Commentary
Commentary
Four Words Gates and His Pals Despise: Democracy & Minimum Support Price
Colin Todhunter: The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and an assortment of high-profile figures and policy makers are pushing for unregulated gene-editing technologies, the rollout of bio-synthetic food created in laboratories, the expanded use of patented seeds and the roll back of subsidies and support for farmers in places like India. ... Not for the first time, the lobbying that the Gates Foundation is engaging in displays complete contempt for democratic processes or public opinion. In 2018, The European Court of Justice ruled that new genetic engineering technologies should be regulated...
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Apr 8, 2021, 12:23pm
Commentary
Lying is as American as Cherry Pie
Paul Street: Which reminds me, the story that young George Washington broke down and told his father he cut down a cherry ... It was made up by the early Washington biographer Mason Lock Weems ... Here’s another lie: “George Washington was a great man.” Not true. He was a vicious killer of Native Americans ... the U.S. Constitution was a profoundly un- and even anti-democratic document crafted to preserve and codify the oligarch rule of the wealthy Few. ... The commonplace white-American depiction of the Native Americans as “savages” and the white so-called “settlers” as agents of “civilization” is itself a great lie. The truth was, if anything, the opposite.... (Ed Note: And The Beat Goes On!)...
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Apr 6, 2021, 3:42pm
Commentary
A Damned Murder Inc: Kennedy’s Battle Against the Leviathan
Cynthia Chung: There is a lot of spurious effort to try to ridicule anyone who challenges the Warren Commission’s official report as nothing but fringe conspiracy theory. ... The reader should keep in mind that much of this frothing opposition stems from the very agency that perpetrated crime after crime on the American people, as well as abroad. ... the CIA is not a respectable agency; we are not dealing with honorable men. It is a rogue force that believes that the ends justify the means, that they are the hands of the king so to speak, above government and above law...
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Apr 3, 2021, 3:17pm
Commentary
The U.S. Has a Moral Obligation to Forgive the World’s Debts
Ty Joplin: It’s time for the banks to be the ones tightening their belts for once... Sovereign debt is a moral atrocity pushing nations slowly into death spirals. It is indefensible for the same reasons student and medical debt in America is indefensible, and struggling to abolish one implicitly relies on the same broad liberatory vision which includes the other. ... At its core, to be hopelessly indebted, whether as a person or as a nation, is to be shackled. ... This is the norm in the global South, where most countries are entrapped into spending more in a futile attempt to repay external debts than to support their own public health institutions...
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Mar 27, 2021, 3:58pm
Commentary
America’s gun problem, explained
German Lopez: 1) America’s gun problem is unique ... No other developed country in the world has anywhere near the same rate of gun violence ... The US has by far the highest number of privately owned guns in the world. ... gun ownership is concentrated among a minority of the US population ... There is a very strong correlation between gun ownership and gun violence ... 2) More guns mean more gun deaths ... 3) Americans tend to support measures to restrict guns, but that doesn’t translate into laws ... 4) The gun lobby as we know it is relatively recent but enormously powerful ... 5) Other developed countries have had huge successes with gun control ... 6) Although they get a lot of focus, mass shootings are a small portion of all gun violence...
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Mar 23, 2021, 3:47pm
Commentary
Chris Hedges: The Evil Within Us
The killings in Atlanta were not an anomaly by a deranged gunman. ... The hatred for people of other ethnicities and faiths, the hatred for women of color, who are condemned by the Christian right as temptresses in league with Satan, was fertilized in the rampant misogyny, hyper-masculinity and racism that lie at the center of the belief system of the Christian right, as well define the core beliefs of American imperialism ... The ideology of the Christian right, like all totalitarian creeds, is, at its core, an ideology of hatred...
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Mar 22, 2021, 3:57pm
Commentary
The U.S. Pivot to Asia: Cold War Lessons From Vietnam for Today
Cynthia Chung: There were Cold War preparations underway as early as August 1945 and the two regions selected, Korea and Vietnam, were pre-planned years in advance before the actual wars were to take place ... the official narrative for why the Korean War and the Vietnam War were fought are fabrications of the Cold War “reality.” ... the Eisenhower-Nixon victory in 1952, the culmination of years of political strategizing by Wall Street Republican power brokers, the new heads of the State Department and the CIA were selected as none other than Foster and Allen Dulles ...
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Mar 17, 2021, 2:55pm
Commentary
Let’s Stop Pretending Russia and China are Military Threats
Dave LIndorff: China and Russia are not our enemies. ... The Pentagon and its backers in the US media and in Congress, have to strain like a person with severe constipation in order to produce anything resembling a threat from either country ... The real threat posed by Russia and China is commercial. ... Let’s get real. The US military is the biggest threat to the future of the United States...
