“Terrorist” is among the scariest words in the English language, usually reserved for individual shooters or small bands of radical bomb-throwers. But today its definition depends on who uses the word and how they use it.

Noam Chomsky wrote that “The level of destruction and terror and violence carried out by the powerful states far exceeds anything that can imaginably can be done by groups that are called terrorists and subnational groups.”

When it comes to raining blockbuster bombs down on tall apartment buildings, killing hundreds of families huddled in their bedrooms, few American politicians call that terrorism. Instead, it’s described on TV as standing up for civilized values. Those who actually launch the murderous bombs are honored as statesmen and patriots, but they are in fact terrorists.

On July 19, in a shameful display of naked partisanship, that is exactly what happened in Washington, DC. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a man under indictment in his own country and now an internationally indicted war criminal, spoke to rousing cheers by almost the entire US House and Senate.

Are we so bereft of humanity and so lacking in compassion that we celebrate such barbarism? Who does that?

However, the recent International Criminal Court charges are serious, and cannot be ignored. They include intentionally directing attacks against a civilian population; murder, extermination of masses of people, and starvation of civilians as a method of warfare; plus other crimes.

British war correspondent Robert Fisk pointed out in the film Robert Fisk and the Politics of Truth (2019) that by “changing words and downgrading language when reporting on Gaza — a war of attrition that remains entrenched in colonialism, land theft, and human rights violations — the situation is effectively transformed into something that bears no resemblance to reality.”

Otto Friedrich published a celebrated essay in Time Magazine in 1984 titled, “Of Words That Ravage, Pillage, Spoil.” Words themselves, he explained, are weapons that can kill. Political elocution, while apparently as neat and clean as the napkins at a tea party, can deliver blood and gore when translated into action. Among other examples, he wrote, President Reagan renamed the deadly MX missile, each carrying a dozen 300-350 megaton warheads that could devastate entire cities, “The Peacekeeper.”

Everybody agrees that killing women and children by the tens of thousands is inhumane. So why has the supposedly enlightened, civilized, estimable, suit-and-tied members of the world’s greatest deliberative body, the US Congress, cheered so enthusiastically for Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, already indicted for mass murder?

Is politics in America so corrupt and cynical that Netanyahu, the thuggish Likud Mafioso now in control in the Holy Land, gets repeated standing ovations from the representatives of small town America? They are supposed to work for us, but have instead defiled the flag that flies over the capitol dome.

Historians know that it is these repeated scenes of wild, thoughtless enthusiasm disguised as patriotism that bring about wider conflicts with devastating consequences. If you need a reminder, read Gone With the Wind, or go see the movie again. Often the so-called “true patriots” are really unthinking zealots.

Who, then, is a terrorist? The Hamas chieftain Yahya Sinwar is certainly one. Found guilty by the International Criminal Court for launching the attack that killed 1,200 people in Israel on a single day in October, 2023, his fate awaits. That action was clearly a crime against humanity, as the ICC has ruled.

The court also indicted at the same time the smarmy and duplicitous Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, who has presided over nearly ten months of continuous killing of innocent civilians in Gaza, causing at least 40,000 deaths—two-thirds of them women and children. The carnage against civilians in Gaza is still going on today, with no military solution in sight as Netanyahu’s own generals have told him.

He lied repeatedly about Israel’s genocidal attacks on the civilian population, with no explanation as to why ten months into the campaign against the tiny enclave, the bombs keep falling, killing scores of civilians every day, wiping out entire families with nothing to show but acres of rubble, dozens of corpses and wrecked bodies of children without arms or legs. Yet the murderous attacks continue.

Netanyahu stood before Congress with the whole world watching and said that Israel has facilitated humanitarian aid into Gaza, while the UN Secretary General and every aid organization has refuted that claim.

Are we so bereft of humanity and so lacking in compassion that we celebrate such barbarism? Who does that? The answer is that the U.S. Congress does—most of whose members have officially participated in this genocide by voting to send money and arms to Israel, and by wildly applauding its chief perpetrator.

The members of Congress represent us. As American citizens, we are therefore forced to share in the responsibility for the ongoing bloodshed, and—painfully and truthfully—for the murder of tens of thousands of innocent people.

Senator, Congressman or Congresswoman, whoever you are, know this—if you endorsed the continuous killing in Gaza month after month, and wildly applauded the perpetrator, the blood guilt belongs to you. History will not forget. We, the voters, know who you are, and we will not forget.

Who then is a terrorist? Look in the mirror. We are. Unless we separate ourselves from official Washington by rejecting US support for the Gaza massacre, that label belongs to all of us.

Next year, we’ll have to make one of the most important decisions about the future of our economy. Will we hand more power and wealth to big corporations and the rich — or invest in a healthy and resilient economy that works for all of us?

In 2017, Republican lawmakers passed tax loopholes and cuts that primarily benefited the wealthy and big corporations. President Trump signed these giveaways into law, spiking inequality and setting off a wave of corporate profiteering.

Next year, parts of that law will begin to expire, which gives us the opportunity to make changes.

For decades, both parties have created an economy where big corporations and the wealthy aren’t pitching in like the rest of us. We’ve been sold a bill of goods known as “trickle down” economics. Trickle down goes like this: Feed the rich the best cut of meat and maybe we’ll get a bit of gristle that falls on the floor — and we’ll thank them for it.

The rich and most profitable corporations aren’t just contributing less and less to our collective coffers. They’re using their power to enrich themselves further while more of us struggle. Senator Elizabeth Warren recently described this as a “doom loop” for our tax code: the wealthy and corporations get richer from tax giveaways and then use their wealth and power to boost their profits — and then lobby for more tax cuts.

For example, the 2017 Trump tax cuts dropped the top corporate tax rate to 21 percent from 35 percent (compared to 40 percent in 1987). Supporters argued this would lead to better wages and supercharge economic growth. Instead, economic growth continued at about the same pace as before the tax breaks. And while 90 percent of workers did not see a raise, billionaire wealth has doubled.

In the same period in which corporations have enjoyed lower taxes, they’ve also raked in record profits. As my colleagues at Groundwork Collaborative have highlighted, lowering corporate tax rates actually incentivized corporate profiteering in the wake of the pandemic, as companies that overcharged us got to keep more of their winnings.

Trickle down theory says these windfall profits and lower taxes should encourage companies to invest more in workers and innovation. But in an economy run by big corporations with enormous market share, that money ends up being funneled to shareholders instead of increasing worker wages, investing in new or more productive technologies, or holding critical inventories in case of a crisis.

If we want corporations to invest more in wages and productive investments, we should raise their taxes, since wages and research are mostly tax deductible.

In other words, corporate profiteering is not a foregone conclusion. Raising corporate taxes has the potential to boost investment, productivity, and economic growth — and get Americans some of their money back.

The Biden administration has taken critical steps to push back against failed trickle down economics and corporate profiteering. It capped the price of essential drugs like insulin, empowered regulators to go after corporations abusing their market power, and made historic investments in a green future. But more can be done by raising taxes on the largest, most profitable corporations.

Fundamentally, the coming tax debate is about who holds the reins in shaping our economy: megacorporations and their wealthy shareholders, or the everyday people who keep the economy humming. Next year is an opportunity for Congress to stand firm against the rich and powerful and build the economy that we want to see.

The National Transportation Safety Board announced in June that the infamous East Palestine, Ohio, freight train derailment was caused by a defective wheel bearing.

But that technical issue does not tell the whole story.

Federal investigators found that the railway company Norfolk Southern failed to communicate information to emergency responders in a timely manner, which contributed to the exposure of responders and the public to post-derailment hazards.

According to the June 2024 NTSB report abstract on the derailment and hazardous materials release, Norfolk Southern’s delayed transmission of consist information “also delayed the Ohio State Patrol’s recommendation to the incident commander that the shelter-in-place order be replaced by an evacuation.”

Norfolk Southern officials and contractors also provided misleading and incomplete information while advocating for an unnecessary vent and burn of tank cars carrying vinyl chloride. A vent-and-burn action is, according to the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA), a response of last resort.

A public rail system would directly benefit workers, trackside communities, small shippers, farmers, passengers, and the environment.

Norfolk Southern began planning the vent and burn shortly after the derailment, rejecting three other removal methods that could have been far less dangerous to responders and the people of East Palestine.

While there may be some temptation to view the catastrophic derailment in East Palestine as an unfortunate fluke, the truth is that disastrous events are predictable features of the American rail system.

Under the private ownership of the Class I railroads, we have seen time and again the callous prioritization of profit over people. For the sake of short-term profit, inspections are cut short, tracks and equipment are not maintained, and the rail workforce is gutted — features of an industrial system that calculates derailments as part of the cost of doing business.

The Class I railroads’ — the largest domestic rail carriers — pursuit of short-term profit has led to critical understaffing, longer trains, diminished maintenance of tracks and equipment, inadequate inspections, and other underinvestments that leave rail workers and trackside communities vulnerable to derailments and disasters.

The Class I railroad robber barons are perfectly willing to risk the lives of workers and people living in trackside communities so long as it means more money for them and their shareholders. This is not hyperbole.

Between 2013 and 2022, the rate of rail accidents rose 28 percent as a result of the implementation of Precision Scheduled Railroading (PSR). In short, the philosophy of PSR can be summed up as “speed over safety.” Since 2015, over 50,000 railroad workers — nearly 30 percent of the rail workforce — have been laid off. The workers who remain on the railroads experience chronic fatigue as a result of unpredictable schedules and critical understaffing.

Last spring, it was reported that Union Pacific, one of the six Class I rail carriers, undermined government safety assessments and retaliated against workers who reported rail car flaws. In 2023, the FRA found that 73% of Union Pacific locomotives have federal defects.

According to the NTSB, Norfolk Southern interfered with the East Palestine investigation and abused its status as a party to the probe. NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy revealed that she was threatened by Norfolk Southern during a private exchange with a senior company executive two weeks prior to the NTSB East Palestine board meeting.

These are but a few examples of the criminality and nefariousness that characterize the privately owned rail system. What’s more, even if one puts aside moral questions regarding the behavior of the Class I railroads, one finds an industry being strangled to death by a get-rich-quick scheme that victimizes workers and trackside communities, cheats small shippers, and — because the rail robber barons are completely allergic to capital expenditure —dooms the US rail system to degradation and ossification.

Another concern is how the American rail system is regulated. While the FRA is ostensibly tasked with overseeing and regulating US railroads, this arrangement becomes murky when one considers the significant degree of industry influence.

The Association of American Railroads (AAR), the industry group representing the interests of North America’s major rail corporations, sets its own safety standards and works closely with the FRA, effectively as an independent regulatory body. AAR even manages the FRA’s Transportation Technology Center through its wholly-owned subsidiary, Transportation Technology Center, Inc.

In the NTSB investigation of the East Palestine derailment, AAR’s standards for hot bearing alerts and alarms came under scrutiny, as they served as the guide for Norfolk Southern’s own criteria that contributed to the disaster. It is worth noting that under the Trump presidency, railroad industry executive Ronald Batory was made FRA administrator, further blurring the line between government regulator and regulated industry.

With the foxes running the henhouse, simple demands for more and better regulation of the railroad industry are inadequate. The real solution, advocated by Railroad Workers United (RWU) and allied organizations across the country, is public ownership of the railroads.

Last spring, RWU launched the Public Rail Ownership (PRO) campaign, building a diverse coalition including rank-and-file unionists, environmentalists, progressives, community activists, and others calling for a rail system that operates in the public interest.

The campaign has hosted webinars, published scholarly works such as Maddock Thomas’s “Putting America Back on Track: The Case for a 21st Century Public Rail System,” and attended union conferences to make its case.

What a publicly owned and operated rail system in the United States will look like has yet to be determined, but there are models that can serve as guides.

The task at hand is massive, and the road ahead is fraught with challenges. However, there is little hope for any improvement of the US rail system so long as it remains in the hands of the irresponsible and unaccountable Class I robber barons.

The rail system in the US is, compared to other countries, an anomaly in that it is predominantly owned by private companies. This was not always the case, and there’s inspiration to be found in US history for the development of a 21st century public rail system.

During World War I, the US rail system was nationalized amid a consensus that the private rail system was unable to serve the needs of the country during wartime. Under the control of the US Railroad Administration (USRA), the railroads operated far more efficiently and effectively than they had under private ownership.

Working conditions and service improved drastically, winning the support of workers, shippers, and much of the public. The nationalized rail system was so popular among rail workers that in a 1918 American Federation of Labor-sponsored referendum, the vote to keep the nation’s railroads in public hands was overwhelmingly in favor: 306,720 to 1,466.

