Category Archives: 47

"New Normal"?, 47, Accountability?, Arts: Blogging, Food, Libraries & Archives, Signs of the Times

Hegseth Headed For the Door?? I’ll Believe It When I See It

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Dow-down-900

Well, rest in peace, Pope F, but the crazy merry-go-round of news moves so fast you could have slipped away a month or two ago. But after all, you were 88.

For that matter, by mid-afternoon the stock market was down again — but only by another 900+ points; I, mean, Ho-hum, right? 401k panic is so last week.

The big late Monday news buzz was a growing swell of oddly-camouflaged, anonymously-sourced reports that the SuperLethal Crusader SecDef Pete Hegseth is on the way out.

The podcasts and news shows practically had him already being ushered out of the Pentagon by a team of Navy Seals. Was that a champagne cork I heard pop? Continue reading Hegseth Headed For the Door?? I’ll Believe It When I See It →

"New Normal"?, 47, Black & White & Other Colors, Books - by Chuck Fager, Books & Book Reviews, Censorship, DEI, Resistance, Sedition Watch, Selma & Civil Rights, Signs of the Times, writing & Such

The Naval Academy Library’s Magical Minstrel Show for Massa Hegseth

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I hate to admit it, but my authorial ego was bruised by wading through the list of 381 books pulled from the Nimitz Library of the U. S. Naval Academy last week. It tallied the volumes  expelled by order of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, for committing the grave sins of advocating and documenting aspects of work for racial and gender justice, particularly its recent incarnation in programs lumped together as DEI.

I was bummed out because, after all, I’ve published four books on racial justice. They got several decent reviews, sold some thousands of copies, and have turned up in footnotes and bibliographies of much better-known tomes. This is a sign that at least a few serious people had taken note of them.
My books were forged from direct experience and much research on a time of wide-ranging and often violent struggle for racial justice. They covered   Selma’s Bloody Sunday; the Poor Peoples Campaign; Black Power (“By any means necessary!”). Writing them, I considered each as documentation of radical challenges to an evil status quo.  Surely at least one of them should have caught the sharp eye of a diligent censor.

But no.

None made the cut for the Naval Academy’s dishonor roll.

Continue reading The Naval Academy Library’s Magical Minstrel Show for Massa Hegseth →

47, Canada, Protests, Tariffs

Gwynne Dyer: How Trump’s Tariffs Could Change the World

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GWYNNE DYER, April 7, 2025

Trump’s tariffs have ricocheted around the world. Here’s how it will change the system
He may have overestimated the role the US plays in trade

In 10 whirlwind weeks, Donald Trump had already smashed the international system of rules and alliances that more or less kept the peace for the past 80 years, but his bizarre ‘tariffs on everybody’ policy has given us a glimpse of what may take its place.

It’s the United States against the whole world, and America’s only possible great-power ally is Russia.

Continue reading Gwynne Dyer: How Trump’s Tariffs Could Change the World →

"New Normal"?, 47, Activism, Aftermath, Antiwar activism, Arts: Storytelling, Catholics & Catholicism, Coup, Current Affairs, DEI, Guns, Hard-Core Quaker, Libraries & Archives, Minority Rule, Novels & other Fiction, Peacework, Project 2025, Quakers, Russia, Vietnam, War & Peace

EXCLUSIVE: A Leaked View of the “Afterlife” of the U. S. Institute of Peace

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March  22, 2025

From confidential Washington sources, the following excerpt is drawn from an account of the aftermath of the March 17 seizure and closing of the U. S. Institute of Peace, by armed agents of the DOGE administration. The account has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Brief Encounter at 2301

Mid-March, 2025, on the edge of the National Mall, not far from the Vietnam War Memorials.

It was almost break time, the leftover dinner pizza was hours cold, and Hennigan thought he heard something.

Standing up from the desk chair, he closed the Security Inc. employee handbook, which was making him drowsy anyway, and peered across the open atrium: first left, then right, following the protocol.

Everything seemed in order: several tiers of closed offices rose or each side. Lights were dim. Nothing moving.

Continue reading EXCLUSIVE: A Leaked View of the “Afterlife” of the U. S. Institute of Peace →