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John Wightis the author of a politically incorrect and irreverent Hollywood memoir --Dreams That Die -- published by Zero Books. He's also written five novels, which are available as Kindle eBooks. You can follow him on Twitter at @JohnWight1
SHARE Thursday, May 7, 2020 COVID-19: Donald Trump's Caligula Moment
John Wight sizes up the tragedy and farce embodied by the U.S. president and notes that Britain has its own problems with leadership by disordered minds.
SHARE Saturday, April 13, 2019 We are all Julian Assange
the arrest and removal of Julian Assange brings an end to seven long, soul-destroying years of confinement in one small room of the tiny embassy. This has now brought into view the grim prospect of his extradition to the US and his disappearance into the void of the American prison system, which is notoriously cruel and callous.
(11 comments) SHARE Sunday, March 4, 2018 No More Mr. Nice Guy: Putin Unveils Next Gen Russian Nukes
The defiance with which Putin revealed the country's new and enhanced missile technology was unmistakable. It was perhaps illustrative of the years of broken promises, bad faith, duplicity and encroaching and enveloping military pressure exerted by the US and its allies against the Russian Federation. For Russia, it is now a case of meeting might with might.
(5 comments) SHARE Sunday, February 18, 2018 Military Conflict Between East and West Has Never Been Closer
In Donald Trump, a man for whom subtlety is an alien concept, we have ourselves a US president who cannot seem to make up his mind whether he is a recurring character in the Sopranos or the elected leader of the world largest economy and nuclear power. With his presidency, the sheer reckless, aggressive and capricious character of it, the time has come to pose the question: Who will save us from America?
(3 comments) SHARE Tuesday, January 23, 2018 Trump Administration's New Defense Strategy: Cold War Redux
19 January 2018 will go down in history as the date of Washington's declaration of a new Cold War, delivered by Defense Secretary James Mattis in the course of a speech he gave at John Hopkins University, marking a new low in US foreign policy.
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, January 9, 2018 Iran's Real Crime: It Won't Bow
That Iran is not a free country is self-evident. How could it possibly be free when it exists in the crosshairs of US imperialism? The only reason, the single reason that Iran is being depicted as a "terrorist state" in which human rights are non-existent, is because under its current government it refuses to bow to Washington or its vassals in western Europe and the region itself.
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, January 3, 2018 Britain's Dirty War in Ireland, Revisited
Charles Haughey was a strong supporter of a united Ireland and as such enjoyed a testy relationship with his UK counterpart, Margaret Thatcher, who took a notoriously hard-line stance against Irish republicanism, most infamously with her refusal to countenance any compromise during the 1981 hunger strike by republican prisoners in the Maze Prison just outside Belfast.
(3 comments) SHARE Monday, November 27, 2017 Libya "Chose" Freedom, Now It Has Slavery
Washington and Europe have never been a source of stability in the Middle East or North Africa. On the contrary, their presence and double dealing has only ever brought the people of this part of the world unremitting suffering and despair.
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, November 11, 2017 Fear of Corbyn: How Theresa May Clings to Power
Jeremy Corbyn is the British establishment's worst nightmare and the primary reason Theresa May has not yet been kicked to the curb, risking in the process an early general election which Corbyn would almost certainly win at this point.
SHARE Wednesday, November 1, 2017 Catalan Independence Flounders on the Rocks of Reality
Instead of burying the corpse of neoliberalism, as they should have, political elites have for purely ideological reasons extended themselves in trying to breathe life back into it with the imposition of austerity programs that have sown even more misery and dislocation in the lives of millions of their own citizens. Thus, they are authors of their own demise.
SHARE Wednesday, October 18, 2017 Weinstein as Symptom: Notes From Hollywood
Lost in what has now become a feeding frenzy of condemnation -- to the point where it is hard to escape the whiff of opportunism on the part of those who've jumped on a bandwagon that has reached warp speed -- is that Weinstein's contemptible abuse of women, far from the exception or an aberration has long been the norm in Tinsel Town.
