Radical Art Is an Act of Uncompromising Passionate Resistance
Mark Karlin, Truthout: To be a radical and revolutionary artist is to be defiant of any imposition of form or content by any economic system, artistic academy or political status quo.
Trans-Pacific Partnership: Another Trade Liberalization Scam
John Weeks, Truthout: The TPP represents not “freer” trade, but re-regulation of trade to entrench corporate profit making. Economist John Weeks skewers the free trade dogma that is the ideological justification and corporate sales pitch for neoliberal globalization.
Robin Marty, Truthout: While clinics are being shut down throughout the country by restrictive and medically unnecessary state laws, patients may soon learn that their last hope – their own private physician – has lost the opportunity to provide abortion care as well.
Truthout Interviews Ayanna Banks Harris on Stand Your Ground Laws and Reproductive Justice
Ted Asregadoo, Truthout: Ayanna Banks Harris talks about Marissa Alexander, a jailed mother who faces a possible 60 years in prison – in a state that has Stand Your Ground laws on the books – for firing a warning shot to keep her estranged husband from attacking her.
Returning Equality to the Campaign Finance Debate
Victoria Bassetti, Brennan Center for Justice: If money is speech, then rich people have more speech and more say in our political system, and that is anathema to our conception of how a democracy works.
Saudi-Iran Thaw Troubles the Neocons
Paul R. Pillar, Consortium News: Neocons and other hardliners are still fanning the flames of confrontation with Iran, but the recent thawing of relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia is making the hawks’ work more difficult.
Portland Is First US City to Divest Funds From Walmart
Laura Garcia and Molly Rusk, Yes! Magazine: On May 15, the city of Portland, Oregon got rid of $9 million, or 25 percent, of its investments in Walmart. The initiative also prohibits the city from purchasing Walmart bonds in the future.
Why Don’t We Know How Many People Are Shot Each Year in the US?
Lois Beckett, ProPublica: How many Americans have been shot over the past 10 years? No one really knows. We don’t even know if the number of people shot annually has gone up or down over that time.
Lessons From James Boggs: Capitalist Automation in the 21st Century
Danny Haiphong, Black Agenda Report: Black American revolutionary worker James Boggs firmly believed that the destructive impact of automation was not a problem of technology itself, but rather of the capitalist system that employed the technology.
Wonderfully Deceptive Superfood Marketing
Jill Richardson, OtherWords: Pom Wonderful made such outlandish claims that the Federal Trade Commission stepped in and told them to cut it out.
Serena Nanda, The Indypendent: From Miami to West Palm Beach, Florida’s Gold Coast is not just paradise for the 1%, but also for middle- and working-class people. A closer look at the region highlights its massive inequalities.
Barbara Ellis writes an open letter to Warren Buffett about an alternative to investing in railcars that carry explosive fracked fuel; James and Jean Anton say that the bosses lost in Vermont with the passage of a GMO food labeling proposition; Dr. James Zogby expresses disappointment over John Kerry’s walk-back of his “apartheid state” comment; Richard Waddell argues that “surfer dude” Jason Greenslate does deserve food stamps; Bill Henderson wonders why the Obama administration continues to miseducate Americans about the global scope of climate change; Zachary Norris and Eveline Shen decry the treatment of struggling mother Shanesha Taylor who faces criminal charges for leaving her kids in a car during a job interview; James Mitchell wonders what John Lennon, a target for government scrutiny, would say now about mass surveillance; the Confederation of Progressive Trade Unions characterizes the deadly mining disaster in Soma, Turkey as murder; Manash Bhattacharjee exposes what’s at stake in India’s general elections; Dr. Michael I. Niman excoriates the Obama response to looming environmental destruction; and more.
BuzzFlash
The Buzzflash commentary for Truthout will return soon.
Everyone Should Know Just How Much the Government Lied to Defend the NSA
Read the Article at The Guardian
Switzerland Rejects World’s Highest Minimum Wage
For the First Time, a Judge Halts the Force-Feeding of a Guantánamo Detainee
The United States’ Homeless: The Rise of Tent City, USA
Growing Evidence Points to Systemic Troubles in VA Health Care System
Read the Article at The Los Angeles Times
Why Are Kids Being Tried in Kangaroo Courts?
Read the Article at Rolling Stone
How Thomas Piketty and Elizabeth Warren Demolished the Conventional Wisdom on Debt
Spirit In Action 