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“Only Donald Trump (among the Presidential candidates) has said anything meaningful and critical of U.S. foreign policy.” No, that is not Reince Priebus, chair of the RNC, speaking up in favor of the presumptive Republican nominee. It is Stephen F. Cohen, Emeritus Professor of Russian History at Princeton and NYU, a contributing editor for The Nation, that most liberal of political journals.

Cohen tells us here that: “Trump’s questions are fundamental and urgent, but instead of engaging them, his opponents (including President Obama) and the media dismiss the issues he raises about foreign policy as ignorant and dangerous. Some even charge that his …

A simple documentary premiere, in a small town north of Vancouver, WA, on the Columbia, a town called Kalama, near Longview, where millions of stripped logs from the Pacific Northwest’s forests are stacked 20 stories high, waiting for markets (sic) in Asia to be turned into lumber and cardboard and stuffing and paper and snot sheets for the U S of A.

Amazing disconnect, how unsustainable and horrific Capitalism is as it plays out, guts communities – both that of Consumopithecus Sapiens and the natural world – while people will argue over some village square tree about to be cut down …

By now, anyone paying the least attention knows that the dishonest Democratic establishment and dishonest mainstream media have created a false narrative of bad behavior by Bernie Sanders supporters at the Nevada State Democratic State Convention on May 14. The evidence-free claims about “thrown chairs” (none) and “death threats” (tasteless insults) have been widely rebutted, but they have served their purpose all the same: taking attention away from the arrogant, autocratic management of the Nevada convention by establishment Democrats working on behalf of Hillary Clinton.

It’s a measure of Democratic Party panic that …

Snapshot: What They Have Done

Authorized secret wars in nearly 3/4th of the planet
Destroyed cities and villages
Sent millions to their graves
Bombed weddings and funeral
Replaced popular leaders with dictators as US pawns
Created countless enemies and potential terrorists
Squandered trillions for war instead of building a new America

Why? Why? Why?

People, including presidents, do what they do because of their PMU (psychological makeup), GMU (genetic and gender makeup) and also because of their SMU (situations or circumstances they create and/or face).

What the Psychoscope Shows Us

Their DNA

Some research suggests that a particular gene is more likely to be found …

In mid-August of 1948, sweltering summer heat was largely negated by high pressure and the frigid winds of Cold War.  The Second War to End All Wars still smoldered in the recent past, while the witch hunt of McCarthyism loomed on the near horizon.  Of course, I knew nothing of this, having only recently earned a birth certificate and U.S. Citizenship as a reward for successfully negotiating Mom’s birth canal, and taking my first breath in America’s Heartland.

As though the sixty million casualties of World War II weren’t enough, by the time I turned five, the Korean War had begun and ended, leaving yet another trail of blood and dead bodies in its wake.  By …

On May 15, I attended the Jesse Washington Memorial in Waco, Texas.

On the hundredth anniversary of the Waco Horror, the mayor of Waco, Malcolm Duncan, Jr., formally apologized for the incident—the burning at the stake of Jesse—who was mentally handicapped and just seventeen years old. Jesse had been accused of killing a 53-year-old white woman named Lucy Fryar, and 10,000-15,000 white folks cheered as his flesh was publicly broiled and his body was reduced to cinder. Onlookers snatched up charred mementoes and the scenes of the atrocity became popular lynching postcards.

It’s too late for the city of Tyler to acknowledge …

Given the political atmosphere that surrounded the 1970 Chilean presidential election, and even the global tensions of the Cold War at the time, the initial outrage that United States President Richard M. Nixon expressed at the nomination of Chile’s leftist candidate, Salvador Allende, is easy to grasp. After all, Nixon had been elected to the US Senate 20 some years prior to Allende’s victory, and a much younger Nixon had established himself as a prominent anti-communist, garnering national attention. Then, there was Allende: 1970 Chile’s newly, democratically-elected Marxist president, a man who had campaigned under the auspices of a left-leaning …

Japan’s Abe administration is pushing very hard to decontaminate land, roads, and buildings throughout Fukushima Prefecture, 105 cities, towns, and villages. Thousands of workers collect toxic material into enormous black one-ton bags, thereby accumulating gigantic geometric structures of bags throughout the landscape, looking evermore like the foreground of iconic ancient temples.

