Donald Trump pumps his fistThe following one-hour video is a serious, though entertaining and humorous, look at “[…] every way Trump is using the presidency to make him and his family billions.” It is historically exhaustive but not repetitive, despite the lack of imagination on Trump’s part.

Why be inventive when just telling obvious lies to get people to give you money seems to work just fine? Trump’s motto is now and seems to have always been, “do no more work than you have to.” The picture to the right of Trump... [More]

The article “Settler madness.” by Cara MariAnna (The Floutist) writes of how a society teaches its young to hate. The example comes from observing Israeli settlers in the West Bank.

“The following three images are screenshots from a video of another incident in which settlers harassed the same family. The boy with the side curls holds a stick. He’s the same boy who was wearing a sweatshirt with a hood in the previous video. I’m showing you these pictures because settlers use their boys as attack dogs. The armed man... [More]”

The article Some Days There’s Just Too Much Israeli Psychopathy To Write About by Caitlin Johnstone (Substack) writes,

“If I had murdered people for trying to retrieve the bodies of their loved ones who I had also murdered, I’d definitely be asking myself a lot of questions, but “what was so important about that corpse?” would definitely not be among them.

“Gaza has become a hunting ground which is visited by psychopathic individuals who want to experience what it’s like to kill human beings, and it’s always open... [More]”

The US is famously and proudly anti-intellectual. It has been for most of my life. There are exceptions but those exceptions live at the edges of society. While their Wikipedia entries might laud them, they acquire neither wealth nor power.

Wealth and power are reserved for the largely self-anointed princelings of the Idiocracy. Europe held itself aloof from its ignorant progeny across the Atlantic for a reasonably long time. But that time is unquestionably past.

Knowledge? No thank you.Kaja Callas is a sad example... [More]

If you’re looking for a more optimistic take, read Hold strong: The cruelty increases with desperation. The video below is by the same guy—Hasan Piker—as in the other article but with a much less hopeful take this time. This video describes the current state of things: that we are cogs in a well-oiled, rent-extraction machine. We have to wake up to it, use our agency, and stop believing all of the bullshit.

you think you have rights? by HasanAbi (YouTube)

“Every single American is being surveilled at every single moment of the day.

“How... [More]”

To be optimistic for once: It’s always darkest before dawn. That is, the reason that the elites are lashing out so cruelly is that they are getting more and more desperate as some of them can’t help but notice that the wheels are coming off of this whole rent-extraction contraption that they’ve built.

Sloppy Jenga TowerSome of the other are just yanking Jenga bricks out of the tower of the global economy as fast as they can, utterly oblivious to or uncaring about the degree to which they’re destabilizing their... [More]

This video of Donald Trump going off the rails is a couple of months old already but the content doesn’t really matter. He’s still doing the same song-and-dance, keeping the plates spinning and the plebes distracted while he makes himself richer.

Trump dancesHe’s benefitted less than a handful of other billionaires but he and his family have gained about $3B since he took office. Those are incredible numbers but no-one with any power really seems to care. There is no real uproar about it. He’s still... [More]

Pro-Palestinian protesters in Bern, SwitzerlandI was listening to the Swiss news on the radio a couple of weeks back. There had been pro-Palestinian demonstrations in Bern the day before. Instead of discussing why people were protesting, the reporters dutifully reported about the damage that had been caused and dutifully reported on right-wing politicians who blamed it all on leftists and Antifa, as they’d been dutifully instructed to do by their ideological masters in the U.S., to whose Truth Social accounts they’ve all dutifully... [More]

This is also a couple of months old but remember when, about 400 news cycles ago, federal museums like the Smithsonian were told to dial it back on exhibits that cast slaveholders in a bad light? I don’t recall hearing whether that was retracted in the meantime. Probably not, because so many closet racists have positively soared out of the woodwork and and are cheerily enjoying what I imagine is, even for them, a wholly unexpected moment in the sun that they will, characteristically, round up... [More]

Almost every line in the following video was important and necessary for people to hear. I dare say …. brilliant. This video seemed completely extemporaneous. It’s Hasan expressing his deeply held and well-considered beliefs, pretty much all of which I agree with. Chapeau.

TRUMP'S MILITARY REVENGE by HasanAbi (YouTube)

The video’s not even 20 minutes long and I found nearly all of it worth citing below.

“What could be a solution to crime? Great question. This has been something that thinkers have gotten together and and tried to find... [More]”

The article Trump & the Russophobes by Patrick Lawrence (Scheer Post) was written near the end of August—about two months ago—and discusses the U.S.‘s obsession with just absolutely hating first Bolsheviks, then the Soviet Union, and now Russia.

