All Views Articles for 2016–08-23-dear
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Todd Gitlin The Normalization of the Deplorables The fact that the press is not reporting on the continuing violence at Donald Trump's rallies reflects an acceptance that is troubling. Read more |
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Anthony D. Romero Obama Should Pardon Edward Snowden. Today We’re Launching a Campaign to Make It Happen. Thanks to Edward Snowden’s act of conscience, we’ve made historic strides in our fight for surveillance reform and improved cybersecurity. That’s why today, ahead of this week’s release of the Oliver... Read more |
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Chuck Collins Anti-Pipeline Movement Gathers Steam From Standing Rock North Dakota to Kentucky, residents are fighting big oil and gas. Read more |
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Raed Jarrar The Reduction of Muslim Americans Both Democrats and Republicans are spreading the same Islamophobic message: you're either with us, or you're against us. Read more |
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Shawn Fremstad The Federal Poverty Line is Too Damn Low The U.S. Census Bureau’s announcement today that the number of Americans living below the poverty line fell between 2014 and 2015 is good news. But before we get too excited, it is worth noting that... Read more |
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Robert Reich Why Corporate Tax Deserters Shouldn't Get the Benefits of Being American Corporations Apple is only the latest big global American corporation to use foreign tax shelters to avoiding paying its fair share of U.S. taxes. It’s just another form of corporate desertion. Corporations are... Read more |
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Alicia Shepard Fact-Checking in the Age of Trump The business of ferreting out candidates' whoppers is booming, and no wonder. Read more |
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Dave Johnson Wednesday Is National Call-In Day To Stop the TPP Wall Street, the multinational corporations and President Obama are pushing for a vote on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) in the “lame duck” session of Congress that follows the election... Read more |
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Vandana Shiva Monsanto and the Poisonous Cartel of GMOs in India India is steeped in a synthesized controversy created by Monsanto on the first GMO crop supposedly approved for commercialization. Engaged in litigation on many fronts, Monsanto is trying to subvert... Read more |
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Edward Hunt US Policy Perpetuating Stalemate in Syria The Obama administration's strategy includes arming the opposition forces just enough to keep them fighting Assad, but not enough for them to overthrow the government. Read more |
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Ramzy Baroud The Native American, the Palestinian: A Spirited Fight for Justice Thousands of Native Americans resurrected the fighting spirit of their forefathers as they stood in unprecedented unity to contest an oil company’s desecration of their sacred land in North Dakota... Read more |
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Glenn Greenwald Hillary Clinton: Boycotting North Carolina Is Noble and Just; Boycotting Israel Is Bigoted and Hateful Hillary Clinton, in a June 2, 2015, letter to billionaire donor and Israel supporter Haim Saban : “I am writing to express my alarm over the boycott, divestment, and sanction [BDS] movement. … I know... Read more |
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Gareth Porter Al Qaeda’s Ties to US-Backed Syrian Rebels The U.S. is demanding the grounding of Syria’s air force but is resisting Russian demands that U.S.-armed rebels separate from Al Qaeda, a possible fatal flaw in the new cease-fire Read more |
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Aisha Dodwell Corporations Running the World Used To Be Science Fiction - Now It's a Reality. Imagine a world in which all of the main functions of society are run for-profit by private companies. Schools are run by multinationals. Private security firms have replaced police forces. And most... Read more |
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Rhea Suh Solidarity with Standing Rock The Dakota Access pipeline needs to be stopped — and the broken system that allowed it to get this far must be fixed. Read more |
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David Suzuki The Planet's Most Dangerous Predator Is Us Humans are the world's top predator. The way we fulfill this role is often mired in controversy, from factory farming to trophy hunting to predator control. The latter is the process governments use... Read more |
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Stephen Kinzer 9/11 Saudi Arabia Bill Opens US to Avalanche of Lawsuits Last week , as the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks approached, members of Congress gathered on the Capitol steps to pray, followed by a rendition of “God Bless America.” Then, evidently energized,... Read more |
