Helena Cobban is a veteran analyst of international affairs and an anti-imperialist activist who campaigns for human equality at all levels. She’s a Quaker who lives in Washington DC, which she describes as “the belly of the beast.” Helena has authored seven books on international issues, four of which have been about the Middle East; and for 20 years she contributed a regular column about global affairs to The Christian Science Monitor. She has also been a publisher.
Tomgram: Danny Sjursen, The End of War As We Know It?
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Consider it strange. The U.S. has been fighting in Somalia on and off (mostly on) since the early 1990s. (Who, of a certain age, doesn’t remember the “Black Hawk Down” fiasco?) Almost 30 years later, at a time when the U.N. secretary-general, supported by dozens of countries, has reasonably
Living on $600/wk for a while and then going back to $7.25 sucks: Pandemic Crisis and Recession Can Spark a Fight for Real Change in the US
By Dave Lindorff
American workers have a huge opportunity as a result of this coronavirus pandemic — an opportunity to massively expand union membership in the workplace, and a chance, after decades of being ignored by Congress, to finally win a desperately needed increase in the federal minimum wage from it’s current $7.25 per hour to at least $15 per hour.
Republicans in Congress, notably Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), are unhappy with the supplemental
Wait, What If War Isn’t Humanitarian?
Dan Kovalik’s new book, No More War: How the West Violates International Law by Using “Humanitarian” Intervention to Advance Economic and Strategic Interests — which I am adding to my list of books you should read on why war should be abolished (see below) — makes a powerful case that humanitarian war no more exists than philanthropic child abuse or benevolent torture. I’m not sure the actual motivations of wars are limited to economic and strategic interests — which seems
The UN’s Global Ceasefire Must Circumvent the UN
Two months have gone by since the Secretary General of the United Nations proposed an absolutely necessary global ceasefire.
The U.S. government has blocked a vote on the ceasefire in the UN Security Council.
The U.S. government during these past two months has led the world in:
- military spending
- weapons manufacture
- foreign weapons sales
- bombs dropped
- imposition of brutal sanctions
- threats of new wars
- attempted coups
- war rehearsals
- destruction of key disarmament treaties
- COVID-19 cases
- COVID-19 deaths
- vetoes and effective veto threats at the United Nations
The world cannot continue to allow the U.S. government to hold it back. A government misrepresenting 4 percent of humanity has no business controlling global policies. The cause of democratizing the United Nations might be
Reparations of an Economic Hit Man
John Perkins, author of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man and this TED Talk, has a new book called Touching the Jaguar. You can pre-order it here and get an online workshop and other bonus materials that I haven’t seen but recommend purely on the basis of having read the book. Perkins also is doing an online workshop in July that you can sign up for here. An interview he’s given about his new book is here. And I’ll soon be interviewing him on Talk Nation Radio.
Perkins has not just been
Tomgram: Bob Dreyfuss, Iraq Redux?
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Let me quote a rare good guy and once-upon-a-time leader on this increasingly godforsaken planet of ours, former Soviet president and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mikhail Gorbachev. He recently wrote: “What we urgently need
Beware another Biden betrayal New Deal’s last legacy program: As Republicans Face November Disaster, Efforts to Undermine Social Security Mount
By Dave LIndorff
Attacks on Social Security are coming thick and fast. It’s time for Americans of all ages who aren’t independently wealthy and don’t need to worry about a serious, career halting disability or surviving in old age to rally and fight back.
The latest attack is the Trump Administration’s so-called “Eagle” plan, appropriately named for the national bird that Benjamin Franklin rightly objected to because of its known proclivity for stealing
Video of Building the Peace Movement Teach-In
Time for a Little Truth About the Economy and the COVID-19 Pandemic
(Jointly published by ThisCantBeHappening! and Tarbell.org)
By Dave Lindorff
The auto industry is gearing up to bring back at least half its workers and to begin producing cars again. Across the country, states and localities are attempting to restart businesses that have been shuttered for as much as two months because of the Coronavirus pandemic.