Author: nick

Photograph Source: Aaronjayjack – CC BY-SA 4.0 Extreme weather has swept across large parts of the United States this month, bringing dozens of tornadoes, flooding, softball-sized hail, and winds near 200 miles per hour. Although much of it hit Texas, the Midwest, and Vermont, the extreme weather extended to Guam and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI). These islands, technically territories of the United State but really more like colonies, are home to about 220,000 U.S. citizens and closer to Japan than Hawai’i. They suffered through one of the largest typhoons (hurricanes) ever recorded outside of the typhoon…

A report on the human rights situation in Gaza It was 93 degrees in Gaza on Wednesday, and the best that most survivors of Israel’s war there could manage was to find shade under a tent. The Israeli air force, unchallenged by anti-aircraft defenses, has damaged or destroyed 92 percent of the territory’s homes and apartment buildings, leaving the Palestinian survivors of the war lucky, but surely not grateful, to have a tent over their heads. The Israeli bombing of Gaza has now gone on for more than thirty months. It began immediately after Hamas’s attack on Israel of October…

Panama City is often reduced to a canal. That’s understandable: The Panama Canal is one of the most consequential pieces of infrastructure ever built. But that’s also a misunderstanding. The canal didn’t create Panama City’s identity as a trading hub; it formalized it. Long before steel ships crossed from ocean to ocean, the isthmus functioned as a corridor for exchange, connection, and movement. Arriving in Panama City today feels like landing in a more tropical version of Miami. Glass towers line the coast. Luxury malls sit beside logistics offices. Container ships hover offshore, waiting their turn to go through the…

Image WIkipedia. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) has announced that he, along with Senators Tom Cotton (R-AR) and Rick Scott R-FL), have introduced a bill targeting what they call the “Iranian Regime’s Polisario Front,” designating that popular North African nationalist movement as a “terrorist organization.” Those of us knowledgeable of the Middle East and North Africa have been scratching our heads trying to figure out about what they could be referring to. Since the early 1970s, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Saguia el-Hamra and Rio de Oro (Frente Polisario) has been leading a fight first, initially for independence from Spain and, after subsequently…

Alexander the Great cuts the Gordian Knot by Jean-Simon Berthélemy (1743–1811) In two weeks, President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping will meet in Beijing, where they will have an unusual opportunity to ease the Cold War environment between their countries.  Xi is in a favorable political situation in view of Trump’s domestic and foreign policy failures.  Trump’s trade and tariff policies have weakened him at home, and the Iran War has compromised his credibility and influence abroad. Trump has a weak national security team, and there is no indication that its members appreciate the necessity of stabilizing Washington’s…

In California, former Rohnert Park police officers Joseph Huffaker and Brendan Tatum will be sentenced together in May after a judge denied Huffaker’s request for a new trial. The case involves a scheme where the officers pulled drivers over and pretended to be federal agents in order to steal cash and marijuana, which they would sell later. Tatum took a plea deal and testified against Huffaker in exchange for a lighter sentence. A jury convicted Huffaker at trial after just 90 minutes of deliberation. The post Brickbat: Partners in Crime appeared first on Reason.com. Source link

War is content, at least for those who are far from the explosions, acrid smoke and mourning parents. To those closer to the destruction and loss, it’s very real and inescapable. For most of us, the privileged, we peer into it whenever we dare, or should it come across our feeds. It’s a digital reflection of an unknown world. A place on our planet that may as well be across the universe, yet, in some small part we are complicit. Participants. Whether through endorsement, a cheerleader for gore, an active enabler of the regimes and governments which inflict violence as…

Image by Ian Hutchinson. The power of the most important protest movement of our time, the Palestine Solidarity movement, lies in how it shaped a new political consciousness, especially among younger generations on campuses. The movement itself was brutally repressed, particularly in Western countries. In the Middle East and Maghreb, the pro-Palestinian protests that continue on a smaller scale are often cautiously tolerated by the regimes, in light of the vast, popular support of the Palestinians in the region. The astonishing international sweep of student encampments in the Spring of 2024 helped to unmask western “democracies,” the self-proclaimed heirs of…

The head spins — while the Zionist regime goes on a persecutorial rampage against Christians, its imperial sponsor enables it at every turn in the name of Christian righteousness. President Donald Trump addressing the National Prayer Breakfast on Feb. 5, 2026, at the Washington Hilton in Washington, D.C. (White House / Molly Riley) By Patrick LawrenceSpecial to Consortium News I cannot get past the recently published photograph of that Israeli soldier taking a sledgehammer to the crucified Jesus in southern Lebanon. And the thought that this was an isolated incident is too preposterous even to consider.  But, then, I cannot get…

Those who grew up in the 1980s will remember a certain sub-genre of sci-fi movies in which the protagonist teamed up with a non-human entity in a feel-good, family friendly adventure, such as Steven Spielberg’s 1982 movie E.T. The Extraterrestrial (with the glowing-fingered alien ‘ET’) and the 1986 film Short Circuit (with the robot ‘Number 5’). If that type of movie was/is your jam, then the new hit movie Project Hail Mary will definitely be up your alley. Firstly, here’s the trailer (which, like this review, contains some spoilers as to the plot): Project Hail Mary tells the story of…