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Katrina vanden Heuvel No One Is Asking Clinton or Trump About the No. 1 Threat to Security Last week we saw another installment of the media malpractice that has plagued the 2016 campaign. NBC’s Matt Lauer was widely criticized for his performance moderating the network’s Commander-in-... Read more |
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Robert Parry The Existential Madness of Putin-Bashing Official Washington loves its Putin-bashing but demonizing the Russian leader stops a rational debate about U.S.-Russia relations and pushes the two nuclear powers toward an existential brink Read more |
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Derek Davison The Latest Syrian Ceasefire Raising hopes for an end to, or at least a pause in, the devastating Syrian civil war, a ceasefire negotiated last week by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey... Read more |
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Isaiah Poole A Day of Action To Stop An Oil Pipeline and “Keep It In The Ground” Bolstered by an extraordinary order from the Obama administration to halt construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline at a site considered sacred and environmentally vulnerable by Standing Rock Sioux... Read more |
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Aviva Chomsky Is Trump an Aberration? The Dark History of the “Nation of Immigrants” Liberal Americans like to think of Donald Trump as an aberration and believe that his idea of building a great wall along the U.S.-Mexico border to prevent immigrants from entering the country goes... Read more |
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Adam Johnson Media Undermine Democracy by Speculating Wildly About Undermining Democracy The relentless drumbeat of Trump–as–Russian agent takes hasn’t ceased since the news broke of a likely Russian hack of the Democratic National Committee in June—and it probably won’t stop until... Read more |
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Stanley L. Cohen Harder Times for Palestine If Clinton Wins US Election It is clear that Hillary Clinton will not be visiting any Arab capital with a proffered fig leaf. Read more |
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Astrid Caldas No Need To Wait for the Future: Global Warming Impacts Are Happening Right Here, Right Now. One thought hit me today, and it was not a very optimistic one. I thought that one may get so used to the fact that that month after month temperature records are being broken, that the issue of... Read more |
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John Nichols North Dakota Wants to Arrest Democracy Now!’s Amy Goodman for Engaging in Journalism The independent journalist was documenting private security personnel using dogs to attack Native Americans activists. Read more |
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Lorne Stockman The Dakota Access Pipeline Will Lock-In the Emissions of 30 Coal Plants The Dakota Access pipeline would carry oil from the Bakken formation in North Dakota to Gulf Coast refineries and export terminals via Patoka, Illinois. With a maximum capacity of 570,000 barrels per... Read more |
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Sarah van Gelder, Dallas Goldtooth The Big Difference at Standing Rock Is Native Leadership All Around This year’s massive buildup of resistance to the Dakota Access pipeline follows closely on the heels of the victory over Keystone XL pipeline, something often credited to feverish organizing by 350... Read more |
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Cynthia Kaufman Making Beautiful Things Where Everyone Gains and No One Profits My friend Annette Aylward is trying to make a living as a crafts person. She makes beautiful handmade linen towels. She believes in craft. She loves to make these things. To make a living making... Read more |
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Sujata Dey From NAFTA to TPP, Canada Hasn't Learned From Free Trade Mistakes Barbed wire still protects the cracked pavement where an abandoned John Deere plant used to operate in Welland, Ontario. The building, still standing, is testimony to the Niagara region's former... Read more |
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Kevin Gosztola What If America Happened To Forget The September 11th Attacks? The United States will never forget the September 11th attacks. It is interwoven into the fabric of the nation. Its identity is partially defined by remembering the horror that unfolded that day, but... Read more |
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Jake Johnson Seizing the Moment: Young Socialists Take on the Old Democratic Guard It should be no surprise that a growing percentage of millennials dislike capitalism. Having come of age during the Great Recession or in the midst of the dismally slow (and profoundly unequal )... Read more |
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Bill Moyers We, the Plutocrats vs. We, the People Saving the Soul of Democracy Read more |
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Paul Buchheit Five Deadly Sins of Big Pharma For Mylan, it was a perfect plan—diabolical, unstoppable. The company made changes in its anti-allergy EpiPen dispenser in 2009, enough to give it patent protection. Then, in 2012, it began to give... Read more |
