Kategori: Engelske
Argentina’s long history of struggle for legal abortion
Armies of the Right – We all know who the real thieves of the election are.
The Laura Flanders Show: Countering the Coup, From the Grassroots Up
To Stop the Far Right, Biden Must Fight for the Average American
The last time a Democratic president took over from a Republican, millions of Americans were soaring on the wings of Barack Obama’s vague but palpably hopeful rhetoric, believing that substantive transformations in American life were just around the corner. Nobody has any illusions about such transformations today as Joe Biden enters the White House. The [...] Coronavirus Is an Occupational Disease That Spreads at Work
What is the one setting that accounts for most coronavirus transmission in the United States? Many governors believe they have the answer to this question. In countless press conferences and public statements, they claim that transmission primarily happens at social gatherings with friends and family. The risk is particularly high, according to these political leaders, [...]
Donald Trump, the Pantomime President
Donald J Trump’s tale is a tale of epochs and generations, about dilapidated tenement housing and star-spangled casino palaces, about race hate and glossy Forbes spreads, about bankruptcy on route to the presidential suite. Above all, it is about the dirty trails which money leaves in its wake, the grime which lives behind wealth’s golden, glittering More
The Shipwreck of a Democracy: Trump and the Aftermath
Make no mistake, this was not an accident. No unforeseen iceberg, sudden change in weather, or misfire in the engine. Yes, there were errors in the original design—poor construction, oversights, blind spots—which made the ship vulnerable, despite the unrelenting claims of its greatness. So yes, we did know the danger as we sailed along, even admitted to some level of [...]
Government Mistakes Provided the Breeding Ground for the Mutant Virus, Which it is Now Using as an Alibi for Its Failures
The coastal town of Margate in east Kent is the place where the fast-spreading variant of Covid-19 first mutated before it swept through the rest of Britain. Scientists identified Kent last month as the county where the mutant virus developed, but a source with knowledge of research into its origins tells me that the earliest case of a person being [...]
Trump May be on Trial, But the System that Produced Him will be Acquitted
It is a fitting end to four years of Donald Trump in the White House. On one side, Trump’s endless stoking of political grievances – and claims that November’s presidential election was “stolen” from him – spilled over last week into a mob storming the US Capitol. They did so in the forlorn hope of More
By ‘Force and Fraud’: Is This the End of the US Democracy Doctrine?
In an interview with the British newspaper, The Times, in 2015, former US Defense Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, vehemently denied that exporting democracy to Iraq was the main motive behind the US invasion of that Arab country 12 years earlier. Rumsfeld further alleged that “the idea that we could fashion a democracy in Iraq seemed to More
Trigger Finger for Armageddon: Trump and the Thermonuclear Monarchy
It is the sort of breezy, skimpy and careless reasoning that is laying the ground for the Biden Republic. A person, kicked off a social media babbling platform and having the means to incinerate the human race multiple times over, seen as corollaries of each other. There should be an obvious difference, but Silicon Valley More
America and the Mob
The United States began as a glint in the eyes of an English mob of oddballs, dissenters, and criminals let loose on what they considered virgin territory. Once secure in their new digs, they administered rough justice to the original Americans and any colonist who fell afoul of community rules. Eventually, casting aside their imperial More
Must Our Billionaires Remain Politically Immortal?
We haven’t seen the last of billionaire Sheldon Adelson. Or, to put the matter a bit more exactly, we haven’t seen the last of Sheldon Adelson’s fortune. The great roulette wheel in the sky has most certainly stopped turning for casino king Adelson. He expired earlier this week at age 87. But Adelson’s $33-billion fortune More
After Four Years, Accountability is Long Overdue
The sacking of the US Capitol on January 6 was not at all surprising. Not surprising that Trump would encourage it, not surprising that those who had swilled his Kool-Aid would so willingly violate the US Constitution they claim to defend but clearly do not comprehend. The president had been working his supporters during his entire More
“Brazil is Broken”: Bolsonaro, COVID, and the Looming Return to Austerity
As the New Year begins and Brazil officially passes 200,000 COVID deaths, far-right Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro announced with his characteristic bluntness: “Brazil is broken. I can’t do anything.” While blaming the media for exaggerating the threat of the coronavirus, Bolsonaro complained that COVID had prevented him from further pursuing the structural adjustments and austerity More
Insurrection at the Capitol
I never felt comfortable with Trump. From the moment I saw him on television competing for president, I felt unease. On March 17, 2016, I wrote: “Trump is borrowing from the violent politics of early twentieth-century Europe. Trump is showing tyrannical tendencies. He urges his followers to be violent towards opponents. He is contemptible of minorities. More
MLK: “Loving Your Enemies” Message for a Political System Based on Hate
I used to think we shouldn’t get MLK Day “off” since we should work extra hard on this day. But I’ve mellowed and think of his own debauchery and give myself some slack. No matter how many self indulgent things you’ve done: plagiarism, cheating on your spouse (as King did) you can still do great, More
When Joe Biden Takes the White House, What’s Next for the Left?
As Joe Biden prepares to take the oath of office on January 20, what are the prospects for the US left in the years ahead? Today’s Left is in a challenging place: strong enough for other forces to care about what it thinks and does, but too weak to shape political outcomes. Biden’s steady stream [...]
Trump’s ‘March on Rome’
Certain pseudo-left circles seem to think that the January 6 assault on the US Capitol was no big deal. Radical journalist John Pilger, for instance, tweeted that “the made-for-media theatrics on Capitol Hill were not an attempted ‘coup’. Coups are what the CIA stages all over the world. Neither was ‘democracy’ in peril. What democracy?”1 Jacobin magazine, More
Hold on to That Fear
Dear Congresspersons and Senators, This letter is about that nauseating, trembling fear you felt when the hate exploded at you on January 6. Please don’t forget it. Journal about it before it fades. Tolerate the nightmares. Keep pen and paper on your nightstand to record what woke you from screaming fits. Don’t block it out. More
Why the Dutch Socialist Party Is in Crisis
A Slanted Narrative on Slanted Journalism
One out of three adult Americans have no trust in our mass media, according to a September 2020 Gallup poll. Sharyl Attkisson attempts to explain why in her new book, “Slanted: How the News Media Taught Us to Love Censorship and Hate Journalism.” Attkisson argues that we live in an Orwellian news environment: The major More
Will the UK Ever Eradicate Covid?
The West is still complicit in the war on Yemen
Gandhi Led a Mass Movement for India’s Freedom — But He Also Constricted It
In 1959, Dr Martin Luther King Jr travelled to India in order to pay homage to its founding father, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. King credited Gandhi with the ability to “mobilize and galvanize more people in his lifetime than any other person in the history of the world.” This was a bold statement, but not an [...]
Jackson Browne – The Waiting
Economic Update: Noam Chomsky looks ahead at 2021
When Germany’s Social Democrats Made a Revolution by Half
“This Is the WORST Interview I’ve Ever Seen With a Politician”
Are Covidiots Really to Blame for the Third Wave?
Germany’s Christian Democrats Are Turning Toward Coalition with the Greens
This weekend’s Christian-Democrat conference elected Armin Laschet as new party leader, narrowly defeating his Trump-like rival. With Chancellor Angela Merkel set to step down this fall, the party is seeking a new centrist bloc with the Greens — but still faces a hard-right upsurge within its own ranks. At this weekend’s Christian-Democratic Union (CDU) conference, [...]
