First published on Counterpunch, August 8, 2014. False face must hide what the false heart doth know….To show an unfelt sorrow is an office Which the false man does easy” — William Shakespeare, Macbeth, 1.7.83; 2.3.136-37 If there’s one thing I’ve learned over many years of following the political career of United States’ President [...]
teleSur English August 4, 2014 Imagine growing up in a household ruled by a violent, psychotic father – a man who bullies, beats, and otherwise abuses everyone in his family. When he isn’t throwing his weight around at home, he and a handful of thugs under his command are busy robbing, assaulting, torturing, and even [...]
First published on TeleSur English, August 1, 2014. The greatest obstacle to democracy and popular activism for the common good in the current New Gilded Age United States (US) is the widespread sense of powerlessness and isolation shared by countless citizens and workers. It’s the pervasive sense drummed into millions that we are all on [...]
First published on ZNet, July 31, 2014. Watching the talking cable television heads on the glowing telescreen in my hotel room in Madison, Wisconsin this morning (Tuesday, July 30, 2014), I was momentarily struck by a foolish question. How, I wondered, do they handle the Orwellian absurdity of the news they report? I was watching [...]
First published on TeleSur English, July 27, 2014 I recently read a call for increased economic equality from an interesting source. The author of the appeal was Bill Gross, Chief Investment Officer and co-founder of the Pacific Investment Management Company (PIMCO), a $14 billion global capital investment firm headquartered in California. Forbes lists Gross as the world’s [...]
Paul Street, Black Agenda Report (July 22, 2014) Greg Grandin, The Empire of Necessity: Slavery, Freedom, and Deception in the New World (New York: New Press, 2014) After recently reviewing a left historian’s study of race and slavery in the New World during the so-called Age of Liberty (Paul Street, “The White United States’ Real [...]
Written for teleSUR English, which will launch on July 24 First published on ZNet, July 19, 2014 “Not Our Problem/Fault” Recently I heard a fellow (United States of] American say that his “heart goes out to all those unaccompanied [Central American] children” showing up at the US southern border – 74,000 estimated for Fiscal Year 2014. “But,” the [...]
Written for teleSUR English, which will launch on July 24 First published on ZNet , July 10, 2014 “It’s a Little Private” Sometimes the smallest news items speak volumes, if you let them. Last April, for example, a 10-year-old girl named Charlotte Bell was at the White House for its annual “Take Your Daughter and Son to [...]
Written for teleSUR English, which will launch on July 24 First published on ZNet, July 4, 2014 Gerald Horne, The Counter-Revolution of 1776: Slave Resistance and the Origins of the United States of America (New York University Press, 2014) How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty amongst the drivers of Negroes? Samuel Johnson, 1775 [...]
Z Magazine (July-August 2014). As the United States’ giant, globally unmatched, and racially hyper-disparate mass-incarceration regime exploded in the 1970s and 1980s, the reigning U.S. penal doctrine underwent a significant change. It shifted from the goal of “rehabilitation” to the objective of “incapacitation”—from prisoners’ societal redemption, restoration, and re-entry to their punitive disablement and exclusion. [...]