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Michael Winship The Lost Innocence of 9/11 The renewed patriotism and commitment we felt 15 years ago has decayed, sullied by jingoism, xenophobia and paranoid fantasies about race and religion. Read more |
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Donna Smith It's Not Enough to Remember 9/11 First, for my son Russell, who turns 40 on September 11, 2016, I've always said there had to be an incredible amount of joy and humanity to remember on other September 11th's to make the pain and... Read more |
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Eric Margolis The Truth About 9/11 “America’s strategic and economic interests in the Mideast and Muslim world are being threatened by the agony in Palestine, which inevitably invites terrorist attacks against US citizens and property... Read more |
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Diane Ravitch Did Obama Administration’s Policies Contribute to Chicago’s Deadly Violence? For many years, parents and education activists in Chicago have warned that the deliberate destruction of neighborhood public schools was causing a rise in violence. The city, first under Arne Duncan... Read more |
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Pierre Tristam The National Anthem’s False Notes One August morning in a small French town in Normandy 250 years ago, a crucifix that stood as a monument in the heart of town was found mutilated. People were upset. They wanted blood. (Irony has... Read more |
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Rev. John Dear The Politics of Nonviolence What a summer! Like everyone else, I’m trying to make some sense of it, and figure out a thoughtful response. We’ve suffered through the mainstream media’s non-stop broadcast of the dirty politics of... Read more |
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Christopher Brauchli Hold the Applause Do what thy manhood bid thee do, From none but self expect applause. — Sir Richard Francis Burton An ad that was run by the Trump campaign hours after the Republican convention ended answers a... Read more |
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Steven Singer If You’re Not a Feminist – What the Hell is Wrong with You!!? I am a male human being. And you’d better believe I’m a feminist. I wear that label proudly. The other day a friend of mine heard one of my articles was published in Everyday Feminism . And he said... Read more |
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Ralph Nader Federal Regulation Saves Millions of Lives Fifty years ago this month (on September 9, 1966), President Lyndon Johnson signed into law the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety laws that launched a great life-saving program for the... Read more |
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Gail Ablow What You Need to Know About the Dakota Access Pipeline Protest Native Americans from tribes all over the country are protesting the construction of a crude-oil pipeline slated to snake through sacred sites and under the water supply for the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation. Read more |
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Cynthia Kaufman Don't Mourn. Organize. (And, Yes, Also Vote) Why my small act of voting is not nearly as important as the organizing I do all year long Read more |
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Faith Barksdale The San Francisco 49ers’ Colin Kaepernick Kneeled So That We May All Stand Taller It’s hard to speak with your face pressed against concrete . Or when you can’t breathe . Or with a broken neck . And even when you manage to speak, people in power seek to silence you. Just ask the... Read more |
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Sean Posey What Workers Aren’t Hearing from Democrats Donald Trump's reception on Labor Day in a traditional Democratic stronghold should be sounding alarm bells for the Clinton campaign. Read more |
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Jeff Bryant Who Gains Most From School Choice? Not Low-Income Students Of Color As parents and students reenter public schools for a new year, they’re hearing a lot about “school choice.” Having “choice,” they’re told, lets parents send their kids to schools other than their... Read more |
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Stacy Keltner, Ashley McFarland On Pricks and Politics: How to Measure Up This Election Season A few weeks ago, several statues of a naked Donald Trump turned up in cities across the United States. Fat, orange, waxy, and a bit cartoonish looking, like the Republican nominee himself, the... Read more |
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Isaiah Poole Time For Obama and Clinton To Oppose The Dakota Access Pipeline The fight between Native Americans and the financial interests dead set on pushing an environmentally hazardous oil pipeline through sacred Native lands in the Midwest intensified on Thursday, ahead... Read more |
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Charles P. Pierce Are We Just Going to Pretend Another President Didn't Give Iran Their Money? Let's go to the videotape. Read more |
