4 migration factors will keep Inclusion on the Agenda for most of this Century

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Today dark clouds hang over Afghanistan as the Taliban takes over the country. The situation may soon deteriorate into a humanitarian crisis, leading to a mass exodus of refugees to neighboring countries and beyond. However the story in Afghanistan unfolds, at least four critical global developments will keep migration at the top of many country’s policy agendas for decades to come. More people crossing borders, whether as refugees or Continue Reading...

A Country on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown

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The first time I saw the irrationality of large groups of adults happened when I was an adolescent in Lafayette, Louisiana. My mom took me to a parish council meeting (in case you don't know, parishes are counties but they're called "parishes" in Louisiana because Catholicism) for a debate over allowing fluoridation of the water in the community. I had asked to go because I've always been perverse that way. To my family, it seemed like the Continue Reading...

Afghanistan’s Armageddon 20 Years After 9/11 Offers Foreign Policy Choices: Groundhog Day or Imperial Reckoning?

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Wakeup Calls As the Afghanistan Armageddon unravels, this humiliating, devastating defeat for the US and its allies and the 20th anniversary of 9/11 (and who knows what may take place to mark that day?), plus the June 29 death of war monger extraordinaire Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, are wakeup calls. They offer Americans the chance to reflect upon, reconsider and rethink Washington’s disastrous, interventionist foreign policy. After 20 Continue Reading...

Hyphen-ated for Life

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"Democratic representation of ‘We The People' requires an accurate ascertainment of who ‘We The People' are." ~Arab American Institute The space of identity is tight. A single identity can hardly fit into its place, yet that is what society expects. The reality of identity is much more dynamic and colorful than dry categories of some census-defined race or ethnicity. But wait. Is any generic definition a fair categorization of a Continue Reading...

COVID Vaccinations are yet another Tribal Marker

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CNN has reported that some people in Missouri are getting vaccinated in secret to avoid backlash from loved ones. And thus, Covid has offered up yet another way to demonstrate tribal loyalty. First it was face masks; now it’s vaccinations. Vaccine hesitancy has a range of underlying causes, from fears about side effects, to distrust in government, to skepticism over the risks.  I have relatives who believe Covid-19 is a Continue Reading...

Trump’s Tehran Poison Pill: US Trade Embargo provokes Iranian Attacks in Gulf, Making Return to Nuclear Deal Harder

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The BBC reports that a bitumen tanker, the MV Asphalt Princess, was boarded by nine men on Tuesday and hijacked. It cites unnamed “analysts,” presumably MI6, to the effect that the hijacking was the work of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps. The MV Asphalt Princess, owned by the United Arab Emirates (UAE), was about to exit the narrow Strait of Hormuz, heading from the Gulf into the Arabian Sea. Two years ago, Iranian forces hijacked Continue Reading...

Republicans Loved the Covid Vaccine Before They Hated It

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I have seen a lot of cynical shit when it comes to the way that conservative politicians and media whores manipulate their fucking ignorant followers, from the Cadillac-driving welfare queens to drug hysteria to birtherism and so very much more. But I cannot wrap my head around the exploitation of fear and the selfish hyping of ideological division behind the right-wing campaign against the Covid vaccine. It's nonsensical on a health level and on Continue Reading...

Gaslighting the Pentagon: Tucker Carlson, who called Iraqis ‘Monkeys,’ Poses as anti-Racist in defending White Supremacy from “Pig” Gen. Milley

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Fox white nationalist (there, I’ve been redundant and repeated myself) Tucker Carlson once called Iraqis “semiliterate primitive monkeys,” managing to be racist, anti-Arab and Islamophobic all at once. Now Carlson is posing as an anti-racist. Funny thing, though. He isn’t out there apologizing for his racism against Iraqis. Then there was that time when Carlson advocated for the odious anti-Semitic “replacement theory” that rich Continue Reading...

The Sinking of the Bipartisanship Manchin

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It's a pretty great joke that Senator Joe Manchin, putative Democrat, has pulled on the country and, especially, on the people of his state, West Virginia. It's honestly irrelevant at this point whether Manchin actually believes the shit he's shoveling about the need "to seek bipartisan compromise no matter how difficult and to develop the political bonds that end divisions and help unite the country we love," as he wrote in his laughably Continue Reading...

Film Review: Apocalypse ’45

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Armageddon Then: Candid Doc Brings the War in the Pacific Home Francis Ford Coppola’s 1979 feature Apocalypse Now depicted war crimes committed by U.S. troops against Vietnamese people: An unforgettable, operatic, bone chilling chopper air raid attacking a Viet Cong village set to Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries” so a surfer whose name is initialed “LBJ” can ride the gnarly waves there (Ride of the Valkyries - Apocalypse Now (3/8) Movie CLIP Continue Reading...

The Chauvin Verdict: Random Observations at the Beginning of a Long, Difficult Road

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1. Sometimes I think about all the times that police murdered or beat a Black or brown person and no one was there to record it. It makes me sick to my stomach, as it should every person, as it especially should every white person. I can't get my head around that, and I'm not just talking since the Rodney King video came out 30 years ago, in March 1991, showing a group of Los Angeles police officers beating a Black man, King, who was on Continue Reading...

New Wind and Solar up 50% globally in 2020, as China beats US by over 4 to 1

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The new report on 2020 by the International Renewable Energy Agency reveals that the world’s renewable energy generation capacity increased by an astonishing 10.3% in 2020 despite the global economic slowdown during the coronavirus pandemic. It beats the previous record for an annual increase in this sector by a healthy 50%. The bad news for Americans is that most of this increase took place in Asia, especially China. In this Continue Reading...

Would a Good Guy with a Gun Have Been Justified in Saving George Floyd?

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The testimony coming out of the trial of Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd has been beyond heartbreaking and beyond enraging. Today, for instance, Floyd's girlfriend revealed on the stand that his pet name for her was "Mama," which is what he called out over and over as he died. It's been this way throughout the testimony of the prosecution's witnesses. Darnella Frazier, now 18 years-old, was 17 when she took the video that Continue Reading...

Attacks on Asian Americans are Rooted in over a Century of Racist Exclusion

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The spine-chilling attacks on Asian-Americans around the country, in San Francisco, New York, and now most bloodily in Atlanta, are manifestations of a white supremacism that has deep roots in American history. The odious Trump and his minions whipped up hatred by branding the novel coronavirus the “Chinese flu” or “Kung Flu.” He was not doing something new. The coronavirus, of course, came to the United States from Europe. Homo sapiens is a Continue Reading...

Grappling with Andrew Cuomo’s Scandals

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There is absolutely no reason to feel guilty or bad because you found comfort in New York Governor Andrew Cuomo's daily press briefings during the lockdown early in the coronavirus pandemic. While President Bumblefuck Magoo was prancing around and lying about the severity of the situation while shitting on anyone who would dare ask the federal government to do more, Cuomo was a soothing voice of calm, seemingly honest and straightforward, ready Continue Reading...