A public rail system would directly benefit workers, trackside communities, small shippers, farmers, passengers, and the environment. The Class I carriers have made it clear that they have no intent to expand rail, or take the crucial step towards full catenary electrification.

Under public ownership, the fetters of the short-term profit motive would be cast off the rail system, opening the door to large-scale infrastructure modernization and expansion projects, creating jobs in construction and spurring economic development in neglected areas of the country. A publicly owned and operated rail system would also create thousands of railroad jobs, as the stripped-to-the-bone PSR model advocated by the Class I carriers would be destined for the dustbin.

The task at hand is massive, and the road ahead is fraught with challenges. However, there is little hope for any improvement of the US rail system so long as it remains in the hands of the irresponsible and unaccountable Class I robber barons. RWU and its allies invite all organizations and individuals to get involved in the Public Rail Ownership campaign, and help make public rail a reality. For more information, please visit publicrailnow.org.

This commentary, the fifth in a series on “The Polycrisis and the Global Green New Deal,” takes the war that began in Gaza and is spreading throughout the Middle East as a laboratory for dissecting the dynamics of the concatenation of crises now being referred to as the “polycrisis.”

In previous commentaries in this series we have explored the emergence and dynamics of the polycrisis. In this commentary we will see how these dynamics are playing out in the increasingly global struggle that first broke out in Palestine at the end of 2023.

Conflict in the Middle East has been endemic for a very long time. It would not take a global polycrisis to ignite a new round of war and escalation. But the global polycrisis gives the current war in the Middle East some distinctive elements, and conversely what started as the war in Gaza vividly illustrates what the polycrisis means in practice.

Backstory

European anti-Semitism, from the expulsion of the Jews from England in 1290 and from Spain in 1492 to the extermination of six million Jews by the Nazis, created a worldwide diaspora. This led many diasporic Jews to seek a national home, and a small number of pioneers began to establish settlements in the predominantly Arab territory historically known as Palestine. In World War I Britain attacked and ultimately replaced the Ottoman Empire as the ruler of Palestine. During the war Britain announced support for a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine. Jews were divided on how to relate to their Arab neighbors, but a Zionist movement opted to seize Arab lands and establish an Israeli state. They won support from many countries, including the US and the USSR. The establishment of the Israeli state was followed by repeated wars between Israel and its Arab neighbors, nearly all won by Israel.

In the post-World War II period the US developed a policy for de facto control of the Middle East based on the “strategic dyad” of Israel and Iran. The purpose was to maintain control of Middle Eastern oil and contain Arab nationalism and leftism. However, the Iranian revolution of 1979 turned Iran into an opponent of the US role in the Middle East. As a result, the US became dependent on Israel as its primary “reliable” ally in the Middle East, supplemented by Saudi Arabia and other conservative monarchies. The effort to restore stable US dominance in the Middle East contributed to numerous wars not only in Palestine but in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, and elsewhere in and near the region. With the failures of US military operations there, the US turned to an effort to stabilize relations between Israel and the Arab monarchies through a series of agreements known as the Abraham Accords, first signed in 2020.

The Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023 and Israel’s subsequent attack on Gaza, initiated a dynamic that illustrates many aspects of the polycrisis. In this commentary I will focus primarily on the first few months of the conflict; while much has happened in the meantime, the dynamics visible from early days have so far persisted.

Polycrisis dynamics in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

While many elements of the Gaza war and its ramifying effects resemble various examples from the past, the overarching context of global polycrisis that I have described in previous commentaries gives them a different significance and portends a different result.

Unpredictability The Hamas attack on Israel shows the unpredictability of events in the polycrisis. Despite their enormous espionage and surveillance resources, neither the US nor Israel nor any other state appears to have had or taken seriously advance knowledge of the devastating attack that Hamas had been preparing for months. Indeed, in a speech just a week before the Hamas attacks, US national security advisor Jake Sullivan proclaimed, “The Middle East is quieter today than it has been in decades.”

“Butterfly-wing effect” The vast violence and disruption unleashed in and beyond at least half-a-dozen countries by the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel illustrates the disproportionate scale of cause and effect that characterizes the polycrisis. It would be hard to find a fitter illustration of chaos theory’s paradigm example of non-linear causation: the wind from a butterfly’s wing that at an early stage can shift the direction of a mighty storm.

Proliferation The war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza and its rapid spread to at least five countries (so far) and the Red Sea exemplify the overall proliferation of war in the era of polycrisis. Further, the conflict polarized and mobilized a dozen other nations and armed groups for war. As the Guardian synopsized the early stages of this process:

Within hours of the outbreak of the Gaza war, the Hezbollah Shia militia in Lebanon began to fire on northern Israeli towns and villages in solidarity with Palestinians, triggering Israeli air strikes in response, and Houthi forces in Yemen attacked ships in the Red Sea with real or perceived Israeli connections.

At the same time the West Bank erupted in protests at the bombing of civilians in Gaza and extremist Jewish settlers quickly sought to ride the wave of Israeli anger by seizing Palestinian land and terrorizing its residents.

Each of these theatres of conflict has the potential to ignite a much-feared Middle East conflagration, and the past few days have demonstrated just how easily escalation, intended or not, could bring Israel into open confrontation with Iran and suck in the US too.

The US moved two aircraft carriers and their accompanying strike groups to the region as American bases in Syria and Iraq came under repeated attacks from Iran-affiliated groups, drawing swift retaliation from Washington.

Tehran’s Houthi allies have meanwhile been firing on the US-led “Prosperity Guardian” naval task force assembled to protect shipping in the Red Sea. American warships shot down dozens of drones and also a handful of ballistic missiles. US Central Command issued a statement to say that Washington had “every reason to believe that these attacks, while launched by the Houthis in Yemen, are fully enabled by Iran.

Escalation Tit-for-tat escalation illustrates the polycrisis dynamic of a “systemic self-amplifying feedback loop,” aka a vicious circle. Mohamed Khaled Khiari, a UN assistant secretary-general, told security council members that, while most of the exchange of fire between Israel and Hezbollah had been around the border, some strikes were going deeper into each other’s territory, “raising the spectre of an uncontained conflict with devastating consequences for the people of both countries.” Khiari added that “the risk of miscalculation and further escalation is increasing as the conflict in Gaza continues.”A similar dynamic is manifested in the escalating conflict between the US and various non-state groups it alleges are proxies for Iran.

Glocalism As discussed in a previous Commentary, a characteristic of the polycrisis is the intertwining of local non-state actors with international power centers. The wars now touching at least five countries in the Middle East show the interpenetration of local non-state actors and international power politics.

Limits of US hegemony The ability of the US to supply the weapons and diplomatic support that are essential to Israel’s genocide in Gaza shows the continuing power of the US; but the inability of the US to effectively control the other players in the Middle East shows the change from the unipolar era. The US relation to Israel in particular shows how little even the greatest remaining great power is able to impose its own interests, even on those who are supposedly its allies. While in the past the US has from time to time successfully pressured Israel to back off from its military actions, in this case the tail so far is wagging the dog. The limits of US hegemony are also indicated by its inability to shape world opinion, the International Criminal Court, the International Court of Justice, or the UN General Assembly, and its isolation within the UN Security Council. The US has become both the greatest of the world’s Great Powers, and, in the memorable phrase of Spiro T. Agnew, a “helpless, pitiful giant.”

Neither unipolar nor bipolar The dynamics of the Gaza war exhibit neither the bipolar character of the Cold War nor the US hegemony of the “unipolar moment.” While the US role so far is quite consistent, the role of the other great powers is ambiguous. The supposedly overarching geopolitical antagonism between the US and China is so far a relatively minor factor – even though China has been mediating between Palestinian factions, the US has gone so far as to politely ask China to intercede with Iran on its behalf. The future may well see a great power polarization around the Middle Eastern war, but at the moment Great Power rivalry is subordinated to other factors.

Post-colonial disunity The so-called “West,” defined as the European colonial powers and white settler colonial states, initially functioned as a bloc, lining up with Israel. Over time, especially with Israel’s genocidal action in Gaza, this unity has become progressively less solid. According to commentator Eldar Mamedov, EU-NATO countries are “entirely split over Israel, Iran, and Houthis.” There is “no sign so far that the EU is gearing up to join the U.S. conflict with the Iran-backed forces in Syria and Iraq, either militarily or through diplomatic support.”

Breakdown of peacemaking The inability of the UN to impose a ceasefire, despite the overwhelming international support for such a move, is an example of the general breakdown of peacemaking capacity in the polycrisis era.

Breakdown of norms and moral limits The initial Hamas attack on Israel and the rapid development of what is undoubtedly the most visible genocide in world history on the part of Israel illustrate the general breakdown of international norms and any sense of moral or human rights limits on state action. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs says that the situation in the Middle East had probably “never been worse” since it began collating records in 1991. Jeff Feltman, a senior fellow at the UN Foundation, says: “The combination of humanitarian crises across the Middle East – including the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza – have put more strains than most of us have ever seen on the financial ability of donors to respond and the ability of humanitarian actors to meet the needs.” Jens Laerke, a senior official at OCHA, says, “Despite 70 years of international efforts to solve problems by diplomacy and by non-violent means, leaders around the world are now reaching for the gun to resolve their differences as a first option. The question is: are we entering an age of war?” As one journalist put it, such actions reveal “a collective erosion of self-restraint and the rule of law.”

Cascading consequences Houthi attacks on shipping in the Red Sea illustrate the way in which consequences cascade across different sectors of the world order in the era of polycrisis. The attacks sharply impeded world transit and trade, as shipping companies rerouted their vessels via circuitous, expensive routes. The volume of traffic moving through the Red Sea’s Bab al-Mandab strait was cut in half. The trade impact was particularly strong in vulnerable countries like Egypt.

The Houthi attacks, unsurprisingly, led to internal pressures in the US to retaliate, even at risk of provoking a wider war, including the possibility of a US war with Iran. US warships were sent into the Red Sea, ostensibly to protect against Houthi attacks. Iran in turn sent warships into the Red Sea. US attacks on Houthi and other alleged “Iran surrogates” led to a breakdown of the Yemen peace process. As Guardian columnist Nesrine Malik put it,

All of this is happening in a wider context of crises and divisions in individual countries. Each escalation results in a rippling series of repercussions. Houthi attacks in the Red Sea have diverted commercial traffic headed to North America and Europe away from the waterway, affecting Egypt’s much-needed revenues from the Suez canal and potentially the country’s stability in the middle of a prolonged financial crisis.

Nascent rise of the nonaligned Overwhelming votes in the UN General Assembly, and the isolation of Israel and the US, even in the Security Council, point to the possible emergence of a non-aligned global coalition that could potentially challenge international crimes and the struggle for great power hegemony. However, the inability of this potential “great power” to even slow down the genocide in Gaza also illustrates that it is not yet able to exercise significant power.

As the Israeli attack on Gaza continued month after month, the genocide death count grew steadily higher. Tit-for-tat escalation between Israel and Hezbollah made full-scale war increasingly likely. In mid-June, when Hezbollah released a drone video of potential targets in northern Israel, Israeli officials warned of “an all-out war” in which Hezbollah will be destroyed and Lebanon would be sent “back to the Stone Age.” Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah thereupon threatened a war with “no restraint and no rules and no ceilings.” In late June Iran’s mission to the United Nations warned that if Israel embarks on a “full-scale military aggression” in Lebanon, “an obliterating war will ensue” and that in such an event, “all options, including the full involvement of all resistance fronts, are on the table.” Even if the various parties agree to a ceasefire, it is less likely to be a step toward peace than primarily a means to acquire military and political advantage before the next round of war and genocide.

The events triggered by the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel show the irrationality, unpredictability, uncontrollability, and folly that human actions have acquired in the era of the polycrisis. While events are unpredictable, the dynamics of the polycrisis have made it substantially less likely that this story will have a happy or even bearable outcome.

You can read the original version of this essay, including footnotes, at the Labor Network for Sustainabilty website where it first appeared.

At first glance, Kamala Harris may seem an unlikely savior of democracy. As a career prosecutor, including stints as the district attorney of San Francisco and the attorney general of California, she specialized in sending people to jail and prison, adding to the nation’s crisis of mass incarceration. As a senator and failed 2020 presidential candidate, she was often accused of opportunism. As vice president, she operated largely out of public view for three years, and was saddled with disapproval ratings that rivaled and sometimes exceeded those of President Joe Biden.