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Sonali Kolhatkar This Election Is Hillary Clinton’s to Lose, and She’s Screwing It Up You could not pick a worse, more inept, inexperienced or offensive joke of a presidential candidate than Donald Trump. The United States has become the butt of international ridicule over our very... Read more |
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Michael Winship Greasing the Outstretched Palms of the Candidates Two reports underline the suffocating influence of corporate America on politics and the tricks banks play on taxpayers. Read more |
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Donna Smith U.S. Healthcare System Culls the Wheat from the Working Class Chaff Americans are an oddly and beautifully diverse lot, but the healthcare industry has us all figured out. For decades now, maintaining control over American lives and any vestige of the American dream... Read more |
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Robert Reich There’s One Big Unfinished Promise By Bill Clinton that Hillary Should Put to Bed What can be done to deter pharmaceutical companies from jacking up prices of critical drugs? To prevent Wall Street banks from excessive gambling? To nudge CEOs into taking a longer-term view? To... Read more |
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Tom Engelhardt Bombs Away! A 9/11 Retrospective of America's 15-Year Air War On the morning of September 11, 2001, al-Qaeda launched its four-plane air force against the United States. On board were its precision weapons: 19 suicidal hijackers. One of those planes, thanks to... Read more |
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Kate Horner Why Rivers, Why Now? For over ten years, I’ve worked on campaigns to protect forests and secure land rights for communities around the world. And this month, I’m thrilled to take on a new position, as the Executive... Read more |
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Amy Kroin Sounding the Alarm on Predictive Policing “Predictive policing” sounds good on paper. After all, what could go wrong with a data-based approach to law enforcement? It turns out: plenty. That’s why Free Press joined a broad coalition of civil... Read more |
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Kevin Gosztola The Derangement of Journalists Against Transparency Officials from President Barack Obama’s administration collude with Wall Street executives to push for the passage of the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement. The FBI monitors “professional... Read more |
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Ramzy Baroud Is Israel Pushing for a Palestinian Civil War? Division within Palestinian society has reached unprecedented levels, becoming a major hurdle on the path of any unified strategy to end Israel’s violent occupation or to rally Palestinians behind a... Read more |
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Rivera Sun Sing the Body Politic, Electric Recently, I traveled by train across the US in a swaying, creeping journey of that took me through the backyards and forgotten corners of our country. Here, you see the America that doesn't make it... Read more |
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Juan Cole Clinton: No US Ground Troops in Iraq, Syria; Trump: Steal Iraqi Oil The NBC Candidates Forum continued the shameful corporate coverage of the Great American Meltdown that is our election season. That season has given us a Faux Cable News that runs clips of only one... Read more |
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Trevor Timm Almost Everyone Gets Russia Wrong – Apart From Obama Those itching for conflict like to portray Putin as a grandmaster. In reality, his country is weak and his strategy is one of desperation Read more |
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Tom Andrews Biden Is Dangerously Unaware Of The Tragedy Asylum Seekers Face Vice President Biden’s widely reported claim, late last week, that the Administration has “embraced a fundamentally different approach” to the “hard trade-offs” posed by the Central America migration... Read more |
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Jim Naureckas 48 Words at 4 AM Is All Network News Has to Say About Pipeline Protests The broadcast news networks —ABC , CBS and NBC —have aired exactly one report on the Dakota Access Pipeline protests since the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe began an encampment against the project in... Read more |
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Robert C. Koehler War vs. Democracy The paradox of democracy is that it depends on the integrity of those who have the most to lose if an election goes the wrong way — you know, the people in power. That’s a particularly thorny dilemma... Read more |
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Jake Johnson Hillary Clinton Is Trying Really Hard to Repel Progressives If you're looking for Hillary Clinton, Amy Chozick and Jonathan Martin observed in Sunday's edition of the New York Times , the best place to start is usually among "the country's most moneyed... Read more |
