Kategori: Engelske
Global South Economies Like Zambia’s Are Being Battered by Coronavirus. We Must Write-off Debt Now
As stock markets in the rich world cling on to the gains made on the back of government and central bank largesse, emerging market economies are still being battered by the pandemic. Last month, the IMF informed the world that the global South was facing the biggest capital outflow ever recorded. Managing director Kristalina Georgieva [...] Leading by Example: Cuba in the Covid-19 Pandemic
The response of socialist Cuba to the global SARS-CoV2 pandemic has been outstanding both domestically and for its international contribution. That a small island nation, subjected to hundreds of years of colonialism and imperialism and, since the Revolution of 1959, six decades of the criminal United States blockade, can play such an exemplary role is due to Cuba’s socialist system. [...]
Our History is Our Future
We can be sure that the public grandiloquence of Barack Obama grated mightily on at least half of the country during his eight years in the Oval Office. Now, we Libtards find every Trump tweet excruciatingly inane – or horrifyingly inflammatory. As ever, it is the style, not the content, of American political leadership that More
Chamberlain v. White Plains: A Crack in the Wall for Police Killings?
On Monday, June 1, the U.S. Second Circuit in New York substantially reversed a district court’s ruling on appeal in the case of the police killing of Kenneth Chamberlain, Sr., in which the lower court had found mainly for the defendants. Amid the turmoil and horror of the George Floyd and Breanna Taylor murders, the More
Domination and the Murder of George Floyd
In our documentary movie “The Doctrine of Discovery: Unmasking the Domination Code,” directed by Sheldon Wolfchild (Dakota Nation), we quote language from the papal document Dum diversas, issued by the Catholic Church in 1452. The dehumanizing language expressed in that papal document provides a means of understanding the heartless killing of an African-American named George More
Defending Land and Water From Mining Profiteers in the Time of Covid-19
Over the years, the mining industry has taken advantage of dictatorship, disasters, and a variety of distractions to expand operations in Latin America. In the time of Covid-19, with entire populations under lockdown and economies falling apart, mining companies have also hopped on the pandemic profiteering bandwagon. The potential implications are wide-reaching. In Latin America, More
I Remember the Lynchings of the 60s. They’re Still Happening
I was naive until I wasn’t. At just 18, the day after I graduated from high school, I drove from Boston to Atlanta to work with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Two weeks later, on June 21, 1964, we got word that three young civil rights workers — James Chaney, Mickey Schwerner, and Andrew More
U.S. Abandons Open Skies for New Age Space Weapons
With the U.S. deciding to walk out of the Open Skies agreement, the U.S. is signaling to the world that it intends to return to days of Pax Americana that existed post-World War II, when it was the sole possessor of nuclear weapons. It has already walked out of the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty in More
NATO Returns to Libya to Challenge Russia
The great game in Libya has begun surging with the United States shedding its strategic ambivalence and resorting to a proactive role. At the end of May, the Pentagon marked a dramatic escalation by accusing Moscow of bolstering “Kremlin-linked mercenaries” who are allegedly helping Khalifa Haftar, the eastern warlord in Libya. In an extraordinary statement More
Redistribution by Another Name
Across the US, cities, especially fancy malls and outlets of major retail chains, are being busted into and ransacked, as police squad cars get flipped over and torched, in scenes not seen in the US since the mid to late 1960s. Many of the perpetrators of these actions are black residents of these cities, but More
How Immunity for Cops and Facebook Kills Americans
When you tell people they won’t be held accountable for their actions, it almost always ends badly. That’s what’s happened with our police and our social media, two institutional pillars of personal and political society in America today. Removing those dual immunities could dramatically change—for the better—the lives of millions of Americans. For police, the More
The Problem With Chainsaw Medicine: the Forest Service’s Move to Cut Oregon’s Big Trees
The Forest Service is proposing to remove the prohibition against logging trees larger than 21 inches that grow in national forests on the eastside of the Cascades in Oregon. The probation was put into place when ecological studies demonstrated the critical importance of large-diameter old-growth trees to overall forest ecosystem function. The Forest Service argues More
An Idea on Providing Coordination and Leadership
The country is filled with so much anger and so much action – but, as far as I can see, so little leadership! Would it not be wonderful if the present protests were supported by a statement and a call for emergency united action by a broad list of known progressives, including, if possible, such as More
How the Credibility Gap Became a Chasm in the Age of Trump
These days, teaching graduating college seniors has me, as the Brits would say in the London Underground, “minding the gap.” In my case, however, it’s not the gap between the platform and the train I’m thinking of, but a couple of others: those between U.S. citizens and our government, as well as between different generations More
With USA in Retreat, China Reassesses Its Options
Beijing. Beijing is looking at the world today through a prism where the United States can be accounted for. The US is too weak, it believes, except in purely military terms, to counter China’s interests. The image has been seen the world over. A black man dies after a US policeman kneels on his neck. Civil More
A Proposal from Afar: Trump Must Resign!
A vast protest of unprecedented scope and intensity has spread over the United States since the police assassination of George Floyd on May 25. The American people are aware of this and it requires no elaboration. Some voices in the media and elsewhere ask insistently of the protesters: What do you want? What are your More
To the Commercial Heavens We Go! SpaceX, NASA and Space Privatisation
It would be too simple to regard the latest space venture, funded by Elon Musk, as entirely a matter of vast ego and deeply-pocked adventurism. But it would be close. The successful delivery of astronauts Douglas Hurley and Robert Behnken of NASA as part of the joint mission with SpaceX to the International Space Station More
The UN’s Anti-Poverty Proposal for Latin America: a “Basic Emergency Income”
The economic impact of the COVID-19 crisis on Latin America could be potentially devastating, according to a new Special Report by the UN’s Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC). The report, based on the available data in mid-April, has estimated a -5.3 percent drop for the region’s GDP growth in 2020 — More
Four Aphorisms
Four Aphorisms One can never think one’s way out of a crisis. From about the age of six, in our globalised, massified, work-ethic society, all humans are set on a trajectory bound toward a state bereft of the misery of their consciousness. I do not want the unity of the One – the same – More
Why I’m Still Thinking About the Amy Cooper “Black Birder” Episode in Central Park
Like white-collar professionals across the nation, I have had to fumble through my fair share of mind-numbing Zoom meetings over the past two and a half months. But last week, a friend and colleague put together what proved to be a particularly enjoyable and constructive meeting for black faculty. The meeting began, as they often [...]
Lessons from “The Battle of the Paulistas”
The “Outside Agitator” Is a Myth Used to Weaken Protest Movements
COVID-19 Chronicles with Noam Chomsky
Mining in Australia Feeds on the Destruction of Aboriginal Heritage
On Sunday, May 24, the resource giant Rio Tinto detonated explosive charges in the Juukan Gorge in Western Australia to extend one of its mines, casually destroying two indigenous sites linked to more than 46,000 years of human habitation. As the Guardian reports, the sacred cave in Juukan Gorge in the Hammersley Range showed 46,000 [...]
Anti-racist marches: From Minneapolis to Paris, everything to play for
Military Rule
Beyond Bernie: Amidst National Unrest, Can Progressive Candidates Salvage the Democratic Party?
