LibertyVoter.Org

By Steven Rosenfeld, AlterNet

The Democratic Party’s Washington-based insiders overseeing their 2018 efforts to win back a U.S. House majority are trying to undermine another progressive candidate—this time it's Greg Edwards, an African-American pastor running in Pennsylvania’s 7th district.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, or DCCC, is pressuring Edwards to get out of the race, according to reports by progressive groups working with Edwards and the Washington Post, which said DCCC officials were asking local Democrats if they thought Edwards could be persuaded to run for a state senate seat instead. Pennsylvania’s congressional districts were just redrawn by the state Supreme Court after Republicans were found to have violated their state constitution, which apparently prompted the DCCC’s intervention, according to the Post.

But the optics for the DCCC are terrible, and seem to confirm a deepening pattern. Only a week ago, the DCCC posted opposition research (usually used to attack opponents) about a Texas progressive congressional candidate, Laura Moser, on its website. That effort backfired, helping Moser to raise nearly $80,000 in days, and now she's coming in second in pre-election polls for Tuesday’s primary, which would position her for a runoff election.

“I wouldn’t have done it,” Tom Perez, Democratic National Committee chairman, told C-SPAN’s “Newsmakers” series, referring to the DCCC's attack on Moser.

But the DCCC is its own sphere inside the larger party universe. It's a creature of House incumbents, and its biggest task is re-electing officeholders and trying to win 24 more seats needed for a majority. While that purview makes it inherently centrist, the DCCC apparently has little intention of heeding the chairman’s message, even as Perez takes steps to break with the past and partner with grassroots organizations.

The effort …read more

Source: ALTERNET

By Jefferson Morley, AlterNet

In the annals of leftist discourse, last week’s debate between Glenn Greenwald and James Risen over the Trump-Russia investigation was akin to a heavyweight boxing match. While both men work for the leftish Intercept and have Pulitzer Prizes on their walls, their styles are radically different.

Greenwald, it seems, was born in a courtroom and (per Groucho Marx) was vaccinated with a phonograph needle. In argument, he is a relentless attacker and counterpuncher, drawing on an inexhaustible well of hard fact and high dudgeon.

Risen, a former New York Times reporter targeted by the Bush and Obama administrations, seems to have grown up in a newspaper office with the journo-mantra, “Just the facts, ma’am” inscribed in his DNA. He is cautious, even plodding, in his rhetorical pugilism, exuding a reporter’s high ambition to avoid even the smallest of errors.

Greenwald and Risen’s civil conversation, skillfully introduced by Jeremy Scahill, clarifies the two distinct ways that the American left has responded to the avalanche of news reporting on Trump’s dealings with Russia, as well as the recent indictments handed down by special prosecutor Robert Mueller.

As Scahill notes, this is a “ferocious debate,” not only in the offices of the Intercept and Twitter, but on the American left in general. While Risen and Greenwald agree on some key issues, their views are, in some respects, fundamentally at odds. History will prove one of them is more right than the other, which is why their debate matters.

In general, Greenwald is skeptical of the narrative of Trump collusion and complicity, while Risen discerns an emerging fact pattern that may point to presidential treason.

Who’s right? Who makes the stronger case? If I were confined to Twitter hell—that overheated sandbox …read more

Source: ALTERNET

By Roberta K. Timothy, The Conversation

Witnessing and hearing stories about racism can impact your health. The feelings evoked can make you ill if not processed.

The recent news of Tina Fontaine’s trial and the acquittal of Gerald Stanley, a white farmer accused of killing a young indigenous man, Colten Boushie, of the Red Pheasant First Nation are examples of the Canadian legal system’s commitment to the Indian Act and colonial dominance.

This ongoing colonial dominance has a transgenerational trauma impact on the health of Indigenous and colonized peoples.

Two recent examples that indicate the kind of violence black people experience: A school that allowed police to shackle a black six-year old girl’s wrists and ankles; a children’s aid system that put a child refugee from Somalia into foster care yet never applied for his Canadian citizenship, so years later he received deportation orders to a country where he does not speak the language.

The impact of this colonialism and anti-black racism on the health of black and indigenous peoples is elongated and insidious. We navigate systems, structures and communities that perpetuate abhorrence towards us in all aspects of our lives.