But if the study of the past teaches us anything, it is that history is often driven by unlikely heroes who rose to the occasion in an hour of dire need. Abraham Lincoln, born into poverty in a log cabin in Kentucky, ended chattel slavery and defeated the Confederacy in the Civil War. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, born into wealth and privilege, oversaw New Deal programs that rescued the American working class from the Great Depression and a world war that defeated the Nazis.

Harris may never be mentioned alongside Lincoln and FDR, but she is off to a good start. She has already rescued the Democrats from certain defeat in November and energized the party’s base in a way not seen since Barack Obama in 2008. Barring the unforeseeable, she will be the Democratic nominee, and, if the election breaks her way, she will make history as the first female president.

This late in the election cycle, Harris is the only realistic alternative to Trump and all that he stands for.

Harris will campaign for the presidency at a time of national emergency born from the dark impulses of Donald Trump and the MAGA movement he leads. There are many ways to understand and characterize Trumpism, a phenomenon that is at once authoritarian, racist, misogynistic and reactionary. I was among the first opinion writers to refer to Trump explicitly as a fascist, and I continue to believe there is no better label to describe his behavior, psychopathology, support for white supremacy, nostalgia for a mythical past and dictatorial aspirations.

Whether Harris ultimately decides to pin the “F” word on Trump — and to-date (unlike Biden) she has not — it is imperative that she defines Trumpism and the stakes in the election in stark and unmistakable terms. In a speech delivered in Wisconsin on July 23, two days after Biden announced his withdrawal from the race, she did just that, framing the election as a choice between “freedom, compassion and the rule of law, [and] … chaos, fear and hate.”

To win, Harris will have to do more than highlight Trump’s negatives or promote herself as a seasoned prosecutor capable of standing up to her opponent. The “cop versus con” slogan that has emerged in the early going is catchy but insufficient. A successful campaign will require the formulation of a forward-looking positive agenda. In this regard, too, Harris has made considerable strides.

Appearing before the Zeta Phi Beta sorority in Indianapolis on July 24, she began to sketch the outlines of that agenda while at the same time boycotting Bibi Netanyahu’s war-mongering address to Congress. Harris set herself up as the perfect foil to Trump — a multiracial woman who, at age 59, is younger, more vital and more articulate than the former president, who turned 78 in June and is showing the same signs of cognitive decline that drove Biden into retirement. “We face a choice between two different visions,” she told the cheering crowd of 6,000. “One focused on the future, the other focused on the past. With your support, I am fighting for our nation’s future.”

Harris touted the Biden administration’s achievements in reducing student debt, broadening assistance for new mothers and cutting child poverty. Looking ahead, she pledged to expand affordable health care, secure childcare and eldercare for all Americans, establish universal paid maternity leave and restore the right to abortion.

“Across our nation,” she declared, “we are witnessing a full-on assault on hard-fought, hard-won freedoms and rights. The freedom to vote. The freedom to be safe from gun violence. The freedom to live without fear of bigotry and hate. The freedom to love who you love openly … the freedom to learn and acknowledge our true and whole history, and the freedom of a woman to make decisions about her own body.”

In what may be the dominant theme of her campaign, she tarred Trump and the GOP as “extremists” who want to “take us back, but we are not going back.”

On July 25, at a gathering of the American Federation of Teachers in Houston, she expanded on her vision for the future, vowing to sign both the Protecting the Right to Organize Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act into law, and to pass an assault weapons ban.

A successful campaign will require the formulation of a forward-looking positive agenda.

Back in Washington on July 25, she unexpectedly moved left on the war in Gaza in a press conference held after meeting privately with Netanyahu. In contrast to the deference Biden has shown to the Israeli prime minister, she said that while she recognizes Israel’s right to self-defense and denounces Hamas for the “horrific acts of sexual violence” committed on Oct. 7, “We cannot look away in the face of these tragedies [committed by the Israeli military] in Gaza. We cannot allow ourselves to become numb to the suffering, and I will not be silent.” She called for a ceasefire, the release of the hostages and the establishment of a Palestinian state, adding, “As I just told Prime Minister Netanyahu, it is time to get this deal done.”

Harris is not a perfect candidate for all voters, and in the coming weeks and months, she will come under withering attacks by Trump and the GOP, who have already begun to mock her for her distinctive laugh and for being “a childless cat lady.”

Such slanders paid great dividends for Trump in 2016, and to rebut the attacks this time will require a united front akin to the effort mounted by the French electorate that blocked the far right from taking power in June. This late in the election cycle, Harris is the only realistic alternative to Trump and all that he stands for. We have much to gain from supporting her, and everything to lose if we don’t.

Our planet is warming up at a record rate. Scientists believe that the climate is warming up as a consequence of the increase in greenhouse gases. Studies have also shown that there is a link between climate change and inequality. Yet, the global economy continues to be overly dependent on fossil fuels—oil, natural gas, and coal—which are by far the largest contributor to global warming. What does all this say about current climate policies and the goal of achieving carbon neutrality by 2050? And how do we address the twin challenges of inequality and climate change?

In the interview that follows, progressive political economist James K. Boyce sheds light on the above questions. James K. Boyce is a senior fellow at the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and recipient of the inaugural Global Inequality Research Award. He is the author, among many other works, of The Case for Carbon Dividends and Economics for People and the Planet: Inequality in the Era of Climate Change.

C. J. Polychroniou: Over the past several years, climate records have been repeatedly broken. Last year was the planet’s hottest by a huge margin since global records began in 1850, and 2024 is on course to break that record again. Are climate policies designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions working, especially when we have wars going on that contribute significantly to climate change? Indeed, with everything going on, which includes increased demand for oil, is it at this point even realistic to expect that we can achieve climate neutrality by 2050?

James K. Boyce: You’re right, it’s getting hotter year by year. This is no surprise: it’s exactly what we can expect until the world reaches climate neutrality (net-zero emissions of greenhouse gases). Some climate policies are working better than others—it is not as if nothing is happening. Renewable energy from solar and wind has become cost-competitive more quickly than most people expected. But we are not on track to achieve climate neutrality by 2050. To do so we would need to phase out the use of oil, natural gas, and coal. Instead, global consumption of all three fossil fuels is at an all-time high.

You are right, too, that wars exacerbate the problem. They distract attention and resources from addressing the climate crisis, and they add to greenhouse gas emissions. In just the first two months of the war in Gaza, for example, carbon emissions (mostly from Israeli warplanes and U.S. weaponry supply flights) exceeded the annual emissions of 20 countries, according to a team of U.K. researchers. Postwar reconstruction, once this latest round of bloodshed ends, is likely to release much more.

You ask whether it is “realistic” to expect that we can achieve climate neutrality by 2050? Obviously not if we continue on this path.

Each ton of carbon is more harmful than the one that came before.

Yet it is realistic to say that it is possible to achieve it. There is no technical reason it cannot be done: the obstacles are political. To do it, each country would need to set a hard ceiling on the quantity of fossil fuels entering its economy, a cap that declines year-by-year on a path to net zero. Restrictions on the supply of fossil fuels would raise their price—possibly a lot. But instead of the money going to into the bank accounts of oil producers, as happens when OPEC and oligopolistic corporations restrict their output to boost prices, the money could go directly back to the public on an equal per person basis with a cap-and-dividend system. This would maintain the real incomes of working people in the face of rising fuel prices, and it would make a modest contribution to addressing the other great challenge of our time, curbing rampant inequality.

I wish I could tell you this will happen sooner rather than later. But the political stars do not seem to be favorably aligned at this moment. That said, the climate crisis is not going to disappear. Pretending it’s not real doesn’t make it any less real. It will keep worsening unless and until we achieve climate neutrality.

Think about that: it will keep getting worse. Climate change is not like a cliff, where once we fall off the edge it is too late to do anything. Instead, it is a cascade of damages, with costs that grow exponentially over time. To proclaim that before long it will be “too late” to do anything about it would be irresponsible and misleading. Each ton of carbon is more harmful than the one that came before. Each day we delay, the need for action becomes more urgent, not less.

C. J. Polychroniou: There is a global backlash on climate action. The pushback against climate policies comes from the fossil fuel industry and major corporations, Europe’s far right, and the Republican Party in the U.S. But this wrecking-ball strategy seems, unfortunately, to be paying off as we still lack sufficient public and political will for bold climate action. Could things be different if plans to combat climate change effectively addressed environmental and social concerns? Indeed, where do things stand with regard to just transition and environmental justice?

James K. Boyce: Denial of the reality of climate change was the first line of defense of the fossil fuel lobby. But this could work for only so long. As the results of climate destabilization become ever more apparent, denial becomes ever more untenable. Of course, there are some who will cling to it. There are still people who insist the world is flat. But most people cannot be persuaded to keep their heads in the sand most of the time.

So today the industry has fallen back on its second line of defense: the claim that cost of moving away from fossil fuels would be unacceptably high, undermining the living standards of working people at home and abroad. The distinguished economist John Kenneth Galbraith anticipated this tactic more than 50 years ago. In his 1972 presidential address to the American Economics Association, he observed that in pursuit of private profits, corporations seek to persuade the public that pollution is “palatable or worth the cost.”

The claim that ordinary people must “tighten their belts” and endure sacrifices to save the planet appeals to a finger-wagging element in the environmental movement, but it is antithetical to building the broad public support we need for climate action.

It is an open question how the costs of the transition to a net-zero economy will be distributed across the population. This is a policy choice rather than a foregone conclusion. With the right policies, the clean energy transition can raise living standards for working people rather than lowering them. What is certain is that climate change, left unchecked, poses a grave threat to human well-being, above all to the well-being of working people who cannot afford to buy private shelter from the approaching storm.

The groundwork for this line of defense was prepared when oil corporations launched a concerted effort to shift the blame for the climate crisis onto consumers. It is a twist on the classic scoundrel’s stratagem of blaming the victim. Two decades ago, BP (the former British Petroleum) propagated the notion of individual “carbon footprints,” complete with a handy online calculator and then a phone app to tell you how much carbon is released when you drive to the grocery store or eat a hamburger. The underlying message was evident: Our customers are the real problem, not us. In orthodox economic theory, this ideological buck-passing has a fancy name: “consumer sovereignty.”

Environmentalists often fall into the same trap when they, too, blame consumers rather than the corporate and government power brokers who dictate the playing field for consumer choice. The claim that ordinary people must “tighten their belts” and endure sacrifices to save the planet appeals to a finger-wagging element in the environmental movement, but it is antithetical to building the broad public support we need for climate action.

Could things be different? You bet they could. Climate policy, if done right, will bring large and tangible benefits to people around the world. As with any addiction, weaning ourselves from dependence on fossil fuels will free us from the grip of pushers masquerading as benefactors. It will open the door to cheaper and more reliable sources of energy. It will end toxic air pollution from burning fossil fuels that annually causes millions of premature deaths. Because investments in energy efficiency and clean energy are more labor intensive than fossil fuel production, it also will create lots of new jobs. All this is on top of preventing further exacerbation of the climate crisis.

For this to happen, however, policies must be designed with these benefits firmly in mind. Just transition policies are needed to ensure that communities that have depended on the fossil fuel industry in the past are not only cushioned from the costs of the transition but actually gain new and better economic opportunities. Environmental justice policies are needed to ensure that communities that have experienced disproportionate costs from fossil fuel pollution are first in line to benefit from cleaner air and water. And as I already mentioned, a carbon price-and-dividend policy is needed to protect and raise the real incomes of working people even in the face of rising prices for fossil fuels as their supply is phased out.

None of these policies are impossible. But none of them will happen as long as the fossil fuel lobby and its cronies are calling the shots.

C. J. Polychroniou: You are one of the very first economists to address the political economy of the environment. Climate change seems to be deeply intertwined with global patterns of inequality. What specific measures do you propose for addressing the twin challenges of inequality and the climate crisis?

James K. Boyce: Political economy is about the allocation of scarce resources not only among competing ends—that is the textbook definition of economics—but also their allocation among competing people, competing individuals, groups, and classes. In other words, it is about who as well as what.

Reducing the inequalities within and among countries cannot be achieved with the snap of a finger. It requires action on many fronts, including taxation, trade, investment, and international finance.

Whenever we encounter environmental degradation, we can pose three questions: Who benefits? Who bears the cost? And why are those who benefit able to impose this cost on others? Inequalities of wealth and power are deeply implicated in answers to the last question. Much of the cost of climate change will fall upon future generations who are not here to defend themselves. The only way to redress this inherent power imbalance is to develop an ethic of intergenerational responsibility. But significant costs are imposed on people alive today, too. This has long been the case for frontline communities polluted by the extraction and combustion of fossil fuels. Now the costs are spreading to people everywhere who are suffering from more frequent and more intense droughts, floods, wildfires, hurricanes, and heatwaves.

