'…a major destabilizing influence'
Word that Hart eSlate voting machines in Texas, which are also commonly used in states like Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee and Pennsylvania, many of them jurisdictions with tight races this election year, are switching party-line votes form one party to the other with disturbing frequency, beg the question that rarely gets asked: Why do we need …
President Trump has been tearing up treaties since taking office, from halting negotiations on the TPP to NAFTA, but his latest threat to pull out of the nuclear deal, negotiated by President Reagan in the 80s, may be the biggest mistake of his disastrous presidency. Meanwhile, while Trump and his National Security Advisor, the neoconservative …
Continue reading “US INF pullout will delight arms industry as it threatens to reignite Cold War”
The brutal murder of sometime Washington Post visiting columnist Jamal Khashoogi, apparently on orders from Saudi Arabia’s de facto leader Prince Mohammed bin Salman, has many American journalists and columnists in high dudgeon. How, they ask, can the US be allied to a country run by such a blood-thirsty leader? How can the US ally …
Continue reading “When It Comes to Having Leaders Who Murder the US is a Pace Setter”
The US media are in high dudgeon over the brutal murder of Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi living in the US in self-imposed exile who among other things had been writing articles critical of the current Saudi royal leadership, and especially Saudi Defense Minister and Deputy Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman. Certainly outrage is justified. It …
Continue reading “US ‘Outrage’ over Slaying of US Residents Depends on the Nation Responsible”
It looks like Brett “I like beer” Kavanaugh will soon be the ninth member of the Supreme Court. The FBI has turned in a submissive fig leaf of a report on its cursory, rushed and presidentially circumscribed “investigation” into the claims of sexual abuse leveled against him by several women who assert that he …
Continue reading “Kavanaugh on the High Court will be a Source of Ridicule”
Why did the US military have a vertical-take-off F-35B launched from an aircraft carrier in the Indian Ocean make an attack on a Taliban position in Afghanistan? Let’s say one thing from the get-go: It was not because it was the right weapons system for the job. Nobody’s mentioning several things about this Pentagon-touted first-ever …
What really struck me about the contrast between Britain’s National Health System and what we have here in the US was not how I was treated during a surprise five-day stay at an NHS hospital in Oxford, where I was sent last summer after suddenly becoming acutely short of breath — though my treatment was …
Whatever your view of Brett Kavanaugh, let’s get one thing clear: While he’s hoping to become the ninth justice of the US Supreme Court, he is not on trial. He is facing a confirmation hearing by the Judicial Committee of the US Senate. Republican backers of this clearly flawed and truth-challenged candidate are insisting indignantly, …
In the preface to his remarkable three-volume History of the Russian Revolution, Leon Trotsky, writing in 1930 about earth-shaking events in which he was a key actor, explains his view of writing history. He cites reactionary French historian Louis Madelin, who wrote that “…the historian ought to stand upon the wall of a threatened city, …
Continue reading “Ron Ridenour’s ‘Pentagon on Alert: The Russian Peace Threat’”
I just had the experience of sitting on a jury in a criminal trial in the County Courthouse of Montgomery County, PA, a sprawling urban/suburban/rural region just north and west of Philadelphia. The first indication that something was amiss was when I entered the jury assembly room at 8:15 am on Monday. There were some …
Continue reading “In Montgomery County PA, It’s Often a Jury of White People”