NORMAN SOLOMON – For months now, our country has endured the tacit denigration of American ingenuity. Countless statements — from elected officials, activist groups, journalists and many others — have ignored our nation’s superb blend of dazzling high-tech capacities and statecraft mendacities. Fortunately, this week the news about release of illuminating CIA documents by WikiLeaks has begun to give adequate credit where due. And not a moment too soon. For way too long, Russia has been credited with prodigious hacking and undermining of democracy in the United States.
Tag: Donald Trump
Trump Can Prove He’s Not a Putin Puppet by Blowing Up the World
NORMAN SOLOMON – Four weeks into Donald Trump’s presidency, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote that “nothing he has done since the inauguration allays fears that he is in effect a Putin puppet.†The liberal pundit concluded with a matter-of-fact reference to “the Trump-Putin axis.†Such lines of attack have become routine, citing and stoking fears that the president of the United States is a Kremlin stooge. The meme is on the march — and where it will end, nobody knows. Actually, it could end with a global nuclear holocaust.
What You Need to Know about the “Carbon Bubble” to Understand Trump
ALEX STEFFEN- You can’t understand what Trump’s doing to America without understanding the “Carbon Bubble.â€
The Long Road to Impeach Trump Just Got Shorter
NORMAN SOLOMON – The momentum to impeach President Trump is accelerating.
Your Guide to the Sprawling New Anti-Trump Resistance Movement
JOSHUA HOLLAND – An explosion of new activism offers a ray of hope in these dark political times.
Activists Call for National General Strike in the US to Bring Down Donald Trump
ANDREW GRIFFIN – Activists are calling for people to stop working and buying things for a day to bring down Donald Trump.
Nomination of Jeff Sessions as U.S. Attorney General Poses Threat to Our Democracy
COMMON CAUSE: Karen Hobert Flynn, Paul S. Ryan, Allegra Chapman – The nomination of Sen. Jeff Sessions to serve as U.S. Attorney General is a threat to many of our nation’s most cherished ideals of democracy. His actions and publicly stated views are out of touch with our nation’s citizens, its laws, and with the Constitution.
Does Rachel Maddow Want Russia Bombed?
DAVID SWANSON – Does Rachel Maddow Want Russia Bombed? Here’s why I ask. Maddow devotes many minutes on MSNBC stirring up hatred of Russia in order to establish that there is a vague possibility that President Donald Trump might be corrupted by a foreign government.
An Inside\Outside Strategy for Defending the US Republic
MARIA STEPHAN – Both the administrative pillar of resistance and the ‘Indivisible’ legislative pillar will be bolstered if linked to a grassroots strategy of cross-issue mobilizing and direct action – the core strategy.
Reclaiming Our Democracy
ANDREW MOSS – Donald Trump can hardly sustain a movement as a “cure” or unifier. Something much deeper has to be involved, and that something is nothing less than the reclamation of our democracy and the democratic promise of the American experiment.
Breaking Badlands: National Park Service Goes Yugely Rogue, Insists On Pesky Facts
ABBY ZIMET – Well this is cool: Trumpian efforts to block information on climate change – ’cause who needs science and/or a planet? – have sparked fierce, creative, heart-stirring resistance by the National Park Service and its many friends, suggesting the Revolution may yet be tweeted.
Chinese Billionaire Says US Wasted Trillions on Wars and Wall Street
LAUREN MCCAULEY – “In the past 30 years, America had 13 wars spending $2 trillion,” said Alibaba founder Jack Ma. “What if the money was spent on the Midwest of the United States?” Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland on Wednesday, Chinese billionaire Jack Ma accused the United States of spending too much money on foreign wars and risky financial speculation and not enough money “on your own people.”
Allegations Against Russia Less Credible Every Day
DAVID SWANSON – The U.S. government has now generated numerous news stories and released multiple “reports” aimed at persuading us that Vladimir Putin is to blame for Donald Trump becoming president. U.S. media has dutifully informed us that the case has been made. But a closer analysis finds a different reality.
Yes, Dubya, Now I Miss You
DAVID SWANSON – When George W. Bush made the case for attacking and destroying the nation of Iraq, he made claims that, if true, would have justified nothing. And he proposed as evidence for those claims fraudulent, implausible, and even ridiculous pieces of information. But he was expected to produce evidence. There was no assumption that he should simply be taken on faith. Those standards are gone.
Urgent to Progressives: Stop Fueling the Anti-Russia Frenzy
NORMAN SOLOMON – Many big factors affect any presidential race, and the Russian government may have tried to be one of them for the 2016 election—though it’s hardly the slam dunk that agencies like the CIA and U.S. mass media are now claiming. But in any event, this month it has become routine for a lot of progressive organizations and individuals to descend into a dangerous mode of partisan flackery — with troubling consequences.
How to Scrap the Electoral College
JOHN LAFORGE – The Electoral College is based on state law, so when enough additional states pass the National Popular Vote bill — enough to add up to the 270 electoral votes needed to win the White House — then the “electors†would be legally bound to vote for the popular vote winner and never again steal an election from the top vote getter.
People Are in the Streets Protesting Donald Trump. But When Does Protest Actually Work?
