My Own Personal List of Lies War Street Has Told Us

Author’s note:  “War Street” is the simplified name that I’ve given to the war-mongers, weapons manufacturers and military-industrial complex members who pretty much own America right now — along with their buddies on Wall Street and K Street of course. This is my own personal list.  Feel free to jump right in with a list of your own. 1.   That the Civil War was fought to free the slaves.  Nah, that was solely an afterthought.  The real reason for the Civil War was the lust for $$$$... Read article

Who Benefits From Being Charlie: “I Am NOT Bibi Netanyahu!”

Clearly this subject has already been covered in the media news cycle ad nauseam but I still can’t stop thinking about the “I am Charlie” concept.  Was the idea behind all those people who held up “I am Charlie” posters supposed to be about protecting free speech?  Really?  Then why isn’t everyone carrying “I am Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden” posters too?   Or demanding that the police stop arresting guys who falsely yell “Fire!” in a... Read article

Charlie Dodo: A Deal Is Struck In France

Author’s note:  This is a satire.  Sort of… Don’t you just hate it when people get killed?  Murdered?  Decapitated?  Have their bodies blown up?  Why would anybody in their right mind even consider killing another fellow human being?  Have you yourself killed anybody lately?  Not me.  I’ve never killed nothing.  Cockroaches, maybe — back when I was living rough on the Lower East Side in 1965.  But cockroaches don’t count.  Or do they?  Can you get PTSD from killing bugs? ... Read article

The Future “Former” USA: Just Another Former Soviet Union?

I just finished reading an article by a guy who had accurately predicted the fall of the former USSR two whole years before it actually happened.  However, nobody back then even believed him.  “The USSR has over-extended itself and is going to collapse!” he kept telling people.  But everyone who heard him just laughed. Well.  At this point in time, the USA has totally over-extended itself too.  Like some addicted shopaholic set loose with questionable plastic at a shopping mall, the USA has over-charged... Read article

Grateful That I’m Not A Wealthy Widow In Chicago (and not a Ukrainian or Syrian either)

Author’s note:  I haven’t had much to be grateful for this past Thanksgiving because I spent that time recovering from an operation that involved re-breaking my arm, realigning the bones in my left hand and having nine pins, a bone graft and a titanium plate installed.  Ouch!  So now I’m all busy trying to make up for lost time and dreaming up things to be thankful for.  Here are a couple of items I’ve come up with (besides my wonderful family of course). To paraphrase that song by Kermit the... Read article

Murder Mystery: Who Really Runs The American Government?

This week I am going down to Long Beach, CA, in order to attend the world-renowned BoucherCon, a fabulous annual convention for mystery book writers and readers.  You just gotta love BoucherCon. At last year’s convention in Albany, NY, I scored 50 free books — but still haven’t finished reading them yet.  However, it’s always reassuring to know that I’ll probably never run out of murder-mystery books to read ever again — especially since I’m about to score yet another 50 free... Read article

Sick Man of Europe: Turkey’s Infection With The Cancer of ISIS

American journalist Serena Shim was beheaded — and “not with a sword but a cement truck,” to paraphrase T.S. Elliott. Right before she lost her head in a brutal “accidental” collision with a cement truck the size of a freight train, Shim had reported that not only was Turkey supplying ISIS foreign fighters and terrorists from such places as Pakistan and Chechnya with weapons and material, but Turkey was also spiriting wounded ISIS terrorists back over the Syrian border into Turkey, hidden... Read article

Mary Poppins, Elizabeth Warren & The American Banking System

When I saw the movie “Saving Mr. Banks” during one of my interminably-long plane rides back from Syria, I liked it so much that I actually went out and bought a copy of the 1964 “Mary Poppins” Disney classic it was based on — the one with Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke frolicking across the rooftops of London. And much to my surprise, I discovered that Mary Poppins might have been one of the world’s first hippies.  Who woulda thought!  And what was even more amazing is that Mary Poppins... Read article

Question For ISIS: Where’d You Get All Those Swords?