Why the Dutch Socialist Party Is in Crisis
The Dutch Socialist Party (SP) was long one of the success stories of the European left. Having started out as a Maoist group in the 1970s, it made its breakthrough into national politics in the 1990s, even as Communist parties collapsed and social democracy embraced neoliberalism across the continent. Around the turn of the millennium, [...]
It’s Midterm Season in Mexico, and the Right Has Joined Forces Against AMLO
On December 23, 2020, the campaign season for Mexico’s 2021 midterm elections officially kicked off with the announcement that the three major opposition parties, the Institutional Revolution Party (PRI), the National Action Party (PAN), and the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), will be joining together in a common front against the ruling party, MORENA. [...]
Bolsonaro is breaking the country: 200,000 dead, unemployment and poverty
Dr. Martin Luther King’s Challenge to the Movement, as the Fascists Storm the Capital
Right now, the central challenge to standing up to the armed right, in the midst of COVID and police occupation of Black communities is a sober re-assessment of the present period and reconstruction of a revolutionary alternative. Contrary to the reactionary and ridiculous counter-position of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, it was their mutual leadership of the Black [...]
The Impeachment Trial of Donald Trump: Can He be Convicted?
Texas Congressman Joaquin Castro, a graduate of Harvard Law School, asked his colleagues: “If inciting a deadly insurrection is not enough to get a president impeached, then what is?” Ten Republicans voted for Impeachment, but 197 House Republicans disagreed. Trump incited the crowd in person on the Mall. He lied to his supporters saying, “I’ll be with More
Lessons From the 6 January Insurrection
While the majority of Americans deplored the events at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, it was troubling to see a YouGov poll indicating that 1 in 5 voters approved of the assault. Their attitudes were buttressed by a significant number of House and Senate Republicans who have egged on the matter by continuing to call into question the legitimacy [...]
Time to Trash the Terrorist Watch List, a Police-State Frankenstein Gone Off the Rails
I have something in common with some of the brownshirt thugs who assaulted the Capitol, some reportedly intent on kidnapping and/or killing congressional leaders and members like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Minority Leader and presumptive Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Vice President Mike Pence. More
Trump’s Failed Coup
The attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021 was a planned effort to overturn the legitimate results of the November 2020 presidential election – an election that saw Joe Biden receive more than 7 million popular votes and 74 electoral votes than Donald Trump. Even before the overwhelming defeat suffered by the incumbent president More
Why Trumpism Will Live On
Just a week after the U.S. Capitol was attacked by his supporters, Donald Trump has become the first president of the United States to be impeached twice. But regardless of how Trump leaves the White House — the Senate won’t act on the impeachment before Joe Biden’s inauguration on Jan. 20 — the domestic terrorism he has inspired will not [...]
Coup, Coup, Kachoo
Contrary to the bleatings of rabid Never Trumpers, Democrat drum majors, and neurasthenic pundits, the Butthead Circus of camo wanks, Halloweening morons, and feeble-minded Q Anon dead-enders, the bumbling vandalism and imbecile thuggery at the Capitol had no resemblance whatever to an actual coup. See Websters, Coup d’Etat: “A sudden, decisive action in politics effecting a More
Encircling China and Praising India: The US Strategic Framework for the Indo-Pacific
The feeling from Rory Medcalf of the Australian National University was one of breathless wonder. “The US government,” he wrote in The Strategist, “has just classified one of its most secretive national security documents – its 2018 strategic framework for the Indo-Pacific, which was formally classified SECRET and not for release to foreign nationals.” Washington’s More
Dear Republicans, Was Your Deal With Trump Worth It?
When Donald Trump ran for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination in 2016, many top Republicans shunned him. Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) confidently explained how Trump was “not going to change the platform of the Republican Party, the views of the Republican Party… we’re much more likely to change him.” He even admitted, “it’s pretty obvious More
An Ordinary German Neo-Nazi
In 2017, a new German political party semi Neo-Nazi called AfD – Alternative for Germany – swept into Germany’s federal parliament winning 12.6% of the popular vote. By the end of 2020, the AfD entered all sixteen state parliaments, even though its support declined to 9% in recent months. Among the state legislatures in which More
Peace in Nagorno-Karabakh Remains Fragile, With Key Issues Unresolved
As Armenia ends its annual two-week holiday period, the mood in the country is sombre. The former Soviet state is continuing to reckon with its losses from the six-week war it waged last year with Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh. The Nagorno-Karabakh region, or Artsakh to Armenians, lies within Azerbaijan’s international border. However, up until last year, More
Lynching Political Correctness
I still see the noose in front of the capitol building, dangling oh so metaphorically. “No matter how all this plays out, it’s only the beginning,” wrote a user on The Donald message board, according to the Associated Press. Actually, it’s anything but the beginning — though I get what the writer means, that there’s more to More
Misusing King’s Message
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was profoundly moved by injustice and inequality ubiquitous throughout the US. The question he asked about injustice in 1967, “Where do we go from here?” was answered with two options: community or chaos. The question is profoundly important in 2021. On the holiday to celebrate King’s birth the whitewashing of More
The New No Fly List: More Dangerous than the Capitol Rioters
As I write this, the Capitol Hill riot of January 6 is enjoying its extended 15 minutes of fame, complete with straight-faced comparisons to December 7, 1941 and September 11, 2001. In hindsight, it will hopefully (and hopefully quickly) shrink to its real-life proportions: A few thousand hysterical Donald Trump supporters, and likely at most More
After MLK, Unlearning Hate
Based upon events over the last couple of weeks, it is clear we need a “federal re-education program” of “anti-hate”, especially for those many arrested after the Capitol riot. Why should the country be held hostage to white supremacy? Moreover, the behavior of President Donald J. Trump after the 2020 presidential election has been appalling More
Moving Forward with Accountability and Justice
The deep and multifaceted social/biological/political crises that characterize the 21st century are primed to intensify in the coming days, weeks, months and years. Deadly social catastrophes and explosions in train of the frankly incompetent public health response to the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, and the right wing mob’s deadly storming of the US Capitol on More
Honoring Dr. King
Today our American family dysfunction is on display for all the world to see. As a keeper of secrets, my work as a psychiatrist and healer told me that our culture was sick long ago. The stories I have heard of grandfathers, brothers, fathers, lovers, priests who rape and abuse and then manage to coerce More
King on the Brooklyn Bridge
King on the Brooklyn Bridge The Façade of the Kings County Courthouse on Court Street’s adorned with a frieze of Moses Upholding two stones — the tablets, The law, the code — as though He sees the golden bull on Broadway to the west and is just about to dash them down to the bed More
The Mexican Right Has United to Defeat AMLO
On December 23, 2020, the campaign season for Mexico’s 2021 midterm elections officially kicked off with the announcement that the three major opposition parties — the PRI, the PAN, and the PRD — will be joining together in a common front against the ruling party, MORENA. The coalition, Va por México (“Go for Mexico”), will [...]
After Prop 22, Expect Uber to Escalate Its War on Workers’ Rights
In 2008, the greed of the major banks sent the global economy crashing, taking the livelihoods of millions of people with it. In the years that followed, many of those people were unable to return to the stable, middle-class jobs they previously enjoyed. As they adapted to a more precarious way of life, a new [...]