The decision of Bernie Sanders to suspend his presidential campaign on April 8 dealt a painful blow to the hopes and dreams of leftists all around the world. Sanders was the first primary candidate in history, from either party, to win the most votes in each of the first three state contests. But as the [...] Felipe Calderón’s Administration Had Ties to Drug Cartels — And the United States Knew All Along
Sometimes among all the high-blown rhetoric, symposia, and communiqués, the curtain is pulled back to reveal the simple levers that operate the diplomatic world. In a remarkable interview published in the Mexican newsmagazine Proceso earlier this month, former US ambassador to Mexico Roberta Jacobson blithely revealed that during the presidency of Felipe Calderón (2006–12), the [...]
Savory Snacks for Social Justice
In April 2017 the corporate overlords at PepsiCo rolled out a nearly three-minute video clip projecting a vague idea of solidarity toward nothing in particular. Featuring a diverse cast of telegenic young people and starring none other than superstar Kendall Jenner, the segment foregrounds a gathering vaguely encoded as a protest march thanks to a [...]
Racist Police Murder of George Floyd Leads to National Rebellion
Rising up against white revenge
Trump’s LARPing as a Dictator Just Got a Little More Real
President Donald Trump said on Monday that he’s considering using the Insurrection Act of 1807 to deploy the military against those protesting the brutal murder of George Floyd, an unarmed black man, at the hands of Minneapolis police on May 25. Trump said in the Rose Garden, “If a city or a state refuses to [...]
On the Streets of Minneapolis, the Labour Movement is Supporting the Protests
Unions and other workers’ organisations are standing in solidarity with protesters in Minneapolis, as the uprising against the murder of black American George Floyd spans a second week. Floyd’s story is familiar to most of us now: on 25 May, Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin detained Floyd after the 46-year-old was accused of trying to [...] The Best Way to “Reform” the Police Is to Defund the Police
Last Monday, a Minneapolis police officer killed George Floyd by kneeling on his neck for nearly nine minutes. Protests that began early last week in Minneapolis spread to city after city, and by the weekend they had snowballed into nationwide mass civil unrest, which continues into this week. Jacobin’s Meagan Day spoke to Alex Vitale, [...]
The Burner Episode #244: Who Counts?
The End of Policing With Alex Vitale
The killing of George Floyd has catalysed a wave of protest across the United States, with police violence central to the message of the powerful #BlackLivesMatter movement. Aaron Bastani interviews author of ‘The End of Policing’, Alex Vitale, to ask just how bad law enforcement is in the United States, and what can be done [...] Revolution, Not Riots: Prospects for Radical Transformation in the Covid-19 Era
The murder of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police served as yet another wakeup call for a nation that has historically struggled with recognizing structural violence against people of color. The ensuing protests and riots represent a renewed effort to sensitize Americans to the reality of pervasive racism in their country. Recent events More
From Mississippi to Minneapolis: Leaving the ‘Abyss of Despair’
In the early morning hours of August 28th, 1955, two white men burst into the Mississippi home of Moses Wright where 14-year-old Emmett Till slept. Till had come down from Chicago to visit his cousins and was accused of having flirted with a white woman, Carolyn Bryant, while at a local country store with some More
The UK Compared With Other Countries on the Pandemic
As I write (the weekend of 30-31 May), the UK’s death toll from the COVID-19 pandemic has reached 38,489. Even the rightwing Financial Times regards this figure as an under-estimate, and says the actual toll is 60,300. The Murdoch-owned Sky News reports that the UK’s population-adjusted COVID19 death toll has now overtaken Italy’s: UK: 543 More
The Murder of George Floyd is Normal for an Abnormal Society
There is no need to wonder why George Floyd (age 46) was murdered in broad daylight in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on May 25, 2020. The script of his death is written deep in the ugly drama of U.S. history. More
The post The Murder of George Floyd is Normal for an Abnormal Society appeared first on
The Sadism of American Power
It was just a couple of weeks ago that President Trump was both inciting and praising anti-lockdown protesters around the country. These included armed white militia men who stormed state capitol buildings demanding an end to public health measures to curb the spread of the deadly Covid-19 virus. Many of them were filmed harassing nurses More
The Coup Against ‘The Most Loyal Ally’
The Australian High Court has ruled that correspondence between the Queen and the Governor-General of Australia, her viceroy in the former British colony, is no longer “personal” and the property of Buckingham Palace. Why does this matter? Secret letters written in 1975 by the Queen and her man in Canberra, Sir John Kerr, can now More
“Total Domination”: Popular Rebellion in the Shadow of Trumpism-Fascism
I joined a decent-sized civil and human rights march in Iowa City two nights ago. It started with mostly young and white people milling around, quietly chalking and talking at City Hall. When the numbers got big enough and two young Black sparkplug activists showed up, we took to (and took over) the downtown streets and had a rally at [...]
The Police Are The Out-Of-Towners Provoking Violence
Since protests of the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis began on May 26, authorities at every level have blamed “outsiders” for provoking violence. On May 30, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter claimed that the large majority of protesters who had been arrested the previous night were from outside More
How the Washington Post Accommodates Disinformation
The Washington Post has come up with a doozy of a pairing for its online interview series. On Thursday, June 4th, the paper is featuring its senior diplomatic columnist David Ignatius and former deputy director of the CIA John McLaughlin in a talk titled “Fact or Fiction: Deepfakes & Disinformation.” This is an ironic pairing in view More
It’s the Worshippers Who Are “Essential”
As the coronavirus death toll was about to reach 100,000, in a quick press announcement, President Trump declared, “Today I’m identifying houses of worship, churches, synagogues and mosques as essential places that provide essential services.” He moralized: “Some governors have deemed liquor stores and abortion clinics as essential, but have left out churches and other More
No, the Public Fury Will Not “Move On” Prime Minister!
It is quite clear from the last week that the majority of the public are furious. Indeed MPs from across the country, including Conservative MPs, have said that the anger they are receiving from their constituents over the rule breaking of the Prime Minister’s chief advisor, Dominic Cummings, is overwhelming. This has also been reflected More
It is Happening Here
My thoughts about the historical moment: June 1, 2020 was one of the most significant days in the history of the United States. In the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, with over 104,000 dead and counting; 40 million people unemployed; an economy that is collapsing, and an unprecedented nation-wide (multi-racial, ethnic and class) uprising against More
Tales from the Dark Side of Customer Service, or “Christians” Giving Christians a Bad Name
I used to teach Business Ethics. It was one of my favorite classes because I think it’s so important. Businesses impact every aspect of our lives. They not only provide goods and services, on which we crucially depend, and livelihoods for a huge portion of society. Whether they are run ethically and responsibly makes a More
A Superpower in Chaos
Minneapolis could not have happened at a worse time for the US elites. While violence perpetrated against African Americans by White police officers has happened a number of times before, its occurrence right in the midst of a huge health emergency that has already claimed more than a 100,000 lives and a related massive economic More
Time to Stop Messing Around and Strike at the Root of Police Violence
Protests quickly broke out nationwide following the May 25 killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, which was caught on video and quickly went viral. Yes, Chauvin has been arrested and charged with murder. Yes, the usual “voices of reason” are issuing a new round of calls for “police reform,” just as More
The Oligopoly That Controls Our Digital Infrastructure Has Deepened Economic and Racial Divides
In a brutal and devastating way, the Covid-19 pandemic is revealing the many stark and deep inequalities at the heart of our corporate capitalist political economic system. In the United States, for instance, every passing day brings new evidence of how structural and institutional racism has left people of color disproportionately vulnerable both to the More
The Ethics of Police Murder Video Exhibition: Democratizing The News Feed, Re-Traumatizing The Survivors, Or Both?
