Economy

( Middle East Monitor ) – “It’s unfortunate that no one’s taking in the refugees,” lamented former White House advisor during the Trump administration Jared Kushner. He made his comment during an interview at Harvard University last month. The reason? Gaza is being eyed as potential space for valuable waterfront property, so why shouldn’t Israel […]

Conspiracy Theories

Could Trump win again? Roots of MAGA Paranoia and the Politics of Fear

Arthur Goldwag

Brooklyn, NY (Special to Informed Comment; featured) – The cover of my The Politics of Fear: The Peculiar Persistence of American Paranoia features a photograph of a bearded, fur-clad man with a horned helmet, tattoos and face paint. On January 6, 2021, Jacob Anthony Chansley, aka the Q Shaman, stood at the House Speakers’ dais […]

Health Care

The Failing Battle for Healthcare in the Dis-United States

Liz Theoharis

( Tomdispatch.com ) – The slang definition of “unwinding” means “to chill.” Other definitions include: to relax, disentangle, undo — all words that, on the surface, appear both passive and peaceful. And yet in Google searches involving such seemingly harmless definitions of decompressing and resting, news articles abound about the end of pandemic-era Medicaid expansion […]

Pentagon

War is Bad for you — And the Economy: Biden touts the Alleged Benefits of the Arsenal of Democracy

William D. Hartung

( Tomdispatch.com ) – Joe Biden wants you to believe that spending money on weapons is good for the economy. That tired old myth — regularly repeated by the political leaders of both parties — could help create an even more militarized economy that could threaten our peace and prosperity for decades to come. Any […]

Climate Crisis

We Need to Phase out Fossil Fuels Immediately, but Equitably

Tom Athanasiou

By Tom Athanasiou | – This essay was originally published in Foreign Policy in Focus Just before the recent climate summit in Dubai, COP28 president Sultan Al-Jaber, with some exasperation, came out with the following rather amazing statement: “Please help me, show me the roadmap for a phase out of fossil fuel that will allow […]

Far Right

Our World-Historical Turning Point – Kairos – is Now, and Everything Depends on the Youths

Liz Theoharis

( Tomdispatch.com) – “All Americans owe them a debt for — if nothing else — releasing the idealism locked so long inside a nation that has not recently tasted the drama of a social upheaval. And for making us look on the young people of the country with a new respect.” That’s how Howard Zinn […]

Debt

The Military-Industrial Complex Is the Winner (Not You) – Overspending on the Pentagon Is Stealing Our Future

William D. Hartung

( Tomdispatch.com ) – 2023 was a year marked by devastating conflicts from Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine to Hamas’s horrific terror attacks on Israel, from that country’s indiscriminate mass slaughter in Gaza to a devastating civil war in Sudan. And there’s a distinct risk of even worse to come this year. Still, there was one […]

Corporations

We Deserve Medicare for All, But What We Get Is Medicare for Wall Street

Common Dreams

By Les Leopold | – ( Commondreams.org ) – The United States health care system—more costly than any on earth—will become ever more so as Wall Street increasingly extracts money from it. Private equity funds own approximately 9% of all private hospitals and 30% of all proprietary for-profit hospitals, including 34% that serve rural populations. […]