Experiencing and fighting such systems for justice for our children, ourselves and our community members have devastating effects on our health.

As a health and human rights researcher, therapist and professor who has explored the deep implications of racism, I would like to share some insights into the impacts of racism on our health.

My hope is that by doing so I create dialogue and encourage communities to continue to voice their experiences of violence and racism — in order to demand changes and ultimately create more supports.

Violence is a continuum

Health indicator statistics of Indigenous communities report increasing disparities between Indigenous and settler populations. Systemic racism affects Indigenous population’s health in various ways, this includes limited healthy food choices, inadequate living conditions and substandard health care. The infant mortality rate within Indigenous communities is almost 12 times that of settler communities.

The statistics, usually presented by state authorities, come without context or …read more

Source: ALTERNET

By Marshall Auerback, AlterNet

“After a year-long analysis of seven developed countries and six sectors,” global management consultancy company McKinsey has “concluded that demand matters for productivity growth and that increasing demand is key to restarting growth across advanced economies.” Which means—surprise, surprise—higher wages for the workforce. The report by James Manyika, Jaana Remes and Jan Mischke was published in the Harvard Business Review. Their analysis marks a shift from the prevailing paradigm of the past several years in which poor productivity growth was viewed as largely a function of supply-side factors such as excessively “rigid” labor markets (hence the call to make it easier to hire and fire workers, and reduce unionization), insufficiently low tax rates (hence the drive to reduce corporate tax rates), a largely unskilled labor force (hence the push for more H1-B visas for Silicon Valley jobs), and too little global competition (hence the need for more, not less free trade).

If deficient demand (and a concomitant commitment to full employment) is not considered relevant as far as productivity goes, the policy framework is very different. Fiscal policy is diminished because there is little point in “wasting” limited financial resources on fiscal stimulus, higher real wages, or a restructuring of the private debt overhang. And economic inequality doesn’t even factor into the equation at all. Rising inequality, growing polarization and the vanishing middle class have all been seen as unfortunate, but inevitable byproducts of globalization, rather than drivers of slow potential growth.

By contrast, the McKinsey analysis leads to a very different policy outcome—one that places demand management and full employment at the heart of macroeconomic policy-making. In fact, there is a historical basis to support the authors’ view that demand does matter when considering the …read more

Source: ALTERNET

By Gareth Porter, Truthout

Israel is beating the drums of war again, this time over Syria. On February 10 the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) carried out the most aggressive Israeli use of force in Syria thus far. After having bombed a drone base in retaliation for an alleged incursion by an Iranian drone, Israel retaliated for the shooting down of one of its fighter planes by hitting the main Syrian command-and-control bunker and five Iranian communications facilities.

Israel has been laying the political groundwork for a military escalation in Syria since mid-2017. That's when Israeli officials began to repeat two interlinked political themes: that Iran must be prevented from establishing permanent bases and implanting its proxy forces in the Syrian Golan Heights, and that Iran is secretly building factories in Syria and Lebanon to provide Hezbollah with missiles capable of precise targeting.

But the evidence suggests that the reasons publicly avowed by Israeli officials are not the real motive behind the escalation of Israel's air attacks and ground combat presence in Syria.

Israeli Ambassador Ron Dermer has vowed that Israel would not permit Iran or Hezbollah to establish permanent bases anywhere in Syria, but no convincing evidence of any such permanent base has come to light — only an aerial photo of a site that was admitted to be a Syrian army facility with several vehicle storage sheds. However, the Syrian army is definitely planning such bases in Golan. In January, Syrian army forces backed by Hezbollah troops captured a key military post at Beit Jinn near both the Lebanese and Syrian borders in the Northern Golan.

A portion of Golan is currently occupied by Israel, which took it from Syria in 1967. It was annexed by Israel in 1981 and populated with Israeli settlers roughly equal in numbers to its original Syrian population. Israel has expressed the fear that Syria's recent moves could threaten Israel's occupation in Golan. IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eizenkot declared in January that Israel “can't ignore the fact that Hezbollah, the Shiite militias and Iran perceive themselves on the winning side in Syria, together with Bashar Assad, and share his …read more

Source: ALTERNET