Author: nick

Social Power Is Built Before It Is Seen – Consortium News

Propaganda & Narrative

[ad_1] While popular energy can fill streets and win elections, social power is the patient, organised capacity of the working class to transform society. Misheck Masamvu, Zimbabwe, Behind Locked Doors Does Not Feel Safe Anymore, 2014. (Via Transcontinental Institute for Social Research) By Vijay PrashadTricontinental: Institute for Social Research From the Bengal famine of 1943 to the election of the Left Front government in 1977, the communist movement in West Bengal, India, patiently built its strength among workers, peasants, refugees, students, and cultural workers. Through campaigns for food and land, the building of trade-union power, refugee mobilization and resistance to state…

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The Long Road to War

Geopolitics & War

[ad_1] The war between the United States and Iran is rooted in events stretching back more than seventy years. As the major media continues to ignore the history, it is important to understand this essential backstory. If you’re wondering why the United States and Iran have been bitter antagonists for more than a half century, and why they are now at war, you won’t find the answer in today’s media coverage where the conflict is portrayed as a dispute over terrorism and nuclear weapons. To truly understand what underlies this ongoing conflict you need to look back much further to…

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The Government Faces High-Stakes Search-and-Seizure Challenges in Virginia

Economy & Power

[ad_1] Two cases in the Eastern District of Virginia—a court regarded as one of the most deferential to executive branch concerns regarding national security—are testing the federal government’s authority to seize and search Americans’ phones when they re-enter the country from abroad. In the first, decided July 15, a federal judge ruled that Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents had violated the Fourth Amendment when they searched the phones of an American citizen who directs a Palestinian advocacy organization. In the second, argued July 29 in the same courthouse, another judge refused to dismiss a claim by a prominent American…

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Aging in the Wrong World

Investigative Reports

[ad_1] Image by Mario Heller. Talk about unjust, unfair, or just plain not right: Here I am at 82 years old with children, grandchildren, and old (and I mean old!) friends, and (like me) our country and our world seem to be all too distinctly on the downhill slope. I could, of course, have added aided by my president, Donald J. Trump, and (except for the “my”) that would be anything but inaccurate. And yet, the very fact that a near majority of Americans (46.4% in 2016 and 49.8% in 2024) elected him president of the United States should tell you that the process was already well underway; otherwise,…

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A gun ruling highlights the tricks Congress uses to evade limits on its power

Political Spin

[ad_1] Second Amendment groups applauded last week after a federal judge in Texas ruled that several national firearm regulations were unconstitutional. But the decision did not hinge on gun rights. Rather, it affirmed a broader principle: The federal government’s powers are limited to those explicitly granted by the Constitution. The case involved the National Firearms Act (NFA), a 1934 law that targeted weapons and accessories thought to be favored by criminals. Because that law was framed as a revenue measure, U.S. District Judge James Hendrix held, Congress fatally undermined the constitutional rationale for some of its provisions by eliminating the…

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