Aleteia (Monica Betencourt) is hanging onto her American dream but just barely as the powers that be in Washington D.C keep threatening more and more of her existence. Aleteia has become radicalized in the war on immigrants, not just because she herself could be adversely affected, but because she believes in the power of a revolution.

Our world produces 3.5 million tons of plastic waste a day, and that doesn't include any other kind of waste. The average American produces around 6 pounds of trash a day. There is approximately 15 billion tons of trash in our oceans and only 14% of the oceans ecosystems are undamaged. These facts are scary and there are plenty of other facts about how we are killing our planet. As a young person, seeing how destroyed our planet is already and how so few are doing something about it makes me wonder if there is any hope for us to restore it.

Democrats Change Rules in Caucus States

I’m hoping this story will appeal to both sides of the Atlantic after the clip of Laurence Fox arguing with an audience member seemed to go a bit viral in the US too.

Right around the time of what would've been a celebration of the late, great Dr. King's ninety-first Born Day, it seems only fitting to revisit his legacy and whatnot.

It did not take long for Queen Elizabeth to give Prince Harry and Meghan Markle answers concerning their desire to step down from being senior members of the royal family and become financially independent. Discussions had been going on for months before the Duke and Duchess of Sussex posted their announcement on their Instagram page on Wednesday, January 8, 2020.

It is perhaps one of the most iconic pieces of Royal film ever: a 21-year-old Princess Elizabeth dedicating her entire life to the service of her people and further Commonwealth family. Her historic words – “my whole life whether it be long or short shall be devoted to your service” – set a precedent for her reign, and in the near seventy years of service as Queen and Monarch, she has unflinchingly, stoically and tirelessly honoured each and every word.

Photo by Mick Reynolds

Ah, 2019. What a year. It was...long and...uh...that's all I can think of right now: it was long. It was so long, that so many things happened, that I can't remember what happened at the beginning of the year. Hell, I can't even remember what happened at the beginning of the day! That's how bad it is. So, with that, here are a few things that you might have forgotten that happened in 2019.

I’ve been invited recently to the fifth annual Youth Global Forum in Amsterdam as a journalist.

Swedish schoolgirl Greta Thunberg has been awarded Time Magazine’s Person of the Year 2019 award. At a mere sixteen years of age, she is the youngest recipient ever.

On April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. was tragically shot by James Earl Ray outside of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. While the country went up in flames, there was a calming voice that arose from the ashes. That very same night, Robert F. Kennedy gave one of the greatest speeches by any American politician over the last 100 years. On what would be Kennedy's 94th birthday, let's take a look at the politician's most heartfelt and progressive statement of his entire career.

Our world produces 3.5 million tons of plastic waste a day, and that doesn't include any other kind of waste. The average American produces around 6 pounds of trash a day. There is approximately 15 billion tons of trash in our oceans and only 14% of the oceans ecosystems are undamaged. These facts are scary and there are plenty of other facts about how we are killing our planet. As a young person, seeing how destroyed our planet is already and how so few are doing something about it makes me wonder if there is any hope for us to restore it.

In 1970 I was a 13 year old black teen heading to 8th grade. This was the first year of integration and I was apptehesive, The school bus picked me and the other children up and drove us across town. Previously I could walk to the elementary and junior high I had attended, but now I was forced to take the bus. This was new and exciting yet intimidating. I had no idea how this was going to turn out but soon reality kicked in.

It has been upsetting to hear about the bushfires that have been happening around Australia. In Melbourne I feel removed from the bushfires that have been happening, yet I have heard even in my state of Victoria the bushfires have been causing serious damage. I also recently heard the frequently documented statistic that millions of animals were burned in the fires, and this has now been updated to be closer to one billion. The situation has become dire and catastrophic. It was declared a 'state of disaster' in Victoria and a 'state of emergency' in New South Wales. There were other alarming statistics which demonstrated how bad the fires have been.

It did not take long for Queen Elizabeth to give Prince Harry and Meghan Markle answers concerning their desire to step down from being senior members of the royal family and become financially independent. Discussions had been going on for months before the Duke and Duchess of Sussex posted their announcement on their Instagram page on Wednesday, January 8, 2020.

It has been only a short time since Prince Harry and Meghan Markle announced on their Instagram page that they were stepping down from being senior members of the royal family to become financially independent. When their decision was first announced on Wednesday, January 8, there were speculations about many things concerning their plans.

