Just What in Hell are War Crimes?

Written January 11, 2014

It’s almost noon on Saturday morning and I’m sipping my coffee surfing the web. I’d done
a post last night and thought I was done writing for the weekend looking forward to friends and football. I then came across a study referenced at Daily Kos that made me angry and so I decided to interrupt my pleasant lazing around to write an angry rant. The study was embedded in an article about the new memoir from Robert Gates, a former Secretary of Defense under both G.W. Bush and Barack Obama. Gates’ memoir, breathlessly flogged by the despicable Bob Woodward, takes President Obama to task for his less than enthusiastic assent to the continuance of the Afghanistan debacle.

Racism: Alive and Well in America, But the Racists Don’t Believe It

Posted on April 18, 2014

Sometime I find that posts just write themselves and this is one of them. It is most amazing that in today’s “post racial” America people of racist bent get angry when they are called out for their prejudice. I will present just some examples of this from the past few days. Their common theme is the anger engendered by people people called out for their racist views, or by people who refuse to recognize that racism against Black people was and is a great American problem and disgrace.

TV’s Local News: Toxic Creator of Racism

From June 16, 2015

One of the most profitable areas of TV broadcasting are the local news programs, that most major channels in every area of the country spend hours per day broadcasting. If you watch any of these shows it seems that the two staples are weather and local crime stories. For many years now the news editor’s dictum has been “if it bleeds, it leads”. The meaning of that is clear. The more horrifying local crime stories will be the opening stories on any one of these local newscasts.

Jeb Bush is not Who You Think He Is

This was written in December of 2014, right after Jeb Bush announced his intentions to seek the Republican nomination for President. When I wrote it, I was writing for another website that has chosen to delete everything I wrote there. This site is where I recover what was lost.

One of the political traits of the Bush Family is that they come across as “folksy” and portray themselves as moderate conservative. The reality is that this is all PR. The Bush Family is one of the “Patrician Families” of America, whose ancestors date back to the 17th Century.

The Military/Intelligence Community and American Oligarchy

A common theme in many of my posts is that America is not a democracy, rather it is an oligarchy, made up of various centers of power. These centers of power are not homogeneous, rather they are composed of people and groups, each egotistically vying for power, both politically and economically.  Therein, so far, lies the saving grace for we the people.

A Short History of the “Tea Party” and How the 1% Created It

From 6/9/2015

The corporate media in what passes for mainstream news-casting and publishing in America, has long been in the control of our nation’s wealthy elite. With some exceptions, since the 50’s it has served as a propaganda arm of wealth. What strikes me most though is that our mainstream media are the dupes willing, or unwilling, of people who would revise past history in a manner akin to what Orwell predicted in the iconic book “1984”.

“The Authoritarians”: A Book Review and a Free Book

Why is it that some people, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, doggedly hold onto beliefs that they can’t logically defend? We can all agree that there are some issues that simply do not lend themselves to being categorized into absolutes of right and wrong.

A Grecian Win Against Europe’s Financial Oligarchs Means Hope for the World

In retrospect this piece I wrote on July 5, 2015, giddy with the victory of the vote in Greece, fell far from the mark in prognostication, in light of today.

Today’s vote in Greece to reject the European Union’s demand for even more austerity, even in the face of the fact that it has only made financial matters in Greece worse after five years, is a victory for everyone in this world who doesn’t number among the 1%.

Tomorrows Greek Vote and the Fate of Europe

I wrote this piece July 4, 2015, one day before the historic Greek vote as a companion to my piece today at ElephantTail. In some respects, in hindsight, a different result occurred. However, the overall point hits the mark.

Tomorrow the Greek people will vote on a referendum whether to accept the harsh, regressive terms of Greek austerity, or to reject them and create a perilous financial situation, about which no one can know the end result.