(9 comments) SHARE Wednesday, October 11, 2017 We Have Met the Enemy and He is Us
The question is not over the rights or wrongs of the Second Amendment; the question is the culture of violence married to the near total lack of social cohesion that pervades in a country suffocating under the weight of its own nauseating hypocrisy. We have met the enemy and he is us.
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, October 2, 2017 Order Prevails in Barcelona as Democracy Dies in Madrid
Regardless of the whys and wherefores of constitutional legality, does the Rajoy government in Madrid really believe that the sight of armed riot police attacking civilians outside polling stations in order to stop them casting a vote is one that will enhance its reputation and democratic credentials in the eyes of the world?
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, September 29, 2017 Labour Party Conference and the Great Antisemitism Stitch-Up
Defense of the apartheid State of Israel cannot possibly be supported on moral, legal, or ethical grounds. To not only defend this system of injustice but also attempt to smear those who dare raise their voices against the brutal oppression endured by the Palestinians, this is a species of mendacity for which history will not be kind.
(2 comments) SHARE Thursday, September 21, 2017 Trump at the UN: Nuremberg Redux
The time for equivocation and satire where Donald Trump is concerned has passed. If the current US President's address to the 72nd UN General Assembly in New York confirms anything, it is that satire must now give way to a sober and serious appreciation of the clear and present danger his administration poses to the world.
(2 comments) SHARE Saturday, September 16, 2017 No Inquiry Needed: Grenfell Tower Fire Was a Crime
At the heart of this issue are the questions of class and inequality that have long blighted British society. Their most grievous symptoms in 2017 are food banks, benefit sanctions, the welfare cap, homelessness, the housing crisis, and as Grenfell attests to, substandard housing.
(3 comments) SHARE Saturday, August 26, 2017 Colin Kaepernick and the NFL: Man vs Machine
In failing to conform to the received truths that continue to feed the mythology of a nation drowning in cant and hypocrisy, NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick has found himself on the receiving end of its wrath. His decision to refuse to stand for the national anthem before an NFL pre-season game last season, in protest at racial injustice, has seen him shut out of the sport this season, with no club willing to sign him.
SHARE Wednesday, August 16, 2017 Charlottesville: Outrage, Hypocrisy and Obama's Betrayal
Even though Obama spent his two terms in the White House going out of his way to cloak the snarling beast of US exceptionalism and its white supremacist roots in the garb of democracy, he was not embraced by those who prefer their coffee white. Here it is impossible to avoid the fact that Trump's election was in large part a reaction to Obama's race as much as it was to his policies.
(12 comments) SHARE Tuesday, August 15, 2017 Charlottesville, White Supremacy, and Why the US Civil War Never Ended
Let us not mince words. If ever a cause was unworthy, that cause was the US Confederacy. If ever a cause was righteously defeated in battle, it was the cause of the US Confederacy. And if ever a flag was -- and is -- an insult to human decency and dignity, it is the Confederate flag. If ever a society was crying out for the aggressive assertion of human rights, racial equality, and justice, it is the United States.
(4 comments) SHARE Friday, August 4, 2017 Venezuela Crisis: the US Wants "Its" Country Back
What is taking place in Venezuela is an attempt at counter-revolution. Washington wants "its" country back, which is why it is providing both overt and covert support to an opposition determined to return the country to its previous status as a wholly owned subsidiary of the United States.
SHARE Saturday, July 29, 2017 Trump's Hezbollah Gaff Was No Gaff
Though tempting to ascribe Trump's seemingly bizarre statement lumping Hezbollah in the same box as ISIS and Al Qaeda to a gaff, this would be a mistake. Along with Syria and Iran, Hezbollah forms an axis of resistance in the region not only to Salafi-jihadi terrorism but also US hegemony. Trump's statement should be seen and treated in this light.
(1 comments) SHARE Sunday, June 25, 2017 Trump's Attack on Cuba
Whereas the US sends missiles and Marines to poor countries in order to kill their people, Cuba sends medicines and doctors to heal them. It marks the difference between a culture of death and a culture of life, between cultural values of oppression and domination and cultural values of solidarity and internationalism.
