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US Supreme Court wants to make America more bigoted again
Bigots are switching to "creative expression" instead of religion as the club they'll use to beat down public accommodation laws.
The Supreme Court appears hell-bent on making America bigoted again. Step-by-step, they’re undoing every bit of progressive legislation from the past 80 years that they can find. Continue reading
Good news for the 65 million Americans who rely on Social Security
With their run-off victory in Georgia, Democrats now have a mandate to protect Social Security. Here’s what they need to do next.
Social Security was on the ballot in Georgia’s December 6 run-off election. Continue reading
EU just woke up and realised it was America’s bitch. Reset needed, claims Macron
The EU is beginning to wake up and realise that its relationship with the U.S. has reached farcical levels of master and slave.
Remarkably, the EU is beginning to wake up and realise not only that it is more servile to the U.S. than ever before, but in fact the relationship has reached farcical levels of master and slave since the Ukraine war started. And yet, despite the EU’s chief diplomat recently refusing to be drawn into a conflict scenario with China and MEPs pathetically voting to deem Russia a terrorist state, it was not the EU which came to the conclusion. It was the French president Emmanuel Macron. Continue reading
Right-Wing SCOTUS majority signals support for anti-LGBTQ+ reactionaries
"It does not bode well for the future of civil rights law that Gorsuch believes a state imposes 'reeducation training' on employers when it reminds them how to comply with nondiscrimination rules," said one court observer.
With rights advocates rallying outside the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday, the right-wing majority of the court appeared poised to rule in favor of a web designer who aims to discriminate against LGBTQ+ couples when she creates wedding websites, as the justices heard arguments in the case 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis. Continue reading
What climate debt does the North owe the South?
Richer countries haven't met their $100 billion promise to help poorer countries move beyond fossil fuels. Where's the money going to come from?
To keep the planet from overheating, there’s just so much more carbon that humans can pump into the atmosphere. From the onset of the Industrial Revolution until today, humanity has used up approximately 83 percent of its “carbon budget”—the amount of carbon the atmosphere can absorb and not exceed the Paris climate agreement’s aspirational goal of a 1.5C degree increase in global temperatures since the pre-industrial era. At the current rate of emissions, the budget will be used up within the next decade. Continue reading
Free elections come under attack Dec. 7 at the Supreme Court
WASHINGTON—On Dec. 7, 1941, “a date which will live in infamy,” as FDR put it, the Empire of Japan attacked the United States at Pearl Harbor. On Dec. 7, 2022, the empire of the right-wing attacks the United States election system—at the Supreme Court. Continue reading
GOP’s silence on Trump’s call to axe Constitution reveals ‘full embrace of fascism’: House Dem
"Last week the leader of the Republican Party had dinner with a Nazi leader and a man who called Adolf Hitler 'great,'" said Rep. Bill Pascrell. "Yesterday Trump called for throwing out the Constitution and making himself dictator."
Repeating his thoroughly disproven lie that the 2020 election was stolen, former President Donald Trump called Saturday for discarding the U.S. Constitution to overturn his loss. Continue reading
Across Africa, water conflict threatens security, health, and the environment
Water is a finite resource on our planet. We can only rely on what we have, which translates to about 2.5 percent of drinkable fresh water. Of that amount, only 0.4 percent currently exists in lakes, rivers, and moisture in the atmosphere. The strain of this limited supply grows by the day and as this continues, the detrimental impact will continue to be felt in places least equipped to find alternative solutions—in particular, the African continent. Continue reading
Censorship by proxy: How big tech and billionaires dodge First Amendment laws and engage in censorship on the platforms where most of us get our news
Adapted from Project Censored’s “State of the Free Press 2023”
Despite the promise of boundless access to information, Silicon Valley mirrors legacy media in its consolidated ownership and privileging of elite narratives. This new class of billionaire oligarchs owns or controls the most popular media platforms, including the companies often referred to as the FAANGs—Facebook (Meta), Apple, Amazon, Netflix, and Google (Alphabet). Their CEOs are routinely lionized in popular culture and the press as intrepid entrepreneurs, inventors of today’s must-have tools for work and play, and stewards of the public square. They include, but are not limited to Bill Gates (Microsoft, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation), Mark Zuckerberg (Meta, Facebook, Instagram), and Jeff Bezos (Amazon, the Washington Post)—all of whom are deeply involved and invested in computer software, social media platforms, and the worldwide web itself (e.g., Alphabet, the parent company of Google and YouTube). Continue reading
Make way for the killer robots: The government is expanding its power to kill
The purpose of a good government is to protect the lives and liberties of its people. Continue reading
‘Deliberate ambiguity’: Israel’s nuclear weapons are greatest threat to Middle East
As western countries are floating the theory that Russia could escalate its conflict with Ukraine to a nuclear war, many western governments continue to turn a blind eye to Israel’s own nuclear weapons capabilities. Luckily, many countries around the world do not subscribe to this endemic western hypocrisy. Continue reading
The global push for population growth shows we’re not grappling with the climate crisis
Progress is being undone by growth, especially as the climate crisis deepens.
