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It is Memorial Day again. Some will celebrate. Some will drink too much. Some will march in parades. Some will rally around the flag. Some will go shopping. Some will mourn. I am among the mourners.

I mourn mostly for those we have killed — and I mourn for those we haven’t killed yet, but will in the days ahead. I mourn for all of the mothers and fathers who put their children to bed at night and wonder if this will be the night that they are killed by a drone attack.

I mourn for the 500,000 Iraqi children – dead …

Here in the US, we have been led to believe that we are an exceptional people and the indispensable nation. During our lifetime we have been exposed to lots of myths about the US, particularly about how we are always on the side of good. Below are insider comments challenging this key myth.

Before presenting the quotes, note that US crimes of stealing lands and resources and killing and exploiting people are, disturbingly, nothing new. Many other nations/empires have committed similar crimes throughout history. Morality, legality or altruism are not considerations that apply to the acts of powerful nations. The US …

Their precious young minds and our precious young minds

She was a redheaded rebel, the singer in the family, a trash-talking, tattooed 21-year-old wrapped up in a hip-hop dream of becoming Holland’s Eminem. Then Betsy found Allah. After her sudden conversion to Islam last summer, Betsy began dressing in full Muslim robes. By January, the once-agnostic Dutch woman, raised in a home where the only sign of religion was a dusty Bible on a shelf, began defending homegrown terrorists. … Denis Cuspert, a German hip-hop artist known as Deso Dogg who converted in 2010 and later joined The Islamic State [ISIS], …

(Full article …)

There is something grimly appropriate about the capture of the ancient Syrian town of Palmyra by a supposedly weakened ISIS. Accounts of history are being settled, unmade and reconstituted. The fundamentalist warriors have never made any secret of their hatred of idolatry – at least of the sort condemned by Quranic edict. Religions of the book have tended to fight wars over that very fact and craven worship of images was always deemed to be a vital point of difference.

What then, of Palmyra, that pearl and bride of the desert supposedly fortified by Solomon? It may …

As a high school student, I came across an observation by Abraham Lincoln who said that “With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed.” Today “public sentiment” would be called “public opinion.”

Over the years, I have been astonished at how less than one percent of the citizenry, backed by the “public sentiment,” have changed our country for the better by enacting reforms to protect the people from abuses of power, discrimination and deep neglect.

Specifically, if – one percent or less – were to dedicate a modest amount of their time and money working together for much-needed changes …

It was eighteen years ago this month that I first handed to a Vancouver Sun newspaper editor a list of possible mass grave sites of Indian residential school children on Canada’s west coast, based on government documents and statements from eyewitnesses who buried children there. I and these witnesses were flatly ignored: not only then, but every other time over the subsequent years that we presented such evidence to the same newspaper.

Bone sample found at Brantford residential …

Northern California’s Sonoma County has been known historically as part of the natural Redwood Empire. Wine industry lobbyists re-branded it as the commercial “Wine Country.” Its economy has been so colonized by outside investors, who extract water and resources from the environment and export them, that re-branding would be appropriate. A more accurate description would be that Sonoma County is now part of the multi-national Wine Empire.

Locals and nature have been dominated by these outside investors; they reap the benefits, while the environment and the residents pay the costs. They have de-localized, industrialized, commercialized, urbanized and commodified a once …

The rapid growth of knowledge

Cultural evolution depends on the non-genetic storage, transmission, diffusion and utilization of information. The development of human speech, the invention of writing, the development of paper and printing, and finally, in modern times, mass media, computers and the Internet: all these have been crucial steps in society’s explosive accumulation of information and knowledge. Human cultural evolution proceeds at a constantly-accelerating speed, so great in fact that it threatens to shake society to pieces.

In many respects, our cultural evolution can be regarded as an enormous success. However, at the start of the 21st century, most thoughtful observers …

In Parts One and Two of this series, we argued that to prevent oligarchic rule, democratic and economic institutions need to be salvaged, ironically, through anarchist political activism and Marxist capital analysis, specifically Marx’s labor theory of value, which identifies the systemic and structural nature of exploitation. The point is that workers are “entitled” to the surplus value they create. We also argued that globalization as manifested in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), amounts to imperialism. In this particular case, we utilize the economic analysis provided by British economist John Hobson. In his great work Imperialism, Hobson, an anti-imperialist …

For the first quarter of my life, I didn’t think much about sex offenders. Call it thoughtlessness or a naïve little bubble; it was probably both. This thoughtlessness might not be unique. But I began thinking about sex offenders when, at age 25, I was charged with a sex crime.

I had had sexual contact with my 17-year-old neighbor. I’m not proud of this and, if given the chance, would absolutely reverse that decision. But I slept with him once and joined the burgeoning ranks of women charged with sex offenses.

I think of these ranks both as a demographic and a …

The U.S. seems to admit it overplayed its hand over Ukraine. Caving to reality is actually the best possible policy

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry puts in an ear piece for translation during a news conference with Saudi Foreign Minister Saud bin Faisal bin Abdulaziz Al Saud on Thursday, March 5, 2015, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Kerry sought Thursday to ease Gulf Arab concerns about an emerging nuclear deal with Iran and explore ways to calm instability in Yemen and other troubled nations in the Middle East.

It is just as well Secretary of State John Kerry’s momentous meetings with Russian …

Governor Bobby Jindal yesterday announced he is praying over his decision whether to run for president. Yesterday he also issued an executive order supporting discrimination against marriages by Louisiana gay and lesbian citizens, minutes after a similar bill was overwhelmingly rejected by the Louisiana legislature.  His action was interpreted as an effort to generate funds from fundamentalist religious organizations for his presidential campaign.  Yesterday Jindal supporters started running $10,000 worth of ads casting him as a protector of freedom of conscience in Iowa.

The people and businesses of Louisiana already know they are paying the price for …

PYONGYANG, North Korea — International, Northern and Southern Korean women activists who plan to cross the Korean Demilitarized Zone said Wednesday they are determined to move forward with their walk, despite the announcement that United Nations authorities can’t guarantee their safety if they walk from the North to the South at Panmunjom. Panmunjom is where the Korean War armistice agreement was signed, and it is critical to the delegates that the DMZ crossing take place at this symbolic site.

Officials in Pyongyang have informed organizer Christine Ahn, a Korean-American peace activist, that without a formal letter from Seoul approving a crossing …

The dangerous underfunding of US infrastructure was underscored by a fatal train derailment on May 12th. The tragedy did not deter the House Appropriations Committee from voting to slash Amtrak funding the very next day. There are ways Congress could fund its massive infrastructure bill without raising taxes. But the conservative-controlled Congress seems to have other plans for the nation’s profitable public assets.

The May 12th train derailment near Philadelphia, which killed eight people and hospitalized 200, was the deadliest Amtrak accident in recent history. The train barreled around a dangerous bend at 106 mph, more than double the 50 …

It’s time that Pistol and Boo buggered back to the United States.

— Barnaby Joyce, Australian agriculture minister, ABC, May 14, 2015

One should be able to make light of it, though anything involving introduced species, pet sympathy and a community watery-eyed at thoughts they might be affected is bound to bring frowns and scowls. Attitudes to the environment in Australia tend to vary between loathing and anthropomorphic bliss.  Rarely does a sensible mind get a word in.

Animal slaughter is sanctioned by scientific-agricultural establishments, armed to the teeth with lethal viruses.  Elaborate techniques of killing the Indian Myna bird, to take but …