MADRID—With climate-related disasters happening “at the rate of one a week,” according to the United Nations, more than 150 civil society organizations around the world are using the UN climate negotiations this week to stand with the Global South. They are pushing for demands set out in an open letter to negotiators in November, including a new global climate fund to [...]
A video of my three-year-old “singing” a song he wrote about Bernie went a bit viral recently. His message got a lot of internet love: “Bernie Sanders wants us to make the world better . . . right away!!” He got it. The world needs fixing, it’s urgent, and Bernie wants to help us do it. A [...]
MADRID—At a press conference at the UN climate negotiations in Spain this week, 25-year-old Angela Valenzuela, a climate activist from Chile, publicly denounced her country’s government for using this annual meeting of world leaders to “clean” its reputation and deflect attention from street protests that have left at least 18 people dead and fueled allegations of excessive force, torture [...]
This is our defeat, and we have to own it. As if we have a choice. And we know what this means. The body count from austerity and the hostile environment will multiply. An already fairly awful society is going to get brutally worse. And it is difficult to see how this won’t feed into [...] Over the past few months, many of my British comrades, now in mourning, have wasted untold hours of their life being infuriated by the anti-Corbyn Labour set — those congenitally outraged nostalgics for the status quo — just as we Yanks have been doing with their US equivalents over here. My advice to my UK [...]
Everyone agrees that labor law is broken. Under the auspices of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) — which was passed in 1935 at the height of the New Deal and laid the foundation for our current regime of collective bargaining — union membership rates have declined to existentially low levels. Though the weaknesses in [...]
In a recent op-ed for the New York Times, David Brooks offers a characteristic dismissal of socialist politics entitled “I Was Once a Socialist. Then I Saw How It Worked.” As its title suggests, the piece (an adapted version of remarks Brooks gave at the Munk Debates in Toronto last week) is framed as a [...]
The Department of Justice’s Inspector General report of the FBI’s Russian investigation has fully exposed one more dangerous aspect of the steady abuses of national-security surveillance against U.S. citizens on U.S. soil. Edward Snowden’s revelations in 2013 of the national security abuses of the National Security Agency exposed the massive surveillance of U.S. citizens in the expanded campaign against terrorism. [...]
Russiagate, Ukrainegate and impeachment aren’t conspicuously economic issues. But they are, to a large extent, class issues. They are inside-the-beltway dramas about foreign policy arcana that are important to people who see their lots tied in one way or another to the established order. This includes, by degree, those of us who would like to make room for outside-the-beltway concerns [...]
For four years, Jeremy Corbyn was smeared in a relentless and savage campaign of vilification and outrageous slander by the British press, much of it orchestrated by liberal outlets like The Guardian and the New York Times, using a kind of rabid Zionism as truncheon. And so, the dreadful result was predictable: the worst showing of Labour since 1935. But [...]
At one of his permanent fascist-style campaign rallies on December 10, 2019, the day the U.S. House of Representatives rolled out Articles of Impeachment, United States President Donald J. Trump told an adoring Pennsylvania crowd that U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren “has a fresh mouth.” The meaning of this insult was understood by his audience. It More
While the Pentagon’s preeminent mission is to increase lethality of the forces, DARPA notes that its cyborg technology is also used to “augment the loss of functionality from injury or disease,” such as implants controlling the use of prosthetics. Nevertheless, it sees a great need for social research to dispel resistance to cyborgs or robots (synthetic autonomous agents) on ethical [...]
Major questions have been raised about presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg’s work for global consulting firm McKinsey, with even the New York Times editorial board demanding that he release the information. After Buttigieg issued a sparse and vague overview on December 7, questions remain unanswered about his work for McKinsey from 2007 to 2010. My recent More
“A federal appeals court on Wednesday evening stayed a lower-court ruling that former Trump White House counsel Donald McGahn must comply with a House subpoena after the administration appealed, arguing the battle poses great consequences for the balance of power between the legislative and executive branches”. – Washington Post, Nov. 27, 2019 There are three obvious reasons More
The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), released on December 9, signals that the US will continue to render assistance to the coalition led by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates which has killed 100,000 Yemenis, including 12,000 civilians. The bill gives the Pentagon $738 billion. The best reaction came from The More
‘Tis the season! Season of giving. I’ve been receiving numerous emails daily this past month from organizations that sponsored one or more of the hundred or so petitions I signed this past year. “Will you donate to save the wolves?” “Help us to save the arctic!” “Donate now to ensure our water is clean!” “Donate More
Nancy Pelosi should thank Donald Trump for helping her get over a bad case of IAS, Impeachment Aversion Syndrome. We all should. Had she not come down with that malady years ago, after the 2006 midterm election made her Speaker of the House the first time, she could now be looking forward, when the time More
Donald Trump’s 2016 electoral slogan was “Make America Great Again” and it was supposed to foreshadow his promise — if elected – to recapture the promise that the post-WW-II recovery inspired. Well, after being elected and three years in office, Trump is ending the promise that long was the “American Dream.” And this end is coming in More
Mongolian dignitaries made an Eastertime pilgrimage to see the Trumps at Mar-a-Lago. And whoosh…. By September, Donald Trump Jr. had a Mongolian permit to kill one of the world’s few remaining argali sheep. ProPublica uncovered the trip. Reporters Jake Pearson and Anand Tumurtogoo described Mongolia’s trophy hunt permit system as “an insider’s game” and reported that Trump Jr. More
In 1966, during the early years of the America’s war against Vietnam, Congress passed and President Johnson signed into law a Freedom of Information Act. It wasn’t all that great at the time, though. Indeed, it took the courageous act of two men, Daniel Ellsberg and his co-conspirator, Anthony Russo, to steal and then copy More