Okay, so what?  So what if you’ve just joined ISIS, been given a sword and been sent off to Syria and Iraq.  So what if you now have a huge bloody sword in your hand and you’ve just cut off somebody’s head?  Big freaking deal.  You’re the one that will be going to Hell, not me.  But what I want to know is this:  Where, exactly, did you get that huge bloody sword in the first place?  “Swords R Us”? From your local “Samurai of the Desert” katana convenience store? To... Read article

Nigeria: Rebels Without A Paycheck?

Author’s note: Who among our founding fathers way back in 1776 would ever have guessed that, just two hundred and thirty eight years later, America’s main driving force, highest ideal, most efficient function and top-priority goal would be to sell weapons and hoard oil. I recently dared to ask a Nigerian-American friend of mine the same dreaded question that I had asked him the last time we had talked. “How are things going over in Nigeria right now?“. “Bad. Really bad,”... Read article

Stalker: Obama’s Obsessive Harassment of Syria & Ukraine

CBS is premiering a new TV show called “Stalker” this October, and this program is fierce and scary as hell — all about a bunch of creepy guys who go around stalking their prey mercilessly. But what is the exact definition of a stalker?  “A person who harasses or persecutes someone with unwanted and obsessive attention.”  Further, “Any unwanted contact between two people that directly or indirectly communicates a threat or places the victim in fear can be considered stalking.” I... Read article

America, For Sale Cheap: $2 Billion Oughta Do It

With election time almost upon us, here’s a rather sobering thought:  By spending as little as a mere two billion dollars, anyone with that amount of money can now afford to buy an entire American election — Congress, the White House, governorships and all. “But Jane,” you might ask, “why would anyone even want to do that?”  Why?  Just look at all the immense amount of loot you can score with just this tiny investment.  Access to national park land, bank deregulation, profits from... Read article

A Caterpillar’s Life-Cycle: How The American War Machine Gets Its $$$$

Back when we took biology classes in high school, we all studied the life-cycle of the caterpillar, right?  Where it went from being a caterpillar to spinning a cocoon to becoming a butterfly to laying its eggs to hatching back into a caterpillar again, right? I’m thinking that this life-cycle is rather similar to the life-cycle of Wall Street & War Street’s huge, scary war machine — which started out being mostly financed by American taxpayers, right?  But then as the “world’s greatest... Read article

“Untouchable”: Ferguson & The American Caste System

When I was in India several years ago, I learned a lot about its historic caste system and the role of its “untouchables”.  But I never put two and two together — that we might have “untouchables” and a caste system here in America too — until I saw photos of what happened in Ferguson, Missouri, this August. http://www.stltoday.com/news/multimedia/special/ferguson-in-pictures/html_24b2b105-90e3-5ef0-9c65-769e848c0d31.html When I was in the Peace Corps in South Africa, I learned all about... Read article

Wall Street & War Street Need To Keep Their Pants Zipped

In almost every country in the world where America’s notorious “Wall Street and War Street” gang of thugs have tampered and interfered with its internal workings, things have always turned out badly for each country involved.  Almost every country that this infamous WSx2 gang has tampered with so far has pretty much seen their way of life turn to dookie.  http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/24710-noam-chomsky-whose-security-how-washington-protects-itself-and-the-corporate-sector You want some examples? ... Read article

Tired of Writing About Genocide? Then Write About FOOD!

OMG, I am so sick and tired of writing about American-sponsored neo-Nazis in the Ukraine, American-financed genocide in Gaza and American-backed ISIS murderers in Syria and Iraq.  Geez Louise.  It’s enough to make me sick! But not sick enough to stop eating. Even though women and children are starving in Gaza and refugees in Erbil are hunkering down in city parks and Ukrainian babies are being shot by swastika-waving skin-heads, I still gotta have three or four square meals a day. And all the average American can... Read article

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