Democracy, Hillary Clinton, Middle East, military budget December 6, 2019

Trump was right: NATO should be obsolete

Popular Resistance By Medea Benjamin December 5, 2019 The three smartest words that Donald Trump uttered during his presidential campaign are “NATO is obsolete.” His adversary, Hillary Clinton, retorted that NATO was “the strongest military alliance in the history of the world.” Now that Trump has been in power, the White House parrots the same worn line that NATO is “the most successful Alliance in history, guaranteeing the security, prosperity, and freedom of its members.” But Trump was right the first time around: Rather than being a strong alliance with a clear purpose, this 70-year-old organization that is meeting in London on December 4 is a…

Democracy, Democratic Party, Green Party, Hillary Clinton, Jill Stein, Presidential Recount, Third Party November 12, 2019

Democrats should abandon the third-party “spoiler” argument

History and polling data show third-party candidates have rarely spoiled presidential elections for Democrats. Truthout By Matthew M. Heidtmann November 9, 2019 With the 2020 presidential primaries in full swing, a common narrative in U.S. politics has resurfaced. Recently, former Secretary of State and former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton suggested on the podcast “Campaign HQ” that current Democratic candidate Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) is part of Russian efforts to influence the 2020 presidential election. While Clinton did not directly mention Gabbard by name, she insinuated that the congresswoman is “the favorite of the Russians,” and that Russian operatives are…

Britain October 31, 2019

Breaking the union

Green World By Molly Scott Cato October 24, 2019 This week Johnson’s failed attempt to get a quickie and high-profile divorce with the EU has dominated the news. Receiving far less attention has been another rocky relationship that looks unlikely to survive any more betrayal. It’s the relationship between the countries of the United Kingdom, and this too looks like it’s heading for divorce. It was all smiles in Dublin when news emerged that a deal might be in the offing, but behind the beaming faces of Johnson and Varadkar was a deal that threatens the future of the United…

Earth Day September 23, 2019

What is energy denial?

By Don Fitz The fiftieth anniversary of the first Earth Day of 1970 will be in 2020. As environmentalism has gone mainstream during that half a century, it has forgotten its early focus and shifted toward green capitalism. Nowhere is this more apparent than abandonment of the slogan popular during the early Earth Days: “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.” The unspoken phrase of today’s Earth Day is “Recycle, Occasionally Reuse, and Never Utter the Word ‘Reduce.’” A quasi taboo on saying “reduce” permeates the lexicon of twenty-first century environmentalism. Confronting the planned obsolescence of everyday products rarely, if ever, appears as an…

Climate Change, Environment, Nuclear Power June 7, 2019

As Reactors Shut in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, Nuke War Rages in Ohio and New York

Green Social Thought By Harvey Wasserman As the nuke power industry slumps toward oblivion, two huge reactors are shutting in Pennsylvania and Massachusetts. The shutdowns are a body blow to atomic energy. The soaring costs of the decayed US reactor fleet have forced them to beg gerrymandered state legislatures for huge bailouts. Just two US reactors are still being built. Stuffed with $12 billion in interest-free federal loans, Georgia’s Vogtle is nearing a staggering $30 billion in cost. Years behind schedule, the lowest possible costs of whatever electricity the two reactors there might produce already far exceed wind and solar….