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People In The US Were Once Promised Affordable Education For All

May 6, 2023 Chris Hedges, The Real News. , , ,
The 1960s were a decade of intellectual and political ferment on college campuses. Anti-war, feminist, and racial justice movements all found a foothold in higher education, with student activists often playing a pivotal role in social movements that extended far beyond the university. A crucial condition for the student radicalism of the time was the affordability of public higher education and the recent dissolution of barriers that prevented students of minoritized backgrounds from attending college. Today, these conditions have all but disappeared. Collectively, college graduates owe some $1.6 trillion in student debt.

How The United States Is Preparing For Imminent War With China

March 13, 2023 Margaret Flowers, Clearing the FOG. , , ,
US aggression toward China is escalating and China is shedding its usual restraint to more clearly call out this aggression and warn the US not to overstep its red lines. Clearing the FOG speaks with K. J. Noh, an activist, journalist and scholar on the geopolitics of the Asian continent. He discusses the renewed belligerence of South Korea under the President Yoon Suk-yeol, the increasing militarization of Japan, shifting alliances in Western Asia and how China, including Taiwan, is responding. Noh also speaks about efforts in the United States to prepare for a war against China and how that is increasing violence against Asian Americans, as well as what we can do to prevent what would be a catastrophic conflict.

Hungary Demands UN Investigation Into Nord Stream Pipeline Attack

March 3, 2023 Helsinki Times. , , ,
According to Hersh's sources, the explosives were planted in June 2022 by US Navy divers under the guise of the BALTOPS 22 NATO exercise, and were detonated three months later with a remote signal sent by a sonar buoy. One source told Hersh that the plotters knew the covert operation was an “act of war," with some in the CIA and State Department warning, “Don’t do this. It’s stupid and will be a political nightmare if it comes out." Now, after China demanded that the United States “explain itself to the world” over the claims, Hungary has added its voice to the call for a full and proper investigation, demanding to know "who committed it and why."

Ten Ways The US Is Out Of Line With The Entire World

February 14, 2023 Lee Camp, Mintpress News. , , ,
Out of the nearly 200 countries in the world, there is one country that does not behave like the others, even remotely. There is one country that is outside the norm in almost every regard. It’s a rogue nation – and it’s about time we called it to account! The agents of the United States used to refer to any country that wasn’t acting in the interests of the empire as a “rogue state.” Countries like Iran, Iraq, Cuba, Syria, Libya, Venezuela, Russia, and Nauru were all labelled as such at various times. Nowadays, the U.S. government has a new expression that seems to mean the same thing. U.S. officials say, “That country is not abiding by the rules-based international order.”

3.4 Million Adults In US Were Displaced By Extreme Weather Last Year

February 8, 2023 Climate Nexus, EcoWatch. , , ,
About 3.4 million adults in the U.S. (1.4% of the adult population) were displaced from their homes by extreme weather disasters in 2022, a new survey from the U.S. Census Bureau reveals. Those findings, based on the 68,500 responses to the Bureau’s Jan. 4-16 Household Pulse Survey , are far higher than figures from the International Displacement Monitoring Centre, which estimates an average of 800,000 U.S. residents were displaced annually from 2008 through 2021, including the 1.7 million people the Centre estimates were displaced in 2017 when Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria all rocked the country. About half of those displaced in 2022 were forced to leave their homes due to hurricanes. While about 40% of those displaced returned home within a week, about 12% were displaced for more than six months and roughly 16% never returned home. The portion of people with disabilities permanently displaced by disasters is far higher.

Russell Banks, John Brown And The American Soul

January 17, 2023 Chris Hedges, Scheer Post. , , ,
The deep malaise that defines American society — the rage, despair and widespread feelings of betrayal and loss — is rarely captured and almost never explained in the pages of newspapers or on screens. To grasp what has happened to the United States, the savage economic and emotional cost of deindustrialization; the destruction of our democratic institutions; the Neolithic violence that sees us beset with almost daily mass shootings in malls, offices, schools and movie theaters; the rise of the militarized state; and the consolidation of national wealth by a tiny cabal of corrupt bankers and corporations, we must turn to our artists, poets and writers. Foremost among writers who explored our peculiar American zeitgeist was the novelist Russell Banks, who died on January 7th at the age of 82.

The US Is Evading Its Responsibility On Climate Change

November 18, 2022 People's Dispatch. , , ,
Eugene Puryear of BreakThrough News talks about the failure of the United States to fulfill its responsibilities in combating climate change. The US is the largest polluter in historical terms. However, it has failed to provide enough funds or take the necessary steps to meet the goals it has set to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases. Eugene explains the domestic conversation and policy-making around climate change and also talks about how globally, it has taken extremely positions that hurt the interests of the Global South.

The Most Dangerous Situation That Humanity Has Ever Faced

October 7, 2022 Vijay Prashad, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. , , ,
Since 1947, the Doomsday Clock has measured the likelihood of a human-made catastrophe, namely to warn the world against the possibility of a nuclear holocaust. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, who attend to this clock, originally set the device at seven minutes to midnight, with midnight being, essentially, the end of the world. The farthest that the clock has been from midnight was in 1991, when it was set at 17 minutes from midnight. The closest to midnight that the clock has been is now. Since 2020, the clock has sat at ‘doom’s doorstep’ – 100 seconds from midnight. The motivation for this alarming setting was the unilateral withdrawal by the United States from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty in 2019.

