Global

On November 19, one of the world’s largest and longest protests achieved a major victory—farmers in North India woke up to Prime Minister Modi apologizing to them and asserting his intention to repeal the three farm laws they have been opposing. Despite Modi’s sudden declaration, farmers initially stood their ground on the outskirts of the capital of New Delhi. Americans should continue to support their movement because it is not over. 

The John Lewis and Freedom to Vote Acts have been officially stonewalled. Joe Biden must now enact them by Executive Order.

The key historic precedent is the Emancipation Proclamation, approved by Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863.

Today’s voting rights bills are essential to beat the uncivil war against democracy being waged by Donald Trump, Steve Bannon and their Jim Crow cult of autocracy.

Bannon says he’ll “take over the election process” and rob voting rights from millions of Americans of youth and color.

He leads an angry, aging cohort that’s lost its grip on the American electorate. By 2045, the US will be half non-white. Half is already born after 1981. In 2016 and again in 2020, Millennial/Zoomers under 30 rejected Donald Trump by more than 60%.

Thanks to America’s grassroots Election Protection movement, 2020 was our fairest, most reliably counted presidential contest. In the time of COVID, vote by mail, paper ballots, scanned ballot images and reliable audit/recount procedures---won by pro-democracy activism—made all the difference.

The first 911 call went out around 10:41. More than 200 local police and FBI agents responded to the scene and established telephone contact with Akram, whose responses were inconsistently coherent. The four hostages assisted with translation. Akram repeatedly said he was going to die. He also repeatedly called for the release of a US prisoner held in a nearby facility, Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, whom he referred to metaphorically as his sister.

Around 5 p.m., Akram released one hostage. According to the other hostages later, the negotiations deteriorated and Akram grew more agitated. Relying on previous training in handling hostage situations, Rabbi Cytron-Walker maneuvered the group closer and closer to an exit. Around 9:30 he decided the moment had come, he threw a chair at Akram, and the three hostages ran safely out an exit door.

Long before intersectionality became a prevailing concept which helped delineate the relationship between various marginalized and oppressed groups, late South Africa’s Archbishop Desmond Tutu said it all in a few words and in a most inimitable style. “My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together,” he said.

Like other freedom and justice icons, Tutu did not merely coin the kind of language that helped many around the world rise in solidarity with the oppressed people of South Africa, who fought a most inspiring and costly war against colonialism, racism and apartheid. He was a leader, a fighter and a true engaged intellectual. 

The final big legislative achievement of 2021 was a bill authorizing $768 billion in military spending for the next fiscal year. President Biden signed it two days after the Christmas holiday glorifying the Prince of Peace.

Dollar figures can look abstract on a screen, but they indicate the extent of the mania. Biden had asked for “only” $12 billion more than President Trump’s bloated military budget of the previous year -- but that wasn’t enough for the bipartisan hawkery in the House and Senate, which provided a boost of $37 billion instead.

Overall, military spending accounts for about half of the federal government’s total discretionary spending -- while programs for helping instead of killing are on short rations at many local, state, and national government agencies. It’s a nonstop trend of reinforcing the warfare state in sync with warped neoliberal priorities. While outsized profits keep benefiting the upper class and enriching the already obscenely rich, the cascading effects of extreme income inequality are drowning the hopes of the many.

As soon as media reports emerged regarding a deal between Palestinian prisoner, Hisham Abu Hawash and the Israeli prison authorities, Israeli extremists, led by Knesset member Itamar Ben-Gvir, angrily

Holding the fate of Build Back Better (BBB) in their hands, Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema should heed some lessons from 2010. When a small group of Democratic Senators so delayed and weakened Obamacare that they cratered Obama’s initially massive support, they also helped end all their own political careers.

New York, NY— Today, the AI Now Institute released a new report exploring how governments have used recent crises to pass a wave of water “relief” policies that not only expand the footprint of technology in the water domain, but also exacerbate water commodification, environmental racism, and economic extraction.

The use of technology - including artificial intelligence, machine learning, computer vision, and other digital data systems - is rapidly expanding across the water domain. Since March 2020, governments and private entities have enacted a wave of water relief policies in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, depleting water supply, and economic crises. Many of these newly enacted policies exacerbate the harms and inequities caused by tech-driven water management, allocation, and distribution decisions.

The report's authors argue that these policies fail to address the most urgent and fundamental needs of water transitions and water futures, and these policies put a premium on extractive economic growth over water justice or equity.

Guess what? I direct the following insight to, among others, the U.S. Congress, which annually and without comment, with only a few objectors, passes a trillion-dollar (and growing) military budget, by far the largest such budget on Planet Earth.

“You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war.”

The words are those of Albert Einstein, in a letter to a congressman 75 years ago. He adds, pointing out a truth that is still waiting to resonate culturally and politically: “The very prevention of war requires more faith, courage and resolution than are needed to prepare for war.”

With Syria still embroiled in its own war, Israel has been actively rewriting the rule book regarding its conduct in this Arab country. Gone are the days of a potential return of the illegally occupied Golan Heights to Syrian sovereignty in exchange for peace, per the language of yesteryears. Now, Israel is set to double its illegal Jewish settler population in the Golan, while Israeli bombs continue to drop with a much higher frequency on various Syrian targets.