(2 comments)        Saturday, June 2, 2018
Donald Trump, Hawaii is our 50th State, Where Are You in Its Pain and Misery?   SHARE Donald Trump is so self-absorbed, narcissistic, and hedonistic that if the news isn't something positive about him, he wants no part of the news. And just like Puerto Rico's crisis and calamities following Hurricane Maria, Trump has done nothing and said nothing concerning the massive destruction caused by a massive volcano on our 50th State's big island of Hawaii. This opinion from "Smirking Chimp" criticizes Trump for this major oversight and questions, like many other commentaries have done, his  legitimacy and his fitness for the Presidency.  

(1 comments)        Sunday, April 2, 2017
Another hunting ranch kills the Sacred White Buffalo for Profit   SHARE The Sacred White Buffalo is an animal that is revered by Native Americans, particularly the Plains Indian tribes of the northern Midwest, like the Lakota. A Texas company will allow anyone with a lot of money to shoot one of these beautiful beasts in what is called "a canned hunt". When wild animals like buffalo are raised almost as domesticated pets and have no fear of people and are rather friendly, then are placed in pens or even cages, there is no danger when a hunter invades the space and kills them with a high-powered rifle. This is a canned hunt and James Magaska Swan, a leading Native American activist and an enrolled member of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, part of the Lakota Nation, has a few things to say about the slaughter of the Sacred White Buffalo and canned hunts in this "Daily Kos" feature. 

       Friday, March 24, 2017
The Strong Heart Warrior Society meets with S.D. federal legislators in Washington, D.C.   SHARE Canupa Gluha Mani and two other members of the Strong Heart Warrior Society met earlier this week with South Dakota's two U.S. Senators and a U.S. Congressman to discuss problems on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. Gluha Mani's primary complaint was abuse that tribal members face at the hands of tribal police. Pine Ridge is afflicted with horrid poverty, high unemployment, an unbelievably staggering teen suicide rate, along with alcoholism and drug abuse. Sales of alcohol is prohibited on this reservation, near Wounded Knee Creek. The meeting with legislators went well, Gluha Mani said, and these legislators agreed to hold a meeting with Pine Ridge residents within the next 90 days. Gluha Mani talked with this Daily Kos and OEN writer in great detail about some of these issues, particularly problems Lakota people face at the hands of tribal police in this "Daily Kos" feature.

       Wednesday, March 22, 2017
Lakota Rising: The garbage issue is nothing more than garbage! - from "Daily Kos"   SHARE Will the largest protest involving Native Americans and their water protector allies be written off as only a garbage-producing nightmare? Well, that's exactly what some of the media outfits around the Upper Midwest are strewing about. James Magaska Swan, a leading Native American activist, a writer, and a member of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe has a few things to say about this egregious spin-doctoring and writes a convincing and compelling op-ed on "Daily Kos" concerning the garbage issue being no more than garbage.

       Monday, March 6, 2017
Everything you need to know about the Sessions controversy in a few short paragraphs from Scholars & Rogues   SHARE By now you have probably read a good bit about Attorney General Jeff Sessions and whether or not he unlawfully met with the Russian ambassador to discuss the 2016 Presidential election. There is a great deal of lawyering on the horizon, but for the moment here’s what we need to understand. Bottom line, this controversial legal vulture needs to resign.

       Thursday, December 8, 2016
Greg Lake, RIP from Scholars & Rogues   SHARE "Yesterday I added Greg Lake’s “I Believe in Father Christmas” to my Dark Christmas Melancholy playlist. This morning I wake to learn he’s gone. Another light snuffed by this hellish, hateful year, and the holiday season just got a little darker…" - Scholars & Rogues

(1 comments)        Tuesday, December 6, 2016
Faulkner was wrong: Mankind will not prevail   SHARE An older white male who grew up in the projects of the South discusses why he isn't a Trump supporter, even though Trump’s tax plan will save him about $12,000 a year and save his children more than a million dollars in inheritance taxes. In his own words, the Scholars & Rogues writer says: "I voted against Trump because I have grandchildren and hope to have more, and I believe that he will make their world a worse place...we are driven by the same underlying emotional drive as those dopes who voted for Trump. It’s important enough to us that we’re willing to vote against our own economic self-interests just like they did....Theirs is a nastier and more direct assertion of superiority. It calls for proving their superiority by depriving those they deem inferior of basic rights..."