Let’s Stop Pretending America Is A Functioning Democracy

September 6, 2022 Chris Hedges, Scheer Post. , , ,
There is a fatal disconnect between a political system that promises democratic equality and freedom while carrying out socioeconomic injustices that result in grotesque income inequality and political stagnation. Decades in the making, this disconnect has extinguished American democracy. The steady stripping away of economic and political power was ignored by a hyperventilating press that thundered against the barbarians at the gate — Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, the Taliban, ISIS, Vladimir Putin — while ignoring the barbarians in our midst. The slow-motion coup is over. Corporations and the billionaire class have won.

Autocracy, American-Style

September 6, 2022 Michael Brenner, Consortium News. , ,
The abuse of executive powers has become so commonplace as to be accepted as the norm. We experience it in organizations public and private – ranging from the Oval Office to elite universities to charitable NGOs and foundations, and of course across the business world where the MBA mindset and CEO hubris reign. In this era of impunity, autocratic behavior is taken as a perquisite of office, if not indeed part of the job description. A general condition of social nihilism entices and emboldens the willful who crave arbitrary power for its own sake. The drifting attention of our political class and an inert citizenry are critical facilitating factors. The result in an overall weakening of the country’s dedication to civic principles.

Iran Awaits US Response In Latest Move To Revive The Nuclear Deal

August 12, 2022 People's Dispatch. , , ,
Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian, in a conversation with his Turkish counterpart Mevlut Cavosoglu, said on Wednesday, August 10, that Iran “hopes that the American side, with a realistic and pragmatic view and acceptance of the legitimate demands of the Islamic Republic of Iran, will provide the ground for an agreement on the final text,” Press Tv reported.  Iran had earlier objected to media reports on Monday claiming that the final draft of the deal has been reached and negotiations are finalized. Iran said that the US has to respond to its fundamental demands before any deal is signed.  Abdollahian made it clear that Iran will not sign any deal that does not address all the issues raised in the talks related to Iranian interests. 

The Chris Hedges Report: Breaking The Cycle Of American Violence

July 24, 2022 Chris Hedges, The Real News Network. , , ,
American society is the most violent of any nation in the industrialized world. Nothing we do, from administrating the world’s largest prison system to militarizing our police, seems to help. Dr. James Gilligan argues that childhood abuse, and the shame it engenders, is the engine that fuels America’s deadliest epidemic. This abuse and shame, he argues, fosters a dangerous numbness that breeds a deep self-loathing and inchoate rage. It is only by understanding the causes of our national epidemic, and addressing those causes, that we will have any hope of stemming the nihilistic violence that grips American society. Dr. Gilligan grounds his writing not only in case studies of the violent patients he works with, but Greek myths and Shakespeare.

China And The US Response To Covid-19

June 27, 2022 John V. Walsh, Popular Resistance. , , ,
In May and June of 2022 two milestones were passed in the world’s battle with Covid and were widely noted in the press, one in the US and one in China.  They invite a comparison between the two countries and their approach to combatting Covid-19. The first milestone was passed on May 12 when  the United States registered over 1 million total deaths (1,008,377 as of June 19, 2022, when this is written) due to Covid, the highest of any country in the world.  Web MD expressed its sentiment in a piece headlined: “US Covid Deaths Hit 1 Million: ‘History Should Judge Us.’” Second, on June 1, China emerged from its 60-day lockdown in Shanghai in response to an outbreak there, the most serious since the Wuhan outbreak at the onset of the pandemic. 

Who’s Behind The ‘People’s Convoy’ To Washington DC?

February 22, 2022 Steve O’Keefe, Counter Punch. , , ,
Thousands of truckers are being hijacked by anti-vax loonies and encouraged to parade through red state America in search of any remaining Covid-19 restrictions to protest. The so-called “People’s Convoy” is scheduled to leave Barstow, California, on Wednesday, February 23, and meander eastward, picking up truckers as they go for a final jamboree and road-blocking in Washington, DC, on Tuesday, March 1, 2022 – the day of Joe Biden’s first State of the Union address. Are these the same organizers that brought us Canada’s “Freedom Convoy,” blocking the streets of the capital, Ottawa, for weeks and blocking border crossings to the U.S.? No, those organizers were arrested. Those trucks were confiscated. Those protesters have been debanked and uninsured. This is a whole new crop of American Made truckers.

Governments Buy More Weapons In First Year Of COVID-19

December 6, 2021 Peoples Dispatch. , , ,
In 2020, when the global economy contracted over 3.1% due to the COVID-19 pandemic, global arms trade recorded an increase of 1.3%, as per latest data released by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) on Monday, December 6. The growth in arms trade, both domestic and international, reveals how governments worldwide chose to maintain or increase their spending on arms despite the economic hardships caused by the pandemic.  According to SIPRI, arms trade by the world’s top 100 companies in the sector touched USD 531 billion in 2020, making it the sixth consecutive year of growth since 2015. According to Alexander Marksteiner, a researcher with SIPRI, the main reason for the growth in arms trade in spite of the global economic slump was “sustained government demand for military goods and services.”
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