Government & Politics

An analysis of gun lobby contributions to Republicans and Democrats

Besides the crucial COVID-19 vaccine patent waiver, far more is at stake at this ministerial than is generally known.

Author and law professor Maurice Stucke explains why the practices of Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Apple are so dangerous and what’s really required to rein them in. Hint: Current proposals are unlikely to work.

Author and peace activist Norman Solomon talks about the double standards in US foreign policy that have smoothed the path for Russia’s inexcusable invasion of Ukraine. The role of the military-industrial-complex in the US is one of the main reasons we lack a single standard for the use of military force and human rights, says Solomon.

The Toronto Star journalist Joanna Chiu discusses her book, China Unbound: A New World Disorder, which argues that we need to go beyond the typical over-simplifications of democratic West versus autocratic China if we hope to engage China in a way that seriously addresses issues such as human rights, climate change, and economic development.

Regulators propose democratizing data and encouraging competition to reign in Big Tech. But such moves won’t go far enough in protecting user privacy. New: A reply to critics

On April 4th, 1967, at a time when the justness and necessity of the Vietnam War was broadly accepted, Dr. King issued a stirring rebuke of the U.S. establishment. He was criticized heavily for challenging US foreign policy; he was told to stick to civil rights.

Patrick Lawrence, writer and executive editor of The Scrum, analyzes the roots of US foreign policy failures, how these are reflected in the current confrontation with Russia, which can be found the US establishment’s weddedness to power and to an unwillingness to see the other’s perspective.

Thirty Years of Indian Economic Reforms: Assessing the Growth and Development of Kerala

President Biden’s first SOTU Address was a missed opportunity to say what he knows to be true: Stock buybacks manipulate the market and leave most Americans worse off

Legislators who vote together get paid together

Using aggregate campaign finance data as well as a Transformer based text embedding model we can predict roll call votes for legislation in the US Congress with more than 90% accuracy.

VIDEO

Terrence McNally, the host of the podcast Free Forum: A World that just Might Work, interviews Rob about the current state of the world and what needs to happen for us to get out of the mess in which we find ourselves.

How did this dire situation come about?