According to a poll done by Cosmopolitan, most people believe Prince Harry and Meghan Markle will not be able to retain their titles once the dust has settled. The Duke and Duchess of Duchess of Sussex recently went to the press and announced they were cutting back on Royal duties, before they notified the Queen. HRM was understandably hurt because her grandson did not first seek her approval. An emergency meeting took place Monday, between the Queen, Prince Charles, Prince William, and Harry. It’s was later announced that the Elizabeth II has given her permission for her grandson and his family to make the changes they desire. Truthfully, Harry and Meghan were going to do what they wanted to with or without the blessing of the House of Windsor.

Since we are wrapping up Bryan Steil’s first year in the House, it seems like a good time for a review. So here are the top votes for each month, to give you a feel for Steil’s record.

Let’s start with the obvious news of the week: At 8:32 PM Eastern Standard Time on December 18, Donald Trump became the third US President to be impeached by the House of Representatives. The first article, regarding Trump’s quid pro quo deal with the Ukranians, passed 230 to 197, with only two Democrats (Collin Peterson and Jeff Van Drew) voting no. Every single Republican sided with Donald Trump. The second article, regarding obstruction of Congress, passed 229 to 198, with Peterson, Van Drew and Jared Golden of Maine against. Every single Republican voted in favor of allowing the President to hinder a congressional investigation.

The big vote during the second week of December was on HR 3, the Elijah E. Cummings Lower Drug Costs Now Act. As the title suggests, the bill is designed to lower consumer drug prices by forcing Medicare to negotiate for lower prices. Steil joined all but two other Republicans (Fitzpatrick and Herrera Beutler, frequent dissenters) in voting against lower drug prices for consumers. (RC 682, Dec 12)

The start of this piece isn’t about Princess Michael of Kent, it’s about a piece of her jewellery. She wore a Blackamoor brooch (above) to a lunch a few years ago that Meghan Markle attended. Some will argue, and many did in 2017, that she was being racist by wearing the brooch.

Yesterday, we were on our way to visit our grandson when the song “United We Stand” by Brotherhood of Man came on the radio. The lyrics are entirely appropriate for today’s turmoil:

" Now I become Death, destroyer of Worlds."

I’m being censored in secret. In Germany, Nicole Junkermann, associate of Jeffrey Epstien, Ehud Barak, Matt Hancock MP and Peter Thiel, has taken out a court injunction to silence me. However, they haven’t informed me of the case. They have never served me with any court papers - as required by the “Convention on the Service Abroad of Judicial and Extrajudicial Documents in Civil or Commercial Matters” - more commonly called the “Hague Service Convention”. Therefore, I have had no opportunity to respond to any accusations and it’s clear that the German judiciary is automatically on the side of the multimillionaire Epstein associate, Countess Nicole Junkermann. The first time I heard any rumors about a German court injunction taken out against me was on 11 January 2020. I’ll always remember the date very well as I was nursing my dying cat when it came through the letterbox. Because I was about to lose my big ginger buddy of almost two decades, I had zero emotional response to the incoming mail.

Injustice is everywhere.

In February 20, 1974, the American rock band Steely Dan, released the album Pretzel Logic. While the writer, Donald Fagan, claim the song had nothing to do with politics, the name of the record has symbolic relevance in today’s political turbulence.

To date over 6,000 Americans have died due to our blundering in both Iraq and Afghanistan. In the Vietnam War we lost over 58,000 Americans and what for? What have these wars brought to the American people I ask you? We are still in Afghanistan and Iraq. Vietnam was a complete failure and what is interesting is all of these wars never had a clear goal or mission in mind. I must ask what is our mission in Iran, if it begets war.

The attacks on the World Trade Centre and on the Pentagon had a lasting effect on the world which we still see to this day. The events that had taken place on September 11, 2001, was quoted by many as the event that had ‘changed everything.' The attacks had caused many changes to happen in many aspects around the world and changed many attitudes as to how to cope and deal with terrorism. It had caused conflicts to begin in Afghanistan and Iraq, with many nations around the world rushing to America’s aid to deal with those that had caused 9/11. Security was increased drastically to try and prevent anything on this magnitude to ever be able to happen again. The biggest change to have come from the attacks was surely the intelligence services.

United Kingdoms Exclusive Economic Zone

Right around the time of what would've been a celebration of the late, great Dr. King's ninety-first Born Day, it seems only fitting to revisit his legacy and whatnot.

Early Cultures in the America

Photo by Mick Reynolds

I remember back to elementary school like it was yesterday. I remember standing, with my hand over my heart, and saying the pledge of allegiance. I remember when that suddenly stopped and I never knew why, nor did I consider it a big deal as a child. In fact, looking back as an adult, having children swear oaths and make commitments of any sort, beyond a play date with a friend, is probably a waste of time.