Jeremy Corbyn: “The Rule of the Few Over the Many Rests on Shaky Ground”
I want to start with a huge thank you to everybody taking part today. People have tuned in from all across the UK, communities big and small, and from countries all over the world. Our coming together across borders, backgrounds, and experiences has never been more important. That’s what we want to do with this [...]
#ACFM Trip 13: Crowds
Nadia Idle, Keir Milburn and Jeremy Gilbert return to #ACFM to talk about the power and potential of crowds – from mobs and marches to mesmeric leaders and terrace anthems, with music from the Joubert Singers, Sham 69 and more. Produced and edited by Matt Huxley and Chal Ravens. PRS Licence Number: LE-0016481 Music: The [...] How the Left Got Where It Is in Venezuela
By the end of Hugo Chávez’s presidency, a vague social contract had come to exist in Venezuela. It was not unlike the social contract which sustained real socialism for many decades, as described by Michael Lebowitz in his book Contradictions of Real Socialism. Both situations involved a vanguard that guaranteed a certain level of welfare More
The 2019 Uprising Produces an Electoral Opening Toward the Left
Flint Activists Remember How Gina McCarthy, Biden Pick for Climate Policy, Failed Their City
Former EPA chief Gina McCarthy has reportedly been picked as Biden’s domestic climate policy chief. That concerns activists in Flint, Michigan, who say that she failed to address the Flint water crisis. Karen Weaver, the former mayor of Flint, said that she was disappointed with the choice. “I hope she does better with climate control More
Clinic Workers Should Be Central to the Fight for Abortion Rights
This month will bring to a close one of the harshest administrations on reproductive rights in recent history; what has been less clear in the weeks since the election is what exactly the Biden administration will do to defend and extend these rights. As an issue, abortion has long motivated the bases of both parties, [...]
The Indonesian Massacres of 1965–1966
Of all the tragic events of the 20th Century, the 1965-1966 campaign of mass killing in Indonesia is among the least known in the U.S. Researchers estimate that the Washington-backed Indonesian military and its civilian militias killed up to one million people. Around a million others were arbitrarily imprisoned with little to no legal process, More
Far-Right Intellectuals Are Offering Workers a Rotten Deal
Michael Apted’s Up, a Decades-Long Film on Britain’s Class System
The Up series of TV films — the first of which was aired in May 1964, with the most recent coming fifty-five years later in June 2019 — is certainly the longest-running documentary series of all time. Yet it was only by chance that it came to be. The first episode, made up of interviews [...]
Musicians Need to Organize Collectively, as Workers
Launched in the spring as the coronavirus pandemic shut down music venues across the country, the Union of Musicians and Allied Workers (UMAW) seeks to, per their website, “organize music workers to fight for a more just music industry, and to join with other workers in the struggle for a better society.” In October, the [...]
The Return of Democracy and an Uncertain Future
Corporate Democrats Want Tax Breaks for the Rich — Not $2,000 Survival Checks
Just two weeks after Democrats won the US Senate on a promise to immediately pass $2,000 survival checks, party leaders are now proposing $1,400 checks — a lesser amount than many expected, which would save the federal government money and could address conservatives’ concerns that too much money is going to people who supposedly do [...]
Christina McAnea’s Unison Victory is a Lesson for the Left
This week, Unison – the UK’s biggest union and a major Labour party donor – announced Christina McAnea had won its general secretary election and will become the union’s first woman leader. While hailed in the press as a progressive victory, this is a disappointing result for those on the left who had hoped to [...] Israel Is Refusing to Give Palestinians COVID Vaccines
On the first day of the new year, Bloomberg ran an opinion article by Daniel Gordis — senior vice president at Jerusalem’s Shalem College — titled “Vaccination Miracle Brings Israel Back to Its Roots.” The “miracle” in question refers to Israel’s aggressive coronavirus vaccination drive, thanks to which it currently leads the world in per-capita [...]
Workers Are Standing Up to Far-Right Violence
The news reports about the far right’s anti-democratic attack on the Capitol have been terrifying for many. (Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has implied that she may have narrowly escaped assassination, Ayanna Pressley’s panic button was suspiciously disabled, and we keep learning still more horrifying details about dangers faced by elected officials and Capitol staff that day.) But [...]
Belle and Sebastian Makes Us Feel Exactly as We Are, Together
There’s a scene in High Fidelity, the 2000 movie that follows the recently-dumped-for-a-New-Age-dilettante record store owner Rob Gordon (John Cusack) as he tries to string a series of failed romantic relationships into some sort of coherent self-narrative, in which his employee Barry (Jack Black) barges into the record shop playing high-octane air guitar when he [...]
‘Starmerism’ is Failing on Its Own Terms – And Members Need to Lead the Way
During the Labour leadership election, the project of Starmerism appeared to have three core components: a continued commitment to the social democratic heart of the Corbyn manifestos; a pluralist approach to party management which would endeavour to reduce factionalism; and an increased focus on ‘electability’, achieved by professionalising the party and abandoning the left populist [...] An End to Austerity Economics with Mark Blyth
Here Are 4 Better Responses to the Capitol Riot Than Expanding “Domestic Terror” Crackdowns
For decades, the US public and the politicians have been conditioned to see more government repression as the solution to just about any ill that strikes the country, especially political violence. So it’s not a shock that in the wake of last week’s Trump-instigated Capitol riot, different sides of the political establishment have agreed that [...]
How Chicago Teachers Are Resisting the City’s Dangerous School Reopenings – A conversation with special-ed teachers about what’s at stake, and the retaliation teachers are facing for speaking out.
Do Donors Now Control the Labour Party?
Yesterday Richard Leonard resigned as leader of the Scottish Labour party – less than 24 hours after a potential donor allegedly said they would not give money while he remained in place. This raises huge questions. Firstly whether the Scottish Labour Party is autonomous of the party at Westminster, and secondly whether wealthy donors now [...] Biden, Don’t Worry About “Overheating” the Economy—Go All Out on Relief and Stimulus Spending – Common metrics that deficit hawks often point to as evidence of economic overheating are not convincing.
Bernie’s Plan to Give Everyone Health Care During the Pandemic Could Transform Our Health System
There continue to be plenty of reasons for skepticism about the incoming Democratic administration and its plans, despite the party’s newly secured Senate majority. For one thing, despite containing some encouraging elements, Joe Biden this week signaled his intention to seek Republican votes for his COVID relief package — a move that will almost certainly [...]
Breaking Point
Experts suggest new Covid infections in England may have finally peaked, but with two more weeks of rising hospital admissions expected, can the NHS avoid collapse? We speak to A&E doctor Silas Webb. Plus: We speak to SAGE advisor Professor Susan Michie on the lockdown blame-game; Toby Young and the Telegraph are reprimanded by UK [...] Let’s Not Become a Bunch of Panicky Reactionaries – The lesson of the Capitol riots is to change the power structure, not to embrace it
Is the Walmart Family Capturing the Colorado River? – The Walton Family Foundation has been pouring millions into nonprofit groups concerned with the Colorado River — including media outlets that cover the issue.