In the wake of the police murder of George Floyd, another unarmed Black man crying out “I can’t breathe!” as he was strangled in public, the ethical question of re-posting the videos and pictures of the murder have arisen in social media. This also occurred in April during the initial revelations surrounding the vigilante murder More
Death, Protest and George Floyd
Mobs are unruly, headless things. The message is the action. The platform is often violence. But what is happening across the United States cannot simply be labelled as a looting-leads-to-shooting episode. It ranks as another chapter of enraged despair and untidy opportunism. It all began with a savage act in South Minneapolis, a killing grotesque More
Who’s Trashing Downtown Every Night and Why?
The corporate media and corporate politicians are paralyzed with indecision. Which fake myth do we adhere to? “Black people burning down their own neighborhoods” or “outside agitators”? What if it’s both, and more…? Media coverage of the past few days and nights of the multiracial uprising that is currently taking place in various forms in More
Trump Is No Accident
God wills that [the Civil War] continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword. – Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural, March 4, 1865 (He was More
Biden and the Common Sense Voter
Last Friday, on the PBS News Hour’s weekly review with Mark Shields and David Brooks, Judy Woodruff posed a question about Joe Biden’s response to what was happening in Minneapolis. David Brooks, the New York Times’ conservative columnist, visibly shaken by the events of the week declared: “I want to see more outrage. I want More
American Authoritarianism Runs Deeper Than Trump
Throughout Donald Trump’s presidency, puzzled observers have often wondered: How is it that the Democratic Party, which regularly accuses Trump of being a dangerous authoritarian plotting a dictatorial takeover, nevertheless works again and again to extend and enhance his spying powers? The past week of protests and riots sparked by the seemingly never-ending contagion of [...]
Ecosystems, Logging and the Definition of Insanity
It’s become a trite but true saying the definition of insanity is doing the same acts over and over yet expecting different results. This is definitely the case with timber industry lobbyists stridently arguing for increased logging and firefighting on public lands. Many people oppose the corporate looting of public lands, and that is why More
The Birds of Brooklyn
The Birds of Brooklyn In other news, the Prospect Park Zoo’s Emus broke loose — and a cop, Attempting to catch one, got gutted Disemboweled. Oh, how he yowled. The birds, however, evaded capture A feather was found, in Crown Heights, On Classon. Another was found In the Brooklyn Museum But nobody’s seen either bird More
To Break the Power of the Police, We Need to Mobilize the Power of Labor
Among the many buildings torched this past week, one stands out as an odd target: the AFL-CIO headquarters in Washington, DC. While some have speculated that protesters set the lobby ablaze Sunday night because of the labor federation’s failure to pursue racial justice with sufficient gusto, the more likely explanation is that protesters saw it [...]
“Black Lives Matter” and police killings
Pelosi and Schumer’s Shamefully Tepid Response to Trump’s Threat to Unleash the Military on Protests
At a June 1 press conference, President Trump declared war against the Black-led uprisings taking place across the country by calling on the deployment of U.S. troops to American cities. “War”—a term typically reserved as metaphor or figure of speech—in this context increasingly appears to be a literal act taken by the President of the United States.
Trump said he would [...]
Malcolm X on Being American
Donald Trump’s “Antifa” Hysteria Is Absurd. But It’s Also Very Dangerous.
For nearly two decades, the United States government has been waging what it calls a “war on terrorism.” Over the last several days, the United States has been engulfed by a wave of terror. But the perpetrators are not al-Qaeda, ISIS, or any other foreign adversary — the terror comes from the domestic forces of [...]
We defend ourselves so we can all breathe in peace
In Central Pennsylvania, the Bernie Campaign Was the Beginning, Not the End
Pennsylvania’s Democratic primary, originally scheduled for April 28, will instead take place today, June 2. This year, Pennsylvania never had the chance to become the pitched battleground that it was four years ago. In 2016, the insurgent Sanders campaign swept a number of counties in rural and de-industrialized parts of the state before ultimately losing [...]
To Fight the Coming Storm, the Left Needs to Learn From the Anti-Austerity Movement
The next few years are likely to see the biggest crisis of capitalism, and the biggest assault on our rights and living standards, in any of our lifetimes. The Bank of England has warned the UK economy could shrink by as much as 14% this year, and unemployment more than double by next spring. After [...] Here Are 10 Things Democrats Could Do If They Actually Wanted to Stop Trump’s Power Grab
The New York “Progressive” Establishment Is Complicit in the NYPD’s Brutality
In 2014, a political revolution happened in New York City. Bill de Blasio stormed into City Hall on a promise of reforming the New York Police Department (NYPD) after twelve years of technocratic and intermittently reactionary rule from mayor Michael Bloomberg. A majority of the City Council was term-limited, replaced by a younger, more progressive [...]
Minneapolis sparks BLM protest in Amsterdam
How Jewish Socialists Fought to Stop the Pogroms of the Russian Civil War
The anti-Jewish violence that spread during the Russian Civil War was unprecedented in scale — even conservative estimates put the number of dead at over 50,000. Most of this violence was perpetrated by the nationalist armies which emerged amidst the breakdown of the old tsarist regime, who also painted the postrevolutionary Bolshevik government as “cosmopolitan” [...]
Rubber Bullets Are Anything but “Nonlethal.” They Should Be Banned.
As part of their violent clampdown on protests against racism and police brutality, US police forces have been routinely firing rubber bullets at unarmed demonstrators, from Minneapolis to Los Angeles, Phoenix to Nashville. These so-called nonlethal or less lethal weapons have become a standard tool of US policing, along with tear gas and pepper spray, [...]
Capitalism Was Always Like This
In two recent New Left Review articles Aaron Benanav has laid out what he sees as the road from necessity to freedom — a revolutionary journey once described by Marx and embraced by most of us who call ourselves socialists. In this, Benanav rejects the currently dominant “automation discourse” of techno- futurists such as Martin [...]