The ability of those who capture the lion’s share of the benefits from fossil fuels—big corporations and rulers of petrostates—to impose enormous environmental costs on others is a symptom of stark inequalities in the distribution of wealth and power. Anything we can do to rectify this inequality will make it easier to address the climate crisis. And anything we can do to address the climate crisis will make it easier to rectify this inequality.

Reducing the inequalities within and among countries cannot be achieved with the snap of a finger. It requires action on many fronts, including taxation, trade, investment, and international finance, some of which we have discussed before.

But in the meantime, we can implement climate change policies that narrow inequality rather than widening it. Let me elaborate a little more on three of these policies.

Carbon dividends would return money to the people from putting a price on carbon emissions by means of either a tax, a cap with auctioned permits, or a combination of the two (in which the tax serves as the floor price in permit auctions, combining downside price certainty with upside emissions certainty). A carbon dividend policy is already in place in Canada. The Canadian policymakers made an initial blunder, in my view, by rebating the carbon revenue to the people via an income tax credit, rendering it practically invisible to most people. Fuel prices, on the contrary, are advertised in foot-high numbers at gasoline stations around the country. The fossil fuel lobby and its political allies have tried to paint higher fuel prices as an awful burden on working families, while ignoring the money coming back to them as dividends. To debunk these predictable efforts, carbon dividends must be as visible as the price of gasoline at the pump. Paying dividends via direct, stand-alone payments—the proverbial “check in the mail” or clearly labeled direct deposits into personal bank accounts—is crucial for this reason. The Trudeau government belatedly realized this and changed to direct payments. But whether Canada’s policy survives will depend on the outcome of the upcoming national elections.

A second climate policy that can also be a vehicle to reduce inequality is well-targeted public investment. This was a focus of the Biden administration in the United States. Public investment can be directed so as to reduce inequalities between regions and communities. Just transition investments in fossil fuel-dependent localities and environmental justice investments in the communities hardest hit by fossil fuel pollution are examples of this. More generally, investment can and should be steered to rural and urban areas that in recent decades have experienced collapsing incomes and shrinking economic opportunities.

A third way in which climate policy can reduce inequality is to bind carbon emissions reductions to commensurate reductions in emissions of toxic air pollutants from fossil fuels—sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and so on—by means of an “environmental justice guarantee.” Such a guarantee would mandate that overall reduction in carbon emissions is matched by reductions in co-pollutant emissions in communities disproportionately impacted in the past. Such a guarantee is included explicitly in the Healthy Climate and Family Security Act of 2022 introduced by U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.)

None of this will happen without popular mobilization. Democracy was not handed to us on a platter. The abolition of slavery was not delivered on a platter. Neither were women’s suffrage, civil rights, or environmental protection. Throughout history, pro-people change happens only when ordinary people demand it. That is what needs to happen now.

In the short term, we are often caught between our dreams and realism. But there is a chance right now to offer a suggestion for the Democratic Party’s vice presidential pick that would be both inspiring and eminently practical, namely, Shawn Fain, president of the United Auto Workers.

Everyone understands that the Democrats’ presidential hopes depend on winning back the white working class. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and others are certainly right that this requires an emphasis on the parts of the Democratic platform that work to reduce the huge inequalities that plague our country. It also requires, however, a vice presidential candidate that can convince voters that Democratic promises will not be ignored after the election. Political insiders understand this and that’s why they are looking for a candidate who might appeal to these voters. But each of the names being bandied about as part of the “short list” in fact has serious handicaps.

Josh Shapiro is the governor of Pennsylvania. In the words of The New York Times “The Morning Briefing,” “perhaps Shapiro’s biggest downside is that he could inflame divisions between moderate and liberal Democrats over the war in Gaza.” Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) would, if he won, “trigger a special election in Arizona in 2026, potentially costing Democrats a Senate seat.” Michigan’s Gov. Gretchen Whitmer says she doesn’t want the job. Gov. Andy Beshear from Kentucky doesn’t offer the Democrats an extra state in the win column. And Gov. Roy Cooper of North Carolina has the problem that every time he leaves the state to campaign, his lieutenant governor, a very conservative Republican who is running for governor, becomes the acting governor.

Shawn Fain would electrify working-class voters. He would thrill volunteers. He would be able to draw a sharp contrast between the fascistic faux populism of former President Donald Trump and Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) and real pro-labor policies. As the leader of the historic UAW strike victories last year, there is no mistaking which side he is on. He has called for a general strike in 2028. And in May, he declared:

The UAW will never support the mass arrest or intimidation of those exercising their right to protest, strike, or speak out against injustice. Our union has been calling for a cease-fire for six months. This war is wrong, and this response against students and academic workers, many of them UAW members, is wrong. We call on the powers that be to release the students and employees who have been arrested, and if you can’t take the outcry, stop supporting this war.

But yet, Fain and the UAW endorsed President Joe Biden. Biden walked on their picket line. (In 2019, so did Vice President Kamala Harris.) So he is not so far beyond the pale that his selection would be inappropriate on a Democratic Party ticket. And when Donald Trump at the Republican convention called for Fain’s firing, he placed the union head in the national spotlight. Think of how Fain’s comments on Trump would resonate on the campaign trail:

Donald Trump is a scab. Donald Trump is a billionaire and that is who he represents. If Donald Trump ever worked in an auto plant, he wouldn’t be a UAW member, he would be a company man trying to squeeze the American worker.

Executive experience? He has run an organization of more than 400,000 members. Foreign policy experience? He doesn’t have much—but only Kelly on the list above does—and he’s been involved in trade issues, recently named to Biden’s Export Policy Council. Speaking ability? As Axios commented, “Fain speaks with the cadence and tone of an old-school preacher, calling on the world to embrace the UAW’s ‘righteous’ cause, referencing biblical heroes like Moses, and telling people to ‘stand up’ for justice.”

Shawn Fain is an outside-the-box choice. A few other commentators have mentioned him as a possibility. He ought to be on everyone’s short list.

And he ought to be the next vice president of the United States.

By all appearances, former U.S. President Donald Trump has cut a sweet deal with a dozen or two of America’s richest billionaires: Finance his campaign and he’ll keep their federal taxes super low—or even lower them—once he’s sitting back in the White House.

How much do billionaires like this deal? This much: In April, hedge fund billionaire John Paulsen held a Palm Beach fundraiser for Trump that brought in $50.5 million. Immediately after Trump’s late May conviction on 34 felony counts in Manhattan, Timothy Mellon, the grandson of the classic plutocrat Andrew Mellon, ponied up $50 million. Miriam Adelson, the billionaire widow of Las Vegas kingpin Sheldon Adelson, appears eager to kick in as much as $100 million.

This past spring, meanwhile, billionaires Elon Musk and David Sacks reportedly held a secret dinner party for Trump, with attendees including the illustrious deep pockets Peter Thiel, Rupert Murdoch, and Michael Milken.

The rich themselves have actually become more brazen about avoiding taxes. Just try to stop us, they seem to be saying.

America’s billionaires clearly see politics as one route to ensuring they pay as little as possible at tax time. But they don’t just make their presence felt at election time. America’s rich have their thumbs firmly on the scale of all three branches of government. In legislatures, the courts, and our executive offices, we have a system rigged in favor of the ultra-rich, rigged by everything from acts of Congress and judicial rulings to IRS budgets and audit policies.

Some of this rigging we can all easily see. The dividends and long-term capital gains of the ultra-rich have for decades faced a maximum tax rate barely half the maximum rate applicable to other forms of income. And the investment income of the rich, unlike the paychecks of working people, faces no Social Security tax.

In 2017, the first year of the Trump presidency, intense lobbying efforts helped rich business owners to a special tax rate for their business income. In 2018 alone, according to ProPublica, that special rate translated into a $67 million gift to Mike Bloomberg, whose personal wealth now reportedly exceeds $100 billion.

But these glaring privileges the rich enjoy at tax time only tell part of the billionaire tax story. Other parts get precious little attention. In 2004, for instance, lawmakers in Congress enacted a penalty for the failure to disclose potentially abusive tax avoidance transactions on tax returns. The penalty on the surface looked substantial: 75% of the tax sought to be avoided. But Congress capped the penalty at $100,000, a move that turned the penalty into a minor nuisance for billionaires seeking to avoid millions of dollars in taxes.

In our current rich people-friendly tax climate, IRS staff who want to do the right thing face tough going. Recently, for example, one former IRS staffer, Michael Welu, went public with his concerns that the IRS itself has both official and unofficial policies that end up treating audited rich taxpayers much more gently than small business owners.

“I was putting butchers, bakers, and candlestick makers in jail,” Welu told the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, “but the big stuff we really wanted to go after was being ignored.”

Welu found the upper management of the IRS division tasked with auditing the super rich—and the corporations they run—distinctly uninterested in investigating America’s richest and their “most egregious, ridiculous schemes” for avoiding taxes.

IRS officials like Michael Welu do occasionally speak out. But only tax wonks truly have any real sense of how much obscure tax code penalties and IRS audit policies favor the rich. And most of those tax wonks work for the rich.

The rich themselves have actually become more brazen about avoiding taxes. Just try to stop us, they seem to be saying.

Take the recently decided Supreme Court case, Moore v. United States. Working through an array of right-wing organizations, the conservative mover-and-shaker Leonard Leo attempted to use a challenge to an obscure one-time tax as a vehicle to preempt Congress from ever taxing the wealth or unrealized gains of the ultra-rich. Ultimately, the court decided the case without ruling on whether the rich can be taxed on their wealth or unrealized gains. But the opinions that four of the nine justices handed down made it clear that they stand prepared to do the billionaire bidding should a direct challenge to a tax on the wealth or unrealized gains of billionaires come before them.

Billionaires now have at least three Supreme Court justices firmly in their pockets. Reporting by ProPublica has revealed the massive gifts that have been flowing from Harlan Crow and other billionaires to Justice Clarence Thomas as well as the generous gifts that billionaire Paul Singer has been sending Justice Samuel Alito’s way. Justice Neil Gorsuch has had his entire career, including his appointment to the court, funded by the billionaire Philip Anschutz.

Those three justices, along with Justice Amy Coney-Barret, have now made it patently obvious they will not allow billionaires to be taxed on their unrealized gains or their wealth. Does anyone really think the billionaires won’t have the crucial, majority-making fifth vote from Justice Brett Kavanaugh when they need it?

Republican members of Congress are showing even less shame than our Supreme Court justices. Last year, these GOP lawmakers held the country hostage in negotiations to increase the country’s debt limit. Their price for agreeing to raise the debt limit, thereby avoiding a default on the country’s debt? They demanded—and won—a reduction in a scheduled IRS budget increase that would been used to increase enforcement moves against rich taxpayers.

The purported motive for this legislative hostage taking—“concern” over the federal deficit—made for an absurd justification. The proposed increase in the IRS budget would have been recovered, several times over, through increased tax collections. The IRS budget reductions the Republican lawmakers extracted will, in fact, only increase the federal deficit. But those reductions will serve a political purpose. They’ll protect the GOP’s richest patrons from tax enforcement.

The mainstream media, to no one’s surprise, did a miserable job of exposing this Republican dishonesty in the debt limit negotiations. But at one point in our recent past a courageous soul did emerge to expose the rot in our tax system. What happened? The ultra-rich and their henchmen in Congress make sure that this soul faced a punishment far more severe than any punishment ever meted out to those few rich Americans who actually get caught evading their taxes due.

That courageous soul, Charles Littlejohn, worked as an IRS contractor. He leaked tax return information related to Trump and America’s billionaires to The New York Times and ProPublica. ProPublica used that leaked information to write over 50 stories about billionaire tax avoidance, embarrassing and angering many of our richest in the process. Two of them even brought lawsuits, one against the IRS and the other against Littlejohn’s employer.

Ultimately, Littlejohn pled guilty to one count of unauthorized tax return information disclosure, a crime that carries a recommended sentence of four to 10 months. But 25 Republican members of Congress, undoubtedly at the behest of their billionaire patrons, wrote the judge in the case and urged the harshest possible sentence of five years. The judge obliged, stating in her sentencing remarks that Littlejohn posed a graver threat to democracy than the January 6 rioters. As tax law professor Reuven Avi-Yonah has noted, Littlejohn is now serving a sentence far harsher than any imposed on rich Americans convicted of tax evasion.

