This year the Dead Zone in the Gulf of Mexico is expected to grow larger than ever. Oceanologists predict the lifeless expanse of water below the Mississippi River Delta will swell to an area bigger than the state of Vermont, an aquatic ecosystem despoiled by industrial fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, oil leaks and the lethal effects of a warming climate. But the desolate waters of the Gulf pale next to the electoral dead zone now confronting the Democratic Party, which seems to occupy about two-thirds of the geographical area of the Republic—a political landscape deadened by the Party’s remorseless commitment to neoliberal economics, imperial wars and open hostility toward the working class base which once served as its backbone. More

The isolation of Qatar appears to be a major step in the Saudi plan, directed by the newly pronounced crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman (the 31-year-old in charge of the Saudi war in Yemen),  to provoke a general confrontation between the Sunni world (led by itself) and Shiite world (led by Iran). What has has More

In today’s so-called democracies, elections seldom bring about changes for the better, except in rare instances when they ratify progress achieved outside the electoral arena. This is one of several reasons why the very long electoral seasons we suffer through in the United States are so disabling. They channel potentially constructive political energies into dead-end electoral pursuits. More