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HOW MITT ROMNEY DODGED THE DRAFT — H. Bruce Franklin remembers Romney from his Stanford days and lays out exactly how he and his father ensured he would evade service in the war which, at Stanford, he was demonstrating for. Andrew Cockburn gives CounterPunchers a compelling investigation of the rise of automated warfare and of the Drones, their vast costs and constant failures. Wei Zhang assesses the social and health costs of China’s incredible GDP growth.
Archives by Tag 'Racism'
Outside the Gallery, Philadelphia’s low-class shopping mall, Jimbo si...
Beirut
As many visitors to Lebanon can attest, some Lebanese have the rather charming habit of asking them, “Do you love Lebanon?” One assumes they actually mean to inquire if the visitor likes Lebanon and is enjoying their visit. ...
The news is in. White births are no longer a majority in the United States. The Bureau of the Census confirms that non-Hispanic whites accounted for 49.6 of all births in the year ending July, 2011, while minorities including Hispanics, blacks, Asians and those of mix...
A great devotee of the Gospel of Getting On.
– G.B. Shaw, Mrs. Warren’s Profession
I hope he remembers them. The explanations that is. They could be handy if anyone ever asks him about his days as a missionary....
It’s not easy to get the President of the United States to provide meaningful answers to questions regarding issues of serious concern to the population. During a Q&A session with Obama put together by YouTube in January, a woman pressed him about her husband’s ...
It is Sunday afternoon. My daughter and I are at home. I am on my (borrowed) laptop in the kitchen, revising chapter forwards for Don’t Leave Your Friends Behind, an anthology on how to support parents and children in social justice movements that I am co-edit...
In August 1964, Malcolm X spent several weeks in Egypt. While in Cairo, he wrote an essay in the Egypt Gazette entitled “Racism: the Cancer that is Destroying America.” Here, Malcolm X noted, “The common goal of 22 million Afro-Americans is respect and HUMA...
Even after twenty years, the Los Angeles riots that were precipitated as a reaction to the Rodney King trial verdict of acquittal for the cops divide rather than affirm positions. So much in the pursuit of life’s answers lies in exposing errors rather than unearthin...
Despite a generation of sensitivity trainings and multicultural studies, an astonishing number of people still feel emboldened to express their misbegotten bigotry in very public arenas. Cops and vigilantes alike are caught on tape throwing down racial slurs before they...
Would a young Martin Luther King Jr. be able to get a job in America today? Would one of the thousands who went to jail in support of Nelson Mandela? Or the brilliant kids at the center of Occupy Wall Street? Unless we begin to enforce the Civil Rights Act, m...
I believe that absolutely nothing happens in a vacuum.
There is always a connection between why things happen and the something (or someone) that made it happen. All too frequently that connection is not easily apparent, and that creates problems.
I’m conv...
The Trayvon Martin case brought the ugly question of racism back into the conversation in the US. After a period of false postracialism in the wake of Barack Obama’s election to the White House, this murder tore away the façade of harmony that US elites have been t...
For the last couple of weeks, I have been revisiting pieces that I’d written in the past. They express concerns that formed my own consciousness and they are the bulk of the over 200 articles that will compose my new book: “My Journey Out of Purgatory.”
I h...
A few days ago, Ozzie Guillen, manager of the Florida Marlins baseball team, and a Venezuelan National, said in a Time magazine interview, “I respect Fidel Castro. I love Fidel Castro. I respect Fidel Castro. Many people have tried to kill Fidel Castro in the las...
Weeks after the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, Special Prosecutor Angela Corey has announced that his killer, George Zimmerman, will be charged with second degree murder. Though originally allowed to walk scot free without any charges, Zimmerman is now behind bars. It ...
Aside from the injustices in Arizona, i.e., the scraping of a highly successful education program, the evident war against Mexicans, and the nullification of the U.S Constitution, I was seduced to the struggle by David A. Morales...
For the Phillies opening in 2010, four Navy Seals were parachuted into Citizens Bank Park. The stunt was such a success, it was rescheduled for this year, but high wind prevented it from happening. What a shame. Unconfirmed team sources whispered to me that these asskicki...
Founded and preserved by acts of aggression, characterized by a continuing tradition of self-righteous violence against suspected subversion and by a vigorous sense of personal freedom, us...
“Like men we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack,
Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!”
– “If We Must Die” -Claude Mckay
The Southern Poverty Law Center released its Spring 2012 ...
Trayvon Martin was shot to death in Sanford, Fla. He was there visiting his father while suspended from school. He was suspended last month after school officials claimed to have found marijuana “residue” in his book bag. No actual contraband was found; n...
I’d say the chances of George Zimmerman spending time behind bars for killing Trayvon Martin are about the same as Sergeant Robert Bales doing time for killing those 16 Afghan villagers the night of March 11. Zero.
Like most things that happen in America these da...
It has always been difficult to convince Anglo-Americans that they should know more about Latinos. It did not seem to matter to Anglos that their ignorance spawned stereotypes that damaged Mexican American children.
Even after World War II and the Korean Wars wh...
We mourn Trayvon Martin, the young African American who, armed only with candy and a soft drink, was shot dead for the offense of “walking while black.”
George Zimmerman, the vigilante who shot him, has not been arrested, apparently pr...
When I was in junior high back in 1967-68, many of my Saturday afternoons were spent at the outdoor basketball courts across the highway from my house. These courts were where I learned about many things besides basketball, which I was never very good at. Sex, beer an...
The note left next to the bloodied body of Shaima Alawadi read “go back to your country, you terrorist.” Alawadi, who died on Saturday after being taken off life support, was an Iraqi-born mother of five living outside of San Diego. Someone had delivered a similar not...