The urgency of international solidarity with refugees
America in Flames (w/ Nelini Stamp)
Inequality Is Worse Than We Were Told, and Our Tax System Has Been Covering It Up
Whenever we have heard a whisper of concern in recent years over rising inequality, the right has leapt to remind us that inequality has been flat since the late 1980s and remains low by international standards. This story is indeed borne out by most standard measures of inequality – the income share of the top [...] The End of Policing W/ Alex Vitale
The killing of George Floyd has catalysed a wave of protest across the United States, with police violence central to the message of the powerful #BlackLivesMatter movement. Aaron Bastani interviews author of ‘The End of Policing’, Alex Vitale, to ask just how bad law enforcement is in the United States, and what can be done [...] Capitalism Is Not the Solution to Urban America’s Problems — Capitalism Itself Is the Problem
It is quite possible that if and when we collectively emerge from the torments being inflicted by COVID-19, we will find ourselves in a political landscape where the reform of capitalism is very much upon the agenda. Even before the virus struck, there were minor hints of such a transition. Major business leaders who were [...]
Deploying Federal Troops in a War at Home Would Make a Bad Situation Worse
Although the National Guard has often been used against civil rebellion, deploying federal military forces within the U.S. is a drastic and historically rare move. I’ve studied the history and geography of U.S. military interventions from the “Indian Wars” to the Middle East, and have documented only a handful of times that Army, Marines, or federalized National Guard forces have [...]
An Unavoidable Recognition of Failure: Trump’s Withdrawal From Afghanistan
In October 2001 I was standing on a hilltop 40 miles north of Kabul watching US aircraft bomb the Taliban front line. The night sky was lit up with the flash of explosions and the sparkle of ineffectual anti-aircraft fire. It was fairly obvious who was going to come out the winner. A few weeks More
Amy Cooper is Christian Cooper’s Lost, Younger Sister
This week – like most weeks – James Baldwin has been on my mind. The man Malcolm X called “the poet” of the civil rights revolution died over three decades ago, but his ideas are as relevant as ever. As I sat today thinking about the recent lynching of Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia, the state-sponsored terrorism that killed Breonna Taylor [...]
Global Warming is Nuclear War
Thermodynamically, we have greenhouse gas-bombed out of existence the pristine biosphere and its habitable climate that first cradled and nurtured the infancy of our species 2000 centuries ago, and then fed and protected the development and growth of that fragile chimera we call “civilization,” which our potentates have been proudly boasting about for at least 8,000 years. And we’re still [...]
Is It Time to Boycott the USA?
In his infinite ignorance, Donald Trump has invited world leaders to the White House for a face-to-face meeting at the end of June. Unlike the other countries in the G7, the United States has yet to get the coronavirus pandemic under control. One of the hotspots that the White House itself has identified is none More
Beating Swords to Plowshares
Inscribed on a wall across from the United Nations in New York City are ancient words of incalculable yearning: “They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore.” – Isaiah 2:4 I’ve stood with activists in More
U.S. Urban Riots Revisited
What follows is an updated essay on the “perennial nature of U.S. urban riots” which I wrote a little over five years ago. The original version appeared on my blog on 9 May 2015 following racial rioting in the city of Baltimore. The murder of George Floyd, an African American, by police in Minneapolis on 25 May 2020, More
“Failed State” Status Here We Come
Americans have at various times in our past battled horrific bouts with infectious disease. And Americans have lived through times of sheer economic desperation. But we’ve never — until this corona spring — experienced both at once. The stats out this week have made this grim landmark “official.” Over 100,000 Americans now dead from Covid-19. More
In Defense of Antifa
Since Donald Trump and his sycophantic henchman Bill Barr decided to label the movement known as Antifa a terrorist organization, people across the political spectrum are resurrecting their antipathy towards the phenomenon. This cacophony of charges and misconceptions has once again put this amorphous manifestation in the spotlight. The last time most people had even More
Bolsonaro and Trump: Separated at Birth
The tricks of Mother Nature There are two types of twins – identical (monozygotic) and fraternal (dizygotic). One fertilized egg (ovum) splits and develops two babies with exactly the same genetic information to form identical twins. They differ from fraternal twins, where two eggs (ova) are fertilized by two sperm and produce two genetically unique More
The BLM’s License to Destroy Sagebrush Ecosystems
The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is now taking comments on a massive vegetation project for the Great Basin and adjacent areas of the Colorado Plateau. The PEIS for Fuels Reduction and Rangeland Restoration in the Great Basin (the Fuels Reduction and Rangeland Restoration PEIS) analyzes several options for carrying out fuel reduction and rangeland More
The Absurdity of Hope
Of all the evils released by Pandora from her jar, the evil that was left behind, HOPE, is obviously the worst of all. I can remember clearly going to a play by Fernando Arrabal in a little theatre off Melrose, both because I was interested in theatre of the absurd and because some actor friends More
Sinister Flatulence: Trump Versus Twitter
Sawing off the branch you sit on can hardly be the best of policies. But that all depends on the nature of the branch. US President Donald Trump has huffed himself into another small historical moment, going on the offensive against social media companies using the very language his faux progressive opponents use against them. More
How Much Violence and Destruction is Enough for Depraved American Leaders and Their Subjects?
“Without trampling through all the historical details, we can designate the entire history of [Americans]—the glorious past so eulogized by our fathers—as the history of shame, for in that history there is more betrayal, apostasy, perfidious intrigue, ignominious defeat, well-deserved failure, base vengeance, merciless retaliation and brutality that no hypocrisy can mask…So let’s forget about More
The Enemy Within
Days of nationwide rioting finally has made absolutely clear in the starkest terms that Donald Trump is more a champion of violence than a peacemaker. There’s a madman in the White House, and he’s the president. At a time when more than 100,000 Americans have died of a virus-borne disease, 40 million others are out More
Trump’s “Free Speech:” Doctrine: Never, Ever, Ever Mention He’s a Liar
On May 28, US president Donald Trump signed an executive order on “Preventing Online Censorship.” From the title and the document respectively we can draw to two lessons. First: Never, ever, ever believe the title of a government document. The internal texts of congressional bills and resolutions, as well as executive branch orders, “findings,” intelligence More
For Murdered Honduran Organizer Berta Cáceres, “Any Injustice Was Her Battle”
The March 2, 2016 assassination of venerated Honduran social movement leader Berta Cáceres sent shockwaves around the world. In her new book Who Killed Berta Cáceres? Dams, Death Squads, and an Indigenous Defender’s Battle for the Planet, journalist Nina Lakhani describes the fraught process that led, two years later, to the conviction of seven men [...]
This Is Not a Revolution. It’s a Blueprint for Locking Down the Nation
“When it gets down to having to use violence, then you are playing the system’s game. The establishment will irritate you—pull your beard, flick your face—to make you fight. Because once they’ve got you violent, then they know how to handle you.” —John Lennon Brace yourselves. There is something being concocted in the dens of power, More
Brazil’s darkest hour requires anti-fascist unity
George Floyd is Now a Household Name in Britain. Why Isn’t Jimmy Mubenga?
The killing of George Floyd last week has generated a wave of protest across the United States. Given his final moments were captured on video, and the particularly sadistic nature of the officer who arrested him, media attention was bound to follow. But in an era of the Trump presidency and policing methods which resemble [...] The Focus on Looting Shows How Our Systems of Power Value Capital Over Human Lives
As it is with any season of protest, nothing brings out the murderous authoritarianism in the ruling class quite like the sight of disobedience by ordinary black people. It comes if you rally by the thousands to deem their authority illegitimate. If you call for an end to a hailstorm of brutality. Or bring chaos upon property in the shadow [...]
