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Liberating Africa from poverty requires changing power relations with the West
Soon after arriving in Oslo, my taxi zigzagged through the city’s well-organized streets and state-of-the-art infrastructure. Large billboards advertised the world’s leading brands in fashion, cars, and perfumes. Amid all the expressions of wealth and plenty, an electronic sign by a bus stop flashed the images of poor looking African children needing help. Continue reading
Techno-authoritarianism is here to stay: China and the Deep State have joined forces
The votes are in. Continue reading
109 Republicans voted against bill to ban sexual assault NDAs
The newly passed Speak Out Act "empowers survivors of sexual assault and harassment to speak openly about their experiences and pursue the justice they deserve," said Rep. Pramila Jayapal.
The House on Wednesday passed bipartisan legislation that prohibits employers from using pre-dispute non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) or non-disparagement clauses to silence survivors of workplace sexual assault and harassment. Continue reading
Palestinians are Native Americans: Time to correct the language of history
At a recent Istanbul conference that brought many Palestinian scholars and activists together to discuss the search for a common narrative on Palestine, a Palestinian member of the audience declared at the end of a brief, but fiery intervention, ‘we are not red Indians’. Continue reading
GOP cool to Trump but not MAGA extremism as he announces third run for presidency
WASHINGTON—Former Oval Office Republican occupant Donald Trump has announced yet another run for the White House, even as many Republicans expressed unhappiness with their master, not because they reject his politics, but because they think it is his style that caused mass rejection of his endorsed midterm candidates by the voters. Continue reading
House Democrat leads charge to bar Trump from office, citing 14th Amendment
The former president "forfeited his right to ever hold federal office again for leading an insurrection against the United States," said Rep. David Cicilline.
As former President Donald Trump prepared to announce his 2024 presidential campaign Tuesday, Rep. David Cicilline was circulating a letter to his fellow Democratic lawmakers calling on them to support legislation that would bar Trump from running, citing his involvement in the January 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Continue reading
The GOP won’t dump Trumpism anytime soon
Trump-backed Republicans lost some big races this year, but the leopard won’t change its spots.
In the face of midterm election results that confounded predictions and crushed Republican hopes for a landslide victory, some in the media are suggesting that the party may finally turn away from Trump. Continue reading
Bittersweet freedom for Mutulu Shakur
Mutulu Shakur has been granted parole, but he is terminally ill. Black political prisoners in this country are held for 30, 40 and 50 years. Reprieve happens only when they are at death's door.
After 36 years of incarceration, political prisoner Mutulu Shakur was granted parole after having been denied on nine occasions. Invariably media accounts mention that he is the step-father of the late rapper and actor Tupac Shakur while saying little about his own history. Any of the elder Shakur’s accomplishments are given short shrift in favor of an emphasis on pop culture celebrity. Continue reading
Why Trumpism as a fascist movement will not disappear
While some high-profile Republicans are ditching Donald Trump after a series of major losses for the party in 2018, 2020, and 2022, the political brand of “Trumpism,” an anti-democratic fascist movement, is not likely to disappear any time soon. Militant political movements that double as cults of personality often long outlive their demagogic leaders. As significant far-right ideologies, Trumpism and its Tea Party forerunner may continue as a potent force within the GOP for several decades. Ronald Reagan left office in 1989, but his philosophy of Reaganism, itself an outgrowth of Barry Goldwater’s brand of doctrinaire conservatism, was only recently discarded with the ascendancy of Trumpism. Goldwater’s extreme conservatism was emblematic of a party that had, for thirty years, dabbled in the extremism of the pro-Nazi Germany American First movement in the 1930s and early 1940s, the postwar Red Scare politics of Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy, and the unhinged conspiracy theories of the John Birch Society. Continue reading
Have Zoomers ushered in a new political era?
