Opinion

The human condition includes a vast array of unavoidable misfortunes. But what about the preventable ones? Shouldn’t the United States provide for the basic needs of its people?

Such questions get distinctly short shrift in the dominant political narratives. When someone can’t make ends meet and suffers dire consequences, the mainstream default is to see a failing individual rather than a failing system. Even when elected leaders decry inequity, they typically do more to mystify than clarify what has caused it.

While “income inequality” is now a familiar phrase, media coverage and political rhetoric routinely disconnect victims from their victimizers. Human-interest stories and speechifying might lament or deplore common predicaments, but their storylines rarely connect the destructive effects of economic insecurity with how corporate power plunders social resources and fleeces the working class. Yet the results are extremely far-reaching.

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Amid this epic battle against fascism and in the wake of Oct. 18, the largest protest in US history, I wanted to take a moment to remember and celebrate the life of a friend and comrade who died recently - Bruce Bostick.

My deepest condolences go out to Bruce's family. Others have written about him, and I'm sure his family, friends, and comrades will continue to share memories.

I got to know Bruce right out of college when I joined the CPUSA and was a community organizer in Cleveland, Ohio. Bruce, a Midwesterner through and through, was radicalized by his involvement in the anti-Vietnam War movement. In the early 1970s, he was already a young, experienced trade union activist at US Steel in Lorain, OH, and one of the leaders of the growing rank and file movement that was trying to transform the United Steelworkers of America into a fighting union. That movement played an important role in changing the USWA and the AFL-CIO.

Remember Phase 1 of Zone In when the Columbus Mayor and City Council screamed that THE SKY IS FALLING? They spent 2.7 MILLION DOLLARS of taxpayer money just on a marketing campaign to tell us that we had to pass the largest change to the zoning code in the history of the city, one that benefits real estate investors and developers. Remember the City ignoring the questions and concerns of the citizens about parking and not having any master plan? Yeah, that happened.

Remember those manufactured talking points that if we didn’t pass the Zone In proposal the city would also be DESTROYED BY GODZILLA? (Okay, that wasn’t a part of their message, but it would have at least been more entertaining).

Anyway, the entire process was TARGETED PROPAGANDA to create fear while flooding the media with the messages they wanted us to believe. It was a beautiful example of MANIPULATING PUBLIC OPINION and it worked perfectly...for real estate investors and developers.

For our City leadership, EVERYTHING IS AN EMERGENCY because there is no planning or strategy—other than finding new ways to spend money–our money.

The massively successful NoKings2.0 has again underlined Donald Trump’s four failing MAGA fascist roots: male dominance; global white dominance; US financial dominance; and the end of fossil/nuclear fuels.

They’re all linked to the impending collapse of the petro-dollar, the century-old pillar of American prosperity, about to disappear.

Autocratic hucksters like Adolph Hitler and Donald Trump have forever feasted on the human inability to cope with a perceived loss of status.

Hitler’s Nazi putsch was rooted in Germany’s inability to accept losing World War I.

Deutschland’s “Christian” misogynists had ultimate faith in their assumed superiority. Their “incomprehensible” 1918 defeat was made unbearable by the 1929 crash.

So Hitler’s Mein Kampf promised to make Germany “great again.”

Under the thumb of Adolph’s white male Master Race, women were defined by the KKK: Kirche (church) Kitchen (cooking) & Kinder (kids). Gays were untermenchen. Jews, gypsies, slavs, trans, Jehovah Witnesses, immigrants…all were “vermin,” fit only for extermination.

Human Rights First’s Innovation Lab announced the launch of ReadyNow!, a free and secure mobile app designed to help immigrants prepare for possible detention and act quickly in moments of crisis. The app empowers users to create an emergency plan to notify pre-selected contacts; arrange emergency plans for childcare, medical needs, legal support, and more.

“No one should disappear into detention without a trace,” said Perris Richter, Senior Director of the Innovation Lab at Human Rights First. ICE arrests are often sudden and disorienting, leaving people unable to notify loved ones, arrange child or pet care, or access legal help. ReadyNow! empowers users to create a personalized emergency plan and instantly notify trusted contacts with one click if they face imminent arrest. “This is not about politics. This is about safety and human dignity.”

Key features of the app include:

There's nothing more inflaming to the souls of Arab and Muslim Americans than seeing US officials treating them as they are less American. 

Case in point:

Mohammed Ibrahim, a 115 y/o American citizen from Palm Bay, Florida, has been illegally locked in Israel’s military prison system since February 17, 2025. Israeli occupation soldiers kidnapped him from his family’s home in al-Mazra’a ash-Sharqiya near Ramallah in the occupied Palestinian West Bank, three weeks after he arrived to visit relatives. Israel claims he threw stones at settlers, yet no trial has taken place and the allegations remain unproven, according to FB post by his supporter Sandra Ibraham.

"When he was taken, Mohammed weighed 108 pounds. Since that time, he has lost 22 pounds, bringing him down to 86 pounds. Troops blindfolded him at arrest, held him in harsh conditions, and confined him for months in 'quarantine' for a scabies infection he contracted in prison as a result of medical neglect by Israelis. His parents have seen him only three times via a courtroom camera and every visitation request has been denied."

It is particularly difficult to pick out the most idiotic comments made by President Donald Trump over the past week as there is so much to choose from. There were the memorable doodle-headed speeches before the Israeli Knesset and the so-called Peace gathering in Sharm el-Sheikh Egypt and the threats against Hamas over the failure to come up with the bodies of Israeli hostages that were killed by American government provided bombs dropped by Israel and are now buried beneath piles of rubble. And then there is the Insurrection Act, cited nearly every day by Trump or one of his cabinet, which, if it is successfully called for and passes through judicial review, will truly turn the United States into a police state ruled by a leader that clearly is mentally incompetent as well as providing all the signs that he is a narcissistic psychopath whose goal in holding the presidency is to be surrounded by folks who tell him constantly how great he is! And let’s not forget the bloviation regarding the “Triumphal” Arch being planned for the Arlington National Cemetery end of Memorial Bridge leading to the Lincoln Memorial in Washington.

A single, candid statement by US President Donald Trump during a Fox News interview on October 9 may illuminate the true calculus behind Israel’s decision for a ceasefire in Gaza, following a relentless, two-year genocidal campaign that has tragically killed and wounded nearly a quarter of a million Palestinians.

 “Israel cannot fight the world, Bibi,” Trump declared during the interview, a direct warning he said to have previously delivered to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. 

 The stark reality is that very few people around the globe currently support Netanyahu. Crucially, a significant segment of his own populace has already held him in contempt, a resentment that predates the war on Gaza — a war which he treated as a desperate, personal quest for renewed domestic popularity.