Commentary
Commentary
How Billionaires Transfer Blame to Others
Eric Zuesse: Throughout history, aristocrats, and their flaks such as their ‘news’-media, cast blame downward, away from themselves who collectively control the government, and onto, instead, some minority or other mass group, who can’t even plan or function together so as to be able to control the government. ... The U.S. has a two-Party aristocracy, as is clear from the “Open Secrets” list of the 100 biggest political donors in the 2020 U.S. Presidential and congressional campaigns ... In a two-Party dictatorship, the important truths are kept away from being publicized on either side. What the public sees and hears, instead, is political theater, merely tailored to different audiences...
[ Visit Website ]
Jan 19, 2021, 3:10pm
Commentary
Ten Theses on Trump
Gary Leupp: 1. In understanding Trump one must first of all recognize his malignant narcissism. ... 2. Trump’s obvious lack of empathy, inability to admit fault, penchant to insult friend and foe alike, claims of polymathic genius, pathological mendacity, expectations of sycophancy, all impede his organizational ability. ... 3. Trump thinks simplistically and transparently. ... 4. Trump’s four years were an experiment in probing the depths of depravity in U.S. society. ... 5. It should be obvious: Trump is the center of a religious-like personality cult...
[ Visit Website ]
Jan 16, 2021, 12:27pm
Commentary
Raskolnikov’s Dream Come True
Edward Curtin: Something is happening here,
But you don’t know what it is,
Do you, Mr. Jones?
— Bob Dylan, Ballad of a Thin Man, 1965
[ Visit Website ]
Jan 13, 2021, 11:31am
Commentary
The pandemic and the normalization of death
Andre Damon, David North: The United States is in the midst of one of the most intense periods of mass death in the nation’s history. More than 16,000 people have died from the coronavirus in the course of just one week, an average of 2,300 every day. ... the official response is to minimize the catastrophe that is unfolding ... Death has been “normalized.” ... Under capitalism, what is meant by “the economy” is the exploitation of the working class. To the extent that the “cure”—that is, the most elementary measures to save lives—impinges on the process of profit accumulation, it is unacceptable...
[ Visit Website ]
Dec 9, 2020, 3:01pm
Commentary
Time to Grow Up: Ending Divisions Creating Peace
Graham Peebles: There are said to be around 30 armed conflicts currently taking place in the world, some large, some small, all deadly. ... In addition to armed battles, societies everywhere are violent, dangerous places in varying degrees, as are many personal relationships and homes. ... Then there is the vandalism mankind is inflicting on the natural world, on intricate ecosystems, on plant and animal species, on the air, the waterways and the earth itself ... Although this form of abuse may appear separate from uniformed killings, stabbings or roadside bombs, it flows from the same destructive source – human consciousness and behavior...
[ Visit Website ]
Dec 5, 2020, 12:07pm
Commentary
Dispossession and Imperialism Repackaged as “Feeding the World”
Colin Todhunter: The world is fast losing farms and farmers through the concentration of land into the hands of rich and powerful land speculators and agribusiness corporations. Smallholder farmers are being criminalised and even made to disappear when it comes to the struggle for land. They are constantly exposed to systematic expulsion. ... In 2014, the Oakland Institute found that institutional investors, including hedge funds, private equity and pension funds, are eager to capitalise on global farmland as a new and highly desirable asset class. Financial returns are what matter to these entities, not food security...
[ Visit Website ]
Nov 30, 2020, 3:11pm
Commentary
Hey, Joe! These Are Our Demands
Ted Rall: Planet Comes First. (No other issue matters if the earth and the people on it are dead or the climate crisis has prompted the collapse of human civilization.) ... Immediate Relief for COVID’s Economic Victims ... Fully Socialized Medicine. (We tried for-profit medicine. It failed even before COVID.) ... Fully Socialized Higher Education. (The college and university model no longer works.) ... Restart the Police. (It is painfully obvious to anyone with an ounce of sense that American policing is an engine of oppression rather than protection.) ... Empty the Prisons. ... End the Wars....
[ Visit Website ]
Nov 25, 2020, 12:21pm
Commentary
Thanksgiving in America: Massive food lines and evictions as benefits expire
Kate Randall: As this week’s Thanksgiving holiday approaches, a social catastrophe is unfolding across America on a scale not seen since the Great Depression of the 1930s. ... As the rise of hospitalizations continues unabated, working-class families across the country are facing a crisis of hunger and poverty alongside the sickness and death from the pandemic. ... Many families struggling with paying for food and housing face the cutoff of remaining COVID-19 relief funds by the end of the year. ... The antisocial interests of the financial elite are the main obstacle to any effective measures to contain the pandemic and save lives. ... Nothing is permitted that infringes on the self-enrichment of moguls...