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Mar 13, 2021, 2:10pm
Commentary
Nine ways that drawing down overseas bases will improve U.S. security
Andrew J. Bacevich and David Vine: 1) The costs: an estimated $51.5 billion in 2017 — nearly two times the State Department’s budget (Imagine what we could do with a fraction of the billions spent)... 2) Bases abroad have fueled a hyper-interventionist foreign policy. ... 3) Overseas bases are technologically outdated: rapid response forces can deploy anywhere on Earth ... 4) Overseas bases destabilize regions and increase the likelihood of future wars ... 5) OBRACC (Overseas Base Realignment and Closure Coalition) experts agree that bases in the Middle East have fueled radicalization, anti-American propaganda, recruitment by militant groups like al Qaeda, and deadly attacks, such as those of September 11, 2001...
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Mar 11, 2021, 3:52pm
Commentary
What’s Behind the Biden Administration’s New $100 Billion Nuclear Missile System?
Jeremy Kuzmarov: According to a 2019 Congressional Budget Office report, the U.S. is committed to spending $494 billion on its nuclear forces over the next decade, or about $50 billion per year. Over the next three decades, nuclear weapons modernization plans could cost as much as $1.5-$2 trillion. ... This total includes investment in a $100 billion Ground Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD), a land-based nuclear missile, which is slated to replace the aging Minuteman III Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM). ... The human tragedy associated with the development of the GBSD is compounded by the fact that military experts believe it will not actually enhance U.S. national security...
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Mar 9, 2021, 3:23pm
Commentary
Ending private prisons is not enough. Biden must end the business of incarceration.
Ashish Prashar: Profit from incarcerated people doesn't meet the moral standards of justice. However, private prisons aren't even where the biggest profits exist. Private companies continue to profit off the labor of inmates in the public prison system, or, the "prison industrial complex." ... These corporations have monetized crime and punishment with the government's help. Whether they draw money out of the pockets of incarcerated people and their support networks or from taxpayer coffers, they siphon from the $80 billion in taxes spent annually to keep 2.3 million people incarcerated. ... There are 4,100 corporations that use prison labor directly or through their supply chains...
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Mar 7, 2021, 3:26pm
Commentary
Civility Won’t End Racism
Alex Zamalin: The first reason civility doesn’t work is because it substitutes the goal of unity and respecting both sides of the aisle over directly confronting systemic racism. ... The second reason civility doesn’t work is because it provides ammunition for reactionaries to more enthusiastically stifle anti-racist protest. ... To reject civility isn’t to embrace violence. ... It’s to anchor your political claims in an unapologetic criticism of bad policies and use disruptive public action—strikes, marches, protests—to support emancipatory ones...
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Mar 2, 2021, 3:03pm
Commentary
American Gulag
Eve Ottenberg: American prisoners constitute a much larger percentage of the population than those in any other nation. ... as abolitionist Mariame Kaba argues in her new book, We Do This Till We Free Us, prisons became their own kind of nightmare. ... Prisoners are our human sacrifice: people locked away in tiny cages for decades. ... She advocates transformative and restorative justice, which would impose consequences on those who harm – such as reparations, public apologies, loss of any position of power or privilege, counseling, etc. – but not destroy them. ... “Prison is simply a bad and ineffective way to address violence and crime.”...
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Feb 27, 2021, 12:38pm
Commentary
Biden’s Great School Reset – Is It a Time for Change?
Tim Kirby The door is open to think about how we can change our 1800’s education to meet up with or fight against the demands of this upcoming new industrial revolution ... Joe Biden is pushing for schools to go back to the way they were in a pre pandemic world as fast as possible. Why would education be exempt from the biggest opportunity for political change since 9/11? ... The big question – what is the point of a 21st century education? ... we educate young people to be prepared to go out into the workforce. This makes sense but the system does not reflect this end. ... Change: Schooling should become shorter by 2-4 years...
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Feb 22, 2021, 3:51pm
Commentary
Texas Freeze Illustrates a Failed Economic System
Robert Freeman: The nation's problems will only get worse the longer we pretend private solutions are best for all situations. ... The first problem with conservative economics is that it wants to imagine that only private economic interactions are legitimate, and that public intervention in the economy is illegitimate. ... A second problem with conservative economics is that it wants to maximize private profits in the short run, so fails to invest adequately in the long run. ... A final flaw in conservative economic thinking is that adaptation to change is resisted unless the benefits can be captured by those who already hold power and wealth...
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Feb 21, 2021, 12:22pm
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