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In a world becoming more atomized and misanthropic by the day, where it seems sometimes that you have only to be a raving degenerate in order to achieve fame and power—witness Donald Trump and Steve Bannon, or, in a different way, Milo Yiannopoulos (whose degeneracy, though, has partly caught up with him)—it is useful to be reminded of the other side of human nature. The institutions of modern capitalism happen to reward depravity, first and foremost in the economic sphere, but since the maturation of mass society generations ago, in the cultural sphere as well. One is constantly confronted, therefore, …

Taha Muhammad Ali is an unlikely dramatic hero. His arms shake with age and infirmity, his legs occasionally buckle, and he often appears lost on stage, as if adrift in a vast expanse of sadness. But for an hour the story of this Palestinian poet has a vice-like hold on our attention and our hearts.

The one-man show “Taha” receives its English-language premiere on Wednesday at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington DC. It offers not only a rare chance to learn about one of Palestine’s finest poets, but provides a visceral account of what it was like …

Note that the title begins with an indefinite article for there are many roots of evil, but the one most invasive and destructive is America’s corpocracy. It is the mother root with two branches that are slowly snuffing out America and the world with it. Those two branches are corporate America and government America. This essay is about the first, corporate America, and specifically, evil corporate leadership, defined here as profoundly immoral, socially irresponsible, and harmfully consequential behavior.

There are many scholarly theories of leadership, but neither a scholar nor theory is needed, just ordinary common sense to define leadership. It …

There has never been a case like this in a zoo in Europe, an assault of such violence, evidently for this stupid trafficking of rhinoceros horns.

— Thierry Duguet, head of Parc Zoologique de Thoiry

It was a matter of time. The war of poachers against those attempting to conserve species, and the animals themselves, took a gruesome turn this week.  At the Parc Zoologique de Thoiry outside Paris, a southern white rhinoceros named Vince was shot three times, with one horn sawn by attackers keen to bring the predations of the ivory market to Europe. (The second horn was only partially …

The clergy dazzle us with heaven,
Or they damn us into hell.

— The world turned upside down by Leon Rosselson

Judith’s story

Our most trusted institutions – church and state – have sometimes been useful. The state provides us with some physical security and modest public services; and the church sometimes provides real emotional comfort to some people during the darkest hours of their lives. But for the few useful services these institutions sometimes provide they are also primarily responsible for causing massive misery, and impeding social progress. It has always been like that, and it still is.

The United States, for example, …

Too many Americans are saving little to nothing for retirement. According to one study, 45 percent of working-age households “do not have any retirement account assets.” Congress could sharply improve those numbers by adopting dynamic scoring of retiree distributions. The move could lead to millions of new accounts, and a fairer sharing of America’s retirement promise.

That promise was the whole idea behind a breakthrough reform over 40 years ago. Let’s see where it came up short, and how the country can still make good for those left behind.

In 1974, a far-sighted Congress created a new benefit for workers not …

Neocons, whose name fits almost every mainstream politician and commentator, say America is destined to rule the world through violence, intimidation and the belief in its own moral superiority. Unfortunately, despite losing wars, their variant of fascism evades condemnation and trial thus far.

It is saddening to see politicians responsible for maintaining our catastrophic, failed foreign policies in the United States and the United Kingdom continue to evade justice since their illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003. Such neocons, including Tony Blair in Britain, have even been taken back from the sewer and polished by the press for us, almost as …

US militarism expanded exponentially through the first two decades of the Twenty-First Century, and was embraced by both Democratic and Republican Presidents. The mass media’s hysteria towards President Trump’s increase in military spending deliberately ignores the vast expansion of militarism, in all its facets, under President Obama and his two predecessors, Presidents ‘Bill’ Clinton and George Bush, Jr.

We will proceed in this essay to compare and discuss the unbroken rise of militarism over the past seventeen years. We will then demonstrate that militarism is an essential …

Palestinian women have always stood side by side with their fathers, brothers, husbands, comrades to resist the Zionist occupation, to fight for freedom and legitimate rights. They are the first to go to the streets to protest the brutality of the Israeli military occupation, the first to organize sit-ins and marches demanding the release of their children, brothers and fathers from Israeli prisons. They are the protectors, the supporters, but most of all they are the comrades in the fight for a free Palestine.

— Reham Al Helsi

The Pietas of Palestine bear the pain full weight of the vicious Israeli occupation …

A fake anti-semitism campaign masterminded by the usual Zio suspects, their Israel lobby colleagues and their stooges in the corridors of power, continues to sweep across UK universities… and our political parties, especially shambolic and rudderless Labour.

The University of Central Lancashire cancelled an event due to be held last month entitled “Debunking Misconceptions on Palestine and the Importance of Boycott Divestment and Sanctions” organised by the University’s Friends of Palestine Society. The University said it would contravene the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s new definition of what constitutes anti-semitism and would therefore be unlawful. The event went ahead, off campus, at …

As a long-in-the-tooth, organizational psychologist, I have noticed that my field generally knows little about the organization of government or the art of governing, concentrating as it does on the other part of the corpocracy, corporate America. In this short essay I define governing, list its various forms throughout the ages and in America, and then close by proposing a model for governing in America that is definitely different from the way she has always been governed.

What Does Governing a Nation Mean?

Governing a nation means whatever “relevant” people define it to be and however it is practiced. Relevant people, I …

The “grace period” of the new administration’s proverbial first 100 days in office is far from over, but there is no relenting in the controversy, acrimony and political turmoil. Events are unfolding fast, and some observations might be in order.

Let’s cut to the chase and repeat an important axiom – not necessarily original here, but often overlooked: Trump is not the problem, but merely the symptom of a (deeper) problem.  Sure (and apart from the obvious reality-show antics) – there are plenty of easy targets: the ridiculous wall proposal, dismantling Obamacare safety net provisions, ineffective passport profiling, sundry “alternative facts”…  …

Conservatives have had a very hard time getting over President Trump’s much-repeated response to Fox News anchor Bill O’Reilly’s calling Russian president Vladimir Putin “a killer”. Replied Trump: “There are a lot of killers. We have a lot of killers. You think our country is so innocent?”

One could almost feel a bit sorry for O’Reilly as he struggled to regain his composure in the face of such blasphemy. Had any American establishment media star ever heard such a thought coming from the mouth of an American president? From someone on the radical left, yes, but from the president?

Senator John McCain …

“Who is to blame for the election of Donald Trump?” It’s a question that has been asked more than a few times since November. We’re all familiar with the answers that have been given: James Comey, the electoral college, the DNC’s leaked—not hacked—emails, the characteristically shameful performance of the mainstream media in its focus on personalities rather than substance, the stupefying incompetence of Hillary Clinton’s campaign, the elitist insularity and corruption of the Democratic Party, etc. Longer-term causes (which are intertwined) include the decline of organized labor, which has always served as a bulwark against fascism or semi-fascism; deindustrialization, …

In the West, even among people who consider themselves not susceptible to government-corporate media propaganda, any wild story about North Korea can be taken as credible. We should ask ourselves why that is the case, given what we know about the history of government and media fabrications, often related to gaining our acquiescence to a new war.

The corporate media reports North Korean agents murdered Kim Jong Nam with a banned chemical weapon VX.   They fail to add that the US government is one of the few countries with a stockpile of this banned weapon. They rarely note the Malaysian …