The Clown Has Taken Over the Party

Roy Zimmerman, perhaps America's premiere political satirical songwriter, nails the meaning of the Republican's Trump convention.

One Year on Earth Seen From 1 Million Miles

A full year of life on Earth condensed into three minutes, recorded from a satellite orbit at Lagrange point 1, approximately 1 million miles from Earth, where it is balanced between the gravity of our home planet and the sun.

Bob Marley | Get Up, Stand Up

Bob Marley wrote Get Up, Stand Up in 1973 while touring Haiti. It has become a grassroots world anthem of the fightback movement and sound best performed before a big, live audience.

A Black Man in Chicago Celebrates Emmett Till's Birthday

Philip C. Kolin Emmett Till in Different States: Poems
Emmett Till, a 14-year old murdered in Money, Mississippi on August 28, 1955, would be celebrating his 75th birthday on Tuesday, July 25. The writer Philip C. Kolin, like Till a native of Chicago, and professor English in Mississippi, has recently published a book, Emmett Till in Different States: Poems (Third World Press) that traces both the historical significance and contemporary legacy of Till’s brief life.

Clinton Must Go Bold - and Go Left - For VP; Is Clinton a Progressive? Not If She Chooses Tim Kaine

Richard Eskow; Jodi Jacobson
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton will announce her vice presidential choice tomorrow, and rumors that she's going with a "safe" pick should worry Democrats. In this political climate, a search for "safety" could put her candidacy in serious danger. The selection of Tim Kaine as vice president would be the first signal that Hillary Clinton intends to seek progressive votes but ignore progressive values and goals, likely at her peril, and ours.

Military Coups, Turkey, NATO and Donald Trump

John Feffer; Rob Prince Foreign Policy in Focus
The attempted military coup in Turkey and the possibility of a President Trump may have more Americans considering the military option. It's tempting to conclude that the same folks who approve of a military intervention into politics support Donald Trump's intervention into politics. Trump is, in a way, a one-man coup. He is an outsider. He has contempt for the normal workings of democracy.

Florida Cop Shot Black Man with His Hands Up

Francisco Alvarado, Michael E. Miller and Mark Berman The Washington Post
Police in South Florida shot an unarmed black caretaker Monday as he tried to help his autistic patient. I was thinking as long as I have my hands up . they're not going to shoot me, he told local television station WSVN from his hospital bed. Wow, was I wrong. Police then handcuffed him and left him bleeding on the pavement for about 20 minutes.

The Big Boom: Nukes and NATO - We May Be at a Greater Risk of Nuclear Catastrophe Than During the Cold War

Conn Hallinan Dispatches From the Edge
Astounding increases in the danger of nuclear weapons have paralleled provocative foreign policy decisions that needlessly incite tensions between Washington and Moscow. It's been 71 years since atomic bombs destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and humanity's memory of those events has dimmed. The bombs that obliterated those cities were tiny by today's standards.