by Fred Reed
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_George_Floyds In my police-reporting days Question: Was their anything racial in Floyd’s death? That is, is there any reason to believe that if Floyd had been a white petty criminal and drug addict, but otherwise identical to Floyd, would Chauvin have behaved differently? Accounts differ. By some he is said to have been …
Everybody and his dog is writing about Palestine. The dogs are probably doing it more intelligently, but I can’t change my phylum, or even species. We columnists do what we can and suffer what we must. OK, Israel. The current war is an ordinary case of colonialism. In the late Forties the Jews grabbed Palestine …
I expect my columns to be gems of lucidity and concision, such as to arouse despair in other writers. I have been expecting this for decades now. It may still happen. Meanwhile I fear today’s effort will be helterskelter, having the literary aspect of a tossed salad. I beg patience. The Earth holds some eight …
have a confession to make to my readers. I have been lying about Mexico. Yes. I am a poor sinner and meant no harm, but the devil got into me, and I have done wrong. I have said that Mexico was a pleasant country of agreeable people, and harmless. I have said that children here …
I confess that I am a bad American. Yes, I pay little attention to Congress. why? Because it seems to me little more than a storefront operation for the powers that count in America: Big Pharma, military industry, Wall Street and so on. They make policy. Congress just announces it. Nor do I much read …
Life is hard in the column racket, I tell you. The work load is crushing. Every week I get many hundreds of emails (well, OK, I would if I did, but this is close enough for journalism) asking, Fred, Fred, what beneficial and meritorious measures will you enact when you become dictator? What will you …
Holy Hannah. This next election is shaping up to be a zoo. We have Biden, a veritable zombie dependent on his ambient ventriloquists and more Adderall than Cornell in exam week. There is Kamala, so close to nonexistent that we could send her home and just keep her nameplate. . No one would notice. And …
In the media there is much noise about “white extremists,” a group said to be a threat to our (largely imaginary) democracy. There indeed exists an ill-defined collection of racial advocates covering a spectrum from militias in the woods of Idaho to groups calling themselves the Dissident Right, Alt Right, Race Realists (they are not), …
Sez I, we are barreling into a world of mixed unreality and invited surveillance, not quite noticed but at warp speed. The unreality? We can now do politicians in video software and make them convincingly say things more reprehensible then they would themselves. The surveillance creeps in like a barely noticed smell. It creeps and …
I despise Trump. He is a mean-spirited son of a bitch. His licking the boots of those revolting pseudo-Cubans in Miami and increasing sanctions, utterly unjustified, on Havana, are grounds enough for putting him behind bars. Trying to starve thirty million Venezuelans into giving up control of their oil, trying to assassinate Maduro are grounds …