We Must Get COVID-19 Vaccines to Prisoners Immediately
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit the United States last spring, advocates immediately warned that catastrophic outbreaks would soon pummel prisons and jails due to poor medical services, unhygienic conditions, and the tightly interwoven routines of incarcerated people and prison staff. An outspoken cohort of lawyers, organizers, journalists, and incarcerated people themselves demanded bold action to [...]
Ten Years of #NovaraFM
2021 marks a decade since Aaron Bastani and James Butler started the radio show which would eventually become #NovaraFM, and which would give birth to Novara Media. To mark the start of the new year – a year in which all the crises which prompted the show’s creation are more visible and more pressing [...] First as tragedy, then as farce? AUR and the long shadow of fascism in Romania
New York Is Weighing Divestment From the Capitol Riot’s GOP Enablers
New York lawmakers are demanding the state and city review pension fund investments in key companies whose executives have funded Republican lawmakers who tried to block the certification of the national election. Their request cites the Daily Poster’s reporting on the links between pension funds and the major financiers of groups that support the GOP [...]
Scrap Our Means-Tested Child Welfare System and Give Every Family $374 Per Child Every Month
When the pandemic hit early last year, the US government did something it had never done before: sent out money to nearly every person in the country, including the poorest of the poor. Last month they did it again. Together, these two sets of checks provided a typical family of four with $5,800 of direct [...]
Joe Biden Is Yet Again Trying to Woo the GOP. He Should Give It Up.
In 2008, President Barack Obama prioritized getting Republican lawmakers to support a stimulus bill in the middle of an economic crisis. The effort did not go well — the legislation ended up being far smaller than necessary, the effort to appease Republicans ended up garnering barely any GOP votes for the bill in Congress, and [...]
Trump Is a Threat to Democracy. But That Doesn’t Mean He’s Winning.
Since Donald Trump came down his escalator in 2015, a debate has raged on the left about whether Trump is a “fascist” who threatened the existence of political democracy in the United States. Since Joe Biden decisively won the 2020 presidential election, a closely related debate has broken out about whether Trump’s many efforts to [...]
The Marxism of Leo Panitch
Ralph Miliband begins his classic book, Marxism and Politics, with the striking observation that no major figure in the Marxist tradition, including Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels themselves, offered a systematic elaboration of Marxist political theory. For Miliband, this glaring absence could be explained by the ambivalent position Marxists typically assigned to politics in their [...]
A Yemeni Famine Made in Washington and Riyadh
Ending months of speculation, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced on January 10 that the Trump Administration would designate Yemen’s Houthi rebels (Ansar Allah) as a “Foreign Terrorist Organization” (FTO). Branding the Houthis as terrorists will make it vastly more difficult for humanitarian groups to deliver desperately needed food, fuel, and medicine to 24 million More
QAnon’s Afterlife: A Holy Civil War
The role of QAnon in the January 6 MAGAist insurrection is becoming clearer by the day. Most readers are familiar by now with its unofficial mascot, be-horned “supersoldier” (and perhaps future WWE Trump tag-team member) Q Shaman. In addition, at least two of the five dead were QAnon adherents. Even the killed police officer followed QAnon influencers on Parler.
Why There Was No People’s Rebellion Against a Fascist U.S. President: Nine Reasons
ast Friday’s New York Times included Paul Krugman’s elementarily accurate editorial observation that “Donald Trump…is indeed a fascist – an authoritarian willing to use violence to achieve his racial nationalist goals. So are many of his supporters. If you had any doubts,” Krugman rightly argued, the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol (by a frenzied mob of fascists directly [...]
Roaming Charges: Do Me Two Times, I’m Goin’ Away
I fully support the right of the People to overthrow their own government. I draw the line at the government currently in power overthrowing the next government before it takes office, thus denying the People the privilege to overthrow it when it, inevitably, betrays them. More
The post Roaming Charges: Do Me Two Times, I’m Goin’ Away appeared [...]
A (Not-So-New) Profile of the American Right: On the Authoritarian-Fascist Crisis
Following the January 6th neofascistic attacks on Capitol Hill, Americans are quickly waking up to the realities of growing extremism on the right. There is now a large share of reactionaries in this country who are drawing false equivalencies between Antifa and Black Lives Matter on the left, and the neofascists on the right. What More
Absence of Abortion Rights is Depriving Latin America of Agency and the Right to Thrive
I can’t mention her name, because she is a child. Twelve at the time, she was too young to legally work, but not too young to be forced to be a parent. She was a student of mine, and I remember, just a few years ago, playing the bridge game with her. She laughed with More
Neoliberalism is Fascism with Better Manners
The best use of the New York Times is usually catching up on the CIA’s talking points for the day. However, back in June of 2019 it published a surprisingly hard hitting article on Joe Biden’s history of crafting and promoting the odious bill that created the modern militarized police and carceral state. The money shot is a quote from [...]
Here We Go Again: Botching the Vaccine Rollout
At the rate we’re vaccinating against covid in the U.S., it will take 10 years for the entire population to receive shots. To counter this, on January 12, the Trump regime announced that it would expand vaccination, regardless of whether second doses are available. Biden had earlier said he would do this too. The reasons More
Will the Senate Confirm Coup Plotter Nuland?
