Thought for Today: How Disinformation Is Sabotaging America

14 Sunday Jun 2026

Posted by in Recommended Reading, United States

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Front Cover – Attack from Within: How Disinformation is Sabotaging America by Barbara McQuade (USA, 2025)
Photo Credit: Seven Stories Press

Disinformation is the deliberate use of lies to manipulate people, whether to extract profit or to advance a political agenda. Its unwitting accomplice, misinformation, is spread by unknowing dupes who repeat lies they believe to be true. In America today, both forms of falsehood are distorting our perception of reality. In a democracy, the people need a shared set of facts as a basis to debate and make decisions that advance and secure their collective interests. Differences of opinion, and even propaganda, have always existed in the United States, but now, enemies of democracy are using disinformation to attack our sovereign right to truthful information, intellectual integrity, and the exercise of the will of the people.

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Throughout history, authoritarians have used disinformation to seize power from the people. As a former national security prosecutor, I see self-serving forces sabotaging our country. Manipulators are using disinformation to poison discourse and stoke divisions in society…. Our country’s constantly changing demographics naturally bring differences of opinion, but the bitter divides are not the inevitable result of a pluralistic society with diverse ethnic, racial, religious, and social groups. They are the product of a deliberate attack through disinformation. Lies are becoming increasingly normalized, and our democracy is in peril. The conversation I propose is not a debate about Democratic and Republican politics. It is about the essential need for truth in self-governance.

Excerpts from the Updated Paperback Edition of Attack from Within: How Disinformation is Sabotaging America by Barbara McQuade, published by Seven Stories Press, New York, USA, 2025, pp. 5-6 & 13.  

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The Changing Earth – Trust

07 Sunday Jun 2026

Posted by in Anthropogenic Climate Disruption, Human Behavior, Nature and the Environment

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WMO Super El Niño 2026 – Prepare for hotter-than-normal temperatures across nearly all parts of the globe – July-August 2026
Source Credit: World Meteorological Organization (WMO)

This is the fifth article in my series about our changing Earth from interviews with Native Americans shared in We Are the Middle of Forever: Indigenous Voices from Turtle Island on the Changing Earth, edited by Dahr Jamail and Stan Rushworth (USA 2022). My presentation does not follow the order of the interviews.

#5: Lyla June Johnston (Diné [Navajo], Tsétsêhéstâhese [Cheyenne])
      (Chapter 5, pp. 61-72)

Lyla June Johnston is a Native American poet, singer-songwriter, hip-hop artist, human ecologist, public speaker, and community organizer of Diné (Navajo), Tsétsêhéstâhese (Cheyenne), and European lineages. She’s originally from Taos, New Mexico. Her multi-genre presentations focus on Indigenous issues and solutions, supporting youth, inter-cultural healing, historical trauma, and traditional land stewardship practices.

She has a Bachelor’s degree in Environmental Anthropology (with Honors) from Stanford University (2012) and a Master’s degree in American Indian Education (with Distinction) from the University of New Mexico (2017). Following her 2021 interview with Dahr and Stan, she earned her PhD from the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Her doctoral research focused on the ways in which pre-colonial Indigenous Nations shaped large regions of Turtle Island (aka the Americas) to produce abundant food systems for humans and non-humans.   

Having grown up with an Indigenous worldview, coupled with her education, Lyla June’s personal goal is to “grow closer to Creator by learning how to love deeper.”

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California: Spring Garden Delights

31 Sunday May 2026

Posted by in Nature and the Environment, United States

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Rosaliene’s Succulent Garden – Dragonfly on Firestick Plant – Los Angeles – California – Spring 2026

Spring arrived late in my corner of the world. With record-breaking heat for March across Southern California, rising as high as 95°F (35°C) in my neighborhood, we seemed to have jumped from winter to summer. After my winter garden break, I was anxious to get back to tending my garden. The leaves of the potted Ficus tree, standing obliquely across from my front door, were covered with a thick black fungus. Ugh!

Late one Saturday afternoon in early March, a neighbor joined me with his cat, Pumpkin, while I removed the leaves of the infected Ficus tree. Pumpkin settled down nearby on the lookout for our two resident hummingbirds. Thankfully, she’s never been able to grab one of them.

“We’re in for an extra hot summer,” my neighbor told me.
“Looks like it,” I said. “I’m hoping all this heat will help my Ficus to grow back.”

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“Undermining Eden” – Poem by Caribbean Poet Jacinth Howard

24 Sunday May 2026

Posted by in Poetry

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Caribbean Poet Jacinth Howard with Front Cover of her Poetry Collection The Mother Island (2023)
Photo Credit: Barbados Today – March 18, 2025

My Poetry Corner May 2026 features the poem “Undermining Eden” from the debut poetry collection The Mother Island by writer, poet, and university professor Jacinth Howard, published by Brown Bird Publishing (2023). In 2020, the manuscript of this collection won the second prize at the Frank Collymore Literary Endowment Award competition. All excerpts of her poetry cited below are from this collection.

