The US Government Never Understood Afghanistan and Still Doesn’t
Anand Gopal, Metropolitan Books: No Good Men Among the Living is a compellingly intimate portrait of how the war in Afghanistan impacted citizens of that nation. The author walks readers through the looking glass lens of US empire into the complex and personal history and impact of the conflict.
Children’s Rights Groups Urge Defense Program to Stop Giving School Cops Military Hardware
Susan Ferriss, Center for Public Integrity: More than 20 national education and civil rights advocates sent a letter to Department of Defense officials, urging them to stop giving US school police departments surplus military hardware, including assault-style rifles and armored vehicles.
Robert Pollin, Boston Review: Meeting carbon emission reduction targets will be challenging, but the goal is not out of reach. Here is a proposal for a transformative US clean energy investment program that can meet the 40 percent reduction target over the next 20 years.
Sea Change: The Ecological Disaster That Nobody Sees
Richard Schiffman, Truthout: As public attention focuses on climate change, many ocean species are being pushed to the edge of collapse by pollution, acidification and overfishing. A Global Ocean Commission report says that we must act now to save the earth’s wildest and most productive ecosystem.
Supervision and Discipline of Corrections Officers Are Key to Stopping Violence on Rikers Island
David Anthony Fullard, Truthout: Although the standard response to police and corrections staff violence is calls for improved training, violent behavior by uniformed officers is often deeply tied to a lack of monitoring and consequences for misbehavior.
Beyond Divestment: Climate-Concerned Philanthropists Pledge to Move Billions to Wind and Solar
Chuck Collins, YES! Magazine: Efforts to address climate change through money-moving campaigns are growing. Groups rallying around the idea of divest-invest are urging policy makers, businesses and investors to accelerate the transition to a low-carbon economy and invest in renewable energy.
Colombia Took On Its Drug Lords; Now It’s Taking On Its Billionaires – Why Can’t We?
The Daily Take Team, The Thom Hartmann Program: Like the United States, Colombia is struggling with an inequality epidemic. But more and more Colombians are being lifted out of poverty each year because the Colombian government isn’t afraid to ask the wealthy elite to do its fair share to help the economy.
Senate GOP Blocks Fair Pay, Continues War on Women
Robin Marty, Care2: We may be less than two months away from Election Day, but that whole “trying to appeal to women voters” plan of the GOP is already falling to shambles. The latest? Senate Republicans have blocked the Paycheck Fairness Act. Again.
The Next Round of an Unwinnable War Beckons
Amanda Ufheil-Somers, OtherWords: Obama promises that his plan to combat and destroy Islamic State forces will also address the underlying political problems in Iraq and Syria. What’s far more certain is that all military campaigns have unintended consequences, some of which don’t appear for many years afterward.
Rebecca Solnit | The Wheel Turns, the Boat Rocks, the Sea Rises: Change in a Time of Climate Change
Rebecca Solnit, TomDispatch: The world is not going to be saved by individual acts of virtue; it’s going to be saved, if it is to be saved, by collective acts of social and political change. When we come together as civil society, we have the capacity to transform policies and change old ways of doing things.
Dean Baker | The Myth That Sold the Financial Bailout
Dean Baker, Campaign for America’s Future: As a result of the hysteria surrounding the 2008 financial bailout, the second Great Depression mythologers prevented the market from correcting a horrible source of waste and the upward redistribution of income that continues to act as an enormous drag on the economy.
Lessons Learned in the Bucca Camp
Kathy Kelly, teleSur English: This will not be our third Iraq invasion. US assaults have been achieved with munitions, children’s forced starvation, white phosphorous, bullet fire, blockaded medicines, emptied reservoirs and downed power lines – it is all one continuous war.
Anti-Coal Campaigners Continue to Win in the Northwest
Mara Kardas-Nelson, Waging Nonviolence: Several communities across the Northwest, linked together in their opposition to coal transports by concern for the health of their communities and of the planet, are winning victories by blocking coal shipments.
Economic Update: Big Economic Changes
Richard D. Wolff, Economic Update / Truthout: This episode covers the new census data, a Kentucky town going “socialist,” a workers’ co-op in Maine, big wage theft and economic insecurity. We also discuss gentrification, the tax consequences of inequality and the global beer economy, and respond to listeners’ questions on minimum wage struggles, corporate “persons” and the BRICS bank.
BuzzFlash
Janet Yellen Should Stop Telling the Economically Exploited to Save Money They Don’t Have
Mark Karlin, BuzzFlash at Truthout: Yellen is telling those who aren’t in the top 1 percent or 10 percent to save money that’s been taken from them in the greatest redistribution of money to the wealthy that the world has ever known.
Obama Peddles New Iraq War to a Nation With a Dead Imagination
Corporate Personhood Is the Ebola Virus of Climate Chaos
Al Gore Is Still Trying to Save Us, One Graph at a Time
Rapture-Related Christian Movies Are More Popular Than Ever; Will the Trend Last?
Why Greenland’s “Dark Snow” Should Worry You
Five Signs the Dark Money Apocalypse Is Upon Us
Read the Article at Mother Jones
Sean Hannity Worries the Adrian Peterson Case Will Prevent Parents From Teaching Kids That “Being Gay Is Not Normal”
Spirit In Action 