This article has been making the rounds in UK political circles. It’s a piece from Politics.co.uk by Chaminda Jayanetti: “Britain will betray itself for Trump’s coins of silver. British values are being forgotten in the hunt for trade deals.”  I must say, when I read such formulations, my guard goes up immediately. “British values are being forgotten?” Um, which British values are being forgotten, even “betrayed”? The values displayed in Iraq? The values displayed in Yemen? The values displayed in years of austerity budgets, endorsed by the electorate in 2015? The values displayed in Brexit? The values displayed in decades

(Here’s my column from the latest print edition of CounterPunch Magazine. It was written three days after the election.) “Hello darkness, my old friend…” There has been great consternation in the world over the fact that Donald Trump, runner-up in the 2016 vote (“Weak! Loser!”), will soon be president of the United States, thanks to the Rube Goldberg contraption set up by white elites in the 18th century to prevent the despised rabble from directly choosing their leaders. (And just to be sure, the Southern slaver-owners and their Northern compatriots also disenfranchised the vast majority of the populace while they

Divide and conquer, demonize and distract: how the bosses thwarted emancipation and set whites against blacks, keeping both poor while pocketing the loot. It’s where we came from, and how we got where we are now — neck-deep in the mire.  

Well, here we are: at the bottom of the barrel under forty feet of slag. In a few days’ time, we’ll know our fate: the five-alarm fire of Trump Rule (oh, how those police unions are chomping at the bit!) or the Clinton Age of Hyper-War (oh, how those neocons are chomping at the bit!). In either case, the entrenched coagulation of corporate interests and war profiteers that have strangled the peace, prosperity and prospects of the American people will not be budged an inch. The change that people are so desperately hungry for — so hungry that that some

Just a quick note to say that thanks to the Herculean and indefatigable efforts of the site’s co-founder and webmaster, Rich Kastelein, Empire Burlesque is back up after a particularly vicious and prolonged hacking. There are new posts coming, but I wanted to let people know we are back in business, again, thanks to Rich. In case of future hack attack of any great length, you might check out my other, less political website, which I will use for Empire Burlesque-type posts whenever this site is down. The other site is Bright Terrible Spirit.

So, just as the world was finally taking notice of the US-Saudi carnage in Yemen — following the mass slaughter of civilians in an attack on a funeral on Oct. 8 — suddenly, for the first time in the 19-month conflict, US ships in the Gulf of Tonkin — sorry, the Red Sea — were fired upon (or “threatened’) by off-target missiles. Now, in thundering righteousness at this unprovoked outrage (unprovoked if you don’t count 19 months of slaughter and blockade which have killed thousands and put millions at risk of famine), the US — which had “only” been funding, arming,