Born in the Caribbean Islands of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, the young Jacinth’s love for reading and literature led her to pursue English Literature at the tertiary level. She earned a BA (2014), MPhil (2017), and PhD (2020) in English Language and Literature/Letters from the University of the West Indies Cave Hill Campus, Barbados. She currently lives with her husband and two children in Barbados, where she teaches Literature at her alma mater.

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Thought for Today: Modernity’s Machine of Destruction

17 Sunday May 2026

Posted by in Anthropogenic Climate Disruption, Human Behavior, Recommended Reading

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Front Cover – Suicide: The Political and Legal Implications of Creating Endless Mass Death by Roger Hallam with Robin Boardman (UK, 2025)
Photo Credit: Roger Hallam Website

Modernity’s machine – the merging of industrial, bureaucratic, and cultural systems – was hailed as humanity’s savior. Instead, it has become the architect of humanity’s demise. The hyperobject of the climate crisis is the machine’s ultimate creation: vast, uncontrollable, and devastating. It grows from a past riddled with injustice and destruction, erupting into a present where we imprison those who resist it. And this points to a future where our survival hangs by a thread.

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The machine – the complex system that governs us – is where the horror lies. It takes time for us to fully recognize this, especially because it feels so abstract. But deep down, we know. There’s reluctance to confront it, yet the truth is undeniable. If you’re reading this, step away for a moment, take a walk, then come back. It’s time to confront this head-on.

One billion displaced people. That’s the primary scenario we face. It could be more, maybe less. The number is not the point. The point is the scale of catastrophe. This is the reality we’re heading towards.

Excerpts from  Suicide: The Political and Legal Implications of Creating Endless Mass Death by Roger Hallam with Robin Boardman, published by Hard Rain Books, United Kingdom, 2025, pp. 113 & 131-132.  

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The Changing Earth – Balance

10 Sunday May 2026

Posted by in Anthropogenic Climate Disruption, Human Behavior, Nature and the Environment

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Tornado outbreak across Missouri to Minnesota – United States of America – April 17, 2026
Photo Credit: Agroinformacion News

This is the fourth article in my series about our changing Earth from interviews with Native Americans shared in We Are the Middle of Forever: Indigenous Voices from Turtle Island on the Changing Earth, edited by Dahr Jamail and Stan Rushworth (USA 2022). My presentation does not follow the order of the interviews.

#4: Shannon Rivers (Akimel O’otham) – Balance
      (Chapter 10, pp. 140-158)

Shannon Rivers, a member of the Akimel O’otham (River People), talked with Dahr and Stan in October 2020 from his humble office at the Indian Health Center in San Jose, California. Born in 1966 and raised on the Gila River Indian Community in Southern Arizona, he grew up in poverty, typical of Indigenous reservations.

His stepfather, who entered his life when he was about six or seven years old, was a Korean War veteran. He had an ugly hump on his shoulder from a bullet wound in his collarbone, which shattered and never healed correctly. He drank heavily every day, then awakened at 3 a.m. to work in the cotton fields in the Arizona heat, seven days a week. Though he sobered up around the time Shannon was twelve, there were still issues and dysfunction in the family.

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The Writer’s Life: Training for the Marathon of Writing My First Novel

26 Sunday Apr 2026

Posted by in The Writer's Life

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The three stories that illuminated my path to completing my first novel: A House for Mr. Bismas, Beloved, and The Good Earth

When we migrated to the United States from Brazil in October 2003, I had hoped that, with fourteen years of experience in international trade, I would have no problem in finding work in my area of expertise. That proved more difficult than I had imagined. Instead, there I was in West Hollywood, working as a salesperson in the jewelry department of a large retail store. We do what we must to pay the bills. Unknowingly, we find ourselves where we’re meant to be.

At the retail store, I worked with and attended to creative artists of all kinds. Some worked in commercial productions. Others played extras in movies or TV shows. Many others struggled to grasp opportunities for getting into the movie industry.

The creative pulse of the heartland of Hollywood was infectious. Becoming a writer was not just a dream. It was within reach. But it would take training in the craft of writing to bring my story of Richard Cheong to life on the pages. With a crazy work schedule and limited funds, I opted for a correspondence course by snail mail. Those were the days before online courses. The Creative Writing course at the Stratford Career Institute in Vermont guided me from writing my first scene of up to 500 words to finding my writer’s voice in a 3000-word short story. Working at my own pace, I completed the writing course within two years (2004-2006).

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“Disease Is Not the Only Thing That Spreads” – Poem by British American BreakBeat Poet Seema Yasmin

19 Sunday Apr 2026

Posted by in Health Issues, Poetry

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Left: Front Cover: If God Is A Virus: Poems by Seema Yasmin
Photo Credit: Haymarket Books
Right: Photo of Seema Yasmin by Lucas Passmore published on her Official Website

My Poetry Corner April 2026 features the poem “Disease Is Not the Only Thing That Spreads” from the first poetry collection If God Is a Virus (Haymarket Books, 2021) by Seema Yasmin, an Emmy Award-winning journalist, medical doctor, professor, and author. Inspiration for this book came from her reporting as a doctor and journalist on the 2014-2016 Ebola epidemic in West Africa and its aftermath. The poems explore which human lives are valued, how editorial decisions are weighed, role of the aid industrial complex during health crises, and the way medical myths and rumors can travel faster than microbes. By chance, the book was released during the coronavirus global pandemic.

