VOICES

COMMON DREAMS-When the Palestinian Olympic delegation of five athletes -- adorned in traditional Palestinian attire and carrying the Palestinian flag -- crossed into the Tokyo's Olympic Stadium during the inauguration ceremony on July 23, I was overcome with pride and nostalgia.

WILDFIRE POLITICS-Northern California is on fire. Indeed, the entire U.S. West is suffering from a serve drought.

VOTING RIGHTS - Georgia has become the epicenter of the voting rights fight in the United States.

COMMENTARY - A recent poll came out from Emerson on the recall of Governor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, showing a statistically tied race among registered voters, 48 no, 46 yes.

This summer, it seemed as if we Americans couldn’t wait to return to our traditional July 4th festivities.

California’s great reformer, former Gov. Hiram Johnson, envisioned that “direct democracy” would be an effective curb on special interest influence.

The British social hierarchy of the Middle Ages and beyond was divided into “three estates of the realm”:the king, the clergy, and the commoners. 

VOICES - With an ugly, abject lack of empathy constituting what now feels like another deadly epidemic  - of not illness but ill will -

LGBTQ NATION - Quinn, a non-binary Canadian soccer player, has become the first out transgender person to win a medal at the Olympics. Quinn uses they/them pronouns.

ISRAEL MELTDOWN - Ben & Jerry’s decision to suspend its operations in the occupied Palestinian West Bank is an event that is proving critical to Palestinian efforts, which ultimately aim at holding Israel accountable for its military occupation, apartheid and war crimes. 

COMMENTARY - The press is predictably singing the praises of Simone Biles, Olympic women’s gymnastics team captain, for her shocking withdrawal from competition.

MY THOUGHTS - By now, George W Bush should have completed volumes one and two of his prison letters.

MISINFORMATION INFECTION — The article that appeared online on Feb. 9 began with a seemingly innocuous question about the legal definition of vaccines. 

RACIAL RECKONINGS - Republican efforts to ban the teaching of the history of racism in public schools picked up steam when the corporate "bill mill" the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) hosted a workshop on December 3, 2020 called "Against Critical Theory's Onslaught."

EASTSIDER - When you think about it, the reality is that homelessness has only been an inconvenience for most Angelenos since they have been under the radar except when our politicians wanted to pass taxes to “help them.” Then came Echo Park Lake and most recently, Venice Beach. 

COMMENTARY - Sexual predators don’t deserve to be on the Supreme Court. No way, no how. And now that we have two, we need to remove them, starting with the low-hanging fruit. 

HEALTH CARE - Fifty-six years ago Congress enacted Medicare to provide health insurance for people ages 65 and older and the disabled regardless of income or medical history.

SPACE TRAVEL-Just minutes after touching down following his successful and brief suborbital flight on Tuesday, billionaire Jeff Bezos expressed hope that humankind will ultimately develop the capacity to move the industries that have heavily polluted and warmed the Earth into space—a vision that one critic slammed as "delusional, toxic nonsense."

Over the July 4th weekend, I interviewed two-time presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich about his latest book, The Division of Light and Power.

NEW GEOGRAPHY-These are times, to paraphrase Thomas Paine, that try the souls of American optimists.

COMMON DREAMS-New Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data out Wednesday shows that life expectancy in the U.S. fell by one and a half years in 2020, a decline fueled in large part by the deadly coronavirus pandemic.