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This article might offend everybody, but the links here are to the sources, and all of its sources are not only authentic when they are primary, but are true when they are secondary. (I have checked-out all sources within each secondary source that I link to.) Individuals who disagree with something here but don’t click onto the link to the documentation when they disagree, are not open-minded; and, for me, the first obligation is to be constantly open-minded, because only in that way can truths be discovered, and falsehoods become identified and replaced with truths. So: I open here by …

On May 13, U.S. President Trump announced he is ordering the removal of sanctions on Syria.

Some of the U.S. sanctions can be quickly terminated because they were issued by Executive Order. Other sanctions, including the extremely damaging 2019 “Caesar” sanctions, were imposed by Congressional legislation and may require Congressional action to terminate.

The Syrian people are joyous at the prospect of the end of their country’s economic nightmare. In 2010, before the conflict began, Syria was a middle-income country with free education, free healthcare, and no national debt. It was largely self-sufficient in energy and …

“Recommend ‘Heaven’ to your followers?” reads the punchline of a recent cartoon depicting a person who has arrived at the pearly gates. What was the name of your first pet reads a similar St. Peter cartoon about social media and the Internet.

While we try to  laugh, social media has devolved from its original promise of an online identity and the chance to find like-minded peers and express an opinion to what is sometimes an opportunist and capitalistic monster.

 Here are some of the ways it is devouring itself before our very eyes.

 “Subscribe” Paywalls

Why do so many sites ambush us with subscribe …

As Israel unveils its final genocide push, and mass death from starvation looms in Gaza, western media and politicians are tentatively starting to speak up.
Who could have imagined 19 months ago that it would take more than a year and a half of Israel slaughtering and starving Gaza’s children for the first cracks to appear in what has been a rock-solid wall of support for Israel from western establishments.

Finally, something looks like it may be about to give.

The British establishment’s financial daily, the …

America is targeting a hotter planet… Bring it on!

That’s the only plausible explanation for the Trump administration’s gung-ho push for 100% fossil fuels and as much coal burning as possible while trashing mitigation of climate change, which is characterized as an expensive hoax, a farce, a threat to the U.S. economy, plus massive roll backs of environmental regulations that force American businesses to spend more to keep America’s environment clean. Based upon these cutbacks of environmental regulations, they’re clearly ignoring climate change.

But the property/casualty insurance industry has no choice in the matter. They are forced to recognize the damage …

May 15 marks the 77th anniversary of the Nakba in the shadow of Israel’s continuing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza and increased aggression and colonial expansion in the West Bank. Our newest visual, “Gaza, Stripped: The Colonial Isolation Of Gaza,” was created in partnership with Al-Mezan Center for Human Rights to show the many layers of colonial fragmentation and control that Palestinian lands are subjected to, shaped by the legacy of British colonialism, the Nakba, and decades of ongoing Zionist settler colonialism.

…

“An American team will win the next soccer World Cup,” a Nicaraguan boy once told me. It took me a second to realize he meant Brazil or Argentina, not the United States. Greg Grandin’s new book shows that America (or, in Spanish, América) was the name used for the whole hemisphere by the late 17th century. In the 18th century, the great liberator Simón Bolívar set out his vision of “our America”: a New World free of colonies, made up of distinct republics living in mutual …

Image credit: Dossier no. 87 ‘The Bandung Spirit’, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, 2025.
Seventy years ago this month, leaders of twenty-nine newly or nearly independent Asian and African nations inaugurated the historic Bandung Conference, embarking on the ‘Freedom Walk’ along Asia-Africa Road to the conference’s Freedom Building (Gedung Merdeka) in Bandung, Indonesia. As a diplomatic performance and collective political action, these leaders walked among the teeming crowds to announce that the peoples of the Third World had stood up after centuries of colonialism.

There was, however, no consensus on the …

There was no excuse for the BBC to follow Israel in treating the head of UNRWA as though he is aligned with terrorism. This kind of craven journalism just makes Israel’s job of genocide easier.
There was yet more shameful reporting by BBC News at Ten last night, with international editor Jeremy Bowen the chief culprit this time.

He prefaced an interview with Philippe Lazzarini, head of United Nations refugee agency UNRWA, with an utterly unwarranted disclaimer – as though he was talking …

Few modern political figures have done more to prompt spontaneous national discussions about the Bill of Rights and constitutional limits on government power than Donald Trump—if only because he tramples on them so frequently.

Indeed, President Trump has become a walking civics lesson.

Consider some of the constitutional principles that Trump can be credited with bringing into the spotlight unintentionally during his time in office.

First Amendment (free speech, press, religion, protest, and assembly): Trump’s repeated confrontations with the First Amendment have transformed free expression into a battleground, making it impossible to ignore the protections it guarantees. From branding the press as “…

What does it mean when something is mandatory?

In February, President Trump said that tariffs would generate so much income that Americans would no longer need to pay income taxes.

The latest plan, according to U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, is to abolish income taxes for people who earn less than $150,000 yearly. That move would affect roughly 75% of workers, according to U.S. Census Bureau data. On its face, this could narrow the wealth gap by boosting disposable income for low- and middle-income households without raising taxes on the wealthy — a politically clever alternative to progressive tax hikes.

Eliminating the burden of income taxes is an exciting proposition, due to savings …

Commercial gimmicks are sometimes impossible to beat off. Their stench and pull follow, even as you look the other way. One occasion is most prominent in this regard.  Nostrils get clogged and eyes get fogged, and the message is this: Remember Mommy.

Mothers’ Day is rarely more than the draw and pull of extracted business and mined guilt. This is the worshipped and leveraged, the human breeder elevated and remembered, if only for one day. It resembles, in some ways, the link between poverty and the church box of charity. Give a few coins and save the child. Your conscience can rest easy.

The day …

From Samori Touré to Thomas Sankara [left], our ancestors chose resistance. Now, we must choose: either we fight for sovereignty, or we remain slaves to neo-colonialism.

— captain Ibrahim Traoré [right], Interview with Radio Omega FM, November 2023

A young, by political standards, military captain, now an acting president has captured widespread admiration in Burkina Faso and across Africa. The legend of Ibrahim Traoré appears to be growing by leaps and bounds.

But to understand from whence captain Traoré comes, one should be cognizant of the young revolutionary Marxist leader captain Thomas Sankara who …

The occasion of electing another Pope was a spectacle in time and, in many ways, outside it. It was the one rare occasion in the twenty-first century where ancient ceremony, the old boy network – many presumptive virgins – along with festive dressing up, were seen with admiration rather than suspicion. Feminists were nowhere to be heard. Women knew their place; the phallocrats were in charge. Secret processes and factions, unscrutinised by media or any temporal body, could take place in secure, deliberative seclusion. Reverential followers of unquestioning loyalty turned up to the square of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome …