WEEKEND
READ - Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan
for America by. Nancy MacLean. ... Behind today’s headlines of
billionaires taking over our government is a secretive political establishment
with long, deep, and troubling roots. The capitalist radical right has been working
not simply to change who rules, but to fundamentally alter the rules of democratic
governance. Amazon
Historian:
Republican Push to Replace Obamacare Reflects Radical Right's Stealth Plan for
America. ... As Republicans attempt to revive a bill to overturn Obamacare, we
look at the radical right’s attempt to reshape the role of the federal government—from
healthcare to education to housing.
Democracy Now Related:
Related: Republicans Have Trifecta Control of 25 States & Need 6 More to Call
for a Constitutional Convention.
Democracy
Now
Trump
Picks DAPL Lobbyist to Oversee EPA Water Safety in Same Week He Rolls Back Water
Safeguards. Democracy
Now
What
Happened to America’s Wealth? The Rich Hid It. ... But what if billions of
dollars in tax revenue have gone missing? ... New research suggests that the super-rich
are hiding their money at alarming rates. A study by economists Annette Alstadsaeter,
Niels Johannesen, and Gabriel Zucman reports that households with wealth over
$40 million evade 25 to 30 percent of personal income and wealth taxes. . Counter
Punch
Medicare
for All: It’s a Matter of Life and Death,
Truth Dig/Goodman and Moynihan
Sy
Hersh, Exposer of My Lai and Abu Ghraib, Strikes Again, Exposing US Lies About
Alleged Assad Sarin ‘Attack’ Counter
Punch and
AlterNet
and Welt
With
Nation's Attention Elsewhere, Trump Quietly Intensifies War on Workers. ... Trump
has nominated two corporate lawyers to the NLRB as Supreme Court Justice Neil
Gorsuch gears up to rule on a key labor case Common
Dreams
Over Half of Hate Crimes in
US Go Unreported, Report Says. ... Most victims of hate crimes don't report them
to police, according to a new study that advocates say reinforces their fears
that the Trump administration's tough rhetoric and policies will make more people
afraid to come forward. NY
Times
Meeting
the Needs of Homeless Youth: Public Schools Are Doing What Government Won't Do
Directly. TruthOut
JUNE
29, 2017
Mnufactured
illiteracy and miseducation: A long process of decline led to President Donald
Trump. ... A deep-rooted crisis in education, and a long cultural and political
decline, is what got us here. There's hope! Salon/Giroux
UN Warns
Human-Caused Soil Contamination Threatens Global Food Security. Excess nitrogen
and trace metals such as arsenic, cadmium, lead and mercury can impair plant metabolism
and cut crop productivity, ultimately putting pressure on arable land, the UN
Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) on 23 June informed. TruthOut
A World
of Winless War: US Special Ops Forces Deployed to 137 Nations in 2017 TruthOut
The
Age of No Privacy: the Surveillance State Shifts into High Gear. ... “We
are rapidly entering the age of no privacy, where everyone is open to surveillance
at all times; where there are no secrets from government.” Counter
Punch
EPA seeks to scrap rule protecting drinking water for third of Americans. ...
Environmental Protection Agency and army propose ending clean water rule to hold
‘substantive re-evaluation’ of which bodies of water should be protected.
Guardian
When
the Bible is the Root of Evil. ... For many Christians, religion is about correct
belief, not right behavior. For them, The Bible’s overriding appeal is the
authority it proclaims, not the empathy it inspires. It is about meeting the believer’s
quest for certainty, not an oppressed person’s need for compassion –
and justice . Counter
Punch
Israel’s
Efforts to Hide Palestinians From View No Longer Fools Young American Jews. ...
Few books on Palestinian history become bestsellers. But one, titled A History
of the Palestinian People: From Ancient Times to the Modern Era, managed to rocket
to the top of Amazon’s charts this month.
Counter Punch (Note:
the book mentioned was pulled from Amazon. It contains 135 blank pages because
from Israel's view Palenstinians don't exist. However, Barnes and Nobel, as of
6/28/17, sells it).
JUNE
28, 2017
Womp!
This Country Was Named The Greatest Threat To World Peace. ... The rest of world
believes that the United States is the country that poses the greatest threat
to world peace, beating out all challengers by a wide margin.. Huffington
Post
Arrogant,
Intolerant, Dangerous': Survey Shows What the World Thinks of Trump. ... "Trump
and many of his key policies are broadly unpopular around the globe" Common
Dreams
Assad preparing chemical weapons attack in Syria, US claims. ... US military sources
reportedly surprised by White House’s public warning that regime would pay
heavily for repeat of April attack.
