Joe Lauria gives an update on Julian Assange's extradition trial in the UK. The biggest piece of news from day one is that certain media outlets are reporting 17 new charges added to Assange's indictment, when in reality, there was simply a superseding indictment to add a little bit of new evidence, but which had to restate all of the original charges. Lauria explains that this new indictment is nothing more than a PR move, designed to elicit exactly this kind of false narrative that there's a whole slew of new charges. In reality, none of Assange's supposed crimes should stick—he's...
Kevin Gosztola’s Great Coverage of Assange Hearings
His Day 1 thread here: https://twitter.com/kgosztola/status/1303251577344413696 Day 2 here: https://twitter.com/kgosztola/status/1303251577344413696
Cops Kill Man
Stop me if you've heard this one before: ‘I Can’t Breathe. I’m Gonna Die, Help’: Cops Beat, Hold Handcuffed Man’s Face in the Dirt Until He Dies https://youtu.be/S2wd6wc_aMI
I Can’t Believe You Send Your Children to Government School
Why do you people hire the Nazi Gestapo to teach your kids how to read and write? I know, it's because you're a ridiculous stupid idiot because you went to government school too. Don't you know there's libraries and the internet and stuff? Teacher at Grand Mountain School in Colorado Springs calls the police on a young black boy for having a toy Nerf™ gun at home in a Zoom video classroom. He didn't point it at anyone. He didn't threaten anyone. Just picked it up for a second. The cops came right out to the boy's home and threatened him with time in prison. Good thing they didn't just...
Trump accuses Pentagon leaders of wanting to ‘fight wars’ to make defense companies rich
Jeff Schogol in Task and Purpose: President Donald Trump blasted the Pentagon’s leadership on Monday for allegedly caring about defense industry more than U.S. service members. “I'm not saying the military's in love with me – the soldiers are,” the president said at a White House news conference. “The top people in the Pentagon probably aren't because they want to do nothing but fight wars so that all of those wonderful companies that make the bombs and make the planes and make everything else stay happy.” Trump also said that his desire to withdraw all U.S. troops from Syria now that the...
9/4/20 James Carden on the Rotten Alliance between Liberals and Neocons
Scott interviews James Carden about his latest article, which explores the recent return of many prominent neocons to the Democratic Party in opposition to Trump. Carden reminds us that during the 1960s a group of hawkish Democrats moved over to side with the Republicans in response to some of the radical social movements in America at that time, thus founding the neoconservative movement. Now, as we near the end of Trump's first term, many of them are supporting Biden—and it's easy to see why, says Carden: Biden and Harris represent the exact same establishment foreign policy consensus...
9/5/20 Gareth Porter on Trump’s First Term Foreign Policy Record
Gareth Porter discusses President Trump's foreign policy as we near the end of his first term. The story of Trump's time in office, as everyone knows, has been that despite his sense for the futility and unpopularity of America's endless wars, he, like Obama before him, hasn't been able to resist the pressures of the military-industrial complex and actually follow through with ending them. The news in Afghanistan is somewhat positive, where Trump has put Zalmay Khalilzad in charge of negotiating a U.S. withdrawal. But Porter is concerned that because there are no stipulations about peace...
9/4/20 David Henderson on the Supposed Economic Threat of China
Scott interviews David Henderson about the threat to the U.S. posed by China's growing stature as an economic powerhouse. In general, Henderson thinks that such concerns are overblown, citing the real economic figures behind the trade relationship. In particular, he explains the way that losses from outsourcing tend to be concentrated to a few employees in a specific industry, whereas the (much larger) gains to are spread out over a whole population of consumers. This results in a skewed narrative that Americans are losing out on global trade with China. He also dispels the myth that America...









