Blogosphere
Blogosphere
Freedom Rider: Abortion Rights and the Power of Protest
Margaret Kimberley: An abortion rights crisis looms, but Americans have lost their fighting tools, lulled to sleep by the corporate fixers of the Democratic Party. ... After the collapse of its communist government Poland enacted some of the most restrictive abortion laws in Europe. When that nation’s parliament proposed making the procedure completely illegal thousands of Poles rose up in protest in 2016 and repeated the process in 2018. They didn’t just gather thousands of people in the streets of Warsaw on a rainy day. They held a general strike too. The creation of a political crisis forced the government to back down and withdraw the legislation not once, but twice. ... Abortion is as much a right as any other medical procedure. No person, man or woman, should be able to restrict medical choices for another. ... There is still time for effective action if we seize it...
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May 22, 2019, 4:14pm
Blogosphere
Freedom Rider: U.S. Wages War Against the World
Margaret Kimberley: Donald Trump is deep in the thrall of Saudi Arabia and Israel, the two nations that pose the greatest risk to Iran. He happily does their bidding and is in a position to bring the sick neocon fantasy to reality. ... But the U.S. excels at nothing except creating misery for millions of people and raising the risk of an all out hot war. ... The U.S. “troika of tyranny,” Trump, Bolton and Pompeo, are making things up as they go along. They picked a trade fight with China that they could not win. They want regime change in Iran and Venezuela but they won’t get the results they want even if they carry out military attacks. ... Unintended consequences have already lead to two world wars and millions of dead. Unfortunately no one who ought to educate the public on this subject are doing what they should. The corporate media always support presidents at war...
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May 15, 2019, 2:31pm
Blogosphere
US hits milestone of 2 Million Home Solar Installations, to double by 2023
Juan Cole: Wood Mackenzie Power & Renewables and the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) just released a report showing that there are 2 million solar home installations in the United States. That is enough to power 12 million homes. (There are 127 million households in the US, and about 64% of Americans own a home). ... By two years from now, the number of solar home installations will climb to 3 million, and in 2023 it will climb to 4 million, having doubled in 4 years. By 2024, new home panels will be installed at the rate of one a minute. ... Starting in 2020, all new homes built in California will have to come with solar panels on the roof. ... The cost of solar panels has dropped 70% since 2010, and dropped 5% just in the past year. ... Zillow estimates that putting up panels increases the value of your home by 4.1%, so some of the cost would be payed for that way. ...
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May 11, 2019, 1:54pm
Blogosphere
Freedom Rider: Facebook and the Farrakhan Distraction
Margaret Kimberley: In banning the only living person who can summon a million Black people to a meeting, Facebook is doing the bidding of the real fascists in the deep imperial state. ... Facebook and other social media platforms are an indispensable means of communicating with people all over the world. They are vital tools for anyone wanting to share or receive information. That is why their surrender to the dictates of the state is so very dangerous. ... The real targets of Facebook and the rest of corporate run social media are on the left. That is the group most hated and feared by the Democrats, the people responsible for this censorship. ... The problem is political. Corporations and the security state now have popular support to attack the free flow of information. They used Russiagate to whip up sentiment in favor of corporate control and right wing ideological bias. ... Farrakhan won’t be the last victim...
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May 8, 2019, 3:07pm
Blogosphere
Freedom Rider: Solidarity with Venezuela
Margaret Kimberley: When the US targets a government for regime change it brings all its coercive forces into play: military threats, economic sanctions, media slander and treasonous Quislings from the theater of the absurd. ... The troika of tyranny, Donald Trump, Mike Pompeo and John Bolton, may have been stymied in their effort to bring down the elected Nicolas Maduro government, but they have not given up. All of their machinations are conducted with the goal of creating as much stress on the Venezuelan state, its economy and on the Venezuelan people as they can muster. .... Venezuela is not alone. The U.S. coup plotters have targeted Brazil, Ecuador and Argentina. Nations are bribed with money or the right wing get support at a crucial moment... But the United States and its puppets care nothing for international law, the sovereignty of other nations, or human rights...
