Latest articles


Founding Rapist: Judging Thomas Jefferson by the Standards of His Time

[This essay is adapted from my 2005 book, The Heart of Whiteness: Confronting Race, Racism and White Privilege.]

Conclusive evidence is in from new DNA tests: Thomas Jefferson fathered children with Sally Hemings.

To put it more bluntly: The primary author of the Declaration of Independence and third president of the United States raped one of more than 600 people he enslaved, starting when she was a teenager.

Does that seem disrespectful or ahistorical?

First, let’s deal with the often-heard claim that we …

Apocalypse Then, Apocalypse Now

Fight or Flight – The Way of the Jews

The genocide of the Palestinian people consumes us, and for good reason; it is a nightmare that will keep us awake until it is resolved. The perpetrators of the genocide work at it for 24 hours, seven days a week, covering the globe with a blanket of falsehoods, deceits, and calculated verbal attacks that they hope will disguise the horrors of their actions and smother the truths that reveal them. We realize we must be equally vigilant, and use each moment of energy to de-energize the Zionist inflated rhetoric, each second of breath to breathe life into the movement to …

Make America Read Again

The Banned Books Week Coalition encourages us to stand up for library staff, students, educators, writers, publishers, and booksellers by “Letting Freedom Read”

The forty-fourth annual Banned Books Week (BBW) takes place October 4 through 10 this year, but given the significant, sustained efforts to restrict what young people can read, Banned Books Week should likely be observed every week. We are living in a time of increased attacks on the free press, free speech, academic freedom, and the rights to read and know. This year’s BBW theme, “Let Books Be: Protect the Freedom to Read,” reflects these concerns.

A …

The Political Economy of Cross-Cultural Acculturation

Genuflecting to Transnational Capitalism

Orientation
The black sheep of the field of psychology
Cross-cultural psychology has been called “the black sheep” of the field. This is because it pokes holes in the more established subjects such as people’s personalities, how people learn and remember and how people reason and emote. Cross-cultural psychology exposes Western interpretations of psychopathology and what kinds of therapy work by showing how these subjects are treated in other cultures. Cross-cultural psychology began in the field of psychological anthropology around the turn of the 20th century. But how well does it explain …

PM Pushes Step towards His “Zionist Palestinian State”

Mark Carney is doubling down on a colonial force in the West Bank with barely a peep from pro-Palestinian forces. In fact, some are supporting a security initiative that highlights the scope of Canadian Zionism and liberal/left naivety towards “aid”.

At the UN last week, the prime minister announced new funds to bolster a security force assisting Israel’s illegal occupation of the West Bank. As part of a hundred-million-dollar announcement, Canada added $20 million in “aid” for Palestinian security initiatives with Carney noting in an official release, “we will continue to lead in training the Palestinian Authority’s security forces through Operation …

Of Course, We Can Abolish War before It Destroys Us!

It’s a matter of principles, courage, vision and pulling together - while the militarist world is falling apart...

Here, then, is the problem which we present to you, stark and dreadful and inescapable: Shall we put an end to the human race; or shall mankind renounce war?

— The Bertrand Russell—Albert Einstein Manifesto, July 9, 1955

The forecast for what’s ahead is worrisome. The sharp rise in armed conflicts over the past three years is adding to what was already the highest level in over seventy years. Genocides, which should be prevented are supported. A shared climate emergency that jeopardises survival is ignored.

Diverse polls now suggest that people are …

Mid-Term Election to be Decided in the Senate

While there is much debate and consternation whether the GOP will retain control of Congress during the mid term election or whether the GOP will survive as a political party, the grim reality is that the Republicans have done little to retain their hold.

Neither the GOP, especially the Senate has gone out of its way to persuade the American public to support the President’s party, the President himself appears indifferent to the outcome of mid terms.

Anyone who has been following Trump’s career knows that to be pure malarkey; while it is true he will find others to …

Condemning Renewal of Neocolonial Gang Suppression Force UN Mandate in Haiti

The Black Alliance for Peace (BAP)  rejects the renewal of the Gang Suppression Force (GSF) mandate by the UN Security Council on September 29, 2026, and affirms that Haiti’s sovereignty cannot be renewed away. One year ago, Security Council Resolution 2793, drafted by the United States and Panama, authorized a foreign force of up to 5,500 police and soldiers to replace the Kenya-led Multinational Security Support Mission that also proved ineffective at stemming armed violence. The GSF was to conduct operations to “neutralize, isolate, and deter” armed groups independently or alongside Haitian security forces. A foreign …

The Sovereign Reset: Escaping the Interest Trap with Greenbacks


Lincoln Breaks the Interest Trap – image by ScheerPost

In August 2026, the U.S. debt reached a gravity-defying $40 trillion, with an estimated fiscal year 2026 deficit of $2.1 trillion. Interest on the debt hit a record $1.4 trillion over the last 12 months and now consumes more than any federal program except Social Security and Medicare, eclipsing defense spending for the first time in U.S. history. Paid with borrowed money, …

The Western Colonization of the Mind

The Taiwanese Need to Decolonize Their Minds

The most dangerous thing for the sovereignty of a nation is the colonization of the minds of the population by a foreign power. The function of Christianity during the period of European colonization of much of the world was to embed Western culture within the minds of the colonized. Where possible, the indigenous religions were suppressed or forcibly exterminated. At its core, Christianity pushes a Western-supremacist ideology with a white European Christ, a white European God and “civilizing” Western missionaries, together with an acceptance of purgatory for the poor in the present in exchange for redemption in an afterlife….