Who is Victoria Nuland? Most Americans have never heard of her because the U.S. corporate media’s foreign policy coverage is a wasteland. Most Americans have no idea that President-elect Biden’s pick for Deputy Secretary of State for Political Affairs is stuck in the quicksand of 1950s U.S.-Russia Cold War politics and dreams of continued NATO More
The Shortage of Black Physicians is a Legacy of Racism and Class-Based Discrimination
“Nobody wants to be an emergency at Harlem Hospital but if the Negro surgeon is visiting, pride cuts down the pain.” Author Toni Morrison was alluding to the scarcity of Black physicians in 1926 (Jazz, 1992). Kareem Abdul-Jabbar took similar note almost 100 years later. The basketball legend pointed out that, “Black babies survive more More
Julian Assange, WikiLeaks and Australia’s Complicity
Australia’s Foreign Minister, Marise Payne, said little in the statement from her department, which was a good thing, as it might have been dangerously useful. The finding of a UK court on whether Julian Assange would be extradited to the United States was made “on the grounds of his mental health and consequent suicide risk.” More
Conan and the Vandals
It took another Barbarian to deliver the toughest talk to the Vandals and Goths who sacked the American Capitol last week. Whether any from these bearded, fur-clad tribes were listening to Conan the Californian seems unlikely since his campfireside chat was issued on YouTube, a forum from which the Germanic marauders’ orange-haired chieftain had been More
Capital, the US Two-Party System and the Chicken Coup
We have a two-party system that has been very successful in containing the political responses in the US to the various conflicts and contradictions that have arisen in its history. During the first half of the 19th century the issue of slavery was compromised and finessed by slaveowner control of the Democratic Party (coupled with More
Last Trump Sale of Public Lands for Fracking Prompts Outrage and Hope
Trump has made it a goal to sell as much public land as possible for fracking over the last four years, but thankfully after today, the administration’s pro-fossil fuel, climate and science denying, anti-public agenda will finally come to an end. That’s because today marks the last federal oil and gas lease sale to be More
The Breakdown: January 6, 2021
Where is a cop when you need one? Well, some of them were taking selfies of themselves posing with rioters. Others were barricading the doors of the Capitol and getting their heads bashed in with fire extinguishers. In any event, they all were one way or the other too busy to arrest the ringleader who More
The Irony of Calling America a “Banana Republic”
In the days after the Donald Trump-inspired siege of the U.S. Capitol, many Americans are still seeking to make sense of what transpired. But some politicians and businesspeople have found one aspect of the mob that hoped to overturn the election especially unnerving: its suggestion of “banana republic” politics. “This is banana republic crap,” asserted Rep. Mike Gallagher of More
The Strange Case of Andrew Roberts and the Liberal Anglosphere
“There is a kind of stupidity among the drunks, particularly when they are sober…” ― John le Carré Oh dear. The New Cold War is having a very particular effect on the Right, just as it is on the liberals. But between these two neo-nostalgias, there is a confluence of interests. On the Right side, let More
A Reminder: Black Lives Matter and Woodrow Wilson in Geneva
The recent insurrection in Washington is a reminder, if one is needed, that not speaking up against injustice has dire consequences. The invasion of the Capitol was the physical culmination of at least four years of collective amnesia/appeasement. The Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement is an ongoing manifestation against hundreds of years of amnesia/appeasement. While More
America Condemns One Violent Mob While Celebrating Another
Most rational Americans have correctly criticized and denounced the violent insurrection in the Capitol last week. Those moments of attack by a racist, disgusting mob have not lacked for condemnation and denunciation. They were violent. They were reprehensible. They called for the killing of lawmakers, demanded the hanging of Congress members. The liberal media and More
Resistance is not Futile: A Brief History of Lebanon’s Hezbollah
Lebanese resistance movement Hezbollah has inspired fear within the Empire through both armed struggle and its success in electoral politics. For effectively wielding this double-edged sword, the “Party of God” has been vilified by countless politicians and media outlets. From its birth as an armed resistance to Israeli attacks on Lebanon over 35 years ago, More
Capitalism’s Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing
Before Justin Trudeau was prime minister of Canada, right winger Stephen Harper eld the position. A loud-mouthed, somewhat boorish right-winger, he attacked immigrants, the indigenous nations of Canada, working people, the environment and everyone to his left. Millions of Canadians breathed a huge sigh of relief when Harper was defeated in the 2012 elections. The overall More
TV Daze
What should we call what happened January 6? Was it a failed coup? That seems right, but how can a government overthrow itself? This is why some fastidious political scientists and many South Americans would more likely call it an “autogolpe,” literally a “self-coup.” In the Weimar Republic, they would have called it a “putsch.” More
Mismanagement and the Domestication of Yellowstone Bison
For 24 years Buffalo Field Campaign has been on the frontlines in the Yellowstone ecosystem advocating for the protection of the only continuously wild bison herds in the United States. During that time, the State of Montana has captured management control of Yellowstone National Park and the Custer Gallatin National Forest via the Interagency Bison More
Biden’s China Conundrum
Soon-to-be President Joe Biden will instantly face a set of extraordinary domestic crises — a runaway pandemic, a stalled economy, and raw political wounds, especially from the recent Trumpian assault on the Capitol — but few challenges are likely to prove more severe than managing U.S. relations with China. While generally viewed as a distant More
Why Are People Going Hungry in India Despite a Massive Grain Surplus?
The Indian intelligentsia has an incredible propensity to swallow the self-serving arguments of metropolitan capitalism that are typically supposed to constitute ‘economic wisdom,’ and nowhere is this more evident than in the case of India’s food economy. There are a plethora of center-page articles in newspapers these days suggesting that Indian kisans (farmers) should move More
The Public Lands Restoration Apocalypse
The Bureau of Land Management’s latest assault on the West’s biodiverse pinyon-juniper forests and sagebrush communities dwarfs its many predecessors. The Trump regime is finalizing a “Restoration” EIS targeting 38.5 million acres of public land across 6 states – Nevada, Oregon, Idaho, Washington, Utah and California. The 60,156 square mile land area is larger than More
The Sahrawi Nakba in an Age of Insurrection
Mainstream pop culture historians always deify the 1960’s as some kind of Woodstock utopian fantasy gone to seed. But any true countercultural history buff knows that the Seventies were where it was really at. After Charlie Manson scared off the flower children, things got truly radical. The left got the message and stopped playing nice. More
Modern Street Conservatism
In light of the street demonstrations and mob attack on the Capitol, I think it timely to reflect on how the demagogue currently in office succeeded in directing a mass action (there and elsewhere). The question at the heart of the Sixth of January’s surreal moment is an apparent reverence of conservatism and particularly the More
The Political Class: At War with Each Other and on the Rest of Us
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible,” President John F. Kennedy said in a 1962 speech, “will make violent revolution inevitable.” Nearly 60 years later, two warring groups within the American political class seem resolutely determined to make “peaceful revolution” — by which JFK seems to have meant orderly democratic decision-making — impossible. Supporters of Donald More
Don’t Trivialize J6
Why the tendency to downplay what’s happening? The question is troubling as one considers the wide diversity of takes (on the left) in the aftermath of last week’s events in DC. To some, the Trump-incited mob’s entry into the Capitol was an attempted coup, or an insurrection—intentionally conveying all weightiness inherent in those terms. To More
Address the Stagnation That Paved the Way for Trump
Donald Trump won’t be around forever. But the political crises his attacks on democracy have caused will outlive his one-term presidency. For one thing, the nearly 150 congressional Republicans who supported his attempted coup will probably remain in office, even though the 14th Amendment bans anyone “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the [the United More
The Ever-Changing Shape of Love
Ongoing events urge us to redefine and refresh that tired old used-up word—love. Love is the only force strong enough to be the unifying energy that ties our broken country back together. Hate can’t do it. Hate and fear have polarized us. We need to choose: we can’t love and hate at the same time. More
Congress Votes to Arm Violent Mobs That Storm through Capitols around the World
Terrified political leaders watched the police who were assigned to protect them melt away. They fled as an angry mob of hooligans, riled up by sketchy allegations of rigged elections, stormed up the stairs of the government building that hosted the debates and deliberations of their venerable democracy. The rioters, reactionary right-wingers from the nation’s More
Obama Didn’t Close the Racial Wealth Divide, Will Biden?
