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Is Qanon a tragedy, a danger, or a terrorist group?
A significant number of Qanon followers, according to NBC News reporter Ben Collins, believe the end-point of their religion will be reached when Donald Trump takes back control of America, unleashes police to mass-arrest elected and other high-profile Democrats, and Qanon followers then engage in an orgy of violence and murder against Democratic Party-aligned neighbors, friends and family. Continue reading
No time for complacency—January 6 was a dress rehearsal
The Trump conspirators haven't given up on overthrowing the US government—and they may yet succeed.
Location, location, location. For good or evil, history often is made in the confines of a hotel room or suite: whether the first meeting of the post-revolution Soviet government at Moscow’s Hotel National in 1918, or the drafting in 1922 of Ireland’s constitution at the lovely Shelbourne Hotel in Dublin. Continue reading
U.S. threatens regime change in Nicaragua
Nicaragua has been a target of U.S. aggressions since the 1850s. The Biden administration’s attack on the newly elected government is the latest chapter in a long and sordid history. Eyewitness accounts of the electoral process reveal the manipulations and lies concocted by the U.S. and its corporate media partners in this latest regime change effort.
The United States has continuously carried out acts of aggression against Nicaragua and its people for more than 150 years. Joseph Biden’s effort to undermine that country’s sovereignty is part of a long history of invasions, coups, and support for U.S. puppets. Continue reading
‘He should be expelled’: Republican Paul Gosar shares edited video of him killing AOC
"This man should not serve in Congress," said Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.). "Fantasizing about violently attacking your colleagues has no place in our political discourse and society."
Far-right Republican Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona is drawing widespread condemnation for sharing an edited animated video depicting him killing Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, conduct that lawmakers and others said warrants his immediate removal from office. Continue reading
Democrats can avoid midterm election disaster by running on their actual agenda
Democrats in Virginia can’t say they didn’t see it coming. Complaints at the gas pump and the rumbling at local school board meetings outside Richmond and in Northern Virginia foretold Election Day trouble. A massive right-wing media offensive spent the summer and fall pumping tales of Democratic inaction and Republican culture war fiction into the minds of voters, particularly white women. By November, many were convinced that the Democratic Party simply wasn’t delivering on the things that really mattered. Continue reading
The Middle East powder keg
There are several powder kegs around the world, among them the South China Sea where the Pentagon’s surface warships, surveillance submarines and electronic warfare aircraft try to provoke China to take action against their aggressive operations, to the Baltic and Black Seas in which U.S.-Nato armed forces confronting Russia have the same objective. But in the Middle East, the leaky powder keg that will soon attract an igniting flash is the State of Israel which indulges in equally provocative behaviour. In regard to Palestinians and the Iranian nation the government of Naftali Bennett has been every bit as inhumane, barbaric and confrontational as any of its predecessors. Continue reading
COP26: Will humanity’s ‘last and best chance’ to save Earth’s climate succeed?
There is a chance we can prevent the worst impacts of the climate crisis, but world leaders must hold businesses accountable and listen to Indigenous communities.
It would be an understatement to say that there is a lot riding on COP26, the international climate talks currently being held in Glasgow, Scotland. Officially, the gathering marks the 26th Conference of the Parties (COP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the third meeting of the parties to the 2015 Paris climate agreement, which aims to limit the global temperature rise to well below 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels, preferably limiting the increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius in order to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. Continue reading
Treat “early and often” and other drugmaker ruses
I have often reported on the drugmaker ruse of “disease mongering” or “selling sickness”—floating symptoms of scary diseases that you may have right now with convenient online, “symptom quizzes” for you to self-diagnose and verify. Long gone are the days when the medical establishment assured you that you were well (“take two aspirins and call me in the morning”) thanks to direct-to-consumer advertising. Continue reading
Republicans prepare transphobic offensive for 2022 elections
A new record was set in 2021 for the filing of anti-transgender legislation, with more than 110 bills put forward by right-wing lawmakers in at least 37 states. From Hawaii to Alaska, Texas to Maine, Republicans went on a full-court press to target trans people—especially trans female student athletes. Continue reading
The Democrats in D.C. promised consequential racial justice reform—where is it?
The message to Black Americans expecting more progress has largely been to wait—for a better political opportunity, for the racial wealth gap to widen, for another Black American to die at the hands of the police.
The lesson of the 2020 U.S. election cycle was clear: Do not underestimate the influence of Black voters. At a time when the electoral process was characterized by voter suppression, Black voters in crucial swing states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin gave this country renewed hope by securing the presidency for President Joe Biden. Thanks to the Black voters who pushed Reverend Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff over the electoral edge in Georgia’s runoff elections on January 5, Democrats took control of the House of Representatives and the Senate. With Democrats in control of the executive and legislative branches, the promise of much-needed progressive change with respect to racial justice seemed to be on the brink of becoming reality. Continue reading
The U.S. moral superiority complex is accelerating its decline
Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Someone should tell the Biden team.