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John Nichols Laboratories of Democracy Stir Up Best Responses to Drug-Company Profiteering Mylan Pharmaceuticals CEO Heather Bresch is the Ryan Lochte of drug company bosses. Mylan's EpiPen profiteering has been so obscene that major media outlets that usually miss stories of corporate... Read more |
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Jo Miles, Hugh MacMillan Who's Banking on the Dakota Access Pipeline? The Standing Rock Sioux are inspiring the world with their resistance against the pipeline. But it’s not just Big Oil and Gas that they’re opposing. Read more |
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Dean Baker At WaPo, You Can Say Anything to Support TPP–or to Smear Sanders In pushing trade agreements, it is fair to say anything, even if it has no relationship to the truth. Therefore it is not surprising to see Fareed Zakaria ( Washington Post , 9/1/16 ) pushing the... Read more |
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Gar Alperovitz 6 Ways We’re Already Leading an Economic Revolution From the “buy local” movement to public banking, we’re well on our way to a more democratic, cooperative, and people-centered economy. Read more |
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Jeremy Corbyn Why Labour is Putting Energy Reform at the Heart of Its Green Agenda No issue better connects the environment to people’s lives than energy. In order to deliver clean, affordable electricity we need to change our undemocratic system of supply Read more |
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Kathy Kelly A Good Beginnning (to the End of Empire) It seems that some who have the ears of U.S. elite decision-makers are at least shifting away from wishing to provoke wars with Russia and China. In recent articles, Zbigniew Brzezinski and Thomas... Read more |
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Bill McKibben A Pipeline Fight and America’s Dark Past This week, thousands of Native Americans, from more than a hundred tribes, have camped out on the Standing Rock Sioux reservation, which straddles the border between the Dakotas, along the Missouri... Read more |
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John Atcheson Empire in Decline: When the Oligarchy Inherits the Wind The unthinkable may well happen. The US may elect as President a racist, xenophobic, narcissistic, con man with no knowledge of policy or governance. As of now, Trump holds a slight lead over Clinton... Read more |
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Jim Hightower Cleaning Up After Pundits Being a muckracking political writer often makes me feel like a custodian in a horse barn, constantly shoveling manure. It's a messy, stinky job — but on the bright side, the stuff is plentiful, so... Read more |
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Glenn Greenwald The Unrelenting Pundit-Led Effort to Delegitimize All Negative Reporting About Hillary Clinton In his New York Times column yesterday , Paul Krugman did something that he made clear he regarded as quite brave: He defended the Democratic Party presidential nominee and likely next U.S. president... Read more |
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Robert Naiman #StopArmingSaudi: 4 Reasons It's Plausible To Try A key hurdle to engaging more people in obstructing the Administration's proposed arms deal with Saudi Arabia has been convincing them that it is politically plausible to try to do so. Outside of the... Read more |
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Lawrence Davidson America and the Plague of ‘Moral Idiocy’ When it comes to applying rules of international law and ethics, the U.S. government and its mainstream media operate with stunning hypocrisy, what might be called “moral idiocy” Read more |
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Peter Singer, Jordan Sosnowski Japan's Notorious Dolphin Hunt Is Where the World's Aquariums Shop The notorious annual dolphin hunt got underway last week in the small Japanese town of Taiji. During the six-month hunting season, terrified dolphins are violently herded into a narrow cove. Most are... Read more |
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Ben Lilliston The TPP's Climate Blindspot Free trade deals, and in particular the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), have taken a beating this election season. Most of the noise on trade from Presidential candidates Donald Trump and... Read more |
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Susan Etta Keller What If We All Used the Same Bathroom? Recent political battles throughout the country suggest we are having trouble with going to the bathroom. Or, more precisely, with who goes to the bathroom next to us. In arguing for a preliminary... Read more |
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Sarah Sunshine Manning ‘And Then the Dogs Came’: Dakota Access Gets Violent, Destroys Graves, Sacred Sites "This demolition is devastating. These grounds are the resting places of our ancestors. The ancient cairns and stone prayer rings cannot be replaced. In one day, our sacred land has been turned into... Read more |
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Stephen Jackson Catastrophism Is as Much an Obstacle to Addressing Climate Change as Denial For a long while people have used the phrase ‘climate denier’ or ‘denialism’ as pejorative labels to admonish those who reject the reality of climate change. Whether it’s industry-funded... Read more |
