The white supremacy of 2023 looks very different than it did prior to the civil rights era. As a nation, we’ve traded Klan robes and open celebrations of segregation for more subtle, and as a result more insidious efforts to erase discussions of racism from public memory. Such is the case with the recent efforts in Florida to dismantle any lingering educational commitment to the studying racial inequality. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has announced that he wants a “core curriculum” for the state’s public universities. He is calling for changes that “would mandate courses in Western civilization, eliminate diversity programs and reduce the protections of tenure.” DeSantis is demanding reforms in order to challenge “woke ideology,” “from gender-neutral bathrooms to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) departments in schools,” while focusing his ire on universities. These efforts, he claims, will disrupt “ideological conformity” in the academy. It doesn’t take much imagination to figure out that he’s talking about dismantling the parts of the college experience that are grounded in liberal or progressive values, and imposing rightwing values in their place, as mandated by the state. In one recent example, DeSantis reportedly targeted New College of Florida, admonishing the school for teaching critical race theory (CRT) and “gender theories.” More

When Southcom commander Laura Richardson starts talking about sending weapons to Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua, you know something’s up. That something is money and new markets for U.S. arms makers. In other words, western Europe depleted its armory by shipping everything to Ukraine to get blown up by the Russians. That creates a huge market opportunity for the U.S. weapons industry, which thus also eyes potential South American customers; hence its eagerness for some nations there to send their Soviet-era tanks to Ukraine, to be replaced, of course, by American hardware. But Europe remains the U.S. arms corporations’ prize. All they had to do, in connivance with political elites, was generate a stupendous media hullaballoo about Berlin sending Leopard tanks to Ukraine, so they can corner German weapons makers’ business once the Russians destroy all the Leopards, and voila! They’ll be raking in the cash for decades. More

A sudden crazed lithium boom poses a grave threat to critical Sage-grouse habitats in the remote Nevada-Oregon borderlands of the McDermitt caldera. The proposed Thacker Pass lithium mine in the southern caldera by the Montana Mountains has gained international notoriety. Winnemucca BLM fast-tracked an EIS for an immense open pit lithium mine sought by Lithium Americas at Peehee Mu’huh Thacker Pass at the end of the Trump administration. BLM glossed over the mine’s death blow to wildlife (Sage-grouse, Golden Eagle, Pronghorn, Long Billed Curlew, songbirds) and to the region’s tiny springs and dwindling groundwater, and downplayed mine pollution. Meaningful Tribal consultation was forsaken for this mine that would desecrate a place of great cultural significance More