Archive: Year: 2022

History teaches us that catastrophe can happen, even if leaders don’t want itPro-Ukraine protest in London, Feb 27At the most dangerous moment in global relations since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, when the US and the USSR stood at the brink of nuclear war and the US Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara left the White House one day literally “thinking that might be the last sunset I saw,” most of us are going through our days as if nothing has changed. On Google Search, people’s top concern in the past two days has been where to find their nearest St. Patrick’s Day parade, followed by queries about Von Miller, the Buffalo Bill’s new defensive end, Liverpool’s victory over Arsenal, an earthquake in...

He may break with Trump on Putin, but his visit to Israel this week shows nothing else has changedMike and Karen Pence in Hebron; MK Itamar Ben-Gvir on far-rightLast week, former Vice President Mike Pence told a group of Republican donors that,“There is no room in this party for apologists for Putin. There is only room for champions of freedom.” If you thought that this meant Pence was in any significant way breaking with his former boss or tacking back toward the center of the political aisle, think again.Yesterday, Pence was in Israel, where he went out of his way to meet with far-right Jewish settlers in the West Bank city of Hebron at one of their favorite pilgrimage sites, the...

Last Friday’s shelling of the Zaporizhzhia complex showed there’s more than one way for Russia to escalate the war using nukesFire breaks out at site of Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine, March 3, 2022Of all the wild and crazy ideas for ending Russia’s war on Ukraine that I’ve seen floated, none is stupider this one from tech VC Jason Calacanis: “If we want to stop Russia immediately, every western country should pass binding, emergency legislation to build an additional 10 new nuclear plants in the next decade. 100–200 new nuclear power plants would collapse the Russia economy *permanently*. Done.”He tweeted that two days ago, a day after Russian forces shelled and then seized the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which has six...

Nuclear disarmament dropped off the radar after the 1980s, but Putin’s nuclear saber-rattling ought to revive public interest in the causeForty years ago this coming June, a million people rallied in Central Park to call for a freeze in the nuclear arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union. It was the high point for a grassroots movement that built on the work of secular antiwar groups like Mobilization for Survival and church-based pacifist organizations like the American Friends Service Committee, who had long agitated against nuclear weapons as immoral without much popular traction. That changed during the early years of President Ronald Reagan’s first term in office, when his insistence on a major build-up of the US nuclear...

The man in charge of the GOP’s effort to retake the Senate has some wild ideasSen. Rick Scott (R-FL) and Pres. Donald Trump, Hurricane Dorian briefing, 2019“What are Republicans for? What are they for? Name me one thing they’re for.” A month ago, speaking at a press conference marking the end of his first year in office, President Joe Biden had good reason to be frustrated. That’s because national Republican leaders have largely been silent on what they would do if they were in power right now, instead focusing on attacking the Democrats and trying to pin every problem we face, from the ongoing pandemic to rising inflation, on the president and his party.Well, now one star of the Republican party,...

Another Reason Democratic Small Donors Keep Setting Their Money on FireWhy do Democratic political donors keep giving to candidates who either don’t need their money or can’t win?A few weeks ago, I wrote here about Run for Something, a post-2016 political start-up that is building a pipeline of young people who are starting their political journeys at the bottom of the ladder, seeking election for local offices like school boards, county and city councils and the like. Its co-founder, Amanda Litman, had dared to criticize grassroots activists for doing something stupid, telling the New York Times’ Ezra Klein, “If your goal is to win and build sustainable power, throwing $90 million at Amy McGrath for Senate just because she’s taking on...

Gab, Parler and now Trump’s Truth Social may never rival Big Tech, but the movement they’re fostering is dangerousPhoto by Jason Leung on UnsplashIf you know anything about the history of alt-tech, you may have greeted yesterday’s launch of Donald Trump’s Truth Social, a Twitter alternative, with a giant yawn. Who cares if there’s one more social network trying to appeal to conservatives and the far-right by promising to allow all forms of speech? After all, none of the many platforms launched as alternatives to the Big Tech mainstays have gained much traction.InfoGalactic, the “planetary knowledge core” launched as a rightwing alternative to Wikipedia in 2016, gets about 300,000 visits a month, compared to more than 5 billion for Wikipedia. Voat,...

How Marked By COVID is organizing to insure we don’t forget those we’ve losthttps://www.covidmemorialday.org/Yesterday, I shared the first half of my conversation with Kristin Urquiza, the co-founder of Marked By COVID, which she co-founded to organize Covid survivors and long-haulers to fight for recognition, accountability and justice for people most harmed by the pandemic. At this point in our conversation, we turned to the nitty-gritty of their organizing work, how they manage to build human solidarity and capacity. We closed by looking at how the Biden Administration has struggled to develop a coherent response and where that leaves the work.Micah Sifry: So a typical Zoom meeting is how many people? Is it local? Is it national? What’s going on?Kristin Urquiza: So...

Survivors, long-haulers and the immuno-suppressed are a latent force for change.The Covid-19 Death Counter App, from Democracy LabsLosing a loved one changes each of us personally, but when many are lost at once, the trauma changes society. As the Covid pandemic ends its second year and the death toll in America inches inexorably toward 1,000,000 souls, a majority of Americans want this time of disruption to be over. According to a recent Monmouth poll, seven in ten agree that “it’s time we accept that Covid is here to stay and we just need to get on with our lives.” At the front edge of that fatalistic attitude are self-identified Republicans, 89% of whom support that sentiment, while just 47% of Democrats...

The truckers now snarling Ottawa and the US-Canadian border are spoiling for a fight in America, too.Freedom Convoy 2022 Ottawa, January 31 (Emilijaknezevic, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons)For the last two weeks, a noisy cavalcade of several thousand anti-vaccination protestors have taken over the downtown core of Ottawa, Canada’s capital city, to demand an end to the country’s vaccine mandates and the resignation of its Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau. A thicket of several hundred 18-wheeler trucks and campers are still parked there, many right in front of the Parliament Building on Wellington Street, where they’ve essentially shut down all traffic and built an encampment complete with a kitchen, saunas, and a stage for speeches that turns into a DJ...