All Views Articles for 2016–08-23-dear
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Kevin Gosztola ‘Get A Life’: Clinton Bashed Anti-Fracking Activists During Private Labor Meeting At a private meeting with the Building Trades Council, Hillary Clinton bashed environmentalists who oppose natural gas fracking and insist the United States must keep all fossil fuels in the ground... Read more |
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Robert Reich Ascendance of Paul Ryan and Hillary Clinton Equals Big Win for Big Business Hillary Clinton won’t be the only winner when Donald Trump and his fellow haters are defeated on Election Day (as looks increasingly likely). Another will be Paul Ryan, who will rule the Republican... Read more |
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Lizzy Ratner Amy Goodman Is Facing Prison for Reporting on the Dakota Access Pipeline. That Should Scare Us All. The charges against Goodman are a clear attack on journalism and freedom of the press. Read more |
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Tom Engelhardt He Who Lives by the Media Dies by the Media Consider it justice (of a sort): he who lives by the media dies by the media. I’m talking -- as if you had a scintilla of doubt -- about Donald Trump. If the Washington Post’s release of a video of... Read more |
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Rebecca Gordon Finding Hope in Dismal Times On learning to claim our victories and why fighting for justice is like surfing Read more |
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Bill McKibben Donald Trump Isn’t the Only Enemy on the Ballot He represents much of what’s wrong about American politics, but not all of it. Just look at what the Koch brothers are doing in Vermont. Read more |
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Paul Buchheit What the Narcissists Have Done to Our Jobs and Health When Donald Trump blurted out "that makes me smart" as a reason for non-payment of taxes, he was revealing a truth about the American narcissist. Senator Lindsey Graham was equally arrogant when he... Read more |
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Edward Hunt Maintaining Influence in Afghanistan Despite President Obama's promises of a drawdown in Afghanistan, the United States is settling in for the long haul. Read more |
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Heidi Chow CETA's Threat to Seed Freedom Seeds are an emotive issue. Across the globe, generations of farmers have been able to save seeds from each year's crops, store them, exchange them and re-use them in the next season. Seeds are the... Read more |
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Charles Eisenstein Fear of a Living Planet By refusing to recognize that the Earth is alive we implicitly endorse the worldview that enables our destruction of the planet Read more |
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Mike Elk Lawmakers Want to Close the Loophole That Pays Disabled Workers Pennies An Hour Recently released Census data reveal that, in 2015, the poverty rate dropped significantly for most demographic groups. One of the only groups who didn’t see an improvement were people with... Read more |
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Adam Johnson Hiding US Role in Yemen Slaughter So Bombing Can Be Sold as ‘Self-Defense’ To hear US corporate media tell it, the US was dragged into a brand new war on Wednesday. US destroyers in the Gulf of Aden launched airstrikes against Houthi rebels, a Shia insurgent group currently... Read more |
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Kasia Tarczynska America’s Most Prosperous Companies Get $2 Million Per Job Subsidy at Their Data Centers Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Apple and Facebook, America’s most well-known brands and most prosperous firms, are demanding that states and localities provide them ever-larger economic development... Read more |
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Kirtana Chandrasekaran We Need an Agroecological Revolution—So Why Are Governments Investing in Agribusiness? Agriculture is under pressure to perform on this World Food Day. As governments pay lip service to combatting climate change in the Paris Agreement, few of them are taking the real action necessary... Read more |
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Sarah van Gelder How to Fight Big Oil: Join Your Neighbors Four reasons communities all over the country are winning against the powerful and extremely wealthy fossil fuel industry. Read more |
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CJ Werleman Homegrown Terrorism is Rooted in US Actions, Not Islam. Just Ask the FBI. Like climate change, the debate surrounding radicalization is over. It’s now time for action, and that means we must first fix ourselves. Read more |
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Gilbert Doctorow The Warnings of a New World War The U.S.-Russia confrontation over Ukraine and now Syria is far more dangerous than is understood by mainstream U.S. analysts as Russia lays down clear warnings that are mostly being ignored, writes Gilbert Doctorow. Read more |
