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Those who say Congress is too corrupt to create a publicly funded system of universal health care are likely to be in for a surprise. Recent developments suggest that Americans may see Medicare for all within the next decade. However, since our system of privately funded elections inevitably leads to Congress putting profits over people, this is not likely to be a good thing.

The death spiral of insurance costs

Some advocates of a publicly funded universal health care system have predicted that its creation is inevitable because of the “death spiral” of insurance costs. This term refers to the fact …

Many people were surprised and outraged when US President Biden recently fist bumped Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. After all, as a candidate, Biden pledged to make the Saudi kingdom a pariah since the Crown Prince had been directly linked to the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

In contrast, consider the relative lack of outrage to Biden’s statement after the latest criminal Israeli attack on Gaza that began on August 5th. This air bombardment by Israel, a nuclear power with one of the world’s strongest militaries and the occupier of Palestinian land, was against a mostly defenseless people. During this …

Many observers believe the future will be written in the Sino-Pacific region and, in particular, the means by which the United States responds to the rise of China as a global economic and political power. That’s clearly the the message in President Biden’s national security policy which states that “China…is the only competitor potentially capable of combining economic, diplomatic, military and technological power to mount a sustained challenge to a stable and open international order.”  ((President Joseph Biden, Interim Security Strategic Guidance, March, 2021, p. 8.))

What follows are thumbnail sketches of U.S. foreign policy in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and …

Events continue to unfold at a quickening pace. Facing an alarming escalation in tensions around the world, we asked Bruce Gagnon for his most current thoughts.

Bruce Gagnon is the Coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space, and was a co-founder of the Global Network when it was created in 1992. He was an early member of the Anti-Defense Lobby in the 1970s challenging the U.S. space program. Between 1983–1998, he was the State Coordinator of the Florida Coalition for Peace & Justice and has worked on space issues for 31 years. Bruce has addressed audiences …

What might COVID look like on Broadway?

With China constantly being accused of insufferable secrecy and a lack of openness about security and defence arrangements among partners in the Pacific, the shoe, when on the other foot, sits just as well.  In the case of Australia, it is particularly snug.  We are not exactly clear about the fine print of the AUKUS security arrangement between Canberra, Washington and London, though we all know it involves nuclear propulsion technology for submarines.

We also know little, officially speaking, about the US Pine Gap intelligence facility in central Australia, though enough work has been done for us to realise how Australia …

Bruce Lee said:

I don’t fear the man who has 10,000 kicks, I fear the man who has practiced 1 kick 10,000 times.

— Wisdom for the Way

And there is cultural and retail and consumer insanity doing the same thing over and over and over expecting different results, as in doing the same wrong thing over and over, or, following the wrong ways over and over, and expecting different results is, well, sort of insane.

Or that system of thinking, SOPs, the working rule book for this system of extraction, destruction, …

Scientists are working on a plan to go beyond the Inflation Reduction Act (“IRA”) recently signed by President Biden, which is supposed to tackle global warming, which, in turn, is tearing the planet apart, piece-by-piece. There’s more info on this very important petition filed by scientists to follow below, including a request for supporting signatures.

Meanwhile, even though IRA is loaded with good stuff to fight global warming, it’s not likely enough to put out the heat. After all, the Inflation Reduction Act is the third or fourth iteration of Biden’s Build Back Better $3.5T prominently mentioned in an article in …

Yes, that’s a friggin’ oil slick near the Statue of Liberty (May 1973)
But a few things for starters:

There are real-life people living here and there’s nothing badass about rooting for our pain.
Not everyone in this city is a non-binary snowflake in a BLM t-shirt. We all don’t agree that rioting is a form of social justice.
NYC is a complex city that deserves a complex perspective.
Things have been worse here — WAY worse…as you’re about to see.

No one has to tell this lifetime New Yorker what …

Nothing I am about to write should be read as diminishing in any way my sympathy for Salman Rushdie, or my outrage at the appalling attack on him. Those who more than 30 years ago put a fatwa on his head after he wrote the novel The Satanic Verses made this assault possible. They deserve contempt. I wish him a speedy recovery.

But my natural compassion for a victim of violence and my regularly expressed support for free speech should not at the same time blind me or you to the cant …

Communist Party of India (Marxist) protest in Khila Warangal, 10 May 2022.

It all started with a survey. In April 2022, members of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), or CPI(M), went door to door in the town of Warangal in Telangana state. The party was already aware of challenges in the community but wanted to collect data before working on a plan of action. Thirty-five teams of three to four CPI(M) members and supporters went to 45,000 homes and learned how people were suffering from a range …

He has survived death threats and attempts on his life since February 1989.  But Salman Rushdie’s luck just about ran out at the Chautauqua Institution, southwest of Buffalo in New York State.  On August 12, at a venue historically celebrated for bringing education to all, the writer was stabbed incessantly by a fanatic who felt little sense of guilt or remorse.  Hadi Matar only had eyes for Rushdie’s neck and abdomen.  As a result of the attack, the author is likely to lose sight of one eye and possibly the use of an arm.

It was a chilling reminder that …

For years, Palestinians, as well as Israelis, have labored to redraw the battle lines. The three-day Israeli war on Gaza, starting on August 5, clearly manifested this reality.

Throughout its military operation, Israel has repeatedly underscored the point that the war was targeting the Islamic Jihad Movement only, not Hamas or anyone else.

A somewhat similar scenario had transpired in May 2019 and again in November of the same year. The May clashes began when two Israeli soldiers were wounded by a Palestinian sniper at the fence separating besieged Gaza from Israel.

Mass weekly protests had taken place near the fence …

In the United States there exists today, and has existed since at least the 1950s, a dominant political narrative according to which most Americans, indeed the very history of the country, exemplify a kind of ideological “moderateness.” Democratic Party operatives and sympathizers constantly preach the virtues of occupying the political “center,” where most of the population supposedly resides. If the party caves in to its “extremist” left wing, it faces electoral annihilation. This narrative echoes, in a vulgar and opportunistic way, the postwar “liberal consensus” school of thought among social scientists and more generally the political culture, that the …

Are present ecological stresses so strong that if not relieved they will sufficiently degrade the ecosystem to make the earth uninhabitable by humans? Obviously no serious discussion of the environmental crisis can get very far without confronting this question.

— Barry Commoner in The Closing Circle, 1971

More than fifty years after Commoner wrote those words, the environmental problem is almost infinitely worse and what is presently called climate change once thought to affect future generations is engulfing the entire planet right now. While warnings from a scientific community not on corporate payrolls grow more desperate the global political power of capitalism, …