Democracy Now!'s show on August 14 takes an in-depth look at the "Unite the Right" white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, on August 12 that erupted into violence, resulting in three deaths.
United States
The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) held their national conference in Chicago on August 5 and 6, at a gathering that confirmed its emergence as stronger, younger and more radical group than it has ever been.
Before last year’s US presidential election, the DSA boasted between 7000-8000 members. Since then, it has ballooned to 25,000 members — mostly young and hungry for a fight.
The threat by US President Donald Trump to unleash nuclear war against North Korea is not a Trumpian “excess”.
That has been made clear by his Secretary of Defense, retired Marine General James Mattis, who backed Trump. The administration is demanding that North Korea freeze its nuclear program, including the testing of missiles.
Many commentators in the US and elsewhere have poured cold water on the idea there could be a short term war between the US and North Korea.
The Guardian said on August 9: “But despite two unpredictable nuclear-armed leaders trading barbs, most observers believe the possibility of conflict remains remote, with the North Korean leadership using its nuclear program as a bargaining chip rather than an offensive weapon.”
Flanked by military commanders, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi was in the nation’s second-largest city, Mosul, on July 10 to announce the city’s liberation from ISIS.
An end to the three-year-long rule by the extremely violent and authoritarian terrorist group is obviously good news for the city's residents. But it seems unlikely the group’s defeat will mean an end to their suffering, which began long before ISIS captured the city in June 2014.
The United States submarine captain says: “We’ve all got to die one day, some sooner and some later. The trouble always has been that you’re never ready, because you don’t know when it’s coming.
“Well, now we do know and there’s nothing to be done about it.”
He says he will be dead by September. It will take about a week to die, though no one can be sure. Animals live the longest.
The war was over in a month
Appearing before a backdrop of smiling uniformed police officers on July 28, US President Donald Trump encouraged the brutalisers in blue to be more abusive and violent toward people they arrest in a speech given at Suffolk County Community College on New York’s Long Island.
After weeks of imperialist threats and opposition violence, the elections for Venezuela's National Constituent Assembly (ANC) took place on July 30. The result was a huge turnout of more than 8 million voters, around 41% of the electorate, which gave Chavismo a much-needed shot in the arm.
There are few subjects more reliably depressing than the problem of impending climate chaos.
In some ways, the daily dumpster fire that is the Donald Trump administration is a welcome distraction from the increasingly dire predictions of the Hell on Earth awaiting us if we do not drastically and immediately alter our trajectory.
It is worth going to see An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power, however, for the same reason that it was valuable to see it’s prequel, An Inconvenient Truth, over a decade ago: Through these films we can come to understand how the liberal establishment proposes to tackle this, the mother of all capitalism’s crises.
Long-time South African climate justice activist and author Patrick Bond is professor of political economy at the Wits School of Governance, University of the Witwatersrand.
Ethemcan Turhan and Cem Iskender Aydin spoke with Bond on the need for an international climate justice movement to target the Donald Trump administration.
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