All Views Articles for 2016–08-23-dear
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Richard Eskow The People’s Issues Came Second in the First Debate Their own reality: It was contest over content in Trump/Clinton debate Read more |
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David Goodner 'Lockdown' Tactic Spreads to Iowa #NoDAPL Resistance Protesters chained to equipment shut down Big Oil construction for nearly six hours at a Mississippi River drilling site in Iowa Read more |
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Salim Lone It’s Not Too Late for Hillary’s Campaign to Renew Itself Sunday's Washington Post/ABC News poll showed that Hillary Clinton’s numbers have fallen drastically in the last month, and the race is now a dead heat with Donald Trump, with 41% of registered... Read more |
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Robert Naiman 9/11 Families Deserve Their Day in Court Against Saudi Arabia This week the House and Senate are expected to vote on whether to override the President's veto of the Justice Against Sponsors of Terror Act ("JASTA"). JASTA would allow 9/11 families to sue Saudi... Read more |
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Jennifer Lynn McCoy Will Colombia's Peace Deal Get the People's Vote? On Sept. 26, 2016, the Colombian government and the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC) are expected to sign a formal agreement to end 50 years of conflict. More than eight million... Read more |
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Jake Johnson Tethered to Corporate Capitalism, Neither Party Willing to Eradicate Poverty If we have learned anything in recent years, it is that the interests of the wealthy almost always win out. Read more |
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Rebecca Gordon Why We Can't Arrest Our Way to "Justice" Should prison really be the American way? Read more |
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Arun Gupta The Left Underestimates the Danger of Trump I know we just had the fifth anniversary of Occupy Wall Street, but there is little to celebrate at such a grim moment. That being the likelihood Trump may very well win. If he does, Black Lives... Read more |
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Richard Eskow We Need a Real People’s Debate, Not the “Fight of the Century” We’re told that Monday night’s confrontation between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton could draw 100 million viewers and “rank among television benchmarks like the finales of ‘MASH’ and ‘Cheers.’” We... Read more |
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Ciara Torres-Spelliscy Corporations in Politics Are Like a Tractor-Trailer Drifting Into Your Lane When I attended an FEC hearing on possible new rules to prevent foreign-owned U.S. subsidiaries from donating to U.S. campaigns, I was struck at how each side was talking past the other. While the... Read more |
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Robert Reich Time for Congress to Stop Hollering at CEOs and Take Action Last week, Congress engaged in a bipartisan barrage of CEO bashing. The Senate Banking Committee assailed Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf for pushing employees to create as many as two million bogus bank... Read more |
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Richard Eskow Immigrants Don’t Steal Jobs or Wages. Billionaires Do. With the advent of Donald Trump, what was once covert in the Republican message has become overt. Yesterday’s dog whistle is today’s screaming siren. Case in point: anti-immigrant bigotry, which was... Read more |
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Juan Cole Number of US Troops in Iraq Heading Toward 6,000 The US plans to send another 500 troops to Iraq to help with the massive Mosul campaign, which will involve the Iraqi army and its allies, the Kurdistan paramilitary Peshmerga, hard line Shiite... Read more |
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George Lakoff Thwimpie: A Spoiled Brat Named Little Donnie Thwimp A Voyage Into Sound Symbolism Read more |
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Jeremy Brecher Jobs, Justice, and the Clean-Energy Future Today, there are 400 parts per million (PPM) of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, far above the 350 ppm climate scientists regard as the safe upper limit. Even in the unlikely event that all nations... Read more |
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Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy The Debates: Questions for the Presidential Candidates on Trade and Agriculture Policy The 2016 election is bizarre, to say the least. While the vast majority of reporting has focused on the horserace and he said she said aspects of the campaigns, the policy proposals put forward by... Read more |
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Christopher Brauchli Trump and Stumpf So farewell hope, and with hope farewell fear, Farewell remorse; all good to me is lost; Evil, be thou my good. John Milton , Paradise Lost Wells Fargo is a metaphor for the Donald Trump campaign... Read more |
