-
Obama, Clinton, Malcolm X, and the Novocaine Effect
“”This has been the role played by Obama. Many people — but especially black people — have silently suffered his policies because he has had the effect of novocaine. This is partly because, certainly, some rightwing attacks on Obama have been racial. But most of his core policies have been corporate and neoliberal. From a pro-corporate health insurance plan, to drone warfare, to not closing the wealth gap, to continuous wars, to trade deals and on and on.”
-
How the NSA Pushed Iraq Invasion
“The U.S. government, through the NSA, was spying — in violation of international law — on other UN Security Council members in order to better coerce them to back the invasion of Iraq. We know this because Katharine Gun leaked a short 300-word NSA memo on this shortly before the invasion. She worked at the time at GCHQ, the British equivalent of the NSA.”
-
Sykes-Picot and What Would Have King-Crane Brought?
“The redrawing borders continued after Sykes-Picot when the British seized Mosul Province from the French in 1918 by continuing fighting north and westward after the Armistice had been announced. Today in Washington there continues to be discussions of ethnically-based redrawing of borders in Iraq and Syria and the Kurds are part of this discourse, while oil remains the main driver.”
-
Afghanistan as “Longest War” Highlights Invisibility of Indigenous and Iraq Wars
“The conventional narrative of U.S. history routinely segregates the ‘Indian Wars’ as a sub-specialization within the dubious category ‘the West.’ But, the architecture of U.S. world dominance was designed and tested by the period of continental U.S. militarism, 1790-1890, the Indian Wars. The opening of the twenty-first century saw a new, even more brazen form of U.S. militarism and imperialism explode on the world followed by two major military invasions and hundreds of small wars employing U.S. Special Forces around the globe, establishing a template that continued after their political power waned.”
-
Brazil: Why It’s a Coup
“If the same criteria used against her were used against state governors, 16 of them would be impeached. They all used the same mechanism to cover a budget shortfall. You can’t impeach a president because you don’t like him or her. That’s why we call this a coup.”
-
What’s a Conservative Today?
“Many are lecturing about what being a ‘conservative’ means. Certainly there are tensions between people who identify as intellectual conservatives and a Donald Trump, who is appealing to public anger and populist tendencies.”
-
Paul Ryan “Wildly out of Step”
“One unfortunate consequence of the rise of Donald Trump is that many media outlets are portraying other Republicans, chiefly House Speaker Paul Ryan, as less extreme in comparison. In fact, Ryan’s plans to slash Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are wildly out of step with the American people.”
-
“Orwellian” Visit to Hiroshima as Obama Modernizes U.S. Nuclear Weapons
“There have been more than 30 times since the Nagasaki A-bombing that the U.S. government has prepared and/or threatened to initiate nuclear war during wars and international crises, most recently with the simulated nuclear attacks against North Korea and the nuclear-capable bomber flights in response to China’s building new military bases in contested waters of the South China Sea.”
-
Brazil Impeachment Agenda: Stop Corruption Investigations
“President Dilma Rousseff is accused of using a common financial mechanism to cover social program expenses in the federal budget by borrowing funds from public banks, which previous administrations also used, as well as local administrations. On the other hand, most Congress members in favor of the impeachment face serious investigations of corruption.”
-
Urban Institute Attack on Sanders’ Medicare-for-All Plan is “Ridiculous”
“To put it bluntly, the estimates (which were prepared by John Holahan and colleagues) are ridiculous. They project outlandish increases in the utilization of medical care, ignore vast savings under single-payer reform, and ignore the extensive and well-documented experience with single-payer systems in other nations — which all spend far less per person on health care than we do.”
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