Global

The tale of 9/11 will just not go away, largely because it is clear to anyone who reads the lengthy 9/11 Commission Report that many issues that should have been subject to inquiry were ignored for what would appear to be political reasons. The George W. Bush Administration quite obviously did not want to assume any blame for what had happened and that bias also extended to providing cover for U.S. “allies,” most particularly Saudi Arabia and Israel. Those who have sought the truth about 9/11 have been persistent in their attempts to find out information that was suppressed but they have been blocked repeatedly in spite of numerous FOIA requests.

A case can be made that just about any public statue in Charlottesville, Virginia, is the worst one. The much lamented statues of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson are not alone in their offensiveness. Determining a winner in a contest for the worst monument in Charlottesville is not nearly as important, I think, as removing any of the lot of them from our central public spaces and installing them in a museum. I’m grateful to everyone who has advocated for the removal of any of these monstrosities and support those efforts 1000%, as I have written about often.

June 12-16, 2019, Columbus
Greater Columbus Convention Center
400 N. High St.
Columbus, OH 43215

Origins Game Fair is in an annual tabletop gaming convention held in Columbus, OH. Join us for our 45th year of playing games, exploring the Exhibit Hall, and making friends from all over the country!

On top of the 6,000+ gaming events scheduled throughout the week, we also offer a wide variety of other activities, such as True Dungeon experiences, a robust Film Festival, a full schedule of Anime Programming, and even Comedy and Music Shows!

John Brown is one of American history’s most fascinating characters. The American Spartacus, Brown led an anti-slavery revolt in 1859 and has often been depicted as overzealous and even stark raving mad. After all, to racists, any white man who’d place himself in harm’s way by taking up arms in order to free Black slaves by definition had to be a lunatic. After his failed raid at Harpers Ferry a crowd of southerners questioned the militant firebrand while he was imprisoned at the armory and a bystander called Brown “fanatical.” Indeed, in the 1940 Hollywood movies Santa Fe Trail and Abe Lincoln in Illinois, Raymond Massey and John Cromwell portrayed Brown as insane.

But those whom Brown defended - and their descendents - did not think the freedom fighter was crazy. Of course, during the Civil War, the Union hymn “John Brown’s Body” paid tribute to the bold abolitionist. And in 1965 Malcolm X told whites who were expressing solidarity with Blacks: “If you are for me and our people’s problems then you have to be willing to do as old John Brown did.”

The U.S. Army tweeted a harmless rah-rah tweet and got hit with a burst of reality never encountered on corporate-controlled media. Score one for the internet.

The Army asked: “How has serving impacted you?”

Here’s a tiny sample of the responses:

The following is testimony given before the Ohio Legislature in Columbus, May 22, 2019.

s Ohio’s Legislature declaring a state of atomic socialism?

Is it poised for a Soviet gouging of some $3 billion over the next ten years? If so, this Bolshevik fiscal bloodletting will cripple Ohio’s economy for years to come.

The current bailout scam is meant to save two dirty, dangerous, decayed Chernobyl-ready atomic reactors that are falling apart. Neither can compete in the free markets so many Buckeyes profess to love.

The Legislature proposes this $3-billion handout while blocking the influx of some $4 billion in private capital. That money is waiting to come into the state from a bevy of private investors. These businesses are set to build thousands of wind turbines in ag land along the lake in northern Ohio.

Category

In a party that officially condemns dog-whistle appeals to racism, Joe Biden is running on Orwellian eggshells. Whether he can win the Democratic presidential nomination may largely depend on the extent of “doublethink” that George Orwell described in 1984 as the willingness “to forget any fact that has become inconvenient.”

It is an inconvenient fact that Biden has a political history of blowing into dog whistles for racism. More than ever, the Democratic electorate is repelled by that kind of pitch. If his dog-whistling past becomes a major issue, the former vice president and his defenders will face the challenge of twisting themselves into rhetorical pretzels to deny what is apparent from the video record of Biden oratory on the Senate floor that spanned into the last decade of the 20th century.

White men rule!

That’s the uber-message quietly emerging from the new anti-abortion laws recently passed in Alabama, Georgia, Ohio and Missouri, no matter that the public remains predominantly supportive of safe, legal abortions.

That doesn’t matter, see. The fact that the Republican Party controls the legislatures in so many states where it lacks majority status, not to mention is able to put presidents in office who fail to win the popular vote, indicates that we live in a rather limited-definition democracy: rule by the most determined cheaters. Or as some would put it, rule by divine decree.

As Ari Berman pointed out recently in Mother Jones, this divine decree is achieved primarily by voter suppression and gerrymandering, as exemplified last year in Georgia’s gubernatorial race.