Truthdig, 10/16/2018 So often, underlying structures and institutions of oppression escape serious scrutiny amid our country’s most high-profile political dramas. Take the recent conviction of Jason Van Dyke, the white Chicago police officer caught on tape four years ago firing 16 shots into 17-year-old Laquan McDonald. From its soul-numbing kill tape to McDonald’s family shown and quoted [...]
Counterpunch, 10/5/2018 Absurdity Reigns in the terrible time of Donald Trump. Just five days apart, the tangerine miscreation went from calling the right-wing Supreme Court appointee Brett Kavanaugh’s primary accuser, Dr. Christine Blassey Ford, a great person and a good witness to openly mocking her painful recollections of sexual assault in front of thousands of laughing white [...]
Truthdig, 10/5/2018 Truthdig update: A Chicago jury on Friday found Police Officer Jason Van Dyke guilty of second-degree murder in the shooting of Laquan McDonald. My earliest memories of growing up in Chicago are steeped in racial tension and political violence: a street covered with Chicago police cars because Malcolm X was speaking under threat of assassination [...]
Truthdig, 9/24/2018 The instantly famous Anonymous New York Times Op-Ed (ATOE), published Sept. 5, in which a senior Trump administration official complained about the brutish awfulness and incompetence of Donald Trump and claimed to be working with other White House officials to check Trump’s worst impulses, has evoked a range of responses on so-called social media. “The [...]
Counterpunch, 9/21/2018 As the brilliant left cultural theorist and social critic Henry Giroux noted more than a decade ago, the dominant neoliberal ideology “collapses” the nation’s “pervasive racial hierarchies…into power-evasive strategies such as blaming minorities of class and color for not working hard enough” and “refusing to exercise individual initiative.” Even as racism “functions” as [...]
Black Agenda Report, 9/19/2018 Things could get very ugly in Chicago if the cop that killed Laquan McDonald is set free by a jury that includes only one Black person. “Van Dyke and his wife have been presented as if they are the real victims.” Sometimes you can only shake your head in dumb amazement [...]
Counterpunch, 9/7/2018 Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin [...]
Truthdig, 9/5/2018 How, liberals and progressives ask with shocked amazement, can President Trump’s supporters continue to back him? They persist even as one piece of evidence after another emerges of his epic and pathological gaslighting, his shameless immorality, his abject criminality, his wild stupidity and his corruption. Then there’s his chilling authoritarianism, his tendency toward fascism, his ugly sexism, his textbook malignant narcissism and his nasty racism. [...]
Counterpunch, 9/6/2018 This is an age of murderous, racist, and imperial impunity – and it isn’t just about the orange beast Donald Trump. Look at the prolonged celebration of the dearly departed mad-dog mass killer and warmonger John McCain. For day after day last week, the man was hailed as a messianic clarion of peace and justice. [...]
Counterpunch, September 3, 2018 Hand of God has struck the hour Day of judgement, God is calling On their knees, the war pigs crawling Begging mercy for their sins Satan, laughing, spreads his wings, oh lord yeah! — Black Sabbath, “War Pigs,” 1969 You’re going to have to shut up or I’ll call the police…Get [...]