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America 2016: What Happens When a Nation Gives Too Much Political Power to the Super Rich
America 2016: What Happens When a Nation Gives Too Much Political Power to the Super Rich Sheldon Adelson. (East Coast Gambler / CC BY 2.0) As the high-powered shenanigans of Las Vegas casino mogul and GOP bankroller Sheldon Adelson show, “Oligarchy, rule by the few, also tends to become rule by the monstrously self-centered,” Paul Krugman writes […]
How Oil Industry Lobbyists Played the Long Game to Access a Fuel-Rich Corner of Alaskan Wilderness
How Oil Industry Lobbyists Played the Long Game to Access a Fuel-Rich Corner of Alaskan Wilderness Joseph Sohm / Shutterstock This story was co-published by ProPublica and Politico Magazine. From his seat in the small plane flying over the largest remaining swath of American wilderness, Bruce Babbitt thought he could envision the legacy of one of his proudest achievements as […]
Capitalism’s Cult of Human Sacrifice
Capitalism’s Cult of Human Sacrifice A girl walks on a track in a park across from the Valero refinery in the Manchester neighborhood of Houston. (Pat Sullivan / AP) HOUSTON—Bryan Parras stood in the shadows cast by glaring floodlights ringing the massive white, cylindrical tanks of the Valero oil refinery. He, like many other poor Mexican-Americans who […]
Apocalyptic Capitalism
Apocalyptic Capitalism A slogan referring to the COP21 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris on the Eiffel Tower. (Michel Euler / AP) The charade of the 21st United Nations climate summit will end, as past climate summits have ended, with lofty rhetoric and ineffectual cosmetic reforms. Since the first summit more than 20 years ago, carbon dioxide […]
Doctors Without Borders Calls U.S. Report on Afghan Hospital Bombing ‘Shocking’
Doctors Without Borders Calls U.S. Report on Afghan Hospital Bombing ‘Shocking’ CNN The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan said Wednesday that “human error” was a factor in the Oct. 3 bombing of the Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, that killed 30 civilians and left 37 wounded. In a statement, Doctors Without Borders, which […]
NSA Leaker Thomas Drake Praises Report Showing U.S.’ Failure Toward Whistleblowers
NSA Leaker Thomas Drake Praises Report Showing U.S.’ Failure Toward Whistleblowers Former National Security Agency official Thomas Drake was originally charged with leaking classified information. (Jacquelyn Martin / AP) Whistleblower Thomas Drake, who in 2010 became the first American charged with espionage in almost 40 years and who was a predecessor of Edward Snowden, applauds […]
The Paris Attacks Are Being Used to Justify Agendas They Have Nothing to Do With
The Paris Attacks Are Being Used to Justify Agendas They Have Nothing to Do With Georgie Pauwels / CC BY 2.0 The aftermath of the Paris terrorist attacks has “devolved into a dark and dishonest debate” in which governments consider banning encryption and barring Syrian refugees from entering their countries—even though the attackers were neither Syrian nor […]
From the Annals of U.S. History: America’s Role in Creating Islamic Extremism
From the Annals of U.S. History: America’s Role in Creating Islamic Extremism Shutterstock This is a refrain that has been played before, but some Americans might need yet another refresher. In response to one of the inevitable questions—“Why did this happen?”—following events like Friday’s terrorist offensive in Paris and the 9/11 attacks in the U.S., […]
Data-Grabbing ‘Stingrays’ Are Attacking Our Civil Liberties
Data-Grabbing ‘Stingrays’ Are Attacking Our Civil Liberties Carolina K. Smith MD / Shutterstock A recent report by the American Civil Liberties Union revealed that Michigan police have been using portable cellphone tracking devices—so-called Stingrays and Kingfish among them—to investigate crimes since 2006. These devices are designed to imitate cell phone towers in order to gather metadata from […]
Sheldon Wolin and Inverted Totalitarianism
Sheldon Wolin and Inverted Totalitarianism Sheldon Wolin discusses his ideas with Chris Hedges in this still from Hedges’ interview with Wolin for The Real News Network. (TRNN via YouTube) Sheldon Wolin, our most important contemporary political theorist, died Oct. 21 at the age of 93. In his books “Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted […]
U.K. Police ‘to Be Given Powers to View Everyone’s Entire Internet History’
U.K. Police ‘to Be Given Powers to View Everyone’s Entire Internet History’ Ministerio TIC Colombia / CC BY 2.0 British police are to be given the power to view the entire Internet history of everyone in the U.K. in a new surveillance bill to be published next week, reports say. Under the proposed plan, telecoms and Internet […]
Ahead of Senate Vote, Edward Snowden Speaks Out to Stop CISA Surveillance Bill
Ahead of Senate Vote, Edward Snowden Speaks Out to Stop CISA Surveillance Bill @Snowden / Twitter As the U.S. Senate gears up for a vote on the controversial Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA) on Tuesday, privacy advocates are galvanizing an 11th-hour push against the bill they say does nothing more than expand government spying powers. […]
TPP Chapter Released by WikiLeaks Would Let Governments Curtail Trials So as to Contain Information
TPP Chapter Released by WikiLeaks Would Let Governments Curtail Trials So as to Contain Information T / CC BY-ND 2.0 What WikiLeaks claims to be the full intellectual property chapter of the Trans-Pacific Partnership appears to give countries greater power to stop sensitive information from going public. The Guardian reports: One chapter appears to give the signatory countries […]
In the Public Interest: Monsanto and Its Promoters vs. Freedom of Information
In the Public Interest: Monsanto and Its Promoters vs. Freedom of Information A protester holds a placard during a march in New York. (Waywuwei / CC BY-SA 2.0) Next year, the federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) will celebrate its 50th anniversary as one of the finest laws our Congress has ever passed. It is a vital […]
Land Degradation Could Create 50 Million Climate Refugees Within a Decade
Land Degradation Could Create 50 Million Climate Refugees Within a Decade Anti-desertification sand fences in Morocco. (Anderson Sady / CC BY-SA 3.0) Fifty million refugees fleeing hunger and poverty could be created in the next decade unless the world’s land degradation crisis is addressed, according to a new U.N.-backed study. The report, titled “The Value of Land,” estimates that […]
