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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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  • Is Saudi Gunning to Scuttle Mideast Peace?

    “Rather than a miscalculation on the Saudi’s part as some analysts would like to believe, the timing of the execution itself alongside Al-Qaeda suspects were telling signs that this was a premeditated move and to send out a clear message to both regional and international actors alike.”

  • Calls to Remove Head of DNC, Debbie Wasserman Schultz

    “In addition to her recent attempt to deny the Bernie Sanders campaign access to its own voter files, Wasserman Schultz has tried in other ways to minimize competition for her candidate, Hillary Clinton. She has done this by scheduling very few primary debates, and scheduling them at times of low TV viewing.”

  • Saudi Executions, Weapons and Influence

    “The execution sends a clear message that the Saudi regime does not care for Islamic and international public opinion and for hundreds of millions of Sheikh Nimr’s lovers who would be hurt by his execution. … Al Saud [the Saudi royal family] are also explicitly telling people that they can either live under the dictatorship…

  • Clinton: The “Temporary Populist”

    “Her Wall Street proposals may sound tough and detailed, but they’re merely technocratic tweaks that don’t get to the heart of the vast increase in the power of Big Money over the last 35 years. And her many supporters on Wall Street know this.”

  • Anger in Streets of Baltimore

    “There are multiple layers of law enforcement incentives, from increased overtime, to easier access to funding for equipment (including riot gear), for law enforcement to produce a large show of force. That serves both to intimidate folks in the community, a so-called ‘deterrent’ which is designed to create a climate where police messages about being…

  • CNN: Must a President Kill Thousands of Children?

    “It’s horrifying to see our leading cable news network offering, as a litmus test for becoming president of United States, a willingness to kill thousands of innocent children. To equate that with toughness and seriousness about protecting the United States is a violent fantasy of the sort that motivates the people who carry out mass…

  • Paris Agreement: Is Massive Military Emissions Bootprint Still Exempt?

    “We need to open up a debate about how to cut record world military and homeland security expenditure and invest that money instead into climate adaptation for the world’s most vulnerable people. That is the only way to deliver real human security, the security of a safe and sustainable future for everyone.”

  • Trump’s Islamophobia is Tip of Iceberg

    “For more than a decade now, they’ve been told the main thing that we need to be scared about is crazy Muslims coming to kill us. The statistics tell a very different story. Some conservatives hate me for saying it, but the truth is, since 9/11, more people have been killed by right-wing terrorists than…

  • 9/11 Whistleblower Rowley on Visas and Mideast War Root Causes

    “In its mad rush to push something out to look as if they were quickly remedying the problems, the House skipped normal debate that comes from holding committee meetings, passing its bizarre ‘Trump-lite’ blanket discriminatory provisions in H.R. 158, the Visa Waiver Program Improvement Act of 2015 [passed on Tuesday 407-19], that would bar citizens…

  • Paris Climate Deal a “Fraud”

    “While fossil fuels production continues to get incentivized and subsidized to the tune of trillions of dollars per year, the rich developed world, responsible for 75 percent of historic emissions, can barely muster a commitment to $100 billion annually (let alone the actual cash), in climate finance to help developing countries transition from fossil fuels.”

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