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Pakistan
“President Donald Trump’s first tweet of the year concerned none of the other ‘usual suspects’ of international ‘rogue’ nations routinely targeted for the president’s wrath: North Korea, Iran, or a China, or a Venezuela. No, this tweet concerned one of the older scapegoats for America’s travails in the ‘Af-Pak’ theatre in the ‘war on terrorism’, that ‘most dangerous country on earth,’: Pakistan. Trump’s sudden outburst repeated more colorfully the hackneyed refrains that Islamabad is all too familiar with by now: more diplomatic-sounding jargon now replaced by language such as ‘lies’ and ‘deceit’ in claiming that Pakistan has taken billions from…
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Korea and Olympics: Opening for Dialogue?
“If Bush had kept the Agreed Framework, if hardliners had not sabotaged the Six Party Talks, and if Obama had clarified the terms of the Leap Day deal, North Korea might not be the nuclear nightmare that grips the United States and its allies today.”
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UN Vote on Jerusalem: U.S. as “Capo dei Capi”
“Coverage of the UN Security Council does not disclose what is really going on in this secretive and despotic institution. Washington causes a stir when it casts a public veto such as the one on Jerusalem, but in fact it uses its veto power daily in private sessions and it regularly dictates Council action (or inaction) in line with U.S. ‘interests.’ The Council is a mafia-like body in which a single member imposes itself on all the rest. In contrast to Britain, France, Russia and China, the U.S. is the capo dei capi — the boss of all the bosses.”
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Evidence of Honduran Election Being Stolen
“International media attention has glossed over the popular resistance in the streets of Honduras and the ensuing violent crackdowns and human rights violations committed by [government] forces. The voices of people and grassroots groups involved in the road blocks, protests, and resistance all over the country are being ignored.”
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Tax Bill: Senators’ Special Tax Breaks, Duping Public
“Senator Collins, in all of your years in politics, all your years of being an educated, intelligent woman, have you honestly still not figured out how to tell when you are being lied to? The idea that Mitch McConnell and your colleagues in the Senate are going to address your concerns with the tax bill in future health care legislation is absurd. GOP leaders started reneging on their so-called promises to you almost as soon as they were made.”
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Is the National Security Strategy Military Dominance?
“There are two ways to look at Trump’s remarks on national security, noting, of course, that his language is both more Orwellian, and less polished than we have seen before from the White House. “The first is that getting past his words, Trumps’ actions on people overseas have not been much different than any of his predecessors. His actions have been a military first, interventionist and hypocritical foreign policy not based on cooperation between nations and a respect for human rights and dignity, but rather a preservation of American hegemony and primacy that results in mass suffering and death for…
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Sexual Harassment and Low-Wage Women
“The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission says the restaurant industry is the largest source of sexual harassment claims. In a national survey of 4,300 restaurant workers by the worker center Restaurant Opportunities Centers United, more than one in 10 workers reported that they or a co-worker had experienced sexual harassment. ROC says even this creepy figure is likely an undercount.”
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Documents Show U.S. Violated Assurances to Moscow About Limiting NATO
“The National Security Archive materials reinforce the point that Soviet — and subsequent Russian — leaders had major reasons to believe NATO expansion was not going to occur in the post-Cold War era. The bargaining surrounding German reunification involved not just diplomatic reassurances, on the American side, but a series of seemingly-significant steps to make these pledges appear credible.”
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Killing Net Neutrality: “Regulatory Capture by Commercial Interests”
“Pai has displayed an utter disregard toward all voices other than those he values most: the very industries the FCC purportedly regulates. This isn’t deregulation; it is reregulation by giving internet service monopolies the power to censor online content and limit our access to the internet. History will not look kindly on this FCC.”
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Nobel Peace Prize: Threats to Nuclear Ban Treaty
“It is the first true multilateral nuclear disarmament treaty ever successfully negotiated. All prior multilateral nuclear treaties aim at preventing proliferation, leaving current arsenals untouched.”
Blog
“With a tiny staff, it has managed to place on the air and in newspapers, points of view otherwise excluded from the national debate.”
Howard Zinn