Getty Image Over the weekend, President Donald Trump spent his time at the big G7 meeting being friendly with Boris Johnson, the United Kingdom’s new prime minister, and reconsidering his trade war with China. As predictably head-scratching and asinine as these (and many other) tidbits were, though, it was his decision to take a break […]
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Jerri-Lynn here. This Real News Network interview with Amazon Watch’s Christian Poirier discusses Bolsonaro’s policies that prioritize agribusiness over people – especially indigenous people.[embedded content] DHARNA NOOR: It’s The Real News. I’m Dharna Noor. The Amazon Rainforest is burning at a record rate. The fires are so big that you can see the smoke from […]
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Yves here. We’ve been giving short shrift to Italy because so much has been happening on other fronts, but also because Italian politics are even during normal times, daunting for outsiders, and these are not normal times. However, the fracture in Italy is taking place under the backdrop of Eurozone-created stresses continuing to damage its […]
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Google yesterday announced it’d banned 210 YouTube accounts “related to the ongoing protests in Hong Kong” and the discovery was “consistent with recent observations and actions related to China announced by Facebook and Twitter.” If you’re not an avid reader of social media company blogs, let me clear things up for you: Google banned 210 […]
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When billionaire libertarian David Koch died this week following a decades-long battle with prostate cancer, the Arctic was rapidly melting. The Amazon rainforest was on fire. And the Earth had just experienced its hottest month in recorded human history. These planetary conditions mimicked closely what scientists had tried to warn the public about 30 years […]
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Those of you who have taken interest in the seemingly never-ending saga of CalPERS’ diseased governance and incompetence, and now the determined efforts of its executives and the majority of the board to thwart efforts to clean the institution up may have noticed how the Sacramento Bee, the newspaper CalPERS cares most about, has reliably […]
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When I read mainstream political commentary, I often think of the awkward gyrating Elaine used to do on Seinfeld, flapping her limbs in all directions in an incompetent, and yet totally confident, imitation of what dancing is supposed to look like. Political pundits are engaged in a similar dance. Convinced of their abilities, they mimic certain […]
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On April 19, 1971, the Senate began debate on legislation that had the potential to foster meaningful integration in American schools. The bill was Connecticut senator Abraham Ribicoff’s baby. He thought that supposedly haphazard, so-called “de facto” segregation was a myth. Instead, he believed that all segregation was traceable to law or public policy. It […]
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Joe Biden never thought he’d have to do this. Positioned, as he was, as the affable veep to an immensely popular president, the veteran of three previous bids for the Democratic nomination assumed a presidential primary was just a way to garner free media until main event, the general election. But, since declaring his candidacy […]
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Yves here. Yet more tired arguments for not just “Why you can’t have nice things,” but “Why you must wear the austerity hairshirt.” Peter Dorman is likely correct in seeing that this scare talk is being revved up for 2020. Can’t have Sanders or Warren, now can we? By Peter Dorman, professor of economics at […]
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The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals handed down a notable ruling on police shootings this week, ruling in favor of a man whose encounter with law enforcement nearly a decade ago left him with profound injuries. It’s the latest development in a case that’s already taken a circuitous path through the judicial system. What’s enlightening […]
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If you are an accomplished science or technology writer, your books are probably handled by the most powerful literary agency in the field: the famous Brockman Inc., started by John Brockman and now run by Max Brockman, his son. As it happens, Max is also my agent—and has been since my first book was sold […]
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It was the Baniwa women who came up with the idea to sell the Jiquitaia chili peppers. They had already planted and picked the peppers in their own gardens in their communities along the Rio Içana, a northern Amazon tributary of the Rio Negro that borders Colombia and Venezuela; it would be easy to produce […]
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By Marshall Auerback, a market analyst and commentator. Produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute President Trump has delayed the new tariffs he threatened to impose on Chinese imports in the early fall, and exempted some other Chinese imports altogether. The de-escalation of the Sino-U.S. trade war is especially welcome, given the […]
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Wednesday morning on Good Morning America, Sean Spicer tried to show off his fun side. As part of an unveiling of the cast of the upcoming season of Dancing with the Stars, the former White House press secretary stood in front of a podium as a joke, and later told an anecdote about getting kicked […]
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Last August, Cokethia Goodman returned home from work to discover a typed letter from her landlord in the mailbox. She felt a familiar panic as she began to read it. For nearly a year, Goodman and her six children—two of them adopted after being abandoned at birth—had been living in a derelict but functional three-bedroom […]
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What is free speech? The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution—perhaps the most explicit legal protection of the right to free speech in the entire world—does not say. It simply states that “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.” It does not, as the saying goes, define […]
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The most incredible thing about last week’s decision in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on detained migrant children is that the case existed at all. The court ruled that the Trump administration had to provide basic health and hygiene supplies, including soap and toothbrushes, to the children in its custody. Justice Department lawyers had […]
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Getty Image Donald Trump’s beef with “the Squad” has been going on for a while now, and any time he takes a swing it tends to be legitimately troubling and upsetting. It’ll be hard for him to go lower than telling four non-white congresswomen, three of born in America,” to “go back” to their home […]
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Photo: Mark Wilson (Getty) Shots fired. That’s the take among reviewers of the Obamas’ first foray into TV production, which looks at the promise to America’s Rust Belt unfulfilled by the Trump administration. American Factory, which premieres on Netflix Wednesday, does not name Donald Trump explicitly, but, according to reviewers at Politico, it is a […]
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