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A veteran of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement and the New Left monthly Ramparts, Steve Weissman lived for many years in London, working as a magazine writer and television producer. He now lives and works in France, where he is researching a new book, "Big Money and the Corporate State: How Global Banks, Corporations, and Speculators Rule and How to Nonviolently Break Their Hold."
(13 comments) SHARE Thursday, January 5, 2017 When Trump Falls Out of Love With Putin
The biggest pressure on Trump comes from the support Congressional Republicans gave Obama's Cold War-mongering. Trump's "softness" on Russia can only lead to open warfare in the Republican Party, and potentially to his impeachment if he does not back down.
(3 comments) SHARE Friday, December 16, 2016 Trump and Le Pen: What Would Hitler Say?
Trump and his chief strategist Steve Bannon continue to pander to nasties on both sides of the Atlantic, nowhere more than in France, where Marine Le Pen has turned her father's Jew-baiting Front National, or FN, into Europe's leading anti-Muslim political force. Understanding all this properly offers an insight into where Trump and Bannon are heading.
(2 comments) SHARE Monday, November 14, 2016 What Will Trump Do in Syria?
what will the property mogul and reality TV star do in specific hot-spots like long-suffering Syria, with its nearly half-a-million dead and 11 million displaced? Does Trump himself even know? With all his mixed and misleading messages, possibly part of his bargaining strategy with other nations, much of what people think they know will likely turn out to be wrong.
(23 comments) SHARE Monday, October 24, 2016 Why President Hillary Will Not Stop the Slaughter in Syria
Clinton continues to play down the Saudi, Qatari, and covert parts of her plans for Syria. What she plays up is her focus on Vladimir Putin and the Russians. She does this to discredit Donald Trump as a Putin puppet, shamefully echoing America's long history of red-baiting. But even more disturbing, she is building public support for either a new Cold War with Russia, or a very hot one.
(27 comments) SHARE Sunday, October 2, 2016 Voting for Hillary With Eyes Wide-Open
Does voting for Clinton trap us forever into having to vote for a lesser evil? That is up to us. Bernie is trying to meet this challenge both inside and outside the Democratic Party. He has helped create groups like Our Revolution and Brand New Congress, which are funding progressive candidates for all levels of government.
(8 comments) SHARE Sunday, September 25, 2016 How Donald Trump Would Save Us from "Radical Islam"
Selling himself and his personal smarts, Trump wants to "make America scared again." He wants to feed and fuel the anti-Muslim bigotry of so many of his followers, especially among white supremacists, theocons who want America to be a Christian nation, and disgruntled white workers looking for a scapegoat to blame for the loss of so many good-paying factory jobs.
(15 comments) SHARE Sunday, August 28, 2016 Bernie's Revolution Leaves Gaping Hole
Bernie has chosen to stress his domestic agenda because Americans suffer directly from economic inequality, racial injustice, and corporate power. Hearing him speak, I believed more strongly than ever that, working together, we can truly build a decent society. Tears of joy welled up in my eyes. My poor, overworked mouse sent another $27.
(20 comments) SHARE Tuesday, August 23, 2016 What Do We Really Know About Clinton's or Trump's Foreign Policy?
Trump's ultimate lie -- that he knows how to "Make America Safe Again" -- is what makes him even more dangerous than Hillary Clinton. What he "knows," what he attacks Clinton and Obama for refusing to recognize, what separates him from even Dick Cheney and George W. Bush is the certainty that the ultimate cause of the terrorist threat is "radical Islamic extremism."
(11 comments) SHARE Tuesday, August 2, 2016 Did Putin Out the Dems? Did American Spooks Out Trump?
No one should doubt that Putin and his spooks regularly hack computers in the United States or that they would meddle in American elections. Nor should anyone doubt that Obama and his surveillance state regularly do the same in Russia and other countries around the world, as former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden and other whistleblowers have taken enormous risks to expose.
