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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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  • Nobel Peace Prize Watch Faults Award’s Selection Process

    “In his latest book, The Real Nobel Peace Prize, to be released on Nov. 11, he explains how Alfred Nobel, “over 50 years before the first nuclear bomb, understood what was coming and established his peace prize for a global co-operation to end war.”

  • Medicare Advantage and Home Health Care

    A new report from the Center for Economic and Policy Research finds that financial actors have used Medicare Advantage as their point of entry into the home health care sector.

  • Hyping Ukraine Counteroffensive

    “The Times report is incongruous with the earlier triumphalist tone of the American press in the lead up to the counteroffensive. Remarkably, this positive tone was presented despite mainstream reporting about how U.S. administration officials did not actually have much faith in the counteroffensive to succeed.”

  • Federal Funding Ends for Child Care

    Vox writes that the media has repeatedly cited an estimate that 70,000 child care programs would likely close after pandemic-era federal funding for child care ran out at the end of September––but experts don’t agree with the number.

  • Legal Challenge Launched Against U.S. Government for Enabling Israeli Discrimination

    “The lawsuit, brought under the Administrative Procedures Act, alleges that DHS and the State Department took arbitrary and capricious action to redefine the Visa Waiver Program statute rule requiring reciprocal privileges for U.S. citizens. The July 19, 2023 Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the DHS, the State Department and the government of Israel allows Israel…

  • UAW Strike, Behind the Headlines

    “Today a demand that the investment program of big corporations like GM must become subject to democratic pressure might not only save factories like Lordstown, but it would be the most effective way to expose President Trump’s faux sympathy for the Midwestern working class. It would unite the populist denunciation of the billionaire class to…

  • Picket Lines at Congressional Offices: “Looming Threat of Nuclear War”

    “We’re going to show every member of Congress that we won’t be silent on the path to nuclear Armageddon. We have activists in every congressional district in the state saying with a unified voice that the costs of a nuclear arms race are too high, and that justice for communities like the Marshallese people have…

  • Zelenskyy and Canadian Parliament Give Ovation to SS Nazi Veteran

    “The AP caption described Hunka as having ‘fought with the First Ukrainian Division in World War II before later immigrating to Canada.’ The First Ukrainian Division is another name for the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS, the military wing of the Nazi Party; the unit was also called SS Galichina.”

  • National Nurses United Calls on CDC to Hold Public Meetings

    National Nurses United put out a letter calling for the CDC to hold public meetings before the agency votes on new infection control guidance updates.

  • Menendez Indictment and Egypt

    “At other points in the indictment, Menendez is described as skirting his committee, at one point asking the State Department for a breakdown of staffing at the U.S. Embassy in Egypt, information ‘deemed highly sensitive because it could pose significant operational security concerns if disclosed to a foreign government or if made public.’ …”

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