(TEDGlobal 2014 transcript)
Why privacy matters
Glenn Greenwald was one of the first reporters to see — and write about — the Edward Snowden files, with their revelations about the United States' extensive surveillance of private citizens. In…
Awareness | Debate | Action
Elevate your social consciousness and become the problem that forces change
Following a series of middle-of-the-night backroom deals, and less than an hour after the final language was unveiled, Senate Republicans voted to pass a bill that would raise food and health care costs on families, increase poverty and hunger, and take health coverage away from millions of people while doubling down on costly tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations.
The Senate Republican bill’s federal Medicaid cuts are even deeper than the massive House cuts, making it more likely that states would cut their programs and putting rural hospitals and other community health providers at even greater long-term risk of closure.
House Republicans, many of whom looked to the Senate to craft a bill that was less damaging than the House bill, must stand up for their communities and reject it.
The more people have learned about the bill, the more opposition has grown. Now we will learn whether House Republicans, with time to reflect on the damage this agenda would cause and the ways the Senate made the bill worse, are as thoughtful as the people they serve.
Just days ago, some House Republicans expressed opposition to the additional Medicaid cuts the Senate was considering. Those additional cuts are in the Senate Republican bill that the House is expected to vote on as soon as tomorrow.
The Senate Republican bill would cut Medicaid by nearly $1 trillion, compared to $800 billion in the House Republican bill. The deeper cuts translate into larger harmful impacts.
The bill also would expand the House Republican bill’s provision that takes Medicaid coverage away from people who don’t meet a red-tape-laden work requirement by applying it to parents enrolled through the Medicaid expansion who have children older than 13.
Working parents who get tripped up by red tape, parents who get laid off and are looking for work, parents who lose their jobs when they get sick or need to care for a sick child — as well as adults without children who have disabilities, are between jobs, or are working — would lose access to the health care they need to work, to care for their children, and to beat treatable illnesses.
Relative to the House Republican bill, the Senate version would make it even harder for some states to finance their Medicaid programs. Senate Republicans know the bill would hurt rural hospitals — that’s why they added a face-saving temporary fund, but it won’t rescue rural providers when the funding runs dry and the permanent cuts to Medicaid and Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplace coverage remain. This is particularly true because the revised Senate fund gives the Health and Human Services secretary significant discretion in how the funds would be allocated. Rural providers need people in their communities to have health coverage they can count on. Without that, more rural hospitals will close and more people with and without coverage will be cut off from care they need.
The Senate Republican bill also would take health coverage away from even more immigrants living and working in the U.S. lawfully than the House bill would. The Senate bill would take away federal funding of Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program coverage for refugees, people granted asylum, certain victims of sex or labor trafficking, and certain victims of domestic violence, among others. This ban includes children, and as in the House bill, it also would take away Medicare, ACA premium tax credits, and food assistance through SNAP from these groups. Despite countless misleading statements, immigrants in the country without a documented status are already ineligible for all of these programs; everyone who would lose health coverage and food assistance because of this bill is living lawfully in the U.S. (One anti-immigrant health provision in the House bill was not included due to a parliamentarian ruling.)
The Senate Republican bill would also raise families’ grocery costs, taking food assistance away from millions of people, including children and veterans, and forcing unaffordable costs on states. When states can’t pay those costs, they would be left with two choices — take SNAP benefits away from large numbers of people or end their SNAP programs entirely.
Again, it is clear that at least some Senate Republicans understand how damaging the provision is — they created a preposterous carve out to delay implementation of the cost-shift for states with the highest error rates in the country as a way to secure the votes they needed. But delaying for a handful of states a harmful provision that could unravel our most important anti-hunger program as a national program would not undo its damage.
Even as the Senate Republican bill would make deeper health care cuts, it continues the House’s approach of large tax cuts for the wealthy, including raising the amount heirs can inherit tax free from the largest estates to $30 million per couple and extending a deduction for business owners that would deliver more than half its benefits to millionaires.
The Senate bill would cost about $3.3 trillion when you remove the gimmick of assuming it is free to extend tax cuts. That is basically the same cost as extending all of the 2017 tax law’s expiring tax cuts for families — including millionaires — without any cuts to Medicaid and SNAP.
House Republicans should step back and find the courage to say no to any bill that would raise costs and take health coverage and food assistance away from people struggling to afford the basics — all while making deficits and debt soar and exposing our economy to more long-term risk.
But at the very least, as House Republican leaders seek to jam the Senate bill through the House, concerned House Republicans should follow through on their promise not to support a final bill that threatens access to Medicaid coverage and reject it.
If they don’t, they, along with their Senate counterparts, will own its impacts. Unfortunately, it is their constituents who will pay the price for their poor leadership.