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Janice 'Jay' Johnson Our Protest Tradition – And Why Now More Than Ever We Must Cherish It As this election season comes to full boil, we should remember the importance of civil disobedience to our history. It is one of the few tools ordinary people still have to organize for change. With... Read more |
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Nick Turse What the US Military Doesn't Know (and Neither Do You) About Special Forces in Africa Mission Impossible on the African continent Read more |
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Jerry Lembcke Taking a Knee for Peace: Recalling the Veterans Who Sat It was my own moment of reckoning—stand and salute for the Star Spangled Banner or sit? The moment returns in memory, brought back by the current flap involving Colin Kaepernick’s refusal to stand... Read more |
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Paul Pillar The Scuffle Over ‘American Exceptionalism’ Before the American Legion, Hillary Clinton sought to paint herself as the real patriot running for President by invoking “American exceptionalism,” a phrase that has caused much trouble and that Donald Trump disdains Read more |
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Rebekah Barber With Private Immigrant Detention up for Review, a Former Inmate Describes the Harsh Life on the Inside When the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced last month that it was divesting from private prisons after they were found to be more dangerous than publicly run facilities, immigrant advocates... Read more |
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Jake Johnson Labor Against the Establishment: Opposing the Bosses, Corporate and Political The decades-long assault on organized labor has delivered tremendous results for capital and the bosses: Broadly, corporate profits have climbed at a steady rate and CEO pay has risen 997 percent... Read more |
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Dean Baker WaPo Wants Us to Mourn the Lost Political Power of Big Business Seriously, the Post ran a major front page article in its Sunday business section telling us that "big business lost Washington." The piece does acknowledge that business lobbies are still very... Read more |
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LaDonna Bravebull Allard Why the Founder of Standing Rock Sioux Camp Can’t Forget the Whitestone Massacre We must remember we are part of a larger story. We are still here. We are still fighting for our lives on our own land. Read more |
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Harvey Wasserman Nuclear's Last Stand? New York’s Cuomo Rushes in to Save Dying Plants New York’s “liberal” Governor Andrew Cuomo is trying to ram through a complex backdoor bailout package worth up to $11 billion to keep at least four dangerously decrepit nuclear reactors operating... Read more |
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Peter Dreier This Labor Day, Remember That Martin Luther King's Last Campaign Was for Workers' Rights Most Americans today know that Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. was killed in Memphis, Tennessee in 1968, but few know why he was there. King went to Memphis to support African American garbage... Read more |
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Dave Johnson This Is Why Labor Day, And the Movement That Created It, Matters Economic anxiety and inequality is contributing (as it always does) to the rise of right-wing, anti-immigrant, xenophobic and racist politics. Many of the people most hurt by the decline of unions... Read more |
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Hanane Karimi No Liberty, No Equality, No Fraternity: The Death of French Secularism France’s secularism was meant to ensure basic freedom for all creeds. Using it to ban burkinis shows how the law has been perverted Read more |
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Lyndal Rowlands Rich Countries Should Take Development Goals Seriously Too The UN’s new Sustainable Development Goals apply to all 193 UN member states, yet one year in some say that rich countries aren’t taking their critical role quite as seriously as they should be. “... Read more |
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Lauren Carasik Donald Trump Doubles Down on Deportation Plan His vitriol and demonization of undocumented immigrants forecloses any constructive dialogue on the issue. Read more |
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Ian S. Thompson New Anti-Trans Attacks Are Yet Another Reason We Must Reform RFRA Next week, Congress will be back in session in our nation’s capital. With the election right around the corner, we can expect to see a frenzy of legislative activity. The past several weeks have... Read more |
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Damon Silvers Once Again, America Seeks the Answer to The Labor Question How can the people who do the work in America receive a fair share of the wealth we create, and a voice in our politics, society and culture? Read more |