Global

A couple of recent stories relating to the utter bestiality of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians have exposed the criminality of successive US governments in supporting the Jewish state no matter what it does. Observers of the lopsided relationship understand very clearly that Israel’s lobby in the United States, backed up by Jewish billionaires who are willing to spend whatever it takes to corrupt the political system and buy up the media, has succeeded in making Washington a totally controlled client state manipulated by extreme war criminals like Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is rewarded by the near complete loyalty of Congress and the White House. The one sided relationship dominates both Republicans and Democrats and has been most evident in the Presidencies of Joe Biden and Donald Trump, who have chosen to ignore the reality of the Israeli slaughter of some hundreds of thousands of Palestinians using US weapons and Washington’s political protection in international fora. For what it is worth, neither Joe Biden nor Donald Trump has spoken out effectively on the murder and torture of the Palestinians by Israel.

Somewhere between New York’s Studio 54 disco and the White House, Donald Trump became infused by militant Christianity. At the same time, he also seems to have been imbued by the most extreme, far-right Zionism.

Politics do odd things. Trump may espouse a lot of oddball causes, but he’s no fool. He lives and breathes politics.

This week’s political rabbit out of the hat is, of all places, Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nations, with 232 million rambunctious people. As with many of today’s world problems, Nigeria was a creation of British imperialism. The British took a very large swathe of West Africa comprising all sorts of peoples, religions and tribes, drew a line around its borders, and called it Nigeria.

Northern Nigeria, which abuts the Sahara, was predominantly Muslim. Southern Nigeria, where vast stores of oil were eventually discovered, became largely Christian thanks to intense British missionary activity. The two huge communities occasionally squabble or fight, most often over land disputes, cattle rusting and kidnapping of women.

In the face of the international legal and political systems' paralyzing silence and utter failure to hold Israel accountable for its genocide in Gaza, international civil society has refused to stand idly by. Instead, it continues to forge a path, presenting essential working models for what true justice in Palestine must look like.

Let him rest in . . . peace?

I don’t know. The irony of those words is a little too much for me to grasp as I sit here contemplating the death of Dicke Cheney at age 84. Cheney, mastermind and primary organizer on the “war on terror,” which, in a 20-year span of insanity, cost the United States some $8 trillion and killed (murdered) nearly a million people, according to Brown University’s Costs of War Project.

And as though that total weren’t high enough, the Project notes that this number is very much an undercount, since it doesn’t include indirect deaths of the war  caused by “disease, displacement and loss of access to food or clean drinking water.”

In November of 2025, Zohran Mamdani—a youthful progressive who, just a few months before, was polling in the single digits—won the mayoral election in New York City. He succeeded in the country’s largest city, home to the highest Jewish population of any city in the world. He achieved this despite the political establishment, billionaires, and media landscape pivoting against him with unusual bipartisan cohesion. For a country that has spent the past decade doubting its own democratic immune system, this is a matter of consequence. It tells us that America may still be able to self-correct when it counts the most.  

As someone who has seen public life in the United States move further away from any moral center—particularly concerning the Middle East, justice, and the worth of Palestinian life—Mamdani’s win represented something I had not experienced in years: American democratic hope.  

Tucson, AZ — AUDIT USA and its Executive Director, John R. Brakey, have filed a Motion for Reconsideration asking the Arizona Court of Appeals, Division Two, to correct several legal errors in its October 20 ruling in Santa Cruz County v. AUDIT USA. The Court, which sided with AUDIT USA in its Opinion, previously agreed the County’s lawsuit should never have been filed but declined to award attorney fees and sanctions — despite statutes requiring them.

In 2022, Santa Cruz County sued AUDIT USA and John Brakey simply for requesting a copy of an election record – the Cast Vote Record (CVR) – from the August 2022 Primary Election. Although the Superior Court judge promptly dismissed the County’s case, the County continued its unjustified litigation by appealing twice to the Arizona Court of Appeals.

With co-convenor MIKE HERSH doing the honors at GREEP #245 we welcome US Representative Adelina Grijalva of Arizona, elected September 23, now the duly elected USRep with the longest period of denial.

She confirms that the Republicans’ unprecedented refusal to swear her in is “undemocratic” and “dysfunctional to say the least.”

The Denim Revolution’s JENNIE GAGE welcomes the Congresswoman that she voted for in her own home Tucson district.

NY Activist HEIDI VERTAILLER asks how ordinary citizens can end this crisis.

Our Oregon-based Poet Laureate MIMI GERMAN tells of the fascist town council in Waldport that had their duly elected mayor arrested; the town’s citizens are now staging a re-call on the six town council members.

Grassroots theorist GARY KRANE urges pro-democracy activism to stem off the GOP’s fascist putsch.

Legendary Tucson-based democracy activist JOHN BRAKEY reminds us of the essential victory for ballot images in Miami-Dade, Florida.

Our erstwhile engineer STEVE CARUSO underscores the need for a core defense of democracy itself.

Many remember the late Dick Cheney for his service as President George W. Bush’s vice president from 2001 to 2009, shaping the War on Terror. Others remember his multi-decade failing heart--”he has his own parking spot on the ER comedians joked”--and how he shot his 78-year-old hunting companion attorney Harry Whittington in the face in 2006.

Fewer know about his love of put-and-take hunting in which game animals are “put” (released) by an organization and hunters pay a fee to “take” them. Real hunters often disdain such no-chase. no-miss pastimes which use no skill.

In 2003, Cheney’s hunting party killed 417 pheasants at the Rolling Rock Club in Ligonier Township, PA, Cheney personally killing 70 pheasants and an undisclosed number of ducks. The birds were donated to Rolling Rock Club staff though the pellets had to be removed before they could be eaten.

The next year, on the day after John Kerry was defeated by Bush, the Veep availed himself of Air Force Two to visit Pierre, SD where a motorcade sped him to a Gettysburg area hunting lodge for what was characterized as a victory hunt.

BANGKOK, Thailand -- Hundreds of swarming, angry Asian Giant Hornets, the world's largest, stung to death a vacationing American father and teenage son while they were jungle ziplining, reports from northern Laos said.

Daniel Owen, a 47-year-old headmaster of an international school, and his son Cooper, 15, suffered extremely painful deaths on Oct. 15 after they were rushed to a hospital, reportedly conscious, in nearby Luang Prabang.

"It was very, very painful. A lot of stings, more than one hundred, over the whole body," said Dr. Phanomsay Phakan.

"I have never seen a death [from hornet stings] and I have been working more than 20 years," the doctor said, according to the Times of London on November 4.

It was unclear why news of their deaths was not earlier reported, but all media is controlled by the Communist government in tiny, impoverished, landlocked Laos which is surrounded by China, Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam.

The tragedy occurred after the father, son, and a zipline guide climbed up to a tree-mounted platform and harnessed themselves to a long, slightly downward vertical steel zipline.