On this very day four years ago in 2021, United States vice president Mike Pence, presiding over the U.S. Congress, certifies the official tally of Electoral College votes in the 2020 election campaign of Pence’s boss, U.S. president Donald Trump, against challenger Joe Biden, a former vice president. Biden is declared the winner, 306 to 232. As Pence brings down the hardwood gavel onto the block on the speaker’s podium, he closes a long day’s proceedings — hours after a violent insurrection inside the U.S. Capitol building, instigated by Trump himself, that had sought to overturn Trump’s loss in the election and reinstall him illegitimately as president. Other members of Congress, at Trump’s urging, had also attempted to sabotage the vote certification proceedings, but to no avail.

These many long months of campaigning for president of the United States of America have now come to an end this day as voting begins tomorrow, 5 November. The world has been shown two very different sides of this thing called “America” over the tedious, tiring campaign season — an often jarring and jolting contradiction in terms that will be decided by millions of voters in what is undoubtedly the most important national election of their lifetimes.

The long, hot spring season of 2024 has passed into history, and along with it the most heated of the university campus protests in the United States and other countries over the state of Israel’s ongoing war with Hamas, the politico-military organization of Palestine. This summer’s record-high heat wave in many parts of the world provided a break in university student demonstrations against the Israel-Hamas war, but it also gave both sides — higher education officials and student protesters — an opportunity to regroup and to solidify their strategies for the autumn school semester that is now upon us. The prospect of even more campus protests over Israel-Palestine looms on the horizon.

A former president of the United States of America occupies an uncomfortable seat at the defendant’s table inside the New York State Supreme Court, as the criminal case of The People of the State of New York v. Donald J. Trump moves along briskly amid a frenzied American media circus over so-called “hush money”. At stake: a possible 20 years in prison for the 45th president of the U.S. on 34 felony charges of falsifying business records with the intent to commit tax fraud, violate federal campaign finance limits and illegally influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election, which he ended up winning.

As a journalist, author and documentary filmmaker, John Pilger has long stood as an unapologetic and determined foe of governments, wars and propaganda throughout his career. He has been equally a passionate seeker of facts and truth whenever they were being covered up by those in positions of authority. He also passionately followed the most important ethic of working in the news media: Be the voice of the voiceless.

It is early morning on a Tuesday, September 11, a day like any other day. Soon that feeling of ordinariness and calm will be shattered by two planes attacking iconic buildings. By the end of this day many people’s lives will be destroyed, a nation will be shaken to its core, a tainted page in history will be written and the world will be changed forever.

...Entertainer and activist Harry Belafonte, it is reported through the static of the bus radio speakers, has just created a storm of controversy by criticizing Colin Powell, the secretary of state in the administration of U.S. president George W. Bush. In an interview with a radio station in San Diego, located on the opposite end of California from where I was living at the time, Belafonte had blasted Powell, a fellow Jamaican American, for kowtowing to the wishes of his white boss, Bush, instead of standing up on principle and condemning the dangerous direction the Bush administration was leading the USA post-911.

Twenty years ago today, a United States president declared war and launched an invasion against a sovereign Middle Eastern nation, Iraq, citing an imminent threat to the American Way of Life (AWOL) and all that it stands for. President George W. Bush, the American boy-king, proceeded to unleash a military offensive the Pentagon called “Operation Shock and Awe” on the capital city of Baghdad that threatened the lives and livelihood of millions of innocent Iraqi people, not to mention the stability and security of the entire region and international community.

Extreme climate change continues to wreak havoc across the Earth, from crumbling coastlines to deadly droughts to killer hurricanes to flash floods to out-of-control wildfires, and beyond. The signs of a planet in distress are there for all to see. But no one feels the effects of climate disasters more than the 370 million indigenous peoples from nearly a hundred countries in all regions of the world. They have literally been sounding the emergency alarm bells about climate disasters for decades now and have mostly been ignored by the rest of us.