Here’s the big push: PM Abe committed to the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, which shall be a crowning achievement in the face of the Fukushima disaster. Hence, all stops are pulled to repopulate Fukushima Prefecture, especially with Olympic events held within Fukushima, where foodstuff will originate for Olympic attendees.

The Abe government …

Dear Friends,

Greetings from the state of Aragua in Venezuela where we are concluding a small US delegation focused on grassroots solutions to the massive food crisis here.

I am reaching out to you to share my grave concerns about what is happening here in Venezuela, my home for over three decades where I worked for 21 years as a Maryknoll Catholic lay missioner, then as Latin America Coordinator for the School of the Americas Watch.

It is out of concern for the most vulnerable sectors in Venezuela, such as my neighbors, that I break my silence to write. As I watch their …

The last fortnight has seen the gloves come off as the Bremain camp engages in increasingly desperate scaremongering. Vote Bremain headed by that doyen of anti-corruption David Cameron is frightened by the stubborn insistence of millions of British people to reject the EU on June 23.

Polls reveal how Vote Bremain and Vote Brexit are neck and neck despite the avalanche of fear warmongering propaganda directed at the British public by Prime Minster Cameron and his big business supporters.

Brexit raises chances of war in Europe

In the last week Cameron, that compassionate dove who ordered the humanitarian bombing of Libya that turned …

Natalie Bennett recently announced she will not be standing for re-election as leader of Britain’s Green Party. I’m pleased about that. She should have gone a year ago after the Greens’ dismal performance in the general election.

Of all the main political parties the Green Party is the biggest disappointment: it has so much potential, but delivers so little, a true paper tiger. Only the Greens have a set of policies which, if put into practice, would help to terminate the destruction of our planet that’s currently underway, and end Britain’s economic and social race to the bottom. What they do …

The dynamics of capitalism is postponement of enjoyment to the constantly postponed future.

— Norman O. Brown, Life Against Death: The Psychoanalytical Meaning of History, 1959

Is There No Alternative? Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

Are we happy yet?  Where is the democracy we were promised? Where is the hope and change we were promised? How can we transform society when we are discovering, to our dismay, that we’re doing everything wrong? What means can people use to rid themselves of abusive governments controlled by a wealthy elite serving only themselves to the detriment of the many and the teetering ecosystem? What …

How to find the voice of a people?  Electoral systems are the stuff of political nightmare and experiment, all attempting the same goal: how best to capture an appropriately, accurate choice.  Australia’s preferential election system is regarded as better than most, envied for its attempt to prevent the premature exhaustion of votes and avoid the misrepresentative nature of “first past the post” polling.

The Australian Senate has been a curious beast in this regard, abandoning first past the post voting in 1919 and introducing the concept of grouped candidates in 1922. But it was 1983 which saw the introduction of a …

How can you tell when “remembering” horrible events is being twisted to defend the status quo and support the powerful against the weak? When a sports network airs a Nazi Holocaust themed show.

Last week TSN ran a six-minute video feature about Hank Rosenbaum, a Polish Jew whose life was turned upside down when German troops invaded 77 years ago. The sports angle for TSN’s “Yom HaShoah, the international day of remembrance for the more than 6 million Jews who died in the Holocaust during WW II” commemoration, was that Rosenbaum became a hockey fan when he arrived …

On May 15th of every year, over the past 68 years, Palestinians have commemorated their collective exile from Palestine. The ethnic cleansing of Palestine to make room for a ‘Jewish homeland’ came at a price of unrelenting violence and perpetual suffering. Palestinians refer to that enduring experience as ‘Nakba’, or ‘Catastrophe’.

However, the ‘Nakba’ is not merely a Palestinian experience; it is also an Arab wound that never ceases from bleeding.

The Arab ‘Nakba’ was namely the Sykes-Picot Agreement, which divided much of the Arab world between competing Western powers. A year later, Palestine was removed from the Arab equation altogether and …