Its crimes in Gaza are increasing Israel’s isolation

UPDATE: Today brings reports of at least another 52 demonstrators in Gaza killed by the IDF and over 2,000 injured.]

Today the Trump administration moves the US embassy to Jerusalem, one more step in dispossessing the Palestinian people and solidifying Israel’s apartheid rule over them, aided by the US. Charles Glass writes about a new book by Norman Finkelstein titled Gaza: An Inquest Into Its Martyrdom that takes a critical look at the crimes that Israel has committed using its Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), focusing on the people who are the worst affected, those living in Gaza.
[Read more…]

End the punitive cash bail system

Today is Mother’s Day in the US, one of the many days to remember certain people in our lives that the greeting card and other merchandizing industries have seized upon to guilt-trip people into spending money on gifts and cards to avoid feeling guilty that their mothers will think that they do not care about them. Being the curmudgeon that I am, I impressed upon my children when they were young age that I thought celebrating things like Father’s Day (and even my birthday) was nonsense and that I would be disappointed if they fell for the marketing pressure and bought me cards and stuff on those days and that I would be pleased if they ignored them altogether. Despite my urgings, they still call me on Father’s Day and my birthday but they know better than to buy me anything.
[Read more…]

Mormons abandon Boy Scouts

The Boy Scouts of America have had a well-deserved bad reputation of being generally reactionary in their attitudes and in particular hostile towards the LGBT community. They have tried to redeem themselves by removing most of the restrictions and now have even announced that they will allow girls to enroll and as part of that move they have announced that they will change their name to Scouts BSA effective February 2019.
[Read more…]

Film review: Star Wars VIII: The Last Jedi (2017)

My uneven relationship with this mega-franchise continues. After reasonably enjoying the first three installments (episodes IV, V, VI), I was totally turned off by the first of the prequel trilogy (episode I) and swore off the next two. When the series was rebooted, I heard good things about episode VII The Force Awakens and found it reasonably enjoyable, although it seemed to be simply a remake of the original episode IV. Last night I watched the most recent episode and it was really awful.
[Read more…]

Diplomacy, Trump style

It looks like Donald Trump’s choice to be ambassador to Germany has got off to a great start, peremptorily telling his host nation that they had better get in line or else. As Robert Mackey writes, Richard Grenell took up his post on Tuesday, the day that Trump announced his withdrawal from the Iran deal, and immediately sent out a tweet saying ” As @realDonaldTrump said, US sanctions will target critical sectors of Iran’s economy. German companies doing business in Iran should wind down operations immediately.”
[Read more…]

Can we stop ‘going forward’?

I have noticed in public discourse an increased use of the phrase ‘going forward’ or alternatively ‘moving forward’. It is used usually in sentences such as “This is what we should we do going forward” and what is noticeable is that the phrase almost never serves any useful function and can be dropped without any loss of meaning, since the rest of the sentence already implies some future action. It seems to be there purely as a filler.
[Read more…]

More politicians should behave like this

A member of Justin Trudeau’s cabinet, who happens to be a Sikh who wears the traditional turban, was singled out for extra scrutiny by US officials at the Detroit airport as he was returning to Canada after an official visit to the US.

Officials from the Trump administration issued an apology after a security agent at a Detroit airport repeatedly demanded that a Canadian cabinet minister remove his turban, the minister has revealed.

Navdeep Bains, the country’s minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development, described the incident in an interview with the French-language paper La Presse on Thursday.

Bains was returning to Toronto after meetings with Michigan state leaders in April 2017 and had already passed through regular security checks, but because he was wearing a turban, a security agent told him that he would have to undergo additional checks, according to La Presse.

[Read more…]

Government thuggery on full display

Ray McGovern is a 27-year veteran of the CIA who worked at high levels in the White House of George H. W. Bush, but who has since become a vocal critic of what he sees as the wrong policies of the CIA and the US government. See what happens to him when he protests at the hearing for torture-lover and war criminal Gina Haspel’s nomination to head the CIA. The brutality and sheer excessive force shown to a 78-year old man simply for speaking out is disgusting to see.
[Read more…]