It has recently been announced that “a confidential trove of government documents obtained by The Washington Post reveals that senior U.S. officials failed to tell the truth about the war in Afghanistan throughout the 18-year campaign, making rosy pronouncements they knew to be false and hiding unmistakable evidence the war had become unwinnable.” Fascinating, of course, but the underlying message More
I occupied Nancy Pelosi’s office and went on hunger strike for 13 days. Still she wouldn’t meet us. Instead she flew off to attend the UN Climate Conference in Spain. That’s not enough. I went 13 days without food. I lost 22.8 pounds, 10.6% of my weight. I had to stand up slowly because otherwise More
I have often wondered if Pakistan would have been a better country and South Asia a more peaceful region if the crisis that led to the creation of Bangladesh in 1971 had been handled differently. As we know that did not happen when Pakistani forces went to war to prevent the secession of East Pakistan. More
Here in the United States, the socio-political climate has never been pristine. Normally, it amounts to maintaining an environment wherein the rich stay rich and all others stay hopeful—except for the segregated and downtrodden. Therefore, it is notable that between the 1960s and early 2000s, the social environment did improve: it got more equalitarian—the social More
“To be a red in the summer of 1919 was worse than being a Hun in the summer of 1917,” reckoned Dos Passos, in Nineteen Nineteen, his novel of the war years. The nation was war weary as the year began, still reeling from the deadly influenza– the “Spanish Flu.” It yearned, and deserved, politicians More
In just over 6,500 words, Time Magazine makes the case for Greta Thunberg being 2019’s Person of the Year. For much of the left, this confirms that she is a corporate tool. Founded in 1923 by Henry Luce, Time was the flagship of the Luce empire. Print newsmagazines have gone into a steep decline with More
It was the head of the Australian Cyber Security Centre who finally admitted before an Australian Parliament committee that she had unilaterally directed and pressured CyberCon to drop myself and an academic research professor (an Australian citizen) from the University of Melbourne as speakers. I viewed the extraordinary pressure exerted by the Australian Cyber Security Centre More
Amazon is one of the largest companies in the world, boasting revenues of more than $230 billion last year. But last month the company sued the US Department of Defense over a paltry potential $10 billion spread over ten years. Amazon lost out to Microsoft in bidding for the Pentagon’s Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (yes, More
Donald Trump is famed for his head-snapping reversals. One day he’s taking troops out of the Middle East; the next he’s sending more in. One day he’s on the verge of an agreement with China on trade; the next he’s tweeting about holding off until after the election. On one thing, however, Trump and his More
The scientific revolution of the seventeenth century (c. 1500-1700) in Europe—beginning with Copernicus (1493-1543) and ending with Isaac Newton (1642-1727)—precipitated a momentous transformative learning moment for humankind. What a revolution that was! Sixteenth century intellectuals in the grip of Aristotle still imagined that nature consisted of four qualities (earth, water, fire and air) and the More
When I lived in the Bronx in 1973 and early 1974, I used to go to a bar up Fordham Road. I was attending Fordham University at the time and it was the custodian who cleaned our dorm hallways and bathrooms who first took me there. He was IRA through and through. So was the More
Here’s the good news: The debate is over. 75% of US citizens believe climate change is human-caused; more than half say we have to do something and fast. Here’s even better news: A new report shows that more than 200 cities and counties, and 12 states have committed to or already achieved 100 percent clean electricity. This means that More
Political rottenness may be bottomless. Consider the following description of a political aspirant for the White House, this person being from the Democratic Party. His “liabilities as a political candidate are so glaringly obvious that it’s easy to dismiss his presidential bid as a vanity project.” The author goes on to describe what can only More
Christmas can be a clarifying time. It clarified that yes, the fervent Mariah Carey, not The Beatles is the best Western music act of all time. On a less serious note, we learn a great deal about the woke postmodern subject this time of year. The postmodern subject may see Karl Marx as just another More
As President Trump’s impeachment unspools, news coverage is buzzing about conspiracy theories and geopolitical rivalries. But at the root of Trump’s effort to extort Ukraine was a simple motive: Trump hoped to influence our elections to preserve his power and that of his associates. That has a lot in common with something closer to home: More
It was a scandal of the highest caliber. On November 23, the Senate of the University of Cape Town (UCT) in South Africa was practically bullied to reverse an earlier decision that called for the academic boycott of Israel. While the story may seem relevant in South Africa’s political and academic contexts, in reality, it More
In an increasingly globalized world, relations between nations can lead to a more general climate of antagonism or to one of cooperation that extends beyond the countries in conflict. Relations between Cuba and the United States are such a case, since the continuous US embargo on Cuba has soured the relations between the US and More
John Bolton might be the one to save us. This, it seems, is where the strange spirit of the Trump impeachment has led. Although we receive regular assurances — from members of Congress and respected journalists — that we are witnessing a sober and sacred process, there’s something troubling, on some level, about the parade More
A lawsuit is taking on the University of California system’s use of the SAT and ACT standardized tests in admissions. The suit claims the tests are “deeply biased and provide no meaningful information about a student’s ability to succeed.” As a sociologist who’s looked at the research, I agree the tests are biased. For instance, More
From three different vectors, the oligarchy is on the march to capture the Democratic presidential nomination. Pete Buttigieg has made big gains. A timeworn ally of corporate power, Joe Biden, is on a campaign for his last hurrah. And Michael Bloomberg is swooping down from plutocratic heights. Those three men are a team of rivals More
Comparing Howard Zinn and Yogi Berra in the same sentence probably leaves most on the left with their mouths wide open. But not so with baby boomers still on the left, and others who cling to sanity near the ninth circle of hell. Historian and Professor Howard Zinn and the great Yankees catcher Yogi Berra More
In what is currently a four-way race for the Democratic nomination – featuring Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Pete Buttigieg – the recent war of words between Warren and Buttigieg has done little for them. But it has highlighted contrasts with Bernie Sanders. As Sen. Warren and “Mayor Pete” heatedly question each other’s More