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Thane Maxwell How You Can Support Standing Rock This is your pipeline battle too. Whatever you have to offer, we need it. Wherever you are, take one step deeper. Find your voice. Find your own front lines. Read more |
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Sonali Kolhatkar Standing Firm in the Face of Violence Another week, and another unarmed black man has been shot by police, with video footage of the macabre incident available for all to view from various angles. The shooting death of Terence Crutcher... Read more |
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John Russo, Sherry Linkon What Trump’s Youngstown Problem Says About Campaign 2016 It might take more than calling out blatant racism to derail the Trump train. Read more |
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Sue Sturgis Will the Gulf of Mexico Remain a Dumping Ground for Offshore Fracking Waste? When you think of a fracking site, the image that comes to mind is probably a bare-scraped well pad in a rural or maybe suburban landscape, topped with a drilling rig and other industrial... Read more |
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Naomi Klein Canada’s Founding Myths Hold Us Back from Addressing Climate Change It has been one year and one week since a coalition of dozens of organizations and artists launched The Leap Manifesto, a short vision statement about how to transition to a post-carbon economy while... Read more |
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John Feffer When States Dream, Is Syria Their Nightmare? Syria is emerging as a metaphor for the fragmentation and chaos that the modern world barely contains Read more |
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Bill McKibben Faced With Massive Opposition to Dakota Access, Banks Could Still Pull Out A key pipeline loan is still pending, and it’s becoming clear that the Standing Rock Sioux are in a two-front war against Big Oil and Big Banks. Read more |
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Jim Naureckas Dakota Access Blackout Continues on ABC, NBC News The Sacred Stone Camp established by the Standing Rock Sioux tribe in North Dakota has brought together thousands of demonstrators in opposition to the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline, a 1... Read more |
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Gabrielle Gurley Trump’s Agenda: A Recipe for Civil Unrest The Donald’s recent remarks highlight the candidate’s bigotry, but also signal a grim future for African Americans should he be elected. Read more |
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Ali Abunimah Facebook Disables Accounts of Palestinian Editors Editors at two of the most widely read Palestinian online publications have had their Facebook accounts disabled. Administrators for the Facebook pages of Quds , which has more than five million “... Read more |
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Gareth Porter How the Pentagon Sank the US-Russia Deal in Syria – and the Ceasefire Was the first ever US strike against Syrian government forces an intentional hit by the Pentagon to block military cooperation with Russia? Read more |
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Jay Stanley Charlotte Shooting Shows Why Video Transparency Is Vital The shooting death of Keith Lamont Scott by police in Charlotte, North Carolina, Tuesday is a case study in why it’s important for police departments to have good policies surrounding body cameras—in... Read more |
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Harvey Wasserman How Nuclear Power Causes Global Warming Supporters of nuclear power like to argue that nukes are the key to combatting climate change. Here’s why they are dead wrong. Every nuclear generating station spews about two-thirds of the energy it... Read more |
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Chuck Collins Talking with Strangers: A Journey to the Heart of the Right A new book encourages us to scale the “empathy wall” to understand a segment of Trump supporters Read more |
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Christian Christensen The Unbearable Whiteness of Being (Donald Trump) If there is one thing that the Trump phenomenon has taught us, it is that, for Trump, it is not easy being white in America. Being white means never-ending guard duty, defending the country against... Read more |
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Terrance Heath When Will Black Lives Finally Matter To Donald Trump? For all his bloviating about “law and order,” Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has yet to express any serious outrage over police killings of unarmed African-Americans. Will he now,... Read more |
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David Korten Want National Security? Dismantle the War Machine A military response to violence creates more violence. For real security, we need to stop climate change and work toward shared prosperity. Read more |
