Iraq’s election results will confirm, but not bestow power

Ben Tanosborn
Polls have closed in Iraq as I start to write this column early Sunday morning, Pacific Time in the US. As many as 10 million Iraqis are estimated to have cast their vote, showing their indomitable character – threats and all, adding to the vote of yet another 600,000 expatriates and refugees abroad, [...]

Neither an idealist nor an ideologue… just an American politician

Ben Tanosborn
Political conservatism went onstage this past week (February 18-20) in the nation’s capital with some new faces taking leading roles, while the true and tried actors of old conservatism resorted to a thicker coat of Obama-hate makeup in order to stay visible. It was the largest annual gathering of conservatives sponsored by CPAC [...]

US needs economic enlightenment, not economic “recovery”

We, Americans, not unlike other materialistic societies inhabiting this earth, have for the most part a very narrow focus on the problems we face and an even narrower one on the problems that might sprout beyond our frontiers. A few tears will be shed this week by those more compassionate in our society for the [...]

America’s First Decade into the New Millennium

Ben Tanosborn
As we bring curtains down to the initial 1 percent of the new millennium, while taking a summary look to see what we’re leaving behind, one feels compelled to give these past ten years a name; one other than 00’s or similar non-descriptive monikers that fail to depict what the period was about. [...]

War and rhetoric: Et tu, Obama?

Ben Tanosborn
At long last we find ourselves not needing to give President Barack Obama any more rope with which to hang himself.  Most Americans, not just those professing progressive leanings, should now clearly see this hoped-for prophet of change wearing presidential vestments in the empire’s colors of military red, corporate white and phony-politics blue. Nothing [...]

Flimflamming America into a pseudo-services economy

Ben Tanosborn

Are we slowly coming out of a major recession, or will it turn into a double or even triple-dip recession thanks to the government’s infusion of capital that this nation neither has, nor will be able to pay back in the future to a lender?  Several prominent economists, Prof. [...]

Two messages of hope: from and to America

Ben Tanosborn
Some of us in the United States would like to think that the Norwegian Nobel Committee did not confer the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday to Barack Hussein Obama, our 44th president, as a prize for a promise yet unfulfilled but, rather, as a reward for a deed in the form of change; [...]

Populist Party of America Ethnographic Analysis

Populist Party of America
The Populist Party’s name is somewhat deceptive. One might mistakenly think that this emergent political party is a modern incarnation of the original People’s Party. The Populist Party of America, however, possesses values and heuristics diverging from the norms that underlay America’s first self-acknowledged populist movement. For instance, Populist America is far [...]

Change won’t come to America without prior de-brainwashing

Ben Tanosborn
American progressives don’t appear to grasp the implications behind the fact that only slightly over half of those who voted in the last presidential election (53%) did so for Barack Obama, presumably to bring change for Americans as individuals, and also as a nation.  And that the counter-reformists, who comprised a lion’s share of [...]

Labor unashamedly rated as just another resource

Ben Tanosborn
Another first Monday in September to signal the end of summer for most everyone here in the United States; while for a small minority of Americans, Labor Day continues to mark the annual set-aside time to pay tribute to the working men and women in the labor movement who so bravely fought to bring [...]