PRESIDENT OBAMA “THROWS IN THE TOWEL” ON POPULISM AND “INTEGRITY” IN HIS ADMINISTRATION Two obscure cabinet appointments with an outsized impact on the daily lives of Americans made by President Obama in the last month offers a startling look at the true course the president’s second term will take, argues Norman Solomon. Penny Pritzker [...]
WILL “KEYSTONE COPS,” IN THE NAME OF “SECURITY,” BE SUPPRESSING PROTEST AGAINST KEYSTONE XL PIPELINE IN NEBRASKA? Local officials of the pipeline company behind the oil company, TransCanada, are in negotiations with local police enforcement agents about using “off duty” police officers to insure against “violence” among the protesters. The local protest group, Bold [...]
WATCH YOUR MOUTH, JOHN KERRY. The new U.S. Secretary of State commits the unpardonable sin of comparing the suffering visited on innocent people at the Boston Marathon with the 2010 Israeli raid and killing of numerous passengers on a “flotilla” of vessels bound with humanitarian aid to breach the Israeli blockage of Gaza. Israeli [...]
ANTI-DRONE ACTION: IT’S NOT JUST A 13-HOUR RAND PAUL FILIBUSTER ANYMORE. Medea Benjaming and Noor Mir describe an April “month of uprising” against drone use both domestically and in pursuit of U.S. foreign policy interests. This “uprising” is taking many forms, including prohibitions for police use in many cities and states, protests at the [...]
VAMPIRE CAPITALISM ON THE PROWL FROM DETROIT TO ATLANTA. Bruce A. Dixon describes the process by which predatory “banksters” use their political clout to manufacture fiscal “crises” in Detroit and the Atlanta suburb of DeKalb County, to force political leaders to declare their elected governments in default, and impose bankster-profitable austerity and privatization measures. [...]
THE HISTORIC FAILURE OF THE BLACK POLITICAL MISLEADERSHIP CLASS. Bruce A. Dixon thus describes the spectacular failure of these leaders to stem the tide of privatization of schools and other public institutions—or the massive gentrification of black neighborhoods—or the criminalization and incarceration of huge portions of the black population. Dixon spares not even Martin [...]
CUBA IN A TIME OF CHOLERA. The Raul Castro government tends to deny the scope of the outbreak of the disease and resist some of the public health measures required to deal with it. This denial seems to be based on a desire not to hurt Cuba’s “reputation” as a desirable tourist destination, but [...]
The world’s largest purveyor of sugary drinks has made an unprecedented public embrace of its own culpability in America’s struggle with obesity and the costs associated with an overweight population. A new video released by Coca-Cola to considerable buzz bluntly labels obesity the “issue of this generation” and makes a vague admission that calories from [...]
LASSO THAT ICEBERG, COWBOY! Exxon Mobil prepares massive oil drilling off the coast of Newfoundland, ironically near the point at which the Titanic was sunk by an iceberg. To ally any fears that another iceberg could produce an even larger environmental disaster, the company plans to construct concrete towers taller than the Eiffel Tower [...]
“WE HAVEN’T BURIED THE CHILDREN YET. WE’RE NOT DISCUSSING IT.” While media mogul Rupert Murdoch has been praised for his public reactions to the Connecticut school massacre by calling for stricter gun regulations in the United States, his Fox News cable channel is accused of dropping the ball on coverage of the tragedy by [...]
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