A blog about a criminal enterprise
I’ve written before about the pseudo-science of genetics, which is almost as crazy as the popular understanding of it. Our culture has long proposed that Oliver Twist could grow up middle-class in the slums because of his inherited traits. But in the age when the scientific gurus in popular films are geneticists, things have gotten nuttier.
A book and movie called The Time Traveler’s Wife presents a handy depiction of roughly the way that many people think of genes. A character has
This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To receive TomDispatch in your inbox three times a week, click here.
She began cutting school on Fridays and simply sitting on the steps of the Swedish parliament. Her name was Greta Thunberg. She was 15 years old, with a mind of her own and a sign demanding a school strike against climate change. Her parents wanted her to go back to school, but Friday after
By David Swanson, Director of World BEYOND War
When I was a kid there was a local basketball team called the Washington Bullets. The team changed its name when “bullets” became offensive due to the high rate of gun murders in Washington, D.C. This is the same city that to this day has a football team called the Washington Redskins. What offends is not, perhaps, violence, but violence directed at people who matter. (Compare: tens of thousands of Yemenis vs. one Washington Post reporter.)
The
By David Swanson, Director of World BEYOND War
The U.S. State Department uses public funds and public employees to market private products designed for mass killing to foreign governments. Few corporations have benefitted more from this socialism for the oligarchs than Boeing. In one recent example, the U.S. government has persuaded the New Zealand government to buy four “Poseidon” planes from Boeing that are designed for working with submarines, of which New Zealand possesses zero.
The purchase
By Dave Lindorff
The organization Roots Action has delivered a petition signed by 6700 people from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, across the country and around the world, to Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner, demanding that Mumia Abu-Jamal be allowed to re-argue his original appeal of his conviction to the state’s highest court.
The petition, which can still have names added, states:
Dear District Attorney Krasner:
As you know, respected
On Speaking Truth to Empire, on KFCF 88.1 FM independently owned and locally operated in Fresno since 1975, Dan Yaseen interviews Steve Lendman, an author, a progressive blogger and an internet radio host. They discuss US initiated coup against democratically elected Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro. He writes on vital international
By David Swanson, Director of World BEYOND War
The New York Times and the people it gives voice to are very worried that Donald Trump may be too much in favor of peace in Korea, more in favor of peace than of disarming North Korea prior to peace — a sure recipe, of course, for never arriving at peace.
North Korea has disarmed in the past when there were real steps toward peace from both sides.
North Korea is no threat to the United States — the actual United States, not its mission of global
This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To receive TomDispatch in your inbox three times a week, click here.
Former Obama speechwriter, confidant, and deputy national security advisor Ben Rhodes had an all-encompassing label for the wonks, experts, think tankers, cable news talking heads, and former or future officials, always ready to spin through Washington’s infamous revolving
By Dave Lindorff
Listening to Sen. Bernie Sanders’ videoed announcement of his candidacy for the Democratic Party’s 2020 presidential nomination, I was struck by how much has changed since 2016, and how little.
Sanders, recall, ran a spirited primary campaign against Hillary Clinton, a campaign that was undermined by crooked dealing, dirty tricks and sabotage by the Hillary campaign and by the Democratic National Committee, all of which effectively
The Trump administration’s campaign to topple the government of Venezuela raises the issue of whether the U.S. government is willing to adhere to the same rules of behavior it expects other nations to follow.
During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, U.S. foreign policy was characterized by repeated acts of U.S.