Littlejohn’s extreme sentence did not reflect the one single count of unauthorized tax return information disclosure he pled guilty to. That sentence reflects his “crime” of exposing the tax avoidance of the billionaire class.

Try this thought experiment: Imagine if Littlejohn had released the return information of 1,000 or so taxpayers with modest incomes to ProPublica. Imagine that ProPublica had then publicly detailed all the tip income that servers and bartenders among these taxpayers had failed to report and all the social meals that small business owners in the sample had claimed as business expenses. If Littlejohn had then pled to one count of unauthorized disclosure, would 25 members of Congress have intervened? Would the judge have imposed a sentence over six times the maximum recommended in federal sentencing guidelines?

Doesn’t it become dangerous to society when the punishment for a crime depends on who the victim happens to be?

We are now living that danger. Our billionaires sit firmly in control. And they will do whatever it takes to make sure they never pay tax at an appropriate level—even if that means locking a human being up for a preposterously long time just to send a message.

Supreme Court reform is an issue whose time has come.

In 2021, President Biden appointed me to serve as a member of the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States. We were publicly instructed at the outset not to reach conclusions — and we didn’t! (At last, a government agency that works.)

We heard from dozens of public witnesses — 17 on day one alone. They disagreed about many things. But one after another, conservatives and progressives alike said almost offhandedly that of course they supported term limits. It reflected a nascent national consensus.

Still, our report received little more than a terse White House acknowledgment. That makes Biden’s eloquent embrace of reform all the more striking. In a Washington Post op-ed, he declared, “What is happening now is not normal, and it undermines the public’s confidence in the court’s decisions, including those impacting personal freedoms. We now stand in a breach.”

What changed? The Supreme Court has vast power and minimal accountability. Public trust has plunged to the lowest level ever recorded. The Court is mired in corruption controversies. And the Trump v. United States ruling giving presidents broad immunity will sanction executive lawbreaking on an unprecedented scale.

Biden backed 18-year term limits for justices, with a regular appointment every two years. He called for binding ethics rules for justices to replace the toothless ethics code the Court hastily posted online last year. And he supported a constitutional amendment to undo the appalling immunity decision.

In many ways, these are conservative ideas. Term limits rest on a foundational premise of accountability: nobody should hold too much public power for too long. George Washington taught us that when he stepped down after two terms. A binding ethics code confirms that nobody is so wise that they can be the judge in their own case. And the constitutional amendment would restore the understanding that held for two centuries: presidents are not kings, and nobody is above the law. This compelling package would save the Court from itself.

Supreme Court Reform youtu.be

Reform will now be a central public issue going forward. Vice President Harris, running to succeed Biden, endorsed the push. Nobody pretends the changes will happen this year. But if the political stars align after the November election, as Politico reports, things could change fast.

Not surprisingly, the new call for reform has drawn fire. Yesterday the Wall Street Journal called it “political.” Today they called it “radical.” Who knows what they will call it tomorrow?

In fact, a broad and growing public consensus supports term limits. Few policy ideas have such durable bipartisan appeal. According to a recent poll by Fox News, 78 percent of Americans support the idea, up from 66 percent in 2022. A few years ago, the National Constitution Center convened progressive and conservative scholars to put forward dueling ideas for Court reform. Both groups embraced term limits.

So did John Roberts. While working as a White House attorney, he wrote that term limits “would ensure that federal judges would not lose all touch with reality through decades of ivory tower existence” and “would also provide a more regular and greater degree of turnover among the judges. Both developments would, in my view, be healthy ones.” Indeed, the idea was first pushed in 2002 by Federalist Society cofounder Steven Calabresi in an article with liberal constitutional law scholar Akhil Reed Amar.

Now, nobody is under any illusion that bipartisan public support will cause partisan division to melt away in Congress. But if the public’s support is strong enough, the political system can be prodded to respond.

One critic, a fellow commission member, warns this is merely a repackaging of dreaded “court packing.” The Journal editorialists call it “court smacking.” But that dad joke inadvertently reveals the truth. This idea is not a retaliatory expansion of the Court designed simply to outvote conservatives, which might in turn be followed by a further expansion to overwhelm the liberals and so on. It is a principled way to bring the Court into line with a changing country. It would also align the Court with the practice of supreme courts in all but one state, for example.

Term limits can be enacted by constitutional amendment, to be sure, and they also can be enacted by statute. As another fellow commission member, constitutional law scholar Kermit Roosevelt III, explains in Time, Congress has the power to create senior judgeships with different and limited responsibilities, and courts, including the Supreme Court, have upheld that. One version of the proposal would apply the idea to sitting justices. As Roosevelt writes, “David Souter, Anthony Kennedy, and Stephen Breyer are all still Supreme Court Justices, even though they are retired. None of them has left their office.” Another would apply only to new justices while giving the president the power to make an appointment every two years. Details remain to be worked out (including whether current or only future justices would be covered).

Some say all this will politicize the Court. Consider me shocked, shocked that there is politics around Supreme Court nominations. We all know how intense, poisonous, and partisan nomination battles have become. Justices now routinely squeak by on a party-line vote. The legendary New York Times reporter Linda Greenhouse put it well: “With the accuracy of a drone strike, the three justices appointed by President Donald Trump and strong-armed through to confirmation by Mitch McConnell, then the majority leader, are doing exactly what they were sent to the court to do.”

Term limits and regular appointments would help drain the toxicity of the confirmation process. Each nomination would matter less. If candidates felt it necessary to hint at whom they would appoint in advance, so what? Trump announced that he would only appoint justices from a list given to him by the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation. (Yes, the same Heritage Foundation, publisher of the notorious Project 2025, that Trump now claims never to have heard of.)

Above all, this makes the issue of Supreme Court reform a central topic going forward. The Brennan Center’s newly launched Kohlberg Center on the U.S. Supreme Court will do its part to bring substantive depth to discussions of a subject that is far from new. The Court and its role have been central political topics many times. Outrage at Dred Scott lifted Abraham Lincoln and the new Republican Party into the White House. Theodore Roosevelt campaigned against reactionary rulings and urged reform in his 1912 run. Conservatives from Richard Nixon to Ronald Reagan to Donald Trump vowed to change the Court.

In short, this is not a distraction from urgent political debates, as some argue. Voters will cast ballots this year in large measure driven by their views of rulings such as Dobbs, which reversed the Constitution’s guarantee of reproductive freedom. Candidates will make pledges about what kind of justice they would appoint, as they should. But reform of a corrupted and unaccountable public institution should be part of the debate as well. As it has been at every moment of peril and progress for American democracy, in 2024 the Supreme Court will be on the ballot.

The right-wing Republicans . . . the Christian nationalists . . . have hoisted their flag: Project 2025, a.k.a., Project Hell on Earth, and it’s coming to a future near you. Or so they believe (and hope).

But the Democrats are on our side! They won’t let it happen, right? While the deep right puts forth its stalwart vision of a recreated world, the moderate center stands cautiously and awkwardly for the status quo of the moment: only some war, mixed with social spending and even a minimal awareness of the problems posed by climate change. God forbid, however, that a counter-vision of the global future — a vision of a world that transcends war and militarism — should be part of mainstream politics. That would be pushing things too far, that is to say, defying the corporate donors who keep the political process going.

So, as the presidential election looms, we have to look at what’s at stake, as outlined in Project 2025: “The nearly 900-page document,” Liz Theoharis and Shailly Gupta Barnes write at TomDispatch, “outlines a plan to ramp up U.S. military might, slash social welfare programs, and prioritize ‘traditional marriage.’”

Military might — yeah, that’s the political key. They add: “Nor is this new. Every year, the Pentagon budget invariably passes with widespread bipartisan support, even if a few representatives vote otherwise. Since the 9/11 attacks, in fact, $21 trillion has been funneled into war, surveillance, policing, border control, and incarceration. In Fiscal Year 2023, nearly two-thirds of the federal discretionary budget funded the military-industrial complex and militarized spending.”

Project 2025 simply eliminates all doubt: Peace is not the way — at least not the lefty version of it.

Militarism is more than the flow of blood. It’s also the flow of money. War is taught, historically, as simple and precise: good and evil go at each other, one side (usually the good guys, the “righteous” ones) wins, and life simply moves on. There are no further consequences. The takeaway is only this: If you want to be safe and secure, you have to be well-armed and ever-prepared for battle. War, in other words, is permanent — and ever on the horizon. At least this is the world of today, indeed, the world that “civilized humanity” has bequeathed itself.

Project 2025 simply eliminates all doubt: Peace is not the way — at least not the lefty version of it. The unquestioned worship of militarism must be our future, and will be if Trump wins, at least according to Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, the organization behind Project 2025. He called it the “second American Revolution” but assured us it will be bloodless, uh . . . “if the left allows it to be.”

What fascinating wordplay. Those who disagree with the Project had better keep their mouths shut. If they don’t, we’ll have to respond violently, but it will be their fault. That’s how the system works.

Here’s another way to look at it:

“The end of World War II was not the beginning of an era dominated by a devotion to peace,” Serdar M. Değirmencioğlu writes at Community Psychology. “Instead, the defining mindset of the period was militarism with no moral limits. Nuclear war was now possible and more was on the way. . . .

“It is now (more) clear than ever that militarism is morally bankrupt. It can justify everything: Nuclear massacres, nuclear weapons, hundreds of military bases around the world, toppling regimes in Guatemala, Chile, Grenada or any other country for that matter. Add an undeclared war on Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. Add napalm and Agent Orange. And no, it did not stop when the Cold War ended. Militarism justified the invasion of Iraq and of Afghanistan, black sites, Guantanamo and so on. Militarism has always served and justified injustice — at home and away from home.”

Let me repeat: Militarism has no moral limits — which, seemingly, turns the term “war crime” into an absurdity. Once you start killing people, it’s hard to stop. You kill innocent civilians. You kill children. You commit genocide. But, oh gosh, doing that is a crime. Well, so what? That means nothing.

Project 2025 seems like nothing more than Project Same Old, Same Old, amplified with political arrogance (social spending is bad) and the belief that we need a good dictator.

Militarism “can justify everything.” And the terrain of justification keeps expanding. In the wake of World War I, one of the horrors wreaked upon the world was poison gas. Less than three decades later, we had the atomic bomb to ponder, fret over and, of course, continue developing. Oh, but “mutually assured destruction” has kept us safe! Except for all the non-nuclear wars the world has managed to squeeze in (during my lifetime).

So Project 2025 seems like nothing more than Project Same Old, Same Old, amplified with political arrogance (social spending is bad) and the belief that we need a good dictator. That’ll keep us safe! All I can do is spray a little poison gas onto this viewpoint, that is to say, quote the ending to Wilfred Owen’s poem about World War I — specifically, about the horror of a poison gas attack and the soldier who failed to get his gas mask on in time. Titled “Dulce et Decorum Est,” the poem ends with a Latin phrase that means: “It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country.”

. . . If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

By Ralph Nader August 2, 2024 Israeli soldiers, like soldiers in other countries, bask in the self-serving effusive praise showered upon them by politicians, but privately they know BS when they hear it. Right from the start on October 7th, the soldiers knew that the sudden collapse of Netanyahu’s state-of-the-art multi-tiered border defense system left…

Political cartoonists and analysts Ted Rall (on the Left) and Scott Stantis (on the Right) take on the week in politics.

Kamala Harris has secured the nomination of the Democratic Party officially, via virtual roll call, less than two weeks after Joe Biden dropped out of the race. Scott and Ted discuss how she quickly consolidated control of the party in one of the most startling reversals of political fortune ever, taking her from pariah to Internet darling with a $1 billion war chest in a matter of a month. Donald Trump is attacking her race and gender; will these punches land?

Meanwhile, the Middle East conflict is heating up with the prospect of a wider regional conflict so pronounced that Ted thinks the unthinkable, considering scenarios for nuclear confrontation. At the same time, Scott declares the Russo-Ukrainian War all over but the shouting, with the outcome increasingly obvious.

Watch the Video Version: here.

(Will be live 8/2/24 6:15 pm EDT)

The post DMZ America Podcast Ep 158: Trump’s Racist on Kamala Harris & Israel Attacks Iran first appeared on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

During Donald Trump’s presidency, he repeatedly capitulated to Israel’s Zionist regime. He illegally recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, illegally recognized Israeli sovereignty over the occupied Golan Heights, and declared Israeli settlements on Palestinian land lawful despite international law to the contrary.

As Israel continues its 10-month genocidal campaign in Gaza, there is no doubt that if he were president now, Trump would give Israel everything it wants to “finish what they started” and “get it over with fast,” that is, ethnically cleanse all of the Palestinians from Gaza.

