For some time now, residents of some US cities have noted occasional incidents of seemingly random, racially motivated violence in which young Black males are involved.  The hot weather and bad economy seem to be combining to generate a small but possibly significant uptick this year.  The national media are doing their best to avoid […]

The invisible hand has been writing on our wall of late, and the message is scaring the markets.  The markets should be scared; there is real trouble afoot, and the world’s political and economic leaders are terrifyingly out of their depth. In the Book of Daniel, King Belshazzar of Babylon held a great feast for […]

Last month, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy (IRGCN) chief Ali Fadavi declared, “The frontline of the Islamic Republic is the sea. Our enemy, the United States, has a military capacity at sea and has secured hegemony by the means of its naval capacity. . . . It is necessary that the Iranian navy counters […]

The Texas State Board of Education has been a recurring locale of what is conventionally understood as the battle between science and religion. The agency has the power to decide which textbooks are to be used in Texas public schools. Since Texas has a huge system of public education, and since it would be expensive […]

The debt ceiling compromise is the end of the liberal dream that the Obama presidency would do for the left what Ronald Reagan’s time in office did for the right. Stanley Greenberg, one of the best pollsters anywhere and a leading intellectual light of the Democratic party, has a must read in the NY Times […]

As Ramadan begins and the Islamic world starts its month of fasting, two historic events are pointing in the same direction: the era of Jacobin secularism in Middle Eastern government is over. The mass resignations of Turkey’s top military leaders is the good news; the murderous crackdown by Syrian forces loyal to Butcher Assad is […]

One of the things they teach you in survivor school is that the wilderness is often full of food that city dwellers either don’t recognize or are culturally conditioned to ignore.  Seeing a box turtle plodding through a forest glade, a fallen log teeming with termite grubs or a field of dandelions, the average city […]

On July 1, 2011, thirteen US senators opposed to the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) participated in a video that is meant to encourage gays and lesbians to persevere and to be optimistic about the future. One of the thirteen, Senator Robert Wyden (Democrat from Oregon), said: “DOMA, folks, is on the wrong side of […]

The ghastly, shocking news from Norway has stunned the whole world.  Empathy for the young victims and their families, horror at the cold blooded and deliberate evil behind this act, and fearful wonder at the depths of madness it reveals are all joined together.  We Godbotherers will be bothering God about this, asking for his […]

The great waves of civil rights legislation and urban policy since the 1960s had successes and some failures.  The great success has been the establishment of a much larger and better educated Black middle class.  Forget the high profile achievements of the few — two of the last three Secretaries of State, the current President […]