JUAN COLE – Hundreds of leftist and secular youth demonstrated on Saturday [April26] against Egypt’s Draconian law forbidding demonstrations, demanding the release of revolutionary activists jailed under it. They marched from Serai al-Qubba to the presidential palace. Activists said that they did not believe the presidential elections scheduled for late May would be on the up and up if the protest law remains in place.
From Outside or Inside, the Deck Looks Stacked
GRETCHEN MORGENSON – “The game is rigged and the American people know that. They get it right down to their toes.†That’s Elizabeth Warren talking, the former consumer advocate and law school professor and now a Democratic senator from Massachusetts. I interviewed her about her new memoir, “A Fighting Chance,†in which she discusses one of America’s biggest challenges: how to level the playing field so that Main Street doesn’t always come second to Wall Street.
How to Tap Latent Conservative Support for Climate-Change Policy
SEAN MCELWEE – Both last month’s Senate Climate Talkathon and Tom Steyer’s $100 million dollar pledge to back environment-friendly candidates indicate the same thing: Democrats are getting serious about global warming again. But even when Democrats have managed to close ranks behind previous legislative efforts like Waxman-Markey, Republicans have stymied them. Can the left forge a coalition to tackle the problem?
Kitzhaber Comes Out Against Coal Exports
GOVERNOR JOHN KITZHABER – The future for Oregon and the West Coast does not lie in nineteenth century energy sources. The 21st century will mark the transition to clean energy sources, and the regions that lead this transition will be the places where our families will find the jobs of the future. I intend that this will be one such region.
If War Was Funded Like College Tuition
DAVID SWANSON – If wisdom about the counter-productive results of militarism spread, if nonviolent alternatives were learned, if free college had a positive impact on our collective intellect, and if the fact that we could end global poverty or halt global warming for a fraction of current military spending leaked out, who knows? Maybe militarism would fail in the free market.
Looking Back on Easter 2014—and Forward to Easter Next
WINSLOW MYERS – Effective leadership must now initiate on the basis that the self-interest of my country is intimately bound up with the self-interest of my “adversaries.†Shia will not be secure until Sunnis feel secure. Israelis will not feel secure until Palestinians feel secure. Ukraine will not feel secure until Russia feels secure. No one will feel secure until we start spending less on weapons and paying more attention to resolving conflict nonviolently, developing compassion and empathy, and enlarging our frame of reference to include all of humanity and the whole earth. That is what it will take to bring new life to dead bones.