When Rev. Dr. Johnnie Moore, a Trump-aligned Christian Zionist, was selected to lead the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, the appointment was framed as a mission of mercy. In reality, it was a calculated move reflecting a theology that sanctifies suffering and weaponizes aid to serve empire.
The GHF is a United States and Israeli-backed entity, established in February 2025 under the guise of delivering emergency food, water, and medicine to a population devastated by bombs and blockades—bombs dropped and blockades enforced by the very governments funding the aid. GHF bypasses United Nations infrastructure and funnels resources through fortified "aid hubs" surrounded by biometric scanners, militarized checkpoints, and private American security contractors. Global humanitarian leaders have widely condemned GHF, and its initial executive director, former U.S. Marine Jake Wood, resigned in May, stating that GHF could not meet "humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality, and independence."
What appears to be humanitarian relief is a choreographed catastrophe. Since the GHF launch, over 400 Palestinians have been killed and thousands injured while attempting to access aid. One U.S security contractor described the chaos in Zeteo: metal lanes collapsed under pressure as desperate civilians were funneled into kill zones. "What we—these American companies and contract personnel—are doing is directly leading to more pain, suffering, and death for the Palestinians in Gaza," he said. The Israeli military is not-so-secretly embedded in GHF operations. U.S contractors shared radio communications with Israel Defense Forces (IDF) units, with snipers and tanks operating within earshot. The contractor added, "I would not be surprised if the aid was delivered at night deliberately, given it would then draw people out, at which point they could be fired on as combatants, even though they weren't."
Christian Zionism claims to stand with Israel, but in practice, it turns both Jewish and Palestinian lives into pawns in violent political theology that demands blood to feel righteous.
Israeli newspaper Haaretz recently published a military whistleblower report confirming that Israeli soldiers were ordered to shoot directly at unarmed Palestinians waiting at designated humanitarian aid sites—the very places GHF celebrates as sites of successful distribution. One IDF soldier told Haaretz: "It's a killing field. Where I was stationed, between 1 and 5 people were killed every day. They're treated like a hostile force—no crowd-control measures, no tear gas—just live fire with everything imaginable: heavy machine guns, grenade launchers, mortars… I'm not aware of a single instance of return fire. There's no enemy, no weapons." The parallel testimonies of American contractors and Israeli soldiers expose a coordinated structure of lethal control masquerading as compassion. Aid becomes ambush. Flour becomes bait. Mercy becomes a mechanism of surveillance and control.
Yet Moore, in a Fox News op-ed, paints a different picture: one of flawless logistics and divine providence. While Moore boasts of "Over 7 million meals were delivered… no trucks seized, no aid diverted, no violence at distribution sites," Palestinians were being trampled in fenced lanes and shot while reaching for flour, tea bags, and lentils, all requiring water that Palestinians do not have. While he cites spontaneous gratitude from the Gazans, his account includes no mention of the casualties, the gunfire, the biometric surveillance, or the private contractors earning up to $1,000 per day to "protect" food distribution, despite having no training in humanitarian law or weapons discipline.
This narrative, where Christian Zionist leaders claim victory while erasing the suffering caused by their own policies, is part of a carefully crafted theological strategy. My seminary thesis, Bad Theology as a Social Determinant of Health, argues that theologies built on white supremacy—like Christian Nationalism and Christian Zionism—transform faith into a political force that legitimizes structural violence by driving policy; justifying oppression; and becoming a cause of disease, displacement, and death. In this worldview, the modern state of Israel is a divine actor in prophecy, Palestinians are obstacles to redemption, and every military escalation is recast as sacred inevitability. So when global outrage over mass starvation in Gaza grew too loud to ignore, the GHF emerged—not as a bridge to recovery, but as a theater of benevolence. Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich made the logic plain when he said that aid was allowed only as a prerequisite for "international legitimacy to conduct this war." In other words, humanitarianism becomes camouflage, and aid is required to sustain the optics of righteousness while the siege continues.
The brazenness of this theological complicity has only been intensified. Even before Israel's bombing campaign against Iran began, Christian Zionist leaders were at the forefront of urging escalation, framing regional war as a necessary prelude to prophetic fulfillment. Once the Iran-Israel war began, they did not grieve the violence—they celebrated it. Mike Huckabee, a longtime evangelical ally of President Donald Trump and now the U.S. ambassador to Israel, proclaimed on social media that Trump was spared from assassination to fulfill God's plan in the region. In this worldview, every missile launched and every city bombed becomes a step in a divine script. Christian Zionist leaders are not bystanders to this destruction but are its interpreters and enablers.