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Amy Goodman, Denis Moynihan Xenophobia and Hate Exacerbate the Plight of Refugees Around the World The MS St. Louis was a German passenger ship whose most famous voyage, in the spring of 1939, became known as “The Voyage of the Damned.” On that trip, 908 German Jewish refugees were headed to Cuba... Read more |
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Jonathan Marshall Dangerous Denial of Global Warming Direct and indirect dangers from global warming are so grave that the issue should be near the top of the U.S. campaign agenda, instead of being downplayed or denied. Read more |
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Tom Engelhardt You Must Be Kidding! On War, Peace, and Absurdity Adventures in an American world of frustration Read more |
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Nick Dearden Opposition to the Canada-EU Trade Deal Has Reached a Tipping Point It's been a bad week for the Canada-EU trade deal known as CETA. In Germany, over 300,000 protestors marched against the deal on Saturday – and they were joined by demonstrators in cities across... Read more |
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Robert C. Koehler Stop the Killing Maybe half a million dead, half a country — 10 million people — displaced from their homes, jettisoned onto the mercy of the world. Welcome to war. Welcome to Syria. This is a conflict apparently too... Read more |
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Jake Johnson Eugene V. Debs and the Urgent Need for a New Anti-War Movement Eugene Debs became a socialist in prison. After being arrested for his leadership role in the Pullman Strike of 1894 — for which he was deemed "an enemy of the human race" in the New York Times —... Read more |
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Adam Johnson Media Ask Which Candidate Can Better Exploit Our Irrational Fear of Terrorism The media’s tendency to focus on horserace issues—who’s up and who’s down, what the cosmetics are of an event rather than the substance—is routinely derided by media critics, and mocking it has... Read more |
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Peter Dreier After Grassroots Activists Expose Scam, Elizabeth Warren Tells ‘Gutless” CEO John Stumpf to Resign Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf was on the hot seat Tuesday when he faced Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and other angry lawmakers at a Senate Banking Committee hearing designed to investigate... Read more |
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Vicki Gass Justice for Berta: Honduran Women Activists Launch Land Rights Campaign Women are banding together in Honduras and around the world to demand #LandRightsNow. Read more |
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Joe Lauria Obama’s Curious UN Farewell Address President Obama’s U.N. speech looked critically at the U.S. role in world and admitted capitalism’s shortcomings, a contrast with Obama’s previous bluster about “indispensable” and “exceptional” America Read more |
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Nick Cunningham Holding Clinton’s Feet to the Fire On Climate Recent difficulties aside, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is the odds on favorite to win the presidency this year—and climate advocates are uneasy about what to expect. She faced immense... Read more |
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Brian Purnell Does Fear of Black Men Satisfy the "Objective Reasonableness" Standard? The case that set the standard on when police officers are justified in using excessive force is Graham v. Connor . But how that standard is applied needs deep consideration. Read more |
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Ramzy Baroud Honoring Aylan Kurdi by Ending the War in Syria "A photograph, no matter how emotionally wrenching, can only do so much," wrote Paul Slovic and Nicole Smith Dahmen in QZ.com. The photograph referenced in their comment was that of three-year-old... Read more |
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Belén Fernández Radicalized Nation: Fear and Hypocrisy in New York Diagnoses of violent extremism are diligently wielded against Muslims but not against leaders or policies that indiscriminately kill civilians Read more |
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Richard Eskow Wells Fargo Had a Bad Day. That’s a Start. People who came looking for drama in Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf’s Senate testimony on Tuesday did not come away disappointed. Stumpf was called before the Senate Banking Committee after his bank was... Read more |
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Jim Hightower Donnie Is a Trumpist, Not a Populist To many hard-working people, this is a time of economic uncertainty. Thus, it is important to point out that America's superrich are intentionally and brazenly knocking down the middle class and poor... Read more |
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Bill Walker, David Andrews Erin Brockovich' Chemical in Drinking Water of More than 200 Million Americans Drinking water supplies for two-thirds of Americans are contaminated with the carcinogenic chemical made notorious by the film "Erin Brockovich," which was based on the real-life poisoning of tap... Read more |