(6 comments) SHARE Saturday, June 17, 2017 Grenfell is a Monument to Tory Britain
The hollowing out of the state, deregulation, the near free rein accorded to property developers and private landlords, all at the expense of people's well-being and safety, is tantamount to a crime committed by the rich people who govern us in the interests of other rich people. Don't politicize the Grenfell Fire, they tell us. Are they serious? Are they having a laugh? This event is verily dripping in politics.
(6 comments) SHARE Friday, March 24, 2017 London and the Dreary Ritual of Terrorist Attacks
The idea that you can set fire to countries in the Middle East, collapse their societies and traumatize entire populations, sowing carnage on a biblical scale, and not expect any reaction in the form of blowback, is utterly insane.
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, March 15, 2017 Scottish Independence, Round Two: Let It Come!
The stakes involved are higher than they were in 2014. They involve the question of whether we should be offering the hand of friendship to migrants and refugees or the fist of fury; defending multiculturalism and diversity or abandoning them; and ultimately the choice between outward-looking Scottish internationalism or backward-looking British nationalism.
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, March 6, 2017 In Defense of Multiculturalism
The working class is not a product of race, religion, culture or creed. Multiculturalism embraces the working class of our time, and as such it provides the locus of the only potential resistance that offers hope of a desperately needed alternative to either the nativist bigotry of Trump or the Clintonian liberalism that paved the way for Trump.
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, February 21, 2017 Firestarter: the Unwelcome Return of Tony Blair
Tony Blair's every public appearance and utterance is an insult to the millions of men, women, and children in Iraq who were slaughtered as a result of the brutal and illegal imperialist war he unleashed in conjunction with Washington in 2003. It reminds us that their cry for justice from the grave is one that is yet to be heard.
(30 comments) SHARE Wednesday, February 8, 2017 "You Think Our Country's So Innocent?" Trump's "Truth Bomb"
While nobody should be under any illusions when it comes to Donald Trump as the reincarnation of Hugo Chavez, he has revealed a propensity for dropping the odd "truth bomb" here and there, much to chagrin of conservative and liberal commentators alike.
(3 comments) SHARE Tuesday, January 31, 2017 Muslim Bans, White Supremacy and Fascism in Our Time
Trump's first two weeks in office have been the most tempestuous of any president in US history. No sooner did he enter the Oval Office than executive orders started flying off his desk with the alacrity of a man intent on reshaping an entire country and world with the stroke of his pen. But in the process of doing he has cultivated a mass movement across America in resistance to his presidency.
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, January 23, 2017 Trump's Inauguration: Hail Caesar!
Donald Trump has unleashed ugly anti-migrant and anti-minority sentiment in the land. It is why despite making references to uniting the country during his inauguration speech Donald Trump begins his time in office as possibly the most divisive American president since Abraham Lincoln.
SHARE Wednesday, January 11, 2017 Israel is a Rogue State
Rather than a state operating in accordance with international law and diplomatic norms, Israel increasingly evinces the character of a rogue state, making up its own rules and norms as it goes along. We are talking here about a country that believes it can act with impunity.
(10 comments) SHARE Wednesday, December 21, 2016 Anti-Russian Hysteria in Washington Is a Byproduct of Imperial Decline
Sanders was denied the nomination by a Democratic Party machine that supported Hillary Clinton from the outset, and which approached the presidential election as courtiers at a coronation. It is their inability to deal with Clinton's defeat at the hands of a billionaire reality TV star with no prior political experience that lies at the root of the current crisis.
(3 comments) SHARE Saturday, December 17, 2016 Moral Quicksand: Samantha Power's Temper Tantrum
What stood out most during the verbal broadside unleashed by Washington's ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, at her Iranian, Syrian and Russian counterparts over the fighting in Aleppo, was her ability to do so with a straight face. Being lectured to by a representative of Washington on human rights violations and war crimes is like being told to sit up straight by the Hunchback of Notre Dame.
