All Views Articles for 2016–08-23-dear
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Adam Parsons The Struggle Continues for a Binding Treaty to #StopCorporateAbuse A binding treaty to regulate the activities of corporations could provide a vital counterpoint to controversial free trade and investment agreements, with potentially radical implications for a new international political, economic and legal order. Read more |
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Jim Naureckas Trump's 'Unhinged' Lie About Obama Doesn't Register as News to Corporate Media In one of his final speeches of the presidential campaign, Donald Trump went after President Barack Obama over his treatment of a Trump supporter at a rally in Fayetteville, N.C. Speaking in Hershey... Read more |
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Joe Lauria Obama’s Last Stand Against War on Syria For five years, President Obama has resisted neocon/liberal-interventionist pressure to go to war against Syria, but – as his departure grows near – the hawks see more “regime change” wars coming into view Read more |
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Katherine Paul Why Are Taxpayers Being Asked to Pay to Promote a Failed GMO Technology? Last weekend (Oct. 29), the New York Times ran a piece on how the biotech industry has failed to deliver on its promises for GMO crops. The article followed less than a month after the biotech... Read more |
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Robin Wall Kimmerer, Kathleen Dean Moore The White Horse and the Humvees—Standing Rock Is Offering Us a Choice Right here, between the barricades on a North Dakota highway, is a pivotal confrontation between two world views, two futures. Read more |
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Peter Greene If You Think the Economy is Improving, You Probably Don’t Work in a Public School Well, hey. The Latest Great Recession is supposed to be ending, the rising tide lifting all the boats back to where we were in 2007, before Wall Street blew a hole in the bottom of the ocean. So why... Read more |
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Barbara Ehrenreich Forget Fear and Loathing. The US Election Inspires Projectile Vomiting The most sordid side of our democracy has been laid out for all to see. But that’s only the beginning: whoever wins, the mutual revulsion will only intensify Read more |
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Timothy Wise Africa Still in the Crosshairs as Land Grabs Intensify Though slowed by courageous resistence by farmers and local communities, efforts to monopolize huge areas in Mozambique and across the African continent continue Read more |
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Jenni Monet This Land Is Our Land: All Sides Dig In as Pipeline Nears the River Recent Standing Rock drone footage makes it clear that time is running out in the Dakota Access battle, and the fight for control of this land is becoming more urgent. Read more |
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Rebecca Solnit The 2000 Election Unleashed Disaster on the World. We Can’t Let that Happen Again in 2016. For eight years, George W. Bush ravaged the planet. What will be left of it if Trump wins? Read more |
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Amy Davidson Bernie Sanders’s Hard Fight for Hillary Clinton One of the many things that makes Donald Trump angry is that Bernie Sanders does not seem to hold grudges. In recent speeches, Trump has pointed to the information that has come out, through... Read more |
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Sean McElwee The Myth of Bipartisanship—It’s Time to Get Tough With the Right Politics is not a parlor game where good manners always win out. It involves questions of power and privilege, which cannot be solved merely with bipartisan brunches. Read more |
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Michael T. Klare Whose Finger on the Nuclear Button? Election 2016 and playing a game of chicken with nuclear strategy Read more |
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César Chelala I Am One of Your 'Bad Hombres' Señor Trump During the last presidential debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, Trump said, “we have some bad hombres here,” in clear reference to the Latinos coming to the United States. As CNN... Read more |
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Rev. Billy Talen Did Our Anti-Monsanto Song Beat The Three Hates? (or 'If Monsanto Loses Its Name, What Will The Lovers Go On To Love Even More? Bayer’s $57 Billion Offer Means Organic Farming Lovers Must Rethink Their Praise!') Read more |
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Naomi Klein The Carbon Tax on the Ballot in Washington State Is Not the Right Way to Deal With Global Warming A revenue-neutral carbon tax simply cannot deliver the massive green-energy investments we all need. Read more |
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Bernie Sanders Here’s How to Send a Message to Big Pharma During this election season, Californians have been relentlessly carpet-bombed by TV ads paid for by three dozen super-rich drug companies to defeat Proposition 61 . The drug industry has raised an... Read more |
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Ai-jen Poo From the Kitchen Table to the Voting Booth An activist hopes we see this moment through the eyes of the women we may never see on TV, but who are at the heart of what it means to be American in 2016. Read more |
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John Light A Colorado Ballot Measure Could Make it Nearly Impossible to Ban Fracking Green groups hope to someday amend the Colorado constitution so communities can ban fracking. An industry-sponsored amendment on the state's Nov. 8 ballot could block that. Read more |