[ Visit Website ]
Nov 23, 2020, 3:28pm
Commentary
Future of American Democracy: On Inequality, Polarization and Violence
Ramzy Baroud: In January 2017, the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU)’s Democracy Index downgraded the state of democracy in the United States from “full democracy” to “flawed democracy”. ... the accuracy of the EIU Index continues to demonstrate itself in the everyday reality of American politics: the extreme political and cultural polarization; growing influence of armed militias, police violence; mistreatment of undocumented immigrants, including children; marginalization of the country’s minorities in mainstream politics and so on. ... the campaign of Senator Bernie Sanders, former Democratic presidential nominee, insisted that massive structural adjustments were necessary at every level of government...
[ Visit Website ]
Nov 14, 2020, 12:34pm
Commentary
How Do Medical Students Get More Experience in the US than Cuba?
Don Fitz: What It Has To Do with Inequality ... while there are innumerable false accusations regarding Cuban medicine, one thing could be said that is true: students who study medicine in Cuba get a lot less practice in handling gunshot wounds than do those who study in the US. ... This leads directly to the question of whether gun violence in the US could be greater than it is in Cuba due to the availability of guns. ... There is a climbing mountain of consistent and well-researched evidence that unequal wealth distribution is associated with death by firearms. ... Authors reason that income inequality fosters anger and resentment, leading to mass murder....
[ Visit Website ]
Nov 7, 2020, 12:04pm
Commentary
This Election Proves the Need for a Right to Vote
Thom Hartmann: America needs an absolute right to vote, like most other major democracies. ... One legacy of slavery is that our Constitution does not contain an absolute right to vote for all citizens who have achieved the age of majority ... Voting, however, is not and never has been a right in America. Which is why the largest part of the Republican election strategy this year has been to prevent people from voting, and to try to block their vote from being counted after it’s been cast. ... Because we do not have a right to vote, the Postmaster General can delay your ballot without worrying about going to jail, and Republican politicians across the country can pass laws making it harder and harder for you to vote or have your vote counted....
[ Visit Website ]
Nov 4, 2020, 11:10am
Commentary
The Fossil Fuel Industry’s Dark Money Is Getting Even Darker
David Sirota & Andrew Perez: A fossil fuel company admitted it made $9.5 million worth of political expenditures to advance its corporate interests — and a Delaware court is helping hide the details. ... The situation is unfolding in a Delaware federal court, where Extraction Oil & Gas declared bankruptcy earlier this year. ... the Denver-based company asked the judge for permission to redact — and keep sealed — information about $9.5 million worth of political donations it has made since 2018. ... bankruptcy cases have been one of the few venues where the public can learn about dark money political donations...
[ Visit Website ]
Oct 29, 2020, 3:35pm
Commentary
70 Years after China and the DPRK Defeated the United States in Korea
Kim Petersen: This year, 2020, is the 70th anniversary of the Chinese People’s Volunteers (CPV) army entering the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) to help in, what the Chinese call, the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea. ... The DPRK has never attacked the US. It is only the US, when it intervened in a Korean civil war, that attacked the DPRK. ... It was war in which the US used biological and chemical weapons. ... if the US had not insisted on splitting the Korean peninsula, the casus belli of reuniting the two Koreas wouldn’t have existed...
[ Visit Website ]
Oct 26, 2020, 2:12pm
Commentary
American Militarism Marches On: No Discussion or Media Coverage of Washington’s War Against the World
Philip Giraldi: One of the more interesting stories carefully hidden by the smoke being generate by civil unrest, plague and personal scandals is the continued march of American militarism. ... The story is particularly compelling as neither main party candidate is bothering to talk about it and there is no discussion of foreign policy even planned for the final presidential debate. ... the sad part is that it is deliberate collusion on the part of government and media to make sure the voting public remains unaware the extent to which the United States has in reality become a pariah, a full-time bully in its foreign relations...
[ Visit Website ]
Oct 23, 2020, 3:48pm
Commentary
Journalists Should Stop Relying on Cops’ Lies
Ravi Mangla: An investigative report by USA Today earlier this year into police misconduct turned up “at least 2,227 instances of perjury, tampering with evidence or witnesses or falsifying reports.” ... Body-camera footage and bystander videos are revealing the wide gulf between what police say happened and what actually happened during a violent encounter. ... Above all, journalists need to put statements from law enforcement under a magnifying glass and treat them as the unreliable sources they are...
[ Visit Website ]
Oct 20, 2020, 1:59pm
|
FountainofLight.net