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How U.S. interference in Cuba creates a false picture of its society
U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) appears to be obsessed with Cuba. Every few days he takes to social media or makes remarks to the press about his desire to overthrow the Cuban Revolution. In recent months, Rubio has played a key role in drumming up support for anti-government protests in Cuba. On September 23, 2021, for instance, Rubio tweeted, “The brave people of Cuba lost their fear of protesting against the dictatorship that represses them. Holguín raises its voice against tyranny.” Rubio included an article about the Cuban town of Holguín in his tweet, where “a group of Cuban citizens” are planning to hold a “march against violence” on November 20. This article appeared in Diario de Cuba, a news site based in Miami, Florida, which received substantial funding from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) from 2016 to 2019, an independent nonprofit that is largely funded by “the U.S. Congress.” Continue reading
Climate emergency includes the threat of ‘Nuclear Winter’
Wishful thinking aside, the threat of nuclear war has not receded.
When world leaders gather in Scotland next week for the COP26 climate change conference, activists will be pushing for drastic action to end the world’s catastrophic reliance on fossil fuels. Consciousness about the climate emergency has skyrocketed in recent years, while government responses remain meager. But one aspect of extreme climate jeopardy—“nuclear winter”—has hardly reached the stage of dim awareness Continue reading
Virginia gubernatorial race: Organizers are turning out overlooked voters of color
A grassroots strategy that avoids partisan clichés and confronts local issues.
After 2020’s election, Virginia adopted more pro-voter legislation than any state, from expanding access to starting to amend its constitution to enshrine voting rights. But these reforms have not been enough to turn out voters in this fall’s statewide elections, where the top-of-the-ticket Democratic and Republican candidates for governor are close in polls but seen as underwhelming. Continue reading
Biden agenda squeezed as corporate Democrats strip down Build Back Better
BALTIMORE—Once again, Democrats are negotiating with themselves as President Joe Biden, realizing that so-called “moderate” Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona remain obstinate in opposition to key elements of his agenda, is giving ground. But he also vows to keep trying to attain those goals. Continue reading
US officials can guard against Havana Syndrome with this innovative home solution
As the dire threat of Havana Syndrome gains increasingly widespread acknowledgement, the US government employees who’ve been finding themselves targeted by these attacks are desperate for a way to protect themselves from this electromagnetic menace. Continue reading
The prevalence of Chile’s right wing
Will the rewriting of Chile’s constitution be enough to veer the country’s trajectory away from the neoliberal experiment ushered in decades ago by the U.S.?
A year ago, Chileans voted to rewrite the dictatorship era constitution—the first step in building a more inclusive society since the democratic transition in the country which was plagued by vestiges of Augusto Pinochet’s legacy. In April this year, Chilean President Sebastian Pinera’s right-wing government suffered another loss as independent and opposition candidates gained the majority of seats to rewrite the constitution. This secured another victory away from the right-wing and the possibility that reforms would be blocked by the government’s candidates. Continue reading
Ted Nugent testifies for hunting bills in Wisconsin
GOP legislators want to establish a hunting season for sandhill cranes.
Where is cancel culture when you need it? Ted Nugent’s racist remarks got him banned from performing in Muskegon, Michigan, Fort Knox and removed from Long Island’s “Back the Blue Demonstration” performing line-up just last year. Though he claims to be a patriot, he has bragged about being a draft dodger and pedophile (later recanting the claims). Continue reading
Conservatives & billionaires want to make ‘welfare’ a dirty word
Senator Joe Manchin, echoing the right-wing billionaire’s think-tanks’ PR and every Republican in Congress, recently said his objection to free college for students and eyeglasses for seniors was that such things created an “entitlement society,” a slur that means “a nation of welfare recipients.” Continue reading
It’s time for corporations to get off the sidelines on social justice issues
It’s both good ethics and good business to support the rights of Black Americans and women when they are under assault.
