Dead Air
Beyond shame: A report from Turkey's war against the Kurds.
Writer Janet Biehl report back from an attempt to speak with imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan, and finds a rising tide of fascism threatening to engulf Turkey, as President Erdoğan uses both the Islamic State and the threat of refugee migration to punish the Kurds and security impunity from European governments.
In addition to her recent trip to Turkey, Janet also traveled to Rojava, which she speaks about in the ROAR Magazine piece Thoughts on Rojava: an interview with Janet Biehl.
Exploring the origins of Illinois's toxic debt crisis.
Municipal finance analyst Saqib Bhatti explains why Illinois is shredding social programs for families and workers to continue making illegal payments on fraudulent Wall Street deals, and how both state governor Bruce Rauner and Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel have sanctified the public's obligations to pay debt above government's obligations to provide services for taxpayers.
Saqib studied the state's interest rate swap disaster in the ReFund America report Turned Around.
How Antonin Scalia Trumped the Supreme Court.
This is Hell! resident Lawpagandist Brian Foley looks past Antonin Scalia's suddenly glowing posthumous reputation to his impact on this mortal plane, from his long reign as the junket king of the Supreme Court, to his apparent joy in disrupting the legal world, and cites examples from his own law career of the impact of Scalia's stylish, smarmy legal legacy.
The smog of war: Burn pits and the poisoning of America's soldiers
Veteran Joseph Hickman links the US military's policy of burning the toxic waste of war in open air "burn pits" across Iraq and Afghanistan to the deadly poisoning of soldiers and civilian populations, and explains how the government and private contractors pass the blame back and forth, denying responsibility for their negligent policies and aid for those affected by them.
Joseph is author of the new book The Burn Pits: The Poisoning of America's Soldiers from Hot Books Press.
Why American democracy can no longer afford its own elections.
Investigative journalist Charles Lewis looks below the surface of 2016's garish, $4.4 billion ad campaign / election process and finds a political process hijacked by money at every turn, from a growing wealth barrier that bars non millionaires from entering politics, to a national party system that has abandoned notions of campaign finance reform, and a corporate media machine that counts ad revenue from the democracy it corrupts.
Chuck wrote the Cairo Review of Global Affairs commentary The Buying of the President.
Religio ad absurdum: A pillow for Antonin Scalia
Jeff Dorchen delivers a radio euology for Antonin Scalia, with a little help from logic, humility, doubt, failed humans, gays, free thinkers, Indian philosopher S.N. Balagangadhara and the Devil himself.
