American politics

The sound of resistance: Three women's marches

Victoria Fenner — Thu, 26 Jan 2017 19:04:30 +0000

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What a week it's been. Looking back to last Friday, Inauguration Day, a lot of us were sharing the same sense of gloom and foreboding, wondering what the next four years are going to be like and fearing the worst.

And then came Saturday ... a day of resistance, defiance, hope and a resolve that the worst is not going to happen. Because it's not Donald Trump's Universe. The future belongs to people who don't believe that misogyny and hatred is the way forward. And it was a day of solidarity with the citizens of the U.S. where millions around the world also said "Hey, we're with you in the struggle."

Today on rabble radio --- some of the voices from the Women's March. Starting in Washington, and then moving up to Vancouver and Toronto.

So long, and thanks!

mattman — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 19:09:28 +0000

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IRTN kicked off in 2007 and we’ve been having fun since. However, as our listener knows, we have a hard time scheduling shows, regular we ain’t. So instead of consistently promising shows we don’t deliver we figure we would hang it up. Will there ever be another show? Who knows? None planned. In the meantime, thanks to Keith Gottschalk, original co-host with Matt, and to the folks that have listened and written to us.

As always we feature news you might have missed.

Coal’s comeback and the climate

Who votes against decriminalizing prostituted children?

Feminist Current — Fri, 09 Nov 2012 17:27:41 +0000

I am thrilled that California has just passed two laws addressing the harms of the sex industry. Measure B mandates condom use in porn among other sensible workplace safety preventions for the legal porn industry, and Prop 35 increases consequences for illegal pimps, child pornographers, and sex traffickers while decriminalizing victims of commercial sexual abuse. These laws are a done deal, hooray, yet my abolitionist work on the issue continues as long as the public debate does, and people are not done talking about Prop 35.

Hope and disappointment: Obama's heartbreaking record

gerry caplan — Mon, 21 May 2012 13:35:50 +0000

I confessed in this space three and a half years ago that I was among those who openly wept when Barack Obama was elected president of the United States. I had closely followed the plight of black Americans ever since I toured the deep southern USA in my late teens, a time when the civil rights movement was in its infancy, segregation was the law, violence against blacks was The American Way, and Martin Luther King was not yet the FBI's Enemy Number 1.

That a black man could win the presidency was literally a dream come true. Everyone in the world knew something truly important happened on November 2, 2008. But no one knew exactly what that was, and almost four years later, it's still hard to know, harder than anyone expected.

On Islamophobia: An Interview with Daniel Tutt

amjohal — Thu, 03 May 2012 16:57:20 +0000

Daniel Tutt from the Unity Productions Foundations shares his views on combating Islamophobia in the United States.

Am Johal: You've been engaging in dialogues around Islamophobia and the general representation of Muslims in American society in a post 9-11 context for some time now. How would you describe the current context for Muslims in America, more than 10 years after the trauma of that event?

U.S. politicians and archaic politics in a modern world

mgregus — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 19:56:02 +0000

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

One has to wonder about the people who run the world, and those who hope to run it. Not many of them seem too interested in running it for the benefit of most of the people on it or for future generations. If they were, things would not be in such a mess today. The more I watch the performance of world leaders and those striving to be a leader, like the current crop of Republican presidential hopefuls south of the border, the more it is obvious that we are in a 21st-century society being governed by 18th and 19th-century thinking. That, of course, is assuming that there is much thinking going on at all.

The more I watch the current crop of Republican presidential hopefuls the more it is obvious that we are in a 21st-century society being governed by 18th- and 19th-century thinking.

The inevitable conflict among leadership candidates

gerry caplan — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 20:11:47 +0000

Can leadership candidates ever not hate each other? At the risk of giving the punch line away too early and spoiling the entire column, the answer is "probably not." It's the old story of civil wars being the most vicious, of the implacable hatred between cherished comrades when they fall out, of family rifts and separated couples poisoning their kids' minds about each other.

