I am finally home again after a week on the road. Most of the time was spent playing with my grandson, who has just learned to crawl and so is always on the move, proudly showing off his new skill. He is also exploring all the different sounds that can be made by banging two objects together. Since the objects he has at his disposal are toys that have been carefully designed for safety and are mostly made of plastic, the range of sounds he can produce is limited but do have subtle variations that he is studying.
[Read more…]

The TV show Black-ish presented a brief animated story I am a slave sung by The Roots in the style of Schoolhouse Rock. It is too painful to be funny but it is true and something that should be widely viewed.

The motives of Stephen Paddock, the person who killed 58 people and injured hundreds in a shooting spree in Las Vegas, remain a mystery. Investigative journalist Greg Palast writes that he went to school with Paddock and recounts his impressions of him from that time. He says that he and Paddock lived and went to school in a poor part of the greater Los Angeles area, where their proximity to the elites of Beverly Hills constantly rubbed their noses in the fact of the sheer unfairness of class privilege that some were born into and which opened many doors for them, and others were not.
[Read more…]

The Republicans made the issue of US deaths in the Libyan town of Benghazi the centerpiece of multiple investigations of Hillary Clinton as part of their sustained effort to discredit her and thus undermine her candidacy. But this news item has received surprisingly little coverage from US media.

When four US special forces soldiers died in an ambush earlier this month in scrubby desert in western Niger, attention was suddenly focused on one of the most remote and chaotic war zones on the planet.
[Read more…]

It used to be considered that the phrase ‘Israel lobby’ was considered too hot to mention in the US media. The activities of the Israel lobby in the US, once also considered an untouchable topic, are now being reported on more openly. Aida Chavez and Ryan Grim at The Intercept write about what happened when Al Jazeera sent reporters undercover to expose the workings of the lobby both in the UK and in the US. The Israeli government complained to the UK media watchdog, which cleared Al Jazeera of all the charges.
[Read more…]

The Dutch investigative journalism team Zembla has been looking into Donald Trump’s shady business history, especially his dealings with dubious characters in Russia and Eastern Europe who may be involved in organized crime and money laundering. I linked to part 1 and part 2 of the documentary series and they have now released the third part.
[Read more…]