Yasmin writes in the seven-verse poem “We Are Watching” (p. 40):

Brown deaths six (thousand) / Miles away matter less // Or not at all if that segment / Airs before commercial break // We regret to inform you // Your scheduled programming / Has been interrupted

Born in Warwickshire, England, Yasmin was raised in East London by immigrant Muslim parents of Indian and Burmese ancestry. She studied biochemistry at Queen Mary University of London where she graduated in 2005 and earned her Doctor of Medicine (MD) degree at the University of Cambridge. Permission to study medicine did not come easy for a girlchild born into a conservative religious Muslim family. She shares her frustration and anger in the poem “lady doctor” (stanzas 2 & 3, pp. 12-13):

I was vexed slammed the kitchen door twelve-year-old girl with a penchant for electrons and using the ice cube tray to freeze different molarities of saline to find the lowest freezing point not to mince garlic green chilies into frozen cubes for speedy curry making to feed hungry doctor husband one day

lady doctor you say to the receptionist and then how can there be none? it is a women’s health clinic how can there be none? none? in all the NHS there is none? and the tug in your uterus is so deep you say a man cannot go that deep cannot go so deep as a woman you say as I cringe behind you and the woman whose mother let her be a receptionist shrugs

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The Changing Earth – Sacred Feminine and Sacred Masculine

12 Sunday Apr 2026

Posted by in Anthropogenic Climate Disruption, Human Behavior

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Palisades Fire January 2025 – Los Angeles County – California – USA
Photo Credit: CalFire Photo Album
Great Flood Baton Rouge August 2016 – Louisiana – USA
Photo Credit: Climate Central (Photo by Bill Feig/The Advocate)

This is the third article in my series about our changing Earth from interviews with Native Americans shared in We Are the Middle of Forever: Indigenous Voices from Turtle Island on the Changing Earth, edited by Dahr Jamail and Stan Rushworth (USA 2022). My presentation does not follow the order of the interviews.

#3: Terri Delahanty (Cree) – Sacred Feminine and Sacred Masculine
      (Chapter 7, pp. 96-107)

Terri Delahanty, a Cree woman, was interviewed by Dahr Jamail in her home in October 2019, several months before the COVID-19 lockdown. (The majority of the Cree Nation resides in Canada. In the USA, they are primarily located in Montana.) A Sun Dancer for eleven years, she maintains a regular practice of Native ceremonies, meditation, and women’s traditional ceremonies. Also an ordained minister, she is the Native American chaplain for York Correctional Institution, a high security women’s facility, as well as for three of the men’s prisons in Connecticut. She is a founding member of the board of Women in the Spirit and sits on the board of trustees at the Institute of American Indian Studies in Washington Depot, Connecticut.

As a certified parent educator, at the supervisory level, through the National Parents As Teachers Organization, she is the director for Greater Hartford Even Start, a family literacy program. For over twenty years, she is also the director for the extended day program and program coordinator at the University of Hartford Magnet School.

Terri sees her spirit’s journey as bringing knowledge to the Indigenous community about returning to the Sacred Feminine and Sacred Masculine, lost through patriarchy. “We’ve gotten away from our heart center,” she told Jamail.

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The Writer’s Life: The Stories We Tell Ourselves

29 Sunday Mar 2026

Posted by in The Writer's Life

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Apocalyptic Landscape by German Expressionist Painter Ludwig Meidner (1884-1966)
Painted in 1912 on the brink of World War I
Photo Credit: Sotheby’s

What stories will we tell of these crazy times as the USA ventures into yet another war in the Middle East? So much has changed since arrival in my adopted homeland in October 2003. My collective American family has fractured, just like my own birth family. My heart aches for other immigrant families that have fractured with the government’s policy to arrest, detain, or deport family members who are undocumented.

We are told that they are animals, criminals, and rapists. They are eating our pets. They steal our jobs: jobs we don’t want, by the way. The stories we tell ourselves. Such separation and loss are devastating and traumatic for our immigrant families under attack. Their stories will haunt us in years to come.

The loss and abandonment I’ve suffered over the course of my life have shaped the stories I tell. What had I done wrong to be abandoned by the nuns, my husband, and my mother? Was I such a bad person? As a believer in reincarnation after death, I considered the possibility that I must’ve committed a grave sin in a former life. The kernel for the plot of my debut novel, Under the Tamarind Tree, came to life in my imagination.

The stories we tell ourselves.

Many questions about this fictitious former life came to mind. Had I abandoned my family in this former life? What were the circumstances surrounding the event? Who suffered the most with this irresponsible and selfish act? How could I make recompense to that person? What would be my fate after rebirth?

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