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Residents of New England and the Mid-Atlantic states will experience increased rainfall and floods if data analysis by a Penn State meteorologist and long-term projections by a fisheries biologist, with a specialty in surface water pollution, are accurate.

Paul Knight, senior lecturer in meteorology at Penn State, compiled rainfall data for Pennsylvania from 1895—when recordings were first made—to this year. He says there has been an increase of 10 percent of rainfall during the past century. Until the 1970s, the average rainfall throughout the state was about 42 inches. Beginning in the 1970s, the average began creeping up. “By the 1990s, …

If there is a God, he surely has a sense of humor. The career of Shimon Peres, who is about to finish his term as President of Israel, is clear evidence.

Here is a life-long politician, who has never won an election. Here is the world-renowned Man of Peace, who has started several wars and never done anything for peace. Here is the most popular political figure in Israel who for most of his life was hated and despised.

Once, several decades ago, I wrote an article about him with the title “Mr. Sisyphus”. Sisyphus, it will be remembered, was condemned for …

Walter White, the main protagonist in the hugely popular Breaking Bad (AMC 2008-13) cable TV series, starts as a struggling high school chemistry teacher who is diagnosed with lung cancer. As such, Walter turns to the fast money lane of methamphetamine formulation to secure a financial future for his family before he dies, leading to a lifestyle conversion from protagonist to antagonist, an evolving metamorphosis from sympathetic to callous, brutal, and hardnosed.

The TV series is emblematic of neoliberalism’s unfolding over these past few decades during which the innocence of the 1950s Leave it to Beaver socio-economic era transformed into… well, …

The landslide election earlier this month of Narendra Modi does not bode well for the 800 million or so Indians living in destitution, or the 120 million minority Muslims in the country, or the Adivasi (indigenous) people and Dalit groups sitting on resource-rich land in Orissa, Jharkhand and elsewhere. He may well come from a humble background, but Mr. Modi’s loyalties lie firmly with the corporations of India, not the chai wallahs working the train station at Vadnagar in Gujarat State like his father once did. And certainly not the Adivasi families being forced from their homes to make way …

War is a bastard but the bitch that bore him is in heat again.
— Berthold Brecht

The destruction of Iraq, which began under the conservatively emotional Bush regime, continues under the liberally placid Obama administration. There are differences in style when an intelligent landscaper replaces a slack jawed gardener but the plantation they serve differs only in the cosmetic facade it sells the public, not the diseased crop it produces. The present political opposition is led by people who make pinheads and maniacs seem thoughtful, but our current CEO still acts the sibilant bully talking tough and selling weapons to stop …

What a black, tragic irony. Just two months ago, on the 11th anniversary of the (illegal) invasion of Iraq, the Guardian reminded that the mass slaughter, the incineration of swathes of towns, cities and the use of US-UK weapons of mass destruction was not about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, but about oil (a fact long established for any one with even minimal gray matter.)

Today flames are rising from Iraq’s largest oil refinery at Baiji, 130 miles north of Baghdad, the result of mortar attacks by the varying forces sweeping towards the capitol city.

The Guardian outlined the invasion’s “real …

As Democratic Representative Nancy Pelosi, the Richest Representative of the One Percent in the House of Representatives, said: “Impeachment is off the table.” Nevertheless, insouciant Californians still send The bought-and paid-for hireling to Washington

In my day if an experienced professor of international and constitutional law, such as University of Illinois Professor Francis A. Boyle, called for impeachment of a president, it was a serious situation for the president. But no more. Today an American president can ride roughshod over constitutional lawyers, the US Constitution and US statutory law without any danger of impeachment. To avoid impeachment today, all a president …

Education is in dire straits, mainly not because of poor teachers and principals but because the privatization movement and the profit motive has infested education’s inner sanctums with greed and an ideology which justifies it. The result is actually poorer education due to higher cost, lack of coordination, politics, commitment to profit rather than a good education, and too often amateurs guiding it.

The outgrowth of its testing focus during the George W. Bush years was ill-advised national programs like the sale of education in the form of “No Child Left Behind,” and the Obama administration is not far behind Bush’s …

“Labeiki ya Zaynab,” chanted Iraqi Shia fighters as they swayed, dancing with their rifles before TV news cameras in Baghdad on June 13. They were apparently getting ready for a difficult fight ahead. For them, it seemed that a suitable war chant would be answering the call of Zaynab, the daughter of Imam Ali, the great Muslim Caliph who lived in Medina 14 centuries ago. That was the period through which the Shia sect slowly emerged, based on a political dispute whose consequences are still felt until this day.

Dark Forces of Sectarianism

That chant alone is enough to demonstrate the ugly …

Author’s note — House Organ out of Youngstown, New York, edited and published by Kenneth Warren. Number 87, Summer 2014, just arrived in the mailbox. Some good shit in it. Comes stapled, folded in half, ten total 11×8 1/2 sheets, printed to equal 40 pages. No web site, but plenty of accolades. What a back to the future idea? Out of your house, on a printer, no internet connection.

Some great and sometimes old world and then experimental poetry, some criticism, but all of it from a deep intellectual beat, drumming through time and pushing this epoc into the memory hole …

Hello, all. It’s been something like 16 tumultuous months since I first checked in? I’m sure we’ve all been busy living life towards the infinity at play.

I was able to escape the guillotine of the gas station. It didn’t take my head, but it did take the last of my prejudices. You learn to hate everyone equally in a shit job.

Now? Instead of vices, it’s steaks, chops and fish, with the same bitch in a different outfit. Substitute the old ladies and their numbers for suburban housewives and holiday hams.

The old ladies only had money to lose and time …

For three years, most residents of the old city in the center of Homs had not seen their homes, shops, churches and mosque. Homs was one of the first cities where armed fighters decided to take on the Syrian army, and those fighters named it “the capital of the revolution”.

That revolution ended in May, 2014 for the fighters in Homs, when they negotiated a retreat from the old city. Starving and running low on ammunition, they accepted the government offer to remove themselves to a different front, taking only their light arms. Some of the fighters gave up entirely, putting …

A Golden Soul Revolution is breaking out of the cosmic egg.

New perspective.

Fresh paradigm.

Cultivating the seed within. Watering the positive intentions. Nurturing the healthy soil. Strengthening the balanced approach.

Why is it that the world seems to be going through a stage of uncertainty, fear and chaos? Well, quite simply, because it is. The major institutions which the masses of humanity take their cues from are undergoing radical states of disturbance. The house of cards is implosively collapsing in upon itself. It is as it must be. The old systems must die so that something new can be born. The fire must …

Ralph Nader wrote a very perceptive essay in the wake of the edifying defeat of the despicable arch-imperialist, Israel Firster and reliable servant of Wall St. Banksters, Eric Cantor, at the capable hands of the libertarian leaning Professor David Brat.  It was titled “Can Progressives Learn From Eric Cantor’s Defeat”?  Can they? Yes.  Will they?  It is highly doubtful.  It is difficult to learn if you think you have nothing more to learn.

But here we are interested only in the lessons of Cantor’s electoral humiliation at the hands of Brat for the progressive antiwar, anti-Empire movement.   (For the …

Historical analogies may be inaccurate, but Americans may need to look at their own civil war and compare it to what is happening in Ukraine now. Today the US supports a murderous criminal adventure that has little to do with unifying the country.

This assessment came from Professor Stephen Cohen, prominent US scholar of Russian studies and author, who advised George H.W. Bush in the late 1980s. He spoke to RT about the mistakes of the consecutive American administrations in their Russia policies, the worst crisis in decades that they led to and the deterioration of political discourse in America …