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Rural teacher Pedro Castillo poised to write a new chapter in Peru’s history
With his wide-brimmed peasant hat and oversized teacher’s pencil held high, Peru’s Pedro Castillo has been traveling the country exhorting voters to get behind a call that has been particularly urgent during this devastating pandemic: “No más pobres en un país rico”—No more poor people in a rich country. In a cliffhanger of an election with a huge urban-rural and class divide, it appears that the rural teacher, farmer and union leader is about to make history by defeating–by less than one percent–powerful far-right candidate Keiko Fujimori, scion of the country’s political “Fujimori dynasty.” Continue reading
Mainstream politics offer pretend revolutions to a discontented public
In 2008, the American public was fed up with the disastrous status quo politics of George W Bush, so they came together and elected a progressive candidate who campaigned on hope and change to replace him. Continue reading
Drug advertising has helped create victim politics
“How dare you suggest I/my son is not sick?” “Stop invalidating the lived experiences of millions of people!” “Able-bodied people like you have no right to report this.” “How dare you suggest my medication has risks?” “You’re not taking my drugs!” Continue reading
A People’s Vaccine against a mutating virus and neoliberal rule
A recent Yahoo News/YouGov poll found that worries about the COVID pandemic in the United States are at their lowest level since it began. Only half of Americans are either “very worried” (15%) or “somewhat worried” (35%) about the virus, while the other half are “not very worried” (30%) or “not worried at all” (20%). Continue reading
Free market illusions: What is the US’ endgame in China?
Why does the US advocate a free market while doing its utmost to stifle it? The current US-China economic war is a perfect example of this perplexing question. Continue reading
The Copenhagen Summit for Democracy: A review
Their conferences reveal them for what they are, black shirts with the smiles of sharks. Mac the Knife is back in town. Be warned. Be prepared.
On May 10-11 a conference was presented by the “Alliance of Democracies” in Copenhagen that claimed to “unite free peoples” against authoritarianism, to promote the rule of law, to advance the “technological control of democracy,” freedom of expression and US leadership. It was heralded as a forum for guests to hear from prominent individuals on “the frontlines of defending democracy.” Continue reading
How the Tulsa Race Massacre was a violent act of racist economic injustice
An underappreciated factor in the racist violence of the 1921 Tulsa massacre is how white supremacist forces decimated Black wealth.
One hundred years after the worst instance of racist mob violence in 20th-century America, the Tulsa Race Massacre is finally getting the attention it is due. The 1921 terrorist attack by an armed white mob against a prosperous Black community is perhaps one of the clearest and most extreme illustrations of how many African Americans were stripped of their wealth for a generation. Continue reading
Think tank wars and the enforcement of thought crime laws
For those who believe that freedom of the press exists in the United States, here’s a news bulletin: Those days are long over!
The United States, Russia, Britain, and other countries are waging a war that pits think tank against think tank and criminalizes ideas and opinions. That war heated up on April 15 when the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) imposed financial sanctions on the Moscow-based think tank, Strategic Culture Foundation (SCF), for whom I have written for over ten years. OFAC alleged, without much in the way of any hard evidence, that SCF was an arm of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, the SVR. Treasury’s sanctions came after a 2020 State Department Global Engagement Center (GEC) report that illustrated the opinions being expressed by SCF and other Russian think tanks and news organizations as similar to Covid-19 virus microbes. In any event, I’ve been compared to worse than a Covid microbe. Continue reading
Republican election ‘fraudits’ a key part of their plan to destroy democracy
The GOP “fraudits” underway now in Arizona and elsewhere were never about a belated installation of Donald Trump as the real president of the United States. They are not mere silly exercises designed to keep a sore loser ex-president happy and therefore supportive of certain Republican candidates. They are instead a purposeful part of a multi-pronged plan by a now clearly neo-fascist GOP to destroy elections and with them democracy itself in America. Continue reading
Democracy: On the precipice?
If we extrapolate from the current trend lines, democracy will be gone in a couple decades, melted away like the polar ice. But although down, democracy is not out.
Alexander Lukashenko, the Belarussian dictator, snatches a dissident from midair. Military strongman Assimi Goita launches another coup in Mali. Benjamin Netanyahu escalates a military conflict to save his own political skin in Israel. In the United States, the Republican Party launches a full-court press to suppress the vote. Continue reading
Abby Martin beats the Israel Lobby: Attack on free speech and association fails court test
Abby Martin’s efforts must be applauded for she has won a major victory in the struggle to maintain freedom of speech in the United States.
Many Americans who follow developments overseas would concede that Israel and its supporters in the United States exercise a fairly high level of control over U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Some are also aware of congressional attempts to introduce legislation that would define criticism of the Jewish state as a federal hate crime. That would narrow the options for discussion, infringing on First Amendment free speech rights, and further tighten the grip on policy. It would also make violators of the new law subject to fines and even imprisonment at the hands of the Department of Justice, which has traditionally responded favorably on issues of concern to Israel and its supporters. Continue reading
How getting a vaccine in India is a ‘privilege’ especially for those in rural areas
Indian states have been left to compete with each other in the global market for vaccine procurement.
