Will we get real debates now?
On April 14, the Republican National Committee announced its withdrawal from the Commission on Presidential Debates, which has monopolized “major party” debates since 1988. The RNC, claiming bias on the CPD’s part in selecting moderators, pledged to “find newer, better debate platforms.” Continue reading →
The U.S. is sliding toward a grim future where abortion is criminalized with little support for families. This “new normal” is disproportionately impacting low-income people of color.
Republican state legislatures are creating abortion refugees across America. Continue reading →
The West’s actions against Russia since the war in Ukraine could signal an emerging new order that shuns the U.S. for weaponizing the dollar and Western control over the global financial system.
Do the Ukraine war and the action of the United States, the EU and the UK spell the end of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency? Even with the peace talks recently held in Turkey or the proposed 15-point peace plan, as the Financial Times had reported earlier, the fallout for the dollar still remains. For the first time, Russia, a major nuclear power and economy, was treated as a vassal state, with the United States, the EU and the UK seizing its $300 billion foreign exchange reserves. Where does this leave other countries, who also hold their foreign exchange reserves largely in dollars or euros? Continue reading →
Since the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan last August and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February, the White House has been desperate to showcase U.S. strength on the world stage. But the Biden administration has struggled to rally traditional Middle Eastern allies against Russia, raising questions over U.S. influence in the region.
For decades, U.S. policy in the Middle East has relied on coordination with the Saudi-led Gulf states, Israel, Egypt and Turkey. Since the Obama administration, however, relations between Washington and its core regional allies in the Middle East have floundered, confounding the United States’ ability to manage Middle Eastern crises and formulate consensus in the region. Continue reading →
"Make no mistake: the Kentucky Legislature's sole goal with this law is to shut down health centers and completely eliminate abortion access in the state," argued one abortion rights group.
The ACLU and Planned Parenthood announced late Wednesday that they are suing Kentucky after the state’s GOP-dominated Legislature voted to override the Democratic governor’s veto of a sweeping 15-week abortion ban, an extreme measure inspired by the Mississippi law that is currently before the U.S. Supreme Court. Continue reading →
How is it possible that so many left voters in France are willing to choose a far-right candidate in the second round of the presidential elections?
In the twentieth century, the left defined itself as anti-fascist. It was against Franco in Spain, Hitler in Germany, and Mussolini in Italy. During the Cold War, progressives opposed far-right dictators like Augusto Pinochet in Chile and Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines. It mobilized against neo-Nazis in Germany, right-wing militias in the United States, and fascist formations elsewhere in the world. Continue reading →
The jockeying has begun over which mix of states might take part in a series of coordinated opening primaries for 2024’s Democratic nominee.
In the past half-century since the Iowa caucuses have led off the presidential nominating season, only one Democratic candidate who was not already president—a U.S. senator from the neighboring state of Illinois, Barack Obama—went on to win the White House. Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and Joe Biden all lost in Iowa in their first bid for the presidency, even though they went on to win the nomination and the election. Continue reading →
Rupa Marya, a physician and musician, studies how social structures impact health. She says colonial capitalism fractures the critical relationships that keep us healthy.
A widespread culture of isolation and disconnection from our bodies, each other and the planet is negatively impacting the mental and physical health of people in America and beyond—and this was true long before the pandemic. Our relatively new human social structure that is work-obsessed and separated from nature and each other leaves us scant time to connect and relate to each other, and is not aligned with our natural rhythms. This way of living has grave impacts on people’s overall health, as well as the health of the planet. Continue reading →
Believers in Trump’s big lie about the 2020 election continue to ignore national media and election experts. Will they be convinced by poll workers and local leaders to trust the democratic process again?
As 2022’s primaries approach, an unprecedented wave of public and private efforts are underway to foster trust in election operations and election officials in response to ongoing claims by Donald Trump and his supporters, including many officeholders and candidates, that President Joe Biden was not legitimately elected. Continue reading →
"We are at a tipping point for abortion rights nationwide," warned president of Planned Parenthood Action Fund.
Republican Governor Kevin Stitt of Oklahoma was denounced Tuesday for signing into law one of the most extreme forced-pregnancy bills in the United States, a law pro-choice advocates argue is blatantly unconstitutional and must be challenged. Continue reading →
Americans have been shocked by the death and destruction of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, filling our screens with bombed buildings and dead bodies lying in the street. But the United States and its allies have waged war in country after country for decades, carving swathes of destruction through cities, towns and villages on a far greater scale than has so far disfigured Ukraine. Continue reading →
Once again, the programming has changed. Continue reading →
On Friday, April 1, Amazon—America’s wealthiest, most powerful, and fiercest anti-union corporation, with the second-largest workforce in the nation (union-busting Walmart being the largest), lost out to a group of warehouse workers in New York who voted to form a union. Continue reading →
No country has successfully challenged the U.S. dollar’s global hegemony—until now. How did this happen and what will it mean?
Foreign critics have long chafed at the “exorbitant privilege” of the U.S. dollar as global reserve currency. The U.S. can issue this currency backed by nothing but the “full faith and credit of the United States.” Foreign governments, needing dollars, not only accept them in trade but buy U.S. securities with them, effectively funding the U.S. government and its foreign wars. But no government has been powerful enough to break that arrangement—until now. How did that happen and what will it mean for the U.S. and global economies? Continue reading →
There is a growing psychosis sweeping the U.S. around the Russian bombardment of Ukraine, and it is being triggered by the legacy news media. The steady stream of biased, often erroneous or incomplete information spewing from the establishment press is leading people to quickly choose sides in a complicated international conflict, waving flags in support of “their side,” fawning over global leaders, and even holding peaceful car parades in efforts to do what they think they can to prevent World War III. In the process, the context and details of the conflict, as well as its historic roots, are being pushed aside in favor of a kind of binary knee-jerk activism that is far too common in American political culture. Speaking out against Russian attacks on Ukraine and in support of the people there should not be difficult to understand or do. However, demanding that the U.S. take aggressive action, such as swiftly implementing a no-fly zone, displays a waning level of sophistication regarding international relations. Continue reading →
In 1969, Richard Nixon and congressional Republicans took down the Supreme Court’s most liberal member, Abe Fortas, threatening to send his wife to prison. There’s a lesson here for today’s Democrats and Clarence Thomas. Continue reading →
To say I need a break is an understatement. March has turned into a grueling month causing me to put off dealing with personal business, which I can no longer avoid doing, including my federal taxes—April 15 is coming up fast. Continue reading →
Palestine’s widening geography of resistance: Why Israel cannot defeat the Palestinians
Posted on April 18, 2022 by Ramzy Baroud
There is a reason why Israel is insistent on linking the series of attacks carried out by Palestinians recently to a specific location, namely the Jenin refugee camp in the northern West Bank. By doing so, the embattled Naftali Bennett’s government can simply order another deadly military operation in Jenin to reassure its citizens that the situation is under control. Continue reading →