Genocide is the Currency of Western Domination

It is 200 miles from where I am in Cairo to the Rafah border crossing into Gaza. Parked in the arid sands in the northern Sinai of Egypt are 2,000 trucksfilled with sacks of flour, water tanks, canned food, medical supplies, tarps and fuel. The trucks idle under the scorching sun with temperatures climbing into the high 90s. 

A few miles away in Gaza, dozens of men, women and children, living in crude tents or damaged buildings amid the rubble, are being butchered daily from bullets, bombs, missile strikes, tank shells, infectious diseases and that most ancient weapon of siege warfare — starvation. One in five people are facing starvation after nearly three months of Israel’s blockade of food and humanitarian aid. More

The Battle for Clean Water: Regulate or Capitulate

The average American would be shocked to know what’s in their water — as well as what passes through both fresh and wastewater treatment plants. Nor are the effects of the growing multitude of pollutants a mystery.  Scientists and doctors know certain substances are extremely deleterious to human health. Yet, bowing to the pressures of commerce or cost, the current direction is to allow more, not less of these substances in our water. The most recent egregious example is the move by Lee Zeldin, now the head of Trump’s mis-named Environmental Protection Agency, to roll back the limits on PFAS, that were first adopted by Biden’s administration just last year. More

The Middle East And the Persian Gulf: Trump’s Favorite Shopping Mall

Donald Trump’s first official travel overseas in both his first and second presidential terms centered on the Middle East and the Persian Gulf.  These trips have secured great wealth and investment for the Trump family enterprises that now include a meme cryptocurrency that allows crypto investors in the Gulf to enrich Donald Trump.  The latest and boldest example of the region’s largesse for Trump is the Qatari royal family’s gift of a $400 million luxury jet that could end up with Trump’s presidential foundation when (and if) he leaves the White House. More

Roaming Charges: Sturm und Drang Warnings

As a parable from the past to help us come to grips with our perilous present, you could do worse than screen Storm Warning, the 1951 noir that may be the most unlikely Klan movie ever made. It features Doris Day as the pregnant young wife who works in a bowling alley that just happens to serve as the local Klavern, but is clueless about everything going on around her; Ginger Rogers as her fashion model sibling who drops in for an unnaounced visit to check on little sister and exposes DD’s husband as a member of the KKK; and Ronald Reagan as the smalltown prosecutor who ends up pursuing the Klan for lynching a…reporter! Reagan and Rogers were two of Hollywood’s most prominent right-wingers. In fact, the film was shot during the time when Reagan, as president of SAG, was secretly snitching out members of the actors’ union he led to the Feds as suspected Reds. The theme of the Storm Warning isn’t that the KKK is racist or hates Jews (those details are taken as a given), but that it is…corrupt. A great film if you’re in the right state of mind. I watched it under the influence of a bottle of Côte du Rhone and Oregon’s most profitable agricultural product…You can find it on TCM and Criterion. More