If the month of April was marked by images of endless rows of burning funeral pyres from major Indian cities, the images of floating bodies in the Ganges River near the north Indian states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar in May were a grim reminder of the unchecked spread of the virus in rural India where a majority of Indians, without access to basic health care, vaccines or infrastructure, have been fighting the virus. Continue reading
The fumbling king of Palestine: Palestinians are defeating the Oslo culture
The political discourse of Mahmoud Abbas, the head of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, is similar to that of an ineffectual king who has been isolated in his palace for far too long. The king speaks of prosperity and peace, and tirelessly counts his innumerable achievements, while his people are dying of starvation outside and pointlessly begging for his attention. Continue reading
Biden should make normalizing relations with Cuba “a priority”
Silvia from Miami, Eduardo from Hialeah, Abel from Lakeland. The names pour in on the donations page for “Syringes to Cuba” as Carlos Lazo promotes the campaign on his popular Facebook livestream. An energetic Cuban-American high school teacher in Seattle, Lazo created a group called Puentes de Amor, Bridges of Love, to unite Cuban Americans who want to lift the searing U.S. blockade that is immiserating their loved ones on the island. Continue reading
Freedom Rider: Lab leak theory and anti-China mania
Most virologists still believe that COVID-19 is far more likely to have originated naturally, but US espionage and disinformation agencies disagree. Continue reading
Biden hailed for ‘historic’ exclusion of anti-choice Hyde Amendment from proposed budget
"At a time when reproductive freedom is under unprecedented attack, and the legal right to abortion is hanging on by a tenuous thread, this critical step from the Biden administration is more important than ever."
Reproductive rights advocates on Friday hailed President Joe Biden’s omission of funding for the Hyde Amendment—which prohibits most federal abortion spending—in his $6 trillion 2022 budget proposal. Continue reading
Biden is on the same page as Trump in maintaining an anti-Cuba stance
U.S. President Joe Biden has given every indication so far that its policies on Cuba will not veer away from those of the Trump administration. In March this year, U.S. officials told Reuters that Cuba is not a top foreign policy item for Biden. The statement was left open to interpretation until now, when the current U.S. administration decided to retain Cuba on the unilateral and defaming U.S. State Sponsors of Terrorism list. The conditions for removal are very much based on how much U.S. influence the listed country will allow – in other words, becoming a U.S. accomplice in foreign policy is a must. Continue reading
‘Mowing the grass’ no more: How Palestinian resistance altered the equation
The ceasefire on May 21 has, for now, brought the Israeli war on Gaza to an end. However, this ceasefire is not permanent and constant Israeli provocations anywhere in Palestine could reignite the bloody cycle all over again. Moreover, the Israeli siege on Gaza remains in place, as well as the Israeli military occupation and the rooted system of apartheid that exists all over Palestine. Continue reading
Does the U.S. really need another oil pipeline?
Native American communities living alongside the route of the Line 3 pipeline project in northern Minnesota are asking all activists to join them in solidarity this June.
A decades-old pipeline called Line 3, run by the Canadian company Enbridge, is in the midst of a controversial upgrade sparking fierce resistance from Indigenous communities living along the route. Line 3 is being replaced in order to enable the transport of nearly 800,000 barrels of dirty tar sands crude oil per day from Calgary, Canada, to Wisconsin. The majority of the pipeline cuts across northern Minnesota through the heart of lands where the Anishinaabe people have treaty rights to hunt, fish and harvest wild rice and maple syrup. Continue reading
Republicans adopt fascist government platform
Across the United States, the Republican Party, through bills passed in state legislatures and signed by GOP governors, is adopting one of the central platforms of fascism, namely, the elimination of the powers of state officials, including secretaries of state, governors, and others. Continue reading
A caring world needs a sharing world to end the COVID-19 pandemic
A virus that mutates forever is a perpetual money-making machine for Big Pharma. Everybody else wants the world’s population to be vaccinated to control the spread of the pandemic.
After three months of dithering, the Biden administration eventually agreed to a temporary waiver of patent rights for the COVID-19 vaccines. The proposal by South Africa and India for a waiver on intellectual property rights in the World Trade Organization has found support from a large number of countries and more than 400 public health organizations. The proposal now faces opposition from the European Union countries, which had earlier portrayed themselves to be more progressive than the United States. This portrayal was not difficult to achieve under the Trump administration. The latest move by Biden has, however, wrong-footed the EU, leaving the bloc as the only public supporter of Big Pharma in the WTO. Continue reading
Chile’s new constitution spells a defeat for neoliberalism and the right wing
The Chilean right-wing government has been given yet another resounding rejection by the people, as the elections for a body to write the country’s new constitution has veered strongly towards independent and left-wing candidates. Only 38 candidates from the right-wing coalition “Vamos por Chile” were elected. The rest of the body is composed of 25 candidates from the centre-left coalition Lista del Apruebo, 27 candidates from the left-wing coalition Apruebo Dignidad, 48 independent candidates and 17 indigenous representatives. Continue reading
GOP offers inadequate infrastructure plan that lets the rich off free
Their plan makes it clear yet again that, for them, protecting the wealthy trumps fixing infrastructure.