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Ralph Nader Ken Bossong—“Favorite Sun” If Mother Sun were to select a favorite son on Planet Earth, Ken Bossong would be high on the list. Operating for over forty years on a tiny budget from a tiny office in Takoma Park, Maryland, the... Read more |
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Kathy Mulady From Flint To Standing Rock To Upstate NY, Organizing To Save Our Water Despite the drinking water crisis epitomized by the scandal in Flint, Michigan, Donald Trump has pledged to scrap regulations protecting our water resources. Meanwhile, the victims in Flint are... Read more |
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César Chelala Donald Trump’s Droit Du Seigneur In medieval Europe, droit du seigneur referred to a legal right which allowed feudal lords to have sexual relations with subordinate women. This tradition, however, had older origins. The Greek... Read more |
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Deborah James As Deadline Looms, WikiLeaks Reveals Corporate Demands from the European Union in the Trade in Services Agreement Demands by the EU to Lock in Privatization of Public Services in Developing Countries; Financial Services Deregulation; and Antidevelopment Provisions Revealed; Secretive, Antidemocratic Deal Must Not Be Rushed to Conclusion Read more |
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Doreen Stabinsky The Courage to Embrace Radical Choices in the Face of the Climate and Food Crisis One of the worst droughts in living memory continues to threaten East and Southern African countries, brought on by the recent El Niño event. More than 40 million people across the continent are... Read more |
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Robert Parry Donald Trump’s False Martyrdom The Republican presidential candidate is presenting himself as a martyr absorbing the "slings and arrows" of false charges that he groped and abused women, even though he boasted about doing exactly that Read more |
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Amy Goodman, Denis Moynihan Standing Rock Sioux Protectors Intensify Fight Against Dakota Pipeline Construction Hurricane Matthew has come and gone, leaving devastation in its wake. So far, at least 1,000 people are reported to have died in Haiti, and at least 39 have died throughout the southeastern United... Read more |
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Glenn Greenwald On WikiLeaks, Journalism, and Privacy: Reporting on the Podesta Archive Is an Easy Call For years, Wikileaks has been publishing massive troves of documents online — usually taken without authorization from powerful institutions and then given to the group to publish — while news... Read more |
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Jake Johnson No Moral Superpower: Arundhati Roy, Edward Snowden, and the Crimes of Empire When Arundhati Roy was preparing, in 2014, for a trip to Moscow to meet Edward Snowden, she was troubled by two things. One of them was the fact that the meeting was arranged to take place at the... Read more |
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Sonali Kolhatkar Are Elections Less Important Than Ever in the Age of Trump? I confess I am enjoying watching the Republican Party implode. It is an all-consuming act of political rubbernecking. The blowback, personified by Donald Trump, of the party’s decades-long descent... Read more |
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Rashna Batliwala Singh, Peter Matthews Wright Imperial Privilege: On War and Violence Near and Far “Imagining politics as a form of war,” writes political scientist and philosopher Achilles Mbembe, “we must ask: What place is given to life, death, and the human body (in particular the wounded or... Read more |
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Kevin Gosztola Clinton Speech For Deutsche Bank Was Designed To Give Cover For Wall Street Coziness Hillary Clinton did a paid speech for Deutsche Bank in 2014 that was written by a speechwriter so she had something to show if people ever asked what she said “behind closed doors for two years to... Read more |
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John Light The $1 Billion Election No One Is Noticing While most media attention is on the presidential circus, candidates for statewide and local offices have raked in massive amounts of campaign donations. Read more |
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Jeff Bryant Public School Activists Stage Massive Nationwide Rally Demanding Government Leaders Prioritize Education In an election year calling attention to multiple policy priorities, parents, educators, community organizers, and progressive activists are increasingly frustrated that education seems to be a... Read more |
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Buddy Bell Policies of Exclusion Challenged Across the Board and Across the Border On the morning of Oct. 8, a group of US veterans who were deported to Mexico, in some cases after having fought in U.S. wars, congregated in Plaza Ochoa, Nogales, Sonora. They were joined by members... Read more |
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Jeremy Brecher Climate Emergency: Global Insurgency There is no choice but to escalate today’s campaigns against global fossil fuel infrastructure Read more |
