Author: nick
Photograph Source: Saqib Qayyum – CC BY-SA 3.0 Today’s cities are hotbeds of inequality. Urban real estate is one of the most expensive kinds of land in the world. It attracts billionaires looking to store their wealth and hedge funds looking to garner predictable returns: New York’s avenues, Paris’s thoroughfares, and Dubai’s dazzling skyscrapers are great at making the rich richer. But they raise the cost of urban life for everyone else. And yet, plenty of people who are not rich flock to cities, driving the ongoing expansion of urbanism across the globe. In the 21st century, humans became an…
Jake Johnson for Common Dreams President Donald Trump’s decision last year to withdraw the US from a global effort to rein in corporate tax-dodging has allowed major American companies to avoid at least $40 billion in income taxes, a significant win for profitable business at a time when working class families are struggling with higher costs and stagnant pay. The New York Times, citing securities filings, reported Friday that American Express, Paypal, Pepsi, and other major US-based corporations “avoided taxes by attributing hundreds of billions of dollars in earnings to low- or no-tax foreign locales like Cyprus, Bermuda, Switzerland, and the Cayman Islands.” The Times noted that…
The US wants to rehabilitate its “post-war” economy. Lucas Leiroz, member of the BRICS Journalists Association, researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, military expert. President Trump’s visit to China raised several questions among international analysts. Some believe Trump was trying to pressure China on the Iranian issue. Other experts, however, believe that Trump acted out of desperation, trying to reach a mutual understanding with his Chinese counterpart to save the American economy. In a recent interview, geopolitical analyst Danny Haiphong stated that Trump attempted to alleviate the pressure on the American economy – generated by the illegal war of…
Robin Andersen The New York Times attempted to ‘balance’ Nicholas Kristof’s documentation of the systematic rape of Palestinians by Israeli forces with yet another unverified rape ‘investigation’ claiming that Hamas had weaponized sexual violence on October 7. It was written by the paper’s pro-Israel Jerusalem-based reporter, Isabel Kershner. Nicholas Kristof’s New York Times Op-ed piece titled The Silence That Meets the Rape of Palestinians, published on May 11, was based on documentation and grueling victim testimonies of rapes that Palestinians have experienced at the hands of Israeli security forces. Brutal and sadistic acts of sexual torture are described in…
You are invited to speak to a large auditorium of people. Which of the following audiences would you prefer to address for an extended talk and question and answer session? Two thousand people nearly all of whom would describe themselves like you describe yourself—or 2,000 who would describe themselves as uninvolved or as Trump voters or even MAGA members? How should one even think about such a choice? For example, whatever size audience you would prefer, suppose they are nearly all largely with you. In that case, what might you say to them? Might you prefer to say things they…
First, Trump attempted to enrich himself and his family by suing the federal government for $10 billion — almost the entire annual budget of the IRS — for releasing Trump’s tax returns. This is a first on so many levels. Trump is the first nominated presidential candidate since the 1980s not to release his tax returns. Every other presidential candidate has voluntarily disclosed their tax returns as a gesture of openness. Trump is the first president in history to sue the federal government for personal damages, and to the whopping tune of $10 billion. But legal experts, including many at the Justice Department, doubted…
Photo by Uladzislau Petrushkevich Who is actually running the government? That is no longer a rhetorical question. As America’s war with Iran lurches from escalation to ceasefire to renewed threats of military force, Americans are being asked to trust that someone, somewhere, knows what they are doing. But who? This is the constitutional crisis hiding in plain sight. The question is not merely whether Donald Trump is fit to lead. The question is whether any president still leads in any meaningful constitutional sense once the permanent war government gets moving. The Iran war is merely the latest test case. If…
Photo by Joseph Corl In a recent essay for The Atlantic, “History is Running Backwards,” David Brooks argues that ever-more people are disillusioned by the moral chaos and uncertainty that characterizes our society. They believe there is no hope for the future if progress no longer provides rational answers to the issues that matter. So they’re turning toward tradition and history for meaning, especially conservative religion, frustrated as they are with the corrosive secularism they believe has contributed to this problem. On this journey the disillusioned beings’ search for the correct history will likely be filtered through the lens of…
Photograph Source: Vox España – CC0 Javier Milei’s government took office in December 2023 with a strong rhetoric about the need to expand freedom. However, rather than expanding it, his economic policy reduces it. Neoliberal policy advocates a model of free enterprise, free trade, and free movement of capital that favors the extraction of national surplus toward core countries, limiting the possibilities for local development and reinforcing the conditions of societal impoverishment. Tricontinental’s Political Economy Substack, The Financial Leash, analyzes the mechanism by which the capitalist system deepens the dependence of peripheral countries through the global financial system, describing the channels…
To mark the centenary of Claude Monet’s death, the auction house Sotheby’s sold Les Îles de Port-Villez and Vétheuil, effet du matin, two Monets that had gone unseen by the public for a century, hidden away in a private collection. The plein air works sold for a staggering $19.7 million in April, smashing pre-sale estimates. One hundred years after his death, Monet’s stature appears more secure than ever, even as the art world enters a new age of imitation and fakery. Far from the auction houses of Paris and the climate-controlled vaults of private collectors, Monet was being litigated this…