Despite all appearances to the contrary, martial law has not been declared in America. Continue reading
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Hating Arabs as a common ground: Why Israel’s coalition government is likely to survive
Shortly after an agreement to form a “national emergency government” in Israel, leader of the Blue and White (Kahol Lavan) party, Benny Gantz, tweeted triumphantly that ‘democracy’ in Israel has been ‘safeguarded’. Continue reading
Freedom Rider: Fighting COVID-19 with mass action and a people’s strike
The people’s mass fightback against the system that failed to protect them from the coronavirus and corporate predators begins May 1. Continue reading
As coronavirus still rages, debate over post-virus future heats up
WASHINGTON—Even as the coronavirus pandemic still rages through the U.S., the debate over the shape of society and the economy, post-virus, is heating up. Continue reading
A cult within a cult: Falun Gong and the Trump administration
Falun Gong, the Central Intelligence Agency-linked Chinese cult, which is banned in China, has achieved overarching influence in the Donald Trump White House, State Department, and among Republican Party stalwarts harboring ambitions for national office. The cult’s newspaper, The Epoch Times, enjoys access to White House press conferences and is currently engaged in a campaign to cast blame on China for the COVID-19 pandemic. Continue reading
Israeli brutality against Palestinians during COVID-19 outbreaks
Instead of easing state-sponsored violence against Palestinians at a time of COVID-19 outbreaks, the racist Netanyahu regime and extremist settlers it supports are using the public health crisis to intensify viciousness. Continue reading
COVID-19[84]: I’m putting mainstream media on lock-down
If I have to listen to yet one more vacuous talking head blithely telling me that “we’re all in this together” one more freaking time, I’m gonna just go run screaming through the streets — with or without a face mask. Continue reading
Post-corona world: Recrimination and defederation
There are growing signs that the coronavirus pandemic will radically alter the geo-political map of the world. The governors, prime ministers, premiers, chief ministers, and administrators of sub-national governments have been almost unanimous in decrying the lack of support from central governments during the current COVID-19 crisis. Not least among these have been the governors of the American states of New York, Michigan, Washington, and other states and U.S. territories. Continue reading
Shed no tears for CEOs with sinking share prices
In today’s corporate pay environment, even a global pandemic can’t deny chief execs their windfalls
Sometimes calendars can be cruel. A regularly reoccurring event can suddenly reoccur at a most inopportune moment. Just ask Ronald Rittenmeyer, the chief executive of Tenet Healthcare, a for-profit colossus that runs 65 hospitals and over 500 smaller care centers across the country. Continue reading
If we lose our focus on coronavirus it might bite us again
The discussion of coronavirus has taken some sharp turns. One such turn is the claim that the mortality rate is not high enough to justify shutdowns. But the mortality rate is not the reason for the shutdowns. The purpose of the closedowns is to reduce the exponential rate of infection. COVID-19 is much more contagious than flu, people can spread the virus for days and weeks prior to developing symptoms, the seriousness of each case is not predictable in advance, and it is a new virus about which little is known including treatment. Therefore, the highly infectious virus can easily overwhelm health care systems—just ask New York City and Italy. This is the reason for trying to reduce the rate of infection. There is no good information on mortality rates as there is no reliable or widespread testing, and the payment incentives result in hospitals reporting the virus as the cause of any deaths that can be associated with it. Continue reading
The COVID-19 class divide
The pandemic is putting America’s deepening class divide into stark relief. Four classes are emerging. Continue reading
In the face of death and disease, who’s sorry now? Not Donald Trump—yet
There’s no imaginable excuse for his words and inaction, but a simple apology couldn’t hurt.
What’s the smartest thing Donald Trump could say to the American people right now? I mean, other than, “I resign.” Continue reading
Some progressives are in denial about Trump’s fascist momentum
Some say preventing the re-election of Trump isn't important. That amounts to ignoring political reality, an evasion with potentially vast consequences.
Two years after Donald Trump won the presidency, the author of “How Fascism Works” assessed him in a video. “It might seem like an exaggeration to call Trump a fascist,” Yale Professor Jason Stanley said. “I mean, he’s not calling for a genocide or imprisoning his own people without due process. But . . . if you use history and philosophy as a guide, it’s easy to see parallels between Trump’s words and those of the most reviled fascists in history. That scares me, and it should scare you too.” Continue reading
Revolution in the twenty-first century: A reconsideration of Marxism
In the age of COVID-19, it’s even more obvious than it’s been for at least a couple of decades that capitalism is entering a long, drawn-out period of unprecedented global crisis. The Great Depression and World War II will likely, in retrospect, seem rather minor—and temporally condensed—compared to the many decades of ecological, economic, social, and political crises humanity is embarking on now. In fact, it’s probable that we’re in the early stages of the protracted collapse of a civilization, which is to say of a particular set of economic relations underpinning certain social, political, and cultural relations. One can predict that the mass popular resistance, worldwide, engendered by cascading crises will gradually transform a decrepit ancien régime, although in what direction it is too early to tell. But left-wing resistance is already spreading and even gaining the glimmers of momentum in certain regions of the world, including—despite the ending of Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign—the reactionary United States. Over decades, the international left will grow in strength, even as the right, in all likelihood, does as well. Continue reading
COVID-19: When to restart the economy?
Global leaderships are being tested by an unseen enemy. Decisions affecting the lives and livelihoods of millions are being made based on flimsy expert projections as to the behaviour of a virus that so far remains unknowable. Continue reading
During coronvrius: Cuba to the rescue, but don’t tell the American people
Anti-Cuba zealots in the Trump administration have been enticing Cuban doctors working overseas to defect, paying journalists to write negative stories, slapping sanctions on Cubans in charge of the program, and strong-arming countries to expel Cuban doctors.