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Christopher Brauchli The Ark and the Election "The Unicorn is a Mythical Beast." —James Thurber, The Unicorn in the Garden Although my readers do not come to this space to get ideas for vacations they may wish to take, many of my readers may be... Read more |
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Jumaane D. Williams Sanders Supporters: It’s Infuriating to Be Told We Have to Vote for Hillary. But We Do. Thoughts from a Bernie delegate. Read more |
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Cornel West Spiritual Blackout in America: Election 2016 The most frightening feature of the civic melancholia in present-day America is the relative collapse of integrity, honesty, and decency — an undeniable spiritual blackout of grand proportions. The... Read more |
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Ellicott Dandy Why A “Revenue-Neutral” Carbon Tax Could Hurt – Not Help – the Planet Why we have to get this right the first time Read more |
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Ronnie Dugger The National Agony of This Election It is time to think mainly of all of us on earth, of the crisis in humanity in this our time Read more |
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Ralph Nader The Silver Linings of Silver-Tongued Donald Are there any silver linings to the tumultuous, degrading, sordid presidential campaign of Donald Trump—a failed gambling czar, corporate welfare king, and supreme hypocrite to his own accusations... Read more |
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Jonathan Marshall How World War III Could Start The U.S. acts as if its military has an inalienable right to operate close to the borders of other nations and those nations have no right to see these actions as provocative Read more |
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Gyasi Ross Why 'There Are No Acceptable Rerouting Options' for Dakota Access Obama, extortion and what #NoDAPL really means Read more |
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Gareth Porter US Hypocrisy: Bombing of Aleppo Is No Worse Than What Happened in Gaza and Iraq The Syrian and Russian bombing is not dissimilar from recent US and Israeli offensives - but you wouldn't know that from the reporting Read more |
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David Korten Forget More Regulation: Make Corporations Serve the Public Interest The purely private-purpose corporation is an illegitimate entity. This is the elephant in the room that no politician dare mention. Read more |
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Robert Borosage Progressives Pushing on Executive Appointments? Scandal! How dare progressive organize around appointments for a president they have helped to elect? Ominous, impudent. Who the hell do they think they are? Wall Street bankers? Read more |
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Bruce Potts In Defense of Bernie, In Defense of Democracy: The Ironic Case for Hillary Clinton During the course of the 2016 Primary Season, millions of Americans fell in love with Bernard Sanders, the angry, outspoken, yet likeable leftist U.S. Senator from Vermont. His temperament, his... Read more |
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Amy Goodman, Denis Moynihan Dakota Access Pipeline CEO Kelcy Warren Should Face the Music President Barack Obama foreshadowed more complications for the Dakota Access pipeline this week, as he told an interviewer that “right now the Army Corps is examining whether there are ways to... Read more |
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Jeff Bryant This Election Is About School Funding, Democratic Control of Education If you’re one of those voters who’s been frustrated by the lack of media coverage of serious policy issues in this year’s presidential election, you can look down ballot for meaningful debates on... Read more |
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Sherry Linkon Memo to the Next President: Don’t Forget the Working Class The divides this campaign has revealed will linger long after Election Day. Read more |
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Sonali Kolhatkar Battle Over Dakota Access Pipeline Should Be the Most Important of the Year More than a million people around the U.S. have “ checked in ” via Facebook to Standing Rock Indian Reservation in Cannon Ball, N.D. While this began as an attempt to confuse Morton County Sheriff’s... Read more |
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Victor Pickard Merger Fatigue In A Time Of Media Oligopolies AT&T and Time Warner’s announced merger warrants serious concern about concentrated media power. The combination of AT&T’s vast telecommunications networks with Time Warner’s massive content... Read more |
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Ciara Torres-Spelliscy Utilities Cloud Solar Power in the Sunshine State Corporations have a lot of tools to get their way. As I describe in my book Corporate Citizen? : they can back candidates, lobby legislatures, and even show-up at regulatory agencies with pre-written... Read more |
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Michael T. Klare The United States May Be Guilty of War Crimes in Yemen The Saudi air campaign is targeting schools, hospitals, markets—and US military support makes it all possible. Read more |
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Taj James Our Poisonous Economic System Needs A Grassroots Intervention Last month, nearly two hundred nations signed on to a legally-binding global climate deal seeking to phase out the greenhouse gases known as HFCs. And this Friday, the non-binding Paris Agreement... Read more |
