Neoliberalism

By Habib Badawi Beirut (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – Lebanon may be a small country of some four million citizens with a land area a little less than that of Connecticut, but it plays an outsized role in the geopolitics of the Middle East. Its upcoming presidential election on June 14th therefore has wide […]

Democracy

Turkey’s Opposition Chief is Leading in the Polls, but Sunday’s Election is a Cliffhanger

The Conversation

By Balki Begumhan Bayhan, Coventry University | – (The Conversation) – Turkey’s general election on Sunday, May 14 will see voters cast their ballots for 600 members of its parliament and the country’s powerful presidency. This election has become intensely competitive in a country which has undergone severe democratic erosion over the past decade, but […]

Epidemics

COVID Response opened a New Era of Social Generosity; Why Didn’t we Make it Permanent?

Liz Theoharis

( Tomdispatch.com) – I doubt I ever feel older or more passé than when I’m out in my city — New York — and I still put on a mask before stepping onto a bus, going into the subway, or entering a store. Increasingly, I find myself alone in a world of the unmasked with […]

Corporations

The Non-Profit Industrial Complex

Rebecca Gordon

( Tomdispatch.com) – We’ve just passed through tax time again. (Unless, like me, you live in one of several states ravaged by recent extreme weather events brought on by climate change. In that case, you can wait until October.) It’s also that moment when the War Resisters League — slogan: “If you work for peace, […]

Neoliberalism

The End of Renting? In Some Cities Affordable Housing is a Thing of the Past

Rebecca Gordon

( Tomdispatch.com) – In 1937, the American folklorist Alan Lomax invited Louisiana folksinger Huddie Ledbetter (better known as Lead Belly) to record some of his songs for the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. Lead Belly and his wife Martha searched in vain for a place to spend a few nights nearby. But they were […]

Climate Crisis

Corporations are using Trade Treaties to handcuff Efforts to save the Planet from Climate Emergency

John Feffer

( Foreign Policy in Focus) – The global economy hit a new milestone in 2022 by surpassing $100 trillion. This expansion, which has experienced only the occasional setback such as the 2020 COVID shutdowns, has been accelerated by trade. The world trade volume experienced 4,300 percent growth from 1950 to 2021, an average 4 percent […]

Far Right

Inside the “Private and Confidential” Conservative Group That Promises to “Crush Liberal Dominance”

ProPublica

by Andy Kroll and Andrea Bernstein, ProPublica, and Nick Surgey, Documented Co-published with Documented ( ProPublica ) – A few months ago, Leonard Leo laid out his next audacious project. Ever since the longtime Federalist Society leader helped create a conservative supermajority on the Supreme Court, and then received more than a billion dollars from […]

Corporations

Before RR Co. Norfolk Southern Poisoned Palestine, Oh., It Poisoned the Ohio Statehouse

OtherWords

The company plied state lawmakers with cash and lobbied against common sense rail safety measures. By Jim Hightower | ( Otherwords.org – “The Wreck of the Old 97” is a classic bluegrass song recounting a spectacular train crash in 1903, caused by the company’s demand that the engineer speed down a dangerous track to […]

Corporations

Derailments across the Country: Rail Workers Warned Us that Greed Is Dangerous

OtherWords

By Rebekah Entralgo | – ( Otherwords.org ) – The toxic clouds that billowed up from a derailed freight train in Ohio this February are a chilling metaphor for the toxic greed that has infected so many of our big corporations. After having to evacuate, residents of East Palestine, Ohio are cautiously going back home, […]