly refer to three texts, the “US Constitution” (1787), Howard Zinn’s book, A People’s History of the United States (1980), but also Paul Johnson’s book, A History of the American People (1997—it took him 32 years to write!). Here are some key ideas we find:
The Electoral College could be a legacy of the Wild West, but it isn’t. It is a “heavy legacy” of the era of slavery, and not only. As the …