Just as more and more issues require a global response, political pressures in the United States are building against American participation in international bodies designed to address these concerns. R. Spencer Oliver, an American who is secretary general of one such organization, says U.S. representatives must be on hand to engage in the debate.
More than a year before the traditional start of the U.S. campaign season – Labor Day 2012 – the political horse race is already heating up with an early measure of the field determined by how much money each contender can raise. As Danny Schechter notes, the TV networks end up as both handicappers and…
Ironically, just as government-spurred technology opened up prospects of greater wealth for all, an anti-government movement took hold, making sure most benefits went to the rich while leaving millions unemployed and the economy a wreck. Michael Winship lists ideas for putting some jobless back to work.
Pretty much the entire field of Republican presidential candidates embraces hostility toward the federal government, driven either by religious fervor or a belief in unregulated capitalism. The GOP hopefuls are appealing to a large subset of the U.S. population that resents the modern world and the lessons of history, as Lawrence Davidson notes.
America and the world seem precariously balanced between those who wish to deny the many problems facing mankind and those who insist that the human race address the multiple crises confronting the planet. Winslow Myers sees reason to hope that the world will tip in a positive direction.
The major U.S. news media is again focusing Campaign 2012 on personalities, gaffes and poll-measured momentum, a superficiality that has contributed to America’s dysfunctional politics for several decades. But ex- FBI agent Coleen Rowley describes her work with an anti-war group seeking to change that dynamic.
As the United States careens toward another economic crisis, the big-time U.S. news media is back to trivializing politics as some inconsequential sporting event where the competing sides score points measured by daily tracking polls. Danny Schechter dissects the madness.
For more than 15 years now, Consortiumnews.com has been fighting to recover what we call “lost history,” particularly the narrative of how the United States stumbled away from its noblest principles and abandoned a commitment to fact and logic.
Republican presidential contenders – Texas Gov. Rick Perry and Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann – profess their Christian fundamentalist faith, but denounce efforts by the government to restrain the power of the rich. The Rev. Howard Bess looks at this enduring contradiction between Christianity’s principles and its alliance with the wealthy.
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