LAWRENCE S. WITTNER – Although critics of the Biden administration’s Build Back Better plan to increase funding for U.S. education, healthcare, and action against climate catastrophe say the United States can’t afford it, there are no such qualms about ramping up funding for the U.S. military.
Category: October 2021
Crisis in Sudan is a Lesson for the U.S.
WIM LAVEN – The U.S. and Sudan showcase different stages of division. The people of the U.S. are well served to learn and get involved in Sudan through solidarity. People of the world can all push for frozen assets and travel bans on those responsible for the coup and thank President Biden for his swift action in suspending $700 million in aid to Sudan. Nonviolent but coercive measures like these can pressure the military to yield to the people’s demands. We can also make strong condemnations to the use of political violence and the detainment of political prisoners—who should be immediately released.Â
How a False Narrative Against Government Spending Shapes Legislation
SONALI kOLHATKAR – Those seeking to squeeze Americans while boosting corporate profits and the wealth of the richest few have for years poured resources into shaping a false narrative that people don’t want tax revenues to be used to pay for things that people need. It’s time to expose and upend such a regressive theory.
Farming to Capture Carbon While Improving Soils
ALASDAIR LANE – Half of the world’s land is used to grow our food. A new generation of ‘carbon farmers’ are making their land absorb greenhouse gases, rather than emitting them.
Biden Restores Bears Ears and Grand Staircase–Escalante National Monuments
WES SILER – Today [Oct. 8, 2021], President Biden announced that he’s restoring the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase–Escalante National Monuments in Utah, as well as the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument in the Atlantic Ocean to the areas and protections that were in place before Donald Trump massively cut them. The move fulfills a campaign promise, protects sensitive historic sites and fragile ecosystems, preserves air and water quality for local communities, keeps coal and oil in the ground, and listens to the voice of Indigenous people on the eve of Indigenous People’s Day.Â
The U.S. Killer Drone Program Stays Afloat on the Back of Lies and Pentagon Propaganda
LEONARD C. GOODMAN – A wrongly targeted Afghan aid worker and his family are among the latest casualties.
What Kind of a Threat Is Russia?
JAMES W. CARDEN – In his latest book, The Stupidity of War: American Foreign Policy and the Case for Complacency, American political scientist John Mueller demonstrates that since the end of World War II, American policymakers have developed a kind of addiction to threat inflation by “routinely elevating the problematic to the dire… focused on problems, or monsters, that essentially didn’t exist.†And with regard to the American foreign policy establishment’s current twin obsessions, Russia and China, Mueller, ever the iconoclast, counsels complacency.
Why Activism Needs to be Part of any Meaningful Climate Education
NICK ENGELFRIED – Simply teaching kids about the science of the climate crisis isn’t enough. To prevent feelings of disempowerment, they need to see how they can make a meaningful impact.
NRC Conducting “Open Investigation†into Allegedly Counterfeit, Substandard US Reactor Parts, & Impossibility of Evacuating Seabrook – CounterPunch.org
JOHN LAFORGE – The Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC) Office of Inspector General (OIG) has confirmed that it is investigating allegations that counterfeit, substandard parts are currently being used in scores of nuclear reactors across the United States, and further that emergency responders in New Hampshire’s National Guard and the Massachusetts State Police have been gagged by orders not to reveal that it is impossible to conduct a safe evacuation of the Seabrook reactor during an emergency.
Two Parties: Two Countries
TOM H. HASTINGS – In my field of Conflict Transformation, one of the things we study is the lingering effects of a conflict. How that conflict was resolved is key. If it’s done peacefully, very little legacy of resentment persists. If it’s done destructively, there is often a burning desire for revenge, often handed down inside the defeated tribe, nation, or people. It is the collective version of the passive-aggressive individual problem with being harmed and humiliated.Â
Climate-Change Transition in the Age of the Billionaire
JOHN FEFFER – Despite the enormous economic and political gaps that separate people around the world, we have to somehow join hands across vast differences to leapfrog over the fossil-fuel economy. United we transform or united we fall.
While Americans Sleep, Our Corporate Overlords Make Progress Impossible
RALPH NADER – Both the Republicans and the Democrats vote as if the nation’s middle-class taxpayer is a sleeping sucker.
Protest at Manchin’s Yacht Demands End to His Obstruction of Reconciliation Bill
JAKE JOHNSON – West Virginia activists in kayaks and electric boats converged on Sen. Joe Manchin’s yacht in Washington, D.C. on Monday, September 27, to protest the right-wing Democrat’s continued obstruction of his own party’s reconciliation package, a central component of President Joe Biden’s climate and safety net agenda.
How Secular Humanism Has Made Life Better for All of Us
JAMES HAUGHT – Few people realize it, but secular humanism – the progressive crusade to improve life for all – may be the chief driving force of western civilization. Humanism means helping people, and secular means doing it without supernatural religion.
So Long, CENTCOM, and Good Riddance!
ANDREW BACEVICH – Recognizing that the safety and well-being of the American people do not require sustaining a regional U.S. military command that fancies itself called upon to determine the fate of 560 million inhabitants in 21 different countries might just offer a path toward regaining sobriety. After all, recovery begins with taking that first step.