The war in Afghanistan, America’s longest, has cost about 2,300 US lives, over 20,000 wounded, and about $1 trillion. Now, thanks to the persistence of the Washington Post, we have an abundance of interviews which, like the Pentagon Papers, reveal the enormous wastefulness, ignorance, and deceit that make Afghanistan, like Vietnam, a chapter in the More
I find surprising the detailed manner in which history repeats itself. The result of the landslide described here seems to have been replicated in the USA of our times in ways that all of us witness each day. The Germany of say 1939 seems like the blueprint for the US role in the world of More
The lurch to the right by the entire US political establishment over the last twenty years has been both significant and alarming. I was recently reminded of how bad things have gotten by the 20th anniversary of the Battle of Seattle, an event that sparked a brief period of radical resistance in the US, and More
After a much contested election process, the largest union of journalists in North America has chosen a 32-year old reporter at the Los Angeles Times to be its new leader, in the U.S. and Canada. Jon Schleuss helped win union recognition and a historic first contract at The Times (a non-union paper for 136 years) before ousting NewsGuild President More
For many years, Giovanna De La Rosa enjoyed working at Toys ‘R’ Us — especially during the holiday shopping season. “I loved bringing joy to families and to children,” she shared at a recent congressional hearing. “I watched so many of the local kids grow up over the years while shopping in our store.” De More
You may have heard about the Trump administration’s latest attack on very poor Americans: a punitive new restriction that will cut SNAP benefits for 688,000 people. SNAP, formerly known as food stamps, is our country’s most popular and effective nutrition assistance program. Growing up, my family got food stamps — and oh, I hated it. More
Roger Hallam is of course right in his short book, Common Sense for the 21st Century: Only Nonviolent Rebellion Can Now Stop Climate Breakdown and Social Collapse. While some portion of humanity heaps scorn on the victims of the fossil fuel propaganda who deny climate science, only a much smaller portion points out the equally delusional More
The ongoing impeachment of one Donald J. Trump is bullshit. There, I said it and I’ll say it again just to make sure you heard me right. This impeachment is fucking bullshit, and I’m tired of pretending otherwise. I don’t care if this makes me a bad leftist or a bad libertarian or whatever, its More
“If it works, why do you need to do it 183 times?” – Senator Dianne Feinstein In 1953, they deposed Iran’s democratically elected prime minister Mohammad Mossadiq, with the help of the British. In the 60s, they were there at the Gulf of Tonkin, false flagging the North Vietnamese; and there pushing exiles onto the More
Seasons Beatings! ‘Tis the Krampusnacht time again, when Krampus, the hornèd, horny Xmas devil of rich medieval Alpine folklore and cheap Hollywood horror movies, roams the earth, wreaking hornèd, horny havoc upon the “naughty.” Bad Santa Krampus is the dark side of jolly old Saint Nick. He also looks a lot like Pan, the ancient More
In shadowed yards he lingers where his children used to play – Vachel Lindsay The perpetually red, glaring figure of Coach Bobby Knight was a kind of weed in the Clinton era that combined a Popeye Doyle ‘70s with contemporary Wall Street Nasty. Strutting the college basketball court, hurling chairs, and ‘getting results’ while ratcheting More
At the beginning of August I drove from the Oregon Coast to the middle of New York State mostly on U. S. Highways and state and county roads. I spent the second night of the trip in Idaho Falls at a cheap motel with a view of the Mormon Temple just across the roaring Snake More
Dollar Store There’s a dollar store on Broadway Near the Marcy stop They sell mylar balloons — All sorts of cartoon characters Emblazon these: The sentient cheese The mice of the moon The helium tank Its nozzle like a rocket Stands at attention, in the corner, Waiting to release At times the guy in charge More
Tonight’s results around the country, but especially in the heartlands, are really bad for our movement. After a spirited campaign by thousands of activists over many weeks, this will be a tough pill to swallow. But the most important ramifications fall to those outside the party. Another five years of the Conservatives will mean more [...]
If the exit polls are right, the British general election result is simply terrible. In England, Labour has lost as many as eighty seats directly to the Tories. North of the border, both have shed seats to the Scottish Nationalists, set to win almost every constituency. But it won’t be anywhere near enough to stop [...]
This article first appeared on Electronic Intifada.
Just days after U.S. President Donald Trump spewed vicious anti-Semitic rhetoric, Israel lobby groups are celebrating his executive order taking aim at supporters of Palestinian rights.
Israel and its most extreme defenders are not bothered by the president’s anti-Jewish rhetoric as long as it comes wrapped in unquestioning support for Israel.
Trump’s order, [...]
In 2016 Bernie Sanders became the first Jewish American to win a major party presidential primary election (New Hampshire). If he wins the Democratic presidential nomination next year, he will be the first Jew in US history to do so. If he wins the general election — well, you get the idea. Sanders prefers to [...]
Few people would trust Donald Trump to protect Jews from a rise in antisemitism. In the United States alone, there were more than a hundred cases of physical attacks, arson, vandalism, and threats in 2018, including last October’s assault in Pittsburgh that left eleven Jews dead at the Tree of Life synagogue. Tuesday’s shooting at a [...]
“I think I’d make a good candidate.” It had been a little over a week since Bernie Sanders decided to run for mayor of Burlington. Now, with these seven words, he was trying to ward off a rival challenger. The man he was trying to persuade was Greg Guma, fellow left-wing activist and journalist whose [...]
A few weeks ago, I made my way through Soldiers to Citizens, a 2005 book by the political scientist Suzanne Mettler. Ostensibly a history of the GI Bill, the work is part of a burgeoning scholarly field studying “policy feedback” — a somnolent name for a groundbreaking set of ideas. The school’s key insight is [...]
In a monumental turn of events, the 2017 general election saw Canterbury elect Labour’s Rosie Duffield as its MP with a majority of 187, ending almost two centuries of Conservative and Conservative-allied rule. The campaign to hold the seat in 2019 has been built on the appeal of Duffield’s pro-Remain stance to a constituency that [...] This British general election campaign has been something of a trudge. If in 2017 the final days were marked by optimism for Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour, this time around, Brexit and a wider political fatigue have rather dulled the mood. Yet there are still issues that could weigh in the Left’s favor — most notably controversies [...]