“I say this because Russophobia is about more, much more, than near-term geopolitical strategies and policy choices. This is a question that goes to the ideology that makes America America, to the collective psyche, to Otherness and identity (which are intimately related in the... [More]”

The article Only Liars And Manipulators Say Gaza Isn’t Starving by Caitlin Johnstone (Substack) makes what I consider to be a logical error in argument in the following passage,

“When a nation keeps having to publish denials that it is intentionally starving civilians, you can safely assume it’s because that nation is intentionally starving civilians. If you saw someone on social media loudly denying the latest allegations that they are a child molester over and over again for two years, you probably wouldn’t let them... [More]”

This video presents an excellent topic on which to shine the spotlight. Unfortunately, Oliver spends a bit too much time with “pooping on pigeon” jokes and too little time on examining the root causes of why corporate crime goes largely unpunished or lightly punished while personal crime is punished incredibly harshly.

Deferred Prosecution Agreements by Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO) (YouTube)

It’s somewhat obvious to say that a just society would seek to build and grow a system in which most of the members can thrive. Sometimes, something bad needs to be pruned... [More]

The article Will Trump’s Working-Class Base Turn on Him? by Yanis Varoufakis (Project Syndicate) writes,

“I, too, hope and pray that Trump’s working-class base will rebel against a president who so readily betrayed them. But I suspect they might not.”

I know they won’t. I just spent almost four weeks among a good sampling of them. They are heavily propagandized and well-trained to ignore anything and everything that they might accidentally hear that might cause an otherwise principled person to at least consider reconsidering... [More]

The article Roaming Charges: From of the Mouths of Madness by Jeffrey St. Clair (CounterPunch) discussed several interesting news items.

ICE

St. Clair started off with a few items about immigration:

“Cost of painting Trump’s border wall black: $500 million.

“ICE recently shelled out $2.4 million for a fleet of new trucks and SUVs, which were custom detailed with gold wraps reading “DEFEND THE HOMELAND, INTEGRITY, COURAGE, and ENDURANCE.”

“ICE has lowered the hiring standards (it will no longer require agents working the... [More]”

The article That Big, Beautiful Summit in Alaska by Patrick Lawrence (Scheer Post), although informative, ascribes much more consistency and reasoning to ‘Trump and his administration’s actions than the situation warrants. For example, much is made of Trump’s statement that he wants to end the war in Ukraine.

“No Western leader, if you have not noticed, has ever called for an end to the war. None among them has ever mentioned a peace accord for the simple reason the Western powers do not want peace with Russia. It is with this... [More]”

The article Military Industrial Simple by Indrajit Samarajiva (Indi.ca) describes the U.S. empire in terms of a “bust out”, which is what an organization like the mafia does to businesses that they’ve otherwise bled dry. The bust-out is then setting the business premises on fire to collect the insurance money. He writes,

“LIghting the joint on fireA bust-out works where the mafia takes control of your restaurant (say), runs up bills on the joints credit, steals or sells goods out the back, and never pays the debt back. When it all goes to shit, they... [More]”

This is an eviscerating satire of the nattering careerist nabobs, unprincipled hypocrites all of them.

Writer can no longer stay silent by Tadhg Hickey (YouTube)

“JanusJanice McUturn here, writer. Guys, I think we can all agree, the images coming out of Gaza this week, they’ve ripped my heart out and flung it against a wall.

“It’s unacceptable and I now—through enormous personal courage, actually—I’m ready to use that blasted G-word. It’s a [whispered] genocide guys. I’m ready to tell you that it’s a [whispered] genocide guys and I can no longer stay... [More]”

Scott Ritter is on fire in this interview about Donald Trump’s and Marco Rubio’s foolishness and evil.

Scott Ritter : Can Trump Bring Peace to Ukraine? by Judge Napolitano (YouTube)

“[…] what’s going on here is: Donald Trump is too stupid to live. I want him to succeed. I really do. I want every president to succeed but this is a man, and you just said it, ‘I don’t know if I will support the Constitution’—then get the hell out of the office! Because you took an oath to uphold and defend that Constitution and now you’re saying it’s too complicated for you?!? It’s too... [More]”

I snipped the following citation from the article “When The Banality Of Evil Becomes Normalized, It Grows Unchecked.” by Francesca Albanese (ZNetwork) about a month ago.