While Bernie Sanders paid a political price for uttering something positive about Cuba’s literacy program, the current pandemic has shown the whole world the heroic side of Cuba’s health care system. Continue reading
She’s back: Nikki Haley’s anti-China rage
Neocon hardliner Nikki Haley is an ideologically extremist hawk on the far-right fringe of US politics. Continue reading
Election protection in 12-18 states will decide the fate of the Earth
The 12-18 states that will decide the presidency this fall are already being primed for voter suppression and election theft by the Trump GOP. Our ability to overcome will decide the fate of the Earth. Continue reading
‘A power grab’: Postal union slams Trump for holding USPS funds hostage to force ‘draconian cuts’
‘This administration is committed to fulfilling the decades-long pursuit by some to sacrifice our public Postal Service at the altar of private profit.’
The 200,000-member American Postal Workers Union accused President Donald Trump of plotting to “sacrifice our public Postal Service at the altar of private profit” after the Washington Post reported late Thursday that the White House is considering using a $10 billion relief loan approved by Congress last month to impose long-sought changes on the popular agency. Continue reading
Washington’s Dr. Strangelove
There are lots of choices for this dubious distinction from elements of both right wings of Washington’s one-party state. Continue reading
Monitoring the public after coronavirus
It is too early to say when or even whether the siege initiated by the coronavirus will end, but many Americans and Europeans are speculating over what kind of countries will emerge on the other side. National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower Edward Snowden, who exposed illegal spying on American citizens, recently predicted that there would be a “slide into a less liberal and less free world,” that the surveillance systems being created to monitor the spread of the disease would become an “architecture of oppression.” To be sure he has a point in that governments have historically used crises to expand their powers. After the crisis is over, the emergency power granted to manage the activity of the people tends to be retained. Continue reading
The digital revolution is inconsistent with liberty
Many have expressed concerns that coronavirus will be used, as 9/11 and the hoax “war on terror” were, to further expand the American police state dystopia. But we were doomed by the digital revolution to a controlled existence regardless of 9/11 and Covid-19. Continue reading
Cooperation Humboldt and the solidarity economy
Founded in 2017, Cooperation Humboldt was already incubating worker cooperatives, administering food sovereignty programs, advocating for public banking and participatory budgeting, and exploring housing cooperatives, an arts hub, and eco-villages—all before the pandemic arrived in the U.S.
The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed all of the inconvenient truths about life in the United States. It is no longer possible to hide the disconnect between myths of a great and advanced society with scenes of long lines for food pantries, millions of workers suddenly unemployed and a political system that gives a one-time maximum payment of $1,200 in a time of severe economic crisis. The already marginalized are at greatest risk of death as black and brown people constitute the majority of coronavirus victims in large cities like New York, Detroit and Milwaukee. Continue reading
Most years, the Postal Service is a moneymaker
Most of the agency's deficits are phony paper losses, manufactured by Congress at the behest of corporate privatizers.
One public service that people really like and count on is the post office, which literally delivers for us. Continue reading
Stopping Trump’s demonic reversals of the long-term benefits of the first Earth Day, April 22, 1970
The omnicidal Republicans controlling the Senate support Trump’s reckless agenda regardless of the environmental harm done to their own families.
Earth Day, April 22, 1970, was the most consequential demonstration of civic energy in modern American history. Engaging nearly 20 million Americans participating in about 13,000 local events, this first Earth Day changed corporate and government policies through popular demands for clean air, water, soil and food. Continue reading
A Machiavellian fiasco: How ‘centrist’ Gantz resurrected Netanyahu, Israel’s Right
It was intended to be a Machiavellian move, but the decision by Benny Gantz, leader of Israel’s Kahol Lavan (Blue and White) coalition, to join a Benjamin Netanyahu-led government is likely to destabilize the political fabric of Israeli society for years to come. Continue reading
Misinterpreting the Constitution, a Trump specialty
Nearly all US presidents reinterpreted international, constitutional, and US statute laws time and again. Continue reading
Another Republican ‘grassroots’ movement hijacks the media
Protests against COVID-19 restrictions, like the Tea Party protests, are corporate fronts.
The Republican Party and its right-wing allies are incapable of governing. They have no policy principles other than a knee-jerk rejection of the policies of the opposing party; indeed, of all this country’s traditional notions of governance. Continue reading
Hungry Americans
In more normal times than now, tens of millions of Americans face hunger and food insecurity in the world’s richest country. Continue reading
Freedom Rider: Racism in and against China
The COVID-19 pandemic has resuscitated the old “yellow peril” canard to its fullest extent, revealing deep xenophobia and racist intent against China. Continue reading
COVID-19 and the wasting disease of normalcy
The pandemic has brought home what the threats of global destruction by climate change and nuclear war should have long ago—that the promises of normalcy will never deliver in the end.
“But what of the price of peace?” asked Jesuit priest and war resister Daniel Berrigan, writing from federal prison in 1969, doing time for his part in the destruction of draft records. “I think of the good, decent, peace-loving people I have known by the thousands, and I wonder. How many of them are so afflicted with the wasting disease of normalcy that, even as they declare for the peace, their hands reach out with an instinctive spasm in the direction of their loved ones, in the direction of their comforts, their home, their security, their income, their future, their plans—that twenty-year plan of family growth and unity, that fifty-year plan of decent life and honorable natural demise.” Continue reading
Israel prepares for annexation of the West Bank
Posted on May 1, 2020 by Jeremy Salt
Since the election of Donald Trump in 2016, Israel and its global lobbies have had an extraordinary run of success. Continue reading →