Global

 No amount of post-election puffery about Joe Biden can change a key political reality: His approval ratings are far below the public’s positivity toward the Democratic Party. Overall, the Democrats who won the midterm elections did so despite Biden, not because of him. He’s a drag on the party, a boon to Republicans, and -- if he runs again -- he’d be a weak candidate against the GOP nominee in the 2024 presidential campaign.

 While the electorate is evenly split between the two parties, there’s no such close division about Biden. NBC reported its exit poll on Tuesday “found that two-thirds of voters (68 percent) do not want Biden to run for president again in 2024.”

After the election comes . . . the coverage, which always, at least in the mainstream media, seems to reduce everything to winning and losing, to strategy and tactics, rather than to the deep issues shaping the future.

The mainstream-created context of this year’s midterms amounted to: Will there be a “red tsunami”? That is, will the GOP, riding joyfully on the back of the bucking bronco of inflation, overwhelm Sleepy Joe’s Democratic Party and grab control over the House and Senate? Or will the Dems hold on, luck out, lose only minimally?

And the post-election news, of course, is the latter. The count continues as I write and not all election results, at national and state levels, are known yet, but what is known indicates that both parties more or less held their own and there definitely was no red tsunami. For the Democrats, this is the equivalent of a big victory.

The European Union’s Foreign Policy Chief Josep Borrell is not particularly perceived by the EU’s political elite or mainstream media as a rightwing ideologue or warmonger. But seen through a different, non-western prism, it is hard not to mistake him for one. 

Borrell’s recent comments that “Europe is a garden” and that “the rest of the world is a jungle” were duly condemned as ‘racist’ by many politicians around the world, but mostly in the Global South. Borrell’s remarks, however, must also be viewed as an expression of superiority, not only of Borell personally, but of Europe’s ruling classes as a whole. 

Particularly interesting about the EU top diplomat’s words are these inaccurate depictions of Europe and its relationship with the rest of the world: “We have built a garden”, “everything works” and “the jungle could invade the garden”. 

On Monday, October 31, Palestinians in the town of Al-Eizariya, east of Occupied East Jerusalem, observed a general strike. The strike was declared to be part of the community's mourning of 49-year-old Barakat Moussa Odeh, who was killed by Israeli forces in Jericho a day earlier.

 This is not an isolated case. General strikes were observed throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territories in recent weeks as a form of civil disobedience, and protest of the Israeli attacks on the cities of Nablus, Jerusalem, Jenin, and Hebron, as well as to mourn Palestinian fighters who were killed, following shooting operations against Israeli soldiers of illegal Jewish settlers.

 Historically, general strikes have been declared and observed by working-class Palestinians. This form of protest often represents the backbone of popular, grassroots resistance in Palestine, starting many years before the establishment of Israel on the ruins of the historic Palestinian homeland.

America’s beloved, desperately needed Pacifica Radio is at the brink of avoidable death.  It needs a miraculous but do-able progressive uprising to overcome the toxic, outmoded structure that’s killing the Network.  

In July, 2021, the Pacifica Voting Membership voted 6820-5471 to revise the Network’s failed old by-laws (FOB).  

But their legal team refused arbitration and pre-emptively sued, at financial costs they refuse to reveal…while demanding still more!!!  Individual “New Day” reformers have been threatened with personal liability.  

The result has been a horrific year of abject failure.  Rightfully elected board members, irreplaceable staff and many of the Network’s most popular hosts have been purged.  Basic operations have deteriorated into failed state chaos.  Phone lines have crashed, utility bills are unpaid, and Pacifica’s listenership has crashed along with its finances. 

My friends Scott and Betsey gave me a drum a few weeks ago. I played it as I sat with them . . . and I certainly mean the word “play” as childishly as you can imagine. I’m no more a musician than I am a nuclear physicist, but I played along with them and, well, this is what happens to me: I notice big things emerge in incredibly small moments.

We devote the first hour of the GREE-GREE zoom gathering #116 with the great DAVID HOGG and a deep dive into two issues at the core of American politics: gun violence and youth turnout.

Now a senior at Harvard University, Hogg has become a national icon in the movement to lower the death toll from guns and motivate the youth vote.

David’s work, in tandem with JOHN ROSENTHAL, has significantly changed views of gun registration and control in Massachusetts and elsewhere.

Hogg and Rosenthal have helped pioneer the AMERICA CALLING organization which aims to vastly expand the turnout among young voters.

Rosenthal’s efforts, in conjunction with Hogg, have tangibly lowered the gun violence death rate in Massachusetts, and could do the same nationwide, saving more than 26,000 lives.

These two grea activists are already legends in making real change in American politics.  

Rooted in the younger generations now taking control of the electorate, while simultaneously working to end gun violence, they are not to be missed.
Part 1:

When Ralph Nader appeared on “Democracy Now!” last week, a key moment came as he responded to the final question from host Amy Goodman: “You have campaigned as an independent and a Green throughout your political life. You ran for president four times. Why now throw in your lot with the Democrats?”