A couple of days before the Fourth of July, I was walking home after a proper, socially distanced outdoor breakfast with a good friend, and noticed on my lower Manhattan block two white sedans marked in red and blue, “US Department of Homeland Security.” Continue reading
Most Britons love to moan and groan about their country’s unstable weather, unreliable trains, high taxes and the underfunded NHS not to mention ‘the idiots’ in government, but when the chips are down, they invariably morph into fierce patriots. Continue reading
Public Citizen’s open letter, co-signed by over twenty nonprofit civic organizations working for the public health, demanded that Trump and Pence immediately give up their disastrous daily mismanagement of the Covid-19 response. Trump’s bungling and ignorance have allowed the Covid-19 virus to spread faster at an alarming rate around the country. Continue reading
However much half of this country hates the other half now, it’s only going to get worse leading up to November. I don’t look forward to it. Continue reading
Donald Trump said that June’s jobs report, which showed an uptick, proves the economy is “roaring back.” Continue reading
In a recent TV discussion, a respected pro-Palestine journalist declared that if any positive change or transformation ever occurs in the tragic Palestinian saga, it would not happen now, but that it would take a whole new generation to bring about such a paradigm shift. Continue reading
Neo-liberal capitalism has transformed the social democratic capitalism that followed the Second World War into a more oppressive and destructive form with greater accumulation of minority wealth and majority poverty than the world has ever seen. The present stage in the usual boom-bust cycle of market forces under private profit rule now multiplied by a still unperceived factor, seems nearer total failure and more frightening than ever. This is leading to incredibly reactionary programs to assure minority rule while at the same time unleashing revolutionary possibilities for the global majority which threaten minority power as never before. Continue reading
While most Catholic clergy members are decent people, unfortunately, there’s an epidemic of pedophile clergy members in the Catholic church. Denying this would be foolish, mendacious, and dangerous to children. Countless kids have suffered because of pedophile clergy members, and the Catholic church hasn’t done nearly enough to deal with this. Immediate measures need to be taken to prevent kids from being sexually abused in the future. Continue reading
While the US administration of President Donald Trump remains adamant in its support for Israel, the traditional democratic leadership continues to employ underhanded language, the kind of ‘strategic ambiguity’ that offers full support to Israel and nothing but lip service to Palestine and peace. Continue reading
In 1979, United Nations Committee on Human Rights rapporteur Abdelwahab Bouhdiba cited the atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia as an example of “autogenocide,” the carrying out or enabling of mass deaths among one’s own nation. Previously cited examples of genocide at the time Bouhdiba coined the word autogenocide, were Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. The former’s genocide of Eastern European Jews, Romani, Slavs, and other non-Germans also included German Jewish and other citizens, making it a practitioner of both genocide and autogenocide. The genocide of Chinese by Japanese military occupiers fit the broader definition of genocide. Continue reading
Since George Floyd was murdered, we have seen an increasing convergence of the “war at home” against Black and brown people with the “wars abroad” that the U.S. has waged against people in other countries. Army and National Guard troops have been deployed in U.S. cities, as militarized police treat our cities as occupied war zones. In response to this “endless war” at home, the growing and thunderous cries for defunding the police have been echoed by calls for defunding the Pentagon’s wars. Instead of seeing these as two separate but related demands, we should see them as intimately linked, since the racialized police violence on our streets and the racialized violence the U.S. has long inflicted on people around the world are mirror reflections of each other. Continue reading
Trump regime hostility toward China keeps pushing the envelope toward rupturing relations altogether or possibly something worse. Continue reading
Wall Street banks and corporate executives have wasted no time trying to establish themselves as allies of the Black Lives Matter movement, professing support for the historic protests against police killings of Black people. Continue reading
I came to Washington, more than four decades ago, to run the Palestine Human Rights Campaign. We founded the PHRC after hearing from lawyers and human rights activists in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian lands horrible stories of rights being abused on a daily basis. Because these stories weren’t known in the US, or they were ignored, we launched the PHRC to shine a light on these violations and mobilize support for the Palestinian victims. Continue reading
In spite of nine years of negotiations since Ethiopia took advantage of the chaotic Arab Spring to begin construction of the $4.6 billion Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) on the Blue Nile the concerned parties—Cairo, Khartoum and Addis Ababa—are still far from reaching an agreement on various technical and legal issues. Time is now of the essence to agree a solution to avoid possible all out military conflict. Continue reading
