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  • Sorry, Census. Poverty Really Did Increase in 2009.

    Between 2008 and 2009, unemployment increased from 5.8 percent to 9.3 percent, the largest one-year increase on record (which goes back to 1948). Over the same period, the number of Americans without health insurance coverage rose by more than four million — from 46.3 million in 2008 to 50.7 million in 2009 — and low-income…

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  • Bruce Reed Appointed Biden Chief of Staff Today

    In light of his prominent role in deficit reduction and the ‘end of welfare’ in the 1990s, Reed’s appointment sends a clear — and troubling — signal about the administration’s domestic policy priorities in the years ahead. Alice O’Connor is author of Poverty Knowledge: Social Science, Social Policy and the Poor in Twentieth Century U.S.…

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  • A Statement from Former Prisoner Omar Deghayes on the 9th Anniversary of the Opening of Guantánamo

    Two years ago, President Barack Obama pledged to bring an end to the anomaly that is Guantánamo within a year, and to thereby restore America’s moral standing in the world. Yet today, on January 11, 2011, we are marking the beginning of the tenth year since the first prisoners were transferred to Camp X Ray…

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  • The Referendum in Sudan

    KHARTOUM, Sudan — Just days before the historic referendum on southern independence Khartoum is experiencing temperate weather and what may turn out to be a deceptive calm. In fact, everybody is either worried or excited, depending on their circumstances. Southerners are resolute that they will not accept second class citizenship in their own country, otherwise,…

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  • The End of New Deal Liberalism

    By William Greider We have reached a pivotal moment in government and politics, and it feels like the last, groaning spasms of New Deal liberalism. When the party of activist government, faced with an epic crisis, will not use government’s extensive powers to reverse the economic disorders and heal deepening social deterioration, then it must…

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  • Chomsky’s initial reaction to WikiLeaks’ latest

    I took a quick look at [“U.S. embassy cables: Hillary Clinton woos prickly Egyptians“].  It’s interesting that Israel does not appear, only Gaza, West Bank, Lebanon.  I found only one entry of any interest, in US Embassy to Clinton: “Soliman brokered a half-year-long truce last year, which Hamas broke in December, leading to the Israeli…

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  • The Katharine Gun Case

    Katharine Gun, a British former government employee, faced two years imprisonment in England for the “crime” of telling the truth. She was charged with leaking an embarrassing U.S. intelligence memo indicating that the U.S. had mounted a spying “surge” against U.N. delegations in early 2003 in an effort to win approval of the Iraq war…

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  • Bush and Blair: A Partnership of Deception

    British Prime Minister Tony Blair is back in Britain now facing an ever-widening scandal involving the distortion of evidence on Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction, but his recent trip to meet with President Bush underscores the partnership the two leaders have shared as both face growing evidence that they knowingly used faulty intelligence to…

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  • Bush in Africa: “A Cruel Hoax”?

    President Bush’s recent tour of Africa to tout his $15 billion pledge to fight the continent’s AIDS epidemic and promote trade was met with skepticism by critics who charged that his administration is attempting to mask regressive policies with staged public relations events. Bush’s trip to Africa appears to represent, more than anything else, an…

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  • Responses to Bush’s 2003 State of the Union Address

    Mr. Speaker, Vice President Cheney, members of Congress, distinguished citizens and fellow citizens, every year, by law and by custom, we meet here to consider the state of the union. This year, we gather in this chamber deeply aware of decisive days that lie ahead. You and I serve our country in a time of…

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  • Instructor at Great Mills HS Leads Campaign to Demilitarize Schools

    Elder said today: “I was at Great Mills High School last night, teaching GED. … There are hundreds of trailer homes around the school. There’s tattoo shops and liquor stores. Nearby, there’s Lockheed and CACI and other military contractors, making millions. My son went to the school and when he was there, I raised concerns about the…

  • Vote on U.S. Backing for Saudi War on Yemen as Crown Prince Tours U.S.

    “Citing that U.S. involvement in Yemen is unconstitutional and unauthorized, Senators Bernie Sanders, Mike Lee, and Chris Murphy have recently invoked the War Powers Resolution and introduced a bill that aims to extricate the United States from this war. Bill S.J.Res.54 is currently cosponsored by 10 senators, and the vote will likely coincide with Mohamed…

  • Trump CIA Nominee Faces Possible Arrest Warrant in Germany

    Schüller said of Haspel: “She should be standing trial, not be promoted. … “The Federal Prosecutor did add our criminal complaint against Gina Haspel to his preliminary examination of CIA-torture, which exists since the U.S.-Senate Committee published its executive summary about CIA-detainee treatment in December 2014. “We ask for a joint criminal investigation of the…

  • “Space Force”: Trump Accelerating Aerospace Goal Targeting China and Russia

    “Whether a separate ‘Space Force’ is created or not, the U.S. is spending massive amounts of public funds to create a new arms race in space. Since Bill Clinton’s administration, Washington has continually refused to negotiate a treaty to ban weapons in space with China and Russia. Instead the U.S. pulled out of the ABM Treaty in 2002, and…

  • Trump’s Nominees: Pompeo at State, Haspel at CIA: * Targeting Iran * Torture

    “Haspel is not the first government official with involvement in torture, or other types of war crimes. This is a government with no accountability. But her hands are particularly dirty, having both run a secret CIA torture prison, and then covering up its felonies. Her nomination is a moral depravity. …”

  • Now: “Another Big Bank Bailout”

    “Even after the financial sector got bailed out by Main Street, these financial institutions nevertheless continued to break the law. And they did so in some of the most egregious ways, like market manipulation, mortgage abuses and selling toxic securities abuses. In fact, in just 10 years these 26 banks racked up 193 violations. This…

  • Trump, Death Penalty and Drug Addiction: What’s at the Root of the Problem?

    “And the real question then is: what happened in my life or your life, Joe, or everybody else’s lives here, that we incurred pain. And then how do we deal with our pain? Because the addiction itself magnifies the pain, it multiplies it — it increases it exponentially.”

  • DeVos’s Record in Michigan

    “Michigan also leads the nation in the number of for-profit charter schools, another dubious distinction. These schools use public tax dollars to produce profit for privately-controlled charter management companies, hastening the redistribution of funds from public coffers to private pockets.”

  • U.S.-North Korea: Victory for President Moon?

    “It’s a mistake to believe that ‘maximum pressure’ forced North Korea to dialogue; it was Moon’s masterful diplomatic stroke. It’s a dangerous rewriting of what happened, and it is sure to be what causes Trump to fail in talks with Kim.”

  • Saudi Arabia Using Law Firm Tied to Trump to Lobby U.S. for Nuclear Deal

    “The Trump administration’s negotiations around Saudi nuclear power have been controversial. Unlike other countries seeking the use of U.S. nuclear technology, Saudi Arabia refuses to sign any agreement prohibiting uranium enrichment, which could be used to produce nuclear weapons.”

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