It is hardly surprising to see Middle Eastern countries at the bottom of the World Press Freedom Index, as the worst violators of freedom of the press. But equally alarming is the complete polarization of public opinion as a result of self-serving media and, bankrolled by rich Arab countries, whose only goal is to serve More
Pharma is one of the public’s most detested industries. But despite its low approval ratings and a plethora of government lawsuits, Pharma continues to thrive. Here are some of the tricks up its sleeve that enable its continued profiteering. 1. Astroturf Patients Pharma promotes fake patient advocacy groups to lobby for its interests. These front More
When anti-Zionists discuss the Middle East, the topic of Israel’s existence rarely arises. It’s almost exclusively a pro-Israel talking point. We’re focused on national liberation, on surviving repression, on strategies of resistance, on recovering subjugated histories, on the complex (and sometimes touchy) relationships among an Indigenous population disaggregated by decades of aggression. That a colonial state—or any state, really—possesses no [...]
Last month, The Washington Post reported on the results of a poll it conducted with the Kaiser Family Foundation earlier this year. The poll had remarkable finding: nearly half — 46 percent — of American adults believe the U.S. needs to “drastically reduce” fossil fuel use in the near future to address the climate crisis, while another 41 More
The hammer of impeachment is finally falling on Donald Trump’s occupancy of the White House. For many, it’s taken far too long to get to the point where an obviously corrupt individual with a very long record of shady dealings, illicit financial transactions and bankruptcies now faces a process in which he has no control. More
“In ten years or so, we’ll leak the truth,” the Dead Kennedys sang. “But by then it’s only so much paper.” But it might just score you a Pulitzer Prize. Award bait and bragging rights are no doubt the principal goals of The Washington Post’s self-congratulatory data dump, “The Afghanistan Papers.” As the headline implies, More
The Mohawk Valley Formula, the propaganda model of “scientific strikebreaking” originated in 1937. Since that time, forms of non-violent worker control have been updated into much more sophisticated measures of strike-breaking. At this stage in American history, strike breaking is a major profession and by destroying unions and atomizing people, the business-run class war continues More
A nonprofit employer is not necessarily a better boss than a profit-making one. That sad truth is reinforced by the experience of some 2,200 nurses at Albany Medical Center, who have been fighting for a contract since April 2018, when they voted for union representation. Even that union recognition struggle proved exceptionally difficult. The management More
On Friday, December 1, two protest marches met in central London in what felt like a magical moment. A few thousand striking university lecturers had just reached the British Parliament at Westminster after marching from the Bloomsbury neighbourhood, when close to a thousand Extinction Rebellion teenagers came pouring down a parallel street and the two protests united. The More
How to live a more sustainable life? This question generates a lot of debate that is focused on what individuals can do in order to address problems like climate change. For example, people are encouraged to shop locally, to buy organic food, to install home insulation, or to cycle more often. But how effective is individual More
Back in 2003, in a top-secret international phone call, President George W. Bush urged French President Jacques Chirac to join America in invading Iraq on grounds that Christian nations must thwart the Satanic forces of Gog and Magog. Chirac was baffled by such crackpottery. A few French newspapers wrote derisive sneers about the born-again U.S. More
I’ve always wanted to find out where the guns came from. Who were the ‘willing accomplices’ to the wars I witnessed? In 1996, I traced to its Boeing makers in the deep south of the US a missile fired by the Israelis at a Lebanese ambulance. It killed two women and four children. I even More
Peace, Good Will and Joy on Earth at Christmas! But what does that mean for Palestine and Palestinians? Every year, on the 11th day of the 11th hour of the 11th month, the human spirit pauses to pay tribute to world peace, good will and joy towards all and commemorate that dark moment in modern More
The recent commentary by Mark Nelson in the San Francisco Chronicle, who works for the Ag industry, suggesting that grazing by goats and other livestock can help reduce wildfire losses in California deserves qualification. As a landscape response to large fires, grazing is no solution. In many ecosystems, particularly in the parts of the state More
This election campaign has seen an astonishing display of the power of the resurgent British left. Thousands of activists have gone out on the doorstep, mobilised by Momentum and joined by parliamentarians, outriders and even some celebrities in an immensely impressive ground game. If the campaign was just a few weeks longer, we would end [...] 
In a world of competing narratives serving competing interests, there’s always a temptation to gravitate to the political centre ground, the would-be midpoint between two apparent extremes, with its aura of moderation, reasonableness and realism. After all, isn’t the truth supposed to be ‘somewhere in the middle’, a composite of competing claims? The simple answer [...] 
A Conservative party candidate is facing questions over whether she sought to profit from Britain’s hunger crisis with an app that charged food banks hundreds of pounds to promote lists of items they need from donors. Miriam Cates, who is standing in the marginal Penistone and Stocksbridge constituency in South Yorkshire, launched the Foodbank app [...] In the wake of the November 10 coup in Bolivia that removed President Evo Morales and installed a right-wing government led by Jeanine Áñez, the first thing many mainstream commentators debated was whether what had just happened was actually a coup. According to the putsch-supporting New York Times editorial board, Morales’s impressive economic record had [...]
Last Saturday, hundreds of people seeking asylum hit the streets to fight for their rights in rallies in Sydney and Melbourne. They are part of a movement that emerged in the middle of this year and has taken almost everyone by surprise. In Australia, the campaign against the internationally renowned cruelty of our border regime [...]
Last time I wrote about Mayor Pete Buttigieg here, I analyzed him as a phenomenon (as well as a phenom), a symptom of an upper-middle-class preoccupation with achievement and narrowly defined “smarts.” I went easy on his brief “career” and on his politics. Now that he’s a more of a significant player, it’s time to [...]