Christian Zionism does not just erase Palestinian life. It instrumentalizes Jewish death. It claims to defend Israel while advancing a theology in which the majority of Jews are expected to die in a coming apocalypse. As Stephen Sizer documents in Christian Zionism: Roadmap to Armageddon?, evangelical writers describe the Rapture as "the time of Israel's greatest bloodbath" and "a holocaust in which at least 750 million people will perish." This is not solidarity—it is eschatological antisemitism, cloaked in prophecy and wrapped in the American flag.
These beliefs have long shaped U.S. policy. Sizer notes that during the Reagan administration, figures such as Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson were invited to the White House to interpret events in the Middle East through the lens of the Book of Revelation. Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin reportedly called Falwell before President Ronald Reagan to brief him on the 1981 bombing of Iraq's nuclear reactor. In 1982, after the Sabra and Shatila massacres in Lebanon, Falwell falsely insisted, "The Israelis were not involved." When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited Washington in 1998, his first stop was not a meeting with President Bill Clinton—it was with Jerry Falwell. This is why the resume of Johnnie Moore is no surprise: former spokesman for Falwell's Liberty University, participant in Trump's evangelical advisory board, and a carbon copy of Huckabee, known for his infamous quote, "There's really no such thing as a Palestinian."
The GHF is not a bridge to recovery, but a theological rehearsal, a performance of control and consecrated theater. It asks us to witness a catastrophe and call it the fulfillment of prophecy. To baptize privatized militarism and call it salvation. To offer a gospel of charity with one hand while authorizing sniper fire with the other.
Christian Zionism claims to stand with Israel, but in practice, it turns both Jewish and Palestinian lives into pawns in violent political theology that demands blood to feel righteous. Its leaders speak the language of salvation while sanctioning policies that produce siege, displacement, and death. Johnnie Moore and others like him do not save lives—they provide spiritual cover for systems that end them. The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation is not a deviation from this logic; it embodies it.
As theologian Reverend Dr. Munther Isaac reminds us, Christ is under the rubble—and the church put him there. Will Christians continue to preach biblical literalism that demands a body count? Will Christians let prophecy justify annihilation? The one Christians claim to follow—a Palestinian Jew—was crucified by empire. Yet, Christian Zionism is insistent on crucifying Palestinians and Jews again and again.
As the climate crisis accelerates, global fault lines are widening. Wealthy nations are gutting aid budgets while pouring fortunes into their militaries. Their climate finance commitments ring empty, masked by claims that public funds have run dry. But the reality is different: The money is there, and a bold tax justice agenda can unlock it. Reclaiming tax sovereignty—the power to decide how wealth is taxed and where it goes—can shift resources away from billionaires and corporate giants to fund real climate solutions.
This isn’t a funding gap. It’s a sovereignty gap.
New analysis by the Tax Justice Network shows that governments could raise an additional $2.6 trillion each year by applying a modest wealth tax to the richest 0.5% of households and ending corporate tax abuse. That would be more than enough to meet global climate finance needs and still leave most countries with billions to invest in care, education, and green jobs at home.
Extreme wealth fuels climate inaction, rising debt, and inequality. In a world on fire, refusing to tax those who profit most is no longer neutral—it’s a global risk.
The climate crisis is accelerating. Floods, heatwaves, and crop failures are pushing more people into precarity. The costs of climate adaptation, mitigation, and loss and damage are projected to reach $9 trillion per year by 2030. Yet the global community is still scrambling to honor a $100 billion pledge first made over 15 years ago.
As the Bonn climate talks come to a close and attention turns to the fourth Financing for Development conference in Seville, climate finance remains a structural void that policy declarations alone cannot fill. On the road to COP30 in Belém, governments face a critical choice: Keep chasing inadequate voluntary climate finance handouts, or finally confront the rigged tax systems that let the superrich and big polluters amass obscene wealth while the planet burns.
Tax Justice Network reveals that fair taxation of extreme wealth combined with measures to curb cross-border tax abuse by multinational corporations could raise $2.6 trillion each year—enough to more than double the $1.3 trillion annual climate finance goal that United Nations member countries are aiming to reach by 2030. The real issue isn’t where new money will come from, but why governments keep letting existing public resources leak through the cracks of a broken tax system.
By applying a minimal annual wealth tax of 1.7-3.5% and reclaiming tax revenue from multinationals that underpay tax, countries could unlock additional tax revenue equivalent to 2.4%of global GDP. This is money that could be raised today if governments stopped letting it slip away through loopholes and inaction.
We modeled what countries could raise and contribute based on historic responsibility for emissions. The results are striking. If countries were to contribute to a global climate finance fund sized at $300 billion—the lower end of the current debate—then 89% of countries could cover their share and still have billions left over for public services. Even if the fund were scaled up to $1.5 trillion, 58% of countries would still contribute their fair share and have billions to spare.
