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
..."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?

June 14, 2009

Obama in Cairo: Playing the political game, by Nawal El Saadawi

"US president Barack Obama might seem more human than his predecessor George W. Bush, cautions Nawal El Saadawi, but in a world ruled by a capitalist patriarchal religious system, politics is 'a game based on how to use beautiful words to cover ugly actions' and has 'nothing to do with humanity'. The real goal of Obama's Cairo speech, says El Saadawi, is 'to mobilise Muslim countries against Islamic extremists', 'to open the markets of Islamic countries to American goods' under the banner of development and partnership, and 'to guarantee Saudi and Gulf oil and other American interests' in the Middle East."

"Obama is different as a person from G.W. Bush. Obama looks more human, but politics and economic interests have nothing to do with humanity.

"We live in one world ruled by the capitalist patriarchal religious system. Power dominates our whole world (not justice or freedom or peace or ethics or human values ). Politics under such a system is a game based on how to use beautiful words to cover ugly actions, how to use the power of God to dominate your listeners, how to select verses from holy books to hide double standards and contradictions, how to kill people and rob their land and resources and then apologise to them with tears in your eyes. We call them in our Egyptian-Arabic language 'crocodile tears'..."

Read full aticle at PAMBAZUKA NEWS

* Nawal El Saadawi is a novelist, a psychiatrist, and a writer. She is president of the Arab Women's Solidarity Association.


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