Oil and gas CEOs were too chicken to show up to a recent congressional hearing—perhaps fearing that their climate pledges will be revealed as nothing more than slick PR.
Everywhere around us there is evidence of climate change, from the increase in winter storms such as New England’s late January blizzard, to California’s recent record-breaking winter heat wave. Meanwhile, the world’s biggest oil and gas companies such as ExxonMobil, Chevron, Royal Dutch Shell, and BP, whose products directly fuel global warming, have done little to counter the disastrous trend. While they have made promises that sound constructive on the surface, a cursory examination reveals them to be hollow. Perhaps worried about their deception being exposed, the executives and board members of these fossil fuel companies snubbed members of Congress at a House Committee on Oversight and Reform hearing on February 8, 2022. Continue reading →
GOP lawmakers are targeting key boards and posts to remove Democrats.
A new wave of power grabs by Georgia’s Republican legislators is threatening to wrest control of key local government bodies where Democrats, often people of color, have recently been elected and currently hold governing majorities. Continue reading →
"If we don't speak up now, and act, Republicans will keep fighting to make laws like DeSantis' hateful 'Don't Say Gay' bill the norm," warned one advocate
Opponents of bigotry and censorship are raising their voices in protest after Florida’s GOP-controlled Senate Education Committee on Tuesday advanced legislation that would effectively prohibit teachers from discussing sexual orientation and gender identity in primary grades or at any level “in a manner that is not age-appropriate.” Continue reading →
Is the U.S. in a position to maintain the embargo upon the pretext of bringing democracy to Cuba with its record in destabilising secure states, even those upholding democracy?
Economic sanctions against Cuba were discussed in April 1960 by the U.S. government. If the U.S. found it impossible to counter the Cuban Revolution, a memorandum with the subject “The Decline and Fall of Castro” stated, economic hardships should be imposed on the island. “If such a policy as adopted, it should be the result of a positive decision which would call forth a line of action which, while as adroit and inconspicuous as possible, makes the greatest inroads in denying money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government.” Continue reading →
As soon as Moscow received an American response to its security demands in Ukraine, it answered indirectly by announcing greater military integration between it and three South American countries, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Cuba. Continue reading →
The media has a responsibility to tell Americans that a major party now openly endorses using violence to overturn elections.
If you’re the sort of person who follows the news, you’ve probably heard a good bit lately about podcaster Joe Rogan, Neil Young’s fight with Spotify, and maybe a little about Russia and Ukraine. Continue reading →
"If the vehicles weighed just one pound less, they wouldn't be permitted on American roads because they pollute too much."
Did the U.S. Postal Service purposely calculate the weight of its new delivery vehicles at 8,501 pounds so as to skirt anti-pollution regulations by a single pound? Continue reading →
Ronald Reagan knew that an educated populace was more progressive and more Democratic, and he was determined to stop the explosion of college educated Americans caused by both the 1944 GI Bill and free tuition at the University of California. Continue reading →
How two nascent artist residencies on opposite sides of the country are giving Black creatives opportunities to rest and create.
Under the pervasive stress of the COVID-19 pandemic, waxing and waning ad infinitum, with no end in sight, finding time to be creative for creativity’s sake can provide a booster to mental health, according to a study conducted in March 2021. Members of the BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and people of color) community already coping with the degrading effects of systemic racism on their mental health are in even greater need of time devoted to arts and crafts. However, renting a studio space, affording equipment and supplies, or having any free time at all for creative pursuits may only seem like a pipe dream to poor Black creatives living paycheck to paycheck—ubiquitously oppressed by institutional racism. Continue reading →
While the Biden administration is sending more troops and weapons to inflame the Ukraine conflict and Congress is pouring more fuel on the fire, the American people are on a totally different track. Continue reading →
When we think of those who harm children, we usually think of men. Child molesters of various stripes are overwhelmingly male. Continue reading →
"The arc of Starbucks' union-busting is long, but it bends toward losing," said Starbucks Workers United.
Workers at a Memphis Starbucks who were fired Tuesday after launching a unionization effort vowed to carry on their fight, with one employee invoking the legacy of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.—who was assassinated in the Tennessee city while campaigning for workers’ rights. Continue reading →
“Amazon was supposed to keep them safe. They didn’t do that. How does a company worth over $1 trillion let this happen?”
The fight for justice and accountability continues for six Amazon employees who were killed when a warehouse roof collapsed during a tornado in December. Continue reading →
The history of the Olympic Games shows both the struggle by China and the Global South to be accepted by the U.S. and other imperialist nations, as well as alternative models to it.