...Today, a half-century later, investigators and prosecutors at various levels of government around the U.S. are hot on the trail of a whole new set of cowards — those involved in the planning, organizing and carrying out of the 6 January attack on the U.S. Congress in 2021. Like Garrison did more than half a century earlier, investigators and prosecutors at various levels today are exposing such cowards for who they are. And what these cowards are revealing to the world is not a pretty picture of America, the land of justice and freedom.

In death as in life, the late prime minister Shinzo Abe divides the nation of Japan. Following Abe’s assassination on a public street in the city of Nara in broad daylight last month, the Japanese government has decided on an official state funeral for Abe to be held on 27 September. The public in Japan is increasingly voicing its opposition to this state funeral, the first such event to be held in this country in more than a half-century. Why should the death of an ultra-nationalist, far-right leader whose policies were so detrimental to democracy in Japan and who was so lowly regarded by so many citizens be honored with taxpayer money? they demand to know.

Anna Yocca was 31 years old when she tried to abort a fetus in her womb that she did not want to carry any longer. In an act of sheer desperation, she used a coat hanger rod in a bathtub full of water to try to end her pregnancy, which was 24 weeks along. When the bleeding wouldn’t stop, she called for medical help and was transported to a hospital, where she gave birth to a severely injured baby. She was soon arrested by police and charged with attempted murder of her child.

The world watches in horror as an act of genocidal war unfolds before our eyes, with Russian president/dictator Vladimir Putin unleashing his country’s full military might against the sovereign eastern European nation of Ukraine, located next door. The Ukrainian people are fighting back bravely for their lives, with no other choice but to confront this modern-day Hitler and his fascist fantasy of a new Russian empire.

...It is August 2002, nearly a year after 11 September 2001, and the Native brother is participating in a sangha, or community, of Vietnam war veterans organized by Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh at Stonehill College, a private Catholic school located in Easton, Massachusetts. Like me, Nhat Hanh was in the United States at the time of 9/11 and saw firsthand the dangerous wave of fear, ignorance and hate that quickly rose up throughout the land: A “war on terrorism” was officially declared, the nation of Afghanistan was soon invaded and now the U.S. government was preparing for a second invasion in Iraq.

Six years ago, I joined with many around the world in appealing directly to Barack Obama, president of the United States, for executive clemency for Native American activist Leonard Peltier — the longest-serving political prisoner in the USA. Our appeal was for Obama to use his power of the presidency to set Peltier free. The legal case that the government of the USA constructed to put Peltier behind bars back in 1977 was marred through and through by incompetence and fraud, to put it mildly. It was time to let Peltier go and draw a close to that sad chapter of history.

It is early morning somewhere in rural South Africa, the sun not yet rising over the horizon. In the dim morning light, through the slowly lifting fog — or is it smoke from the nearby shacks? — I am walking up some makeshift steps on the side of a steep ravine. I look over at the person walking up next to me and study the lines on his face: It is Desmond Tutu, the revered Anglican Church archbishop of South Africa. He is showing me around here, he explains, because he wants me to see how people in South Africa really live, the poverty they still have to face in the land of apartheid.

News media worldwide are awash now with stories about the recent death of Colin Powell, a towering figure in the world of American military matters and diplomacy, at the age of 84 due to coronavirus-related causes. Past presidents of the United States, not to mention right-wing media and the corporate press in general, are showering the late Powell with praise as a “great American,” a patriot and a war hero in the grand tradition of warmongering in the USA.

Janice Mirikitani and a friend are walking down the sidewalk, as the friend’s recollection goes, in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco, California, USA — one of the city’s poorer and more merciless areas. Coming down the sidewalk toward them is a man of the streets who is making loud barking and growling noises like a dog; he is obviously in need of some help.

A half-year after the greatest crime against the USA that the universe has never seen — to borrow a Trumpish superlative — it bears looking closely at what has been happening since the 6 January 2021 failed coup attempt sparked by the former president of the United States and the inauguration of the legitimately elected president, Joe Biden, not long afterward.

The violent insurrection on the United States Congress a few days ago in Washington DC, urged on by no less than the Fake President himself, Donald Trump, intended to reverse by force a free and fair election. More than that, the insurrection intended to overturn the system of democratic government in a coup attempt. That attempt failed, though it could easily have succeeded under the circumstances.

