Author: Syndicated

Almost 500 years ago, a tall African man arrived in Japan. He would go on to become the first foreign-born man to achieve the status of a samurai warrior. Known as Yasuke, the man was a warrior who reached the rank of samurai under the rule of Oda Nobunaga – a powerful 16th Century Japanese feudal lord who was the first of the three unifiers of Japan. In 1579, his arrival in Kyoto, the capital at the time, caused such a sensation that people climbed over one another to get a glimpse of him with some being crushed to...

Kenosha prosecutors asked Judge Bruce Schroeder on February 3 for a new arrest warrant for Kyle Rittenhouse, the Illinois teen charged with shooting three people, killing two of them, during a protest over police brutality in Wisconsin after he apparently violated his bail conditions. Rittenhouse violated his bond agreement by apparently moving out of his home without notifying the court. In the court filing, prosecutors said several attempts to contact the teenager had failed. The motion asks Judge Schroeder to issue an arrest warrant and increase Rittenhouse’s bail by $200,000. On February 2, Kenosha police detectives visited the address...

The Trump mob that trashed the Capitol on Jan. 6 made it absolutely clear that there is a dangerous far right anti-democracy movement in America that must be stopped. This is an authoritarian movement, even a fascist movement, that uses racism and anti-Semitism and ultra-nationalism and irrationalism as fuel. It was not a coincidence that one of Trump’s storm troopers was carrying a giant Confederate flag inside the Capitol. It was not a coincidence that one of Trump’s storm troopers was wearing a sweatshirt that said “Camp Auschwitz.” It was not a coincidence that the Proud Boys wear T-shirts...

By mid-February 2021, American deaths from COVID-19 may well surpass the country’s 405,400 deaths during the Second World War. By around mid-May, more Americans will have died from the virus than during the Civil War, which killed 655,000, and the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918, when 675,000 are estimated to have perished. Yet America’s largely self-inflicted COVID-19 disaster may be eclipsed by the country’s political unraveling, which has proceeded with warp speed in the last few weeks, with the once celebrated American way of succession in power via the ballot box dealt a body blow by a large sector...

President-elect Joe Biden called for the restoration of “simple decency” as a mob incited by his predecessor stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6 and delayed Congress from certifying the results of November’s election. Biden had planned to deliver a speech focused on how to revive the economy and provide financial relief for small-business owners reeling from the coronavirus pandemic, giving routine political remarks from a theater in his native Delaware. But shortly before he was to begin speaking, demonstrators broke into the Capitol building, reaching as far as the House floor. “Our democracy is under unprecedented assault unlike...