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On September 2, the Israeli government approved a proposal that allows the military to indefinitely withhold the bodies of Palestinians who have been killed by the Israeli army. The proposal was made by the country’s Defense Minister, Benny Gantz.  

Shut up and let corporate America — and also, for that matter, corporate Taiwan — get on with its business. We have ethane to crack and plastic to produce. We dare not let America run out of shopping bags!

Environmental racism? Don’t be ridiculous.

This is the message the activists of Louisiana’s “Cancer Alley” — a heavily industrialized, 85-mile strip of land along the Mississippi River, between New Orleans and Baton Rouge — have gotten from the local powers that be regarding their determination to prevent the construction a gigantic, highly toxic, 14-plant plastics-production complex in their midst.

BANGKOK, Thailand -- Thailand's democracy activists, angered by Hong
Kong's police brutality, joined an international "Mulan" boycott which
expanded after Disney thanked China's security forces for help with
filming in a desert where one million Uighurs and other Muslims are
imprisoned or suffer other rights violations.

"It just keeps getting worse!" Hong Kong's leading activist Joshua Wong tweeted.

"Now when you watch #Mulan, not only are you turning a blind eye to
police brutality and racial injustice -- due to what the lead actors
stand for -- you're also potentially complicit in the mass
incarceration of Muslim ethnic Uighurs. #BoycottMulan," Mr. Wong said.

"We have still not forgotten that Mulan's leading actress supported
the police use of violence against Hong Kong protesters who fight for
freedom and democracy,” announced prominent Thai student activist
Netiwit Chotiphatphaisal.

"I would like to invite everybody to #BoycottMulan, #BanMulan, so that
Disney and the Chinese government realize that state violence against

On 16 August 1819, an estimated 60,000 pro-democracy and anti-poverty activists were peacefully protesting the utterly corrupt nature of the Parliament in Westminster and demanding the reform of parliamentary representation (which afforded less than 2% of people the right to vote). The gathering took place in St Peter’s Field, Manchester in England.

The protest was precipitated by the acute economic slump, including chronic unemployment and harvest failure, following the conclusion of the Napoleonic Wars as well as by enforcement of the Corn Laws which kept the price of bread high, by blocking (or imposing tariffs on) the import of cheap grains, at the expense of ordinary people.

After arresting some key figures on the speaker’s cart at the gathering, the cavalry was ordered to disperse the crowd. Charging with sabres drawn, approximately eighteen people were killed and nearly 700 seriously injured, with the event dubbed the ‘Peterloo massacre’ by radical media in a bitterly ironic reference to the bloody Battle of Waterloo some four years earlier. See ‘The Peterloo Memorial Campaign’.

At a time when long-winded polemics and punditry about the upcoming presidential election are all over the place, a longtime progressive populist author and agitator has just summarized it all in less than a minute.

“Hi, Jim Hightower here,” a just-released video begins, “with a message for progressives who don’t like Joe Biden’s corporate-hugging politics. Neither do I! But — and it’s a very big ‘but’ — Trump is a crackpot, a total plutocratic toady who’s literally destroying the lives of workaday people and killing America’s progressive possibilities.”

Hightower continues: “Trump has to be gone before we the people can move forward with our agenda of fairness and justice for all. So I don’t care if Biden is a 200-pound sack of concrete, we have to carry him into the White House to eject the Orange Menace. I urge all of you, especially in swing states like mine, to suck it up and do this heavy lifting. Let’s dump Trump, then we’ll take on Biden!”

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is an alliance in name alone. Recent events notwithstanding, the brewing conflict over territorial waters in the Eastern Mediterranean indicates that the military union between mostly Western countries is faltering.

The current Turkish-Greek tensionis only one facet of a much larger conflict involving, aside from the two Mediterranean countries, Israel, Egypt, Cyprus, France, Libya and other Mediterranean and European countries. Notably absent from the list are the United States and Russia; the latter, in particular, stands to gain or lose much economic leverage, depending on the outcome of the conflict.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is an alliance in name alone. Recent events notwithstanding, the brewing conflict over territorial waters in the Eastern Mediterranean indicates that the military union between mostly Western countries is faltering.

The current Turkish-Greek tensionis only one facet of a much larger conflict involving, aside from the two Mediterranean countries, Israel, Egypt, Cyprus, France, Libya and other Mediterranean and European countries. Notably absent from the list are the United States and Russia; the latter, in particular, stands to gain or lose much economic leverage, depending on the outcome of the conflict.

When I ponder the likelihood of looming electoral chaos — uncounted votes, a defeated president who won’t leave office, the possible termination of American democracy (coming soon!) — I can’t avoid putting it into a larger context:

We’ve always been, at best, a partial democracy, skewed in favor of the wealthy and powerful (and white). Furthermore, a destructive force has been growing in this country that has a global impact and is far larger than Donald Trump. This force — militarism, war — has been, at least in my lifetime, pretty much immune from the checks and balances of American democracy and has been growing increasingly out of control, regardless who’s in office, during the 21st century. It’s been met, at best, with a shrug, by the media and most politicians: set aside as a matter to be dealt with later.

I believe the time to deal with both issues is now.