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John Feffer Hillary Clinton and the Neocons Veteran GOP foreign policy hawks are flocking to Hillary Clinton. Is it callow opportunism, or a major realignment? Read more |
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Kevin Martin US to the World: “We Can’t Eliminate Our Nukes, Because We Rely on Our Nukes" When the song remains the same, the dangers of nuclear weapons will never go away Read more |
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Jeff Cohen, Norman Solomon Dangerous Myths About Trump That Some Progressives Cling To We have no illusions about Hillary Clinton, nor do we have any about the dangers of a President Donald Trump Read more |
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Jill Mangaliman Why Washington State's Carbon Tax Measure Is a False Promise for Climate Justice When it comes to proposed climate solutions like Initiative 732, we must be sure that our sense of urgency does not fuel bad policy Read more |
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Tom Engelhardt Resurrecting My Parents From the Dead for Election 2016 (Or How the American Political System Changed and No One Noticed) Read more |
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Ai-jen Poo, George Goehl In This Hate-Filled Election, There’s Always Love Some couples, in the days leading up to their wedding, are caught up in final preparations: a last-minute dance class, attending to a late RSVP, or doing some work on your vows. There are lots of... Read more |
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Chelsea Manning I Can't Vote. If You Can, You Must Despite what they say, suffrage isn’t universal. If you’re privileged enough to be able to vote, don’t waste the opportunity that not everyone is afforded Read more |
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Sarah van Gelder Building a Bridge to Turtle Island — Dispatch from Standing Rock Standing Rock (Nov. 2) — Drone footage taken of the ridge overlooking the camp showed that the water protecters worst fears had been realized. Construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline had reached... Read more |
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Kelle Louaillier Putting Democracy Above the Bottom Line This month, we will have a chance to chart a course toward a stronger, safer global society, where power belongs to the many, not to the few, and where those who have run roughshod over our... Read more |
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Jasmine Gomez Citizens United, the First Amendment, and the Ballot In this post-Occupy, post-Tea Party election, with voters on both sides concerned about the excessive influence of big money in our political system, voters in California and Washington have the... Read more |
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Robert C. Koehler Democracy and Our Vulnerable Future It was a moment as tiny as marking a ballot — those two minutes of the second debate, when the presidential election hung suspended mid-diatribe and the candidates let go of their opponent’s flaws... Read more |
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Jeff Chester A Huge Victory for Online Privacy Advocates As AT&T and Time Warner plan to merge, new FCC rules on broadband privacy show how today “Big Media” also means “Big Data.” Read more |
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Chuck Collins Eight Ways to Strengthen Our Democracy Beyond Voting The strength of our civic life depends on what we do outside elections Read more |
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John Buell Trade, Democracy, and the Politics of Backlash On why there has never been a greater need to quash the global corporate agenda. Read more |
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Jim Lardner Wall Street Sets Political Outlay Record Top execs in the financial sector have been spending an incredible $2.3 million a day to stall and deep-six needed reforms. Read more |
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RoseAnn DeMoro California’s Prop. 61 Offers Opportunity to Take on Big Pharma The drug corporations are running scared... and spending big to defeat this ballot measure Read more |
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Winona LaDuke, Ann Wright, Zoltan Grossman Public Servants or Corporate Security?: An Open Letter to Law Enforcement and National Guard in North Dakota So you joined law enforcement or the National Guard because you wanted to uphold the law, protect innocent civilians against the bad guys, and help your community in times of need. Instead, they’re... Read more |
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Sarah van Gelder Report from Standing Rock—Fierce Resilience as the Black Snake Approaches the River After watching the police actions of last Thursday, I decided I had to come back to Standing Rock. Here’s my first report … Read more |
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Gareth Porter Justifying the Saudi Slaughter in Yemen Official Washington insists Iran is the main Mideast troublemaker when clearly that isn’t true, but the “group think” explains why a few intercepted arms shipments to Somalia where linked to Iran and Yemen Read more |
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Matt Taibbi Too Smug to Jail 'The Economist' issues a myopic defense of the white-collar criminal Read more |
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David Morris Beyond Candidates: Three State Initiatives That Could Bolster Democracy On November 8th citizens in 35 states vote on 163 ballot initiatives. They cover a wide range of subjects (e.g. marijuana, minimum wage, taxes, gun control). To my mind, initiatives in three states—... Read more |
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Jonathan Kozol Vote ‘No’ on Charter Schools It's not easy to compete with buckets of money pouring into Massachusetts to convince the public to lift the cap on charter schools but, as a former teacher who has worked for more than 50 years with... Read more |