The pundits are mystified by last Tuesday’s election outcome: they were certain a red wave was on its way. Continue reading
Democrats didn’t win the midterms—they simply held the line
Americans invested in the idea of living in a democracy heaved a collective sigh of relief the day after the 2022 midterm elections when it became clear that the dire predictions of a Republican sweep were overblown. Democrats made greater gains than expected, winning races in both the Senate and the House that they didn’t expect to. Continue reading
Judging by history, the Trump-DeSantis feud could turn very violent
The political civil war that is erupting in the Republican Party between loyalists of Donald Trump and Florida’s recently re-elected governor, Ron DeSantis, has the making for a full-blown Hatfield and McCoy-style feud. Although Trump supporters are largely cultists adhering to QAnon and white nationalist drivel, DeSantis supporters include several former Trump fans who are no less driven to settling scores on the streets. No sooner had he taken to disparaging DeSantis on his Truth Social platform, Trump began re-transmitting scores of anti-DeSantis postings from QAnon accounts. Continue reading
For Lula’s victory to matter: A proposal for a unified Palestinian foreign policy
Palestinians and their supporters are justified in celebrating the election victory of the leftist presidential candidate, Luis Inacio Lula da Silva, in Brazil’s runoff elections on October 30. But Lula’s victory is incomplete and could ultimately prove ineffectual if not followed by a concrete and centralized Palestinian strategy. Continue reading
Midterm elections too close: Dems need to fire their corporate-conflicted political consultants
The mid-term congressional elections are over, but the counting in some very close races continues, which extends the time for determining the margins of control over the Senate and the House. Continue reading
The government is still waging war on America’s military veterans
The U.S. government is still waging war on America’s military veterans. Continue reading
‘Nothing works’: Europe must stop blaming others for its own crises
The European Union’s Foreign Policy Chief Josep Borrell is not particularly perceived by the EU’s political elite or mainstream media as a rightwing ideologue or warmonger. But seen through a different, non-western prism, it is hard not to mistake him for one. Continue reading
No red wave, no surprise
Americans not only get the best “democracy” money can buy, they get results determined by brazen fraud. Continue reading
Did the fascist mantle just pass to Ron DeSantis?
In democracy, the people choose their leaders; in fascism, the leader chooses his people.
The elections appear to be a mixed bag, with young people and women, in particular, rejecting the rightwing Supreme Court Dobbs abortion decision. The early youth vote in Wisconsin, for example was 360% higher than in 2018 according to Ben Wikler, the chair of the Wisconsin Democratic Party. Continue reading
Will democracies be polarized out of existence?
From the United States and Brazil to Israel and Hungary, liberals approach the widening gap in political perceptions with incredulity while Illiberals see polarization as a political opportunity to destroy democracy.
Every election these days seems more consequential than the last. Continue reading
Woodward and Bernstein warn that GOP leader Trump was a seditious president
WASHINGTON—The two reporters perhaps more expert than anyone else in presidents who violate the U.S. Constitution have come to one conclusion: Donald Trump “was a seditious president.” Continue reading
The ‘principal threat’: Time to talk about the Palestinian class struggle
On Monday, October 31, Palestinians in the town of Al-Eizariya, east of Occupied East Jerusalem, observed a general strike. The strike was declared to be part of the community’s mourning of 49-year-old Barakat Moussa Odeh, who was killed by Israeli forces in Jericho a day earlier. Continue reading
The dream of American socialism has been strangled by mainstream media
Mainstream media make it their task to keep Americans ignorant about socialism. Because American mass media are under the control of capitalists, mainstream media do not allow what they see as inconvenient facts competing with leftist economic systems to reach the masses. Continue reading
Chasing a mirage: How Israel Arab parties validate Israeli apartheid
Regardless of the outcome of the latest Israeli elections, Arab parties will not reap meaningful political benefits, even if they collectively achieve their highest representation ever. The reason is not about the parties themselves, but in Israel’s skewed political system which is predicated on racism and marginalization of non-Jews. Continue reading
Corporate CEOs gone wild: Raking in inflation profits and busting unions
