Новости за 14.02.2025

In an oped in the Washington Post this week, former secretary of the navy Richard Danzig recommended deploying Elon Musk and his team from the Department of Government Efficiency to the Pentagon “not with a view to cutting costs,” but to “increase effectiveness” of our weapons systems.  Danzig believes that “our first national security priority should not be to cut costs.”  I believe that we can do both.
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Puerto Rico. Guam. The U.S. Virgin Islands. American Samoa. The Northern Mariana Islands. Today these unincorporated territories are inhabited by U.S. citizens who cannot vote in presidential elections, have limited representation in Congress and circumscribed self-governance, and are excluded from important federal programs and tax provisions. They can only benefit from selective constitutional protections. To this list of colonies one can add the U.S. government’s military bases and operations around the world... Читать дальше...

On this episode of CounterPunch Radio, Erik Wallenberg and Joshua Frank talk with Jesse Hagopian about his new book Teach Truth: The Struggle for Antiracist Education. Jesse has taught in the public schools for over 20 years, serves on the Black Lives Matter at School steering committee, organizes for the Zinn Education Project, and founded More

In 1799, during his explorations along the Orinoco River, German naturalist Alexander von Humboldt “stayed with a local Indigenous Carib tribe near the isolated village of Maypures,” located deep in the Venezuelan jungle. The Indigenous inhabitants kept tame parrots in cages and taught them how to speak. But among them was one bird that “sounded unusual.” When Humboldt asked why, he learned that the parrot had belonged to a nearby enemy tribe who were driven from their home village and land. The... Читать дальше...

The United States is imploding. The reign of Donald Trump is not only challenging and threatening the very foundations of its constitutional democracy, it is calling into question the U.S.’s post-World War II hegemonic role. Empires or hegemonic powers rise and fall. Often they are defeated by emerging powers. Sometimes their decline takes place over More

The onset of some level of climate upheaval or widespread destruction of biomes and human lives, mild or severe, has essentially been forecast by the world’s leading climate scientist James Hansen, Earth Institute, Columbia University who pronounced the 2C upper temperature limit that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says cannot be exceeded “dead More

This year marks the quincentenary of the publication of First Voyage Around the World, 1519-1522: An Account of Ferdinand Magellan’s Expedition. First published in 1525, this travelogue was written by Antonio Pigafetta (1492-1531), the navigator from Vicenza who was part of Magellan’s round-the-world expedition. Pigafetta completed the entire voyage from start to finish and lived More

The old Frasier show is one of my all-time favorite sitcoms. Not only are the writing, casting, and acting superb, the show routinely addresses profound philosophical issues. Episode 2 of season 10, “Enemy at the Gate,” opens with Niles and Frasier on their way to a shopping mall where they hope to get a new More

The US aid program began in earnest in the early stages of the Cold War, with an intention to beat off the contenders from the Soviet bloc in the postcolonial world.  President Harry S. Truman proposed, in his 1949 inaugural address, “a bold new program for making the benefits of our scientific advances and industrial progress available More

Teamsters Canada is led by François Laporte, who was elected president in 2015, as well as being an International Vice-President. LaPorte is an old guard figure who supported James P. Hoffa, Jr., the previous leader of the Teamsters, and ran on the winning O’Brien-Zuckerman Teamsters United slate in 2021. Yet, the Teamsters Canada are in a different country and operate in a different labor ​movement that is now the subject of menacing threats of annexation and economic ruin from U.S. President Donald Trump, who is supported by Sean O’Brien. Читать дальше...

Randell Leach is the CEO of Beneficial State Bank, a regional community bank based in Oakland, CA. He and I conducted via email the interview below about the ongoing shutdown of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), and what it means for both the financial sector and consumers. Seth Sandronsky: Generally, what do you think about More

Absent in the raging debate over trade policy and tariffs is a truth about the economy that those of us in poorer countries know all too well: U.S. corporations and their billionaire owners profit from massive supply chains that exploit low-wage workers in the Global South. For decades these unregulated supply chains have been praised More

Across the country, trans and nonbinary people and their families are reeling from President Trump’s cruel anti-trans executive orders, which restrict our access to passports, lifesaving healthcare, military service, athletics, and more. This builds off an election season that placed us squarely in the crosshairs of political and religious scapegoating. In 2024 alone, 672 anti-trans bills were More

President Trump has made it clear that he’s dead set on attacking our immigrant friends, families, and neighbors — and that the only people he’ll protect are his loyalists and billionaires. Since day one, Trump has launched a blatantly hateful agenda against immigrants. He’s issued executive orders that would unlawfully shut down asylum at the U.S. southern More

It is the year LIX, BCE. The Roman LIX translates into 59 in Arabic, soon to proclaimed “American Numerals” by Trumpius Maximus, newly returned to the Consulship. BCE stands for Big, Crazy Entertainment, and it is fitting that this edition of the games are being staged in Caesars Superdome in New Orleans. During his conquest More

Generally speaking, starting a war out of the blue is a bad idea. This is the lesson, if such was needed, of the utterly unprovoked 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, and one our rulers would do well not to forget – a war with millions of displaced Iraqis, hundreds of thousands of dead ones, tens More

Here’s a strange question: Why is Elon Musk lying about Lutherans? The richest man on earth recently forced good people across the country to interrupt their community work to respond to his lies and threats. Lutheran social service agencies offer crucial assistance related to adoption, foster care, domestic violence, and more. They also support immigrants More

Voting took place on February 9 for Ecuador’s next president. With 96% of the votes counted, Ecuador’s National Electoral Council indicated incumbent President Daniel Noboa of the National Alliance Party (ADN) had taken 44.2% of the vote and Luisa González of the Citizen’s Revolution Party, 43.9%. Second-round voting for these two candidates takes place on More

Washington Post columnist Matt Bai had a piece this week in which he implied that people did not realize the enormous political power that Elon Musk would have by taking ownership of a huge social media platform like Twitter. “Musk’s purchase of Twitter in 2022 is a useful case study here. At the time, the More

Bank robberies have been a means to gather funds for revolutionary organizations for more than a century. From the Russian narodniks to the Bolsheviks to the Black Liberation Army and countless others similarly inspired, the expropriations of funds from capitalism’s reservoirs of wealth have funded numerous acts of rebellion and ongoing revolutionary movements. Perhaps no More

This is the twelvth part in a series about riding night trains across Europe and the Near East to Armenia—to spend time in worlds beyond the pathological obsessions of Donald Trump. (This week newly installed President Elon Musk and his social media spokesman, Donald Trump, did their best to furlough most of the federal government, More

In bad times — and these are bad times — I call up the spirit of Willie. Willie has seen me through cancer, divorce, and deaths in the family. His memory has given me the courage and strength to push on when I wanted to give up and hide. Willie reminds me that, even at More

“The culture is such that we have a “mission” but even though they encourage self-care in theory, it doesn’t play out in reality.” (co-worker) After the 2024 November election results, like others who had the privilege to do so, I stayed in bed for a day, devastated. I knew we were in trouble so I More

Rural Americans – particularly men – are expected to live significantly shorter, less healthy lives than their urban counterparts, according to our research, recently published in the Journal of Rural Health. We found that a 60-year-old man living in a rural area is expected on average to live two fewer years than an urban man. More

No Chance to Surrender Sometimes some of the best proof of something or someone’s essence is found in one of its more forgotten manifestations. I spent much of the first Donald Trump administration gobsmacked by the failure and refusal of numerous academics, journalists, and commentators to acknowledge that the 45th President of the United States More