U.S. Spends Billions on War in Ukraine and the Working Class Pays the Price, by Natalia Marques

The largest national defense budget in the world just got larger. Earlier this month, the United States Congress passed $728.5 billion in discretionary funding for the Department of Defense for the 2022 fiscal year, a sharp 5% increase from the previous year. The budget contains a plan for $13.6 billion in aid to Ukraine for the Russia–Ukraine war.

U.S. Spends Billions on War in Ukraine and the Working Class Pays the Price, by Natalia Marques

Beware the redux: America’s violent Cold War history

Hollywood loves a sequel, but the Russia-Ukraine crisis has made the possibility real, and no one should want to see it.

The “us versus them” rhetoric and global military maneuvering likely to play out in the years to come threaten to divert attention and resources from the biggest risks to humanity, including the existential threat posed by climate change. It also may divert attention from a country — ours — that is threatening to come apart at the seams. To choose this moment to launch a new Cold War should be considered folly of the first order, not to speak of an inability to learn from history.

Beware the redux: America’s violent Cold War history

Congress’s ‘Israel Normalization Act’ normalizes ethnic cleansing and impunity

Congress’s ‘Israel Normalization Act’ normalizes ethnic cleansing and impunity

When we hear the phrases Normalizing and Israel, we should always read Normalizing Israel’s impunity and violence. On top of enabling this violence, H.R. 2748 also includes language that limits free speech in support of Palestinian rights and threatens to censor or defund international organizations that may not support “normalization” (read: Israeli impunity and violence) as defined by this bill and through the intent of the Abraham Accords.

Rat Out Your Doctor: Biden’s Surgeon General Calls on Informants to Report Use of Generic Drugs

Rat Out Your Doctor: Biden’s Surgeon General Calls on Informants to Report Use of Generic Drugs

The purpose of the RFI is described as being to help the authorities understand the effect of pandemic “misinformation” on such areas as “health decisions and outcomes, direct and indirect costs, trust in the healthcare system and providers, and healthcare worker morale and safety. It is also intended to help them ascertain its impact on “access to trusted and credible health information, particularly during a public health emergency” and on “lifesaving health decisions such as an individual’s likelihood to vaccinate, and to “prepare for and respond to future public health crises.”

The RFI, which covers a period extending from January 2020 to the present, applies to general search engines, content sharing platforms, social media platforms, e-commerce platforms, crowd-sourced platforms, and instant messaging systems, and includes “research, case studies, data sets, images, data visualizations, interviews, and personal testimonies.”