BRICS in Delhi: Building a Trading System Free of Western Control

The recent two-day BRICS summit in Delhi was important because it indicated that even the government of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi – which had earlier attempted to enter into a strategic relationship with the US and Israel – now realises that its future lies in maintaining strategic autonomy.

Rosana Paulino (Brazil), Atlântico vermelho (Red Atlantic), 2017.

The objective reality is that the US, EU, NATO, and the G7 (clubs of settler-colonial and ex-colonial powers) are no longer the decisive forces in the world. Instead, the world is moving towards a …

The Next U.S. President?

Chris Van Hollen or Andy Beshar

Several years ago, the late Foreign Service Officer, Eugene Bird, led a small delegation, which included me, to visit our congressional Representative, Chris Van Hollen. Gene Bird presented a firm position; he and his vast following intended to back candidates who demonstrated a positive attitude toward the rightful Palestinian demands of relief from Israeli oppression and would work to unseat those who favored apartheid Israel. Van Hollen listened carefully and made no commitments, except remaining committed to the Democratic Party position, which faithfully followed AIPAC.

New York Times

The congressional …

Is Taiwan a Country? And Will China Invade?

Will Beijing invade Taiwan? That question explodes every time tensions rise, but this video explains why the usual headline is the wrong starting point.

First, the video answers the question people actually search: is Taiwan a country? After China’s unfinished civil war, two governments still claim the same country: the People’s Republic of China in Beijing and the Republic of China in Taipei. Taipei did not create a new state called Taiwan. Its own constitution claims all of China, including the mainland, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan Island. …

Unchained Malady: Hubris Syndrome as President Trump’s Crowning Condition

The unchaining of a pre-existing malady triggered by the sudden acquisition of great power.

By now, there can scarcely be anyone on the planet who does not realise that Donald Trump suffers from serious psychological problems. The public record of his mental ailments and behavioural idiosyncrasies is voluminous and well-worn (e.g., Blunt, 2025, 2026a, 2026b; Hedges, 2026; Lieberman, 2026).

An important part of the reason for the wide coverage is that, as heads of state go, the amount and variety of his supply of material to work with …

“You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time …”

The Merger-Muzzle Pipeline

How Corporate Consolidation Enabled Trump’s War on the Press

“President Trump Travels to MN” by The White House is marked with Public Domain Mark 1.0.

“CNN, MSNOW and Politico back at the White House, hours after judge ordered Trump to lift ban,” read a September 24, 2026 Associated Press headline, published just one week after the administration had barred the three outlets from press briefings. In response to the ban, the White House press pool—a rotating …

Cabeza del Buey

A small town with a big history

Cabeza del Buey [Head of the Ox] is a beautiful old town in the province of Badajoz in Extremadura, Spain in the region known as La Serena, roughly 300 km southwest of Madrid, near the borders with Andalusia and Castilla-La Mancha. The town hosts a population of around 4,500 inhabitants. It is situated on the foothills of the Sierra Morena mountains and nearby lakes. It is well-known by bird watchers for the variety and quantity of its many different bird species.

I was invited to Cabeza del Buey earlier this year by local teacher and historian, Nazaret Serrano Simancas, due to …

Lawless Lands: Trump Preaches at the United Nations

There was nothing new in the Reality Television President’s swill filled address to the United Nations General Assembly on September 22. Donald Trump had said much of it before, most of it with wearying derangement and detachment from reality. There were the bullying threats of annihilation and doomsday relish that never eventuate. There were the usual flashed credentials, now long worn, of a Cincinnatus briefly brought from plough to war for the state. “While others have talked, I have acted; while others have spoken of peace, I have made peace.” There were the stock verbal assaults on outsized, …

Remembering the Sabra Shatila Massacre

Lebanon — When veteran reporter Robert Fisk, first entered the Beirut Palestinian refugee camp 18th September 1982, these are some the words he wrote to describe what he saw:

‘It was the flies that told us. There were millions of them. Big as bluebottles, they covered us, unaware at first of the difference between the living and the dead. If the smell of the dead in Sidon was nauseating, the stench in Chatila made us retch. The dead were everywhere – in the road, in alleyways, in backyards and broken rooms, beneath crumpled masonry and laid on top of rubbish tips. The …

A.I. Execs ADMIT to the “Largest Labor Theft in Human History”—and Killing the Internet

It’s rare to see these kinds of documents — internal emails and memos from executives at Microsoft and OpenAI candidly discussing how exactly they’re currently stealing labor and killing the internet.

They were forced to release the docs by a massive lawsuit in which the New York Times is accusing them of copyright infringement. And not just any copyright infringement. It’s the largest case of copyright infringement ever. …Like, ever.