Soon after the chaotic withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, David Ignatius, Washington Post columnist and Deep State insider, remarked, “The reversals in Afghanistan are confounding for a Biden national security team that has rarely known personal failure (…) These are America’s best and brightest, who came to the messy endgame of the Afghanistan war with spotless résumés.” Continue reading
Predators with badges: The sex traffickers on America’s police forces
We are a nation on the brink of a nervous breakdown. Continue reading
Abortion rights ‘in peril’ as Ohio GOP proposes total ban modeled on Texas law
Reproductive rights advocates on Thursday doubled down on their urgent demand that federal lawmakers pass legislation to protect the right to abortion after Ohio Republicans introduced a total ban on the procedure—part of a proposal modeled on Senate Bill 8 in Texas. Continue reading
Elections and the illusion of Black political power
Black politicians may be openly conservative or pretend leftists but their constituents rarely get what they need. Politics absent a mass movement is a recipe for inaction or even outright betrayal.
Election day is treated with great fanfare in this country. Citizens are propagandized into voting for the sake of voting and are shamed if they don’t. Black people who question the value of the process are under particular pressure. “People died so that you could vote,” and other exhortations cheapen the memory of the liberation movement which sought to guarantee human rights for Black people. While casting a ballot is seen as a quasi-religious duty, the development of mass movements that are the foundation of all important political change is actively discouraged. The result are electoral victories for politicians that often spell defeat for the voters who are propagandized to put them in office. Continue reading
Why do Supreme Court justices keep saying they’re not hacks?
Because there’s good reason to believe they are.
Ralph Waldo Emerson once told about a guest who came to dinner and spent the entire evening prattling about his own integrity: “The louder he talked of his honor,” Emerson wrote: “the faster we counted our spoons.” Continue reading
Conservative SCOTUS justices dance around but avoid key abortion rights issue
WASHINGTON—Much is being made of several conservative justices appointed by Trump expressing concerns Monday about how the outrageous Texas abortion law is written to avoid federal judicial review. Continue reading
Are Trump & his cronies guilty of mass murder?
All across America this past year-and-a-half 700,000 people have died an agonizing, terrifying, drowning-in-their-own-fluids death, their relatives helpless, saying goodbye using Zoom or FaceTime. Families broken and shattered; husbands, wives, children and grandchildren left bereft; doctors, nurses, and physicians assistants dying along with them or holding their hands as they draw their final, tortured breath. Many of those deaths were absolutely unnecessary. Continue reading
Don’t call “slaughter-free” meat, “fake meat”
What PR genius came up with the catchy, dismissive moniker “fake meat”? The term, along with the euphemistic “protein plants” for slaughterhouses, shows just how threatened meat producers have become by the legions now embracing plant-based meat….and the prospect of cultured meat coming up the rear. Continue reading
What happened to the party of limited government?
I’m old enough to remember when the Republican Party stood for limited government—when Ronald Reagan thundered “Government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem.” Continue reading
How the Texas abortion law’s faulty legal text could self-destruct
The ghastliness of the new Texas abortion law is difficult to express in words. It prevents women from aborting their pregnancies after six weeks and creates legal avenues for the punishment of those who assist a woman in her efforts to obtain an abortion. Texas has opened a multidimensional Pandora’s box that threatens marginalized communities across the country. Continue reading
Justice for Assange is justice for all
Julian Assange is a truth-teller who has committed no crime but revealed government crimes and lies on a vast scale and so performed one of the great public services of my lifetime.
When I first saw Julian Assange in Belmarsh prison, in 2019, shortly after he had been dragged from his refuge in the Ecuadorean embassy, he said, “I think I am losing my mind.” Continue reading
Still no accountability from Israel over the 1956 massacre of Kafr Qasem
With Kafr Qasem, as well as with other massacres, Israel needs to set the record straight—it is a perpetrator, with intent, and with an entire political structure that has supported its ethnic cleansing for decades.
On the 65th anniversary of Israel’s brutal massacre on the village of Kafr Qasem, where 48 Palestinians were gunned down by border police, the colonial entity has still failed to formally acknowledge its responsibility for the killings. A bill presented at the Knesset by Arab Israeli MKs was once again voted down. The bill would have required educational instruction in Israeli schools about the massacre, as well as the publication of any classified documents. Continue reading
Climate change and the limits of economic growth
If economic growth ushered in this era of climate change, how can economic growth also be part of the solution?
Since the nineteenth century, human society has experienced extraordinary but uneven economic growth thanks to the energy unleashed from fossil fuels. That growth, and the greenhouse gasses released from fossil-fuel use, has also created the current climate crisis. The conventional solution put forward to this crisis, a putative compromise between economic and environmental imperatives, has been to maintain economic growth but on the basis of sustainable energy sources. Continue reading
American tax policy in the age of trillionaires
Have we just about decided that the further accumulation of billionaire fortunes makes for good public policy?