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May 1, 2019, 1:48pm
Blogosphere
Freedom Rider: Pompeo’s Truth About Lies
Margaret Kimberley: The Secretary of State’s candid remarks remind us that US foreign policy is intended to punish those targeted as enemies, keep friends as vassal states, and disregard international law. ... "When I was a cadet -- What’s the cadet motto at West Point? You will not lie, cheat, or steal, or tolerate those who do. I was the CIA director. We lied, we cheated, we stole. It’s – it was like – we had entire training courses. It reminds you of the glory of the American experiment.” -- Mike Pompeo, U.S. Secretary of State ... Pompeo said what anyone who has ever paid attention already knew. The intelligence agencies of the United States government are masters of deception and one should always assume that they are lying, cheating, and or stealing. ... Pompeo’s speech was entitled, “Why Diplomacy Matters.” But he couldn’t help himself and blurted out that diplomacy is of no importance to the United States. Pompeo didn’t tell the truth until he admitted how often he lies...
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Apr 24, 2019, 2:39pm
Blogosphere
Freedom Rider: The “Resistance” is Silent on Julian Assange
Margaret Kimberley: Ever since Donald Trump was elected president we have heard a lot about people who call themselves the “resistance.” That word has very significant meaning and should not be used frivolously. The enslaved Haitian people resisted the French 200 years ago. Harriet Tubman resisted and so did Tecumseh. Brave people all over the world have resisted colonial invasion, occupation, and racist violence. ... But resistance for the anti-Trump group doesn’t amount to very much. ... The so-called resistance have been conspicuously silent ever since Julian Assange was arrested after Ecuador withdrew his asylum from its London embassy. ... Liberals are just as much true believers in imperialism as the right wing they claim to oppose. They are nothing if not consistent. When the Trump administration announced the coup attempt against the Venezuelan government the resistance didn’t resist at all. ... Perhaps this group needs a new name. They should be honest and call themselves the conformists...
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Apr 17, 2019, 3:45pm
Blogosphere
How Classic Anti-Semitic Tropes are being Marshaled against Ilhan Omar and Muslim-Americans
Juan Cole: The attacks on Ilhan Omar, one of the first two Muslim-American women to serve in Congress and the first of Black African heritage who veils, by the Rupert Murdoch press (Fox, New York Post, etc.) and the US Republican Party are frightening for many reasons, but most of all because they repeat classic anti-Semitic charges made by the Nazis in Germany against Jews. ... Racism is not that complicated, and is always simple-minded and stupid, and so it is not a surprise that contemporary racists can’t come up with new tropes for demeaning minorities. ... The implication ... is that Omar is not outraged enough about the 9/11 attacks, is insufficiently patriotic, is “stabbing us in the back.” ... It is quite the opposite, of course. She is saying that American Muslims are patriotic and devoted to their country and should not be confused with a tiny Saudi-Egyptian terrorist clique based in Afghanistan in the 1990s...
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Apr 15, 2019, 11:41am
Blogosphere
Republicans & Rupert Murdoch Created al-Qaeda when Ilhan Omar’s Somalia upheld Scientific Socialism
Juan Cole: The dirty little secret is that sleezy and monopolistic press lord Rupert Murdoch, who spreads anti-Muslim hatred as an echo of the “White Australia” racist politics in which he was steeped, strongly backed Ronald Reagan in 1980. ... And Ronald Reagan created al-Qaeda. ... Reagan had the CIA set up training camps for the Mujahideen in which they were drilled on weapons, explosives, and tradecraft. ... By creating a vast army of militant, radicalizing Muslims as a stick to beat the geriatric Soviet Union, the Republican Party and its financial and media backers like Rupert Murdoch opened Pandora’s Box. ... So not only are Ilhan Omar and other Muslim-Americans distinctly not responsible for al-Qaeda, but Rupert Murdoch and the US Republican Party do bear great responsibility for it ... As Noam Chomsky has correctly pointed out, the US Republican Party is the most dangerous organization now operating on the face of the planet earth...
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Apr 13, 2019, 1:45pm
Blogosphere
Freedom Rider: Scoundrels and Reparations
Margaret Kimberley: Reparations should not be a topic for national discussion until there is something akin to a consensus among black people about what to demand and how to do it. ... There is no question that black Americans deserve redress for 300 years of chattel slavery, Jim Crow segregation, racist terrorism, mass incarceration and a plethora of discriminatory practices which were and are sanctioned by law. ... Morality and international law are clearly on our side. ... Black Americans do not dispute the rightness of this stance, but there has been insufficient debate about what reparations ought to mean. As a result, people with dubious motives have now seized the agenda. ... The harm done to black people is not in the distant past, but is ever present. Mass incarceration and displacement by gentrification are just two issues which are causing terrible harm to black people today...
