Is Corporate America Rebuking the Republican Party?

Georgia’s voting rights laws are forcing unlikely alliances between the Democrats and Big Business

_____ The Republican outrage over Major League Baseball moving the All-Star game out of Georgia after the passage of the state’s new voter suppression law reveals a bigger crisis in American democracy: the mechanics of our current system do not reflect the will of the majority. Consumer-driven corporate America is increasingly throwing ...
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Is Corporate America Rebuking the Republican Party?

Infrastructure Is the Gift That Keeps on Giving

But the GOP will oppose this important jobs bill and the taxes one billionaires that could redistribute wealth to millions of Americans

_____ This week, President Joe Biden unveiled a new $2 trillion infrastructure proposal titled The American Jobs Plan. The statement introducing the plan notes that the United States currently ranks 13th in the world for the quality of our infrastructure, and that our public domestic investment as a share of the ...
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Infrastructure Is the Gift That Keeps on Giving

The Case for Creating a National Lustration Commission for the United States

It’s a way to stabilize fragile democratic institutions

_____ The  storming of the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob on January 6 has made it clear that a surprising number of police and military veterans are currently affiliated with armed right wing militias. But suspending and firing a few police officers and soldiers in response likely won’t suffice. And any mass ...
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The Case for Creating a National Lustration Commission for the United States

China’s Return to Global Dominance

What it means for America — and for the future of democracy around the world

_____ When future historians look back on our discordant times, they will surely report an epochal shift of global importance: a transition from failed attempts to restore America’s greatness to China’s return, after two centuries of subjugation, to world pre-eminence. The writing is already on the wall, but strange prejudices, bitter ...
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China’s Return to Global Dominance

Glenn Greenwald Punches Down

Worse, when he attacked an intern for USA Today, this established and wealthy journalist also threw the truth under the bus

My disappointment with Glenn Greenwald, who I once admired for his work on the Snowden revelations, escalates. Watch as Greenwald, who has 1.6 million followers, deliberately exposes a recent college graduate, a woman, to a screaming mob of trolls on March 28, 2021: Screenshot via Glenn Greenwald's Twitter @ggreenwald. What a bully. More importantly, ...
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Glenn Greenwald Punches Down

The Struggle at Turkey’s Boğaziçi University

Attacks on higher education tighten the grip of the AKP’s hegemonic project

_____ Late at night on January 1, 2021, by presidential decree, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan appointed new rectors to five universities in Turkey. One was Professor Melih Bulu, who became rector of the prestigious Boğaziçi University. This liberal and pluralist institution hosts dissident students and faculty, including many connected to Academics for Peace, ...
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The Struggle at Turkey’s Boğaziçi University

Obama Said He’d Close Guantánamo — These Activists Are Pushing Biden to Finish the Job

What should have been an end to the Guantánamo saga in 2012, was only the beginning of more grueling work for this anti-torture coalition

_____ I remember, as if in a distant dream, repeating through sobs of joy and exhaustion, “It’s over. It’s over.” On live TV President Obama had just signed, as his first official act in January 2009, an executive order mandating the closure of the prison at Guantánamo. To Obama’s right stood ...
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Obama Said He’d Close Guantánamo — These Activists Are Pushing Biden to Finish the Job

Winston Churchill’s North American Tour

In the summer of 1929, the future prime minister almost quit politics

_____ One night in the summer of 1929, Winston Churchill, who was staying in a bungalow owned by William Randolph Hearst, was horrified to see a bulky figure clambering through his window.  The intruder, Winston realized, was his son Randolph, who seemed equally startled. Randolph had expected to find Hearst’s daughter-in-law, who ...
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Winston Churchill’s North American Tour

What America Teaches White Men About Asian American Women

The Atlanta killings have all the hallmarks of a hate crime

_____ On March 16, 2021, Robert Aaron Long – a twenty-one-year-old white male evangelical Christian – massacred six Asian American women while they were working at three Asian-owned Atlanta-area spas: Daoyou Feng (44), Hyunjung Grant (51), Suncha Kim (69), Soon Chung Park (74), Xiaojie Tan (49), and Yong Ae Yue (63). Police ...
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What America Teaches White Men About Asian American Women

Beyond the Two-State Solution

A decimated Left is at a crossroads. Is the only chance for meaningful opposition to drop the doctrine that Zionism requires a Jewish State? A discussion

_____ The Left in Israel has been decimated, its options reduced to propping up Netanyahu or his hardline challengers. Some, including philosopher Omri Boehm, believe that the only chance for meaningful opposition is for the Left to drop the doctrine that Zionism requires a Jewish State. The Zionist Left, so this ...
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Beyond the Two-State Solution