       Monday, November 28, 2016
Identifying the actual enemy who hides far from the front lines By James Giago Davies   SHARE Who is the actual enemy of the American Indian Tribes, led by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, in their ongoing protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline? Is the enemy the militarized police who are using trained attack dogs, tear gas, rubber bullets, and water cannons to thwart-off the growing number of water protectors? Or is the enemy far off, and not really an enemy at all, but a leader who is at the mercy of a society that is hopelessly addicted to fossil fuels, with an existential and daunting governmental and economic structure that demands the pipeline be constructed? In a Daily Kos opinion piece published Sunday, award- winning journalist James Giago Davies, an enrolled member of the Oglala Lakota Sioux Tribe, ponders these questions in a compelling way. 

       Friday, November 25, 2016
If Donald Trump came to the Sacred Stones encampment By James Giago Davies   SHARE What would happen if President Donald Trump made a surprise visit to the Sacred Stones Encampment, where all Native American tribes have been fighting the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline? Well, considering Trump's erratic and unpredictable ways, he could do or say almost anything. In a series of hypotheticals, a writer who is an enrolled member of the Oglala Lakota Sioux Tribe, a journalist who was just awarded the best columnist award from the Native American Journalists Association, pens a compelling piece that has a poignant side, a tragic side, a hopeful side, and even a hilarious side. And the zinger at the end of this little ditty might just knock you out of your seat!

       Sunday, October 2, 2016
Two flies in the Mahoning Valley's political ointment By Bertram de Souza of The Vindicator   SHARE Youngstown, Ohio, Mayor John A. McNally was found guilty of crimes involving the public trust and The Vindy's top political writer, Bertram de Souza, criticizes him for refusing to leave office. McNally has sponsored legislation to force an entire neighborhood of predominantly African-American residents from their homes to build an industrial park not far  from downtown (and has even threatened to use eminent domain). It turns out, not one company has yet shown an interest in opening up shop in this industrial park. McNally also declared a tilting-at-windmills war against homeless downtown. Displaying Progressive grit, de Souza also goes after Kathy Miller, a former local Republican township trustee who made international news lately as the local Trump campaign chair, for making racist statements against blacks, and even President Barack Obama.

       Sunday, September 4, 2016
Fine Tuned By Ancient Predators By James Giago Davies   SHARE Some species are sitting ducks when it comes to being roadkill. Others have a knack and a seeming inborn instinct on just where and when to cross the roadway. You can travel hundreds of miles in the west and never see a Pronghorn roadkill. And coyotes seem to have a know how when it comes to being highway jaywalkers, too. Award winning writer James Giago Davies has penned a compelling and interesting article on these little studied and hardly known facts, with this story appearing a few days ago on "Daily Kos". Mother Nature sometimes takes care of her own, but not all, Davies posits.

       Monday, August 22, 2016
Who killed mobster Naples?   SHARE Welcome to Bertram de Souza's hometown of Youngstown, Ohio, where he has been the lead politics and opinion writer for decades now. In a city in which most news can be considered `yellow journalism', Mr. de Souza is seemingly the only local journalist who uncovers the truth behind the oblique facade. In "Who killed mobster Naples?" this writer questions aspects of this mysterious and unsolved murder, which dates back to Aug. 19, 1991, in which a well-known Mahoning Valley Mafia figure Joseph N. “Little Joey” Naples Jr. was gunned down. Mr. de Souza adeptly goes into the peripheral incidences and backdrop surrounding this strange and nefarious killing, which leads any reader questioning: "How can anything good ever come out of a place like Youngstown, Ohio? What kind of a horrible place is this city?"

(14 comments)        Monday, June 13, 2016
The Deadliest Mass Shooting In U.S. History....NOT! In Florida! By James Magaska Swan   SHARE Not to marginalize or downplay this horrid mass shooting at an Orlando nightclub, it's indeed a terrible American tragedy; but James Magaska Swan, leader of the United Urban Warrior Society and a member of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe of South Dakota, believes if CNN is going to talk in absolutes, they should at least get their facts straight. Why does the unofficial fourth branch of the United States government, the media, always rewrite history when such senseless acts of barbarism come about? Swan lists a litany of Native American massacres in which the number of American Indians who were killed far exceed the death toll of this horrible Orlando mass murder. Meanwhile, we can only offer prayers and condolences to the victims and families of those killed and wounded in the Orlando nightclub. This bloodletting and murder has to stop!

       Monday, May 9, 2016
Youngstown is on the precipice by Bertram de Souza of The Vindicator   SHARE Welcome to Bertram de Souza's hometown of Youngstown, Ohio, where he has been the lead opinion writer for the region's leading daily newspaper, "The Vindicator", for decades. In his weekly Sunday column, Mr. de Souza is the only local journalist who holds public officials accountable. Sometimes this writer is brutal and malicious, but in this Sunday's column he writes of a Democratic Party Chairman who is about as impotent as a muzzled poodle; a mayor convicted of innumerable crimes involving the public trust who refuses to leave office; a corrupt city government filled with rogues who more or less do whatever pleases them and ingratiates them (just as "Baby Doc" Duvalier once ran Haiti); and a bullying, billionaire, shopping-mall magnate who collects local politicians to his war chest just as an adept chess player throws captured pawns into a box on the side of the game board.

