Cardi B and Nicki Minaj are feuding. Stormy Daniels has described Donald Trump’s penis for us. A big storm in North Carolina demanded 24/7 coverage, even if reporters had to fake it. Meanwhile, in other news: The Shanghai International Port Group is expected to take management of a new private seaport at Haifa, Israel in 2021, bringing a Chinese […]
Fault Lines
“At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it? Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined… could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make […]
Squaw Creek Rambling Blues
I’m drawn to those quiet little outbursts of humanity demanding attention, that impulse to declare with some permanence: “I was here”. It is the same impulse, I suppose, that drove my wife and I to put our handprints and our names in the wet concrete when we built our barn. For good measure, we added the paw prints of our dogs, and I scratched the date in with a nail.
Calling Interference
It must seem like a pretty good joke in the labyrinthine halls of the Kremlin: the Americans in a giant, going‐on‐two‐years twist about Russian interference in the 2016 election. We ought to recognize it when we see it. The Russians understand — better than 99 percent of Americans — that the USA is the world champion of […]
Busting Out Of The Binary Box
After a quarter‐century as an Oregonian, I finally experienced one of the state’s iconic events. My daughter and I attended the Oregon Country Fair. This countercultural extravaganza on six acres of oaks along the Long Tom River west of Eugene has been encouraging thousands to let their freak flag fly since 1969. There are multitudes of angles to […]
Six Days on Peleliu, Part One
The landing beaches were enfiladed with hardened machine gun positions and grazing fire on either flank, booby trapped with land mines and improvised explosives, and all the while the Marines remained under accurate fire from mortars and artillery buried and unobservable in the hills beyond. All of this remained true even after several days of naval bombardment and the US Navy’s assurances that there were no longer any targets available to their gunners on Peleliu.
Called By No Name
Is this the best way we can grow our big orchards? Is this the best way we can grow our good fruit? To fall like dry leaves to rot on my topsoil And be called by no name except “deportees”? — Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos) by Woody Guthrie “You think […]
Wrestling With Rhodes — Part IV — The Long Reach Of The Secret Elite
Cecil Rhodes dreamed the Secret Society — Alfred Milner gave it life. A journalist and then a colonial administrator, Milner was the perfect man to take up leadership of Rhodes’ Secret Society, for he was as ardent a “British Race patriot” as Rhodes himself, and considerably more capable when it came to pulling political strings. He […]
The Old North Trail
The meeting between the Blackfoot party and Lewis’ own did not end well. The following morning several of the Blackfoot – according to Lewis – crowded around the campfire and stole a number of rifles, including those belonging to Drewyer and Lewis. A chase ensued in which there was a fight, and R. Fields stabbed a Blackfoot through the heart with his knife. The fight then was then general – as other Blackfoot were attempting to steal horses — and ended when Lewis shot a Blackfoot in the belly. It was a close run thing, as Lewis wrote upon the return fire he “felt the wind of the ball very distinctly.”
Wrestling With Rhodes — Part III — The Secret Elite Stumbles Out Of The Gate
A cabal of wealthy and/or politically and socially connected Englishmen — a “Secret Elite” — forms in 1891 to ensure Anglo‐Saxon domination of the world as it enters the 20th Century. They seek a federated Empire — the white dominions acting as partners with the Mother Country — and the recovery of the United States. To achieve these […]
Wrestling With Rhodes — Part II — The Quest For Ophir
Cecil Rhodes was one of the worlds richest men, having acquired his fortune through amalgamating diamond claims in Kimberley, South Africa, to create a monopoly that continues to dominate the trade to this day. He made a second fortune in the world’s richest gold field on the Witwatersrand in the Transvaal. He was a Robber Baron in a Gilded […]
Sentosa Island Blues
I’ve read speculative reports that Trumpy has suggested throwing up a few McDonalds restaurants in North Korea, and as funny and ridiculous as that sounds, maybe the Golden Arches could serve as a kind of ping‐pong diplomacy for the modern age. Because even the most ardent communist occasionally, deep down inside, craves a Big Mac and fries.