Public outrage immediately followed the enactment of the new Texas law designed to undermine abortion rights. While the law bans abortions beyond six weeks into a pregnancy, it, perhaps most perniciously, allows private citizens to collect bounties from anyone who helps a person obtain an abortion. The category of persons who “knowingly… [engage] in conduct that aids or abets the performance or inducement of an abortion” potentially extends from the doctor who performs the procedure to the rideshare driver who transports the patient to the facility to abort the pregnancy. Continue reading
Our future vs. neoliberalism
In country after country around the world, people are rising up to challenge entrenched, failing neoliberal political and economic systems, with mixed but sometimes promising results. Continue reading
Biden, unions, progressives condemn GOP defeat of voting rights
WASHINGTON— President Biden, the AFL-CIO, top unions, and key progressives condemned Senate Republicans’ defeat—again—of key legislation to protect voting rights and stop voter repression measures running rampant in Republican-run states from coast to coast. Continue reading
The many crimes of Colin Powell
Colin Powell's death is an opportunity to question the inclination to respect the Black face in a high place. Powell's career includes a litany of crimes that must never be excused.
The late Colin Powell certainly had a storied career. It wound through various Republican presidential administrations from Ronald Reagan, to George H.W. Bush to George W. Bush. He served as National Security Adviser, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Secretary of State. He said this about his life and work, ““All I want to do is judge myself as a successful soldier who served his best.” Continue reading
The U.S. rejoining the UNHRC speaks volumes on human rights violations impunity
If, according to the U.S., Cuba does not deserve a seat at the UNHRC, what has the U.S. done to deserve it?
Much has been said about the Biden administration’s rejoining international institutions, after former U.S. President Donald Trump broke away from the standardised participation in international agreements and consensus. Notably, the international community singled out the U.S. under Trump for the so-called “deal of the century”, which veered away from the two-state paradigm that has steered international diplomacy on Palestine and Israel for decades. Continue reading
Is the Havana Syndrome a result of classified U.S. technology falling into the hands of right-wing Cubans in Miami?
The first reports of U.S. and Canadian diplomats in Havana being stricken with ear ringing, dizziness, and severe fatigue, dubbed the “Havana Syndrome,” resulted in a series of botched investigations into the source of the illness by the Trump administration. There have been a number of theories about the source of what some experts now believe may have been a psychotronic weapon emitting pulsed radio frequency/microwave bursts directed at the U.S. and Canadian embassies and diplomatic housing areas in Havana. These bursts resulted in the targets suffering from the Frey effect, which manifests itself with ringing, buzzing, grinding, or clicking auditory sensations. Continue reading
After CIA plot revealed, press freedom coalition says DOJ must drop Assange case
"A precedent created by prosecuting Assange could be used against publishers and journalists alike, chilling their work and undermining freedom of the press," said the groups.
A coalition of more than two dozen press freedom groups on Monday intensified an earlier call demanding the U.S. Department of Justice drop its charges against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, saying the demand is now even more urgent due to recent reports that the CIA plotted to kidnap—and possibly kill—the journalist. Continue reading
Why the hell are Democrats keeping your drug prices high?
Excuse me but I have to vent. Continue reading
Legacy social media: Free as in beer, not as in speech
On October 5, former Facebook product manager Frances Haugen testified before the US Senate, decrying her former employer’s “destructive impact” and warning that “without action, divisive and extremist behaviors we see today are only the beginning.” Continue reading
Refreshingly honest billionaire says media purchase will be used for propaganda
The billionaire CEO of the multibillion-dollar corporation that recently purchased the news media outlet Politico has said that its newly acquired employees will be required to support Israel and the capitalist world order. Continue reading
Congress must reclaim its constitutional authority to subpoena witnesses
Nothing in the Constitution says the legislative branch must go to the administrative or judicial branches to compel testimony.
WASHINGTON—In the continuing congressional investigation of the Trumpite invaders and their Jan. 6 coup attempt at the U.S. Capitol, one big stick lawmakers should be wielding is their power to compel compliance with subpoenas for documents and witnesses—and hold malefactors who, in criminal contempt of Congress, don’t obey. Continue reading
How right-wing media outlets kill people who take their advice
It happened three times Sunday, and I only watched or half-watched a few hours of TV news. It happens every day, it seems. Somebody wonders out loud (yesterday’s most prominent was Alex Witt with Dr. Anthony Fauci) why over 60 million Americans who are eligible to be vaccinated are still refusing—including hospital workers in some parts of the country. Continue reading
I hear America screeching
The constant din from the right and others destroys the peace. No good can come of this ill-spoken, irrational rage and violence.