This Weekend, Police Responded to Protests Against Police Violence With Even More Wantonly Brutal Violence
In more than 140 American cities this past weekend, protesters blocked traffic and marched, demanding an end to racist police violence and justice for George Floyd, who was killed by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin last week. The police greeted the protesters with brutality. Police shot rubber bullets and tear gas. They used extreme force [...]
In America, the Rich Get Immunity. The Rest of Us Get “Law and Order”
One of the crown jewels of the Constitution is the Fourteenth Amendment — which promises that there will be “equal protection” for all people under our laws. And yet we all know this is a farce. In America, we routinely offer legal immunity to the rich and powerful, while giving the iron fist to everyone [...]
Crisis and the Global Factory at the U.S.-Mexico Border
Conservative ‘Common Sense’ Lets Men Like Dominic Cummings Do What They Want
In the weeks preceding the furore over Dominic Cummings breach of lockdown rules, a row took place over the vagueness of the government’s new ‘stay alert’ guidance – a revision of the simpler ‘stay at home’ message. Nicola Sturgeon said “I don’t know what ‘stay alert’ means,” and Wales and Scotland refused to change their [...] The Pandemic Is Changing How It Feels to Be Free
Last week, the think tank Autonomy released new research into the economic impact of Covid-19. By breaking down the post-lockdown increase in unemployment claims by age, gender and region the report has, amongst other things, provided the clearest evidence yet that the young are disproportionately bearing the economic costs of the pandemic. Around 40% of [...] The Laura Flanders Show: Environmental Injustice During the Pandemic
Amazon Is No Ally in the Fight for Racial Justice
Amazon works with police departments across the country, offering them facial recognition services in the form of Ring, a video-doorbell app. The company has contracts with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and seeks them with the US military. In recent months, Amazon has fired several black warehouse workers in what appears to be retaliation for [...]
Economic Update: Cornel West on Pandemic Capitalism
When Rioting Works
American liberalism has a distinctly contradictory relationship with black protest. On the one hand, liberals imagine themselves the best friends (in contemporary parlance, “allies”) of the cause of black equality. On the other, since at least the 1930s, liberals have recoiled from black militancy, convinced it served little purpose but to strengthen the hand of [...]
How to Make the Left More Attractive
Young People Today Are Uniquely Radical Because Capitalism Has Failed Them
A few years ago, I attended a panel discussion at a gathering of Canada’s conservative movement. A number of well-known Conservative MPs gave speeches, and during the Q&A that followed, the moderator asked each to offer some insight into how they thought conservatives might make their party and its program more appealing to young people. [...]
The Burner Episode #243: Ease Off, Second Wave + Talking Teachers
How to Save the Restaurant Workforce From Being Casualties of The Covid-19 Crisis
The UK is Not Innocent – Police Brutality Has a Long and Violent History Here
“I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe.” This desperate refrain has once again become the dying words of yet another black man in the United States. Memories of the New York City Police Department officer administering a lethal headlock on Eric Garner have barely faded since his death in 2014. In the years [...] Donald Trump’s Antifa Bogeyman Has a Long, Proud History of Fighting Fascists
When the President of the United States says that he’ll be designating Antifa as a terrorist organization, a part of me thinks: well go on then, let’s see you try. Because this awful, foreign-sounding word “antifa” is only an abbreviation of “anti-fascist.” Organizations can be banned, but it isn’t so easy to do the same [...]
It’s a Class War Now Too
The people who became known as the looters were a fraction of those who stayed behind after the earlier protests dispersed. They are now deemed “thugs” and “thieves” by those who find it easy to write off their palpable frustration, which spread to Santa Monica and across Long Beach by Sunday evening. Writing it off, however, not only ignores America’s [...]
Why the Neoliberal Agenda is a Failure at Fighting Coronavirus
The utter failure of private capitalism to prepare for the coronavirus should have surprised no one. Private capitalism, as business school graduates repeat, focuses on profit. The “profit incentive,” they learn, makes private capitalism the superior, “most efficient” economic system available. That is its “bottom line” and “chief goal.” The problem is that to produce adequate numbers of testing components, [...]
Racial Domestic Terrorism and the Legacy of State Violence
The sheer brutality of George Floyd's death at the hands of a viciously violent cop symbolizes the unadulterated racism of a culture that looks away in the face of police violence against Black people but also a society in which a form of racialized domestic terrorism has become normalized. More
The Second Longest War in the United States
Other than the fact I was born in Minneapolis, I have little connection to the place. My adult life never encouraged much interaction with my relatives who live in the area, so except for the rare visit, I don’t know much about it. However, I do understand police brutality and the nature of a police state. The current rebellion in [...]
The Return of the “Outside Agitator”
Shortly after protests erupted in Ferguson following the killing of Michael Brown in August, 2014, officials in Missouri began to refer to “outside agitators” as the main instigators of the civil unrest in the city. Today, in St. Paul and Minneapolis, the governor, Tim Walz, and the mayor of Minneapolis, Jacob Frey, have once again referred to “outside agitators” as [...]
“You Loot; We Shoot”
Last Friday, the leader of the entity that expects my pledge of allegiance threatened to shoot—specifically—looters. Before we go into what happened last night and Saturday morning and is on track to continue through the week, let me remember some historic milestones in looting. * In the seventies, African-American homeowners were dealing with a disturbing More
Eruptions of Rage
America’s cities are burning again. In Minneapolis, after an unarmed and unresisting George Floyd, 46 and black, was killed by a white cop after being arrested for the non-violent alleged crime of trying to pass a fake $20 bill, protests immediately erupted. Minneapolis cops, with a reputation for violence, responded to the initial protest with More
An Impending Crisis: COVID-19 in Haiti, Ongoing Instability, and the Dangers of Continued U.S. Deportations
Prepared remarks by Jake Johnston to Congresswoman Frederica S. Wilson’s forum on COVID-19 and ICE’s deportation of detainees to Haiti First, I want to thank Congresswoman Wilson for convening this forum and for her leadership on this issue. The introduction of legislation mandating a halt to these deportations is a concrete and necessary step. I’d More
Private Prisons Should Be Abolished — But They Aren’t the Real Problem
On March 9, Governor Andrew Cuomo announced that New York State prisoners would be producing hand sanitizer, just as incarcerated people and outside activists alike began pressuring for the widespread release of prisoners due to COVID-19. The irony wasn’t subtle: prisoners risking their lives to produce hand sanitizer for people in the free world put [...]
What is Capitalism?
“Even when I’m weak and I’m breaking I stand weeping at the train station ‘Cause I can see your faces I love people’s faces” —Kate Tempest, People’s Faces The question ‘what is capitalism’ is a sincere one. Critiques of our present situation very often say the problem is capitalism. This is usually done without defining More
“Do Not Resuscitate”: My Experience with Hospice, Inc.
One nurse told Clay. . . “I’ve given him the highest dosage I can. It’s enough to kill a horse. Most hospice patients die from morphine, but I can only OD him within an acceptable margin of error.” –From Christopher Bollen, A Beautiful Crime In this age of coronavirus, it has become abundantly clear that More
Who Are the Secret Puppet-Masters Behind Trump’s War on Iran?