Twelve years ago, the inauguration of America’s first Black president had many Americans believing that a future free of racial discrimination and inequality was finally within reach. This year, as Obama’s former vice president Joe Biden takes office amid a surge in far-right violence, it’s clear we have a long way to go — not More
A Tale of Two Mobs
In 1923, Hitler and the Nazis stormed a beer hall in Munich, Germany, from whence they planned to overthrow German democracy. The putsch failed ignominiously, and Hitler was briefly jailed. That, of course, was not the end of Adolf Hitler. America needs to remember that history if we want to preserve our democracy from the More
Learn From Georgia
The answer to what happened in Washington last Wednesday is what happened in Georgia last Tuesday. The answer to the yell and the noose of white macho supremacy is the slow, hard labor of making society democratic. The debate over Amazon dropping Parler and Twitter and Facebook dropping Donald Trump misses the point. Megaphones for More
CEOs Should Pay for Their Own Three Martini Lunches
While the world is reeling from the pandemic and American democracy faces a profound crisis, corporate lobbyists have been focused on making taxpayers subsidize lavish lunches for wealthy executives. Their work paid off in the 11th-hour COVID-19 relief deal Congress passed late last year. Buried in the details of this modest aid plan is a More
Rape of the Capitol
It was “wild,” just as the Trumpus himself tweeted it would be (when he could tweet). To give it some perspective: On July 14, 1789, a mob of angry Frenchmen stormed the Bastille to depose their King. On January 6, 2021, a mob of angry Americans stormed the Capitol to try to impose their wannabe More
Steve Talbot’s Cinematic Anti-War Hymns: Leave it to Beaver Actor Goes Behind the Camera
Once upon a time, the protesters outside the White House, the Department of Justice and all across Washington D.C., were mostly lefties and liberals of one stripe or another. For a decade they—or should I say “we”— raised voices and put bodies on the line against the War in Vietnam, which seemed to have no More
A Thief and the Guru: A 2021 New Year’s Tale
Garry Davis, the founder of the World Citizenship Movement, had two gurus or spiritual guides who helped him understand what it means to be a world citizen, profoundly influencing his thoughts and actions. I was in my mid-20s when I started working with Garry at the World Service Authority. Garry, who was in his 70s, became More
Is Trump Worse Than Nixon?
My friend, Eric Andrew Gebert asked: “I’ve only read and studied about the Nixon era, and the Watergate scandal (1972 to 1974) that led to Nixon’s resignation. To those that lived through it: is our current state of political scandal worse? The G.W. Bush era was definitely worse than Nixon. Even John Dean called it: More
Enabling a Fascist Putsch and Empowering a Big Lie
January 6, like December 7 eighty years earlier, will forever live in history as a day of infamy. Yet unlike the foreign military attack on the US base in Pearl Harbor in 1941, the domestic terrorist attack upon the US Capitol in 2021 enjoyed the objective support of nearly one-third of the US Congress and More
Cruzification
Although the Senate is much given to admiring in its members a superiority less obvious or quite invisible to outsiders, one Senator seldom proclaims his own inferiority to another, and still more seldom likes to be told of it. – Henry Brooks Adams, The Education of Henry Adams One of the joys in running for and More
Ten Theses on Trump
1. In understanding Trump one must first of all recognize his malignant narcissism. To attempt to analyze Trump as a normal human being or even a normal politician is a waste of time. His ideology does not lend itself to normal analysis because it is an ideology of 100% self. Early academic efforts to dissect More
The 6th of January (The Battle of New Old Beans)
Open New Tab,Hit Play, and Sing-A-Long The 6th of January (The Battle of New Old Beans) (banjo intro) LOUD PROUDS: In TwentyTwentyone we took a little trip Bubba fed us acid and we deep in rebel shit We ate of barrel pork and drove to New Old Beans And we went at speaker Nancy and More
$2,000 Checks Now—And Make Them Monthly – The Democrats’ victory in Georgia was a vote for cash assistance. Prioritizing direct monthly payments isn’t just good policy—it’s good politics.
Sex and the City Is Back and I Couldn’t Help but Wonder: Will the Show Finally Throw Off Shackles of Capitalism?
Imagine a purgatorial dreamscape so dazzling it blinds you to your own misery, and certainly to other people’s. Let’s call it New York City. Imagine you are living there at the end of history. Let’s call it the nineties. Not the real nineties, [...] AOC Will Not Be Cowed by the Right
On Tuesday, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) took to Instagram Live to describe her experience of last week’s siege on the US Capitol in harrowing detail. Not only did AOC and other lawmakers have to contend with the armed, Confederate flag–wielding mob in the Capitol, but, as AOC pointed out, there was no safety among her [...]
Indonesia’s Repression Hasn’t Broken the West Papuan Freedom Struggle
The Indonesian occupation of West Papua has been in place since 1963, claiming at least 100,000 lives in a country whose total population is 2 million, around half of whom are indigenous Melanesian Papuans. West Papuan Independence Day, which fell on December 1 in 2020, inspired protests by Papuans in eight cities across Indonesia, despite [...]
I’m a Care Worker and I’m on Strike – Here’s Why
This weekend, workers at SAGE care home in Golders Green, north London are striking. Their demands – which if met, could set a historic precedent in the private care industry – include £12 an hour, parity with NHS sick [...] Throw the Book at Rick Snyder for Poisoning Flint’s Water
Michigan’s attorney general Dana Nessel charged Republican former governor Rick Snyder with two counts of willful neglect related to the Flint water crisis today. The charge carries a maximum penalty of up to a year in prison. Snyder pleaded not guilty. Several former senior Snyder aides were also charged, and Nessel has said more indictments [...]
We Should Cause Trouble, Not Make Nice With Biden – History suggests that it’s not making friends, but making the administration’s life difficult, that gets results for the Left.
Big Pharma Is Fighting to Deny Canadians Access to Treatment
In the Speech from the Throne this September, the Trudeau government said it “remains committed to a national, universal pharmacare program and will accelerate steps to achieve this system.” That is an improvement over the Liberals’ pledge, during the 2019 federal election, to provide $6 billion over four years as a “down payment” on pharmacare. [...]
The Public Should Regulate Silicon Valley — Not the Other Way Around
Donald Trump’s Twitter ban is a poetic end to his performance. In 2016, the outsider-insider outmaneuvered his enemies and seized power with the aid of an aggressive, nimble base stitched together online. Now the failing God-Emperor’s soliloquy is silenced by the very force who helped him come to power, amid the tragicomic denouement of armed [...]
Celebrating the power of ideas: a tribute to Murray Bookchin
The Giant Corporate Giant Slush Fund Bankrolling the Extremist GOP
In response to the violent insurrection at the US Capitol, the Charles Schwab Corporation yesterday announced it will shut down its political action committee, which gave less than a quarter million dollars to Republican lawmakers in 2020. “In light of a divided political climate and an increase in attacks on those participating in the political [...]
Post-Election 2020: A Crisis of Representation
Bibi and Jonathan Pollard: Two Anti-American Peas in Their Own Pod
Last month, the New York Times described the hero’s welcome in Israel for Jonathan Pollard, who served 30 years in jail for spying for Israel, as “relatively subdued.” In view of the fact that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu led this “subdued” reception, it is time to throw some shade on Bibi and Jonathan. After all, the United More
The Trading App Robinhood Takes From You and Gives to the Rich
Market researchers estimate that over 10 million Americans became first-time investors in 2020, amid record volatility. A staggering 6 million chose to invest through Robinhood, the Silicon Valley start-up that pioneered commission-free trading back in 2013. The app has been lauded by commentators for its mission to democratize finance — but as the New Year [...]
