New chance to fight conviction: PA Supreme Court rejects Faulkner Widow’s ‘Evidence-Free’ Effort to Block Mumia Appeal

Dave Lindorff

Mumia Abu-Jamal, the prison journalist long known as the “voice of the voiceless” for his compelling writings and short audio tapes about life behind bars, moved a step closer to getting a chance for a reconsideration of his earliest appeal of his conviction — an allegedly flawed Post-Conviction Relief Act hearing in 1995, as well as three other later PCRA appeals of aspects his case, all ignored and their findings rejected by Pennsylvania’s appellate read more

Tomgram: Andrew Bacevich, The Madness of War, American-Style

This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To receive TomDispatch in your inbox three times a week, click here.

The American invasion of Iraq began almost 18 years ago in mid-March 2003. By early April, that country’s capital, Baghdad, had fallen and before the month ended the war was considered over and won. On May 1st, President George W. Bush, in the co-pilot’s seat of a Navy fighter jet, landed read more

Tomgram: Engelhardt, Partyland 2020

This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To receive TomDispatch in your inbox three times a week, click here.

What If, After 9/11, George W. Bush Had Thrown Parties?
And What If, After the Pandemic Arrived, Donald J. Trump Had Launched a Global War on Covid-19?
By Tom Engelhardt

‘Tis the season to be folly
Fa-la-la-la-la, la-la-la-la
Don(ald) we now our gay apparel,
Fa-la-la-la-la, la-la-la-la!…

It’s party time in the nation’s capital and the Christmas spirit read more

Talk Nation Radio: Will Trump Attack Iran?

Michael T. Klare, The Nation’s defense correspondent, is professor emeritus of peace and world-security studies at Hampshire College and senior visiting fellow at the Arms Control Association in Washington, DC. Most recently, he is the author of All Hell Breaking Loose: The Pentagon’s Perspective on Climate Change, and his latest article for The Nation is “A Very Trumpian Christmas Surprise? Signs Point to a Possible US Attack on Iran.

Total run time: 29:00
Host: David Swanson.
read more

Go for it Republicans! Go!: A Red State Secession from the US of A is a Great Idea!

By Dave Lindorff

Texas Republican Party Chair Allen West has joined blow-hard right-wing radio whackjob Rush Limbaugh in suggesting that Republican-governed states (like Texas, Wyoming, Nebraska, Utah, Montana, Alabama, Mississippi and others) should “band together” and secede from the Union.

Some have expressed outrage at such a suggestion, but really, since it’s going to be next to impossible to get rid of the Electoral College that has enabled Republicans read more

Talk Nation Radio: Nicolas Davies on Ceasing to Create Terrorists

Nicolas “Sandy” Davies is a freelance writer, a researcher for CODEPINK and the author of Blood On Our Hands: the American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq. We discuss the article he wrote with Medea Benjamin, “Will Biden’s America Stop Creating Terrorists?”

Total run time: 29:00
Host: David Swanson.
Producer: David Swanson.
Music by Duke Ellington.

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Tomgram: Rajan Menon, On the Frontlines of Covid-19 Suffering

This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To receive TomDispatch in your inbox three times a week, click here.

In the midst of the worst pandemic since 1918, one only growing ever more severe as cases, hospitalizations, and deaths rise precipitously, if you haven’t lost your job or had your hours and wages cut back severely, if you can cover your rent or make your mortgage payments, you may not have noticed read more

Where Did the War on Cancer Come From?

Did you ever wonder whether Western culture focuses on destroying rather than preventing cancer, and talks about it with all the language of a war against an enemy, just because that’s how this culture does things, or whether the approach to cancer was actually created by people waging a real war?

This story was not actually a secret anymore, yet I didn’t know much about it until I read The Great Secret by Jennet Conant.

Bari is a lovely Southern Italian port city with a cathedral where Santa read more