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Laura Carlsen Who Gains from Colombia’s Vote for Permanent War? Pretending that everyone wants peace in Colombia ignores the long-term effects of militarism — and the fact that the war benefits many powerful interests, including in Washington. Read more |
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Ann Jones Nasty Women vs. The Greatest Victim in the History of the World Donald Trump Donald Trump grabbed a new lifeline. Speaking at a rally in Charlotte, North Carolina, on October 15th, he raised a hand as if to take an oath and declared : “I am a victim!” The great business... Read more |
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Lerato Letebele COP22: A Defining Moment for Africa’s Climate Movement Upcoming UN climate summit in Morocco should help spark the energy among Africans to mobilize for the sustainable future we all aspire for Read more |
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Jake Johnson The American Way: Socialism for the Rich, Free Enterprise for the Rest While it's not entirely clear who coined the phrase "socialism for the rich, free enterprise for the rest," its ability to provoke — and, more importantly, to describe — is beyond question. There are... Read more |
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Phyllis Bennis The War in Syria Cannot Be Won. But It Can Be Ended. The left is profoundly divided over the conflict, but we should at least agree on a set of principles to end it. Read more |
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Nate Terani Tehran, USA: One Veteran's War on Islamophobia I’m not an immigrant, but my grandparents are. More than 50 years ago, they arrived in New York City from Iran. I grew up mainly in central New Jersey, an American kid playing little league for the... Read more |
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Trevor Timm James Comey Has Been Abusing His Power for Years We shouldn’t be surprised at the FBI director’s intervention in the presidential campaign. He has a track record of dubious decisions Read more |
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Frances Moore Lappé, Adam Eichen Trickle-Up Democracy: State and Local Ballots Give Voters A Say Measures to reduce the influence of money on politics could win approval in cities and states across the country Nov. 8. Read more |
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Belén Fernández Forget Halloween: There's Plenty of Real-Life Horror in the Middle East For many across the region, horror and fright constitute a permanent condition rather than a source of controlled entertainment Read more |
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Ralph Nader Why the Democrats Keep Losing the Congress Why isn’t the Democratic Party landsliding the worst and cruelest Republican Party in the past 162 years? Just take a glance at their record votes and you’ll wonder why the Republican representatives... Read more |
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Jeffrey D. Sachs The Fatal Expense of American Imperialism The single most important issue in allocating national resources is war versus peace, or as macroeconomists put it, “guns versus butter.” The United States is getting this choice profoundly wrong,... Read more |
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Thomas Frank Forget the FBI Cache; Podesta Emails Show How America Is Run WikiLeaks’ dump of messages to and from Clinton’s campaign chief offer an unprecedented view into the workings of the elite, and how it looks after itself Read more |
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Neal Gabler Trump’s Campaign for Celebrity Like junk food, will Trump leave us empty and wanting more? Read more |
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Chris Hedges American Irrationalism There is no shortage of signs of impending environmental catastrophe, including the melting of the polar ice caps and the rise of atmospheric carbon to above 400 parts per million . The earth’s sixth... Read more |
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Marcy Rein Free Tuition Proposal Aims to Reclaim San Francisco's City College In an inspired political jujitsu move, advocates for City College of San Francisco (CCSF) launched a ballot measure that would make the school free for everyone who lives or works at least half-time... Read more |
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Marcy Wheeler The Story About Judicial Dysfunction Behind the Comey Whiplash I’ve been home from Europe for less than a day and already I’m thinking of sporting a neck collar for the whiplash I’ve gotten watching the wildly varying Jim Comey opinions. I’m speaking, of course... Read more |
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Ray McGovern Putin-Obama Trust Evaporates How did the "growing trust" that Russian President Vladimir Putin once said marked his "working and personal relationship with President Obama " change into today's deep distrust and saber-rattling?... Read more |
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Gary Younge Note to America: Don’t Be So Sure You’ve Put Trump Behind You Take it from a Brit, right-wing populism will thrive until you deal with it genuinely. Read more |
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Taylor McKinnon Why Oregon Standoff Verdicts Set Dangerous and Far-Reaching Precedent Malheur acquittals raise stakes for next year’s trial in Nevada and beyond Read more |
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Nozomi Hayase Controversy over WikiLeaks Podesta Emails Opens a Debate for Future Journalism In its 10 th years of existence, WikiLeaks has been at the center of controversy. Ever since its global debut with the 2010 Apache helicopter gun-sight video depicting the killing of civilians in... Read more |