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Andrew Cohen The Myth of Pervasive Voter Fraud One of the most distressing indications of failure in American journalism today is the release of a poll last week that reveals that nearly half of the country believes that voter fraud occurs “very... Read more |
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Peter Van Buren For $178 Million, the US Could Pay for One Fighter Plane – or 3,358 Years of College Does free college threaten our all-volunteer military? That is what Benjamin Luxenberg, on the military blog War on the Rocks says. But the real question goes beyond Luxenberg's practical query,... Read more |
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Katrina vanden Heuvel Edward Snowden Is the Perfect Candidate for a Presidential Pardon Edward Snowden is the former National Security Agency contractor who risked his job, his prestige and his freedom to expose the NSA’s secret mass surveillance programs that trampled the privacy... Read more |
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Chip Ward Indians and Cowboys: The 2016 Version of an Old Story on a New Planet Cowboys and Indians are at it again. Americans who don’t live in the West may think that the historic clash of Native Americans and pioneering settlers is long past because the Indians were, after... Read more |
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Richard Eskow 7 Hard Rounds of Questions for John Stumpf, Wells Fargo CEO “There was no incentive to do bad things,” said Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf, after his bank was hit with $190 million in fines and restitution because employees fraudulently opened more than 2... Read more |
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Emily Schwartz Greco Breaking the Climate Procrastination Habit: How to Bring on America the Sustainable It's a long list, but things can be done to get this country on a renewable energy track. Read more |
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Richard Heinberg Exploring the Gap Between Business-as-Usual and Utter Doom Predicting the future is a fool’s errand, but everybody does it. As long as we’ve had language—for tens of thousands of years, at last estimate—we’ve been able to formulate the question, “What will... Read more |
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Nozomi Hayase Assange, Manning and Snowden, Standing with the Conscience of Truthtellers Last week, Oliver Stone’s biopic “ Snowden ” hit the theaters. The film illuminates the life of Edward Snowden between 2004 and 2013, aiming to humanize one of the most wanted men in the world. Just... Read more |
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Harmit Kambo Into the Unknown: Government Surveillance After Brexit We're living at the crux of two moments of political uncertainty. One is Brexit, and the other is the introduction of unprecedented surveillance powers. How might these uncertainties effect one another? Read more |
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Sarah Anderson Confederate Symbols and Inequality Modern-day problems of gentrification and racial inequality play into a debate over what to do with streets and statues that honor the Civil War south. Read more |
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Robert Parry America’s Worldwide Impunity The mainstream U.S. media is treating the U.S.-led airstrike that killed scores of Syrian troops as an unfortunate boo-boo, ignoring that the U.S. and its allies have no legal right to operate in Syria at all Read more |
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Bill Moyers, Michael Winship There’s No Debate The candidates and the media have thoroughly corrupted the presidential debates. Our democracy deserves better. There's still time for a change. Read more |
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Don McCanne The Public Option Is Back: Our Enthusiasm Should Be Tempered Last week an intensive campaign was initiated in support of a “public option”—offering the choice of a public, nonprofit insurance plan which competes with private health plans. Our enthusiasm should... Read more |
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Christopher Brauchli The Mosquito and the Politician [A] vile insect that has risen up in contempt against the majesty of Heaven and earth. — Johnathan Edwards, The Justice of God . . . . (1734) It turns out it didn’t make all that much difference... Read more |
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Robert Naiman Contesting the U.S.-Saudi Bromance With 1,000 Cuts On September 8, Senators Rand Paul (R-KY), Chris Murphy (D-CT), Mike Lee (R-UT), and Al Franken (D-MN) introduced a bipartisan resolution, SJ Res 39 , to disapprove the $1.15 billion arms deal with... Read more |
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Peter Van Buren It’s Personal: Apologizing to My Daughter for the Last 15 Years of War I recently sent my last kid off for her senior year of college. There are rituals to such moments, and because dad-confessions are not among them, I just carried boxes and kept quiet. But what I... Read more |
