Counterpunch, August 4, 2015 Racism as Just an Economic Problem The nominally socialist Democratic Party presidential candidate Bernie “sheep dog” Sanders, from 95% white Vermont, has, it turns out, has some race problems – at least five by my count. The first one, very much on his display in his speech to Dr. Martin Luther [...]

Counterpunch,  July 31, 2015 “You Had Your Input” More than seven years ago, then United States Vice President Dick Cheney had an interesting response when ABS News’ Martha Raddatz told him how recent polls showed that two-thirds of the U.S. populace thought the U.S. war in (on) Iraq was “not worth fighting.” Cheney smiled as [...]

Counterpunch, July 24, 2015 I never cease to be fascinated by the breathtaking ease with which the “liberal” New York Times and other major U.S. media outlets airbrush out of history the disastrous and criminal role Uncle Sam has played and continues to play in the world. Take last Wednesday’s Times. On the first page [...]

ZNet, July 18, 2015 The most famous phrase in Thomas Jefferson’s 1776 Declaration of Independence includes the statement that “all men” possess the “unalienable right” to “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Conventional history and wisdom says that Jefferson replaced the third word of John Locke’s trinity – “life, liberty, and property” – with [...]

Counterpunch, July 17, 2015 A Response to David McReynolds I never cease to be amazed by U.S. major party and candidate-centered electoral (and especially presidential) politics’ continuing power to muddle, mystify, and mar liberal, progressive, and even Left hearts and minds. Recently the very clever, decent, and likeable U.S. democratic socialist and pacifist David McReynolds [...]

Counterpunch, July 14, 2015 "We who protest the [Iraq] war,” the late radical American historian Howard Zinn wrote in 2007, “are not politicians. We are citizens. Whatever politicians may do, let them first feel the full force of citizens who speak for what is right, not for what is winnable, in a shamefully timorous Congress. [...]

teleSur English, July 15, 2015 My most recent book is titled They Rule: The 1% v. Democracy. It details the deadly social, economic, political, and environmental costs of the nation’s corporate and financial aristocracy and the numerous interrelated ways in which that economic super-elite rules American “democracy” – with horrific consequences at home and abroad. Still, [...]

CounterPunch, July 21, 2015 I am glad that the left intellectual and activist Chris Hedges does not support the Bernie Sanders campaign for the Democratic Party presidential nomination. As Hedges explained in a recent interview on the Ralph Nader Radio Hour, Sanders’ candidacy lends undeserved credibility to the thoroughly corporatized Democratic Party. Sanders has pledged [...]

CounterPunch, July 10, 2015; ZNet, July 9, 2015, As the reigning corporate United States media and politics culture responds to a terrible racist atrocity by questioning the political correctness of the Confederate Flag and logo across the South, it is a good time to reflect on the different levels at which race and racism operate [...]

teleSur English, July 7, 2015 I’ll never forget the night of January 3, 2008.  It was the evening of the Iowa Democratic Party Presidential Caucus. Iowa City High School’s cafeteria was packed. Old-timers couldn’t remember a bigger Caucus crowd. The Democratic voters (well, caucusers) had come to put the deeply conservative Barack Obama over the [...]