Author: nick
Ad for Yoga Walks in the Wye River Valley, Wales. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair. Away from the heat, there must be some winds that wish to cool the earth. Some that carry the scent of wet stone and violet. Some that reach the Welsh mountains still fresh. As a friend wrote last week, “This is why I build in the mountains with my own water sources and plenty of wind and solar.” In Wales, I gather people have their yoga mats at the ready again. Last year, the two teachers running this one particular retreat would have looked upon running…
Photo by Jasmina Ajkic Recently, while listening to an NPR interview with Cuban-American musician Arturo Sandoval, I was reminded of the late political scientist Michael Parenti’s classic text, Inventing Reality: The Politics of the Mass Media. In his 1986 book, Parenti described a situation that is still relevant forty years later— when the US fears that another country’s non-capitalistic political model (and its attendant advances in social justice and quality of life) could cause US citizens to question their own system, it regularly imposes an embargo and sanctions against the country. Next, the news media reports on the suffering caused…
A growing number of mainstream Americans are beginning to consider contingency planning, often only after experiencing a personal crisis like a power outage or natural disaster. Financial precarity remains a major barrier: 60% of U.S. households live paycheck to paycheck, making it difficult to stockpile supplies or fund evacuations. Research shows that evacuation decisions are hindered by cost, lack of transportation, health concerns, pet ownership, and risk perception. Experts recommend pre-disaster strategies such as building more accessible shelters, accommodating pets, and improving public education on risk. Preppers are divided on how to handle the unprepared during a crisis — options…
Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair In December 2025, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met in Palm Beach, Florida, with evangelical Christian Zionist leaders and university presidents. He told them that Israel had been fighting a “seven-front war,” and warned that there was now an eighth front: the battle “for hearts and minds in the West,” particularly among young people, and, above all, in the United States. And almost two years ago, I wrote how Western media normalizes genocide, not through silence, but through language. Euphemism and clinical jargon do the work: framing Israel’s wars against Palestinians in Gaza and the people…
Image by Sophie. Amidst the ICE terror that descended on Minnesota this past winter, tens of thousands of everyday people packed into community centers for legal observer trainings. Trainers handed out photocopied know-your-rights zines and bright, 3D-printed whistles. Yet appeals to procedural law and the Constitution offered zero physical defense against state-sanctioned abductions. ICE agents and their army of prosecutors couldn’t have cared less about constitutional rights. The only force that offered a real challenge to the machinery of terror was raw, organized collective power. “Stay loud, form a crowd,” ran the headline of one popular zine. The tactic was…
Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair Recent data on corporate mergers and acquisitions reveal a trend of fewer and fewer individual deals of larger and larger values, with “megadeals” (that is, deals valued over $5 billion) coming to dominate the world of industry consolidation. A June report from PwC notes: M&A has joined this supersize party. This year, we’ve seen the largest ever deals in sectors from utilities to streaming to real estate investment trusts. Global deal value is on track to hit $4tn in 2026, up by about 13% year-on-year, even though deal volumes are declining. M&A transactions above $5bn have made up almost…
A pox upon the supermarkets who start showing Halloween decorations in August! Mystery deepens over ‘vampire’ woman buried with sickle across her neck. A man took synthetic testosterone, and started hearing voices. What will we eat if we live on the Moon or Mars? Lifeforms can survive on ‘significant’ regions of the Moon, study finds. From grainy orbs to cinematic hauntings: How YouTube reinvented the ghost investigation. BoA Revival invites our hermano Joshua Cutchin to talk about his newest book, The Inverted Path. What really happened on Easter island? (Archived link) Medicinal mushroom supplements linked to a sudden relapse of…
Photo Credit: Patrick Newman It is an exceedingly rare thing that I eagerly await the release of a book. However, Patrick Newman’s second installment in his series on the history of cronyism in the United States, just published by the Ludwig von Mises Institute, is precisely that. Indeed, ever since the release of the first installment in 2021, Cronyism: Liberty Versus Power in Early America, 1607-1849 was released, I and other similarly impressed readers have been checking regularly for updates as to the progress of the second installment. Well, it has arrived and it does not disappoint! In Cronyism: Rise…
Image by Mike Newbry . British Columbia, Canada is my home and once again, it’s burning. More than 100 fires were burning across the province as B.C. declared a state of emergency. Across the border, Washington and Oregon are burning too as wildfires spread through the American West. Across the Atlantic, wildfires have swept through France, Spain, Greece, Croatia and Germany. And despite all that, so much mainstream discussion about climate change is inadequate. A whole lot of carbon talk while barely discussing power. And if we want to understand the power which results in a burning planet, eventually we have…
U.N. spokespeople are deflecting questions about a Drop Site News investigation of alleged spying by staffer Yahav Lichner in 2014 and 2015, Dulcie Leimbach and Damilola Banjo report. Ron Prosor, at right, Israel’s U.N. ambassador at the time, in Israel in February 2012 with U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. (UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe) By Dulcie Leimbach and Damilola BanjoPassBlue Two weeks since news broke that an Israeli mole working inside the United Nations was leaking confidential information years ago to Israeli diplomats, the organization has released few facts about the allegations against Yahav Lichner. That means there are more questions than answers…