Republicans Want Metal Detectors for Schoolkids, But Not for Themselves
GOP lawmakers are resisting new metal detectors at the Capitol building — less than three years after voting to install them at schools all across the country.
20404 Article(s) by: William G. Martin
William G. Martin teaches at SUNY-Binghamton and is co-author of After Prisons? Freedom, Decarceration, and Justice Disinvestment (2016) and a founding member of Justice and Unity for the Southern Tier; he covers local justice matters at www.justtalk.blog
Communists Like My Uncle Fought to Expand American Democracy. Fascists Fought to Destroy It.
My uncle, LeRoy H. Wood, spent years in a federal prison for “conspiring to teach the advocacy of the overthrow of the US government by force and violence.” He was a Communist peacefully organizing for civil and economic rights. And he was punished to a far greater extent than Donald Trump will ever be.
Renationalize Canada’s Airlines
The pandemic has exposed some terminal defects in Canada’s deregulated, privately owned airline industry. Nationalization is the best way to make air travel viable, environmentally sustainable, and in tune with social needs.
The Capitol Riot Was Bad Enough. New Domestic Terrorism Legislation Would Make It Even Worse
The police and national security state need far less power, not more. We should oppose any attempts, by both Democrats and Republicans, to use the Capitol riot to pass new domestic terrorism legislation expanding state surveillance powers.
The Pension-Fund Profiteers Are Making a Killing From Long-Term Care
Canada’s pension funds are profiting from financialized long-term care while widespread negligence is killing residents. It’s time to take the company that is behind this rapacious profiteering into public ownership and fully socialize Canada’s health care system.
Joe Manchin and Mitch McConnell’s Case Against $2,000 Checks Is Complete Garbage
The $2,000 survival checks for all Americans would immediately deliver enormous benefits to the millions facing eviction, starvation, and bankruptcy. The case against those checks that is currently being argued by Joe Manchin and Mitch McConnell is bogus.
We Can’t Lose the Collective Experience of Going to the Movies to This Pandemic
Going to the movies feels fundamentally different from simply streaming videos: it’s a collective experience, and often inspires discussion and argument. In 2021, when the pandemic finally recedes, we should build socialist film clubs.
We Should Be Very Worried About Joe Biden’s “Domestic Terrorism” Bill
Joe Biden used to brag that he practically wrote the Patriot Act, the Bush-era law that massively increased government surveillance powers. Given his purported plan to pass a new domestic terrorism law once in office, the danger is real that the January 6 Capitol attack will be used as an excuse to severely curtail our civil liberties.
The Massacre in Dersim Still Haunts Kurds in Turkey
A reporter for Jacobin traveled to the Kurdish province of Dersim to investigate the recent discovery of a mass grave from a 1937 massacre. But far from being forgotten, it’s an atrocity that still haunts the region today, with millions of Kurds in Turkey struggling for freedom against Erdoğan’s latest crackdown.
Wonder Woman 1984 Has Set the Bar Even Lower for Superhero Films
The big-budget Wonder Woman sequel is an ugly, tedious, bloated, badly CGI-ed mess and a wretchedly directed film. And yet critics keep making excuses for it because of its supposed social relevance.
We Don’t Need New Terror Laws to Defeat the Far Right
Last week’s riot was an attempt to undermine the nation’s democratic procedures. The response from some political elites is unwittingly trying to do the same through calls for unnecessary new terror laws.
Israel’s Leaders Are Trying to Cancel the Debate Because They Know They’re Losing
Israel and its supporters are ramping up efforts to outlaw solidarity with Palestinians in the name of combating antisemitism. But these authoritarian maneuvers can’t hide the fact that Israel is losing the battle for public opinion over its denial of Palestinian rights.
To Understand Capitalism, We Have to Understand Shipping and Oil
There is no twenty-first-century capitalism without the shipping and oil industries. And understanding the global economic system means understanding their operation in the Arabian Peninsula.
Why Centrists Love Blaming Jeremy Corbyn for Everything (Including the Capitol Riot)
As far-right rioters rampaged through Congress, Britain’s centrist commentariat absurdly insisted that Jeremy Corbyn’s supporters are equally dangerous. Such allegations of left-wing extremism evoke the crudest Red Scare tactics — and whitewash the conservatives who have been enabling Trump for years.
We Should Know Exactly Who Funded Last Week’s Right-Wing Riot
Last week’s right-wing riot at the Capitol was egged on by politicians and organizations that have received substantial dark-money funding from corporate interests. It’s past time to enact reforms to end the era of dark money — and find out who exactly is bankrolling the anti-democratic far right.
Ken Klippenstein Knows Where the Bodies Are Buried
Investigative reporter Ken Klippenstein, who will soon be joining the staff of the Intercept, has honed the craft of Twitter trolling to an art form. But he’d prefer to be known for his journalistic scoops, based on a painstaking analysis of declassified documents and a roster of sources working in the bowels of federal agencies.
What Delhi Tells Us About Neoliberalism
In India, the transformation of Delhi Ridge from a site of working-class politics to a site of breezy recreation shows how a world-class megacity is made under the spell of neoliberalism. Workers are pushed to the side in order to make way for the affluent.
Andrew Cuomo’s Vaccine Debacle Perfectly Encapsulates His Style of Governing
Governor Andrew Cuomo’s failure to contain the virus in the earliest weeks of the outbreak doomed New York to far more suffering than it needed to endure. Now, with a vaccine here, he is again proving his unfitness to lead his state through the worst crisis it has faced in modern history.
Capitalism Is Not a “Free Labor” System
Apologists for capitalism like to point to its historically progressive aspects, like its supposed use of “free labor” rather than older forms of labor compulsion. But throughout its history, as the system has conquered new territories for capital accumulation, it has embraced and depended on the most coercive forms of “premodern” production relations.
Corey Robin: What Trump’s Impeachment Could Mean
Impeachment could, in theory, turn Donald Trump into an even bigger symbol of a rotten political and social order. It could help bury the Reagan order once and for all. But establishment Democrats would never be interested in the type of impeachment that fundamentally challenged the status quo.