'…a major destabilizing influence'
GANGSTERS OF CAPITALISM: Smedley Butler, the Marines, and the Making and Breaking of America’s Empire; St. Martin’s Press, 2021, 412 pages. History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes. -Attributed to Mark Twain The tale journalist/historian Jonathon M. Katz tells in his new book, Gangsters of Capitalism, is an epic story that “rhymes” a …
This article is published in Salon.com, which assigned it. Last August with a chaotic evacuation by air of the last US troops in Afghanistan, President Biden effectively ended one of the country’s most embarrassing and pointless wars, leaving that battered land fully in the control of the Taliban — the same dogged AK-toting …
Continue reading “US Wants a New War or at Least Public Fears of One”
I poured myself a glass of Guinness As much to enjoy drinking it as To watch the creamy foam build on top, The black stout rise at the bottom. The process is called nitrogenation But I’m not interested in the science. I am interested in the tempest That drives the storm of malted beer down …
Sometimes the hypocrisy of the US government, especially when it comes to foreign affairs, it just too much to let pass. The latest example of this is the Ukraine crisis, where the US pretty much stands all alone (unless you count Britain’s embattled and embarrassed Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who parrots US policy like a …
Continue reading “How Can the US Accuse Any Nation of Violating ‘Rules-Based International Order’?”
Oh, there will be a war! It will not be just any old war. It will be our very own war. Make it count. Hoard food If you haven’t already. Firewood, kerosene, Gasoline. Install a windmill. Guns, ammo. I’m not wasting any more poem space On this list. Just go on line. You will find …
(This artidle was written for The Edge, a publication of Ithaca College’s Park Center for Independent Media.) One of the biggest blacked-out stories of 2021 surely has to be the news, on November 16, that the Pentagon once again had abysmally failed to pass an audit, despite the best efforts of 1,200 top-flight Wall Street …
Continue reading “The Pentagon Fails Its Fourth Consecutive Audit”
There was a dog in my dream with 6 legs. One of the dog’s legs didn’t work. He didn’t need that leg. He had 5 perfectly good legs. This dream is interesting to me. There is a part of me that doesn’t work. This could be a real problem if I was a different person. …
What race-based assault is common to legendary civil rights activist Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., recently deceased Harvard Law School Professor Lani Guinier and Critical Race Theory (CRT) – the analytical framework some academicians use to dissect institutional racism in America? Intense, irrational ire mainly from white conservatives bent on blocking both racial progress and …
Continue reading “Smears From King To Guinier To CRT – The Same Old Same Old”
We have two examples of economic systems and of individual scientific workers and business people doing what they do that offer a instructive illustrations of why the US is so screwed up, and why it doesn’t have to be that way. The first is the extraordinary new (if unfortunately named) James Webb telescope heading rapidly …
Continue reading “Capitalism and the Profit-Motive Didn’t Create the James Webb Space Telescope”
To hear the podcast of the author speaking about and elaborating on this article in the Nation magazine, in an interview by Nation contributing editor Jon Wiener, click here. The interview begins at the 14:10 point in the podcast. In April 1950, three months before Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were arrested as Soviet atomic spies, FBI director …