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Rousing a Sleeping Giant

by Rob Schofield NC Policy Watch
Why politicians of both parties may rue the awakening of North Carolina’s progressive movement.

Dr. Maya Angelou was America’s Most Phenomenal Woman

by Ronda Racha Penrice TheGrio
A poet, memoirist, dancer, singer, actress, playwright, producer, director, teacher, civil rights activist and women’s rights advocate, there were no limits to her outlets for creative expression or her capacity to champion justice and equality. Her life was a testament to the power of possibility as well as an affirmation of courage and daring.

Let Them Eat Carbon

Michael Klare TomDispatch
The giant energy companies are taking a page from Big Tobacco’s playbook. As concern over climate change begins to lower the demand for fossil fuels in the United States and Europe, they are accelerating their sales to developing nations, where demand is strong and climate-control measures weak or nonexistent. As in the case of cigarette sales, the stepped-up delivery of fossil fuels to developing countries is doubly harmful...

Pure Poison: The UCSB Shooting, Ray Rice and a Culture of Violence Against Women

Dave Zirin The Nation
As a sportswriter, I try to look at the ways in which violence against women is excused and glossed over in professional sports, sending messages to their young, male audiences that this is somehow just part of being like their game-time heroes. This weekend, the day before the shooting, saw yet another one of those moments that should make the National Football League burn with shame...

Thomas Paine, Our Contemporary

Chris Hedges Truthdig
Thomas Paine is America’s one great revolutionary theorist. Paine’s brilliance as a writer—his essay “Common Sense” is one of the finest pieces of rhetorical writing in the English language—is matched by his clear and unsentimental understanding of British imperial power. No revolutionist can challenge power if he or she does not grasp how power works.

The State Department’s Ukraine Fiasco

Robert Parry Consortium News
The State Department’s handling of the Ukraine crisis may go down as a textbook diplomatic fiasco, doing nothing to advance genuine U.S. interests while disrupting cooperation with Moscow and pushing Russia and China back together, reports Robert Parry.