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Anne Garrels (1951 – 2022) was a US journalist who worked for National Public Radio during the Iraq war and authored of Naked in Baghdad.

 Northwestern University Medill School of Journalism students were mostly in high school when National Public Radio (NPR) correspondent Anne Garrels endured the “shock and awe” bombing of Iraq, chronicling her experiences in the book Naked in Baghdad. 

 But when she spoke at the university in 2008, that didn’t curtail their questions about the Abu Ghraib scandal, the dubious government contactor Blackwater, government censorship, reporters embedding with the active military operations and war reporting as a female when Garrels.

 Casually dressed in a leotard, flowered skirt, ballet flats and bare legs, Garrels discussed the progression of the war, the effect of escalating violence and kidnappings on reporting and everyday life in Iraq and her personal experiences as a reporter and a woman.

Donald Trump & Elon Musk (he/himmler) have built their political power base on a retro white male “Christian” constituency that lives in total terror of strong women & people of color.

Here's the appropriate historic root “Southern Strategy” quote from Lee Atwater, George H.W. Bush’s very own Josef Goebbels, with [DEI] subbed in where it belongs:

"You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” 

"By 1968 you can’t say “nigger”—that hurts you, backfires. 

"So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, [DEI] and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. 

"Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes [and DEI], and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks [and women] get hurt worse than whites [and men].… 

“We want to cut this [DEI] ,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Nigger, nigger.”

BANGKOK, Thailand -- Thaksin Shinawatra enters 2025 as purportedly the most powerful politician in Thailand, the billionaire who could not be stopped even after two coups and juntas, 15 years in self-exile, and a stack of prison sentences against him.

Mr. Thaksin is now so larger-than-life that many allege he manipulates Thailand's government through his seemingly timid daughter Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra, 38, who was elected by Parliament in August and appears to eagerly agree with his advice.

Mr. Thaksin, a two-time ex-prime minister who currently holds no political office, is this year's man to watch. 

Unfortunately, he began 2025 grappling with allegations that he voiced racist views.

"African people, who have black skin and flat noses that make it difficult to breathe, are hired for millions of baht [Thai currency] to be models," Mr. Thaksin said during a campaign rally in Chiang Rai city on January 6.

"Thai people look much better," Mr. Thaksin, 75, said. "There is no need for [our people to get] nose, jaw, or breast augmentation.

In this chaotic news cycle, America’s worst plane crash in a generation already feels a generation old.

But the administration’s response to the tragic January collision that killed 67 people over the Potomac is worth revisiting. Not only because the loved ones of those lost deserve answers, but because it highlights a MAGA playbook we’ve seen repeatedly now — and we’ll see again very soon.

The return of one million Palestinians from southern Gaza to the north on January 27 felt as if history was choreographing one of its most earth-shattering events in recent memory.

 Hundreds of thousands of people marched along a single street, the coastal Rashid Street, at the furthest western stretch of Gaza. Though these displaced masses were cut off from each other in massive displacement camps in central Gaza and the  Mawasi region further south, they sang the same songs, chanted the same chants, and used the same talking points.

“Some experts worry that, if the country went to war, many reserve units might be unable to deploy. A U.S. official who works on these issues put it simply: ‘We can’t get enough people.’”

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Readers no doubt remember Trump’s first term bluster that Mexico would build the border wall, and pay for it. President López brought that racist promise to fruition then, and his hand-picked successor Scheinbaum renewed it February 4th, sending no less than ten thousand additional troops to the U.S. border.

To stop the flow of migrants back in 2019, President of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador sent 15,000 troops to Mexico’s northern border, plus another 6,000 to the southern border with Guatemala. He did that after president Trump threatened tariffs, a menace he took back after Mexico reinforced its borders with its new-fangled National Guard. Sheinbaum folded before the same tactic.

Which is to say, Mexico paid for a wall made of soldiers rather than bricks, and paid their wages.

I recently heard an interview on OnPoint Radio with Jane Clayson. The interview
subject was an internist named Stuart B. Mushlin. He had practiced in the Boston area
for 40 years and had recently written a book describing 20 difficult to diagnose patients
that he had encountered during his career. The book was titled “Playing the Ponies and
Other Medical Mysteries Solved”.

In the interview, Dr Mushlin expressed many of the same concerns that I have had with
the Big Business of medicine, and so I wrote the following letter to him:

Dear Dr Mushlin: Thank you for writing the book and also for taking the time to reveal
some unwelcome truths about the sad status of America’s healthcare system.