In the early 1990s, barely a decade after rejoining the Olympic movement, Beijing launched a bid to host the 2000 Games. Unfortunately by then, U.S. policy had begun to shift perceptibly from the honeymoon years of rapprochement. Gone was the incentive for even arch-reactionaries like U.S. Presidents Nixon and Reagan to embrace the People’s Republic of China (PRC) effusively in the name of hard-nosed anti-Soviet realpolitik. With the end of the first Cold War, anticommunism also receded as a guiding framework for U.S. imperial rhetoric, in favor of a universalized (if richly hypocritical) weaponization of neoliberal “human rights.” This was a discursive terrain tilted heavily toward bourgeois democracies in the imperial core, on which China was hardly more equipped to compete than it had been in the Mao era. Continue reading →
Over the weekend, on Saturday, Americans heard on corporate news media reports that anonymous U.S. government officials confirmed the Russians are “70 percent ready” for an immediate invasion of Ukraine. Only a day later, they heard that the invasion, which had been described as almost a certainty, would come instead in late February when the ground in Ukraine is frozen enough so that Russian tanks won’t sink in the mud. Continue reading →
Federal lawmakers joined with advocacy groups that argued requiring biometric information to access records online is a "creepy and disturbing strike" at privacy and security.
After Democrats in both chambers of Congress added their voices to the growing chorus of opposition to the U.S. Internal Revenue Service’s plan to require the use of a private company’s facial recognition software to access various information online, Sen. Ron Wyden revealed Monday that the IRS intends to change course. Continue reading →
Only through the lens of history can we understand why China fought so hard for a place in the Olympics on its own terms: to heal the scars of both exploitative Western colonialism and civil war.
Much has been made of the “diplomatic boycott” by the United States and its allies of the 2022 Beijing Olympics. But what much of the major Western media coverage misses is the historical and geopolitical significance of these games to China—as one of only three Asian host nations for the Olympics (along with Japan and South Korea), and the first Global South country to host the Winter Games. The countries boycotting the 2022 Olympic Games, it seems, see this moment and the history that underpins it as threatening to their global hegemony in both sport and geopolitics. Continue reading →
Advice to news consumers: If a feast of fakery is your cup of tea… Continue reading →
It’s easy to say, but it’s been six very hard decades that began with disconcerting lightness and the belief that the United States government’s blockade of Cuba would not last long—a couple of years, maybe. Continue reading →
The January jobs report from the Labor Department is heightening fears that a so-called “tight” labor market is fueling inflation, and therefore the Fed must put on the brakes by raising interest rates. Continue reading →
The recent spat between Neil Young and Spotify reminds us that the world’s largest streaming company only cares about profits—which is what independent musicians have been complaining about for years.
Neil Young’s recent decision to pull his music from Spotify, the world’s largest streaming service, has shaken up the music industry and sparked broader questions about how streaming services operate. Young demanded that the company choose between his music or Joe Rogan’s misinformation-laden podcast. Spotify chose Rogan. Continue reading →
As President Joe Biden announced the transfer of 2000 US troops to Poland and Germany on February 3, 2022, and the movement of an additional 1000 troops from Western Europe to Romania, I shook my head and looked to the sky thinking, “the United States and its elites really want a war with Russia, both economic and military. US generals want to use tanks, missiles, and aircraft against a near-peer competitor. They can’t beat sandal wearing insurgents in Afghanistan, so they want to mix it up with the A-Team, i.e., Russia.” Continue reading →
It should matter little to the Chinese that American diplomats and a handful of their western allies will not be attending the Beijing Winter Olympics in February. What truly matters is that the Russians are coming. Continue reading →
Markets do not solve the problem of energy pricing. What is required is planning and long-term investments in infrastructure.
The current crisis of spiraling gas prices in Europe, coupled with a cold snap in the region, highlights the fact that the transition to green energy in any part of the world is not going to be easy. The high gas prices in Europe also bring to the forefront the complexity involved in transitioning to clean energy sources: that energy is not simply about choosing the right technology, and that transitioning to green energy has economic and geopolitical dimensions that need to be taken into consideration as well. Continue reading →
Whoopi Goldberg slipped up but some of her critics are shameless hypocrites
Posted on February 14, 2022 by David Boyajian
Award-winning actress/comedian/author Whoopi Goldberg, co-host of ABC-TV’s The View, has been suspended for two weeks for a minor slip-up (Monday, January 31) regarding the Holocaust. Continue reading →