For the past several years, Scotland has been stuck in a constitutional quagmire over the question of independence. 2014’s referendum pitted an optimistic ‘yes’ campaign in favour of independence against a ‘no’ campaign dubbed “Project Fear”. It is little wonder that young people by-and-large got behind the “yes” campaign, galvanised by new opportunities to reshape [...] It was 1979 and Bernie Sanders was, as he so often would be for the next forty years, in the middle of a fight. But the target of his ire was, uncharacteristically, not a major corporation or one of its political allies — it was the state’s public broadcaster. The thirty-eight-year-old Sanders had seemed to [...]
“Are you here for the quilting group or the election?” asks an elderly lady on the gate of a church in a West Sussex seaside town. So begins my bizarre night at the only political event being held in the constituency of Bognor Regis and Littlehampton. I’m here to see each of the six parliamentary [...] Boris Johnson is a pathological liar. This has been known for decades. He was elected Conservative Party leader and appointed prime minister in spite of this fact. He has been sacked numerous times for lying: by the Conservative Party for lying about an adulterous affair to then–party leader Michael Howard, and by the Times for [...]
A tweet by someone calling themselves “gnocchi mane” recently went viral, going like this: Me when Bernie is president: Sorry can’t come into work too busy gaming. My boss: That’s okay you may take a gaming sabbatical as the law allows. Me: Fuck you. My boss: I’m sorry sir. Those of us who’ve had our [...]
Noam Chomsky recently celebrated his 91st birthday. As an homage to Noam, I spent the day with one of his lesser-known books—The Backroom Boys (1973). The book is made up of two spectacular essays, the first a close reading of the Pentagon Papers. To read this book alongside the trove of documents released by the U.S. government as part of [...]
I am in Sydney, having just spent 6 days in Brisbane to the north. The area around, and to the south of, Sydney has been engulfed by extensive wildfires which have been burning since August. This includes 20% of the Blue Mountains world heritage area. According to The New York Times, in the middle of More
It’s not news that Jeremy Corbyn isn’t a popular figure. It’s also not news that Jeremy Corbyn’s policies are hugely popular with the British public. Why should the first of these appear to matter more than the second? The answer, of course lies in something that we’ve known for a long time. The British press More
“It is the responsibility of the patriot to protect his country from its government.” – Thomas Paine While Congress subjects the nation to its impeachment-flavored brand of bread-and-circus politics, our civil liberties continue to die a slow, painful death by a thousand cuts. Case in point: while Americans have been fixated on the carefully orchestrated More
In some ways, it is a very British thing: fair play is expected; the reasonable person with all faculties intact, going about the business of living and voting. Little thought is given to the fact that these assumptions are as much constructions, façades of rhetorical merit rather than reality. Voters need not be reasonable, and More
Sure, impeach Trump for legitimate reasons explicitly stated in the Constitution. But let’s be honest that an 18th century document did not include slaveholding among high crimes against humanity, and certainly has no specific clauses covering modern war crimes and state terrorism. The New York Times has a recent article (“Republican Tactic: Using Impeachment Hearings More
The federal government of India has yet to realize its obligations toward minorities. India’s progress will be greatly hindered unless the federal government as well as the majority community assure minorities that their honor, liberty, and rights will be fully protected. In a diverse country, it is not only for the majority community to approve More
I don’t keep count, but I see lots of headlines like this one from The Hill, dated December 5: “Congress races to beat deadline on shutdown.” Reporters Jordain Carney and Niv Elis tell us that “Congress is racing the clock” and working on a “tight time frame” to pass yet another stopgap spending measure (“continuing More
In a recent New York Times’ column, Thomas Edsall defends progressives against Attorney General William Barr and other social conservatives who charge them with wanton destruction of the family. Edsall is right to call out Barr and others for “marketing apocalyptic hogwash” to get Trump reelected, but his argument concedes too much to social conservatives. More
“The hostility or fear against WikiLeaks that resides in these arguments [about whether to publish or not] comes from a philosophy that these things should be kept between the people in question and not revealed, so as not to disturb smooth diplomacy.” The WikiLeaks shock has retaught us a basic principle of journalism, he adds. More
Just before this year’s global climate summit opened in Madrid recently, researchers announced that emissions of carbon dioxide from fossil fuels will hit a record high in 2019. Although the 0.6 percent rate of growth is less than last year’s 2.1 percent, the total which must be cut to prevent the most catastrophic and irreversible More
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is the only 2020 presidential hopeful who has pledged to vote against—and loudly denounced—the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for 2020, a $738 billion military spending bill that would mark a $22 billion increase over last year. The other frontrunner in the Senate, Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), serves on the Senate Armed Services Committee, which is [...]
As the Democratic caucuses and primaries hurtle ever closer, Democratic centrists ranging from billionaire Michael Bloomberg to former President Barack Obama are waging a frantic war to stifle more progressive candidates, i.e. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.
In the name of “unifying” to defeat Trump, this centrist deception falsely insists that only a moderate can bring voters together and win in [...]
In the closing days of the election campaign, Labour’s anxieties have switched from remain-leaning Liberal Democrat marginals to ordinarily safe seats in the midlands and north, so many of which voted to leave the EU – often overwhelmingly so. These seats supposedly constitute Labour’s English ‘heartland’, as the cliché goes. It’s an association that isn’t [...] 
“Not everyone is born equal though, are they?” In the wake of Labour’s radical commitment to educational equality, I anticipated I’d have easier gigs than representing the party at a hustings in a private school. To be fair, most of the audience was eager to hear what all the candidates had to say. But some, [...] It’s Tuesday, so you know what that means: time to debunk the latest litany of smears from Hillary Clinton. In last week’s interview with Howard Stern, Clinton took part in her trademark combination of score-settling and excuse-making over her inept 2016 presidential campaign that brought the world President Donald Trump. Clinton’s scorn was directed, as [...]
Labour’s vision for the UK features a dramatic shift of power away from a corporate elite who, at present, seem to have more power than our own government. Jeremy Corbyn has railed against corporations that play by their own rules, and Labour hopes to finance a large percentage of its spending commitments by tackling the [...] This year marks the one hundredth anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party USA (CP). The party became, from at least the early 1930s until the 1950s, the preeminent left group in the country, and one with no significant rivals. It was during this period that Communists led the fight for racial equality, and [...]
