Category Archives: Analysis

This is what it means to go back-to-school in America today. Continue reading →

Our country may be divided on the issue of abortion. But when it comes down to it, most Americans believe that it’s a pregnant person’s right to decide for themselves whether to continue a pregnancy. Continue reading →

In Mwanza, Tanzania, Nairukoki Leyian-Naisinyai tells me that here, “Corporations come with papers from the government claiming that they have the right to our land.” She points to the large corporations that have entered the lands of the Maasai people to mine rubies and tanzanite. The Maasai can neither assert their rights to the land nor benefit from the mining of these precious resources. Continue reading →

“Inflation” is the new buzzword of the year. It is the reason for the Federal Reserve’s interest rate hikes designed to increase the costs of some loans. It is the excuse given against renewing the expanded child tax credit program that briefly lifted millions of American families out of poverty. It forms the name of one of the key pieces of legislation that may salvage President Joe Biden’s first term: the Inflation Reduction Act. And, it is the basis of Republican complaints against Democrats heading toward the midterm elections this fall. Continue reading →

As Republicans turn back the clock by outlawing abortions—even in cases of rape, incest, and the life of the mother being at stake—same gender marriages and sex, and access to contraceptives, another right stands to be obliterated by that party that is enacting what the America First Committee, German-American Bund, and Ku Klux Klan could have only dreamed about in the 1930s: a ban on interracial marriage. Continue reading →

The world today is on the verge of a major food emergency, provoked in part by Russia’s attack on Ukraine but more broadly by the damage heat from global warming is doing to crops worldwide. This is both a crisis and an opportunity. Continue reading →

Janet Yellen has spent a lifetime trying to inject a little humanity into the macho male ranks of our nation’s elite economists. This past year, she may have engineered her greatest contribution yet: an epic global tax deal—involving over 130 nations—designed to drive corporate tax havens out of existence and raise billions upon billions in new revenue from accomplished corporate tax avoiders like Apple and Google. Continue reading →

It’s January 2026. The Republican president thanks Congress for banning all abortions and makes an enthusiastic plea for a law that would require a national registry of pregnant women, so their pregnancies could be subject to surveillance. Continue reading →

Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) visited the United States on July 12 and offered five proposals to U.S. President Joe Biden. These proposals are based on AMLO’s in-depth knowledge of Mexican history and his reading of the economic crisis in the United States, which seems to be losing its edge as a global leader. Continue reading →

In a blog entry, reflecting on the G20 Foreign Ministers’ meeting in Bali, Indonesia on July 7-8, the High Representative of the European Union, Josep Borrell, seems to have accepted the painful truth that the West is losing what he termed “the global battle of narratives”. Continue reading →

We know the United States is an outlier in abortion restrictions, but it is still startling to realize just how much. Continue reading →

America is now under armed assault, a tyranny that suppresses free speech and has produced almost-daily mass- and school-shootings, in a gun ownership frenzy fed by people who claim their power comes from the Constitution. Continue reading →

Steve Bannon, the former political guru to Donald Trump and architect of the false narrative over the stolen 2020 election, should be prosecuted for more than merely contempt of Congress. There’s an abundance of prima facie evidence that Bannon was a key plotter in a fascist coup to overturn the presidential election to keep Trump in power. Continue reading →

Donald Trump wanted to turn the Justice Department into his own private law firm, the FBI into his own political police force, the military into his own private security force, and the Secret Service into his own praetorian guard. He failed in all cases with the exception of the latter. Continue reading →

Nothing is private. Continue reading →

Since the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, more than 7 million Ukrainian refugees have left the country till mid-June. While some 1.5 million ended up in Russia, the rest have mostly entered the European Union, where they have been granted the right to live and work for up to three years, in addition to receiving welfare, education, housing, food, and medical assistance. Continue reading →

The spirit of La Marseillaise, that greatest of all national anthems, is again infusing citizens in countries as diverse as Ukraine, Canada, England, Sri Lanka and the Netherlands, where the banners for liberté, liberté chérie are again unfurled against NATO’s “horde of slaves, traitors, plotting kings.” Continue reading →

History is repeating itself as far as the presence on the world stage of so many psychopaths in positions of leadership. The last time the world experienced a slew of bloodthirsty craven leaders with megadeath on their minds was World War II. That war etched into the collective memory of humankind such psychopaths as Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Hideki Tojo, Joseph Stalin, Francisco Franco, Vidkun Quisling, Juan Peron, Subhas Chandra Bose, and an assortment of petit-tyrants, fascist despots, and bloodthirsty warlords whose names have largely been forgotten by history. Continue reading →