WASHINGTON—Republican senators outlined a $928 billion infrastructure proposal Thursday that drastically slashes what President Joe Biden has proposed and sets things up so that the wealthy, unlike the rest of the country, will pay nothing toward fixing the nation’s crumbling infrastructure. In fact, in what is perhaps the most unacceptable part of their “counter-offer” to Biden’s plan, which the president has already cut from $2 trillion-plus to $1.7 trillion, the Republicans want to pay for their plan by taking away money intended for coronavirus aid. Continue reading
They’re not conservatives, they’re extremists
By mislabeling the radical members of the Republican Party "conservative," the mainstream media gives them a veneer of respectability.
The House Freedom Caucus is routinely described as conservative, by its members, by the mainstream media, by Wikipedia. The caucus, which draws together 45 Republican Party members of the House of Representatives, is the furthest to the right of any major political formation in the United States. The most extreme and flamboyant politicians in America, like scandal-plagued Matt Gaetz of Florida and gun-toting Lauren Boebert of Colorado, are proud to call the Caucus their political home. Even Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, after threatening to form an explicitly racist America First caucus, chose ultimately to continue promoting her nativist, QAnon-inspired beliefs from within the Freedom Caucus. Continue reading
What lies beneath: President Biden’s deceptive acknowledgment of the Armenian Genocide
President Biden’s April 24 statement acknowledging the Armenian Genocide (1915–1923+) carried out by Turkey was welcome but flawed. Indeed, “Turkey” appears nowhere in the document. Moreover, the State Department swiftly undermined Biden’s virtuous-sounding words. Continue reading
Palestine’s moment: Despite massive losses, Palestinians have altered the course of history
The ‘Palestinian Revolt of 2021’ will go down in history as one of the most influential events that irreversibly shaped collective thinking in and around Palestine. Only two other events can be compared with what has just transpired in Palestine: the revolt of 1936 and the First Intifada of 1987. Continue reading
Drivers beware: The deadly perils of blank check traffic stops
We’ve all been there before. Continue reading
Freedom Rider: Biden breaks his promises
Black people have nothing to show for a Biden presidency despite turning out in droves to put him in office. Continue reading
The hell of the same: Capitalism breaks down and homogenizes life, disconnects the past, present and future
In the English lexicon of the day, it is verboten to mention that some inspiration, sense of wonder, or a pause to reflect on a passage from the texts of ancient myth and/or religion is a positive. You run the risk at a Washington, DC, cocktail party of being ostracized if you praise Pope Francis for washing people’s feet or visiting Iraq, discussing the myths of the Saints, or even the tales of more ancient deities of Rome, Athens, Babylon, and pharaonic Egypt. Who cannot but like the Greek story of Orpheus and Eurydice? Continue reading
Is Colombia’s military displacing peasants to protect the environment or sell off natural resources?
Corporations, not wildlife, stand to benefit from the emptied lands.
Colombia witnessed a series of mass protests at the end of April following a call for a national strike. Still ongoing, the protests have many causes: an apparent “tax reform” that was going to transfer even more wealth to the 1 percent in Colombia; the failure of the most recent peace accords; and the inability of Colombia’s privatized health care system to contain the COVID-19 crisis. In response to these ongoing protests, the government has killed dozens, disappeared hundreds, imposed curfews on multiple cities, and called in the army. But the protests continue—because they are, at least in part, a repudiation of the militarization of everything in the country. Continue reading
The First World War, Cecil Rhodes and conspiracy facts
Why did World War One happen? The conventional fable agreed upon begins on June 28, 1914, with the assassination of Austria’s Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo. The aftermath of the assassination spiraled out of control. It was like an unstoppable train speeding down the tracks. Suddenly all of the Western powers were at war. When the armistice was signed on November 11, 1918 forty million people lay dead. Exactly five years to the day after the assassination of the archduke, the Treaty of Versailles was signed. Germany alone accepted all the guilt for the war. The end. Continue reading
Senator Manchin, killing the filibuster won’t destroy democracy—but you might
A reminder that a late 19th century speaker of the House, a Republican, successfully quashed the filibuster—for the sake of the nation.
Posted on June 9, 2021 by Michael Winship
Back at the beginning of the year—and just two days before January 6—I was writing about the dire situation on Capitol Hill, and mentioned Profiles in Courage, the book John F. Kennedy and Theodore Sorensen wrote about brave US senators in our history who took unpopular stands in the face of loud opposition. Continue reading →