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Paul Buchheit How to "Stop the Violence": March Up the Steps of the Traders Who Pay No Sales Tax The rallies in Chicago and around the country evoke passion and sympathy from most of us, but just a shrug of the shoulders from those ultimately responsible for the carnage on our streets. These are... Read more |
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Norman Solomon AFL-CIO to Planet Earth: Drop Dead At a meeting with the deputy political director of the AFL-CIO during my campaign for Congress, she looked across her desk and told me that I could get major union support by coming out in favor of... Read more |
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Barton Gellman The House Intelligence Committee’s Terrible, Horrible, Very Bad Snowden Report Late on Thursday afternoon the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence released a three-page executive summary (four, if we count the splendid cover photo) of its two-year inquiry into... Read more |
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Sonali Kolhatkar Inmates Launch Series of Work Stoppages to Protest ‘Slave Labor’ Prisoners in dozens of correctional facilities around the nation launched a labor strike Sept. 9, a day that, appropriately, was the 45th anniversary of New York’s Attica prison rebellion . The U.S... Read more |
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Matt Taibbi Stop Whining About 'False Balance' Everyone wants to blame reporters for the rise of Donald Trump. How about the media consumer? Read more |
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Frida Berrigan Movements Need Imagination, Which Is Why I’m Not Buying My Kids Any More Toys “Mine!” “No. It’s mine!!” They keep this “conversation” going for a while before there is a screech and a wail. “Figure out a way to share it,” I call from the other room. “Madeline,” says four-year-... Read more |
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Winnie Byanyima UN Refugees and Migrants Summit: All Talk, No Action For now, these summits risk being but a half-hearted beginning to help those millions of people forced to flee. Read more |
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Adam Johnson Sing in Unison, David Brooks Tells Black Athletes David Brooks is a Very Concerned Man. The majority of his New York Times columns are him feigning agreement with the aims of the subject in question, but he just has Some Concerns he’d like to go... Read more |
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Kevin Gosztola Human Element Makes Oliver Stone’s ‘Snowden’ Quite Captivating Every whistleblower undergoes some kind of transformation that pushes them to the point where they make the pivotal decision to challenge power. Oliver Stone’s film about National Security Agency... Read more |
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Robert Reich Trump’s Yuge Bamboozle Donald Trump poses as a working-class populist, but about his new economic plan would be a gusher for the wealthy. And almost nothing will trickle down to anyone else. He’d knock down the top tax... Read more |
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Ilze Peterson Real Change in Democracy Comes Not in the Voting Booth But Activism at the Grass-Roots Many years ago, the late Judy Guay, a low-income woman from Bangor, founded the Maine Association of Interdependent Neighborhoods in order to advocate for the neediest in our state. I remember she... Read more |
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John Feffer YOLO Economics: Growth on a Burning Planet Fossil fuels provided a one-time-only quantum leap in growth. Coming up with a new economic model should be on everyone's bucket list. Read more |
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Jenni Monet This Moment at Standing Rock Was Decades in the Making North Dakota’s militarized response to activists opposing the Dakota Access pipeline—and the Standing Rock Sioux’s fierce resolve—reflect the area's particular racial divides. Read more |
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Alex Kotch Tallying Up the Mounting Economic Toll of North Carolina's HB2 Since becoming law in late March, North Carolina's House Bill 2 has sparked national controversy and an ongoing boycott of the state over its discriminatory provisions. HB2 requires transgender... Read more |
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Emelyn Lybarger, Ben Price Learning from the Standing Rock Sioux Heartbreaking, inspiring, and galvanizing images and voices are coming from the Standing Rock Reservation. These are more than five minute clips on social media or a quick skim of an article on the... Read more |
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Christopher Brauchli The Mosquito and the Politician [A] vile insect that has risen up in contempt against the majesty of Heaven and earth. —Johnathan Edwards, The Justice of God . . . . (1734) It turns out it didn’t make all that much difference... Read more |