Many people have strong opinions about abortion—especially in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe v. Wade, revoking a constitutional right previously held by more than 165 million Americans. Continue reading →

As fierce fighting continues in Ukraine and British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss determines to arm Taiwan to fight China, Ecuadorian bananas have found themselves smack in the center of NATO’s campaign to crush Russia. The key to getting Russia to hoist the white flag and surrender her bountiful resources to the Anglo American alliance is, it seems, not only to deprive Russia of Ecuador’s bananas but to ensure the Russians cannot source their banana supply elsewhere. Continue reading →

Since the turn of the century, private military and security companies (PMSCs) have played an increasingly important role in conflict zones. Because the lines between private military companies and private security companies are often blurred, the all-encompassing PMSC term is used to describe them. Continue reading →

The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn the constitutional right to abortion has far-reaching personal and political implications and may help decide the midterm elections in November 2022. Continue reading →

The G7 summit in Elmau, Germany, June 26-28, and the NATO summit in Madrid, Spain, two days later, were practically useless in terms of providing actual solutions to ongoing global crises—the war in Ukraine, the looming famines, climate change and more. But the two events were important, nonetheless, as they provide a stark example of the impotence of the West, amid the rapidly changing global dynamics. Continue reading →

What Westerners call the West or Western civilization is a geopolitical space that emerged in the 16th century and expanded continuously until the 20th century. On the eve of World War I, about 90 percent of the globe was Western or Western-dominated: Europe, Russia, the Americas, Africa, Oceania, and much of Asia (with the partial exceptions of Japan and China). From then on, the West began to contract: first with the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the emergence of the Soviet bloc, and then, from mid-century onward, with the decolonization movements. Terrestrial space, and soon after, extraterrestrial space, became fields of intense disputes. Continue reading →

The Supreme Court’s recent decision to overturn Roe v. Wade was predictable even as it was shocking. Right-wing forces have spent years working painstakingly on multiple fronts in plain sight to ensure that the right to an abortion would no longer be guaranteed, and they have won. Two of the three Supreme Court Justices, Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch, who were appointed by former President Donald Trump, stand accused of lying about their positions on abortion. A third, Justice Clarence Thomas, invited challenges to same-sex marriage and the right to contraception as part of his undoing of Roe, hinting at the right-wing’s future targets. Continue reading →

It is quite clear that Donald Trump and his supporters who took part in planning and executing the January 6th insurrection in Washington, DC aimed to kill as many members of Congress, government employees, and journalists as possible. Thanks to the January 6 Select Committee’s investigation to date, we know that the insurrection was planned weeks in advance by Trump and his inside and outside advisers. The J6 Committee played a video of one such Trump supporter, a YouTube blogger who goes by the handle “Salty Cracker,” exhorting his 750,000 subscribers to join in what was planned to be a bloody uprising in Washington on January 6. He said, “You better understand something, son. Red wave, bitch! There’s gonna be a Red Wedding going down Jan. 6 . . . Motherfucker, you better look outside. You better look out Jan. 6, kick that fucking door open and look down the street. There’s going to be a million-plus geeked-up, armed Americans.” Continue reading →

During his testimony before congressional investigators, former Oath Keepers spokesman Jason Van Tatenhove left little doubt about the intentions of the white nationalist militia group when its members stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Continue reading →

We are witnessing the gradual dismantling of every constitutional principle that serves as a bulwark against government tyranny, overreach and abuse. Continue reading →

During late April and early May, South Asia experienced the terrible impacts of global warming. Temperatures reached almost 50 degrees Celsius (122 Fahrenheit) in some cities in the region. These high temperatures came alongside dangerous flooding in Northeast India and in Bangladesh, as the rivers burst their banks, with flash floods taking place in places like Sunamganj in Sylhet, Bangladesh. Continue reading →

Pro-democracy Americans, who continue to represent some 70 percent of the total voting age population of the country, can no longer delude themselves that what occurred in Germany in the early 1930s cannot happen here. What has and is happening here is that a violent movement of Nazis, fascists, and racist Confederates have not only seized control of the Republican Party through their cult leader Donald Trump, but elected Republicans and candidates for office are moving to repaint American history. The intentions of these dreadful products of the Trump movement are clear. They seek to justify the Holocaust of World War II as a necessary, African slavery as necessary for the development of the American economy, and the genocide of the Native Americans as an acceptable manifestation of European colonial expansion. Continue reading →

The Supreme Court’s June 24, 2022, ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade is already having profound effects across the United States, from Florida to Wisconsin. And the ruling also bucks a clear worldwide trend. In countries from Iceland to Zambia, abortion restrictions have been lifted over the last two decades, not tightened. Continue reading →