As the holiday season kicks into gear and people get to spend time with friends and loved ones, I too would like to wish everyone an enjoyable time.
Although Donald Trump has now made it safe for people to say “Merry Christmas”, I much prefer to say the more inclusive Happy Holidays or Reason’s Greetings from Baxter the Wonder Dog and me. (The photo is not actually of Baxter but he does look a lot similar.)
How do you know if your computer has been tampered with while it was temporarily out of your sight, say when you left it in a hotel room? The Freedom of the Press Foundation has issued a press release about a new open-source privacy and security app called Haven that a team led by Edward Snowden have developed that will alert you if anyone tries to do so. Haven is currently in its beta phase and they looking for testers to improve it.
[Read more…]
It turns out that not all the evangelical leaders who have aligned themselves with Donald Trump and agreed to serve on his evangelical advisory board sold their souls in exchange for access to Trump. One of them, A.R. Bernard, the pastor of the Christian Cultural Center megachurch in Brooklyn, New York, decided after two meetings with Trump that the whole thing was a sham and quit, with Trump’s awful response to the Charlottesville events being the last straw.
[Read more…]
At this time of year, we get holiday cards from friends and relatives, though fewer each year since some are now choosing to send electronic versions. We usually place them on a sideboard until the holiday season is over. But there has been an increasing tendency for businesses to send cards to their customers and that poses the question of whether they should be accorded the same status as the others by being placed among them.
[Read more…]
Tennessee senator Bob Corker gained some fame in liberal circles when it seemed like he was objecting to the recent tax giveaway on principle (a commodity that has long ceased to exist among Republicans), because he has long stated that he opposes increasing the debt. But he then made a sudden switch and voted for the bill after it turned out that the bill writers inserted a provision at the last minute that greatly benefited those who had real estate business like him and Donald Trump. I showed a chart earlier with those who profited the most and by how much and, Lo!, Bob Corker’s name led all the rest.
[Read more…]
There is sycophancy and there is Mike Pence level of sycophancy. Watch this cringe-inducing video of vice president Pence shamelessly sucking up to Donald Trump at a recent cabinet meeting. We have seen this kind of obsequious fawning to Trump at cabinet meetings before but Pence raises it to a whole new level, especially considering that he knew that the news media were recording it. Watch if you have the stomach for it. If you don’t, you can read the transcript.
[Read more…]
Regular readers of this blog may remember my writing about the hue and cry raised by two social media celebrities Alissa Violet (real last name is Butler) and Ricky “FaZe” Banks (real name Richard Bengston) who claimed that they had been sexually harassed and assaulted by the security guards at a Cleveland bar known as Barley House over the Thanksgiving weekend. The couple’s many devoted followers, who call themselves the CloutGang, threatened vengeance against Barley House and anyone else whom they thought had done anything to their idols.
[Read more…]
Cornel West published an article in the Guardian where he criticized Ta-Nehisi Coates for as representing the neoliberal wing of the black freedom struggle and failing to take a sufficiently strong stand against the predations of US capitalism and imperialism and Barack Obama’s complicity in them.
This wing reaps the benefits of the neoliberal establishment that rewards silences on issues such as Wall Street greed or Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands and people.
The disagreement between Coates and me is clear: any analysis or vision of our world that omits the centrality of Wall Street power, US military policies, and the complex dynamics of class, gender, and sexuality in black America is too narrow and dangerously misleading. So it is with Ta-Nehisi Coates’ worldview.
Coates rightly highlights the vicious legacy of white supremacy – past and present. He sees it everywhere and ever reminds us of its plundering effects. Unfortunately, he hardly keeps track of our fightback, and never connects this ugly legacy to the predatory capitalist practices, imperial policies (of war, occupation, detention, assassination) or the black elite’s refusal to confront poverty, patriarchy or transphobia.
The comedian has a new special equanimity coming up on new year’s eve on Netflix. In this clip, he discusses his interactions with white people both rich and poor. Chappelle lives in Yellow Springs, Ohio which is a kind of liberal, hippie enclave in a conservative rural area.
Donald Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel catered to the wishes of the Israeli hardliners who have created an apartheid state against the Palestinians. It also pleased the evangelical extremists in the US, especially those eagerly awaiting he Rapture and the end of the world because this seems to fulfill one of the so-called prophecies that herald the second coming of Jesus.
[Read more…]