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Tanja Andrejasic Wechsler Mass Media, the Wetiko Virus and the Future of Humanity The Cree Indians of North America, and many First Nations, have a concept called wetiko , a cannibalistic mind-virus that creates an unnatural desire to continually consume human flesh and gives its... Read more |
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Trevor Timm If Trump Leaks Are OK and Clinton Leaks Aren't, There's a Problem Journalists should always publish newsworthy information – even if its from a potentially biased source. This election should be no different Read more |
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Lindsey German Stop All Intervention in Syria and Let the People Decide Their Future British politicians calling for intervention in the Syrian civil war ignore lessons learned from Libya and Iraq and risk a bigger war as a result Read more |
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Micah Lee Dear Clinton Team: We Noticed You Might Need Some Email Security Tips There is probably no one more acutely aware of the importance of good cybersecurity right now than Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta, whose emails have been laid bare by Wikileaks, are... Read more |
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Joel Simon Donald Trump Threatens Press Freedom Worldwide For the first time in history , the Iranian state broadcaster livestreamed the entire 90-minute US presidential debate on Sunday. This was not meant to be a civics lesson. Rather, it was an effort to... Read more |
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John Feffer Trump the Arsonist Evangelicals, survivalists, the alt-right, and Hurricane Donald Read more |
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Philip K. Stoddard Protecting Forests Is Our Best Defense Against Natural Disasters October 13th is the United Nations’ International Day for Natural Disaster Reduction. Today, I joined local elected officials ranging from Virginia to Florida to recognize the importance of Southern... Read more |
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Tom Gallagher If You Mean It, Hillary Clinton, Say It Loud In an email released by WikiLeaks, one Hillary Clinton advisor claimed the campaign was so uninspired that he was “ petrified that Hillary is almost totally dependent on Republicans nominating Trump... Read more |
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David Morris Trump, Republicans, Guns, and Butter In October 2015, when he was a very, very long shot for the Republican nomination, Donald Trump the businessman promised to make the military “much stronger than it is right now” without increasing... Read more |
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Robert C. Koehler Nuclear Standoff Values the size of Planet Earth are at stake, as the American presidential election grows ever smaller, ever pettier, ever more certain that rancor triumphs over relevance. Can you imagine, let us... Read more |
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Richard Eskow The Republicans’ Civil War – And Everyone Else’s Whom among us, upon hearing of the grave and perhaps existential threats now facing the Republican Party, is entirely immune to the siren song of schadenfreude? Who from the liberal classes can... Read more |
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Glenn Greenwald In the Democratic Echo Chamber, Inconvenient Truths Are Recast as Putin Plots Donald Trump, for reasons I’ve repeatedly pointed out , is an extremist, despicable, and dangerous candidate, and his almost-certain humiliating defeat is less than a month away. So I realize there... Read more |
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Wendell Potter History (of Health Insurance Greed) Repeats Itself It doesn't take a psychic to predict that health insurance carriers will return to the Obamacare fold in 2017 with dollar signs in their eyes. Read more |
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Farhiya Tifow From North Dakota to Kenya, People Power Fights Fossil Fuel Infrastructure Oil and gas is a sector which depends on exploitation without responsibility, thus creating the worst form of relationship with people and the environment.” – Nnimmo Bassey On a panel discussing “... Read more |
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Ramzy Baroud Was the Women’s Boat to Gaza an Existential Threat? The Israeli official narrative regarding its conflict with the Palestinians is deliberately confounded because a muddled up discourse is a convenient one. It allows the narrator to pick and choose... Read more |
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Krystal Two Bulls, Scott Parkin, & Patrick Young The Financial Powers Behind the Dakota Access Pipeline Must Be Confronted A look into the banks and energy companies behind the Dakota Access Pipeline Read more |
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Mary Green Swig, Steven Swig In the Spirit of the GI Bill, Cancel All Student Debt Our young people deserved a Bill of Rights, we sold them a bill of goods instead Read more |
