Policies
With less than a week before the FCC’s “resoundingly unpopular” repeal of net neutrality rules go into effect on June 11th, defenders of the open internet and online consumers are warning members of the U.S. House of Representatives to either immediately back a resolution petition that would nullify the rules or “face the internet’s wrath.” According to Candace Clement, campaign director for the Free Press Action, “This will be one of the biggest showdowns of the summer in the House. For constituents everywhere Net Neutrality is non-negotiable. Our elected representatives can either side with the people and support the CRA or with the cable and phone lobby.” As part of their campaign, the coalition has organized a day of actions for TODAY (Thursday, June 7), so that citizens nationwide can visit or contact their House member in order to demand support for the CRA.
Saudi Arabia is an absolute monarchy, where every position of power is appointed by either the king or other members of the Al Saud royal family from which the nation derives its name. Trump recently visited Saudi Arabia, a close ally of the U.S., and took the opportunity to deeply criticize the two nations’ mutual foe, Iran, and its commitment to democracy weeks after it held its presidential election. Though clearly hilarious and at the same time appropriately awkward, the incident highlighted the fact that mainstream journalists rarely ask the obvious questions that might so easily expose the glaring hypocrisy of US foreign policy and its leaders.
With millions of Americans already on the brink of deep poverty, Philip Alston, U.N. Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights and author of the new report, warned that Trump’s tax law, deregulatory agenda, and welfare cuts are driving the poor closer to complete “ruination,” which the U.N. official defines as “severe deprivation of food and almost no access to healthcare.”
After Pompeo’s unveiled “Plan B” for nuclear negotiations—which comes around two weeks after President Donald Trump violated the Iran nuclear accord and placed the U.S. on the path to yet another war in the Middle East—National Iranian American Council (NIAC) president Trita Parsi argued that the Trump administration’s demands are intentionally unrealistic and “clearly designed to ensure there cannot be any new negotiation.”
After making the widely condemned and erroneous assertion that responsibility for Israel’s massacre of more than 50 Palestinians “rests squarely with Hamas,” the Trump administration on Monday unilaterally blocked a United Nations statement that expressed “outrage” at Israel’s killings and demanded “an independent and transparent” investigation. During an emergency U.N. Security Council meeting, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley took the further step of applauding Israel forces during her speech for showing admirable “restraint” as it mowed down dozens of peaceful demonstrators.
If Any Other Country Was Shooting Civilians Like Israel, The US Would Be Calling For Invasion By Now
The death toll in Gaza increased dramatically on Monday as Israeli Defense Forces opened fire on thousands of Palestinian civilians, killing 41 and injuring at least 1,700, and the United States’ response served as a reminder that if the governments in Iran, Syria, North Korea or Russia had done the same thing, the U.S. would be calling for a full-scale invasion right now. It is hypocrisy at its finest, especially considering the fact that the U.S. has a history of cheering on and aiding protests against foreign governments. In fact, when the mainstream media began sharing reports of protests in Iran in December 2017, President Trump took to Twitter to cheer on the dissidents.
Overcoming weeks of extortionist threats and other forms of “corporate bullying” from the world’s largest retailer, Seattle’s City Council on Monday unanimously approved a new tax on Amazon—which paid nothing in federal income taxes last year—and other major companies in an effort to provide essential services for the homeless and combat the local housing crisis. Noting that the so-called “head tax” is quite modest relative to Amazon’s annual revenue and the pay of its CEO Jeff Bezos – the world’s richest man – Seattle City Councilmember Kshama Sawant argued on Monday that “even a smaller tax is a huge victory,” given the “Goliath-like clout of Amazon.”
In the years leading up to the economic crisis in 2008, banks increased the funding for the riskiest loans (called subprime loans), from $30 billion a year to over $600 billion a year, rigged even higher interest rates on those loans, and then, while the bankers were making billions of dollars of profits off the borrowers’ high interest repayments, they made further profits betting against their customers ever being able to pay back the loans they had just been given. The FBI warned the government about this in reports as early as 2006, the IMF’s chief economist, Raghurum Rajan, presented a paper to the men in charge of all the world’s major banks, including the Federal Reserve, warning of the potential collapse of the system due to dangerous incentives, and journalist Allan Sloan published articles in Fortune magazine and The Washington Post in 2007 – nothing was done.
The budget blueprint from the Republican Study Committee (RSC)—and titled A Framework of Unified Conservatism—says it “would take unprecedented steps to begin the deconstruction of the administrative state” and would cut $12.4 trillion over the next decade from federal spending. Among the plan’s numerous goals are the repeal of Obamacare and raising the eligibility age of Medicare and Social Security benefits to age 70.
The documents themselves are quite bizarre and, honestly, despite reports dismissing them, it is worth remembering that this is exactly what the CIA was working on for years during MKULTRA. That program was supposed to have been shut down after the Church Hearings and other congressional hearings exposed all of the CIA’s clandestine activities at the time many that violated human rights including experimentation on patients and the American population without their knowledge.
Military experts (and corporatists) rule – at least since the end of WWII. They have pressured every U.S. president to lead with the military option and have usually gotten their way. It hardly matters that they have pushed over the years for the use of nuclear weapons, or that they have lost every war they’ve fought since 1945, inflicting or at least expanding global chaos and suffering in the process.
Holding up the U.N. charter, which allows the use of military force for members only when necessary for self-defense or with the approval of the Security Council, Bolivian ambassador Sacha Sergio Llorenty Soliz said, “And we also know that they have nothing but scorn for international law…”
The truth is that the real problem lies in our hearts, and the corrupt politicians that currently represent us are simply a reflection of who we have become as a nation. The generations of people that founded this nation and established it as the greatest republic that the world had ever seen had far different values than most Americans do today. So until there is a dramatic shift in how most of us see the world, it is quite likely that not much in Washington will change.
We need a Poor People’s Campaign to amplify the voices of regular folks above the lobby of militarized industry, a poisoned economy, to demand jobs in industries other than war-making, to demand opportunities for working class folks that don’t require killing other working class folks.
Though the Federal government is taking steps to eliminate net neutrality, not all states are playing along. Last week, Washington became the first state in America to pass legislation protecting net neutrality.