Democratic politicians who don’t call out powerful corporations and their CEO’s as the driving force behind inflation risk allowing the GOP, the party with no plan to combat the skyrocketing costs to consumers of almost everything, to take power in the elections next week. Continue reading
Electoral denialism cuts across party lines: Despite What the corporate media would have us believe, both parties engage in the ‘big lie,’ and the rest of lose because of it
Speaking to the January 6th Committee on September 29, 2022, Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, stood by her contention that the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election was stolen. Thomas and others who doubt the legitimacy of the election results have been convinced to believe “the big lie.” The big lie refers to an incomprehensible distortion or misrepresentation of the truth as a form of propaganda. It is often attributed to the Nazis’ big lie about the Jews after World War I, which served to justify the holocaust for sympathizers. Germany’s Reich Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels explained, “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.” Continue reading
The weapon that the GOP pointed at the heart of our democracy in 1964 still haunts us
Will we be governed by representatives we elect, or people put in office by angry mobs storming capitols? Continue reading
A white Christian nationalist state produced Musk, Thiel, and other fascists among us
As we approach the Fifth of November, the day Britain resolves that there is no reason why the 1605 “Gunpowder Treason should ever be forgot,” we should also remember that the two fascist billionaires, Elon Musk and Peter Thiel, are products of the white Christian nationalist and racist apartheid state of South Africa. Musk’s ownership of Twitter, the world’s third-largest social media platform, and Thiel’s unveiled attempt to insert two of his hedge fund lackeys, J. D. Vance and Blake Masters into the U.S. Senate representing Ohio and Arizona, respectively, point to the export of apartheid fascism from the Boer veldt of South Africa to the shores of the United States. Continue reading
Anarchy in America: We’re being gunned down like dogs in the street
Things are falling apart. Continue reading
What if journalism disappeared?
By examining how journalism is missing from many Americans’ lives, we can identify false paths and promising routes to its reinvention.
In 1995, early in the development of the global internet, sociologist Michael Schudson imagined how people might process information if journalism were to suddenly disappear. An expert on the history of US news media, Schudson speculated that peoples’ need to identify the day’s most important and relevant news from the continuous torrent of available information would eventually lead to the reinvention of journalism. Continue reading
The party of violence
The GOP’s gun-flaunting ads, apocalyptic messaging, and demonization of opponents are steering its followers toward bloodshed.
A MAGA “patriot” broke into the home of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in order to kidnap her, break her kneecaps, and perhaps beat her to death with a hammer. Continue reading
Politicians make Black people the face of crime
Manufactured crime panics are still a successful method of getting votes from white people.
When politicians and corporate media speak of crime they are invariably talking about Black people as a group. The latest manufactured crime panic is following a very old and successful playbook. The dog whistle is very clearly heard by white people, who don’t need very much encouragement to indulge in their worst racist fantasies. Politicians feed the madness and then profit from it, making Black people the face of crime and then winning office as result. Continue reading
American Democracy: Buying & selling elections
Posted on November 21, 2022 by Frank Scott
This was the most important election in American history, as was the previous one, the one before that, and all previous exercises of marketing that pose as democratic rule in our great example of how to fool most of the people most of the time. Of course this election, as all others, cost more money than the previous marketing fiasco, when more than 14 billion dollars were spent on the 2020 purchase of the White House and Congress which rose to more than 16 billion for this cycle of shopping center lesser evilism that cost even more just to purchase Congress. Clearly, democracy survived its most serious assault in the history of marketing, at least according to our mind managers and consciousness controllers who make pimps and sex workers seem like poets of love. The only thing that is consistent in our one corrupt system with two corrupt parties is the rising profit margin as all manner of advertising, insurance, polling and other marketplace hustlers feast on the profits available in marketing capitalist democracy while claiming to stand for truth, beauty and other forms of mass hallucinations. Continue reading →