Skip to main content

The Real Face of Washington (and America)

Tom Engelhardt TomDispatch
" I deeply believed that our country was simply too special for The Donald, and so his victory sent me on an unexpected journey back into the world of my childhood and youth, back into the 1950s and early 1960s when (despite the Soviet Union) the U.S. really did stand alone on the planet in so many ways."

What Should Reparations for Slavery Entail?

Ama Biney Black Agenda Report
In the light of the former British Prime Minister’s dismissal of reparations, activists must push the debate further by detailing what reparations should entail. Fundamental to a reparations program must be the fact that we transform the system of capitalism which slavery gave birth to. We must initiate a “trans-Atlantic dialogue on reparations, as well as creating progressive governments and leadership to push for a reparations program.”

What Labor Should Learn from Trump’s Victory

Michael Hirsch, Saulo Colon, Murray Schneider, Lois Weiner New Politics
The form of political action that Clinton defenders in labor advocate is a suffocating loser. It seeks accommodation when confrontation is required. It is more concerned with the longevity of the union as an institution – an important consideration for labor, but one that demands a more courageous vision – than with the overall strength of its members vis a vis their employers, which in fact is the only guarantor of institutional survival.

Tidbits - January 12, 2017 - Reader Comments: Protests Should Also be Used for Organizing;Trump Nominees; Leonard Peltier; Hidden Figures; Black Women and Civil Rights; Resources; Announcements; and more...

Portside
Reader Comments: Protests Should Also be Used for Organizing; Another Extreme Trump Nominee to Run National Intelligence; Top Prosecutor in Leonard Peltier Case Urges Clemency; Hidden Figures; Black Women and Civil Rights; It's Time to #TeachResistance: A Toolkit for Educators; Announcements and more....

"The Yanks Are Coming!" - Obama Orders Greatest Redeployment to Germany in a Quarter Century

Victor Grossman Portside
Hit that old song again, loud and clear! "Over there, over there, Send the word, send the word, That the Yanks are coming, the Yanks are coming." Yes, sirree! Shades of 1918 and the Battle of the Marne! Shades of 1944 and the beaches of Normandy! But no, not just shades and not just words have already been sent. The U.S. is sending significant military assets to Germany, and to countries bordering Russia.

Rodrigo Duterte: A Fascist Original

Walden Bello Foreign Policy in Focus
Duterte's campaign to rid the Philippines of drug users and pushers through extrajudicial executions elicited shock even among the most hardened observers. And his now legendary cursing of President Obama as a "son of a bitch" - part of an angry farewell to a long-standing alliance with Washington and an embrace of China - upended Asian geopolitics.

Meryl Streep Calls Out Trump: Having Bully-in-Chief Coarsens Whole Culture

Juan Cole; Meryl Streep Informed Comment
Occasionally entertainment and politics intersect. Sunday Meryl Streep tearfully addressed the stars assembled at the Golden Globes about her anxieties and distress at the advent of the Trump era in the United States. She made the powerful point, which is that no human experience is really foreign to us as human beings if only we can find the tools to understand it, emotionally and intellectually. And Trump does not.

Exxon - Oil, Oil Spills, Climate Denial and "America Uber Alles"

Erika Spanger-Siegfried; Antonia Juhasz Union of Concerned Scientists
Rex Tillerson stands a good chance of being confirmed as Secretary of State. His statements about climate change adaptation, whether, hubris, ignorance, or deception talking-it's a dangerous view. It's playing with other people's lives. So why does Rex Tillerson want a job that could easily be seen as a step down in power and influence? He has unfinished business, particularly in Russia, which he likely does not trust the Trump administration to handle.