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Apr 12, 2019, 3:04pm
Blogosphere
Freedom Rider: Remembering April 4th
Margaret Kimberley: On April 4, 1967 Dr. Martin Luther King delivered his famous sermon, “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break the Silence.” ... While there were always threats to his life, King’s political realignment was most probably the cause of his assassination one year later on April 4, 1968. It is fitting that this date is remembered and that on this occasion people of conscience assess the meaning of the last year of his life. ... The international neo-liberal regime now rules over this country and the world. Inequality continues at a rapid pace, as does the ecocide caused by the same forces. The country continues its rightward shift and there are fewer and fewer policy differences between Democrats and Republicans. ... If we are going to remember King we must be like him and put international issues at the forefront. There is no line of demarcation. It is impossible to have justice at home and injustice abroad. The existence of some 1,000 foreign military facilities inevitably leads to a 1033 program that gives surplus military equipment to local police departments...
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Apr 3, 2019, 4:34pm
Blogosphere
Freedom Rider: Julian Assange and Robert Mueller
Margaret Kimberley: The faux scandal was kept alive by lies which the misinformed public were exposed to for more than two years. One of those lies was a claim that Wikileaks founder Julian Assange worked with the Russian government to hack Democratic National Committee emails in 2016. ... There is no independent corroboration of a hacktaking place at all. However there is evidence of a leak coming from a DNC insider. ... The true evil of Russiagate goes further than the exposure of a compliant corporate media or cynical politicians. Russiagate has been used to further the interests of the surveillance state, neoliberalism and imperialism. The new attack on Assange should be understood as the most dangerous aspect of Russiagate. The Democratic Party wants to stifle dissent and make certain that there will be no Wikileaks in the future. That is why this dead issue will be kept on life support for as long as possible and why very few people will speak up for Assange and Manning...
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Mar 27, 2019, 4:16pm
Blogosphere
How Bush’s War on Iraq Produced Trumpism, Instability, Refugees and Climate Catastrophe
Juan Cole: Much that is wrong with politics in the Trump era ... was foreshadowed by Bush. It was Bush who practiced the Big Lie to take the country to war against Iraq. It was Bush who encouraged climate denialism and gutted health, financial and environmental regulation. His deregulated financial institutions plunged the country into the 2008 Depression and blighted the lives of millions of Americans who lost their homes. ... Bush lied the country into a war for oil. ... Bush’s obsession with getting more hydrocarbons out of the ground and making them cheaper by invading Iraq and removing Saddam-specific sanctions helped put 5 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide a year into the atmosphere. ... Bush gave us the worst of all possible worlds– an unstable Middle East, a refugee crisis that pushed Europe to the far right, a loss of trust in government and the press that Trump capitalized on...
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Mar 21, 2019, 4:27pm
Blogosphere
Freedom Rider: The Permanence of White Supremacy
Margaret Kimberley: White supremacy is the guiding force behind many atrocities committed around the world. Zionism is an example of white supremacy in action. But many of those who expressed shock after the New Zealand killings don’t question Israel’s apartheid system that could not be carried out absent the support of the United States and its allies. ... White supremacy explains the willingness of many Americans to support the bipartisan project to carry out regime change in Venezuela and other nations. It is expressed as as positive, a humanitarian gesture meant to save the colored peoples of the world from themselves. The notion of a white man’s burden still exists in the 21st century. ... Europeans invaded Australia and nearly eradicated the aboriginal inhabitants. The entire indigenous population of Tasmania was wiped out by the settler population. The bigger shock is that there aren’t more mass killers from Australia and other nations that owe their existence to genocide...
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Mar 20, 2019, 3:22pm
Blogosphere
New Zealand: Is Trumpism now replacing ISIL as a major Cause of Stochastic Terrorism?
Juan Cole: One of the tactics of the so-called “Islamic State group” or ISIL had been to put out calls on the internet and social media for people to engage in random acts of violence. ... Some have called this random, one-off violence, which is almost impossible to forestall, “stochastic” terrorism. ... The good news is that the military defeat of the ISIL’s phony “caliphate” in eastern Syria and western and northern Iraq appears to have reduced the amount of stochastic terrorism associated with that group. ... The bad news is that Trump’s promotion of key themes of white supremacism, in conjunction with the billionaire Mercers and bizarre ideologues like Steve Bannon, have clearly produced a new wave of stochastic white nationalist terrorism. ... A whole series of acts of terrorism have now demonstrated significant links to Donald J. Trump’s resurgent white nationalism, a key component of which is hatred for Muslims...
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Mar 15, 2019, 3:55pm
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