Ripe for Fascism: A Post-Coup d’Trump Autopsy of American Democracy
“If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading.” – Lao Tzu For the past few years, the corporate/establishment news media oft analyzed Donald Trump’s presidency in an historical vacuum, ignoring the decades-long, bipartisan embrace of neoliberalism that helped bring about his successful candidacy while focusing sensationally on his cult More
Department of Redundancy Department-Trump Racks Up Another Impeachment
A little over a year ago I wrote about the impeachment trial of Donald Trump. I’m writing about his second impeachment now. In my writing, I noted that last year’s impeachment hearings showed a Congress split between those who believed in bourgeois law and those who tended towards fascism. On January 6, 2021, Donald Trump More
The Trump Administration’s Parting Outrage Against Cuba
On January 11, in his final days before leaving office, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo added one parting blow to the series of bludgeons his administration has inflicted on Cuba for four years: putting the island on the list of “state sponsors of terror” that includes only Iran, North Korea and Syria. The designation drew More
America Has Entered the Weimar Era
By mid-February 2021, American deaths from COVID-19 may well surpass the country’s 405,400 deaths during the Second World War. By around mid-May, more Americans will have died from the virus than during the Civil War, which killed 655,000, and the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918, when 675,000 are estimated to have perished. Yet America’s largely More
Genetic Engineering, Agriculture and Brexit: Treachery in Our Midst
The UK government has launched its public consultation on the deregulation of gene editing in England. To kick things off, somewhat predictably Environment Secretary George Eustice recently spun a staunch pro-industry line at the Oxford Farming Conference by stating: “Gene editing has the ability to harness the genetic resources that Mother Nature has provided in More
No Proof, No Evidence, No Truth
Our local newspaper here in Helena, Montana recently carried a lengthy report on the echoes in Montana of the claims that led to the January 6, 2020, U.S. Capitol insurrection.[1] Among others, the paper provided statements from state legislators confirming their belief that the 2020 presidential election was rigged and was replete with fraud. These More
Violent Right Wing Forces Have Been Activated, It Requires Strategic Action to Stop Them
Since the assault on the US Capitol on January 6 by right-wing Trump supporters, the fallout has been rapid. The Democrats, both elected officials and voters, were quick to jump on the impeachment train. Some elected officials are calling for Members of Congress who supported the events to resign and to refuse to seat them More
POW Nation: When Will America Free Itself From War?
“POWs Never Have A Nice Day.” That sentiment was captured on a button a friend of mine wore for our fourth grade class photo in 1972. That prisoners of war could never have such a day was reinforced by the sad face on that button. Soon after, American POWs would indeed be released by their More
War of the (Financial) Worlds
Sometimes things only make sense when seen through a magnifying lens. As it happens, I’m thinking about reality, the very American and global reality clearly repeating itself as 2021 begins. We all know, of course, that we’re living through a once-in-a-century-style pandemic; that millions of people have lost their jobs, a portion of which will More
Impeachment Too Good for Trump
“The evil that men do lives after them” – Marc Antony in William Shakespeare’s, Julius Caesar Donald Trump may go down as the biggest loser in American history, a corrupt Benedict Arnold who put himself before country, before his people, before his party, even before God. He was the first among our 45 presidents to More
What It Meant to be Conflicted During the Vietnam War
You can take the man out of the war, but you can’t take the war out of the man. I use the noun “man” because most who either went to Vietnam or resisted that war were men. There were millions of women in the antiwar movement of the 1960s and early 1970s, but very few More
Twitter’s Ban on Trump will Deepen the US Tribal Divide
Anyone who believes locking President Donald Trump out of his social media accounts will serve as the first step on the path to healing the political divide in the United States is likely to be in for a bitter disappointment. The flaws in this reasoning need to be peeled away, like the layers of an More
No Tears For Twitter Trump
There are two takes on the left, both of which are principled and admirable. The first is that of free speech absolutism which opposes all bans on everyone, perhaps especially when it is difficult to do so. The second is that fascism is not taken seriously enough by the liberal class and that censorship of More
Covid-19 under Apartheid: How Israel Manipulates Suffering of Palestinians
Israel’s decision to exclude Palestinians from its COVID-19 vaccination campaign may have surprised many. Even by Israel’s poor humanitarian standards, denying Palestinians access to life-saving medication seems extremely callous. Amnesty International, among many organizations, condemned the Israeli government’s decision to bar Palestinians from receiving the vaccine. The rights group described the Israeli action as evidence More
Trump and His Billionaire Enablers
We’ve heard plenty about the GOP members of Congress and Trump political appointees who have “enabled” Donald Trump over these four years, failing to act to stem his excesses. But what about the billionaire donors to Trump’s campaign and his victory PACs? Especially those who gave substantial donations in 2019 and 2020, when it was More
White Nationalist Barbarians Storm the Gate(s) of the U.S. Capitol
The white nationalist barbarians, aided and abetted by their Führer—President Donald J. Trump—stormed and entered the gate(s) at the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, January 6, 2021. The seditionists include those who brazenly entered the so-called people’s house,[1] responsible for death, destruction and mayhem, along with their snowflake leader who suckered them to do so from More
Western Wolf Coalition Files Lawsuit Challenging Nationwide Wolf Delisting
Today, WildEarth Guardians and a coalition of Western wolf advocates, represented by the Western Environmental Law Center, challenged the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s (the Service) decision to prematurely strip wolves of federal protections in the contiguous 48 states, in violation of the Endangered Species Act (ESA). The most recent data from the Service and its More
The Illinois Legislature Just Voted to End Cash Bail. Here’s How Organizers Made It Happen. – Illinois is poised to become the first state in the country to completely end the use of money bond.
Student Rent Strikers Don’t Just Want Their Money Back – They Want to Smash Capitalism
When universities resumed teaching in September, many institutions encouraged or even demanded that students return in person, despite Covid-19 restrictions making much of student life impossible. While the first and second lockdowns saw students trapped in university accommodation; now, in the third, they are unable to even enter the rooms they’ve paid to rent. Students [...] The Animal Legal Defense Fund Is Busting Its Union With a Smile – A nonstop anti-union campaign comes with assurances that management is “really progressive”
Fleecing Britain’s Children
We Can’t Fight the Far Right in Military Court
Scholars and journalists have extensively documented the connections between armed far-right groups and the US Armed Forces. As historian Kathleen Belew has shown, the roots of the modern militia movement lie in the networks of neo-Nazi and white power groups established in the 1970s by Vietnam veterans. And today, far-right groups like the Oath Keepers [...]
Past Time to Remember Thousands Displaced and Left Behind by Hurricanes Laura and Delta
Four and a half months after two hurricanes ripped apart Louisiana, tens of thousands of people are still suffering. While the national election has absorbed the attention of the nation, thousands of people are still not back in their homes. Many have had to move a half dozen times. Some are living in tents. It More
Unionizing Google Workers: We Want Democracy at Work
Last week, workers at Google and its parent company, Alphabet, announced a first-of-its-kind tech workers union. In a New York Times op-ed, the Alphabet Workers Union (AWU) stated that “[we]’d had enough” of Alphabet’s mishandling of harassment and discrimination, its morally dubious ventures with the Department of Defense and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and [...]
Desperado in the White House: Coup Fails, Trump Faces Impeachment
Why Matteo Renzi Is Sinking Italy’s Government Even as the Pandemic Rages
If it weren’t for the pandemic, Giuseppe Conte’s government might not have lasted even this long. Last February, neoliberal centrist Matteo Renzi threatened to split the ruling center-left coalition, only to fall back in line. But even as COVID-19 again rages through Italy, Renzi is today pulling out his Italia Viva party’s ministers — and [...]
The Socialism of James Joyce
Ulysses is a book in which everything happens and nothing happens. The story of a day in the life of a city — the Hibernian metropolis, as James Joyce saw Dublin — is a journey in a rambling flow of consciousness, where the very serious political issues of the day (the book is set on June [...]
