The greatest danger to American democracy right now is not coming from Russia, China, or North Korea. It is coming from the Republican Party. Continue reading
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When politicians cry “accountability,” ask “accountable to whom?”
“Unity begins with the truth,” US Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) tweeted on January 13, arguing in favor of the impeachment of then-President Donald Trump, “and the truth demands accountability.” Continue reading
An unsettling similarity between the German Nazi Party and the current U.S. Republican Party
One major unsettling similarity between the Nazi Party of Adolf Hitler and the Republican Party of Donald Trump is that both would resist an independent investigation of the attacks on the respective legislatures of the two nations: the February 27, 1933, Reichstag Fire in Berlin and the January 6, 2021, storming by Trump loyalists of the U.S. Capitol complex. Hitler and his Nazis falsely claimed the Reichstag arson was carried out by a mentally deranged Dutch Communist named Marinus van der Lubbe, who was allegedly aided by German Communists. In the case of the U.S. Capitol attack, several far-right Republicans have claimed the attack was actually carried out by members of “antifa” (an acronym for “anti-fascist”) and Black Lives Matter (BLM). Using Nazi propaganda from 1933, some Republicans also falsely claim that BLM is a “communist” organization. Continue reading
Biden hailed for ‘historic’ exclusion of anti-choice Hyde Amendment from proposed budget
"At a time when reproductive freedom is under unprecedented attack, and the legal right to abortion is hanging on by a tenuous thread, this critical step from the Biden administration is more important than ever."
Reproductive rights advocates on Friday hailed President Joe Biden’s omission of funding for the Hyde Amendment—which prohibits most federal abortion spending—in his $6 trillion 2022 budget proposal. Continue reading
Biden is on the same page as Trump in maintaining an anti-Cuba stance
U.S. President Joe Biden has given every indication so far that its policies on Cuba will not veer away from those of the Trump administration. In March this year, U.S. officials told Reuters that Cuba is not a top foreign policy item for Biden. The statement was left open to interpretation until now, when the current U.S. administration decided to retain Cuba on the unilateral and defaming U.S. State Sponsors of Terrorism list. The conditions for removal are very much based on how much U.S. influence the listed country will allow – in other words, becoming a U.S. accomplice in foreign policy is a must. Continue reading
‘Mowing the grass’ no more: How Palestinian resistance altered the equation
The ceasefire on May 21 has, for now, brought the Israeli war on Gaza to an end. However, this ceasefire is not permanent and constant Israeli provocations anywhere in Palestine could reignite the bloody cycle all over again. Moreover, the Israeli siege on Gaza remains in place, as well as the Israeli military occupation and the rooted system of apartheid that exists all over Palestine. Continue reading
Does the U.S. really need another oil pipeline?
Native American communities living alongside the route of the Line 3 pipeline project in northern Minnesota are asking all activists to join them in solidarity this June.
A decades-old pipeline called Line 3, run by the Canadian company Enbridge, is in the midst of a controversial upgrade sparking fierce resistance from Indigenous communities living along the route. Line 3 is being replaced in order to enable the transport of nearly 800,000 barrels of dirty tar sands crude oil per day from Calgary, Canada, to Wisconsin. The majority of the pipeline cuts across northern Minnesota through the heart of lands where the Anishinaabe people have treaty rights to hunt, fish and harvest wild rice and maple syrup. Continue reading
Republicans adopt fascist government platform
Across the United States, the Republican Party, through bills passed in state legislatures and signed by GOP governors, is adopting one of the central platforms of fascism, namely, the elimination of the powers of state officials, including secretaries of state, governors, and others. Continue reading
Texas Democrats walk off House floor to block ‘one of the ugliest voter suppression bills in the country’
"This is the kind of fight we need from our legislators."
Texas Democrats blocked final passage of a Republican-authored voter suppression bill late Sunday by abruptly walking off the state House floor, denying the chamber’s GOP majority the quorum necessary to proceed to a vote. Continue reading
A caring world needs a sharing world to end the COVID-19 pandemic
A virus that mutates forever is a perpetual money-making machine for Big Pharma. Everybody else wants the world’s population to be vaccinated to control the spread of the pandemic.
After three months of dithering, the Biden administration eventually agreed to a temporary waiver of patent rights for the COVID-19 vaccines. The proposal by South Africa and India for a waiver on intellectual property rights in the World Trade Organization has found support from a large number of countries and more than 400 public health organizations. The proposal now faces opposition from the European Union countries, which had earlier portrayed themselves to be more progressive than the United States. This portrayal was not difficult to achieve under the Trump administration. The latest move by Biden has, however, wrong-footed the EU, leaving the bloc as the only public supporter of Big Pharma in the WTO. Continue reading
America’s cops are having their Harvey Weinstein moment
The generation coming up now is not going to let this moment pass like previous generations were forced to do by the powers-that-be after horrors like the brutal murder of Emmit Till, the beating of Rodney King or the murder of Eric Garner.