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Nancy Altman Did Donald Trump Cheat on His Social Security and Medicare Taxes? In 1995 and other years, has billionaire Donald Trump paid less for Social Security and Medicare than minimum wage workers paid? If he did, he probably cheated. The only way to know for sure is to... Read more |
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Simon McCormack When Minority Report Becomes New Yorkers' Reality Tucked into Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s presentation on his $100 billion plan to invest in the state’s infrastructure last week was an initiative that will put New Yorkers’ privacy in peril. Part of Cuomo’s... Read more |
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Vandana Shiva Ending a Century of Ecocide and Genocide, Seeding Earth Democracy Putting Monsanto on trial is only the beginning of what the world's people must do to regain control of their food systems Read more |
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Nancy Young Hurricane Matthew: Haitians Rebuilding Haiti In the days before Hurricane Matthew, when it became clear it would not dissolve harmlessly, I called a friend in Haiti to warn him. I did not just call Daniel Tillias, leader of the SAKALA community... Read more |
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Ray McGovern Ignoring Russia Warnings, US Walking Towards New Abyss in Syria As U.S. politicians and pundits have fun talking tough about Russia and demonizing President Putin, they are missing signs that Moscow isn’t amused and is preparing for actual conflict Read more |
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Donna Smith Battered Voter Syndrome Whew. This has been a grueling election season for many of us, and it feels very much like being beaten repeatedly no matter which direction I turn. My organization, Progressive Democrats of America... Read more |
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Kevin Gosztola Labor Secretary Advised Clinton To Cast Sanders As Candidate Of Whites To Turn Off Minorities Labor Secretary Tom Perez, who has spent a considerable amount of time boosting Hillary Clinton’s campaign, offered advice in February on how to change the narrative so people of color were... Read more |
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Robert Parry Debate Moderator Distorted Syrian Reality The American people are receiving a highly distorted view of the Syrian war – much propaganda, little truth – including from one of the moderators at the second presidential debate Read more |
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Stephen Zunes Anti-War Movement Must Listen to Voices Within Syria's Civil War With the prospects of increased U.S. military involvement in Syria, peace activists have been mobilizing across the country. Recognizing the disastrous results of recent U.S. military interventions,... Read more |
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Rajan Menon American Military Intervention Can’t Save Syria The New York Times appears to have experienced an epiphany of the obvious on Syria. On October 6, its op-ed page ran a piece by Steven Simon and Jonathan Stevenson, both former members of President... Read more |
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Adam Johnson Blaming Millennials for Their Elders’ Trump Attraction Blaming Millennials is 2016’s hottest media trend. Thus far Millennials have been blamed for killing the movie business , credit , the hangout sitcom , online shopping , Macy’s , napkins , vacations... Read more |
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Dilip Hiro American Power at the Crossroads A snapshot of a multipolar world in action Read more |
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Chris Hedges The New Slave Revolt A nationwide prison work stoppage and hunger strike, begun on Sept. 9, the 45th anniversary of the Attica uprising, have seen over 20,000 prisoners in about 30 prisons do what we on the outside... Read more |
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Michael Winship At Second Debate, A Monster Calls In the latest Trump-Clinton confrontation, many voters shudder at the prospect of the Republican candidate at the helm. Read more |
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Sabrina King, Will Munger The Surveillance State Descends on the Dakota Access Pipeline Spirit Camp For the past six months, at the confluence of the Cannonball and Missouri Rivers, history has been made at one of the largest international gatherings of indigenous people in recent history... Read more |
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Mark Schuller Rebuilding Haiti, One Commune at a Time: Experience from Haitian People in Zabriko and Elsewhere As Hurricane Matthew continued onto the U.S., the waters receded in Haiti, and it became apparent that the damage in Haiti was immense. Just like many people who either are Haitian or work in Haiti,... Read more |
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Steven Chovanec Selective Outrage Over Aleppo Bombing When the U.S. kills civilians while bombing ISIS’s cities in Syria and Iraq, the jihadists are blamed for using “human shields” and the big media is silent, but different rules apply to Russia’s attacks on Al Qaeda in Aleppo Read more |
