I became estranged from my father after my parents’ divorce in the early 90s. My wife Valerie and I had been living in Albuquerque for a few years at that point and we began hearing rumors that my dad – Roscoe – had bought a mail-order bride over from the Philippines and married her. She was half […]
THE HOUSE I GREW UP IN (Riverside, California) Google Earth. Long shot of the American continent. Zoom in to the west coast. The Pacific Ocean is on the left. Zoom in again to southern California. The geography of the Los Angeles basin is easily recognizable – Oxnard further to the northwest along the coast, Palos […]
Martin Luther King, Jr.’s heartbreaking 1963 Letter from a Birmingham Jail is a classic rhetorical response to social injustice and to those who seek to perpetuate injustice either by ignorance, complacency, or tacit approval. MLK eloquently calls out the clergymen in Alabama who condemned him as an “extremist” for his very reasonable and honorable – […]
Musings on the Beatles and Manson Another bizarre twist to this tale involves a little guy by the name of Charles Manson. He was so obsessed with The Beatles he thought they were sending hidden messages directly to him through their music. While this had nothing to do with the ‘Paul is dead’ controversy per […]
In this blog I will demonstrate how the term ‘conspiracy theory’ has been misused by the media. In particular, I will focus on the so-called ‘alternative media’ and the many ways they marginalize and isolate reasonable suspicions about the political economy which have the potential to de-legitimize the prevailing social order. The archetypical example of […]
Elite propaganda Scholars such as Lance DeHaven-Smith and Mark Fenster have advanced this field of study by revealing the ways in which valid questions about activities of the power elites in the US have been abrogated by simply applying the term ‘conspiracy theory.’ The pejorative use of the term dates back to a CIA memorandum […]
When former U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned the nation about the dangers of the ‘military-industrial complex’ in his farewell address on Jan. 17, 1961, he knew what he was talking about. In that famous speech, Eisenhower challenged the American people to limit the undue influence of the military on our democratic society: “In the […]
We’ve all heard the story about George Washington chopping down the cherry tree, right? “I can’t tell a lie, Pa; you know I can’t tell a lie. I did cut it with my hatchet,” Little George said, when his father asked the boy what he’d done to his favorite tree. Guess what? It’s a lie. […]
Is America a “police state?” Within the context of mainstream political discourse in America, the subject is unworthy of discussion. Despite the lack of any critical public debate on the issue, however, it’s clear that we are already well on our way to reaching full-blown police state status. We’re a lot closer than most people […]
Michele Leonhart’s days as head of the US Drug Enforcement Agency are numbered. Last week, members of the House Oversight Committee delivered a vote of “no confidence” in her leadership abilities. Leonhart’s tenure as chief administrator for the troubled agency has seen a litany of scandals, including – among others – the massacre of civilians […]
Jason Darensburg's Blog-o-rama 