It is no surprise that the federal government is a participant in the Flint, Michigan, water debacle. After the close support the administration of President Barack Obama provided the state’s government throughout the Detroit bankruptcy proceedings, the allegiance of the feds to the monied interests of Michigan at the expense of its residents is clear.
Demand is down. Prices are down. Wages are down. The markets are down. And money, that half-fictitious substance, is largely to be found in the parasitical financial markets in the form of debt. These are ominous signs. In a fact-filled article published on the World Socialist Website (WSWS), journalist Barry Grey lays out in plain
Flint is the future. The catastrophic human damage inflicted on the impoverished Michigan city is the result of forces and decisions that we will see replicated in urban areas throughout the country. Thousands of children exposed to irreversible lead poisoning. Ten residents whose deaths from Legionnaire’s disease are almost certainly attributable to the toxic water
The net is tightening. Fifteen years in the making, the net woven of unconstitutional laws, intelligence agencies, surveillance technology, secret prisons where torture takes place, propaganda aimed at frightening the people with external and internal enemies, a militarized police force—the net known as totalitarianism—is closing. Federal officials with the Department of Homeland Security have announced
Last week the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) lost another tooth, and the pharmaceutical industry won another battle in its ongoing effort to roll back safety regulations that impinge on its profit margin. The regulatory agency capitulated to drug company Pacira Pharmaceuticals’ demand that it revoke restrictions it had placed on Pacira’s marketing of
Over a period of three days, from December 12 to December 14, military forces of the government of President Muhammadu Buhari slaughtered hundreds of, perhaps more than a thousand, Shia Muslims at three sites in Nigeria’s Kaduna State. According to a report on the World Socialist Web Site, witnesses interviewed by Human Rights Watch claimed
When I was a kid, we Americans lived in the shadow of the Vietnam War. Sometimes it was just “the war,” although that term has generally been reserved for World War II. But “Vietnam” was synonymous with “war,” and in our minds it anchored all war to that one country in Southeast Asia. Complication crept
There comes to all of us a night when we do not sleep. We lie awake looking at the ceiling and feel ourselves aging. Maybe we found a gray hair that day, or maybe someone younger reminded us of ourselves. But on that night we lie there stunned in the revelation that our bodies are
Getting old is no good. The world gets blurry. Hair grows in your ears. People stop falling in love with you. And that ain’t the half of it. Lately, I’ve been getting older. The skin on my neck is coming loose, and my face is getting lumpy making it hard to shave without cutting myself.
Once again Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has been banned by a school. This time it is the Friends’ Central School in Wynnewood, Pennsylvania where students had complained that the book made them uncomfortable. You can’t blame folks for wanting to be comfortable. When he’s living with the Widow Douglas, wearing starchy