In all of the news surrounding Vladimir Putin, it might have been easy to overlook that he had recently revived a Soviet-era policy called the “Mother Heroine” award, which goes to women who bear 10 or more children, offering financial incentives and other benefits in a bid to spur population growth. He is not alone, with a host of men who perch atop pyramids of power—from Elon Musk, to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to Hungary’s strongman Victor Orban—pushing women to have children as a means of growing the base of those power pyramids and further elevating the men at the top. Continue reading
Eight reasons why now is a good time for a Ukraine ceasefire and peace talks
As the war in Ukraine has dragged on for nine months and a cold winter is setting in, people all over the world are calling for a Christmas truce, harkening back to the inspirational Christmas Truce of 1914. In the midst of World War I, warring soldiers put down their guns and celebrated the holiday together in the no-man’s land between their trenches. This spontaneous reconciliation and fraternization has been, over the years, a symbol of hope and courage. Continue reading
The Guardian could help Assange by retracting all the lies it published about him
The Guardian has joined The New York Times, Le Monde, Der Spiegel and El País in signing a letter from the five papers which collaborated with WikiLeaks twelve years ago in the publication of the Chelsea Manning leaks to call for the Biden administration to drop all charges against Julian Assange. This sudden jolt of mainstream support comes as news breaks that Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has been personally pushing the US government to bring the Assange case to a close. Continue reading
Worthy and unworthy protest
Protesters in some nations are celebrated. Others are ignored. Protest is a human right to be respected but instead can be used as a pretext for nefarious motives such as regime change.
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is on the verge of effectively making protest illegal. The Public Order Bill has passed in the House of Commons and is expected to be approved in the House of Lords and become law. The bill will ban any protest that “interferes with national infrastructure” or blocks construction or transportation. It gives police powers to search without “reasonable grounds.” It allows for Serious Disruption Prevention Orders (SDPO) which give police the right to arrest anyone who may have violated these deliberately vague rules and prevents them from attending another protest for up to two years. The ban gives police the right to electronically monitor anyone they think is in violation. These criteria effectively prevent any large scale public protest. Violators of these provisions may be sentenced to up to 51 weeks in jail if found guilty. Continue reading
Republican presidential wannabe Pompeo uses teachers, Weingarten as punching bag
WASHINGTON—How do you know the presidential campaign season is upon us? When a right-wing presidential hopeful, Mike Pompeo, uses U.S. teachers, in general, and Teachers (AFT) President Randi Weingarten, in particular, as a punching bag to harvest votes. Continue reading
Cancel culture’s war on history, heritage and the freedom to think for yourself
There will come a time in the not-so-distant future when the very act of thinking for ourselves is not just outlawed but unthinkable. Continue reading
Beware of those who believe they were sent by God
Whether they believe their God sent them or that their DNA is superior to the rest of us, the new supremacists who own the GOP represent a threat to American democracy. They’ve tried to conquer America three times in the past: will they do it this time? Continue reading
Gridlock just ain’t what it used to be
The 2022 midterm election results “stand as an expression of overwhelming lack of confidence in the major parties,” J.D. Tuccille writes at Reason magazine, “with a resulting breather for the country resulting from the split decision’s ensuing, and quite welcome, gridlock.” Continue reading
Because ‘publishing is not a crime,’ major newspapers push US to drop Assange charges
"This indictment sets a dangerous precedent, and threatens to undermine America's First Amendment and the freedom of the press," The Guardian, The New York Times, and other media outlets warned.
The five major media outlets that collaborated with WikiLeaks in 2010 to publish explosive stories based on confidential diplomatic cables from the U.S. State Department sent a letter Monday calling on the Biden administration to drop all charges against Julian Assange, who has been languishing in a high-security London prison for more than three years in connection with his publication of classified documents. Continue reading
Symbolic but significant: why the decision to investigate Abu Akleh’s murder is unprecedented
The recent decision by the United States Department of Justice to open an investigation into the killing, last May, of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh is not a game-changer, but important and worthy of reflection, nonetheless. Continue reading
Winning messages for Sen. Raphael Warnock
The Warnock/Walker senatorial run-off election on December 6th seems to be “more of the same” campaigning and fundraising as occurred during the general election. “More of the same” with tens of millions of dollars spent on unimaginative TV ads is not smart if Warnock wants to win without a disputed razor-thin margin. Continue reading
Xi Jinping, Justin Trudeau and white supremacist ideology
Western arrogance and anger about the economic prowess of a non-white nation resulted in Xi Jinping's very public dressing down of Justin Trudeau.