In the weeks since the 20th anniversary of 9/11, sensory memories of that disastrous day—things I haven’t thought about in years—came flooding back. Continue reading
The new American leadership: Biden tells the world what he wants it to know
It is sometimes difficult to absorb how much the United States has changed in the past twenty years, and not for the better. When I was in grade school in the 1950s there was a favorite somewhat simplistic saying much employed by teachers to illustrate the success of the American way of life that prevailed at that time. It went “What’s good for General Motors is good for America” and it meant that the U.S. version of a robust and assertive capitalist economy generated opportunity and prosperity for the entire nation. Today, having witnessed the devastation and offshoring of the domestic manufacturing economy by those very same corporate managers, such an expression would be rightly sneered at and considered risible. Continue reading
Manchin/Sinema play “The Price Is Right” while the GOP stars in “Night of the Living Dead”
The whole progressive world is screaming at Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin. Continue reading
Here come the abortion bounty hunters
In this unequal economy, Texas’s harsh new anti-abortion law pits desperate people against each other.
Texas’s cruel new anti-abortion law is more than just an unconstitutional restriction on reproductive choice. It’s also an egregious new frontier in late capitalism. Continue reading
Trump’s undermining of the electoral process gives U.S. Third World nation status
To the delight of autocrats around the world, from Brazil’s neo-fascist President Jair Bolsonaro to Hungarian quasi-dictator Viktor Orban, Donald Trump and his cult-of-personality Republican Party have driven the United States into a category that was once the domain of Third World nations. Widespread belief among Trump loyalists that elections are “fixed” has undermined faith in the American political process. It was similar propaganda put forth by Adolf Hitler that convinced many Germans in the 1930s that elections were merely a waste of time, a mindset that allowed Hitler to scrap Germany’s democratic constitution and declare a “Thousand Year” Nazi Reich. Continue reading
Tyrants of the Nanny State: When the government thinks it knows best
We labor today under the weight of countless tyrannies, large and small, carried out in the so-called name of the national good by an elite class of governmental and corporate officials who are largely insulated from the ill effects of their actions. Continue reading
Violence against environmental activists escalates alongside political impunity
With nothing to hold governments or the UN accountable, protection remains elusive when juxtaposed against the reassurance of neoliberal profit.
For the second consecutive year, Latin America has been established to be the most dangerous region for environmental activists. According to a recent annual report by Global Witness titled “Last Life on Defence”, 227 environmental activists and indigenous leaders were killed in 2020, with three out of every four killings occurring in Latin America. Continue reading
The Obama Presidential Center will displace Black people
The Obama Presidential Center will inevitably displace a working class Black community in Chicago. The center is in keeping with Obama's history of doing the bidding of the powerful, including accelerating gentrification.
The soon to be constructed Barack Obama Presidential Center poses a great danger to the surrounding Black neighborhoods on the South Shore of Chicago. In fact, thanks to this $500 million, 19-acre homage to the 44th president, there may not be any Black people living there much longer. Continue reading
What does India get out of being part of ‘The Quad’?
Australia has joined the U.S. and UK games to contain China, leaving India unclear in the Quad and isolated in Asia. Tied to the waning imperial power of the U.S., India is gradually losing strategic autonomy.
The recent Quad leaders meeting in the White House on September 24 appears to have shifted focus away from its original framing as a security dialogue between four countries, the United States, India, Japan and Australia. Instead, the United States seems to be moving much closer to Australia as a strategic partner and providing it with nuclear submarines. Continue reading
Follow Alabama’s lead on child care
If one of our poorest states can rise to meet this basic human need, why can’t Congress?
Here are two terms you don’t expect to see together: “The state of Alabama” and “progressive leader.” (Okay, I’m a Texan, so I have no standing to point at the rank regressiveness of any other state government… but still, Alabama?) Continue reading
The police state’s reign of terror continues … with help from the Supreme Court
You think you’ve got rights? Think again. Continue reading
Russell “Maroon” Shoatz is free, but other political prisoners languish
The demand for freedom of political prisoners must be consistently made for their sakes and for all at risk of joining them in the future.
Posted on October 28, 2021 by Margaret Kimberley
Russell “Maroon” Shoatz has been granted compassionate release after 50 years in prison. The length of his sentence is outrageous but it is hardly unique. The United States not only has the dubious distinction of being the country with the largest population of incarcerated people, but it also has political prisoners held longer than anywhere else in the world. Shoatz is now 78-years old and suffering from cancer. To be blunt, he is being released so that he can die outside of prison walls. Continue reading →