But this genocide is happening on Joe Biden’s watch. His administration has aided and abetted Israeli genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, killing more than 40,000 Palestinians according to the official Gaza Health Ministry count, although the real death toll is likely much higher. Besides the $3.8 billion the U.S. sends annually to Israel, it has furnished an additional $15 billion in military aid since October 7, 2023. And the U.S. has provided political and diplomatic cover to Israel by vetoing three Security Council resolutions that would have required a ceasefire in Gaza.

A second Trump administration would not just double down on enabling Israel’s genocide in Gaza. It would also usher in a system of fascism grounded in Christian nationalism.

During the primary elections, nearly 1 million voters—many of them Arab American and younger progressive voters—cast their primary ballots for “uncommitted” to protest Biden’s complicity in Israel’s genocide.

In order to capture those votes, Kamala Harris should commit to ending U.S. support for Israel’s genocide and its illegal occupation of Palestinian territory.

Harris’s Record on Israel-Palestine

Harris has a history of strong support for Israel. As a senator, she twice addressed the pro-Zionist AIPAC conference, co-sponsored a bill to undermine a UN resolution that condemned Israel’s illegal annexation of Palestinian territory, and denounced the Boycott Divestment Sanctions (BDS) movement. During the 2020 presidential race, when asked by The New York Times if she believed that Israel complied with international human rights standards, she said, “Overall, yes.”

An integral part of the Biden administration, Harris has participated in 20 calls between Biden and Netanyahu since the October 7 attacks in Israel. But in the past 10 months, she has made public statements that went much further than Biden in expressing concern about the humanitarian devastation in Gaza.

While stating that Israel had a right to self-defense, Harris maintained that it must comply with international humanitarian law by protecting civilians and allowing humanitarian aid into Gaza. On October 29, she said on CBS’s 60 Minutes that “it is very important that there be no conflation between Hamas and the Palestinians. The Palestinians deserve equal measures of safety and security, self-determination and dignity, and we have been very clear that the rules of war must be adhered to and that there be humanitarian aid that flows.”

After meeting with leaders of Egypt, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates in November 2023, Harris decried the horrors of October 7 and called for the return of the Israeli hostages. But, she added, “As Israel defends itself, it matters how. Too many innocent Palestinians have been killed. Frankly, the scale of civilian suffering and the images and videos coming from Gaza are devastating.”

In late 2023, Harris reportedly urged Biden to get “tougher” on Netanyahu and express more public concern about the deaths of Palestinian civilians.

On March 3, in a speech commemorating the 59th anniversary of Bloody Sunday on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, Harris pressed for an immediate six-week ceasefire, stating, “What we are seeing every day in Gaza is devastating. We have seen reports of families eating leaves or animal feed, women giving birth to malnourished babies with little or no medical care, and children dying from malnutrition and dehydration.”

Harris also declared, “As I have said many times, too many innocent Palestinians have been killed. And just a few days ago, we saw hungry, desperate people approach aid trucks, simply trying to secure food for their families after weeks of nearly no aid reaching Northern Gaza. And they were met with gunfire and chaos,” adding, “Our hearts break for the victims of that horrific tragedy and for all the innocent people in Gaza who are suffering from what is clearly a humanitarian catastrophe. People in Gaza are starving. The conditions are inhumane. And our common humanity compels us to act.”

Harris is Constrained by Administration in Her Criticism of Israel: “Her hands are tied”

NBC News reported that officials at the National Security Council watered down Harris’s March 3 speech before she delivered it. The original draft came down harder on Israel over the desperate humanitarian situation in Gaza and the need for Israel to allow more aid.

Harris has apparently wanted to take a stronger stand against Israel’s assault on Gaza. A Democrat who helped elect Biden in 2020 told NBC News that Harris went to great lengths to be more responsive to the concerns of Muslim and Arab Americans and other Democrats who are disturbed by the worsening humanitarian situation after months of Israeli bombing. “Her hands are tied,” the person said. “People are not attacking her because they know that this is not her policy. This is Biden’s war. This is Biden’s failure,” adding, “I think she would have asked for a cease-fire a long time ago.”

Last week the Washington Post cited multiple current and former White House officials who anonymously reported that Harris has advocated for the rights of the Palestinians in several internal meetings and in public remarks when she thought they were not being adequately considered in crafting policy. She faced a backlash in June after she publicly mourned the over 270 Palestinians who were “tragically killed” by an Israeli military operation that rescued four hostages held by Hamas since October 7.

To her credit, Harris refused to preside over the joint session of Congress on July 26 where Netanyahu gave what shamefully sounded like a State of the Union address.

She met with Netanyahu later and then called for a long-term cease-fire. "It's time for this war to end and end in a way where Israel is secure, all the hostages are released, the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza ends, and the Palestinian people can exercise their right to freedom, dignity and self-determination." She reported that the meeting had been "frank and constructive."

Harris also stated, “Israel has a right to defend itself, and how it does so matters.” She had “serious concern about the scale of human suffering in Gaza, including the death of far too many innocent civilians,” and “images of dead children and desperate, hungry people fleeing for safety.” She declared, “We cannot allow ourselves to become numb to the suffering, and I will not be silent.”

Make Harris Commit to Ending Support for Israel’s Genocide and Illegal Occupation

After leaving Washington D.C., Netanyahu met with Trump in Florida. Trump declared that Harris’s "remarks on Israel were disrespectful."

A second Trump administration would not just double down on enabling Israel’s genocide in Gaza. It would also usher in a system of fascism grounded in Christian nationalism.

The American Muslim 2024 Election Taskforce said in a statement: “By fully charting a new course on Gaza policy,” Harris can “win back the support of American Muslims and other voters in key swing states and, ultimately, save the country from another Trump presidency.”

We must push Harris to commit to a permanent ceasefire and the withdrawal of U.S. support for Israel’s genocide and its illegal occupation of Palestinian territory.

The Uncommitted National Movement says it will support any candidate who backs a permanent ceasefire and an arms embargo. It issued this statement:

Supplying weapons to Netanyahu’s regime makes a mockery of Democrats’ claims to fight against MAGA authoritarianism. By funding a government committing human rights abuses, we undermine our party’s stance against far-right extremism and contradict our commitment to democracy. It’s time to align our actions with our values. Vice President Harris can start the process to earn back trust by turning the page from Biden’s horrific policies in Gaza.

Veterans for Peace (VFP) wrote an open letter to Harris saying that it “wholeheartedly concurs” with her sentiments following her meeting with Netanyahu. “We applaud you for expressing sympathy with the Palestinian people,” the letter says. “We also refuse to become numb to their suffering, and we cannot be silent. Like so many of our fellow citizens, including Jewish Americans, we are deeply disturbed that our government continues to provide Israel with a steady supply of bombs, and to provide political cover for Israeli leaders charged with war crimes.”

VFP states that “justice and humanity require” there be “an immediate, permanent ceasefire in Gaza, the release of all Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners, the opening of Gaza’s borders for massive humanitarian and medical aid, and the end of US arms shipments to Israel.” VFP exhorts Harris not to wait until January to urge Biden to change course in Gaza.

We must push Harris to commit to a permanent ceasefire and the withdrawal of U.S. support for Israel’s genocide and its illegal occupation of Palestinian territory.

The choice is clear. It is critical that Trump be defeated in November. Either Donald Trump or Kamala Harris will be elected president. A vote for anyone other than Harris will help Trump take the White House - and our constitutional government with it.

During the Civil Rights Movement, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., famously said, “The time is always right to do what is right.”

While she may have been a lone protest voice during Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s speech to a joint session of Congress last week, Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) did what is right.

Most mainstream news reporting either ridiculed her or only briefly mentioned her silent protest displaying a sign with “War Criminal” printed on one side and “Guilty of Genocide” on the other. Missing was any analysis as to whether she was right. Let’s look at the facts.

We are outraged that the taxes of workers are being used to kill, maim, and slaughter innocent people.

Any objective observer of the war in Gaza must conclude that the Israeli government is guilty of war crimes and that those crimes are enabled by U.S. military aid. Ninety percent of the 2.3 million besieged residents of Gaza have been displaced. More than 39,000, mostly women and children, have been confirmed killed. The world-renowned medical journal The Lancet recently calculated that—once adding those beneath the rubble and dying from injuries and lack of medical care, disease, and famine—hat number will soon be closer to 200,000 people. Most homes have been razed. The medical system has been systematically targeted and destroyed, as have the water and sewer systems. Israel has intentionally blocked food aid, inducing widespread famine Between 111 and 165 journalists have been targeted and killed. People forced to move to “safe zones” have then been bombed.

The definition of genocide includes “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group.”

The International Criminal Court (ICC) has charged, and its chief prosecutor has requested an arrested warrant for, Netanyahu for war crimes, including the purposeful starvation of civilians, willfully causing great suffering, and killings targeting the civilian population. As an indication of their impartiality, the ICC also charged the Hamas leadership with crimes against humanity.

Bolstering the ICC action is the everyday tragic news. As I write, Israel has just killed 30 and injured 100 civilians by bombing a school being used by displaced Gazan refugees.

Forty-five U.S. doctors and health professionals who carried out volunteer health services in Gaza sent a recent letter to U.S. President Joe Biden calling for a cease-fire and arms embargo sharing that, “with only marginal exceptions, everyone in Gaza is sick, injured, or both. Israel’s continued, repeated displacement of the malnourished and sick population of Gaza, half of whom are children, to areas with no running water or even toilets available is absolutely shocking… Every day that we continue supplying weapons and munitions to Israel is another day that women are shredded by our bombs and children are murdered with our bullets.”

Shame on both the Republican and Democratic Party leadership for inviting a war criminal to address Congress and giving him a green light to continue the crimes against humanity.

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) not only made it clear that she would not have invited Netanyahu to speak before Congress but that he made the worst speech of any foreign leader afforded that opportunity. She is right, as Netanyahu openly attacked those in this country who are protesting his war crimes and continued U.S. military aid and spread absolute falsehoods that the protests are funded by Iran. His rotten statement was also directed against those family members of Jewish hostages who were protesting Netanyahu’s refusal to negotiate a cease-fire to free their loved ones.

While Rashida Tlaib, the one Palestinian-American in Congress, courageously protested inside the Capitol, thousands of us, including this union leader and proud Jewish-American, were peaceably demonstrating outside demanding a cease-fire, condemning Netanyahu’s crimes against humanity, and the U.S. government for continuing to send armaments to Israel.

I am proud that my union, which deplored the Hamas actions of October 7 and condemned Israel’s barbaric response, called for the release of all hostages and advocates for a permanent cease-fire and for massive humanitarian aid. Recently, our union took further action by a vote at our national convention to demand that our government halt military aid to Israel and joined six other unions, representing over 6 million U.S. unionized workers, calling on President Biden to implement an arms embargo. As the largest arms supplier to Israel, the Biden-led U.S government should use its leverage to stop the carnage. We are outraged that the taxes of workers are being used to kill, maim, and slaughter innocent people.

Most people in the U.S. and across the world support calls for an immediate and permanent ceasefire. In this time of urgent crisis, those protesting Netanyahu’s war crimes take inspiration from Congresswoman Tlaib’s “profile in courage” and refuse to be silenced in the continuing struggle for solidarity, justice, peace, and freedom. The cries of humanity demand nothing less.

Almost 100 days have now passed since the Congress passed $61 billion in emergency funding for Ukraine, a measure that included a condition that required the Biden Administration to present to the legislative body a detailed strategy for continued U.S. support.

When the funding bill was passed with much fanfare on April 23, Section 504, page 32 included the following mandate:

“Not later than 45 days after the date of enactment of this Act, the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense, in consultation with the heads of other relevant Federal agencies, as appropriate, shall submit to 18 the Committees on Appropriations, Armed Services, and Foreign Relations of the Senate and the Committees on 20 Appropriations, Armed Services, and Foreign Affairs of the House of Representatives a strategy regarding United States support for Ukraine against aggression by the Russian Federation: Provided, That such strategy shall be multi-year, establish specific and achievable objectives, define and prioritize United States national security interests…”

It is now August and There is still no sign on the part of the Biden Administration of any intention to submit such a strategy to Congress. This inevitably leads to the suspicion that no such strategy in fact exists. It also suggests that without a massive change of mindset within the administration, it is not even possible to hold—let alone make public—serious and honest internal discussions on the subject, as these would reveal the flawed and empty assumptions on which much of present policy is based.