ERICA CHENOWETH – The politics of dissent is back in the United States. Since 2011, the country has witnessed the resurgence of popular action — from Occupy Wall Street to Flood Wall Street to Black Lives Matter to Standing Rock. Since Nov. 8, many Americans have participated in protests and marches in nearly every major city in opposition to Donald Trump’s election — or to counterprotest in defense of it. Recent data from around the world suggest that popular action is here to stay.
Trump’s Possible Path out of Ukraine Crisis
JONATHAN MARSHALL – If Donald Trump wants to make a decisive and constructive mark on U.S. foreign policy early in his presidency, there’s no better place to start than by helping to end the brutal war in Ukraine that has claimed some 10,000 lives.
Jury is Still Out on Trump’s Foreign Policy Agenda
ROBERT PARRY – By inviting in Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, a Democrat hostile to “regime change†wars, President-elect Trump may be signaling a major break with Republican neocon orthodoxy and a big shake-up of the U.S. foreign policy establishment.
Fear and Strength in Oregon’s Immigrant Communities Post-Election
ERIC TEGETHOFF – Immigrant communities across Oregon are preparing to take President-elect Donald Trump at his word regarding ramping up deportations during his presidency.
Are the US and Russia Sleepwalking into War?
RAMESH THAKUR – Are the increasingly frosty relations between the United States and Russia going to turn into all-out war? Former United Nations Assistant Secretary-General Ramesh Thakur weighs the evidence.
Donald Trump Brings the Crisis in Masculinity Into Focus
ROB OKUN – The crisis in masculinity and the presidential election got hitched this weekend, thanks to Donald Trump. While a vast majority of men—this election season’s silent majority—reject Mr. Trump’s “locker room†ideas about manhood, many are reluctant to publicly say so. That may be changing.
Latest Syria Trainwreck Shows the Obama Administration Is in a State of Confused Agony
RUSSIA INSIDER/THE SAKER – The latest developments in Syria are not, I believe, the result of some deliberate plan of the USA to help their “moderate terrorist†allies on the ground, but they are the symptom of something even worse: the complete loss of control of the USA over the situation in Syria and, possibly, elsewhere.
This Moment at Standing Rock Was Decades in the Making
JENNI MONET – North Dakota’s militarized response to activists opposing the Dakota Access pipeline—and the Standing Rock Sioux’s fierce resolve—reflect the area’s particular racial divides.
The Debut of Our Revolution: Great Potential. But.
NORMAN SOLOMON – While Bernie Sanders was doing a brilliant job of ripping into the Trans-Pacific Partnership during the livestreamed launch of the Our Revolution organization on Wednesday night, CNN was airing a phone interview with Hillary Clinton and MSNBC was interviewing Donald Trump’s campaign manager. That sums up the contrast between the enduring value of the Bernie campaign and the corporate media’s fixation on the political establishment. Fortunately, Our Revolution won’t depend on mainline media. That said, the group’s debut foreshadowed not only great potential but also real pitfalls.
McKibben: Time to Declare a War (Literally) on Climate Change
JON QUEALLY – We’re under attack, says author and climate campaigner Bill McKibben, and the only way to defeat the enemy is to declare a global war against the destructive practices that threaten the world’s imperiled ecosystems and human civilization as we know it.
Evaluating Obama’s Foreign Policy Record
MEL GURTOV – How should we evaluate Obama’s foreign policy record? Right-wing critics will of course excoriate Obama for all the usual things—weakness against adversaries like Russia and China, negotiating with instead of subverting Cuba and Iran, eviscerating the US military, undermining relations with Israel. On the left, Obama is already being cast as another liberal leader whose actions failed to deliver on his promises, from Guantanamo to the Middle East. Historians will have plenty of things to quarrel about, but we need not wait.
Yes to Assertive, No to Aggressive
TOM H. HASTINGS – I teach and write in the field of Peace and Conflict Studies, with a special focus on strategic nonviolence. It is a rich field, growing in its scholarship and its widespread usage. I’m so enthused by this—the more we wage our conflicts with nonviolence the lower the costs. Counting the costs of conflict, we normally think of blood and treasure, of casualties and expense. We are slowly beginning to also count other costs, including our environment, our relationships, our civil rights, our human rights, our metrics of democracy, and more. Nonviolence is superior to violence in every way if we read the research and consider all the costs.
What Should We Conclude From the Sanders and Trump Victories?
WINSLOW MYERS – Trump and Sanders in their stark difference both from each other and from establishment candidates exemplify our national duality: fear-mongering and oversimplification from Trump, idealism and authenticity from Sanders. Every four years we have a fresh chance to look both for the real America and for the best possible America. Fifty-seven years ago, King pointed the way.
How Big Oil Spent Part of Its $90 Billion in Profits So Far in 2012
DANIEL J. WEISS and JACKIE WEIDMAN – Lingering high oil and gasoline prices contributed to another quarter of huge profits for the big five oil companies: BP plc, Chevron Corp, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil Corp, and the Royal Dutch Shell Group. They earned a combined $28 billion in the third quarter of 2012, reaping more than $90 billion in profits through the first three quarters of the year. (see Table 1) As they did last year, the “big five†are on track to easily exceed $100 billion in profits this year.