(14 comments) SHARE Sunday, November 27, 2016 Fidel Castro's revolutionary life and legacy
Such is the legacy that Fidel leaves behind; it is impossible to fully comprehend the sheer magnitude of the role he played in breaking the chains of millions across the Third World, both literally and figuratively, in defiance of the racist conceit of apologists for imperialism.
SHARE Sunday, November 20, 2016 Putin's 2015 UN speech on "multipolar world" coming to fruition
The 2015 speech Putin proceeded to deliver to the delegates in attendance, along with an expectant world via the international media, was tantamount to announcing the birth of a multipolar world, one in which Washington would no longer enjoy the uncontested primacy and hegemony it had since the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991.
(1 comments) SHARE Sunday, November 13, 2016 Trump, Brexit and the Collapse of the Liberal Order
Donald Trump and Brexit are symptoms of the rise of anti-politics in response to the massive inequality that has engulfed both British and US society in recent years. Far too much wealth is now owned by far two few, with the result that people are angry and in no mind to continue to support a status quo widely regarded as corrupt and hopelessly compromised by its support for a corporate elite and vested interests.
(1 comments) SHARE Sunday, October 23, 2016 Washington's game of good terrorists vs bad terrorists
The conflict in Syria, it bears repeating, has never been about democracy in the eyes of Washington. Instead, it is about domination, about reshaping the region according to strategic objectives that pre-date the conflict. The Assad government had long been considered a key obstacle in this regard.
(4 comments) SHARE Wednesday, October 12, 2016 Clinton vs. Trump: a Zero-Sum Game
With few exceptions media coverage has been on Trump, depicting him as an out of control nut who would be dangerous for the country. In truth it is Hillary Clinton, with her penchant for war and the destruction of Arab countries, who is far more dangerous -- not only for the people of the United States but a world grown weary of US hegemony.
(9 comments) SHARE Sunday, October 2, 2016 9/11 and the Saudis -- When Will the Hypocrisy End?
The 9/11 families and a US Congress that dare not defy them, given the emblematic and iconic status of 9/11 within the country, have with this vote punctured this cozy relationship. For many it is something long overdue. For justice to be truly just, there has to be enough to go round.
(3 comments) SHARE Monday, September 19, 2016 US Massacre of Syrian Soldiers Exposes Washington's Mendacity
If Americans sincerely held the well-being of the Syrian people as a priority in this conflict, they would have already joined with Russia, the Syrian government, and its allies in defeating Daesh, Nusra, and the various other groups of religious and sectarian fanatics. The enemy of the American people is not Russia, Syria or Iran. The enemy of the American people is the hypocrisy of their own government.
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, September 16, 2016 British MPs Blame David Cameron for the Destruction of Libya
The burning question a world interested in justice has long demanded an answer to is when are these so-called leaders and democrats, members of a ruling elite dripping in the blood of millions, ever going to be held accountable for the vast human suffering they have and continue to sow across the world?
(10 comments) SHARE Friday, September 9, 2016 Why the Syrian People Won't Accept a Deal to Remove Assad
Vladimir Putin and Russia have staked too much in the outcome of the conflict in Syria to allow Assad to be thrown under the bus in service to a contrived and transparent attempt to depose him under the guise of a peace plan. This is not to claim that Assad should lead Syria in perpetuity. It is, however, to claim that the government of Syria is a matter for the Syrian people.
(3 comments) SHARE Wednesday, May 18, 2016 NATO exercises on Russian border: Are these people actually mad?
Why is the West and NATO intent on pursuing a cold war strategy when it comes to Russia? How can it possibly profit Western countries and their citizens to experience a return to the decades of enmity previous generations endured, with all the dangers that such a state of mutual antagonism brings?
(5 comments) SHARE Tuesday, July 14, 2015 Behind the Mask of Democracy Lurks European Tyranny
Events in Greece have succeeded in ripping the mask of democracy off the face of the EU to reveal a cold, callous, and brutal tyranny of blind economic forces.
Not since the end of the Second World War has a people and nation in Western Europe been forced to endure the economic hardship and privation that Greece and its people are suffering today. T