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Marjorie Cohn Tom Hayden, Courageous Warrior for Peace The death of Tom Hayden at age 76 marked the passing of a major progressive leader who championed causes from civil rights to Vietnam War opposition to the environment Read more |
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Will Griffin After Two Wars, Standing Rock is the First Time I Served the American People 'I’ve been on the wrong side of history' Read more |
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Bill Distler Finally “Winning” the Viet Nam War—in Afghanistan Some military thinkers in the United States believe we could have won the American war in Viet Nam if we had just stayed a little longer. After years of bombing and wounding and killing, they thought... Read more |
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Bill McKibben Why Dakota Is the New Keystone MIDDLEBURY, Vt. — The Native Americans who have spent the last months in peaceful protest against an oil pipeline along the banks of the Missouri are standing up for tribal rights. They’re also... Read more |
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Janine Jackson At DAPL, Confiscating Cameras as Evidence of Journalism While elite media wait for the resistance to the Dakota Access Pipeline to go away so they can return to presenting their own chin-stroking as what it means to take climate change seriously ,... Read more |
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Ann Wright When Will It End? US Government Again Uses Militarized Response to Stand of Native Americans to Injustice Its like we are back to the 1800s when the U.S. Army rampaged against Native American tribes across the American West. The militarized police and the use of the National Guard this week in responding... Read more |
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George Lakey Why Campaigns, Not Protests, Get the Goods After the election there will be many things to protest, no matter who wins. This is the time to figure out how to amplify our power and maximize the chance of winning victories. To do that, we can... Read more |
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Christopher Brauchli Requiem for the Asterisk Omissions are not accidents. — Marianne Moore, Complete Poems, author’s note This election season has had many unexpected consequences, but none has been more distressing than its effect on civility... Read more |
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Linda McQuaig Privatizing Airports a Flight Risk If the federal Liberals go ahead with the plan it will only hurt consumers and make businesses richer Read more |
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Jill Richardson Trump is the Nation’s Abuser-in-Chief A checklist of 30 tactics used by emotionally abusive partners reads like Trump's debate prep to-do list. Read more |
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Robert Dodge Nuclear Weapons – The Time for Abolition is Now Nuclear weapons present the greatest public health and existential threat to our survival every moment of every day. Yet the United States and world nuclear nations stand in breach of the 1968... Read more |
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Molly Cain Conservatives Say Raising the Minimum Wage Kills Jobs. New Research Says They’re Wrong. Raising the minimum wage would help a lot of Americans. It would raise wages for 35 million workers, bring 4.5 million people out of poverty, and reduce the wage gaps that plague women and people of... Read more |
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Sonali Kolhatkar Election’s Rape and Sexual Assault Accusations Need to Be Taken Seriously Less than a day after the third and final 2016 presidential debate, GOP nominee Donald Trump faced new accusations from a woman who recounted a story of her sexual assault at his hands. Karena... Read more |
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John Pilger Selling ‘Regime Change’ Wars to the Masses Propaganda is now such a pervasive part of Western governance that any foreign leader who resists the prevailing power structure can be turned into a demon and made a target of a “regime change” war Read more |
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John Light The Long Path to Reversing Citizens United Campaign finance lawyers are pursuing two legal strategies to try and push back against the 2010 ruling, and other court decisions, that deregulated our campaign finance system. Read more |
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Emily Fuller How to Contact the 17 Banks Funding the Dakota Access Pipeline Here are CEO names, emails, and phone numbers—because banks have choices when it comes to what projects they give loans to. Read more |
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Emile Frison To Diversify Agriculture, We Must Diversify the Questions We Ask Why narrowly- defined indicators of agricultural performance fail to capture many of the benefits of diversified and organic systems Read more |
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Charles B. Keeney 'Blood on the Mountain': Why We Need a Red Neck Protest Anthem, Not a Hillbilly Elegy A place mired in poverty, a culture of guns, conservative religion, poorly educated people, an angry and embittered populace. These are common words used by journalists and writers to describe West... Read more |
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Bernie Sanders Here's What I'll Do the Day After Election Day I am currently working as hard as I can to see that Donald Trump is defeated, that Hillary Clinton is elected president, and that Democrats gain control of the US House and Senate. The day after the... Read more |