( Tomdispatch.com ) – Late last month, President Biden signed a bill that clears the way for $858 billion in Pentagon spending and nuclear weapons work at the Department of Energy in 2023. That’s far more than Washington anted up for military purposes at the height of the Korean or Vietnam wars or even during […]
Archives for January 2023
Billionaires Gobbled up 2/3s of New Wealth at $2.7 bn/ day, as 800 million go to bed Hungry: Oxfam
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Oxfam , the British charity, has released a new report finding that the global problem of wealth inequality is growing ever more threatening. Of all the new wealth the entire human race has produced in the past two years, the richest 1% gobbled up 66% of it. The less-rich 99% […]
Iran: Brute Force Used in Crackdown on Dissent
( Human Rights Watch – (Beirut) – Iranian authorities used excessive and lethal force in their clampdown on nationwide protests that broke out in September 2022, Human Rights Watch said today in its World Report 2023. The government imprisoned hundreds of activists on dubious charges, and issued death sentences in grossly unfair trials. The death on […]
On MLK Day, Let’s Learn the Right Lessons from History
By Svante Myrick | – ( Otherwords.org) Every year, the arrival of the Martin Luther King holiday calls us to pause and reflect on Dr. King’s legacy. And every year, I’m struck by the same thing: as sincere as we are in our reverence for Dr. King, we keep learning the wrong lessons not just […]
Why do so many Turkish people believe ‘Secret Clauses’ in the 1923 Great Power Lausanne Treaty will be unveiled this Year?
By Ozan Ozavci, Utrecht University | – (The Conversation) – Commonly regarded as the “birth certificate” of modern Turkey, the 1923 treaty of Lausanne was the last of the peace settlements signed at the end of the first world war. This year’s centenary has already provoked far more public anticipation than one might expect, thanks […]
J. Edgar Hoover was the QAnon of his Era, and Martin Luther King Jr. was the Victim of his Dirty Tricks
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Ours is an age beset by conspiracy theories, with the fascist QAnon cult at the center of much public lunacy. These completely implausible ideas, apparently taken seriously by millions of people, have been enabled by the internet, by social media, and by the rise of a new, militant billionaire class […]
How the Right-Wing Distortion of Martin Luther King Jr.‘s words enables more, not less, racial Division within American society
Hajar Yazdiha, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences | – U.S. Rep. Chip Roy of Texas is just the latest conservative lawmaker to misuse the words of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. to judge a person on character and not race. In the protracted battle to elect Rep. Kevin McCarthy as speaker […]
Saudi Arabia: Government Agents infiltrate Wikipedia, sentence Independent Admins to Prison
By SMEX | – ( Globalvoices.org ) – The Saudi Arabian government infiltrated Wikipedia by recruiting the organization’s highest ranked administrators in the country to serve as government agents to control information about the country and prosecuting those who contributed critical information about political detainees, said SMEX and Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN) […]
Why does the Pentagon Budget Really Keep Growing? When Democracies Pursue Imperial Dominance it doesn’t End Well
( Tomdispatch.com) – Imagine this scenario for a moment: a “great power” watches another major power fight a war in a nearby nation for 10 years before its army limps home defeated and, not so very long after, that country implodes. A little over a decade later, by then unofficially the “last superpower” on planet […]