If you’re taking this moment to cheer for the New York Times, please put away your pom poms. The Times is …

Boxing Art

Form (not genre) is the key to understanding literature that opens cracks in conventional understanding. But exactly what form is is unknowable. Goethe said there was “an open mystery” to every form. One either senses it or not. It comes with a thrill of recognition.

As Roberto Calasso puts it, it is “by a certain vibration or luminescence of the sentence” or whole that one catches it and “a sort of second reality opens out beyond that other reality where everyone has agreed on the …

The US Constitution Prohibits Those “Engaged in Insurrection” from Public Office – so Will Nicaragua’s

Nicaragua’s electoral reforms seek to defend popular sovereignty as Washington intensifies its interference in Latin American elections.

Photo: Radio NicaraguaLast week I was at a local neighborhood meeting in the Nicaraguan city of Masaya. More than a hundred people had come to hear a report from a doctor from the local health center and from a teacher at the technical college where the meeting was being held. We learnt about the attention being given to pregnant women (currently 11 pregnancies in the area), the mobile health clinic that would …

Venezuela’s Battle for Sovereignty Continues

Underneath the appearance of “normalcy” in the ongoing relationship between Venezuela and the US lies a manifest asymmetry of power. Even commentators from mainstream international news outlets frame their analyses by drawing attention to the proverbial US gun held to acting President Delcy Rodríguez’s head and, by implication, to the whole Chavista movement. That movement, founded by Hugo Chávez and carried forward by Nicolás Maduro, has broadly united behind her.

The US attack of January 3 killed over 100 persons and succeeded in kidnapping President Nicolás Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores, an elected member …

Suspend the EU–Israel Association Agreement

It has been more than a year since the European Union (EU), Israel’s number one trade partner, found that Israel is in breach of the human rights clause of the EU–Israel Association Agreement. Despite recent sanctions on trade with illegal Israeli settlements imposed by twelve countries, the EU continues to choose complicity over accountability. As the success of a recent European Citizens’ Initiative demonstrates, the EU’s position has never been more at odds with the views of the European public.
In July, a European Citizens’ Initiative calling for …

Denial as a Way of Life: Netanyahu on Egyptian Warnings about October 7

Things are looking bleaker by the day for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, most notably for his standing as a competent leader in full mastery of his office. After allegations were made that he had received warnings from the United Arab Emirates leader President Mohamed bin Zayed (MBZ) that the October 7, 2023 attack by Hamas was, if not imminent then certainly most likely, a sense of paralytic denial has taken hold.

The claim by Haaretz, based on research for the book Hostages: 843 Days of Abandonment by Shlomi Eldar and Ruth Yuval, finds Netanyahu being told, in …

The Sovereignty of the Native

On Iran, Oppression, and the Colonial Mind

“Before the palefaces came among us, we enjoyed the happiness of unbounded freedom and were acquainted with neither riches, wants, nor oppression.”

— Chief Tecumseh1“Sleep No Longer, O Choctaws and Chickasaws,” 1811, in Great Speeches by Native Americans, ed. Bob Blaisdell (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2000)

“When I fought to protect my land and my home, I was called a savage. When I neither understood nor welcomed …

  • 1
    “Sleep No Longer, O Choctaws and Chickasaws,” 1811, in Great Speeches by Native Americans, ed. Bob Blaisdell (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2000) ↩︎

Goodbye Donald Trump

The Last Hurrah

He is fading fast, feeling more alone each day, displaying an increasing strain, becoming more erratic, finding it more difficult to gain the adulation that enables his survival. Punch-drunk Donald Trump is on the ropes, and the referee is ready to call it a technical knockout. He leans against Xi jinping, who could give Trump a knockout punch, but is content to prop him up before the referee makes the final call. The long nightmare of the deluded figure, wandering the White House grounds, slaying the dragons that contaminate the capital city, is nearing its end. Before the end, there …

Always an Ensign, Never a Captain: Death and Class Aboard the Enterprise-A and the Nostromo

When I was a teenager, I used to frequent an overpass near my house. It was over a busy motorway, and it was not uncommon to see white tents underneath me. These white tents, clinical tachrichim, meant only one thing – that somebody had been hit and killed.
I don’t think it’s possible for any living person to fully understand death, but many artists have used their mediums to try to, and amongst those artists are Gene Roddenberry, Dan O’Bannon, and Ronald Shushett. Star Trek and Alien stand as two beacons in the sea of portrayals of death – …

Digital Media-itis

What brings on digital media-itis?

The PRIO & ISA Effort to Excommunicate Johan Galtung from Peace Research – and Why It Failed

An academic scandal for all involved parties and why some of us withdraw now.

How Oxford University Press allowed a personality‑driven narrative to masquerade as scholarship.

A Special Issue in a scholarly journal is not an ordinary publication. It is a collective, curated statement about a subject of central importance to a field. When the International Studies Association, ISA, and Oxford University Press, OUP, publish a Special Issue devoted to Johan Galtung’s academic and scholarly contributions, the expectations are correspondingly high. One expects rigorous intellectual history, conceptual analysis, and a sober evaluation of one of the indisputable founders of peace and conflict studies. One …