Unfortunately, it seems that the administration’s actual position is to kick this issue down the road until after the presidential election.

This relates first of all to the requirement “to define and prioritize United States national security interests.” No U.S. official has ever seriously addressed the issue of why a Russian military presence in eastern Ukraine that was of no importance whatsoever to the U.S. 40 years ago (when Soviet tank armies stood in the center of Germany, 1,200 miles to the West) should now be such a threat that combating it necessitates $61 billion of U.S. military aid per year, a significant risk of conflict with a nuclear-armed Russia, and a colossal distraction from vital U.S. interests elsewhere.

Instead, the administration, and its European allies, have relied on two arguments. The first is that if Russia is not defeated in Ukraine, it will go on to attack NATO and that this will mean American soldiers going to fight and die in Europe. In fact, there is no evidence whatsoever of any such Russian intention. Russian threats of escalation and (possibly) minor acts of sabotage have been outgrowths of the war in Ukraine, and intended to deter NATO from intervening directly in that conflict—not actions intended to lay the basis for an invasion of NATO.

Western commentators like to state Russian public ambitions beyond Ukraine as a given fact, but when asked to provide actual statements to this effect, they are unable to do so. Nor, at least judging by Putin’s latest statement, does he intend (or believe it possible) to “wipe Ukraine off the map.” The top official Russian goals include limited territorial gains, Ukrainian neutrality, and Russian language rights in Ukraine—all questions that can legitimately be explored in negotiations.

Moreover, given the acute difficulties that the Russian military has faced in Ukraine, and the Russian weaknesses revealed by that conflict, the idea of them planning to attack NATO seems utterly counter-intuitive. For Russia has been “stopped” in Ukraine. The heroic resistance of the Ukrainian army, backed with Western weapons and money, stopped the Russian army far short of President Putin’s goals when he launched the war. They have severely damaged Russian military prestige, inflicted enormous losses on the Russian military, and as of today, hold more than 80% of their country’s territory.

The Biden administration has issued partly contradictory statements about the purpose of U.S. aid to Ukraine: that it is intended to help Ukraine “win”, and that it is intended to help “strengthen Ukraine at the negotiating table.” They have not however fulfilled their legal obligation to define to Congress what “winning” means, nor why if the war will end in negotiations, these negotiations should not begin now — especially since there is very strong evidence that the Ukrainian military position, and therefore Ukraine’s position at the negotiating table, are getting worse, not better.

As Samuel Charap and Jeremy Shapiro have written in response to the latest US despatch of weapons to Ukraine:

“[A]daptation and adjustment do not constitute strategy, and reactive escalation absent a strategy is not sound policy. Escalating U.S. involvement in this conflict—or any conflict—should be guided by an idea about how to bring the war to an end.”

As with U.S. campaigns in Vietnam and elsewhere, the administration and its allies have tried to play the “credibility” card: the argument that it is necessary to defeat Russia in Ukraine because otherwise, China, Iran and other countries will be emboldened to attack the United States or its allies. But like the line about Russian ambitions beyond Ukraine, this is simply an assumption. There is no actual evidence for it at all.

It can, with equal or greater validity, be assumed that the governments of these countries will make up their minds according to calculations of their own interests and the military balance in their own regions.

The final administration line of argument is a moral one: that “Russian aggression must not be rewarded” and that “Ukrainian territorial integrity must be restored.” Since, however, any realistic negotiations towards a peace settlement will have to involve de facto recognition of Russian territorial gains (not de jure recognition, which the Russians do not expect and even the Chinese will not grant), this statement would seem to rule out even the idea of talks. On the face of it therefore, the Biden administration would appear to be asking the American people to spend indefinitely tens of billions of dollars a year on an endless war for an unachievable goal.

If this is a mistaken picture of the administration’s position, then once again, it has a formal obligation under the bill passed by Congress in April to tell the American people and their elected representatives what their goals in Ukraine in fact are. Then everyone will be able to reach an informed judgment on whether they are attainable, and worth $61 billion a year in American money.

Unfortunately, it seems that the administration’s actual position is to kick this issue down the road until after the presidential election. Thereafter, either a Harris administration will have to draw up new plans, or a Trump administration will do so. But given the length of time it takes a new administration to settle in and develop new policies, this means that we could not expect a strategy on Ukraine to emerge for eight months at best.

If the Ukrainians can hold roughly their present lines, then this approach could be justifiable in U.S. domestic political terms (though not to the families of the Ukrainian soldiers who will die in the meantime). There is however a significant risk that given the military balance on the ground, and even with continued aid, Ukraine during this time will suffer a major defeat. Washington would then have to choose between a truly humiliating failure or direct intervention, which would expose the American people to truly hideous risks.

There is an alternative. Since President Biden will in any case step down next January, he could take a risk and try to bequeath to his successor not war, but peace. In terms of domestic politics, to open negotiations with Russia now would deprive Donald Trump and JD Vance of a campaigning position, and would spare a future Democrat administration (if elected) from a very difficult and internally divisive decision.

The first step in this direction is for the Biden administration clearly to formulate its goals in Ukraine, and — as required by law — to submit these goals to the American people.

In the presidential race, Democrats and Republicans remain neck and neck. But how could this be?

Afterall, free-market mythology, politically popular since the 1980s, has led us to believe that humans are essentially selfish creatures, eager to put ourselves first. Yet, Trump’s many policies that harm the vast majority of us do not seem to diminish his appeal.

Before puzzling over “why,” here are a just a few examples of party differences that one might think would have brought the truly self-interested to abandon Trump and jump on the Democratic bandwagon.

On Social Security. Trump remains ambiguous, failing to provide any specific measures on how he would protect Social Security. In contrast, Democrats promise not only to protect but to strengthen benefits, including—if needed to cover the cost—raising taxes on those earning more than $400,000. They have also expressed support for raising benefits for low-income recipients and improving Social Security’s cost-of-living adjustment formula.

On taxes. The 2017 Republican tax reform was skewed to benefit the rich and Trump now proposes reducing taxes on capital gains. Democrats, however, seek to expand tax credits for workers and families and to increase tax rates on wealth for corporations and individuals.

On the minimum wage. Trump says he would consider raising it but prefers to leave the decision to states. The Democrats pledge an increase, underscoring that the minimum wage has not risen since President Obama and still only brings the worker to the poverty line.

On abortion. Trump promised in 2016 to appoint Supreme Court justices who would overturn Roe v. Wade. He also appointed abortion opponents to the federal judiciary, including three Supreme Court justices who voted to overturn the federal right to abortion. However, Democrats support women’s right to choose, as do two-thirds of Americans.

On education. As president, Trump called for eliminating the Public Service Loan Forgiveness initiative and ended loan forgiveness for students defrauded by their schools.

In contrast, President Biden’s 2021 American Rescue Plan—the largest one-time investment in education—helped schools reopen and regain ground faster.

On healthcare. Trump calls Medicare “socialism” and supports appealing or overturning the Affordable Care Act in favor of a private market. He also supports spending caps and work requirements on Medicaid. With these changes, certain low-income populations, pregnant women, and people with disabilities would lose Medicaid coverage. Democrats support the Affordable Care Act and Medicaid as a federal program.

On climate. Trump has promised to roll back regulation of the fossil fuel industry in exchange for $1 billion in campaign contributions. Under Biden’s presidency, carbon emissions fell by 2 percent even as the economy grew, and his administration is devoting $2 billion to encourage electric vehicles.

On immigration. Trump declared an “illegal immigrant invasion, the worst that’s ever been seen anywhere in world.” Yet, between 2020 and 2022 the percent of foreign-born grew just one point, reports the U.S. Census Bureau. Between 2019 and 2023, our immigrant-labor force grew yearly on average 2.3 percent; yet there’s no evidence of harm to the native-born, as our economy has also been growing. Thus, for U.S.-born workers, 2022-2023 was a time of “very low unemployment—and strong employment growth,” notes the Economic Policy Institute. Plus, job growth continues to exceed expectations.

Hmm. If on policy questions, direct self-interest seems to take a back seat, what is shaping today’s highly charged political divergence that might be less obvious?

Our free-market mythology teaches us that anyone worth their salt can make it if they try. So, those who don’t are, well, either too lazy or too stupid. From that root myth, it is easy to grasp why those at the lower rungs of the economic ladder can feel shame. I know I’d be vulnerable, too.

But we also know enough about our nature to realize that shame is perhaps the most painful of human emotions. We can cope with loss, anger, and embarrassment…but shame? Hmm, it hits hard. So, what can we do to evade that terrible feeling?

Well, there seems to be one easy, effective way: Blame.

As long as we can blame “the other,” we can find some solace. Feeling oneself to be a victim isn’t great, of course, but it’s definitely preferable to shame. For one, we can enjoy self-righteousness and create bonds with others based on common grievances.

Another plus? We don’t have to be troubled by coming up with solutions ourselves, including how to tackle profound economic inequality. Note that worldwide in income inequality, the U.S. is ranked more extreme than 115 countries, while most of our peers come in far above us in the top 50.

Acknowledging our standing and coming up with solutions is hard. Blaming “them”—immigrants, LGBTQ+, welfare recipients—is easy.

Recognizing that blaming is an all-too-human pitfall, let’s strive to replace its simple satisfaction with those enriching, positive emotions that emerge through mutual empowerment as we shape and offer solutions through interaction with others. Millions of Americans are now building that courage through groups such as those in the broad network Declaration for American Democracy.

Among the deepest of human needs is power—from the Latin posse, meaning “to be able.” It is not power over others, but rather a sense of agency that only democracy can offer. Yet, for most of us, action requires courage—risking the new by reaching out, asking tough questions, and doing something we’ve never done before.

Courage, however, is also a human need. Its root lies in “coeur,” meaning “heart” in French. With the courage to step out comes the joy of bonding, not from shared finger-pointing but through acting together in shared problem-solving.

And… in all, it is vastly more satisfying than blaming.

Although the Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has recently distanced himself from it (despite the fact that six of the former president’s cabinet secretaries and at least 140 people who worked in his administration were involved in writing it—whatevs), Project 2025 remains the blueprint for conservative policymaking for any future conservative president.

If it’s not Project 2025, it will be Project 2029, Project 2033, and so on. It’s boilerplate conservative thought, boiled down, in a nod to the efficiency they so love, to a mere 880 pages. As the saying goes, when 110 conservative organizations tell you who they are, believe them.

A running theme throughout the document is the idea that we should shrink the federal government and those remaining in it should carry out the political will of the President (even if that means contradicting accepted scientific knowledge, such as climate change).

Here’s how Project 2025 puts it, regarding various government departments: “Both assertions can be equally true, that the department possesses the expertise, programs, and authorities that will be crucial to the success of a conservative presidency and that its role in the federal bureaucracy would benefit from streamlining and reform.”

Here’s how JD Vance put it in 2022: “I think Trump is going to run again in 2024. I think that what Trump should do, if I was giving him one piece of advice: Fire every single mid-level bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, replace them with our people.”

And that demolition project includes decimating and privatizing or commercializing one of the nation’s most trusted and beneficial offices, the National Weather Service (NWS), which is part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. They’re the people who give us, among other things, severe weather warnings.

When 110 conservative organizations tell you who they are, believe them.

Here’s the Project’s recommendations in its own words:

Though not an exhaustive set of proposals, the next conservative President should consider whether:

The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) should be dismantled and many of its functions eliminated, sent to other agencies, privatized, or placed under the control of states and territories.

Together, [the six main offices within NOAA] form a colossal operation that has become one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry and, as such, is harmful to future U.S. prosperity [emphasis ours, but it should be everybody’s].

The NWS provides data the private companies use and should focus on its data-gathering services. Because private companies rely on these data, the NWS should fully commercialize its forecasting operations.

That would mean that whatever data comes from the NWS to the public must come via some sort of commercial service—despite taxpayers already paying for the data—such as AccuWeather. That company’s lobbyists and campaign donations have already prevailed in keeping NWS weather warnings off of social media so that the public had to rely on warnings from private, paid-for services instead of direct contact with the NWS.

The report also recommends that “Scientific agencies like NOAA are vulnerable to obstructionism of an Administration’s aims if political appointees are not wholly in sync with Administration policy. Particular attention must be paid to appointments in this area.”

As an example of what that might look like, we need only recall the former president using the weather map altered by a Sharpie to back up his false assertions of where a hurricane would make landfall.

This isn’t the first time privatizing or commercializing the vital National Weather Service has been proposed, and we wrote about one of the earlier attempts in the book I co-authored with Allen Mikaelian, The Privatization of Everything.

