Inauguration 2017 Special Coverage w/ Angela Davis, Naomi Klein, Ralph Nader & More
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Special coverage in the Trump Era
From Public Citizen's Corporate Presidency site: "44 Trump administration officials have close ties to the Koch brothers and their network of political groups, particularly Vice President Mike Pence, White House Legislative Affairs Director Marc Short, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt and White House budget director Mick Mulvaney."
Dark Money author Jane Mayer on The Dangers of President Pence, New Yorker, Oct. 23 issue on-line
Can Time Inc. Survive the Kochs? November 28, 2017 By Jane Mayer
..."This year, among the Kochs’ aims is to spend a projected four hundred million dollars in contributions from themselves and a small group of allied conservative donors they have assembled, to insure Republican victories in the 2018 midterm elections. Ordinarily, political reporters for Time magazine would chronicle this blatant attempt by the Kochs and their allies to buy political influence in the coming election cycle. Will they feel as free to do so now?"...
"Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America" see: our site, and George Monbiot's essay on this key book by historian Nancy MacLean.
Full interview with The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer March 29, 2017, Democracy Now! about her article, "The Reclusive Hedge-Fund Tycoon Behind the Trump Presidency: How Robert Mercer Exploited America’s Populist Insurgency."
Democracy Now! Special Broadcast from the Women's March on Washington
The Economics of Happiness -- shorter version
Local Futures offers a free 19-minute abridged version of its award-winning documentary film The Economics of Happiness. It "brings us voices of hope of in a time of crisis." www.localfutures.org.
What's New?
February 01, 2011
Phyllis Bennis: Tunisia's Spark & Egypt's Flame: the Middle East is Rising
Excerpt:
"Among the hundreds of thousands across Tunisia who marched, chanted, demanded, and won the abdication of their longstanding dictator, thousands are the young men and women whose college degrees have provided no security, whose lives were constrained by the lack of jobs, lack of opportunities, and lack of hope.
"In Egypt, participation was even broader. The thousands and hundreds of thousands filling the streets, occupying Cairo's famed Tahrir (Liberation) Square, include not only the most impoverished of Egypt's urban slums and rural farmers and peasants. They also include the educated, the middle classes, even many of the wealthy, all finally saying no to the paucity dignity and freedom of their lives. Their demand was clear: not just reform, not just new elections, but an end to the Mubarak regime.
"It is also important to recognize what the demands in Tunisia and most essentially in Egypt were not about. They were not about opposition to the United States; we have not seen the U.S. flag burning or crowds attacking the U.S. embassy. They were not even about Egypt's thirty years of collaboration with Israel's occupation, especially its role in maintaining the siege of Gaza – opposition to which is arguably the greatest point of political unity in the country. People have been very clear – and very public in the media – about their awareness of and outrage towards the U.S. history of arming Mubarak with the very weapons killing protesters in the streets; the "Made in USA" tear gas canisters from Jonestown, PA are featured all over the media. But the demands of this mobilization are directed to domestic, internal issues, aimed at changing the very nature of the ruling structures of the country and its impact on the people who live there. Foreign policy will come just a little bit later."...
About Phyllis Bennis