At 9 p.m. on October 27, the city of Buenos Aires erupted in celebrations. For the many Argentines who had suffered under the last four years of Mauricio Macri’s neoliberal government, it was time to rejoice: Alberto Fernández — lawyer, university professor, former cabinet chief for Néstor Kirchner, and self-described “leftist liberal”— had won the [...]
For years, under the glitzy brand of ‘New Labour’ and its facile slogans of ‘modernisation’, the British Labour Party had been moving to the right. Encouraging people to get ‘filthy rich’, systematically reducing corporation tax, courting powerful press barons like Rupert Murdoch and committing to the type of bellicose foreign policy which would facilitate the death of hundreds of thousands [...]
Donald Trump’s narcissistic, authoritarian instincts and the man’s clear admiration of Vladimir Putin’s gangster-capitalist leadership style makes me think of archetypal killers. During his campaign for president he spoke often of killing; he would anonymously refer to some of his business friends as “real killers,” which was meant as a compliment on their skills and effectiveness. There was the remark [...]
The Pentagon cannot be pleased with the Washington Post. That’s because the Post has just disclosed a mountain of previously secret documentary evidence within the military showing that the Pentagon has been intentionally lying for years about the “progress” that it was making with its forever war in Afghanistan. While the Pentagon has been publicly More
In this new century, there are a daunting number of important issues which are to be confronted if we are to progress as a nation. Each must be addressed thoroughly and energetically. But in order to accomplish the collective goals of our society, we must first address how we deal with issues. We must reexamine [...]
Congress’s first round of impeachment hearings wound up largely focused on whether President Trump had offered a quid pro quo for receiving a favor from Ukraine, i.e. Trump would release held up military aid and other signs of US support only after Ukraine investigated a particular company that employed Joe Biden’s son, and the former More
To impeach or not to impeach. A lot of decent voters don’t know what to think. Kansas is no exception, but Kansas has a number of exceptional role models for our troubled times, leaders who demonstrated that it’s okay to change one’s mind in politics. In fact, it’s a mark of true character. Changing Sides: Emporia’s More
The two-week marathon of the annual UN climate conference is underway in Madrid, and the world’s expectations have perhaps never been lower. The Amazon is burning and unprecedented storms are raging worldwide, but the world’s climate diplomats are still mostly talking business-as-usual. Never mind that this year’s 25th Conference of Parties (COP) to the UN More
The Monday, December 9th hearings were another repetition of the facts by Democrats and the ignoring of them by the trumpists. The hearings began with a so-called silent protest by the GOP. Despite this misappropriation of a popular tactic by the right wing, one has to admit it’s nice when they keep their mouths shut. More
The US House of Representatives marked a milestone on November 6, 2019, as it decided to report out articles of impeachment on Trump. But there’s a bigger picture to consider. The impeachment represents a new stage in the political ‘food fight’ between the two wings of the political-economic elite in the USA. It also represents More
China’s experiment with socialism was chaotic and failed to produce the much-desired transition to development and prosperity. When the country broke with socialism and cautiously ventured into market-led development in the countryside in the late 1970s, China was one of most equal societies on earth. It was also quite poor, with over 30 percent of More
Summit anniversaries are not usually this abysmally interesting. While those paying visits to Watford, England on the occasion of the seventieth anniversary of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation are supposedly signatories to the same agreement, a casual glance would have suggested otherwise. This was a show of some bickering. France, never the most comfortable member, More
My personal impression of Canada is that of a tattered nation where social cohesiveness based on equality of all citizens in the eyes of the law and within our political system, and with a common-good agenda, has been in continuous decline since the post war years of the 1950’s. The sheer genius of universal health More
Hope is the fuel upon which working-class movements for social change draw their core strength. But hope divorced from solid organizing leads no-where. So, if we are to continue to propel our class forward it is vital that we learn the full lessons of how our sweetest victories are seized from the hands of our More
One of the enduring myths connected to the Vietnam War is that the U.S. military could have won the war if the politicians and protestors back in Washington didn’t somehow handicap the generals. When George H. W. Bush launched the first Gulf War in 1990, for instance, he said that “this will not be another More
Many wilderness advocates would be surprised to learn that some well-known conservation organizations that purport to protect wild nature, actually facilitate the destruction of wild nature. Specifically, the Greater Yellowstone Coalition, The Wilderness Society and the Montana Wilderness Association, via the “Gallatin Forest Partnership” (GFP), support mechanized transportation and resource extraction for many of the More
It’s midday outside a taxi office in Cleckheaton, West Yorkshire, and a man who is still out from the night before is talking about politics. The temperature hovers around five degrees and he’s wearing a grey t-shirt and washed out jeans. He looks jaded. “I’m not fucking voting, there’s no point.” The man, who doesn’t [...] “To be a red in the summer of 1919 was worse than being a Hun in the summer of 1917,” wrote John Dos Passos in 1919, his novel of the war years. The nation was war-weary as the year began, still reeling from the deadly influenza — the “Spanish flu.” It yearned and deserved “normalcy,” [...]
To live in the United States as a person with disabilities is to encounter daily acts of abuse and oppression. Working disabled people can legally be paid less than $1 an hour under federal law, an appalling exemption to already inadequate minimum-wage standards. Disabled people on Social Security Income (SSI) must report any income, including [...]
When Jeremy Corbyn launched the Labour manifesto in Birmingham last month, he referred to it as “a manifesto of hope.” If you live in the UK in 2019, and earn less than, say . . . £80k a year, then hope must feel in short supply. A decade of Tory rule has seen a fall in living [...]