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Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity US Media Ignores CIA Cover-up on Torture A group of U.S. intelligence veterans chastises the mainstream U.S. media for virtually ignoring a British newspaper’s account of the gripping inside story on how the CIA tried to block the U.S. Senate’s torture investigation. Read more |
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Kathy Kiely Guess Who’s Winning the Argument on Trade? A top AFL-CIO economist tries not to say, "I told you so." Read more |
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Mike Rispoli Drop the Charges Against Amy Goodman and Other Journalists Covering #NoDAPL The images are shocking: security guards, armed with dogs and pepper spray, attacking peaceful Native Americans marching against the Dakota Access Pipeline. The footage from Democracy Now! is a... Read more |
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Brendan Fischer Wisconsin Case Offers Rare Glimpse into Inner Workings of Our Broken Democracy Leaked emails show how the Republican governor of Wisconsin flouted campaign finance law to court secret donors. Read more |
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John Nichols A Lesson for Trump From Scott Walker: If the Election Is Close, Cry Fraud After a close Wisconsin election, conservative operatives made plans for “messaging ‘widespread reports of election fraud.’” Now Trump peddles a similar line. Read more |
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Jud Lounsbury Deplorables—We’ve Been Here Before Hillary Clinton has been the target of a lot of feigned outrage this week for stating the self-evident: Half of Trump's supporters are attracted to him because of his racism, sexism and many other "... Read more |
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Jim Naureckas Colleagues Mostly Fail to Rally for Amy Goodman, Threatened With Jail for Journalism When Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman ( 9/4/16 ) asked security guards at the Dakota Access Pipeline construction project why they were using pepper spray and dogs to attack Native American protesters... Read more |
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Chuck Collins Explaining the Rise in Median Wages New Census data show rising incomes and shrinking poverty, although it’s not quite time to bust out the champagne. Read more |
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Mary Bottari Scott Walker and John Doe: How Corporate Checks Fueled Coordinated Campaign Documents released by the Guardian indicate that Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker may have solicited and received corporate checks for the 2011 Senate recall fight and his own 2012 recall election... Read more |
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Steve Benen New Polls Serve as a Wake-Up Call: Trump Could Win Presidency The blunt assumption has dominated much of the political world’s thinking for months: “There’s simply no way Americans will elect an unqualified, racist television personality to be president of the... Read more |
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Robert Parry Getting Fooled on Iraq, Libya, Now Russia After the British report exposing falsehoods to justify invading Iraq in 2003, a new U.K. inquiry found similar misconduct in the 2011 attack on Libya, but no lessons are learned for the West's new propaganda about Russia Read more |
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Terrance Heath What Clinton and Millions of Workers Have in Common: Going To Work Sick Hillary Clinton was feeling a little woozy. On Sunday morning, after standing around for an hour and a half at the 9/11 memorial event at Ground Zero, possibly while wearing a bullet proof vest in 80... Read more |
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Frances Moore Lappé, Adam Eichen To Endorse, Or Not To Endorse—That Is the (Wrong) Question Public figures and political organizations are wringing their hands: Do we publicly throw our weight behind a fear-mongering demagogue or do we suck it up and endorse a “career politician” who can’t... Read more |
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Jake Johnson Empire's Religion: Arundhati Roy Confronts the Tyranny of the Free Market Perhaps the most revealing words on the topic of globalization in recent years came not from the pen of Thomas Piketty, nor were they written by Robert Reich or Joseph Stiglitz or Paul Krugman —... Read more |
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Michael T. Klare Will Trumpism, Brexit, and Geopolitical Exceptionalism Sink the Planet? The mounting threat to climate progress Read more |
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Jim Hightower What Can You Possibly Buy for 47 Cents These Days? Although most of us take it for granted, America's postal service is an amazing bargain. For only 47 cents, you can purchase A "Forever" postage stamp. Buy one 47-cent stamp, and postal workers will... Read more |
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Robert C. Koehler The Future Cries Out: 'Water Is Life' The dogs growl, the pepper spray bites, the bulldozers tear up the soil. “ Water is life !” they cry. “Water is life!” This isn’t Flint, Michigan, but I feel the presence of its suffering in this cry... Read more |