Here we go, the first Steil Watch of 2020. had to wait until there were enough votes to cover.

The politics of doing nothing

My grandpa quit smoking in 2002, after smoking cigarettes since he was 13 years old back in the early 60s. A time when doctors were the spokespeople helping tobacco companies sell their products.

In the final week of 2019, I asked the supporters of Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang (otherwise known as the Yang Gang) to let me know their favorite videos of the year with or about him, and to vote on them using likes on Twitter. The result was a list of over 30 favorite videos. I then took the top 15 from that list and asked the Yang Gang to rank them using ranked-choice voting (one of Yang's policy proposals) to best determine the top ten videos. Over 350 people voted and this ranked list is the result.

Before I get into this, I want to play my “minority card” granting me the power of immunity to personal attacks about my perceived privilege. I hope by the time you finished reading this post the following declaration will be redundant. I am a masculine looking gay woman, I grew up poor, and I am half native. I also live with a mental illness, but I mean who doesn’t these days? My point is while my stats indicate I am not a typical person of “privilege,” my education and my bank account would state otherwise. I graduated at the University of Calgary with a bachelor of social work. I basically have a degree in oppression. We were always encouraged to advocate for people in-need. While I do agree with many of the principals and philosophies of social work I've seen being a "social justice warrior" become bastardized, and hijacked by today's youth in the name of leftist politics. Here are four uncomfortable truths about "the left" that more conservative thinkers and politically centered folk find cringey and foolish.

Recently, scientists moved the Armageddon clock closer to midnight than it's ever been. This clock, which shows us how close we are to the end of the world as we know it, has been around for decades.

Yesterday, I learned the candidate I had hoped to vote for ended his campaign for president. It took me by surprise as I really believed in him. I couldn’t think of a better man at this time to be my president than him. This president hopeful was Senator Cory Booker from New Jersey.

Back in June of 2019, I tweeted about the latest egregious example of MSNBC excluding Democratic Presidential candidate Andrew Yang from their ongoing coverage of the 2020 Presidential candidates. There had been previous examples, but that was the worst up to that point because they had photos of all 20 candidates who were going to be in the first debates, and instead of including Yang as one of them, they included someone who wasn't even going to be there. I then started to add each new example as a new reply, and that ongoing thread has now been covered over and over again with each new example as a source of entertaining absurdity. It's been covered by traditional media outlets like The Guardian, Vox, and The Hill. It's also been covered by new media like Ethan and Hila Klein of the H3 Podcast for their two million subscribers.

1. Freedom Dividend

Democrats Change Rules in Caucus States

Improving democracy

In a weird case of life imitating art, the country of Wakanda - established in #Marvel canon as the homeland of King T'Challa aka Black Panther - has been struck from the list of approved free trade agreement partners with the United States Department of Agriculture, or USDA.

Looking at Justin Trudeau's latest scandal. I started wondering about cultural appropriation, and how each region around the world thinks about things differently.

How do you lampoon an election that already routinely veers into absurd territory? That’s a challenge that Trevor Noah, the host of Comedy Central’s The Daily Show, faces nightly, as he discusses an election cycle of scandals, leaks, bigotry, and fear-mongering—a cycle where even the most unprecedented happenings have become mundane. A South African television and radio host and comedian, Noah has been the host of The Daily Show since 2015. Being the child of a Xhosa mother and Swiss-German father, his childhood in Johannesburg under apartheid’s Immorality Act had a large impact on his life and future in comedy. This is explained in his autobiographical comedy book Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood, which become a #1 New York Times Bestseller and named one of the best books of the year after being published in 2016. Noah's mixed-race ancestry, his experiences growing up in Soweto, and his observations about race and ethnicity are leading themes in his comedy. His typical humor genres include political/news satire, deadpan, and black, insult, and observational comedy. This he carried over to The Daily Show after the retirement of his predecessor and one of his comedic influences Jon Stewart, integrating political and ethnic humor.

“Loyalty to country ALWAYS. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it.” ― Mark Twain

To date over 6,000 Americans have died due to our blundering in both Iraq and Afghanistan. In the Vietnam War we lost over 58,000 Americans and what for? What have these wars brought to the American people I ask you? We are still in Afghanistan and Iraq. Vietnam was a complete failure and what is interesting is all of these wars never had a clear goal or mission in mind. I must ask what is our mission in Iran, if it begets war.