This election campaign has underlined critical questions about how polling works, and whether the statistical models that underpin it are still able to accurately predict electoral behaviour. If our polling methods work, Labour is heading for a defeat of massive proportions on 12 December. There is, however, increasing evidence that the way in which polling is [...] Over the weekend, Anu Partanen and Trevor Corson published a piece in the New York Times that argues Finland is actually a “capitalist paradise.” The article is a very familiar one to those who keep track of this debate. It notes that Finland has high taxes and a generous welfare state, but then says that [...]
The working-class port city of Marseille has always had something of an independent streak — and today, that extends to politics. Galvanized by fears of being crowded out by the competition, left-wing activists in this age-old melting pot on the shores of the Mediterranean are setting aside their differences — and working together. Ahead of [...]
For months, the names of Michael Horowitz and John Durham have figured in the pounding rhythms of right-wing media in which a heroically afflicted president faces down his perfidious enemies. A steady drumbeat of reports from Fox News, echoed by President Trump and Republican loyalists in Congress, proclaimed these two obscure Justice Department officials would get to the bottom of [...]
Have you noticed? From Hong Kong to Baghdad, Paris to Tehran, 2019 is shaping up to be, as the New York Times dubbed it, “the year of the protest.” Violent—and often deadly—anti-government protests are breaking out throughout the world in an unprecedented fashion, in rich countries as well as poor, as people everywhere are expressing their anger at corrupt, inefficient, [...]
Sunday, Nov. 24, I watched some white media women led by Stephanie Ruhle, a former Bloomberg employee, gush all over Bloomberg’s announcement that he was running for president. When the interviewer asked about Bloomberg’s condoning Stop and Frisk, Ms. Ruhle said that it brought down the crime rate. She probably had black and Latinx men in mind, whom bourgeois feminists [...]
News item: Three rightwing Latin American governments have forced out Cuban doctors working in their countries. Over 8000 of them departed from Brazil in late 2018 and 382 doctors left Ecuador in mid-November, 2019. Some 700 Cuban doctors exited Bolivia after the coup there on November 10. Brazilian President Bolsonaro alleged that Cuban doctors were More
Airedales to deter grizzly bears from coming into camp? This was one of several novel recommendations made at a recent meeting of Yellowstone grizzly bear managers in Cody, Wyoming, during a lively brainstorming session about ways to reduce human-bear conflicts. Another was establishing an academy where citizens could learn from each other by exchanging stories More
On November 29, FBI agents arrested hacker and cryptocurrency developer Virgil Griffith. His alleged crime: Talking. Yes, really. The FBI alleges that Griffith “participated in discussions regarding using cryptocurrency technologies to evade sanctions and launder money.” Griffith, a US citizen who lives in Singapore, gave a talk at conference on blockchain technology in April. Because More
A succession of social upheavals over the last decade has radically realigned political power throughout the world. As a result of these tectonic shifts, what had once been on the furthest fringes of the right has now moved toward the center while the left has been pushed to the margins. “Things fall apart; the centre More
Will the Democrats move to impeach Trump for a narrow brace of violations and accept that the Senate Republicans will keep this outlaw in the White House? Or will they present the Senate with the President’s many proven impeachable offenses, thereby requiring the Senate Republicans, before live national television, in a public trial to defend More
Sri Lanka is a role model for the dictum of diplomacy being the extension of a country’s national policies. Sri Lanka’s performance must be commended since it also grapples with an unresolved nationality question in which its big neighbor India has historically staked claim as stakeholder, a claim that Sri Lanka cannot brusquely repudiate due More
Mohamed Ali infuriates Field Marshal President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt. His waspish, cruel, outrageously funny, solemnly pedantic videos and social media messages transmitted from his self-exile in Spain, mocking the man who overthrew Egypt’s first elected president, even brought demonstrators back on to the streets of Cairo in September. But the 45-year-old actor and More
Recently, I was in Homer, Alaska, to talk about my book The End of Ice. Seconds after I had thanked those who brought me to the small University of Alaska campus there, overwhelmed with some mix of sadness, love, and grief about my adopted state — and the planet generally — I wept. I tried More
State, federal and tribal representatives voted again to slaughter 600-900 Yellowstone Park bison this winter. The agencies and tribes use the less offensive sounding euphemism “cull”. But let’s be honest, what happens is nothing more than butchery done to appease the livestock industry. It is shameful that these agencies and tribes legitimize the annual butchery More
In the United States there was a time in the previous century when a political campaign was waged against “premature antifascists,” namely against members of the socialist left who warned and fought against fascism well before World War II. In the wake of that war, the leading career politicians also worked within a corporate consensus More
Hundreds of letters are pouring into the office of Polish Minister of Health, Lukaz Szumowski, from Polish citizens and people all over the world, responding to Mr Szumowski’s proposition to exponentially raise the officially recognized limit for cell phone emissions. Under the proposed change, new emission levels will be aligned with the introduction of 5G More
The NYT had an article that focused on Buchanan County, Virginia as an example of a left behind area in the United States. The county’s economy had centered on coal. While the discussion implies that its downturn is a recent story, the data presented in the piece shows that most of the decline occurred more More
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, More
Uber, that most ethical of ride-hailing companies, is in hot water once again. This time it isn’t for slashing drivers’ pay so low they can barely survive or having an institutionalized culture of sexism — I’m sure its PR department only wishes it could throw out the canned lines it has prepared for such situations. [...]
On November 21, hundreds of thousands of Colombians poured into the streets all over the country. A diverse coalition including labor unions, indigenous organizations, the student movement, and LGBT activist groups had called for a paro nacional, a general strike, in the country. The outpouring of citizens defied all expectations. The streets of the main [...]
There’s no doubting the importance of Friday’s strikes in France. The actions on December 5 provided a powerful rebuke to Emmanuel Macron’s assault on pensions — and showed that millions of people are prepared to resist the planned dismantling of France’s welfare state. Reflected in local mobilizations in hundreds of towns and cities across France, [...]
As Britain faces a crucial general election, its second in two years, one of its most venerable institutions has been busy demolishing what’s left of its reputation. The BBC has long been admired internationally for its well-resourced drama and documentary programs, and respected for the professionalism of its journalism. But its hollowing out by a [...]