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Medea Benjamin Do Western Nations Care about Yemeni Lives or Saudi Blood Money? How much is the life of a Yemeni worth? Not much, according to the Saudi regime that has been bombing and starving the people of Yemen for since March 2015, or to the Saudi’s western backers,... Read more |
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Kevin Gosztola WikiLeaks Release Of Clinton Campaign Emails Smeared As Russian Masterminded Plot (Again) With no specific evidence, President Barack Obama’s administration explicitly claimed the Russian government was responsible for stealing emails from the Democratic National Committee and other... Read more |
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Jake Johnson Democrats' Embrace of Corporate Cash Isn't Pragmatic, It's Ideological Democrats were once ardent opponents—at least in word—of the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision, which has, as the New York Times editorial board noted , "thrust politics back to the robber-... Read more |
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Shaun Harper Many Men Talk Like Donald Trump in Private. And Only Other Men Can Stop Them. When we don't stand up to the sexism around us, we're all complicit. Read more |
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John Nichols Donald Trump Just Summed Up His Totalitarian Vision for America in 4 Words The “you’d be in jail” line was antithetical to every historic and contemporary understanding of the American experiment. Read more |
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Jeremy Scahill Trump May Go Away, But the People He Has Empowered Will Not The following is an excerpt from The Intercept's live-blog for Sunday night's presidential debate between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton: These presidential debates — certainly this one — serve as... Read more |
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Daniel Abdulah Proposed Pipeline Sparks Widespread Dissent The People over Pipelines march packed the streets with local activists in July who came together in protest and embarked on a five day trek across 55 miles, covering only a fraction of the proposed... Read more |
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Michael Moore Trump Is Not the Only Grabber Who Must Go The rats are quickly jumping from the sinking ship of Trump. But not so fast, dear Republican senators and congressmen. Trump may have verbalized his misogyny, sexism and abuse of women into an open... Read more |
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Sarah Aziza The Women’s Boat to Gaza Activists Are Free and Undeterred “If you’re listening to this, then you will know that myself and all the women who sailed on the Women’s Boat to Gaza have been arrested and are in detention in Israel.” These pre-recorded words by... Read more |
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Eric Margolis Afghanistan: Fool's War Fifteen years ago this week, the US launched the longest war in its history: the invasion and occupation of remote Afghanistan. Neighboring Pakistan was forced to facilitate the American invasion or... Read more |
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Peter Bloom Sex, Lies and America’s Deplorable Democracy Only a little more than a month before the November election, both Trump and Clinton were rocked by new scandals. Headlines around the country and world reported on secretly recorded tapes and speech... Read more |
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Robert Reich Wishful Thinking: First 100 Days After November 8 1. Hillary Clinton is elected President. 2. Democrats take over the Senate, and reduce the Republican margin in the House to just 3 votes. 3. Elizabeth Warren announces she’ll challenge Hillary in... Read more |
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Janine Jackson US Media Don’t Need to Look Abroad to Find an Abortion Crisis US media saw a story in the work boycott and street protests by some 6 million women in Poland that led to a reversal of government plans to put through a complete ban on abortion, including in cases... Read more |
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Gareth Porter Obama’s Syria Policy and the Illusion of US Power in the Middle East One of Obama's biggest failures is letting his policy in Syria be determined primarily by the ambitions of Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey Read more |
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Christian Christensen Trump’s Misogyny and the Media’s “Righteous-Indignation Dollar” Twenty years ago, the great Bill Hicks had a classic stand-up bit in which he imagined ad executives watching his rant against advertising, and saying to each other: “Oh, I see what Bill is doing! He... Read more |
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Anne Marie Goetz Still No Woman at the Helm of the UN António Guterres's election as the new UN Secretary-General is a stark illustration of how male-dominated decision-making means that female leadership is not just rare, but virtually inconceivable. Read more |
