Global
“Renee sparkled. She literally sparkled. I mean, she didn’t wear glitter but I swear she had sparkles coming out of her pores. All the time. You might think it was just my love talking but her family said the same thing. Renee was made of sunshine.”
The words are those of Renee Good’s wife Becca. They cut to our heart – our humanity. She was shot in the face by an ICE agent, who then muttered: “Fuckin’ bitch.” The murder of this 37-year-old mom as she tried to drive around the ICE guys who stopped her is national news, of course. Almost everyone has seen at least one of the many videos of the incident and, you might say, the national dialogue about virtually anything else has been put on hold.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has arrested, detained, deported, and/or imprisoned many people that it has unilaterally determined to be undesirables. At first, they claimed they would deport only criminals, but it has already gone beyond that. We at the Free Press consider every person who has been sent to the Tecoluca (El Salvador prison), Guantanamo naval base, or detained in other prisons throughout the country to be innocent until proven guilty. We will include students who have been expelled for protesting genocide. It appears the government will revoke Visa's to get rid of undesirable students. This article will be updated as long as is necessary.
The only way to truly have dignity and integrity as a westerner is to put your energy into opposing the empire under which you live.
Under the individualism of our capitalist society, we are indoctrinated with the belief that the most important and interesting things about us are the personal characteristics which distinguish us from other people: our likes and dislikes, our lifestyle, our interpersonal relationships, our sense of fashion, how successful we are professionally, academically and romantically, etc.
But when you live under the most murderous and tyrannical power structure on the planet, your individual little quirks and facets are a lot less significant than the extent to which you oppose the abuses that your rulers are inflicting upon human beings around the world. If you met a German in 1940, you would probably be a lot less curious about his taste in music and fondness for dapper suits than you would be about his level of support for Adolf Hitler.
A shocking article today from the People's Pharmacy asks "Could you or someone you know have ADHD without realizing it?" and lists the warning signs.
Why is this shocking?
Because People's Pharmacy has a long history of side-stepping the industry symptom mongering that is designed to sell drugs--suggestible, judgement-call, self-diagnosed diseases siphoned through Ask Your Doctor ads to create "demand," customers and hypochondria.
Today's People's Pharmacy cajoles, "Are you always late for appointments?" "Do you start projects but have trouble finishing them?" and Pharma thanks them if not pays them. As comedian Chris Rock once joked, "Do You Fall Asleep and Wake Up in the Morning? You May Be Suffering From..."
Welcome to the world of Ask Your Doctor ads in which an ad which warns about stroke, fatal bleeding, blood clots and "permanent paralysis" can still somehow sell product.
People's Pharmacy is not the only outlet unexpectedly conveying industry messages.
This summer the once-respected Bloomberg news trumpeted, "The $360 Billion Market that Medicine Got Wrong for 20 Years," about the new menopause market.
Heartbeat Movement Inc. stands in absolute solidarity with Black women in leadership who continuously face coordinated, dehumanizing attacks designed to undermine their authority, silence their advocacy, and erase their contributions to systemic reform. We strongly condemn both the explicit, racist hostility directed at elected Black women across the country and the establishment political double-dealing that sacrifices constitutional civil rights for partisan convenience across the state of Ohio.
1. The Weaponization of Explicit Racism Against Black Female Leaders
When Black women step into positions of authority to challenge entrenched institutional power, political bad actors frequently abandon policy debate in favor of vicious personal destruction. We saw this dynamic clearly when far-right political activist Laura Loomer targeted Florida State Representative Angie Nixon—the first Black woman to win the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate in Florida—alongside Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson and Congressional leaders including Representatives Ayanna Pressley, Ilhan Omar, and Cori Bush.
A quarter-century has passed since the terrorist attack that killed almost 3,000 people in the United States on Sept. 11, 2001. During the first seven years after that mass atrocity, Pentagon spending doubled. The aftermath of 9/11 was also a huge boost for “the intelligence community.” Despite – and because of – their failure to prevent the carnage on that day, the CIA and the National Security Agency as well as 14 smaller spy agencies boomed with enormous jolts of funds.
Along the way, some line items paid for torture that persisted during the George W. Bush presidency under the euphemism of “enhanced interrogation techniques.”
For decades, the IDF & Jewish Israeli settlers have uprooted thousands of Palestinian olive trees & restricted farmers from accessing their fields—measures that Palestinians have long viewed as an effort to drive them from their land.
The justification? In some cases, the IDF has claimed that these trees posed a “security threat” to Israeli settlements. But how can an olive tree be a security threat? And when destroying a family’s trees also destroys its livelihood, what are we really talking about? I call it Israeli economic terrorism.
The olive tree is far more than a tree in Palestine. It is a symbol of resilience, rootedness, and the enduring connection of the Palestinian people to their land. For centuries, olive trees have provided food and livelihoods while carrying deep cultural, spiritual, and historical meaning.
Destroying an olive tree does more than remove a source of income. It can erase decades—even generations—of cultivation and sever a living connection between families and the land they have worked for generations.
The death of Palestinian artist Sliman Anis Mansour stirred powerful memories.
He passed away at Al-Makassed Hospital in occupied East Jerusalem on August 24, at the age of 79, bringing to a close a legacy that cannot truly be described, but only experienced.
His life almost exactly spanned the age of the Palestinian Nakba. He was born mere months before the mass expulsion of the Palestinian people from their homeland. Yet his death in an occupied city tells us that the story of Mansour, his art and the Palestinian struggle for freedom is far from over.
Oddly, for years, I knew Mansour through a single painting: Jamal al-Mahamel (The Camel Carrier of Hardships).