#ACFM Microdose: Ece Temelkuran on Crowds
Nadia Idle speaks to Turkish journalist and author Ece Temelkuran about the potency of crowds. Reflecting on their experiences in Tahrir Square and Gezi Park, they talk about feeling powerful in political demonstrations, why raves are infantilising rather than inspiring, and how Covid-19 has put an end to free assembly. Ece, twice named Turkey’s “most [...] The Laura Flanders Show: Unforget, Dream, Build
Republicans Want Metal Detectors for Schoolkids, But Not for Themselves
Less than three years before Republican lawmakers today threw temper tantrums about metal detectors in the halls of Congress, they passed GOP legislation supporting more metal detectors in schools. In 2018, the Republican-controlled House tried to head off strict gun control legislation by instead passing Florida GOP Rep. John Rutherford’s bill authorizing new resources for “evidence-based strategies and programs to prevent [...]
Parliamentary elections – Results and prospects
2021 begins with a new National Assembly. Will it lead to advances?
What’s next for Julian Assange?
Communists Like My Uncle Fought to Expand American Democracy. Fascists Fought to Destroy It.
My late uncle, LeRoy H. Wood, spent years in a federal prison in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, for what he did in Washington, DC. Roy was convicted of “conspiring to teach the advocacy of the overthrow of the US government by force and violence.” No, Uncle Roy was not a billionaire who incited a mob to storm [...]
Sen. Josh Hawley: The Face of New American Fascism?
“No one other than President Donald Trump himself is more responsible for Wednesday’s [January 6th] coup attempt at the U.S. Capitol than one Joshua David Hawley, the 41-year-old junior senator from Missouri, who put out a fundraising appeal while the siege was underway.” So opens the Kansas City Star’s coverage of January 6th storming of More
Renationalize Canada’s Airlines
Canada’s flag carrier, Air Canada, is cutting most of its flights to locations across Atlantic Canada from major cities like Toronto and Ottawa. WestJet, Air Canada’s main competitor, had already announced a cut of 80 percent to its Atlantic Canada flights back in October. At first glance, airlines in Canada may seem to be victims [...]
The UK’s Brexit-and-Covid Languors
The UK has been in a protracted capitalist crisis since the collapse of the postwar welfare-state “compromise” between capital and labour (1945-1970s), a compromise which Margaret Thatcher ended definitively with much glee. Overall, being in the EU neither reduced nor worsened the nature of this crisis. With regard to this systemic crisis, the EU, in More
Africans See U.S. Ugly That America Ignores
Like many across the African continent and around the world, noted author Patrick Gathara had “an epiphany” about America after President Donald Trump delivered an incendiary speech on January 6, 2021 that incited a violent mob attack on the U.S. Capitol. When that mob invaded the Capitol building members of the Congress, the Senate and More
The Only Thing Scarier than QAnon Is the Reaction to It
The right-wing demonstration turned violent riot at the US Capitol on January 6 was a spectacle, complete with Confederate flags and a QAnon shaman in red-white-and-blue face paint. The Venezuelan government stated: “With this unfortunate episode, the United States is experiencing what it has generated in other countries with its policies of aggression.” Some half More
‘One State is a Game Changer’: A Conversation with Ilan Pappe and Awad Abdelfattah on the One Democratic State Campaign
As the US ruling elites have fully succumbed to Israel’s political discourse on Palestine, the Israeli government of right-wing Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, may feel that it, alone, is capable of determining the future of the Palestinian people. This conclusion is, perhaps, gleaned from Israel’s behavior in recent years and months. The expansion of illegal More
Dangerous Curves Ahead
The last few days I’ve been reminded of the period immediately after 9/11. That too was a media spectacle that fired up fevered emotions and over-heated rhetoric. With the word “spectacle” I am not questioning the reality or the gravity of either event; I am emphasizing that each featured a mediated aspect that itself instigated More
Building Global Labor Solidarity
I’m not a labor historian, but I grew up in a long-time union household that instilled a strong sense of working-class values. For most of my adult life, I’ve thought about labor unions, how they could better organize, and how those of us not organizing on the shop floor could aid such efforts. Indeed, there’s More
Twitter Nukes Trump
This was Twitter Safety’s January 8 post, full of noble concern: “After close review of recent Tweets from the @realDonaldTrump account and the context around them – specifically how they are being received and interpreted off Twitter – we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence.” Is it More
The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (RCEP) and the Future of the US Dollar
“The dollar is our currency, but it’s your problem.” – John Connally, former US Treasury Secretary Introduction After several years of negotiations, a regional trade and economic agreement—the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP)—was signed by 15 Asia-Pacific nations on November 16, including China, Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand and all 10 members of the More
Denouncing Republican Evils Can’t Do Much for the Biden Presidency Without Demanding Progressive Policies
The Republican plunge into Trumpism has made the party especially unhinged and dangerous, but its basic ideology has long been a shameless assault on minimal standards of human decency. Now — while Democratic leaders and most corporate media outlets are suitably condemning the fascist tendencies of Trump and his followers — deeper analysis and stepped-up More
Our Post-Trump Democratic Prospects: What the Ming Dynasty Can Teach Us
How best to understand the assault on the Capitol this week? Might some historical perspective help us better comprehend how endangered our democracy has become? Could that perspective point us to a more promising post-Trump path? A global team of anthropologists from the United States and Mexico may be offering up just the sort of More
Alliance for the Wild Rockies Sues Over Impacts on Grizzlies from Widespread Illegal Motorized Use on National Forests
The Alliance for the Wild Rockies filed a lawsuit in federal district court on Friday over impacts to threatened grizzly bears from widespread illegal road use across the Helena-Lewis & Clark National Forest in Montana. Illegal motorized use includes motorized use on “closed” roads by driving around gates or barriers or ripping them out, as More
Trump Fanatics Invade Capitol, as His Presidency Crumbles
Chaos and disarray marked an electrified Washington, D.C. political scene in the days immediately following the Wednesday, Jan. 6 President Donald Trump-instigated rampaging mob that stormed the Capitol Building aimed at preventing an in-session joint meeting of the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate from certifying Joseph Biden’s Nov. 3 Electoral College victory. The several More
Three Sonnets on Being Whiteness
I. The unbearable whiteness of being white weighs on me tortures me day and night — a self-loathing fat fuck Orpheus light, the ex I stiffed pillar of salt fleeing to Sister Ophelia’s nunnery seeking sinless blank canvassed nothingness, while I’m on the lam from wolves. I confess a fond white need for constant punnery, More
Latest Lawsuit Challenges Trump Sale of Montana Public Lands for Fracking
Great Falls, Montana Citing the failure of the Trump administration to protect the climate and clean water, a coalition today filed suit to overturn the sale of more than 58,000 acres of public lands for fracking in Montana. The lawsuit comes as President-elect Joe Biden has pledged to end the sale of public lands to the oil and More
CounterPunch.org 2021-01-13 00:07:52
‘A Red Flag and a Silver Dress?’ | Interview With Divina De Campo
RuPaul has turned drag into a multi-million dollar industry and a global TV franchise, but has that meant that the art of drag has lost its claim to being punk? Ash Sarkar was joined by Divina De Campo, first runner up from RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 1, to talk about drag, gender identity, and the [...]