John P. Ruehl – Independent Media Institute
12-07-2024 ~ The United States today faces inherent challenges that have weakened the republic, making lessons from the Roman Republic even more necessary to avoid greater political instability.
The U.S. enjoys many strengths that give it an edge over other republics, such as a decentralized and innovative economy that draws global talent and unmatched military strength. Yet the Roman Republic, which had its own comparative advantages, ultimately fell to autocratic rule, and the U.S. faces a similar fate if it fails to protect institutional integrity and unchecked power continues to grow.
Reform is crucial to the continuity of republican governance, yet history shows it is often compromised by entrenched power. Political dysfunction and the growing influence of corporate interests threaten to undermine the foundational principles of the U.S., posing a risk to its long-term stability.
From its inception, the United States has struggled to address its internal contradictions in ensuring fair treatment for its inhabitants. Autocratic tendencies also emerged early, with second President John Adams’s Alien and Sedition Acts targeting political dissent, immigrants, and free speech. Abraham Lincoln later expanded executive power during the Civil War, bypassing Congress to preserve the Union and abolish slavery, the most contentious and significant political question since the country’s founding. Despite such departures from Constitutional procedure—sometimes for good reasons—the system’s checks and balances ultimately resisted later executive overreach, like FDR’s failed Court-Packing plan.
Individual political challenges to republican systems are concerning, but the erosion of republican culture also leads to irreversible shifts in the political framework. Political bribery, unchecked imperialism, and government serving corporate interests over citizens combine to steadily capture the system. A select group of actors has crafted a continuous, increasingly scripted cultural-political spectacle, contributing to civic decline. As a result, the public has reduced active participation in governance in exchange for the passive right to cheer or criticize from the sidelines. Read more
Sonali Kolhatkar
12.07-2024 ~ The “migrant crisis” was manufactured and is the fault of both Trump and Biden. We need to understand that the U.S. needs immigrants more than immigrants need the U.S.
A quiet panic has broken out within immigrant communities across the United States ahead of Donald Trump’s inauguration on January 20, 2025. Mixed-status families are expecting to be separated, DACA recipients foresee their status being revoked, those with Temporary Protected Status are pessimistic about the program remaining valid, and asylum seekers fear the worst. Indeed, if Project 2025’s anti-immigrant agenda is fully enacted, the horrors of family separation that the nation witnessed in 2018 under Trump’s first term will pale in comparison to what’s coming.
And yet, Trump might claim that this time, he’s merely following the public’s desires. The prevailing story of the 2024 presidential election is that voters were so fed up with immigration upending their lives that they picked a leader who promised to do something about it. Headlines such as this New York Times piece on Election Day claimed, “Voters Were Fed Up Over Immigration. They Voted for Trump.” Indeed, polls showed likely voters ranking immigration as either the top issue, or second only to the economy. Read more
12-05-2024 ~ Aboubakar Alassane of the West Africa Peoples Organization (WAPO) explains how Nigeriens are enduring the consequences of unprecedented floods that have devastated their economy already crippled by sanctions.
In the aftermath of the devastation left behind in the wake of unprecedented floods, Nigeriens are rebuilding their livelihoods and economy with the help of several relief measures instituted by the government to drastically cut prices of essential commodities and services.
The Sahel-wide flooding between June and October of 2024 has exacted a particularly high toll on the people of Niger, destroying crops, cattle, houses, and infrastructure in one of the world’s poorest countries. The country’s economy had already been strangled by seven-month-long sanctions.
By late September, at least 339 were killed, many more injured, and 1.1 million people displaced by the floods caused by unprecedented rain. The storms affected almost 190,000 hectares of cultivated agricultural land in a country with one of the highest child malnutrition rates.
Maradi region, the agricultural hub of south-central Niger, was the worst affected, with “the equivalent of an entire month’s worth of rain falling in a day,” said Aboubakar Alassane, a member of the coordination council of West Africa Peoples Organization (WAPO).
Masses of livestock, one of the most important sources of foreign exchange in Niger, were washed away in the Agadez region in the Sahara desert in the central north of the country. This destroyed the sole livelihood of nomadic communities. Read more
12-03-2024 ~ Switching to organic products is an easy way to eat healthier and support the environment.
Climate change is no longer an abstraction. I can literally see it at my front door. My figs ripened in October 2024, which has never happened before as it was never warm enough during that month. In my home state of Oregon, wildfires set new records this year, with almost 2 million acres burned.
Meanwhile, in my hometown, Eugene, we had the longest stretch of consecutive days when temperatures reached at least 100 degrees Fahrenheit in the summer. It’s hard for me to think about the world that I will leave to my grandchildren. So I look for what I can do, and believe it or not, there’s hope right at the grocery store; buying organic can contribute to combating climate change. Organic farmers actually store carbon in the soil, meaning there’s less in the air to change our climate.
A series of long-term studies mentioned below demonstrate that organic farming increases soil carbon. In other words, organic farming is carbon farming. Federal law defines organic farming as a farming method, so we know what we’re buying. Organic farmers use cover crops, mulches, and crop rotations to build healthy soil. They utilize various techniques to prevent pest problems, using only certain pesticides, which have been thoroughly reviewed as a last resort. You can support carbon farming by buying organic.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) 2023 Synthesis Report states that carbon sequestration in agriculture has one of the highest potentials for reducing carbon dioxide emissions. Carbon sequestration, or carbon farming, uses farming techniques to increase soil carbon, keeping it out of the atmosphere (For more details about carbon farming and farmers who are using the method, see “How Land Use Is a Tool for Solving Climate Change” and “Carbon Farming: A Sustainable Agriculture Technique That Keeps Soil Healthy and Combats Climate Change.”)
Referring to the IPCC recommendations, the World Economic Forum’s November 2024 article states, “[E]nhancing soil carbon sequestration through regenerative agriculture could sequester up to 23 gigatons of carbon dioxide by 2050, a substantial portion of the mitigation required to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.” Read more
Deborah Barsky
11-28-2024 ~ What led humans on the unique path of cultural development? And can we do anything useful with newly reconstructed histories of this process?
Culture is central to defining humanity. Throughout history, many definitions have been proposed to describe what we mean when we talk about culture, leading to considerable confusion.
The word “culture” was once reserved to designate the customs and behaviors of particular groups of people in specific regions and timeframes. In recent years, however, definitions concerning what is and what is not culture have widened considerably, to the point where “culture” is now used to describe the behaviors of numerous life forms. For example, it has become common to refer to culture when describing the social structures of sperm whales and other animals, including insects.
But while animal culture denotes behaviors that are learned and socially transmitted, human cultural practices go further, transforming these behaviors into coded systems that are reproduced within specific group settings. This explains the emergence of tradition—a key element of culture that seems exclusive to humans. Traditions provide abstract mechanisms through which humans symbolically assimilate the concept of identity over time. Read more
C.J. Polychroniou
11-27-2024 ~ We should raise walls of resistance as much as we can. More important, though, we should demand from the democratic forces to adopt a socio-economic agenda that puts people’s needs above corporate interests.
