Commentary
Commentary
Study Shows Pandemics Can Give Rise to Fascism
Ed Tant: A new study published earlier this month by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York says that the rise in deaths from the worldwide 1918 influenza epidemic may have contributed to the later rise of the Nazi Party in Germany in the 1930s. ... Today's global pandemic provides more fodder for those who would use the tragedy of the coronavirus to spread political viruses of fear and falsehood. ... "As the coronavirus continues to surge globally, antisemitic, xenophobic and hateful messages and conspiracy theories are proliferating rapidly online." ...
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May 27, 2020, 4:48pm
Commentary
Inside corporations’ war on science
Sean Illing: Johnson & Johnson announced this week that it will stop putting talc, a mineral linked to asbestos, in its baby powder products. The move comes after years of lawsuits alleging that the powder causes various cancers. ... has spent decades funding biased science and lobbying the government to avoid regulating its products or labeling them as cancer-causing. ... It’s a tactic deployed by many other industries that have a stake in stifling regulation and the science behind it. ... From cancer-causing hair products and apparel to diabetes-linked food and sugary drinks, corporations have realized that you don’t have to convince the public or government officials of anything — all you have to do is create the illusion of doubt...
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May 26, 2020, 4:45pm
Commentary
Rethinking Public Safety: Trust vs. Force
Robert C. Koehler: “Guns aren’t just a danger in and of themselves,” writes Noah Berlatsky at Quartz. “They enable a policing philosophy built on violence and forced compliance, rather than one founded on respect, trust and consent. That philosophy affects every police interaction, even those that don’t involve actual shooting.” ... We need to start over: set down the guns and strip this system down to the bone, with the intention of rebuilding our social infrastructure on a foundation of trust, cooperation and a belief in the sanctity of life...
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May 22, 2020, 4:43pm
Commentary
Gardening Advice from Indigenous Food Growers
Stephanie Woodard: “Gardens represent resiliency, strength, wellness, culture.” ... “Working in a garden develops your relationship to the land,” says Aubrey Skye, a Hunkpapa Lakota gardener. ... While gardening, Skye says, tribal gardeners will put into action traditional practices that arise from close observations of nature and the belief that humans, plants, animals, and other aspects of the natural world form a mutually reliant community. We are all related...
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May 20, 2020, 3:53pm
Commentary
Another Bank Bailout under Cover of a Virus
Ellen Brown: Insolvent Wall Street banks have been quietly bailed out again. Banks made risk-free by the government should be public utilities. ... State and local governments could make cheap credit available to their communities, but today they too are second class citizens when it comes to borrowing. ... State and local governments with a mandate to serve the public interest deserve to be treated as well as private Wall Street banks that have repeatedly been found guilty of frauds on the public. ... As Buckminster Fuller said, “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, create a new model that makes the old model obsolete...
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May 19, 2020, 12:02pm
Commentary
Iran – Powerful and Determined
Andre Vltchek: I refuse to describe Iran as a victim. It is not. It is one of the most influential and strong-minded nations on Earth. ... Iran is home to one of the oldest and deepest cultures in the world ... Iran is an internationalist country. Not unlike Cuba or Venezuela, who are its long-term allies. Even when injured, itself, it helps others, those who need solidarity even more. This can never be forgotten, particularly in places like Latin America, or Syria. ... Now, many are perhaps wondering, what triggered, in the West, such hate towards Iran? ... “It is a Socialist country. Socialist with Iranian characteristics.”...
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May 16, 2020, 12:22pm
Commentary
The Race to Replace a Dying Neoliberalism
Walden Bello: The world’s prevailing socio-political models aren’t going to survive this pandemic. What’s going to replace them? ... In response to the cataclysm occasioned by the coronavirus, three lines of thinking are emerging. ... One ... the basic structure of production and consumption is sound, and the problem lies only in determining the moment when things can return to “normal.” ... Two ... we are now in the “new normal,” ... while the global economic system is not significantly out of kilter, important changes must be made to some of its elements, such as redesigning the workplace to accommodate the need for social distancing, strengthening public health systems ... Three ... the pandemic provides an opportunity for transforming a system that is ridden with deep economic and political inequalities and is profoundly destabilizing ecologically....
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May 15, 2020, 3:06pm
Commentary
China’s International Solidarity Aid to the World During the Corona Pandemic
Stansfield Smith: China’s worldwide assistance and medical aid to other countries to combat the coronavirus is barely covered in the corporate press. ... This is the first international crisis where China is actively taking a global leadership role and it stands in particular contrast to the US, which has disdained international cooperation... China has been supplying the world with medical supplies through donations and sales. ... In total, Chinese companies have donated 1.5 million masks, 200,000 test kits, 180,000 gloves and many other medical supplies to the United States. ... In March, the Chinese government and Chinese businessman Jack Ma donated 500 ventilators, 800,000 personal protective equipment, 6 million masks, and 1.1 million test kits to Ethiopia for distribution among African countries...