       Monday, April 25, 2016
Go forth & break the law By Bertram de Souza of The Vindicator   SHARE Welcome to Bertram de Souza's hometown of Youngstown, Ohio, possibly the most corrupt city in the United States. Mr. de Souza has been the lead opinion writer for "The Vindicator" for decades now and has written some great opinions over the years in his weekly Sunday column. He writes on issues nobody else will tackle and is a sentinel in a town filled with yellow journalism. This Sunday, he writes about three Youngstown officials, including the city's mayor, who received probation rather than prison time by a Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court Judge last week for serious crimes involving public trust. "What other area of the country can boast of having a congressman, county prosecutor, county sheriff, judges, other elected officials and organized crime bosses being hauled off to prison in chains? Not even Chicago or New York," de Souza  writes. .

       Sunday, April 17, 2016
Black Hills resource harvesting and the rape of sacred Lakota lands is just 'Business as Usual' By Samuel Vargo   SHARE Lakota leaders involved with treaty councils, treaty laws and their interpretations and implementations discuss how the sacred lands of the Black Hills have been raped by Big Oil & Gas and mining companies. Some Lakota activists who have been long associated with fighting against pipeline installation, mining, fracking, and drilling for natural resources, rich and plentiful in the Black Hills, also chime in here on this article from `Daily Kos'. "The Black Hills Are Not For Sale," these Lakota leaders agree, and they never have been.

       Friday, April 1, 2016
A Letter to the American Indian Movement and all Activist! By James Magaska Swan   SHARE James Swan, leader of the United Urban Warrior Society (UUWS), based in Rapid City, S.D., is urging the American Indian Movement and other activists to stand with the UUWS against a deal at the Wounded Knee site based on greed. "We will require the help and support of all. As you may or may not know Tim Giago (Publisher of Native Sun News), and his attorney Mario Gonzales, are soliciting funds from the public to donate $3.8 Million dollars so they can purchase 40-acres of sacred land from a Caucasian male. Swan told the writer who submitted this Quicklink that this land, owned by James Czywczynski, that the outlandish price is null and void. Under the Fort Laramie Treaty, the tract can only be sold for "Fair Market Value," which has been estimated at between $7,500 to $40,000.

       Wednesday, March 16, 2016
A King in His Castle: How Donald Trump Lives, From His Longtime Butler By Jason Horowitz of The New York Times   SHARE “You can always tell when the king is here,” Mr. Trump’s longtime butler, Anthony Senecal, said of the master of the house and Republican presidential candidate. Senecal, who is Trump's butler at the Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., a 118-room snowbird’s paradise that will become a winter White House if Trump is elected president. "Few people here can anticipate Mr. Trump’s demands and desires better than Mr. Senecal, 74, who has worked at the property for nearly 60 years, and for Mr. Trump for nearly 30 of them," New York Times writer Jason Horowitz writes. In a long feature, Trump's at home behavior and lifestyle is part Emperor, part Pharaoh, and a big part spoiled monster. Can someone living in such opulence and gratuity be in touch with the "common people" of America? An interesting read, but a long one.

(2 comments)        Tuesday, March 8, 2016
Why I Don't Vote; an Indigenous Perspective by Vincent Rinehart   SHARE How do Native Americans feel about voting? Well, like all issues, opinions are varied, but Vincent Rinehart feels that no race has been so alienated by the U.S. government than have American Indians. He says the American political process and voting is an act of legitimizing the state, and he refuses to recognize the legitimacy of the state that exists for the sole purpose of controlling people and resources and funneling wealth to a ruling class. He also goes on to say that "Our rights are not protected by the government, they are protected from the government or 2. The Civil Rights Movement failed." And finally, he argues, "Don’t we have better things to do? Start organizing, stay out of jail, and rebuild your clan/band/tribe." The Civil Rights Movement was a failure, he opines, and it's time to just move on.

(1 comments)        Sunday, February 14, 2016
In Bernie's America, the people rule   SHARE As far as Scholars & Rogues Writer Joshua Booth sees things, the 2016 Presidential Election is as much about voting against tyranny as it is voting in a qualified, just and good leader. "There is only one presidential candidate, out of a double digit field, who is willing to stand up to American economic tyranny, vowing to protect civil liberties, disrupt media hegemony, stop the outsourcing of customer service jobs, and make significant change to the justice system to address the obvious lack of racial justice," Booth writes in this dynamic and concise opinion.