On May 6th, President Trump vetoed a war powers bill specifying that he must ask Congress for authorization to use military force against Iran. Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign of deadly sanctions and threats of war against Iran has seen no let-up, even as the U.S., Iran and the whole world desperately need to set aside More
A Simple Model for Global Warming
70% or less of the sunlight shining onto the Earth reaches the surface and is absorbed by the biosphere. From this absorbed energy, in combination with the presence of water and organic material, all life springs. The oceans, which cover 70.2% of the Earth’s surface and comprise 99.4% of the biosphere’s mass, form the great More
Is the Pandemic Creating a Resurgence of Unionism?
Since Ronald Reagan fired air traffic controllers (Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization) en masse at the beginning of his presidency “(“Reagan fires 11,000 striking air traffic controllers, August 5, 1981,” Politico, August 5, 2017), unions, which had already seen a decline because of the expansion of the global economy, saw membership numbers begin a precipitous decline (“The PATCO Strike, More
Federal Prisons Should Not be Death Chambers
Double Ditch Indian Village overlooks the Missouri River in North Dakota, about an hour’s drive north from where the Dakota Access Pipeline Water Protectors formed their prayer camps in 2016 on the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation. It’s a historic site of a village where, from 1490 to 1785, members of the Mandan Tribe lived in More
The Impact of Upward Redistribution on Social Security Solvency
Economic inequality in the US has ballooned since the early 1980s. Wage and salary growth at the top of the earnings distribution has significantly outpaced that at the bottom and middle, resulting in decades of unabated upward redistribution of income. The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed and exacerbated this divide. In addition to the immediate problems More
We Need a Public Option for Banking
The COVID-19 pandemic response has shown that the very foundations of our economy are shaky, fragile, and — for some of us — downright dangerous. We’re once again watching working people, especially working people of color, bear the brunt of the fallout. Meanwhile, big companies traded on the stock market took two-thirds of the money More
Our Disaster: Why the United States Bears Responsibility for Yemen’s Humanitarian Crisis
An entire generation of Yemeni children has suffered the traumas of war, many of them orphaned, maimed, malnourished, or displaced. The United Nations reports a death toll of 100,000 people in that nation’s ongoing war, with an additional 131,000 people dying from hunger, disease, and a lack of medical care. A report from Save the Children, issued in November 2018, estimated More
An Open Letter to Joe Biden on Race
Dear Mr. Vice President Joe Biden, You showed up in public on Memorial Day weekend for the first time in weeks and I breathed a sigh of relief. YoDear Mr. Vice President Joe Biden, You showed up in public on Memorial Day weekend for the first time in weeks and I breathed a sigh of More
On Sheep, Shepherds, Wolves and Other Political Creatures
Noam Chomsky was recently recorded in an interview saying that the Bernie Sanders campaign was “an extraordinary success” that “completely shifted the arena of debate and discussion” in the United States. While I agree with Chomsky when he says in the same Democracy Now interview that “If Trump is reelected, it’s an indescribable disaster. It More
All Night Jazz All The Time
All Night Jazz All The Time black and blue another black and white fireworks display day or night mighty whitey in the jazz at the first beboptist cathedral how can a poor martyr sleep listening to gargoyles we never let in cept to favor us with their play drop some coinage in the cap step More
“Undisciplined people” face eternal lockdown
Kurdish Women’s Movement in solidarity with George Floyd protests
Once Again, the Government is Using Disadvantaged Children to Pursue Harmful Policies
On Thursday evening Boris Johnson confirmed that parents and teachers should prepare for the phased reopening of schools in England from 1 June. Despite resistance from teaching unions since this plan was first announced in early May, Johnson said bringing back Reception, Year 1 and Year 6 pupils from Monday was necessary as “closing schools [...] Minneapolis Bus Driver: “It’s Imperative That Unions Fight for All Workers”
The murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis has set off a wave of protests and uprisings across the country. The rash of police violence, coupled with the COVID-19 pandemic and the unemployment crisis, has clearly pushed many to the breaking point. Because the vast majority of people protesting are workers, it makes sense that their [...]
Don’t Fall for the Myth of the “Outside Agitator” in Racial Justice Protests
Over the last few days, we’ve seen a national uprising against racism and police brutality. In response, the first instinct of the defenders of the status quo was to unite behind an old talking point: the uprising was carried out by “outside agitators” from beyond the communities where the protests took place. It’s a trope [...]
Coronavirus’s Devastation Has Been Made Far Worse by Years of Democrats’ Neoliberal Policies
Jason Furman, former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers during Barack Obama’s administration, has been making the case to the Biden campaign that Democrats should be fearful of the third quarter of 2020 where he predicts we will “see the best economic data we’ve seen in the history of this country.” What Furman is [...]
We Are Living in a Red Spring
A rash of racist violence against African Americans has hit the United States. Across the land, African Americans and left organizations attempt to organize, or even fight back. Meanwhile, a pandemic ravages the country and the world. International crises further threaten to tear the nation apart. This was the state of things in the summer [...]
The Climate Crisis and COVID-19 Are Inseparable
In the eighteenth century, Edward Jenner, the inventor of the first vaccine, confronted a crisis similar to what we face today — a world undone by disease. It wasn’t coronavirus that he was studying, but smallpox, an illness with a mortality rate ranging between 20 and 60 percent in the Old World, and higher yet [...]
For lessons in protest during the pandemic, look to Latin America
“We are Witnessing America as a Failed Social Experiment” – Dr. Cornell West Preaches on the System
We Can’t Breathe: Rebellion against Racist Police Violence
How Colonialism and Austerity Are Shaping Africa’s Response to the Coronavirus
Since February 14, when Africa’s first case of COVID-19 was recorded in Egypt, the number of confirmed cases across the continent has risen to roughly 130,000 and caused 3,800 deaths. Though tragic, these numbers pale in comparison to the pandemic’s devastation in Western Europe and the United States. New York City alone has suffered well [...]
China Is Not the Enemy — Neoliberalism Is
Based on all we know, China has been comparatively successful in containing the spread of COVID-19 domestically beyond Hubei Province. Many observers attribute this to its authoritarianism: one even goes as far as to proclaim that, due to China, “a spectre is haunting the West – the spectre of authoritarian capitalism.” Unconstrained by democratic principles [...]
Joe Biden Wants to Be the Anti-Trump — So Why Does He Support Building Trump’s Signature Border Wall?
Since Joe Biden started running for president, it’s been easy to dismiss his frequent calls to “restore the soul of the nation” as mostly cosmetic moral gesturing meant to get him off the hook for a lack of vision or bold policy commitments. And now it’s even easier. Asked point-blank recently what would happen to [...]
Rights, riots and police brutality
Furloughing the Science
Big Protest in Hong Kong Greeted the News about Tabling National Security Law
Amid Minneapolis Uprising, Anti-War Veterans Call on National Guard to Stand Down
Who Exactly Is Doing the Looting, and Who’s Being Looted?
