A few thoughts for the silent majority. There are only 193 countries in the world, and I like to have some idea of what’s going on in all of them. It inevitably surprises the cab drivers that I know the name of the capital city of the country they’re from. I...
Photograph Source: Mark Warner – CC BY 2.0 “8647.” Those numbers are spelled out — in seashells — in a May 15 Instagram photo posted by former FBI director James Comey. The meaning doesn’t seem unclear. To “86” someone, as I recall from my brief late-1980s career in...
Photograph Source: Yomosa – CC BY-SA 4.0 Congressional Republicans are moving quickly to enact Donald Trump’s “big beautiful bill” that would cut spending on the social safety net and increase the military budget while delivering tax cuts that would overwhelmingly...
Photograph Source: Missvain – CC BY 4.0 There’s a criticism which I see with some frequency in the animal-rights movement which argues those who view cultivated meat as means of reducing nonhuman suffering and premature death are engaged in technological solutionism....
Effluent pipe from a pulp mill draining into the Willamette River. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair. Humans can survive for a rather astounding one to three months without food and in one case, a stunning 382 days, which the Guiness Book of Records places as the longest known...
Image by Mohammed Ibrahim. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is a skilled salesperson, though the product he peddles is deeply flawed. His current challenge is to convince himself, his people, the region, and the world that, despite significant setbacks, he is...
Nicușor Dan and George Simion during their only televised debate, on 8 May 2025. Bucharest mayor Nicușor Dan bested sovereigntist George Simion in Sunday’s Romanian presidential election. Both were anti-systemic candidates of sorts. They were Romania’s established...
Image by Robert Klank. I don’t know about you, but the news continues to stress me out. Trump administration officials are using any excuse they can think of to detain and deport people whose points of view — or whose very existence on U.S. soil — seem to threaten...
Photograph Source: Jaber Jehad Badwan – CC BY-SA 4.0 CAIRO, Egypt — It is 200 miles from where I am in Cairo to the Rafah border crossing into Gaza. Parked in the arid sands in the northern Sinai of Egypt are 2,000 trucks filled with sacks of flour, water tanks,...
Photograph Source: Missvain – CC BY 4.0 There’s a criticism which I see with some frequency in the animal-rights movement which argues those who view cultivated meat as means of reducing nonhuman suffering and premature death are engaged in technological solutionism....
Effluent pipe from a pulp mill draining into the Willamette River. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair. Humans can survive for a rather astounding one to three months without food and in one case, a stunning 382 days, which the Guiness Book of Records places as the longest known...
Image by Mohammed Ibrahim. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is a skilled salesperson, though the product he peddles is deeply flawed. His current challenge is to convince himself, his people, the region, and the world that, despite significant setbacks, he is...