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Marcy Wheeler Trump Is Who He's Always Been, and Trump Is the Epitome of the GOP; They Have to Own Him The Washington Post’s David Fahrenthold has come up with another scoop. While scraping for video clips does not seem to be Fahrenthold’s strength, like the KFile boys who bolted Buzzfeed in the... Read more |
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James Zogby Israel: Strong Words Must Be Followed by Strong Action I was both understanding of and puzzled by the Obama administration’s reaction to Israel’s announcement of new settlement construction in occupied Palestinian lands. It was just a few weeks ago that... Read more |
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Christopher Brauchli The Slough of Despond Deliver me from your cold phlegmatic preachers, politicians, friends, lovers and husbands. — Abigail Adams, Letter to John Adams Alabama is back with us. Its arrival preceded by just one day the news... Read more |
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Rajiv Sicora The Real Solution To Climate Polarization: Defeat The GOP Denial Machine Political “divisions reach across every dimension of the climate debate,” the Pew Research Center declared this week, releasing its latest survey results tracking polarization in the United States... Read more |
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Ralph Nader Trump–Betrayer in Chief Let’s say you’re inclined to vote for Donald Trump largely because you dislike Hillary Clinton and are fed up with government messing up and serving Wall Street over Main Street. You’ve heard all the... Read more |
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Jeff Biggers Hillbilly Shuffle: Don't Blame Appalachia For Trump The phenomenon of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, we’ve been told for months in the media, has been fueled by the coal-fired alienation and anger of the nation’s working-class whites... Read more |
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Thomas Frank Some of Clinton's Pledges Sound Great. Until You Remember Who's President The Democrats promise to take on a system rigged against middle America. So why the hell has Barack Obama done almost nothing about that for eight years? Read more |
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Howard Zinn Fifteen Years of Lessons Not Learned Publisher's note for The Progressive: October 7 marks the fifteenth anniversary of the beginning of the longest war in U.S. history. Midday on Sunday October 7, 2001 U.S. president George W. Bush... Read more |
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Matt Taibbi Six Million Adults Who Won't Influence This Presidential Race One in 40 Americans can't vote because of a criminal conviction. But the rules aren't exactly fair Read more |
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Robert Naiman Sen. Mike Lee: U.S. Can't Bomb Syrian Forces Without Congressional Approval According to multiple voices in the DC press, the idea of the U.S. bombing Syrian government forces is "back on the table" this week. On Sunday, under the headline, " Four military options for Obama... Read more |
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Jeff Bryant Federal Government Feeds Charter School Beast Despite Auditor’s Warnings Politicians always promise they will rid government of “waste, fraud, and abuse,” so let’s hope at least one political leader or policymaker will denounce our federal government’s new gift of nearly... Read more |
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Scott Paul If the Saudi-Led Coalition is Committing War Crimes, the US is Aiding and Abetting Them A few days ago, Ryan Goodman announced on Twitter that we should expect “a challenge to (some) critics of Defense Department support to Saudi Arabia.” Jay Shooster published that challenge on Just... Read more |
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Miriam Pemberton Combat vs. Climate: The Military and Climate Security Budgets Compared As our climate crisis plays out in increased refugee flows and natural disasters, the government is still wasting money on ineffective, traditional military security. Read more |
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Amy Goodman, Denis Moynihan Silence on Climate Change Is Another Form of Denial President Barack Obama made a brief statement in the Rose Garden on Wednesday, announcing that the global accord to combat climate change, the Paris Agreement, had achieved enough signatories to... Read more |
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Jim Naureckas NYT Declares Snowden a Thief–and Journalism a Crime On the home page today of the New York Times , the lead story ( 10/5/16 ) bears the headline: “Contractor for NSA Charged in Possible New Theft of Secrets.” Describing the arrest of Harold T. Martin... Read more |
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Tom Engelhardt This Is Not About Donald Trump The Age of Decline, Apple Pie, and America's Chosen Suicide Bomber Read more |
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John Light The Paris Agreement Is Set to Go Into Effect. Will it Be Trumped? Whether or not the world confronts climate change could boil down to how Americans vote. Read more |