Author: nick

Purdue Pharma building in Stamford CT. Photograph Source: WikileaksIntern – CC0 Suppose there was an explosion at an oil refinery that killed hundreds of people. Presumably, there would be a major investigation to determine what went wrong and how to prevent a similar accident in the future. But it’s different with the pharmaceutical industry. Purdue Pharma, one of the drug companies at the center of the opioid crisis, was finally put to death as the result of lawsuits over its pushing of OxyContin. The allegation is that the company misrepresented the addictiveness of the drug in order to have it…

Image by Bret Kavanaugh. Recently, I had the opportunity to stand in a friend’s kitchen eating pupusas, the Salvadoran national food, while listening to an update on conditions in Central America from Cristosal’s Noah Bullock. Cristosal is a key Central American human rights organization engaged in legal advocacy, forensic investigation, and amplifying the voices of people who are experiencing — and resisting — repression in El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala. Noah offered considerable detail on the conditions in those countries, but his basic message for us living so far away was simple: No matter how dark the road gets, we keep on walking.…

Tracey Matthews, a teacher at Wonder Junior High School in West Memphis, Arkansas, was charged with aggravated assault after he choked a student. The incident started when Matthews asked the student if he had a computer, to which the student replied, “Bruh, I don’t have a computer.” Matthews then said, “I’m not your bruh, I’m your sir,” to which the student responded, “My bad, lil bruh.” Police say Matthews then grabbed him by the shirt and slammed him against a desk, and when he left the classroom, Matthews followed him into the hallway, slammed him into the wall, and choked…

Photograph Source: JD Vance – Public Domain On April 14, 2026, Vice President JD Vance stood before a half-empty arena at the University of Georgia, courtesy of Turning Point USA, and decided to lecture the Pope about Augustine. Specifically, Vance — who has publicly named St. Augustine as his patron saint, the intellectual godfather of his Catholic conversion — invoked the great North African bishop to push back against Pope Leo XIV’s Palm Sunday declaration that God turns away from the prayers of those who make war. The Pope, Vance said, was oversimplifying. There was, after all, “more than a…

Editor’s Note: This article was originally delivered as a speech at the West Suburban Peace Coalition Educational Forum on May 4, 2026. Within a few days at the end of March, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky made two claims. He revealed that Russia had given him two months to withdraw all forces from areas still under its control in Donbas, or Russia would take it by force and change the terms of the settlement. Russia said that was not true. And he said that the United States had conditioned security guarantees on Ukraine withdrawing from Donbas. “That’s a lie,” U.S. Secretary…

Photograph Source: College of Arms – Public Domain “In my beginning is my end,” wrote T. S. Eliot. Every so often—after writing nearly a dozen articles on this subject—I return to the same question: where, exactly, are industrial relations in the UK right now? There are no easy answers—or so I have found. Not least because it is a question so rarely asked by a largely indifferent press. This, despite the increasing noise from the union camp. What passes for union coverage arrives only in fragments: a single remark inflated into a story here, a minor dispute pressed into service…

Thanks to ‘Midnight Review Presents’ for your support of the Grail! Archaeologists reveal secrets of artificial island older than Stonehenge in Scottish loch. Haunted houses and ghosts are probably not caused by infrasound, actually. UFO update: Congresswoman promises to show things of ‘non-human origin‘. A quick reminder that a pile of bull manure is material of ‘non-human origin’. Trump has lost control of the conspiracy theories that he once used to his benefit. China’s massive stealth flying wing drones spotted together at secretive test base. Scientists exposed flies to crushing hypergravity – the results were unexpected. Unexpected bilingualism is surprisingly…

The response of the British left to the knife attack on two Jews, Moshe Shine, 76, and Shloime Rand, 34, in London’s Golders Green on Wednesday was telling. The leader of the left-wing Green Party, Zack Polanski, retweeted a post on X accusing the police of brutality for “violently kicking a mentally ill man in the head.” Well, a kick in the head is perhaps the least this attacker should have expected after refusing to give up his weapons; in many jurisdictions, he would be dead. Essa Suleiman has now been charged with attempted murder. The men stabbed in Golders…

Image by Getty and Unsplash+. It’s “Déjà Vu All Over Again” in America. I feel as if I am being forced to revisit old 20th-century American paradigms under the current administration, while the rest of the world is rolling into the 21st century. This year we are told that AI needs more nuclear power plants built, “Drill Baby, Drill” is once again the White House theme song and the Navy needs more battleships. Those who don’t study history are doomed to repeat it. In December 1910 (not a typo), a Popular Mechanics (Page 783) article “The Aeroplane vs the Battleship” envisioned…

President Donald Trump keeps attracting potential assassins. His latest wannabe killer went to a good school, had a steady job, and touted remarkably mainstream politics. You probably have a relative or a friend with the same exact politics as Cole Allen. The difference is that Allen tried to kill the president. There’s a lot of talk about “radical left terrorism” in the wake of the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner shooting. But the shooter wasn’t an antifa type or a communist. He’s the kind of guy who backs the most establishment Democrat to lead the party and keep things moderate.…