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President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence greet military personnel during a visit to the Pentagon, July 20, 2017. (AP/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)
Beyond Guns and Bombs

The Impact of America’s Wars on Freedoms and Democracy at Home

Archives for April 2018

Jill Stein Senate Investigation Reveals Xenophobic, Anti-Democratic Direction of Russiagate

The Senate Intelligence Committee has demanded all of Jill Stein’s campaign communications with “Russian persons.”

Max Blumenthal
By Max Blumenthal
Green party presidential candidate Jill Stein delivers a stump speech to her supporters during a campaign stop at Humanist Hall in Oakland, Calif. on Thursday, Oct. 6, 2016. (AP Photo/D. Ross Cameron)

Former Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein has turned over a large tranche of emails and documents to the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee, which is investigating unfounded rumors that Stein was part of a Russian plot to subvert the 2016 US presidential election. However, she has refused to oblige a series of demands that the

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Savoring Every Bite: Cheering the Fall of Black America’s Scold

Remembering the sucker-punches that “the Cos” delivered to their cause, there is no shortage of blacks who today are basking in the afterglow of a race traitor getting his comeuppance for trafficking in the worst Amos-n-Andy racial tropes.

Jon Jeter
By Jon Jeter
Bill Cosby speaks to students during at a tribute marking the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education at Riverside Church in Manhattan, N.Y., Monday, Feb. 2, 2004. Cosby got serious with 500 ninth-graders at a talk commemorating the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark ruling. The event was hosted by Columbia University's Teachers College, where Cosby's son Ennis was a doctoral student when he was fatally shot in 1997. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews)

INDIANAPOLIS –- The four of us, all black men, watched in stunned silence as the news unfurled across the barber shop’s television screen: a jury in Pennsylvania had found Bill Cosby guilty of drugging and sexually assaulting a woman at his home. Finally, my barber broke the silence: I hope they serve pound cake in jail.” The room erupted in

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Nuttier than a Fruitcake: White America’s Racial Psychopathy

With a cartoonish bigot in the White House, state terror that is reminiscent of the Jim Crow era, and epochal inequality, there is, as of old, a whiff of insanity in white Americans’ racial attitudes, a hint of a nation coming unglued, foaming at the mouth like a rabid dog.

Jon Jeter
By Jon Jeter
A group of President Donald Trump supporters is seen from the media van traveling in the president's motorcade en route to his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla., Feb. 3, 2018. (AP/Carolyn Kaster)

Were it not, perhaps, for Stanley Kubrick’s deft direction, the fight scene in the 1960 Hollywood classic Spartacus might well have been laughable rather than iconic. At nearly six-feet-four-inches tall, the African gladiator Draba, played by the former pro football star, Woody Strode, towered over Kirk Douglas’s eponymous character. The two

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Starbucks Ditches Anti-Defamation League For Anti-Racism Training

After an outcry over the inclusion of the Anti-Defamation League as a lead member of Starbuck’s anti-racism training, the ubiquitous coffee shop backed down.

Marjorie Cohn
By Marjorie Cohn
Protesters gather outside of a Starbucks in Philadelphia,, April 15, 2018, where two black men were arrested after employees called police to say the men were trespassing. (Michael Bryant/The Philadelphia Inquirer via AP)

After a video of the arrest of two African-American men sitting in Starbucks without buying anything went viral, Starbucks scheduled anti-racism training. But their inclusion of the Anti-Defamation League in the training provoked another outcry and Starbucks capitulated. On April 12, Rashon Nelson and Donte Robinson were arrested for trespassing

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Big Pharma, Big Oil and Big Banks Meet the Definition of Terrorists

Common threads persist throughout definitions of terrorism: violence, injury or death, intimidation, intentionality, multiple targets and political motivation. Big pharma, big oil and big banks meet them all.

Paul Buchheit
By Paul Buchheit
Big Oil

Various definitions of terrorism have been proposed in recent years, by organizations such as the FBI, the State Department, Homeland Security, and the ACLU. Some common threads persist throughout the definitions: violence, injury or death, intimidation, intentionality, multiple targets, political motivation. All the criteria are met by

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Trump De-Escalates With North Korea, Escalates With Iran

The Iran and North Korea crises are very different but in both cases Trump is behaving as if the US is turning into a stronger power when, thanks to his leadership, it is becoming a weaker one.

Patrick Cockburn
By Patrick Cockburn
Donald Trump | Iran

As a journalist, I have always dreaded reporting on meetings between world leaders billed as “historic” or “momentous” or just plain “significant”. Such pretensions are usually phony or, even if something of interest really does happen, its importance is exaggerated or oversimplified. But plus ca change is not always a safe slogan for the

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