Maskless in America: Biden Caves to Anti-Masker Political Pressure, Has ‘Mission Accomplished’ Moment

By Dave Lindorff

In the clash between sound science and political pressure from anti-science crackpots in the United States, the Biden administration and the Center for Disease Control have blinked, announcing prematurely that people who are vaccinated can basically give up masking except when traveling on public transit or visiting health facilities.

The idiocy and mendacity  of this announcement, at a time when  read more

Chile and Colombia to Move Money Out of Militaries

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, May 15, 2021

While the proposal for a global ceasefire during a disease pandemic has done the opposite of catching on, there are a few small signs of sanity and even of successful activism. While most big military spenders (including the super-mega-biggest one) have increased or kept their spending steady, the SIPRI numbers show a serious reduction from 2019 to 2020 in military read more

For Okinawa, Rahm Would Be a Knee on the Neck

If you don’t know much about Japan (and neither does Rahm Emanuel, the reported nominee for U.S. ambassador) a few relevant facts are these:

1) It’s right next to China which much of the U.S. government is eager for some sort of fight with.

2) Its Constitution (imposed by the U.S.) bans war, and the U.S. has been hard at work pressuring Japan to violate that bit since about 10 seconds after it was adopted.

3) It has colonized and abuses a separate set of islands, including Okinawa, where read more

Talk World Radio: Richard Falk on Peace, War, and the Life of a Citizen Pilgrim

Talk World Radio is recorded as audio and video on Riverside.fm. Here is this week’s video and all the videos on Youtube.

This week on Talk World Radio, our guest is Richard Falk. Richard Falk is Albert G. Milbank Professor Emeritus of International Law at Princeton University, and currently Chair of Global Law, Queen Mary University London. Falk served as UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Occupied Palestine (2008-2014). He has written several books. (Re)Imagining Humane Global read more

Beef Scam Tease: The Best Positions in U.S. Politics Are Always the Fake Ones

The only positions I ever get excited about in U.S. politics are the ones that Republicans pretend Democrats hold.

The beef one is no exception.

Lately, Republicans have been pretending not just that Democrats want the usual array of things I wish someone would actually act to institute (a guaranteed income, a decent minimum wage, single-payer healthcare, a Green New Deal, a major shift to progressive taxation, defunding militarism, making college free, etc.) — THE HORROR OF IT! — but also that read more