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President Donald Trump gives a thumbs-up after speaking to Navy and shipyard personnel aboard the nuclear aircraft carrier Gerald R. Ford at Newport News Shipbuilding in Newport News, Va. (AP/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)
Americana

Trump’s Twenty-First-Century American Populism

Archives for November 2017

#HURESIST Is Anti-Racist Student Activism That Goes Beyond Trump

What #HUResist represents is genuine resistance against not just the symptom that is Donald Trump, but the disease of white supremacy.

Roqayah Chamseddine
By Roqayah Chamseddine
Student organizers attempt to deliver demands to Pres. Frederick, campus police called. (Photo: Twitter/#HUResist)

In the wave of movements and trends of the Trump era, #HUResist is a powerful and often overlooked student-led initiative at Howard University that goes beyond anti-Trump organizing. The student movement for administrative transparency started not long after President Donald Trump was elected. Students became aware of the cozy relationship

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William Binney: the Struggles of ‘a Good American’

A new documentary tells the story of ex-NSA official William Binney and his fight to get the federal bureaucracy to accept an inexpensive system for detecting terrorists while respecting the U.S. Constitution.

James DiEugenio
By James DiEugenio
The former US National Security Agency employee William Binney arrives for questioning by the German parliamentary NSA investigation committee in Berlin, Germany, July 3, 2014. The committee was tasked with investigating the NSA surveillance activities included the tapping of German Chancellor Angela Merkel. (AP/Michael Sohn)

In my view, one could not find a better title for Friedrich Moser’s film about former National Security Agency technical expert William Binney than the one decided upon, A Good American. His life illustrates the cost some people pay when a person’s morality and professional ethics clash with a governmental bureaucracy that values neither. Friedrich

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Venezuela’s Communes Play Key Role in Countering Economic Crisis

In the face of economic crisis and US-led international encirclement, Venezuela’s communes continue advancing in the struggle for socialism from the bottom up.

Katrina Kozarek
By Katrina Kozarek
Communes like El Maizal and Pio Tamayo are at the vanguard of building Venezuela's 21st Century socialism. (Vero Canno)

Over the years we have all heard a great deal about the great social achievements of the Bolivarian Revolution, the government subsidized health program Barrio Adentro, the subsidized food program Mercal, the housing mission which provides free and affordable government organized housing to the poor and middle class, the Canaima program which

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In One Year, China Will Add More Solar Capacity Than Any Other Country Has — Ever

China’s investment in solar in 2017 is yet more evidence that the country is dead serious about being the world’s clean energy leader.

Zachary Davies Boren
By Zachary Davies Boren
A bus moves past by solar power and wind power farms in northwestern China's Ningxia Hui autonomous region, Oct. 10, 2015. (AP/Ng Han Guan)

It’s no secret China has been installing solar panels at a record-breaking rate — it’s been happening for years now. But in 2017 China took its solar drive even further, deploying more PV capacity in one year than any other country has — or at least had at end of 2016. Last week, Bloomberg New Energy Finance revised upwards its projection for new

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Why the US Wants to Shut Down Palestine’s PLO Office

Even if the PLO’s office is permanently shut down, the decision should not just be seen as punishing Palestinians for seeking ICC support but, ultimately, as the culmination of disastrous U.S. diplomacy, for which the Trump Administration has no clear alternative.

Ramzy Baroud
By Ramzy Baroud

On Nov. 18, just days before the 50th anniversary of United Nations Resolution 242, the U.S. State Department took its first step towards severing its ties with the Palestinian Liberation Organization. The timing of this decision could not be any more profound. The first formal contact between the U.S. and the PLO occurred in mid-December,

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Human Rights Watch Urges UN to Publish List of Israeli Settlement-Linked Companies

The database will publicly identify businesses that contribute to rights abuses by operating in or with settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.

Middle East Monitor
By Middle East Monitor
A Palestinian man tries to stop work by an Israeli bulldozer during a protest outside the village of Deir Qaddis, near the West Bank city of Ramallah, Wednesday, July 13, 2016. Dozens of Palestinians demonstrated Wednesday in front of Israeli bulldozers that were bulldozing land outside Deir Qaddis village near Ramallah for an apparent plan to expand a nearby Jewish settlement. The protesters forced the bulldozers to stop, but residents said they resumed work after the protesters left the area.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) has urged the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) to publish as planned a database of companies involved in Israeli settlement activity, as the Geneva-based body comes under increasing Israeli and US pressure to bury the list. “Ongoing illegal Israeli settlement activity highlights the urgency of the publication

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