The other side of the story

William M. LeoGrande, a professor of government at American University, writes about the disingenuous coverage of Russian interference in US elections that portray it as an outrageous violation of the sovereign rights of a nation, when the US has been doing it for so long and in much more overt ways. Such behavior was revealed a long time ago in former CIA agent Philip Agee’s book Inside the Company: CIA Diary (1975) that detailed the things he did in Latin America after he joined the CIA in 1957. Like so many things that the US ruling class finds distasteful, this knowledge tends to be repeatedly buried.
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The chaotic nature of gun use

Donald Trump has suggested that teachers should be armed with guns to deter killers. Of course, the fact that an actual police offer (and maybe even four) was on site at the Parkland school and did not act shows that having an armed person present is not a solution when there is the ability for any person to buy a rapid-firing weapon that can kill many people in just a few seconds. Teachers are also pushing back saying that they joined the profession to teach people, not to be law enforcement officers.
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More fun and games at CPAC

As I have mentioned, CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference) that is currently going on is basically a closed feedback loop where extreme right-wingers come to hear extreme right wing speakers pander to their deeply held prejudices and fact-free views. Michael Steele used to be head of the Republican National Committee in the years 2009-2011. He also happens to be black. At a dinner on Friday evening for the attendees at CPAC, Ian Walters, a spokesperson for the American Conservative Union that sponsors CPAC, said that “We elected Mike Steele as chairman because he was a black guy. That was the wrong thing to do,”
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Iona Craig wins Polk award for her report on the killing of Yemeni civilians by the US

I linked a year ago to a news story by Iona Craig that described the horrific killings of civilians by the US during a botched raid on the Yemeni village of Al Ghayiil. This was a raid to supposedly capture an al Qaeda leader that was hailed by the Trump administration and much of the mainstream media in the US as a ‘success’ when it was anything but and it was Craig’s report with photographs that revealed the devastation that was wreaked on an impoverished village in a remote area. The Pentagon’s top Middle East commander ‘investigated’ the case US and, despite the evidence, concluded that “he found no signs of “poor decision-making or bad judgment” in a January raid in Yemen that killed 10 children and at least six women, as well as Navy SEAL William “Ryan” Owens”.
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Data? We don’t need no stinkin’ data! Skin color is enough!

CPAC (The Conservative Political Action Conference) is an annual gathering of nutty and hate-filled right-wingers, aka the Republican party faithful, and it is currently going on. This is where speakers throw red meat to the attendees, the redder the better, attacking all their favorite targets with hyperbolic rhetoric. Alice Ollstein reports on one session on immigration that quickly went off the rails when a speaker tried to buck that trend and persuade the audience, using actual data, that immigrants are actually good for the US.
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The ugly face of Billy Graham

The famous evangelist died last week at the age of 99 and we are now going through an orgy of official mourning that would have delighted the adulation-seeking Graham. I have been sickened by the fawning praise that has been rolling in from all quarters for the so-called ‘America’s pastor’, ignoring the many bad things he said and did. So it was a relief to read this article by Bob Moser that paints a very different picture of the man.
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Stephen Colbert nails it

As we know, Florida senator Marco Rubio got an earful from a stadium full of people outraged by his abject subservience to the NRA. Stephen Colbert has a telling segment about one moment during the event and how many in the media commented on the fact of his showing up for it.

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The failed attempt to smear Jeremy Corbyn

A sign of the growing fear among the British elites about Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn’s increasing popularity are the attempts to smear him. Robert Mackey writes about one such attempt by the right-wing British tabloid press led by Rupert Murdoch to accuse Jeremy Corbyn of having been a spy for the Czechoslovakian secret service during the Cold War. This was taken up by Conservative prime minister Theresa May and some of her cabinet members but the attempt failed miserably.
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The importance of hope and the danger of cynicism and pessimism in politics

I am usually optimistic about politics, that however bleak things look at the moment for the causes of equality and justice (and boy are they bleak right now) over time things will improve. But there is one issue where I felt where things would not improve and that is with gun control. My pessimism on that particular issue was sealed with the murders of twenty first grade children in Newton, an event that did not lead to any movement to limit the easy availability of high-powered weapons that pretty much anyone could get with no difficulty. It seemed like the political class was not going to interfere with the ability of any individual to buy unlimited numbers of weapons and ammunition to kill as many people as they can.
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