Sometimes cultural change takes generations or even centuries; sometimes it happens in the seeming blink of the eye. America’s bad cops—and their enablers—are having their Harvey Weinstein moment. Continue reading
Crocodile tears on corporate taxes
Biden’s modest corporate tax increases to fund public infrastructure projects are wildly popular—except among CEOs.
“Outrageous,” screeched the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. “It doesn’t feel fair,” whimpered a top corporate executive. Continue reading
Chile’s new constitution spells a defeat for neoliberalism and the right wing
The Chilean right-wing government has been given yet another resounding rejection by the people, as the elections for a body to write the country’s new constitution has veered strongly towards independent and left-wing candidates. Only 38 candidates from the right-wing coalition “Vamos por Chile” were elected. The rest of the body is composed of 25 candidates from the centre-left coalition Lista del Apruebo, 27 candidates from the left-wing coalition Apruebo Dignidad, 48 independent candidates and 17 indigenous representatives. Continue reading
‘It’s the filibuster or democracy,’ say progressives after GOP tanks January 6 commission
"Unless we abolish the filibuster, there will be no progress on any agenda focused on justice, fairness, or basic survival," said Sen. Ed Markey.
Intensifying progressive calls to eliminate the legislative filibuster, Senate Republicans wielded the archaic procedural tool on Friday to torpedo a bill that sought to establish an independent commission to probe the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. Continue reading
GOP offers inadequate infrastructure plan that lets the rich off free
Their plan makes it clear yet again that, for them, protecting the wealthy trumps fixing infrastructure.
WASHINGTON—Republican senators outlined a $928 billion infrastructure proposal Thursday that drastically slashes what President Joe Biden has proposed and sets things up so that the wealthy, unlike the rest of the country, will pay nothing toward fixing the nation’s crumbling infrastructure. In fact, in what is perhaps the most unacceptable part of their “counter-offer” to Biden’s plan, which the president has already cut from $2 trillion-plus to $1.7 trillion, the Republicans want to pay for their plan by taking away money intended for coronavirus aid. Continue reading
They’re not conservatives, they’re extremists
By mislabeling the radical members of the Republican Party "conservative," the mainstream media gives them a veneer of respectability.
The House Freedom Caucus is routinely described as conservative, by its members, by the mainstream media, by Wikipedia. The caucus, which draws together 45 Republican Party members of the House of Representatives, is the furthest to the right of any major political formation in the United States. The most extreme and flamboyant politicians in America, like scandal-plagued Matt Gaetz of Florida and gun-toting Lauren Boebert of Colorado, are proud to call the Caucus their political home. Even Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, after threatening to form an explicitly racist America First caucus, chose ultimately to continue promoting her nativist, QAnon-inspired beliefs from within the Freedom Caucus. Continue reading
The justice McDonald’s workers seek workers at Spain’s Mondragón have found
We don’t have to organize our economy around enterprises that pay CEOs over 1,000 times what workers make.
McDonald’s workers in 15 U.S. cities staged a one-day strike last week. They’re demanding at least a $15 hourly wage for every McDonald’s worker. McDonald’s is resisting, pledging only to raise average wages to $13 an hour. Continue reading
What lies beneath: President Biden’s deceptive acknowledgment of the Armenian Genocide
President Biden’s April 24 statement acknowledging the Armenian Genocide (1915–1923+) carried out by Turkey was welcome but flawed. Indeed, “Turkey” appears nowhere in the document. Moreover, the State Department swiftly undermined Biden’s virtuous-sounding words. Continue reading
Palestine’s moment: Despite massive losses, Palestinians have altered the course of history
The ‘Palestinian Revolt of 2021’ will go down in history as one of the most influential events that irreversibly shaped collective thinking in and around Palestine. Only two other events can be compared with what has just transpired in Palestine: the revolt of 1936 and the First Intifada of 1987. Continue reading
‘Stop the monopoly madness’: Biden urged to block Amazon’s $8.5 billion purchase of MGM
"In announcing plans to buy MGM, Jeff Bezos placed a big softball on a tee for the Biden administration to knock over the fence."
