Yousef and Laila in Hammamet, Tunisia
Let me tell you a story about Yousef and Laila in Hammamet, Tunisia. As an experiment, I used AI to help plan part of this trip. For the record, no travel planners were harmed in the making of this itinerary; I still do all my own research and always have. AI suggested Hammamet as a […]
MLK Day, My Hometown and the First Amendment
I hope you’re enjoying the MLK holiday. This day carries special meaning for me. It was January 15, 1986—just days before the very first Martin Luther King Jr. federal holiday on January 20—when the Ku Klux Klan marched through my hometown of Pulaski, Tennessee. It was not a proud moment. The town quite literally turned […]
Synagogue in Kyiv Hit by ruzzian Drone
A ruzzian drone hit last night (Oct. 24, 2025) in Kyiv, a synagogue in Podil. It was just two blocks from my apartment, where I stayed in July/August. I walked past it every other day during my runs along the Dnipro River. I don’t know why it makes war feel more tangible when something or […]
Amyl and the Sniffers Show – Smells Like Punk Rock To Me
It’s cliche, albeit inaccurate, to say “punk music is dead.” In the past, to counter this false narrative, I’d point to bands like Rancid or musicians like Laura Jane Grace from Against Me. But then I’d just be proving their point. Rancid’s seminal “And Out Come the Wolves” album exploded onto the scene in 1995, […]
The Careless, Uninformed, Glib & Damaging Dissemination of Disinformation – Rita C. Article
A Facebook “friend” who claimed to be a journalist wrote an article about the Russian War in Ukraine with so little credibility, journalistic standards, and Russian disinformation that I felt I had to respond to at least some of the disinformation. See Rita’s “article” Rita C. Article (The Yellow Highlights are the excerpts we addressed […]
The Sleazy and Slippery Slope of Appeasement
For the first time since the full invasion, the United States voted against a UN resolution condemning Russian aggression against Ukraine. Marco Rubio, the once proud son of Cuban Immigrants and anti-communist hawk, said, “We didn’t feel it was conducive, frankly, to have something out there at the UN that’s antagonistic to either side.”He defended […]
Raw Travel’s “My Summer in Ukraine” Film is Streaming Now.
Raw Travel’s “My Summer in Ukraine” documentary film premiered to a standing-room-only crowd in New York City last month, a scant one week after the election. I was amazed and grateful at the response of the crowd, especially Ukrainians, who were visibly moved, some to tears. Rather than trot the film out to film festivals […]
Trump Cuts Out the Middleman to Fascism
I used to think that Trump = Putin and Putin = Hitler, but these days, Trump is cutting out the middleman and quoting directly from Hitler. He’s getting unprecedented help from Putin and the ruzzian bot and disinformation army who are uninhibited with their hybrid war with the west. I’ve never seen so many bots […]
Trumpism’s Cognitive Dissonance
While visiting family down south, I had yet another befuddling conversation with a “Trumper” also claiming to be a “Ukraine supporter” who has somehow rewired their brain to ignore the fact that the Trump faction of the GOP are the primary folks responsible for abandoning Ukraine by blocking continued US funding. I’m curious how one […]