Guardian
(Probably
fake news - The Cynic)
Fracking
seems to poison groundwater within one kilometer. Journalist's
Resources
EPA
Continues To Purge Scientists, Putting Public Health In Jeopardy. Scott Pruitt,
the climate change-denying head of the Environmental Protection Agency, announced
that another 38 science advisors will be purged from his agency and that they
are going to curtail panel meetings for the time being.
The Ring of Fire
Quantifying
the local health effects of transporting coal. Journalist's
Resources
70,000
Tonnes of Hubris. There is no defensive purpose to an aircraft carrier. Craig
Murray
The
Causes of Forest Fires: Climate vs. Logging. The timber industry and the U.S.
Forest Service aggressively market the idea that reducing fuels through logging/thinning
programs will result in a significant decrease in acreage burned, firefighting
costs and the number of high-severity fires. ... However, it is climate/weather,
not fuels, that drive all large wildfires. Counter
Punch
White
House threatens to sabotage insurance of low-income people if Trumpcare isn’t
passed. ... The Trump administration is putting poor people in a lose-lose situation.
Think
Progress
JUNE
27, 2017
Authoritarianism
Is Making a comeback - Here's the Time-Tested Way to Defeat It. ... Tyrants’
tactics require the consent of large numbers of people. The first lesson, then,
is not to obey in advance.
AlterNet
Arundhati
Roy on the Rising Hindu Right in India, the Gujarat Massacre & Her Love of
Eduardo Galeano. Democracy
Now
Thinking
Dangerously: The Role of Higher Education in Authoritarian Times. ... Across the
globe, the forces of free-market fundamentalism are using the educational system
to reproduce a culture of privatization, deregulation and commercialization while
waging an assault on the historically guaranteed social provisions and civil rights
provided by the welfare state, higher education, unions, reproductive rights and
civil liberties. All the while, these forces are undercutting public faith in
the defining institutions of democracy. TruthOut/Giroux
How
the Supreme Court just dangerously undermined the separation of church and state.
This Week
Ralph
Nader: The Democrats Are Unable to Defend the U.S. from the “Most Vicious”
Republican Party in History. The
Intercept
Hersh’s
New Syria Revelations Buried From View. Counter
Punch
Oil
‘Is Going to Be a Worthless Commodity,’ and Saudi Arabia’s Crown
Prince Knows It. TruthDig
Saudi
Arabia Wants to Reduce Qatar to a Vassal State. Counter
Punch
JUNE
26, 2017
The
American Empire Is Now Effectively Being Run by Generals. ... The military has
been given free rein to massacre at will, especially in the Muslim world.
AlterNet
Dakota
Access-Style Policing Moves to Pennsylvania’s Mariner East 2 Pipeline.
Intercept
The Saudi Regime Is Playing Donald Trump Like a Fiddle, With Potentially Disastrous
Consequences. ... It could in the end destabilize the Middle East in ways not
seen in our lifetimes. AlterNet
Qatar given 10 days to meet 13 sweeping demands by Saudi Arabia. ... Gulf dispute
deepens as allies issue ultimatum for ending blockade that includes closing al-Jazeera
and cutting back ties with Iran.
Guardian and
Guardian
Deaths of despair are rising in America. They are claiming lives all around me.
... Half of my schoolmates are dead, in jail or battling addiction. My town does
not have a mental health clinic so, faced with hopelessness, people self-medicate.
Guardian
Prominent
Democratic Fundraisers Realign to Lobby for Trump’s Agenda. The
Intercept
It's
not just Amazon coming for Whole Foods – Silicon Valley is eating the world.
Guardian
Who
Would Have Told Trump to Go Back to Demand a Patronage Relationship with Comey?
Empty Wheel
Republican
Healthcare Bill Gives Tax Cuts to the Rich by Gutting Safety Net for Poor &
Middle Class.
Democracy
Now
The CIA
Reads French Theory: On the Intellectual Labor of Dismantling the Cultural Left.