Likability is a trait that politicians across the political spectrum seek to achieve during their careers. Achieving popularity among the masses requires empathy and rationality, two elements that politicians of the right-wing, many of whom believe they are “populists,” lack. With the backdrop of the coronavirus pandemic, an overwhelming majority of those political leaders who have seen their popularity rise are those who cared more for the health and safety of their constituents than in the value of stock market shares. Continue reading
Children arrive in this world unthinking and empty-headed, like idiots. We have to teach them how to be smart and knowledgeable thinkers like us. Continue reading
Saturday’s New York Times headline boldly exclaimed, “PRESIDENT IS ‘NOT ABOVE THE LAW,’ JUSTICES DECIDE.” But then the Supreme Court majority found a way not to apply the law to Trump’s defiance of Congress. Continue reading
The University of Pennsylvania was founded in Philadelphia by Benjamin Franklin in 1740 to serve as a center of liberal arts education to train the next generation of colonial American leaders in commerce, government, and public service, three disciplines that were never mastered by one of the university’s graduates, Donald Trump. In fact, according to the information provided in the blockbuster book, “Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man,” by Dr. Mary L. Trump, Trump’s niece and a clinical psychologist, the University of Pennsylvania should invalidate Trump’s Bachelor of Science degree in Economics because Trump paid a friend, Joe Shapiro, to take his college admission SATs. A sharper mind than the simpleminded Trump, Shapiro’s performance on Trump’s SATs earned Trump admission into Fordham University for two years and a follow-on transfer to Penn. Continue reading
Wednesday, July 1, was meant to be the day on which the Israeli government officially annexed 30% of the occupied Palestinian West Bank and the Jordan Valley. This date, however, came and went and annexation was never actualized. Continue reading
What exactly is going on? Continue reading
For the world’s super rich, the thrills don’t come cheap. But they do keep coming—even amid a pandemic. Case in point: this past Monday night’s historic Sotheby’s art auction, the first-ever “hybrid” sale of high-end artwork. On site in London, Hong Kong, and New York, socially distanced Sotheby’s specialists took in phone and online bids for four-and-a-half hours of often breathless auctioneering. Continue reading
There is a new contagion sweeping across America, more deadly than the COVID-19 virus released by our collapsing environment, and even more dangerous than the worldwide economic collapse triggered by the pandemic. The widening collapse has undermined our local and state governments, precipitated by their failure to protect peaceful First Amendment protests against racial discrimination and the lack of accountability for police violence allowed by corrupt governments. This new strain of plague is spread by burning and looting, as infected mobs destroy the structure and stability of our communities, eliminate the livelihoods of our working neighbors, and sever access to our own means of survival. The most critical stage will be the imposition of martial law by presidential decree, and the deployment of military and intelligence assets to defeat the righteous resistance of the People to corrupt government and loss of liberty. Continue reading
Cutting police budgets without establishing public control over their behavior doesn’t solve the problem, and invites politicians to shuffle budget numbers around like a three-card monte swindle. Continue reading
Addressing the horror of police officers who kill innocent people will get nowhere until we find a better way to identify and eliminate psychopaths who apply for work in law enforcement. Continue reading
When those of us who are white are asked to engage with anti-racism, we are being asked to do something emotionally difficult: understand how we have benefited from a system that disadvantages and hurts others, so we can help dismantle it. Continue reading
It appears that the British prime minister is failing to grasp the big picture. Boris Johnson seems unaware that his country is no longer a big power or that its global influence has waned since the UK-Sino declaration on the future status of Hong Kong was signed in 1984 by the ‘Iron Lady’ Margaret Thatcher. Continue reading
The chief cultural signifier of our times is this: Wearing a mask. Or not. Continue reading
The visit by newly-elected Tunisian President Kais Saied to France on June 22 was intended to discuss bilateral relations, trade, etc. But it was also a missed opportunity, where Tunisia could have formally demanded an apology from France for the decades of French colonialism, which has shattered the social and political fabric of this North African Arab nation since the late 19th century. Continue reading
Everyone should wear a protective medical mask—but some ought to be in ski masks, like those favored by bank robbers and muggers. Continue reading
RSS
The real choice: Social control or social investment
Posted on July 22, 2020 by Robert Reich
Some societies center on social control, others on social investment. Continue reading →