Now that voters in the United States have politically buried their Fake President, Donald Trump, at the polls by a wide margin, we can all continue popping the corks off those celebratory bottles of champagne into the new year and finally close the book on that unfortunate reign of America’s self-appointed emperor…right?

The clock is now ticking down to the general election being held in the United States, in which a U.S. president, members of Congress and local issues will be decided by voters in just a couple more days. The most important campaign being watched, of course, is the one deciding which candidate — Donald Trump of the Republican Party or Joseph Biden of the Democratic Party — will occupy the presidential office in the White House. Both candidates’ campaigns are calling this particular election a “battle for the soul of the nation,” and it would be hard to disagree on that point.

In the countryside, mountain wildfires rage out of control, destroying all life in their path for hundreds of miles at a time. The daytime skies are covered with layers of ash and smoke, and in the evening are lit up by a luminescent orange-yellow glow. Meanwhile, in the cities, mostly peaceful public protests boil over, igniting some local buildings in ferocious flames. The orange-yellow-tinted nighttime skies, punctuated by police helicopter searchlights, radiate with rage and the heat of history.

A damaging impeachment trial, a ravaging global pandemic, a crashing domestic economy and explosive uprisings in cities across the United States: Any one of these factors would be enough to seal the fate of an American president, Republican or Democrat, conservative or liberal, and consign a president’s legacy to the trash heap of history.

Folktales abound in ancient cultures and countries of some vainglorious king who is hoodwinked by a dishonest tailor and made to believe he is wearing a magnificent suit of fine regal robes, when, in fact, he is wearing nothing at all — as he finds out only after he leaves the castle walls and parades himself to a gawking public that sees his royal highness in all his nakedness.

It is the only historical event in modern times that literally takes my breath away whenever I see a picture of it or stop and think of it, with time itself standing still and my heart overwhelmed just in the simple act of remembering that day. No other event ever does that to me. I’m talking about the moment Nelson Mandela walked out of prison in South Africa on 11 February 1990 — today, exactly 30 years ago.

In the end, one political party found its backbone, another party sold its soul to the fire down below, one senator found righteousness in religion, and one president finally achieved something he could crow about as a “victory”. That, in a nutshell, is the legacy of the impeachment trial in Washington DC of Donald J. Trump, the fake 45th president of the United States, that resulted in his acquittal instead of dismissal from office.

We walk the streets of the old neighborhood this afternoon, remembering another place, another time. Our former apartment building is still there on the south side of JR Koshienguchi station in Nishinomiya, but the cozy third-floor unit where my wife, son and I first lived as a new family, apartment #303, is now being rented out to some local business. The family-run liquor shop just across the way from us in the local shopping arcade is still there, as is the old family-run stationery shop, the shelves filled with office supplies and paper that seemed unmoved since 17 January 1995, the day of the big quake.

The first time I heard Rush on the radio was the very moment when I began to take notice of rock musician Neil Peart as a writer in his own right. I even remember when and where it all started: It was sometime in early 1980; I had just turned 21. On a warm afternoon, in my car with the windows rolled down and the radio blasting, I was on my way to the beach and stopped at a traffic light at a major intersection in town when the “The Spirit of Radio” from the new Rush album Permanent Waves came over the airwaves of a local FM rock radio station. Peart’s drumming especially knocked me out, and I soon got the LP record and found an even greater musical feast to be had: the song lyrics that Peart wrote for almost the whole album.

...Once upon a time, in a land not so far away, a babe was born in a manger to Joseph and Mary, two proud and happy parents. The manger, located in the top-floor executive suite of the highest skyscraper in America, Trump Castle & Palace, was soon filled with the Wise Men of Wall Street below who had come to the top of the building by express elevator, eager to look at this new bright and shining baby. “A Child is born!!!” they said excitedly. He was found to be a one-in-a-million-boy, an Orange Albino with wavy orange hair and an artificial orange-and-white skin tone. This was a sign from God, the Wise Men said, that the boy was destined to grow up someday and rule the land forever. Or at least until he was kicked out, whichever came first. And so, they christened him The Chosen One. And so he was, from then on.