Headlines this morning are all about looting — specifically, looting in Minneapolis, after the police killing of an unarmed African-American man was caught on video. In the modern vernacular, that word “looting” is loaded — it comes with all sorts of race and class connotations. And we have to understand that terms like “looting” are an example of [...]
Nearly there for 10 000 target!
Israel’s Bloated New Government Is Entering Dangerous Waters
At first glance, Israel’s longest-serving Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, seems more secure in his post today than at any time in the past few years. His government’s response to the coronavirus crisis has been quite successful, relative to the Western states to which Israelis are used to comparing themselves. The centrist party Blue and White, [...]
BAME People Are More Likely to Have Been Fined for Breaking Lockdown Across the Country, FOI Data Shows
BAME people in 22 areas of the UK outside of London were 4.4 times more likely than white people to receive a £60 fine for breaking lockdown in the first full week that new police powers were in place, according to a freedom of information exercise to all British police forces. Black people in particular [...] States Are Copying and Pasting Immunity Laws for Nursing Home Executives
In recent years, lawmakers have been caught stealthily copying and pasting identical corporate-friendly provisions into law in states across the country. It appears that is now happening again as politically connected hospital and nursing home executives seek to shield themselves from civil litigation and government prosecution during the COVID pandemic. A review of New York, Massachusetts, and [...]
Reclaiming Harrisburg
On April 8, days after Philadelphia’s official COVID-19 shutdown, Bernie Sanders delivered a video statement announcing the suspension of his presidential campaign. Nikil Saval, candidate for Pennsylvania State Senate in the First District, posted this brief statement: “Thank you, Bernie Sanders, for your vision and your tireless work. We will continue to fight for what [...]
Social Media Companies Can’t Be Trusted to Protect Our Democracy
President Trump’s tweets now come with a warning label. Below his recent tweet dismissing mail-in votes as “substantially fraudulent” is a linked advisory from Twitter: “Get the facts about mail-in ballots” — a message that both flags Trump’s tweet as fake news and reminds users that Twitter is the arbiter of public speech. Trump and [...]
Dominic Cummings Is a Glorified Shitposter
Everything about Dominic Cummings’ press conference on Monday was absurd – his tardiness, the ill-fitting trousers and his account of events, filled with obscure and frankly dubious details. Of all the oddities exhibited in the rose garden, however, the most perplexing remains Cummings’ admission of driving 30 miles to test his eyesight. Why the great [...] “No Matter How Different the Movements Were, the LAPD Targeted Every One of Them”
The 1960s in Los Angeles were explosive. The LAPD brutally enforced segregation, raided gay bars, policed the counterculture, and repressed radical students and anti-war protestors. But the working class of Los Angeles fought back against the police and the city elite with passion and muscle. Jacobin’s Meagan Day spoke to Mike Davis and Jon Wiener [...]
COVID-19 Chronicles with Roger Waters and Brian Eno
Hard Road of Hope
A Socialist Takes on Big Real Estate in North Brooklyn
In November 1918, a real estate dealer named Joseph Lentol beat a socialist incumbent for a state assembly seat in what was then Brooklyn’s 14th district. Since then, Lentol men – two out of three of them named Joe — upholding the interests of the real estate industry have represented the area for three generations. [...]
The Burner #242: ‘And You Have to Do It All the Time’
Why Britain Is in an Uproar Over a Tory Lockdown Scofflaw
Finally, Boris Johnson has found a way to unite the country. Defending Dominic Cummings breaking multiple rules surrounding the lockdown has united the country in fury. One poll found that 71 percent of people wanted Cummings sacked for driving 250 miles to his father’s estate, then driving to Barnard Castle, a local beauty spot, “to [...]
Protest, Uprisings, and Race War
The moralizing has begun. Those who have rarely been the target of organized police gangsterism are once again lecturing those who have about how best to respond to it. Be peaceful, they implore, as protesters rise up in Minneapolis and across the country in response to the killing of George Floyd. This, coming from the More
White Supremacy is the Virus; Police are the Vector
Tensions are high as Minneapolis police murdered a black man named George Floyd, not by gunshot, but by an agonizingly long kneel on his neck; which was not released for seven minutes, several of which the man was not breathing. Protest is a place to emerge into the collective and become unoriginal, to humble yourself in silence as others more [...]
What’s NATO Up to These Days? Provoking Russia, Draining Healthcare Budgets and Protecting Its Own from COVID
In November 2019, as experts warned that a novel coronavirus was likely to develop in the near-future, NATO boasted that its European Allies, including the UK, as well as Canada, were boosting their military budgets by an average of 4.6 percent, or an additional $130bn since 2016. The implication is that this increase in military spending is at the expense [...]
Bibles at the Barricades: How the Right Seized Power in Bolivia
Returning to La Paz, Bolivia after last November’s coup was like returning to the scene of a crime. Since Bolivian President Evo Morales was removed from power, right-wing interim President Jeanine Áñez has led the country with an iron fist. State repression immediately following the coup left dozens dead and the government has been throwing More
There is No Peace: an Incitement to Justice
Summer 2014: a year since George Zimmerman was acquitted for killing Trayvon Martin. Another summer of violence and justification: US shells incinerating Palestinian children, devastating UN refuges in Gaza, pounding Afghan villages, again. Another trial of another white man who says he was scared, who had to defend himself with a blast of ammunition against More
A Few Good Sadists
Here’s a flashback that may help to explain how we got to where we are: the day was April 30, 2004. Alexander Cockburn and I were sitting by the pool having a gin and tonic at the old Richelieu Hotel in New Orleans’ French Quarter. The concierge, an elegant black man from Haiti named Jean-Claud, dropped More
Trump isn’t the Pope and This Ain’t the Middle Ages
President Trump orders governors to open up the churches. Churches defy governors and seek to open. Someone needs to remind both the president and religious institutions that the Middle Ages are over and Modernity won. President Trump and many religious institutions are pushing arguments reminiscent of those found in the Medieval Christian Europe where secular More
The Plague of Racist Cop Murders: Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd and the COVID-19 Pandemic
Black Georgia jogger, 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery, was murdered in cold blood by three white racists on February 23. Arbery’s family attorneys, led by Benjamin Crump, have charged that his murder was premeditated. Local police, on the scene soon after the murder, accepted the testimony of the killers. They were considered “witnesses,” not suspects. One, a More
In Search of a Lost Socialism
In May 1914 — 107 years ago this month — a small, yet vibrant socialist colony on the edge of Los Angeles County took root. In the Age of Covid-19, and with the continued violent assault on black and brown people across the US, one must visualize a more peaceful, egalitarian future, where healthcare is More
Who are the “Wrong Hands” in Yemen?
