What makes politicians publicly embrace a lie when the truth is staring them in the face?
"There is an apartheid state here. In a territory where two people are judged under two legal systems, that is an apartheid state."
A simple statement of fact - in this case made recently by Tamir Pardo, a former head of Mossad, Israel's intelligence agency, referring to Israel's current system of treatment of Palestinians.
Pardo is not the only Israeli official to say so. Former diplomats, leaders, security officials, and cultural figures - loyal Israelis who love their country - are making the same point. These are not people who would be accused of being antisemitic even by the rabid right-wing Israeli defenders-at-all-costs in the United States.
America's radical right has chosen to target drag shows and transgender people in their latest assault on family values posing as a defense of family values. Shocked cries about grooming and child abuse are spewing from their mouths like pea soup from Regan in The Exorcist. The very folks...
On Jan. 26, Brattleboro was treated to an evening of Windham County’s Got Talent. Young contestants got a chance to perform for the judges and the public. One young student, after an investment of time and hard work, was excited to perform Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit.” However, less than...
History - what could be simpler? Things happen, they get written down, we read about it. For instance, the Boston Tea Party was an act of piracy, the revolution was a criminal enterprise. Not so fast, you say? This take might have been the historical view of the British, but it misconstrues the noble acts of self-determination and free speech that is the real story of that conflict. Or consider the Spanish-American War, which gave the Cubans a new American...
The candidates in the race for the U.S. House seat represent an surprising array of choices for Vermonters to sort through. If you think that the U.S. Congress is doing a fine job and should just keep on doing what it always has, then Molly Gray, who is somehow perceived as an interloping carpetbagger while simultaneously being a native daughter of Vermont, is the choice for you. She is the darling of the Democratic establishment and will be a loyal...
U.S. Rep. Peter Welch tries to talk a good game about serving the people. But his performative puffery, like bragging about not taking PAC contributions while still raking it in from trade associations that are nothing but PACs with another name, shows that he is as at the heart of the problem that the U.S. Congress has become. Welch is very popular in Vermont. His Republican opponent faces an extreme uphill battle to get traction in the race, and any...
A large country, armed to the teeth, entering into the dusk as a superpower, makes outlandish claims about another, much smaller and weaker country. The rest of the world's nations scratch their heads and wonder at these claims. The large country amasses troops and armaments near the smaller country. It gives the smaller country an ultimatum that cannot be met because it is based on a false premise. Very few other nations are interested in joining the bellicosity of the...
The rich and powerful seem to share at least one trait: They have a remarkable ability to ignore the real life consequences of their pronouncements, acquisitions, and policies. President Joe Biden puts on his earnest face and speaks with great empathy during his speeches. When campaigning, he assured us that he would end the suffering being inflicted on asylum seekers by the brutal border policies of former President Donald Trump. But after a year in office, asylum seekers are still...