“[…] the situation in the West Bank is not fundamentally different from what is happening to the Palestinian people as a whole. In Gaza, the attack has been genocidal in its intensity, but the same logic of destruction is being applied in the West Bank — though in a way that garners less attention, with fewer visible explosions. Palestinian communities... [More]”

I really like Chris Hedges as a writer, as a journalist, and as a person. He has impeccable instincts and principles. I don’t think that there is any way that he doesn’t know who Jason Stanley actually is. He interviewed him anyway, so that we could all have a look at how someone can sound like they’re on your side when they’re really falling far short.

Erasing History: How Fascism Works (w/ Jason Stanley) by The Chris Hedges Report (YouTube)

I waited long minutes to see if Stanley would discuss which current genocide is leading to the crackdown on universities, and realized that... [More]

I am a more-than-occasional critic of John Oliver’s “criticism lite,” which takes aim only at pre-approved targets, perhaps most recently in John Oliver and SNL don’t cause enough offense. I do not expect him to say a word about Israel, for example, until the entire rest of the establishment media has indicated that the coast is clear.

Still, this video about the odious ADF is a good and funny entry in the war against stupid and disingenuous.

Alliance Defending Freedom: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO) by LastWeekTonight (YouTube)

At about 07:40,

“One of its key founders was James... [More]”

Are You Racist? by George Galloway | Oxford Union (YouTube)

I’d never seen this, so it’s new to me. Eleven years ago, George Galloway refused to debate an Israeli about apartheid. He claims that he was misled and would never have agreed to it. Of course, people claimed that he was being racist. He clarified in a manner that only a handful of people could, off the cuff and magisterially.

“[…] George Gallowaybecause of my time in South Africa, because of the decades that I worked against apartheid in South Africa, do you imagine that I would turn up at a university... [More]”

Another great book interview by Chris Hedges, again with an extremely erudite author who’s written a book about Gaza. Their discussion ranges to places that most are unwilling to go, like: why should the rest of the world grant primacy to the Jewish holocaust as a historical occurrence? Why should they even know about it when they’ve suffered their own holocausts, at the hands of the same empire that is browbeating them to bow in obeisance to the memory of the horror of the last holocaust it... [More]

Pretending cancel culture never existed

Let’s start with a terrible take from a terrible source: the article The big idea: what do we really mean by free speech? by Farrah Jarral (Guardian) writes,

“What the right calls cancel culture, philosopher Arianne Shahvisi writes, “is often just the supersized celebrity version of what the rest of us experience all the time: consequences for our mistakes and bigotries. You do something shitty and people distance themselves from you, especially if you refuse to acknowledge your... [More]”

Remember that Russia is irredeemable

The following citation illustrates what I consider to be one of the dumbest (simplest? Most ignorant?) but extremely popular interpretation of the changing alignment of the U.S., NATO, Europe, and Russia in early 2025,

“Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth last week ordered U.S. Cyber Command to stand down from all planning against Russia, including offensive digital actions.” Because the US is a Russian ally (or satellite?) now I guess.”

It comes from a post... [More]

This is a fantastic seven-minute refresher on what the first amendment means in the U.S.—specifically the right to free speech, The government is bound quite strongly to respect one’s right to say anything one wants, even if one is benefiting from a government program, like unemployment or a visa program. While the government is allowed to curtail benefits in the case of criminal prosecution—predicating them on being law-abiding—it cannot retract them based on one having expressed... [More]

This was an interesting 21-minute discussion about the importance of multi-polarity, multi-civilizational humanity. Dugin points out how the globalism that we’re seeing trying to take over everything has deemed itself the winner and chooses not to integrate anything from other, “conquered” civilizations. He cites the Chinese Confucian approach to law and philosophy, the Russian Orthodox Church, and so on, as deep and ancient influences on cultures and civilizations.

Alexander DuginHe calls out globalists for... [More]

This is an absolutely brilliant 45-minute video: as history lesson, as political analysis, as military analysis. Many, many more people should be watching this.

In particular, the two sections comprising about 18 minutes and starting at 15:35, called “EU’s militarisation & Russia’s plans” and “EU’s fiscal discipline” are brilliant and are well-worth listening to in their entirety.

Vijay Prashad – The Collapse of NATO and Europe's Dilemma by acTVism Munich (YouTube)

At 04:56,

“Vijay PrashadTrump interestingly said, ‘look, this is not a prestige issue for us in the United States. We don’t... [More]”

The article Trump bans transgender athletes from entering the United States by Isla Anderson, Evan Winters (WSWS) writes,

“SemenyaRubio justified the ban on international transgender athletes under the 1952 Immigration and Nationalities act, which authorizes a “permanent fraud bar” as punishment for “lying” on a visa application. The pretense is that a gender marker matching a transgender person’s gender identity, rather than one that aligns “with their sex assigned at birth,” amounts to “misrepresenting the purpose of... [More]”