The
Philosophical salon
Why
is it that the British state could cope with the Blitz, but cannot deal with Grenfell
Tower? ... It is disgusting but revealing that the Government has still not withdrawn
a press release which is entitled ‘Government going further to cut red tape
by £10 billion’. Independent
Roll
of Shame. ... These are the 15 countries which shamefully voted against a UN General
Assembly Resolution on Thursday which proposed to seek an opinion from the International
Court of Justice on Britain’s continued colonial possession of the Chagos
Islands. Craig
Murray
Weenend
June 23-25, 2017
WEEKEND
READ:
Optimism over Despair: On Capitalism, Empire, and Social Change
- Noam Chomsky - In these recent, wide-ranging interviews, conducted for Truthout
by C. J. Polychroniou, Chomsky discusses his views on the “war on terror”
and the rise of neoliberalism, the refugee crisis and cracks in the European Union,
prospects for a just peace in Israel/Palestine, the rise of the Black Lives Matter
movement, the dysfunctional US electoral system, the grave danger posed to humanity
by the climate crisis, and the hopes, prospects, and challenges of building a
movement for radical change. Amazon
Myths
of Globalization: Noam Chomsky and Ha-Joon Chang in Conversation. ... Since the
late 1970s, the world's economy and dominant nations have been marching to the
tune of (neoliberal) globalization, whose impact and effects on average people's
livelihood and communities everywhere are generating great popular discontent,
accompanied by a rising wave of nationalist and anti-elitist sentiments. But what
exactly is driving globalization? Truth
Out
How privatization
could spell the end of democracy. ... Between Trump and tech, never before have
so many powerful people been so intent on transforming government into a business.
Guardian
Neoliberalism
– the ideology at the root of all our problems. ... Financial meltdown, environmental
disaster and even the rise of Donald Trump – neoliberalism has played its
part in them all. Why has the left failed to come up with an alternative?
Guardian
A Grain
of Truth: RCEP and the Corporate Hijack of Indian Agriculture. ... The plight
of farmers in India has been well documented. A combination of debt, economic
liberalisation, subsidised imports, rising input costs and a shift to cash crops
(including GM cotton) has caused massive financial distress. Counter
Punch
In
Yemen’s secret prisons, UAE tortures and US interrogates. AP
and
Democracy
Now
As Yemen
War Rages On, Saudi King Elevates the War's Architect—His Own Son—to
Be Crown Prince. Democracy
Now
Bloomberg
says America should 'get behind' Trump because 'the public has spoken'. ABC
Orange Julius - If Trump is Julius Caesar, then Americans are a confused and violent
mob.
The Nation
Invisible
Empire Beneath the Radar, Above Suspicion. ... When the United States went to
war with Spain in 1898, it did so in a media environment of “yellow journalism,”
that played no small part in the advent of the Spanish-American War. Counter
Punch
Medicare
for All: A Prescription for What Ails Us ... President Donald Trump’s long-promised
repeal of Obamacare, or the Affordable Care Act, edges closer to reality, as the
Senate releases its secretly written version of the House’s American Health
Care Act—the very bill that Trump first championed, then recently reportedly
called “mean.”. Truth
Dig
There
are deep forces in American society that are driving the current political crisis.
... In an obvious sense, the root cause of our political crisis is Donald Trump.
This crude and delusional man is despoiling some of our most treasured national
assets, not least of all our standing in the world. Raw
Story
JUNE
22, 2017
Saudi
Arabia's New Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman Is Good News for Israel and US.
... Saudi crown prince Bin Salman agrees with U.S. on Russia, Assad, Iran and
ISIS and according to some reports, he's also met with top Israeli officials Haaretz
Closing
Democracy’s Doors Until the People Open Them. ... Republicans prefer to use
the words “liberty” and “freedom,” not “democracy.”
Why? Because democracy includes these rights but adds “justice,” which
holds those in power accountable and brings them down to earth where people live,
work and raise their families. Counter
Punch
Acclaimed
Novelist Arundhati Roy on Telling the Truth of the Atrocities in Kashmir Through
Fiction. Democracy
Now
As
Standing Rock Camps Cleared Out, TigerSwan Expanded Surveillance to Array of Progressive
Causes. Intercept
Sen.
Warner Wants Russia Hacking Info Public but Pushes Prosecution for Alleged Leaker
Who Revealed It. Intercept
EPA
accelerates purge of scientists
Members of the EPA’s Board of Scientific
Counselors were told that they would not see their tenure renewed. Think
Progress
Industry
Was Doubly Generous with 13 GOP Senators Now Drafting Trumpcare. ... Industry
Was Doubly Generous with 13 GOP Senators Now Drafting Trumpcare. ... While baker's
dozen of Republicans' all-male, all-white legislative team draft bill in secret,
analysis reveals giving of insurance and pharmaceutical industries. Common
Dreams
Safety
problems at a Los Alamos laboratory delay U.S. nuclear warhead testing and production.
... A facility that handles the cores of U.S. nuclear weapons has been mostly
closed since 2013 over its inability to control worker safety risks. Public
Intregrity
How privatization
could spell the end of democracy. ... Between Trump and tech, never before have
so many powerful people been so intent on transforming government into a business.
Guardian
Neoliberalism turned our world into a business. And there are two big winners.
... Fearmongering Donald Trump and optimistic Silicon Valley seem to epitomize
opposing ideologies. But the two have far more in common than you think. Guardian
