North America

By Stansfield Smith Regardless of the traditional bluster about the Founding Fathers and the world historic nature of the US Constitution, the electoral system it set up to choose a new president is far from democratic. We now find Trump attempting to use the Constitution as written to be “re-elected.”… »

Did you ever wonder whether Western culture focuses on destroying rather than preventing cancer, and talks about it with all the language of a war against an enemy, just because that’s how this culture does things, or whether the approach to cancer was actually created by people waging a real… »

By Jhon Sánchez In my apartment, there are two wooden boxes full of manuscripts. After reading “Rover,” by A.T. Sayre, I keep thinking about those stories, poems, and a novel that lie there. Existing. I dreamed that after my death, someone would come and find them. But more likely,… »

1. Reports on the climate collapse have stopped in some cases the nonsense talk about needing the United States to “lead,” and even gone beyond urging it to get out of last place, and begun demanding that it do its fair share to undo its share of the damage. That’s… »

The COVID-19 pandemic, like a scab torn off a wound, has exposed systemic inequality and racism throughout our healthcare system. Now, the distribution of desperately needed vaccines is revealing even further the depths of inequity and immorality at the core of our globalized economy. Wealthy countries like the US, the… »

A snapshot from the video of Manu Chao on Twitter #FreeAssange is flooding social media while calls for the release of Julian Assange and against his extradition to the USA multiply. Ordinary people who are calling for the protection of free journalism and of Julian Assange raise their voices every… »

The pandemic won’t end until we overcome our fear and loathing of scientific remedies and achieve “herd immunity”—but of the kind that is possible through mass vaccinations, not inaction. By Sonali Kolhatkar The end is in sight, we are told. The cavalry has arrived in the form of safe and… »

On the anniversary of the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, two pro-democracy human rights groups, Democracy Unlimited and Move to Amend, today launched a project to envision a more democratic and just U.S. Constitution. Toward a People’s Constitution is a website created to provide an… »

You may have heard that the U.S. House of Representatives just passed a bill to spend $741 billion renaming military bases that have been heretofore named for Confederates. You may think that’s a grand idea but still wonder at the price tag. Of course, the secret is that — even… »

December 10, 2020 is the 72nd anniversary of the adoption of the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The document is a powerful, and hopeful, testimony to the belief that all people on our planet should have access to fundamental human rights, including protection under the law, freedom… »