Global

John Perkins, author of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man and this TED Talk, has a new book called Touching the Jaguar. You can pre-order it here and get an online workshop and other bonus materials that I haven’t seen but recommend purely on the basis of having read the book. Perkins also is doing an online workshop in July that you can sign up for here. An interview he’s given about his new book is here. And I’ll soon be interviewing him on Talk Nation Radio.

Dr. Bob invites author and political comedian Lee Camp. The host and head writer of Redacted Tonight talks Coronavirus, the coming elections, Jeffrey Epstien and the plight of indigenous people.

Journalists aren’t supposed to “bury the lead.” But when death is the topic and corporate power is the culprit, the connection routinely goes unmentioned.

Class war -- waged methodically from the top down -- is so constant and pervasive that it might seem unremarkable. The 24/7 siege to make large companies more profitable and the wealthy more wealthy is going on all around us. In the process, it normalizes avoidable death as a cost of doing business.

The Global War on Terror or GWOT was declared in the wake of 9/11 by President George W. Bush. It basically committed the United States to work to eliminate all “terrorist” groups worldwide, whether or not the countries being targeted agreed that they were beset by terrorists and whether or not they welcomed U.S. “help.” The GWOT was promoted with brain-dead expressions like “there’s a new sheriff in town” which, after the destruction of large parts of the Middle East and Central Asia, later morphed into the matrix of the God-awful belief that something called “American Exceptionalism” existed.

On May 15, thousands of Palestinians in Occupied Palestine and throughout the ‘shatat’, or diaspora, participated in the commemoration of Nakba Day, the one event that unites all Palestinians, regardless of their political differences or backgrounds. 

For years, social media has added a whole new stratum to this process of commemoration. #Nakba72, along with #NakbaDay and #Nakba, have all trended on Twitter for days. Facebook was inundated with countless stories, videos, images, and statements, written by Palestinians, or in global support of the Palestinian people. 

The U.S. government is certainly in the running for worst handling of coronavirus on earth. Where did this grotesque incompetence and indifference to human lives come from so suddenly?

What if it was always there?

What if it’s to be found in long-standing U.S. policies on environment, energy, labor, healthcare, education, and retirement?

We don’t know what the long-term damage is of coronavirus in those who recover. We don’t know who will die among those who catch it. We do know that we each have a responsibility to avoid catching it and avoid spreading it. Here are some ways to do that.

I saw a criticism of NPR for reporting on claims that coronavirus is being used to set up a world government. The criticism was that NPR never mentioned that the claims are nonsense lacking any documentation. I have an additional criticism: neither NPR nor its critics mentions that it might be a very good thing if such claims were true.

If nothing changes, New York State will not have independent candidates on the general election ballot in November. Only candidates who affiliate with a party and win their party’s nomination will be on the ballot this November. Governor Cuomo’s executive order suspending petitioning for independent candidates, for both the Presidential race and for all races down the ballot, offer no alternative to get on the ballot in November. Governor Cuomo must offer a path to the ballot for independent candidates. Otherwise, he risks presiding over a constitutionally defective election. Moreover, in negotiating a path for independent candidates, the Governor needs to move past the petty politics that dominate the party primaries, to end the byzantine petitioning process and to switch to digital or electronic signatures.