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May 15, 2020, 2:46pm
Commentary
Faint Praise for the Pandemic
Osha Neumann: What’s bad for humanity is good for the planet. ... There could not be a more uncomfortable truth. But who can deny. ... Think of humanity as an invasive species, or rather, given the times a plague – a sexually transmitted disease, devastating the planet. We, each of us, are the pathogen. ... Some strains of the human plague are more virulent than others. The most dangerous to the planet can be found in the board rooms of giant corporations, in penthouses, and luxury boxes at sports events. ... A pathogen will not save us or the planet....
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May 9, 2020, 3:05pm
Commentary
Election Officials Plead With Congress: Help Us Protect Voters
Gabriella Novello: Election officials have long dealt with faulty and vulnerable voting machines, but this year, they are also grappling with the risk of spreading a deadly virus to hundreds of thousands of individuals who will cast a ballot in person this November. ... Thousands of voters will use the same voting machines and touch the same stylus pens set up at polling places across the country this November. ... Elections that have been carried out so far amid the COVID-19 outbreak have shown that “traditional Election Day practices are not suited for a pandemic” ... Consider what happened in Wisconsin, after voters went to the polls last month ---- dozens of confirmed cases of coronavirus in the days following in-person voting ...
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May 5, 2020, 2:38pm
Commentary
One World Under Corona?
Deena Stryker: The American Pledge of Allegiance ends with the words: “One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” Two and a half centuries after its drafting, few Americans realize that it is only by working with other countries that they can maintain that aspiration. ... Covid is challenging every country, regardless of its form of government ... only a cooperative, holistic approach by the entire international community can prevent decades of progress from being lost ... At the start of 2020, 135 million people in the developing world were facing acute food shortages, with the World Food Program expecting the pandemic to bring 265 million to the brink of starvation by year’s end. In Latin America progress in health care modernization still leaves a majority of citizens without access...
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May 4, 2020, 2:17pm
Commentary
The Persistence of White Supremacy: A Conversation with Margaret Kimberley
Kollibri terre Sonnenblume: Americans don’t like to think of themselves as being propagandized but we are. Most definitely propagandized from childhood on, about the nature of this nation, which was founded as a settler-colonial state, which means that the original inhabitants — the indigenous population — were immediately the victims of genocide. ... And that continued with chattel slavery. So we have two great crimes which impacted this nation, its founding, and its history to this very day. ... We have to face that fact that we’re now in this economic crisis because first of all, the economy wasn’t doing well. ... it was phony ... It was low wage jobs ... This is an opportunity for us to question many different things...
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May 2, 2020, 2:24pm
Commentary
Welcome to the Era of the Great Disillusionment
Jonathan Cook: Two decades of lies: the lack of transparency in the US government’s investigation into the events surrounding 9/11 ... the documented lies told about the reasons for launching a disastrous and illegal war of aggression against Iraq in 2003 ... the astronomical bailouts after the 2008 crash of bankers ... the refusal by western governments and global institutions to take any leadership on tackling climate change ... The failings of experts, administrators and the professional class have been all too visible to the public as well ... We will need a new model of independent, pluralistic, responsive, questioning media that is accountable to the public, not to billionaires and corporations...
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Apr 30, 2020, 12:16pm
Commentary
No, Voting by Mail Is Not ‘Ripe for Voter Fraud’
Gabriella Novello and Erika Smithson: Just 0.02 percent of the three million total votes cast during the 2012 election were proven to be actual instances of voter fraud. ... “Trump is simply wrong about mail-in balloting raising a ‘tremendous’ potential for fraud” ... The recent debate on universal mail-in voting has been cast as just one of the many issues long divided along partisan lines. In reality, absentee voting has been used by voters across the political spectrum for decades with little pushback. ...
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Apr 29, 2020, 4:28pm
Commentary
A Universal Basic Income is Essential and Will Work
Ellen Brown: According to an April 6 article on CNBC.com, Spain is slated to become the first country in Europe to introduce a universal basic income (UBI) on a long-term basis. ... “Where will the government find the money?” is no longer a valid objection to providing an economic safety net for the people. The government can find the money in the same place it just found more than $5 trillion for Wall Street and Corporate America: the central bank can print it. ... In the current crisis, in which a government-mandated shutdown has left households more vulnerable than at any time since the Great Depression, a UBI seems the most direct and efficient way to get money to everyone who needs it...
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Apr 20, 2020, 3:15pm
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