Op-Ed

“Excuse me, occasionally it might be a good idea to be honest about American foreign policy.”

I don’t think I’ve heard that much honesty from a mainstream-party presidential candidate in virtually half a century. And suddenly this race begins to matter in a way that seems like . . . oh my God, a return of democracy? Suddenly I don’t feel utterly marginalized as a voter, as an American, left with nothing but cynical despair as I wait to learn which “lesser evil” the Dems will serve up for me as a candidate.

The words are those of Bernie Sanders, of course, standing up to the red-baiting the moderators and some of the other candidates were slinging at him during the latest debate, trying their best to bring him down.

This overview of the Mexico’s context in the last year of the 21st century’s second decade was drafted at the request of a North American comrade who shares the socialist, feminist, and environmentalist ideals, and who knows that the only thing that is realistic is to fight for the impossible.

Contexts

Mexico’s foreign context continues to be dominated by its dependence on the United States, a country led by an unstable aristocrat whose manner of rule is by threat. He often evokes a chauvinist discourse in which Mexico plays the scapegoat.

Once upon a time there was a Constitution of the United States. In Article II, Section 2 it stipulated that only the U.S. Congress has the power to declare war, which means the American president has to go to the legislative body and make a case for going to war against an enemy or enemies. If there is a vote in favor of war, the president is empowered as commander-in-chief to direct the available resources against the enemy.

There is also something called international law. Under international law there are situations in which a head of state or head of government can use military force defensively or even preemptively if there is a substantial threat that is imminent. But normally, a country has to go through a procedure similar to that in the U.S. Constitution, which means making a case that the war is justified before declaring war. The Nuremberg Tribunals ruled that starting a war of aggression is the ultimate crime.

Without former Cambridge University professor Alexander Kogan’s desire to obtain Facebook data for his research, Cambridge Analytica would never have had access to the 87 million profiles they used to elect Trump in 2016. But Dr Kogan was not the only academic who worked with parent company SCL and Cambridge Analytica itself as they developed methods for data gathering, analytics and rolled out unethical campaigns, for Donald Trump, the UK’s Brexit campaign and worldwide. Many of the firm’s academic and commercial collaborators remain unknown, and some universities are actively obscuring their staff’s involvement.

With the holidays approaching, few want to think about their weight. It will certainly go up not down before 2020 arrives. People will probably start thinking about their weight on January 2 –– and joining gyms.

It is true that in much of the world, people have never been bigger. The average American man todayweighs 194 pounds and the average woman 165 pounds. The growing girth has led to the creation of special-sized ambulances, operating tables and coffins as well as bigger seats on planes and trains.

NOTE: This is the debut of a new occasional column pointing out factual inaccuracies, misstatements, falsehoods, disinformation, misrepresentations, propaganda and lies in the mass media - from cable news to talk radio to movies and beyond. In our Orwellian era of “fake news” and “alternative facts,” when journalists are vilified as “enemies of the people,” truth - and the ability to discern it - is becoming increasingly endangered. This “post-truth” climate threatens is corrosive to our social discourse. Indeed, something I’ve noticed is that the very word “fact” itself is frequently used incorrectly on the airwaves.

Let’s bomb Iowa! Or maybe Texas or Michigan or Nebraska . . .

Oh wait, I got confused for a second. Those places are part of America and we love them. We would never bomb them. These are places we would bomb: Guatemala, Indonesia, Cuba, Congo, Vietnam, Cambodia, Grenada, Libya, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Iran, Panama, Iraq, Kuwait, Somalia, Bosnia, Sudan, Afghanistan, Yugoslavia, Yemen, Pakistan, Syria, etc.

It is not often that one hears anything like the truth in today’s Washington, a city where the art of dissimulation has reached new heights among both Democrats and Republicans. Everyone who has not been asleep like Rip Van Winkle for the past twenty years knows that the most powerful foreign lobby operating in the United States is that of the state of Israel. Indeed, by some measures it just might be the most powerful lobby period, given the fact that it has now succeeded in extending its tentacles into state and local levels with its largely successful campaigns to punish criticism or boycotting of Israel while also infiltrating boards of education to require Holocaust education and textbooks that reflect favorably on the Jewish state.

Occasionally, however, the light does shine in darkness. The efforts by Congresswomen Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar to challenge the power of the Israel Lobby are commendable and it is worth noting that the two women are being subjected to harassment by their own Democratic Party in an effort to make them be silent.

The weaknesses of Ukrainegate are on display in a new book by Neal Katyal (“with Sam Koppelman”) making the case for Ukrainegate, but titled “Impeach: The Case Against Donald Trump.”

If you think you are seeing a lot of ads for sleep-related drugs lately you are right. Pharma is rolling out a banquet of "sleep disorders" like Delayed Sleep Phase Disorder, Advanced Sleep Phase Disorder, Non-24-hour Sleep-Wake Disorder, Irregular Sleep Wake Rhythm, Jet Lag Disorder and Shift Work Sleep Disorder. These are on top of the predecessor conditions of Chronic, Acute, Transient, Initial and Middle-Of-The-Night Insomnia, Early-Morning Wakening Disorder and Non-Restful Sleep Disorder.

The conditions constitute Pharma's global circadian rhythm sleep disorder market which wasvalued at $1.31 billion two years ago.