The Group of 20, or G20, comprises those nations said to be those with the largest economies in the world. The heads of state who attend the annual summit may have meaningful meetings with one another but the recently convened G20 in Bali, Indonesia was more a source of U.S. inspired drama than anything else. For example, it wasn’t clear if Chinese president Xi Jinping would meet with Joe Biden after the numerous insults involving Taiwan, including sending the Speaker of the House there after China made clear that this was a red line provocation. Of course, being more mature than the Americans, Xi met with Biden, perhaps only to determine if he was up to some new foolish behavior. The summit was fully devoid of any seriousness when the traditional group photo was eliminated because the U.S. and its NATO/EU vassals didn’t want to be seen with Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov. But an interesting encounter between Xi Jinping and Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau was both amusing and instructive about China and how it is perceived and treated by western nations. Continue reading
A reference to a dystopian America is now officially enshrined in federal case law
U.S. judge Mark Walker of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida has struck down Republican Governor Ron DeSantis’s Individual Freedom Act and the Stop-Woke (Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees) Act as a violation of the U.S. Constitution. Specifically, Walker cited the censorship provisions of DeSantis’s law as a violation of the First Amendment right of free speech and the ban on colleges, universities, public schools, and businesses having more than 15 employees instructing students or employees about cultural and racial awareness as a violation of the 14th Amendment on due process. Continue reading
The ‘freedom’ billionaires & the GOP are selling Americans is deadly
Queer people in America are not feeling “freedom,” particularly after the most recent deadly attack on Club Q in Colorado Springs. As if to amplify the GOP’s message of hate and fear against this vulnerable group of our fellow Americans, it happened on Trans Remembrance Day, when we honor the memory of trans people who’ve been the victims of hate and violence. Continue reading
Glenn Youngkin will defeat Trump in 2024 primaries
EXCLUSIVE TO INTREPID REPORT
Now that Donald Trump has announced his candidacy for a return to the White House, the Republican mainstream, under the assumption that Trump is the only Republican who can lose a general election, are hinting largely at two opponents with a shot at beating him in the primaries—Ron DeSantis and Glenn Youngkin. Continue reading
Critics decry ‘disappointing’ billion-dollar Biden bailout of California’s last nuclear plant
"Instead of putting Diablo Canyon back on life support, dependent on a drip of taxpayer subsidies, California should turn a new leaf and lean into building the electric system of the future," said one campaigner.
Environmental and climate campaigners decried Monday’s announcement that the Biden administration—which promotes nuclear energy as part of its solution to the climate emergency—will give more than a billion dollars to California’s largest utility to keep the state’s last nuclear power plant operating. Continue reading
The blunder that could’ve cost John Fetterman the election
“If John Fetterman lacks the stomach to expose the entire Oz-Turkish love affair, particularly Ankara’s support of ISIS, he may lose … and will deserve it.” Continue reading
University of California comes to a standstill as academic workers strike
A militant labor strike by workers at 10 UC campuses comes after the state university system failed to offer compensation commensurate to the cost of living in California.
Nearly 50,000 academic workers at the University of California launched a historic strike on November 14 after contract negotiations with their employer failed. Postdoctoral scholars, researchers, trainees, fellows, graduate student instructors, readers, and tutors, who are from 10 UC campuses across the state and are unionized with United Auto Workers, walked out of their jobs. Continue reading
Musk’s free speech moves on Twitter have so far been unimpressive
When Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter was first announced this past April I said that the purchase likely wouldn’t go through if the empire thought it posed a threat to its information interests. I said that any reduction of censorship protocols which Musk implements on the platform would probably not be of the sort that make any difference to the powerful, but would instead just amplify vapid partisan culture war nonsense. Continue reading
Deadly Polish abortion ban treats women ‘as incubators,’ critics say at EU hearing
"The European Parliament must continue to put pressure on the Polish government and use all the tools it has, or more women will die," said one advocate.
Reproductive rights advocates, attorneys, and family members of people who have died as a result of Poland’s stringent abortion ban were among those who testified before the European Parliament in Brussels on Thursday, calling on the body to take every available action to protect Polish people from “conservative politicians” whose ban has led to at least six deaths so far. Continue reading
Does Elon musk have a right to destroy Twitter?
Posted on December 5, 2022 by Robert Reich
You break it, you own it. That’s what I was told as a child. But for today’s billionaires, it seems like the opposite is true. Continue reading →