Progressive opponents of corporate consolidation are pushing the Biden administration to intervene after Amazon announced Wednesday that it has agreed to acquire the Hollywood film and television studio MGM for nearly $8.5 billion, a deal that critics denounced as harmful to workers, consumers, and U.S. democracy. Continue reading
Drivers beware: The deadly perils of blank check traffic stops
We’ve all been there before. Continue reading
Freedom Rider: Biden breaks his promises
Black people have nothing to show for a Biden presidency despite turning out in droves to put him in office. Continue reading
The hell of the same: Capitalism breaks down and homogenizes life, disconnects the past, present and future
In the English lexicon of the day, it is verboten to mention that some inspiration, sense of wonder, or a pause to reflect on a passage from the texts of ancient myth and/or religion is a positive. You run the risk at a Washington, DC, cocktail party of being ostracized if you praise Pope Francis for washing people’s feet or visiting Iraq, discussing the myths of the Saints, or even the tales of more ancient deities of Rome, Athens, Babylon, and pharaonic Egypt. Who cannot but like the Greek story of Orpheus and Eurydice? Continue reading
Is Colombia’s military displacing peasants to protect the environment or sell off natural resources?
Corporations, not wildlife, stand to benefit from the emptied lands.
Colombia witnessed a series of mass protests at the end of April following a call for a national strike. Still ongoing, the protests have many causes: an apparent “tax reform” that was going to transfer even more wealth to the 1 percent in Colombia; the failure of the most recent peace accords; and the inability of Colombia’s privatized health care system to contain the COVID-19 crisis. In response to these ongoing protests, the government has killed dozens, disappeared hundreds, imposed curfews on multiple cities, and called in the army. But the protests continue—because they are, at least in part, a repudiation of the militarization of everything in the country. Continue reading
The First World War, Cecil Rhodes and conspiracy facts
Why did World War One happen? The conventional fable agreed upon begins on June 28, 1914, with the assassination of Austria’s Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo. The aftermath of the assassination spiraled out of control. It was like an unstoppable train speeding down the tracks. Suddenly all of the Western powers were at war. When the armistice was signed on November 11, 1918 forty million people lay dead. Exactly five years to the day after the assassination of the archduke, the Treaty of Versailles was signed. Germany alone accepted all the guilt for the war. The end. Continue reading
The US and EU vs. Belarus: Pot, kettle, black
On May 23, a fighter jet intercepted Ryanair Flight 4978 as it was about to exit Belarus’s airspace en route from Athens, Greece, to Vilnius, Lithuania. Citing a supposed bomb threat (apparently contrived by regime agents on board the plane), Belarus air traffic control ordered the Boeing 737 to turn around and land in Minsk. Continue reading
The danger of collective amnesia
At the risk of being the skunk at the picnic, I feel compelled to warn you that if we forget and move on from the tragedies of this past year, we’re setting ourselves on a dangerous path. Of course I understand the desire to forget all the unpleasantness and start a new chapter. But if we do, we’re inviting greater tragedies in the future. Continue reading
The emperor’s new rules
The world is reeling in horror at the latest Israeli massacre of hundreds of men, women and children in Gaza. Much of the world is also shocked by the role of the United States in this crisis, as it keeps providing Israel with weapons to kill Palestinian civilians, in violation of U.S. and international law, and has repeatedly blocked action by the UN Security Council to impose a ceasefire or hold Israel accountable for its war crimes. Continue reading
It’s past time to end U.S. funding of Israeli violence
What else could billions of American tax dollars buy instead of innocent deaths?
At the end of 2020, as the coronavirus pandemic was continuing to ravage the populations of many nations, Israel stood out as a success story, administering more doses of vaccines to its modest-sized 9-million-strong population than any other country after China, the U.S., and the UK. Today, more than 60 percent of Israelis are vaccinated, which is 20 percentage points higher than the United States—a nation that happens to give more foreign aid to Israel than to any other country in the world. Continue reading
The biggest threat to Israel is the occupation
Netanyahu says, "We must live by the sword"—but he's never tried alternatives.
I first met Angela Godfrey-Goldstein, the Israeli peace and anti-apartheid activist, on a sunny spring Sunday in Jerusalem almost exactly seventeen years ago, in 2004. It was at the end of the second Intifada, and a few of us clambered into a van so that she and a colleague could give us a tour of what it was like to be a Palestinian living in the Occupied Territories. It was revelatory. We’ve remained friends ever since. Continue reading
Advocates hail ruling striking down ‘unconstitutional’ Georgia Anti-BDS law
"This ruling comes at a crucial moment... and makes clear that the Constitution protects participation in the BDS movement."
Free speech and Palestinian rights advocates on Monday hailed a ruling by a federal judge declaring the unconstitutionality of a Georgia law prohibiting the state from doing business with anyone advocating a boycott of Israel. Continue reading
Banking that serves people, not bankers
The post office could offer simple, honest banking, including checking and savings accounts, consumer loans, and low-fee debit cards.
Posted on June 3, 2021 by Jim Hightower
Corporate ideologues never cease blathering that government programs should be run like a business. Continue reading →