Barely a year ago, my colleagues Chuck Collins and Omar Ocampo noted the passing of “a disturbing milestone in the U.S. history of concentrated wealth and power.” On August 13, 2020, just twelve obscenely wealthy Americans held a combined $1.015 trillion. They called those twelve the “Oligarchic Dozen.” Continue reading
The most important battle for press freedom in our time
If he is extradited and found guilty of publishing classified material it will set a legal precedent that will effectively end national security reporting.
WASHINGTON, D.C. (Scheerpost)—For the past two days, I have been watching the extradition hearing for Julian Assange via video link from London. The United States is appealing a lower court ruling that denied the US request to extradite Assange not, unfortunately, because in the eyes of the court he is innocent of a crime, but because, as Judge Vanessa Baraitser in January concluded, Assange’s precarious psychological state would deteriorate given the “harsh conditions” of the inhumane US prison system, “causing him to commit suicide.” The United States has charged Assange with 17 counts under the Espionage Act and one count of trying to hack into a government computer, charges that could see him imprisoned for 175 years. Continue reading
The U.S. has an unhealthy obsession with Cuba
The piggy bank was rattled again. In September 2021, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) gave $6,669,000 in grants for projects aimed at “regime change” in Cuba, a euphemism to avoid saying “direct intervention by a foreign power.” The United States’ current Democratic administration has especially favored the International Republican Institute (IRI) with a bipartisan generosity that Donald Trump never had. Other groups in Miami, Washington and Madrid that have also received generous amounts have been among those calling for an invasion of the island. These groups paint an apocalyptic panorama in Havana to secure greater funding next year. Continue reading
How critical race theory hysteria may influence the future of affirmative action
If the current national conversation on critical race theory is a harbinger of things to come, affirmative action is in trouble.
The lesson of the 2020 U.S. election cycle was clear: Do not underestimate the influence of Black voters. At a time when the electoral process was characterized by voter suppression, Black voters in crucial swing states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin gave this country renewed hope by securing the presidency for President Joe Biden. Thanks to the Black voters who pushed Reverend Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff over the electoral edge in Georgia’s runoff elections on January 5, Democrats took control of the House of Representatives and the Senate. With Democrats in control of the executive and legislative branches, the promise of much-needed progressive change with respect to racial justice seemed to be on the brink of becoming reality. Continue reading
How a false narrative against government spending shapes legislation
The unfolding drama over a legislative battle within the Democratic Party to pass a massive bill encompassing desperately needed social services has revealed the power of narrative in our political landscape. It is not enough to put forward policy proposals that actually help people, paid for by those who can afford to pay (the wealthiest), and then try to pass those proposals into law. Relentless propaganda from conservative think tanks and their partner media outlets against the idea of government funding people’s needs has been so successful that it requires equally powerful counternarratives by progressives. Continue reading
What are Garland and Yellen waiting for?
Attorney General Merrick Garland and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen have come under sharp pressure from Democrats on the way they are leading their respective departments. In Yellen’s case, it has been her foot dragging on “reworking,” as she put it, harsh U.S. sanctions on Cuba that were imposed by Donald Trump. In June, Yellen told the House Appropriations Committee that Treasury was “reviewing” Cuba sanctions. That is where she left it and no loosening of Cuba travel or trade restrictions have occurred so far this year. Continue reading
The real meaning of Squid Game
You’ve either seen the Netflix show Squid Game, considered watching the South Korean series before giving it a pass because of its violence, or read about it and wondered what all the fuss is about. You know, therefore, that this global hit is about hundreds of indebted Koreans competing against one another for a huge jackpot. The competitions are children’s games like tug-of-war and marbles. The penalty for losing is death. Continue reading
Jerusalem’s ‘liveliest parties’: Has Biden proved different from Trump on Palestine?
When Joe Biden was declared the winner in the US elections last November, expectations in Ramallah were high. A Biden administration, compared to the brazenly pro-Israel Trump administration, would surely be much fairer to Palestinians, was the conventional wisdom at the time. Continue reading
Meta isn’t just about rebranding Facebook—could it bring a dystopian future?
Facebook’s announcement has implications about digital life and work—provided it can attract younger users and gamer skeptics and overcome the hate speech and disinformation problems that could still plague Zuckerberg’s vision.
Posted on November 12, 2021 by Prabir Purkayastha
On October 28, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg launched a new company brand, Meta, at the annual Facebook Connect event. According to Facebook, “Meta… brings together our apps and technologies under one new company brand. Meta’s focus will be to bring the metaverse to life and help people connect, find communities and grow businesses.” Continue reading →