In it, we recalled the story of AccuWeather’s founder and former CEO Joel Myers boasting to CNBC about the pinpoint accuracy of its forecasting service on behalf of its client, Union Pacific Railroad, during a tornado alert.

“Two trains stopped two miles apart, they watched the tornado go between them,” he said. “Unfortunately, it went into a town that didn’t have our service and a couple of dozen people were killed. But the railroad did not lose anything.”

In Project 2025’s version of the hoped-for future, laid out by more than 100 conservative organizations over nearly 900 pages for all to see, we, the public, all live in the town between the trains.

For months, we’ve all been able to stay reasonably informed about the wars in Gaza and Ukraine. But there’s another horrific war that’s gotten so little coverage you could be excused for not knowing anything about it. What we have in mind is the seemingly never-ending, utterly devastating war in Sudan. Think of it as the missing war. And if we don’t start paying a lot more attention to it soon — as in right now — it’s going to be too late.

After 15 months of fighting in that country between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), experts in food insecurity estimate that almost 26 million people (no, that is not a misprint!), or more than half of Sudan’s population, could suffer from malnutrition by September. Eight and a half million of those human beings could face acute malnutrition. Worse yet, if the war continues on its present path, millions will die of hunger and disease in just the coming months (and few people in our world may even notice).

By now, those warring armies have driven Sudan to the brink of all-out famine, partly by displacing more than a fifth of the population from their homes, livelihoods, and farms, while preventing the delivery of food to the places most in need. And you undoubtedly won’t be surprised to learn that, with their foreign-policy eyes focused on Gaza and Ukraine, our country’s government and others around the world have paid remarkably little attention to the growing crisis in Sudan, making at best only half-hearted (quarter-hearted?) gestures toward helping negotiate a cease-fire between the SAF and RSF, while contributing only a small fraction of the aid Sudan needs to head off a famine of historic magnitude.

From Emergency to Catastrophe

In late June, the U.N.-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) system, which monitors regions at risk of starvation, reported “a stark and rapid deterioration of the food security situation” in Sudan. It noted that the number of people suffering hunger severe enough to qualify, in IPC terms, as Phase 3 (“Crisis”) or Phase 4 (“Emergency”) has ballooned 45% since the end of last year. In December 2023, no Sudanese had yet made it to Phase 5 (“Catastrophe”), a condition characteristic of famines. Now, more than three-quarters of a million people are in that final phase of starving to death. Indeed, if the conflict continues to escalate, large parts of Sudan may spiral into full-blown famine, a state that exists, according to the IPC, when at least 20% of an area’s population is suffering Phase-5 hunger.

Until recently, the worst conflict and hunger were concentrated in western Sudan and around Khartoum, the country’s capital. Now, however, they’ve spread to the east and south as well. Worse yet, the war in Sudan has by now displaced an astounding 10 million people from their homes, more than four million of them children — a figure that looks like but isn’t a misprint. Many have had to move multiple times and two million Sudanese have taken refuge in neighboring countries. Worse yet, with so many people forced off their land and away from their workplaces, the capacity of farmers to till the soil and other kinds of workers to hold down a paycheck and so buy food for their families has been severely disrupted.

Not surprisingly, 15 months of brutal war have played havoc with crop production. Cereal grain harvests in 2023 were far smaller than in previous years and stocks of grain (which typically supply 80% of Sudanese caloric intake) have already been fully consumed, with months to go before the next harvest, a stretch of time known, even in good years, as the “lean season.” And with war raging, anything but a bumper crop is expected this year. Indeed, just as planting season got underway, fierce fighting spilled over into wheat-growing Gezira, one of Sudan’s 18 “states” and renowned as the nation’s breadbasket.

Sudan desperately needs food aid and it’s simply not getting enough. The U.N. High Commission for Refugees has received less than 20% of the funds necessary to help feed the Sudanese this year and has had to “drastically cut” food rations. As Tjada D’Oyen McKenna, head of the aid nonprofit Mercy Corps, told the New York Times, “World leaders continue to go through the motions, expressing concern over Sudan’s crisis. Yet they’ve failed to rise to the occasion.”

Worse yet, in the swirling chaos, even the food aid that does make it to Sudan is largely failing to reach starving populations in anything approaching adequate quantities — and when available, it’s usually unaffordable. Famished people are reportedly boiling leaves, as well as eating grass, peanut shells, and even dirt.

Starvation: “A Cheap and Very Effective Weapon”

For many families, the one thing keeping starvation at bay may be a local free soup kitchen. In a report published in May, Timmo Gaasbeek of the Netherlands Institute of International Relations noted, “Sudan has a long tradition of sharing food. After the war broke out and hunger spread, community-level initiatives for sharing food sprang up across the country. These ‘soup kitchen’ initiatives are often informal but can be very well organized.”

Gaasbeek warned, however, that soup kitchens can fill only so many gaping holes in a system shattered by wartime destruction, displacement, and crop failure. His institute estimates that at current rates of food sharing, 2.5 million people could die of hunger and disease by the time crops are harvested in September. In other words, a shocking 10-20% of the Sudanese in the hardest-hit areas could die — mortality rates similar to ones suffered during horrendous famines in parts of Nigeria in 1969, Ethiopia in 1984, and Somalia in 1992.

By Gaasbeek’s calculations, more aggressive food sharing through soup kitchens and other means could cut the total death toll to a still-appalling one million. But that seems unlikely since even the existing efforts by local mutual-aid groups and international organizations to provide food have come under attack from both sides in the war. Six international experts writing for the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights have accused SAF and RSF of “using food as a weapon and starving civilians.” They also found that the “deliberate targeting of humanitarian workers and local volunteers has undermined aid operations, putting millions of people at further risk of starvation.”

We recently got in touch with Hadeel Mohamed, an educator with whom we’d spoken last October after she fled Sudan for Egypt. In a July 16th email to us, she wrote that “the war in Sudan, like many wars, has proved to be more an attack on civilians than on any armed forces.” Still in contact with neighbors who stayed behind in Khartoum, she reports that neither army is protecting civilians. In fact, the two at times appear to be tag-teaming to do them in. When, for instance, RSF forces carry out a raid, her contacts tell her, SAF troops are often “removed from the locations hours before the attacks occur.” Worse yet, for those now trying to flee as she did last year, “Some said that, in their attempts to escape Khartoum, they’ve encountered RSF forces waiting to loot them. All their supplies were stolen once again!”

Alex de Waal of the World Peace Foundation told the BBC that the RSF paramilitary is “essentially a looting machine. They rampage through the countryside and towns, stealing everything there is.” They even bombed and looted the last hospital still functioning in Northern Darfur state. No less horribly, the government’s SAF troops are guilty of trying to starve people in areas now occupied and controlled by the RSF and, according to De Waal, neither side is willing to “relinquish what is a cheap and very effective weapon.”

Echoes from a Thousand Miles Away

Is Sudan’s nightmare starting to sound grimly familiar?

* Families displaced multiple times, with war following hot on their heels.

* Food aid falling desperately short of what’s needed.

* Humanitarian aid intercepted by soldiers and other armed men before it can reach intended recipients.

* Soup kitchens attacked.

* Aid workers targeted for death.

* Hospitals bombarded, invaded, and shut down.

* Crop production capacity sabotaged during a hunger emergency.

* Washington doing little or nothing to stop the horror.

Might we be thinking, perhaps, of a small 25-mile strip of territory a thousand miles directly north of Khartoum, just on the other side of Egypt?

Sadly enough, there are many striking parallels between the wars being waged on the civilian populations of Sudan and Gaza. It would nonetheless be wrong to blame world interest in the nightmare in Gaza for drawing attention away from the civil war in Sudan. Neither of those crimes against humanity, in their scale and ghastliness, should be exploited by anyone to minimize the weight and urgency of the other. Worse yet, simply paying more attention to the nightmare in Sudan and sending its people more food aid won’t address the imbalance. The fact is that neither the Sudanese nor the Gazans have received what they most urgently need right now: an end to their respective conflicts.

Efforts by the U.S. and other countries to push for cease-fires in both places and an end to each of those wars have proven almost cataclysmically inadequate and ineffective. For Sudan, it’s been especially discouraging. Talks last year between the SAF and RSF brokered by Saudi Arabia and the United States failed to even reduce the fighting there and recent attempts to revive those talks all too expectably broke down. In early June, Egypt hosted supporters of both of Sudan’s warring parties in Cairo for negotiations. The only outcome: the creation of a supremely bureaucratic subcommittee to draft a meaningless communique.

Collective Courage

Last October, Hadeel Mohamed wrote that there was then only one modest hope in Sudan. For the millions of Sudanese living through their latest national nightmare, she told us, “You really come back to more community-based aid. With our limited resources, with our limited abilities, we still find people rising up to take care of each other.” And they’re still doing it. It’s just not enough to prevent a disastrous famine, as long as the sectarian fighting continues.

With weak support from the outside world, civilians in Sudan have little choice but to rely on long traditions of social cohesion and mutual aid as they work to survive and somehow bring the war in their country to an end. In that, there’s yet another parallel with the war on Gaza’s civilians: the coordinated service, heroism, and sacrifice personified by Palestinian journalists, taxi drivers, first responders, healthcare professionals, and countless other people is now legendary.

Civilians in many such situations are too often portrayed in the world media as nearly helpless victims. The Sudanese and Palestinian people are showing that image to be fallacious by acting with the kind of collective courage, endurance, and solidarity that’s all too rare in the comfortably situated societies that are leaving them to starve. They’re being cruelly victimized, yet they’re refusing to play the victim.

The wartime food-sharing movement in Sudan that operates soup kitchens is a good example. It’s led by grassroots neighborhood groups called “resistance committees” that started forming more than a decade ago in the wake of the Arab Spring, with the mission of providing social protection and provisioning in their home communities. They have since proliferated throughout Sudan, operating locally and independently but together forming a remarkably well-integrated national network.

The resistance committees took a leading role in grassroots protests against the October 2021 military coup that cut short a national transition to democratic rule then underway in Sudan. Eighteen months later, the current war erupted when the two generals who had led that coup turned on each other, with one leading the armed forces and the other the Rapid Support Forces. Throughout the ensuing war, at great risk to their own safety, resistance committee members have played essential lifesaving roles. While working to fend off hunger in their communities, they have also prioritized the maintenance of human rights, continuation of social services, and defense of direct democracy, while urging fervent opposition to the SAF, the RSF, and more generally the incessant militarization of their country. Some are also mobilizing their communities for self-defense.

Sudan expert Santiago Stocker suggested recently that the resistance committees, “because of their support among youth and local legitimacy in Sudan, are a voice the international community should support and elevate.” The committees are one part of a broader grassroots civilian movement that participated in those ill-fated Cairo talks. That movement, Stocker argues, could sooner or later help break the deadlock in Sudan by pressing other nations to move decisively to help end the war. They could urge, for example, that “the international community… increase punitive measures, including sanctions, against RSF and SAF leadership and key members of the SAF’s governing coalition, including businesses and hardline religious groups.”

While it’s important indeed that Gaza remains a focus of our attention as long as the nightmarish Israeli campaign there continues, it’s no less important that those of us in the Global North focus on the less visible war in Sudan and push our governments to impose punitive measures on that country’s generals and other elites, while pulling out all the stops (and ample cash) to get food to the millions who desperately need it.

Sudan should simply no longer be callously ignored.

Democrats who were urging President Joe Biden to step aside from his reelection campaign in the interest of the party and defeating Donald Trump frequently pointed out or argued that he is a good, kind, decent and compassionate man. The text is almost boilerplate. The people of Gaza, on the other hand, might disagree.

The post Everybody Loves Joe first appeared on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

On this episode of The Final Countdown, hosts Ted Rall and Steve Gill discuss various current events, including Russia’s and the United States’ prisoner exchange agreement.    The show begins with the Managing Editor at Covert Action Magazine Jeremy Kuzmarov discussing Kamala Harris and Donald Trump’s policy positions towards Iran.  Then, media commentator Mitch Roschelle joins the show to discuss federal interest rates.  Later, Ukrainian whistleblower and former diplomat Andrii Telizhenko discusses Ukraine’s new F-16s and the prisoner exchange between Russia and the United States.    The show closes with RT journalist Mohamed Gomaa sharing his perspective on Iran’s vow to retaliate against Israel which the country believes was behind the assassination of the late Hamas leader.   The post The Final Countdown – 8/1/24 – Russia and U.S. Agree to Massive Prisoner Exchange first appeared on Ted Rall's Rallblog.