(2 comments) SHARE Sunday, June 12, 2016 Help Bernie Smash Trump
Trump has created a political vehicle for the alliance these groups have long nurtured with Evangelicals and others who want to make America "a Christian nation," deprive women of their right to choose, and in writer Frank Browning's wonderfully apt phrase, "Make America Male -- Again."
(6 comments) SHARE Tuesday, May 31, 2016 What the Hell Does Bernie Sanders Think He's Doing?
Do Bernie and his people truly expect party officials to turn their backs on all the campaign contributions, not to mention high-paying jobs as lobbyists and corporate honchos? Do those who feel the Bern really see the Democratic Party returning to the down-at-the-heel days of FDR and the New Deal? What effing idealists! Why couldn't they just go away?
(2 comments) SHARE Sunday, May 1, 2016 What Is Bernie's Price for Playing Nice?
Sanders understands that Hillary will almost certainly win the nomination and has once again promised that he would vote for her against Trump or any other Republican. He is playing nice, but he will not play dead. pressed on whether his own attacks on Hillary for taking money from Wall Street did not imply that she was crooked, he simply smiled. "In that case," he said, "the entire United States government is crooked."
(16 comments) SHARE Sunday, April 24, 2016 How Bad Could Hillary Clinton Be?
Bernie has promised to run to the end, hoping to win as many delegates as possible, which will help him shape the party rules and platform. But the party elders and their spear-carriers in the media will put him under enormous pressure to play nice, toning down any criticism that might further weaken Hillary before her likely race against Trump.
SHARE Monday, April 11, 2016 Robert Reich vs. Paul Krugman on Bernie Sanders vs. Hillary Clinton
Hillary's pragmatism is more limited than Bernie's. Just listen to her long, wonky answers where she carefully leaves herself free to go back to her earlier support for the kind of world that her corporate and Wall Street backers want. What a brilliant lawyer she is, fully in the tradition of Slick Willie and what the definition of "is" is.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, March 16, 2016 Bill and Hillary's Interventions Raise New Doubts About NATO
The role of the Clintons dramatizes two key historical realities. Many progressives tend to whitewash the Democratic Party by blaming the coup on Republican neocons. Their best evidence is the hands-on role played by Victoria Nuland, then assistant secretary of state, the wife of Robert Kagan, one of the neocon founders.
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, February 23, 2016 From Scalia to Obama, What Rule of Law?
If Scalia appeared to offer a principled and unfailingly democratic defense of Originalism. How then could he have joined in the majority decision in Bush v. Gore, which cited the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection Clause to override the voters of Florida and make George W. Bush president?
SHARE Monday, February 15, 2016 How Low Will the Clinton Camp Go?
Several black leaders and activists are already endorsing Bernie as the candidate who best embodies the moral imperative of our time, and John Lewis has only demeaned himself to score a few cheap political points. But common decency and a proper regard for our shared history demand that Hillary disavow his comments and that they go beyond sterile apologies and both set the record straight.
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, February 8, 2016 What Do Progressives Eat for Breakfast?
The bigger risk -- if we can believe the recent Quinnipiac poll showing a virtual tie nationwide between Sanders and Clinton -- is that we will win the elections and lose the more decisive battles, as we did to a large extent with Obama's victories in 2008 and 2012.
SHARE Tuesday, January 26, 2016 How Hillary Tells Us She Won't Fight Wall Street
Hillary has little to say about her husband's dealings with Wall Street, which will arguably define his place in history. What does she think of his enabling Wall Street to bring the global economy to a thudding crash? How does she respond to Bill's role in helping Wall Street gain such power and promote such glaring inequality? Ask her. We need to know, and so far, her silence speaks volumes.
SHARE Monday, January 11, 2016 How Hillary Bangs the Drums of War
Hillary voted to overthrow Saddam Hussein in Iraq. She helped organize the civil war against Muammar Kadhafi in Libya. She played a cameo role in the second Orange Revolution against the Russian-backed Viktor Yanukovych in Ukraine, and she is again talking up regime change against Bashar al-Assad in Syria. So many mistakes. So little learning.