In his masterpiece Catch-22, Joseph Heller describes the hostility of several American offices to an ordinary G.I. Joe:

Richard III, 9/11 and the relentless drive for political power

mgregus — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 12:49:12 +0000

Friday, September 9, 2011

Last Sunday in Stratford I saw Seana McKenna play Shakespeare's Richard III in a stunning version of that amazing play. It was also deeply relevant to us politically. Much of that has to do with casting an actress as a king.

Last Sunday in Stratford I saw Seana McKenna play Shakespeare's Richard III in a stunning version of that amazing play. It was also deeply relevant to us politically.

Weather, cheap politics and the power of nature

mgregus — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 11:47:01 +0000

Friday, September 2, 2011

Last weekend American politics reached a bizarre point: in order to justify their existence, government leaders decided to do something about what human beings have always agreed you can't do anything about: the weather. So we had their frenetic reactions to Hurricane Irene.

American politics reached a bizarre point: in order to justify their existence, government leaders decided to do something about what we have always agreed you can't do anything about: the weather.

Shameless U.S. news personality Lou Dobbs still given a mainstream platform

migrant matters — Wed, 18 May 2011 19:07:11 +0000

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Lou Dobbs is the former CNN host of Lou Dobbs Tonight, generating big money for Time Warner Inc. for decades. He is currently the host of a new television show of the same name on Rupert Murdoch's Fox Business Network, no doubt trying to hold on to his reign as a very influential spokesperson for the anti-immigrant movement. Dobbs is acclaimed by former CNN president Jonathan Klein for his "fearless reporting and commentary," but independent journalist Isabel Macdonald has uncovered hidden truths that tell otherwise. She reveals in her October 2010 article, "Lou Dobbs, American Hypocrite," how Dobbs is yet another affluent white American reliant on the labour of poor racialized people with no or precarious status.

A gun control model for Canada?

gerry caplan — Sat, 19 Mar 2011 12:52:58 +0000

Since a rampaging Jared Loughner murdered six fellow Americans and wounded congresswoman Gabby Giffords and 12 others in Tucson, Arizona, earlier this year, Americans have assiduously been working on Lessons Learned. Led by the National Rifle Association and dedicated politicians across the United States, energetic attempts are being made to ensure such a tragedy can never happen again. Stephen Harper has to be watching like a hawk.

Can Americans be saved from themselves?

gerry caplan — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 12:15:06 +0000

President Barack Obama and Jon Stewart believe if only Americans were more civil to each other, future Tucsons might be averted. Would that it were as simple as that.

In fact America faces a much deeper, more intractable, crisis that no one has a clue how to deal with, largely because it's denied: a huge epidemic of mentally disturbed people, many with power and influence. That doesn't mean all Americans are unstable, delusional or paranoid; there's Senator Bernie Sanders, after all.

Why Canada lost UN security council bid. Why is the U.S. swinging to the right? Pitfalls of Canada-EU Free Trade Agreement

tommyallen789 — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 04:56:20 +0000

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Alert! Radio #162 -

After the U.S. Social Forum 2010: The potential for a multi-scalar strategy

rabble staff — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 04:43:58 +0000

Thursday, August 5, 2010

Is the U.S. Social Forum an arena for movements to propose a diversity of alternatives or is it a political agent of the left that pulls movements together?

In 1933, Mexican artist Diego Rivera completed his Detroit Industry fresco cycle. The abundant, controversial work, considered one the 20th century's outstanding achievements of monumental art, covers the four walls of the Garden Court in the Detroit Institute of Art.

Deficit hawks have swooped down on the U.S. budget

jrose — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 13:35:14 +0000

Friday, July 23, 2010

Getting out of the red is the new black. Deficit hawks have swooped down on the U.S. budget. This week, they attacked unemployment benefits.

Ultimately, they are going after Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid, the venerable programs once considered untouchable "third rails" of U.S. politics. These have been replaced by a new third rail, the defense budget. To really deal with annual deficits and a surging national debt, we are going to need to cut military spending.

We need some deficit doves.

Getting out of the red is the new black. Deficit hawks have swooped down on the U.S. budget. This week, they attacked unemployment benefits.