Politics makes strange bedfellows. Some of them want to kill us. Take Abu Abbas (as Henny Youngman used to say: “Please.”). Abu Abbas (a nom de guerre for one Adil Abduh Fari al-Dabhani) is the founder and leader of the Abu Abbas brigade, a militia fighting on the government side in Yemen. Abbas and his More
Trump Is Unbeatable in the Race to the Bottom and So Is the GOP
In the race to the bottom, Donald Trump is unbeatable. Therefore, so now too is the Republican Party; being under his thumb, it is with him, every step of the way. This is why Joe Biden will have a hard time losing in November, no matter how good he and other corporate Democrats are at More
Political Ambiguity or a Doomsday Weapon: Why Abbas Abandoned Oslo
This time, we are told, it is different and that President of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, is absolutely serious about his decision to absolve his leadership from all previous agreements signed with Israel and the United States. But this time is not different, and Abbas is not serious. “The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and More
A Growing Wave of Bankruptcies Threatens U.S. Recovery
The bankruptcy epidemic in the U.S. started last year, long before any COVID-19 pandemic had touched down. U.S. retailers ranked among the greatest casualties of 2019 with a total of 17 bankruptcies. Big names among the retail bankruptcies in 2019 included Gymboree on January 16; Charlotte Russe on February 3; Things Remembered on February 6; More
Conditions Close at Hand
“Man makes his own history, but he does not make it out of the whole cloth; he does not make it out of conditions chosen by himself, but out of such as he finds close at hand.” – Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte Closest at hand is our Coronavirus pandemic, a virus gone viral in the American mass psyche bringing a close More
No Lessons Learned From Bhopal: the Toxic Chemical Leak at LG Polymers India
The port city of Vizag or Vishakhapatnam, situated on the south-east coast of India in the State of Andhra Pradesh, is home to several hazardous industries. In the early morning on 07 May 2020, five million people residing in the Vizag Metropolitan Region were rudely woken up by the alarming news of a poisonous chemical More
The Odyssey of Elias Demetracopoulos
In twenty-first-century mainstream media, a real journalist is difficult to find. Instead, one finds multiple purveyors of corporate and government propaganda, entertainers who sensationalize the most meaningless tidbits about the lives of public figures, faux investigations of misdoings that focus on the symptoms and not the causes, and outright liars. Elected and non-elected officials use More
Arundhati Roy on Indian Migrant-Worker Oppression and India’s Fateful COVID Crisis
In India there is never one story but thousands, even millions, and so the detrimental impact of Coronavirus (COVID-19) on this country of more than 1.3 billion, especially among the poor, has been profound, causing immense suffering. Nor did it help matters much when Prime Minister Narendra Modi shut India into immediate lockdown without warning More
Goodness Gracious, David Ignatius!!
The Washington Post’s senior diplomatic columnist, David Ignatius, has done it again. He has a well-earned reputation as an apologist for the Central Intelligence Agency and a defender of increased defense spending and the newly-created Space Force. Now, Ignatius has added a new plaque to his personal Hall of Fame—Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. In an More
Blaming the COVID-19 Pandemic on Too Many Humans: a Critique of Overpopulation Ideology
A world gripped by a deadly virus has precipitated a deluge of punditry claiming to have found the primal cause of the pandemic. In a recent article Anthony Judge, for example, claims to have tapped into “the collective subconscious” to blame what he calls overpopulation. How well does this claim hold up? Mr. Judge is concerned More
For America’s Wealthiest, the Pandemic is a Time to Profit
The American Enterprise Institute’s (AEI) Michael Strain wrote an op-ed in the New York Times recently explaining how “The American Dream Is Alive and Well,” and that in his opinion this nation has, “bigger issues than inequality.” Strain’s piece is part of the paper’s new pandemic-era series called “The America We Need” and engages in More
U.S. Declares a Vaccine War on the World
Donald Trump launched a new vaccine war in May, but not against the virus. It was against the world. The United States and the UK were the only two holdouts in the World Health Assembly from the declaration that vaccines and medicines for COVID-19 should be available as public goods, and not under exclusive patent More
Coronavirus and the Telecom Crisis
The current Corvis-19 pandemic provides a unique vantage point to assess key social institutions of American life. Sadly, none has failed so gravely as the nation’s health care system, especially as underwritten by the private insurance model. The crisis of the U.S. healthcare system raises the deeper, more fundamental, question as to whether health care More
Why Does W.E.B. Du Bois Matter Today?
In their new book, W.E.B. Du Bois: A Life in American History,Charisse Burden-Stelly and Gerald Horne pose the question that every scholar of African American history, a central part of all US history, must sooner or later approach. W.E.B. Du Bois is without question one of the largest, perhaps the very largest, figure in African-American history. More
The Only Way to Save Grizzlies: Connect Their Habitats
Linkages, biological corridors, demographic connectivity or intervening areas. These are the lands outside and between the Grizzly Bear Recovery Areas in the Northern Rockies. Over the past 20 years grizzly bears have begun to recolonize this historic habitat, increasing the possibilities of linking genetically isolated populations and reestablishing a breeding population in the vast Bitterroot More
The Sociopolitical and Historical Context That Shaped Kashmiri Women Like My Grandmother in the 1940s
In what ways are women present in political contexts? Kashmiri women, from different walks of life, have managed against all odds to express their agency during the plethora of political, social, and military transformations in the past nine decades. During the growing sense of nationhood in the 1930s, and during the political awakening in the 1940s More
Pandemic Crisis and Recession Can Spark a Fight for Real Change in the US
American workers have a huge opportunity as a result of this coronavirus pandemic — an opportunity to massively expand union membership in the workplace, and a chance, after decades of being ignored by Congress, to finally win a desperately needed increase in the federal minimum wage from its current $7.25 per hour to at least More
Does Neo-Feudalism Define Our Current Epoch?
When I learned that we were entering a new period called neo-feudalism, my first reaction was to wonder if that was any worse than what we have now. After all, the serf might have suffered from a lack of freedom but at least had lots of time off as Michael Perelman pointed out in “The More
S. David Freeman: Seven Decades of Participating in Power for All of Us
If the planet Earth were animate, it would have shuddered at the news that S. David Freeman passed away this month. Freeman was that important to Earth’s future. In his 94th year, he inspired all he met with his burning passion, relentless energy, and keen intellect. Freeman, an engineer and a lawyer, knew where decisions More
Amy Klobuchar, Minneapolis Police and Her VP Quest
Eighteen years before Minneapolis police killed an unarmed black man named George Floyd on Monday, Minneapolis police killed an unarmed black man named Christopher Burns. Today, U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar decries the killing of Floyd. Back then, Minneapolis chief prosecutor Amy Klobuchar refused to prosecute city police for killing Burns. A year ago, the Washington Post published More
Venezuela in the 2020 Pandemic
As of May 27th 2020, in Venezuela, there have been 1,245 coronavirus cases (44 cases per million inhabitants) and only 11 deaths.[1] It remained at 10 for over a month.[2] Venezuela has the lowest percentage of confirmed coronavirus deaths per population in the region (0.4%) and the highest ratio of testing, 31,561 tests per million More
Defending Our Public Lands: One Man’s Legacy
Conservationist Ron Mitchell passed away from heart failure on May 14, 2020. Ron grew up in Nampa, Idaho dreaming of adventure and reading magazines like “Field and Stream” and “Sports Afield” – publications he would later write for. He was a consummate outdoorsman who knew the land and loved it intimately, and dedicated most of More