Every marathon ends in a sprint. The result of this election will be the culmination not of the six weeks that preceded it, or even the three years since the EU referendum, but the decades of disenchantment and austerity that form its real backdrop. And yet, to win from behind, Labour will have to pull [...] 
Earlier this week, Extinction Rebellion (XR) activists protested against the Labour party by blocking the party’s battle bus. This latest action follows the protests – including hunger strikes – which have been taking place at Labour’s headquarters. XR have also targeted the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, stating that “party politics is not fit to address [...] Late last August, prominent FARC commanders Iván Márquez and Jesús Santrich declared that they would be taking up arms against the Colombian state once again. The announcement signified a partial breakdown of the 2016 peace agreement which was meant to mark the end of the decades-long conflict. The vocal cynics within Colombia’s hawkish right wing [...]
The National Health Service is at risk of being eroded and privatized if Boris Johnson and Donald Trump get their way. Opening a service already underfunded and riven with privatization to a further round of exploitation by the vultures of the US pharmaceutical industry could really be the moment that the NHS as its been known [...]
The decommodification of health insurance was always an anomaly in Elizabeth Warren’s liberal reform agenda. After all, Warren famously called herself a “capitalist to my bones.” But after months of cryptic rhetoric, she has reconciled this inconsistency with a health care plan that won’t get us closer to achieving Medicare for All. Warren’s recently unveiled [...]
I work with some of the most vulnerable people in our society and have done for some time. These women come from every race, religion, walk of life and economic status, united only in their experiences of abuse. There is no ‘face’ to gender-based violence because it truly does impact everyone. With one in four [...] Scott Morrison’s Pentecostal faith claims to channel the religion of Christ’s time, in which God’s presence was immediately felt and people spoke in tongues. Combining a postmodern obsession for feeling with the dogmatism of prosperity gospel, it is a completely unselfconscious anachronism. This self-centered admixture can sanction any evil. On December 4, it did. Morrison’s [...]
There are two essential facts that every single Labour supporter must grasp about the few days until the election: 1. In 2017, more than one third of all Labour voters only made up their minds to vote Labour in the last week of the campaign. 2. In 2017, face-to-face conversations were second only to the [...] Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell rammed through eight of President Donald Trump's lifetime judicial picks in just three days this week, accelerating the far-right court takeover that Vox's David Roberts warned is "absolutely going to hamstring efforts to make the U.S. into a responsible, civilized country, for as long as we live."
The latest slew of confirmations, according to Bloomberg's Sahil Kapur, [...]
Yesterday, an eighty-three-year-old retired farmer named Merle Gorman addressed Joe Biden at a New Hampton, Iowa campaign event. Gorman rightly questioned his son Hunter’s qualifications for a lucrative post he once held on the board of a Ukrainian gas company, a job which saw him compensated up to $50,000 some months. (Though Gorman more dubiously [...]
“Breathe!” The contemporary white-collar worker is constantly exhorted. Capitalism drives us crazy and makes us sick. But whatever the malady — anxiety, hypertension, or trouble focusing at work — “mindfulness” is touted as the cure. On November 21, at McNally Jackson’s bookstore in Manhattan’s South Street Seaport, Jacobin’s Liza Featherstone talked with Ron Purser, a [...]
On September 22, a small group of civil activists in Iraq called for a protest on October 1. They had no idea the kind of rebellion they would spark. The call echoed through various social media platforms, in part inspired by Egyptian businessman Mohamed Ali’s plea for an uprising against Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s corrupt dictatorship. [...]
The electoral dynamics in Scotland are very different from those in the rest of the UK, and its 59 seats are often decisive in a general election. 2019 will be no different. With the historical infallibility of Labour support in Scotland having long since melted away, this election will hinge on whether Jeremy Corbyn can [...] The upcoming UK general election was billed as the Brexit election, though it’s turning out to be fought over a much wider range of policy issues than expected, including the NHS, welfare, the environment, education, tuition fees, and taxation. Much of this is thanks to Labour’s grassroots campaigning machine, which has brought issues into the [...]
Jeremy Corbyn announced on Tuesday that, under a Labour government, schoolchildren would be taught about the injustice and violence of the British Empire. Labour also promised to promote a “new internationalism” and a progressive foreign policy, as outlined in its recent manifesto. In response, the Conservatives claimed it was “staggering” to hear Labour “lecture people” [...]
Impeachment is the most under-utilized, but politically potent check on executive power in the Constitution. It’s there for a reason and the authors of our organizational parchment surely envisioned it being used more frequently than once every 60 years. Indeed, impeachment may well be the only defense we have against the rising authoritarian powers of a presidency which seeks to [...]
I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can…Its brutality, its futility, its stupidity. – Dwight Eisenhower. For the first time in decades, passage of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) has been delayed due to disagreements between Democrats and Republicans. The disagreements at the center of the delay in Congress are, as usual, partisan in nature: funding for the President’s border wall More
In the long-running nightmare of the Syrian civil war, the attack at Douma was a déjà vu atrocity with big consequences in Washington. On April 7, 2018, a working-class neighborhood in greater Damascus suffered a chemical attack that killed at least 43 people. Six days later, President Trump ordered a cruise missile attack on a More
Kamala Harris is out. This makes me almost sad; she was a snarky debater and, for a “moderate,” she wasn’t all that bad. Perhaps her managers ought to have stressed that point: “Better Than Booker” would have been a fine slogan for her to run on. Now, with Harris gone, it falls to that dreadful Obama wannabe to take the lead [...]
I never cease to be amused by the brazen hypocrisy of the dismal, dollar-drenched Goldman Sachs-Citigroup-JP Morgan Chase-Council on Foreign Relations Democrats. Yesterday morning, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Net Worth: $101 million, D-CA) blessed the drafting of Articles of Impeachment against the demented fascist oligarch Donald Trump. She gave the nod in a short oration that cited the Declaration of [...]