Take the United States. It could raise enough additional revenue to contribute $365 billion a year toward climate finance and still be left with $412 billion to spend at home. China, India, the United Kingdom, and Brazil follow the same pattern.
This is the core message of our climate finance slider tool. Taxing extreme wealth and curbing tax abuse does not pit climate justice against development. It enables both. The interactive tool shows how much countries could raise and how much they could contribute if tax rules were rebalanced in favor of people and planet.
So why are countries still acting like climate finance is unaffordable?
The answer lies in decades of eroded tax sovereignty. Countries have signed away their taxing rights through outdated and unfair treaties, allowed wealth to flow into secrecy jurisdictions, and catered to corporate demands for tax cuts and incentives—often under conditions of debt dependence and economic coercion. In the process, governments have weakened their ability and willingness to tax those most responsible for fuelling the climate crisis.
Today, 61% of countries were found to have an “endangered” level of tax sovereignty or worse—meaning they are failing to collect tax revenue worth at least 5% f what they already raise, largely from their richest households and from multinational corporations that underpay tax. Nearly a fifth of countries (19%) fall into the “negated” category, missing out on the equivalent of 15% or more of their annual tax revenue. These are not natural constraints. They are political outcomes shaped by an unequal global financial system.
Across the Global South, the consequences are particularly acute. Many governments face impossible tradeoffs—between education and adaptation, between debt service and disaster response. As United Nations independent expert Attiya Waris has warned:
Across the Global South, care and climate responses are being sacrificed to servicing debts that dwarf the funds we need for a just transition. These sacrifices reflect an international financial order that prioritises creditor claims over human and planetary well-being.
Climate finance cannot be separated from this wider context of fiscal injustice. When governments are forced to borrow for every disaster or rely on discretionary aid pledges, they lose both agency and time. The race to build resilience becomes a race against the clock—one they cannot win without revenue.
It is time to reframe the debate. Climate finance must not rely on broken promises or voluntary pledges. It must be embedded in systems that are fair and redistributive. That means tax systems—ones that reflect both capacity to pay and responsibility for emissions.
The upcoming U.N. Tax Convention offers a once in a generation opportunity to rebalance global tax rules. If done right, it could help all countries reclaim the power to tax their richest residents and corporations fairly. It could end the era of tax havens, profit shifting, and billionaire impunity.
But we do not need to wait for negotiations to conclude. Countries can act now by introducing wealth taxes, renegotiating exploitative tax treaties, increasing transparency, and aligning fiscal policies with climate goals. These reforms are not only possible. They are popular. Polling consistently shows widespread support for taxing extreme wealth to fund public goods.
Extreme wealth fuels climate inaction, rising debt, and inequality. In a world on fire, refusing to tax those who profit most is no longer neutral—it’s a global risk.
By reclaiming tax sovereignty, governments can do what markets and private finance have failed to deliver: fund climate solutions at scale, protect the most vulnerable, and make those most responsible pay their fair share. Refusing to tax isn’t sovereignty—it’s surrender to the idea that tax is a tool for catering to the desires of the superrich, rather than a tool for protecting people’s well-being, the planet, and our collective survival.
In a June 27 ruling, the Supreme Court granted the Trump administration’s request to partially halt nationwide injunctions blocking President Donald Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship for certain people born in the U.S. We look at what that may mean for the president's order going forward.
The post How the Supreme Court’s Ruling on ‘Universal Injunctions’ May Affect Birthright Citizenship appeared first on FactCheck.org.
The location of some enriched uranium is still in question after the U.S. bombed three key nuclear facilities in Iran, according to the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency and experts on arms control and global security.
The post Questions Linger About Iran’s Enriched Uranium Stockpile After U.S. Airstrikes appeared first on FactCheck.org.
The chair of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s newly constituted vaccine advisory committee announced in his first meeting that the panel will revisit the longstanding practice of vaccinating all babies against hepatitis B, questioning whether it was “wise” to administer shots “to every newborn before leaving the hospital.” Experts, however, say there are valid reasons to vaccinate babies against hepatitis B, and that it has proven to be safe and very effective.
The post RFK Jr.’s New Vaccine Panel Casts Doubt on Hepatitis B Shot at Birth appeared first on FactCheck.org.
Are you interested in how you impact the rest of the world, or how others impact the world thereby affecting you? Do you want to do something to improve things? ... About Us
Objective journalism on the struggles of democracy in a socially stratified society.
Added by Cromag 0 Comments 0 Likes
Added by Cromag 0 Comments 0 Likes
Added by Cromag 0 Comments 0 Likes
For people with COPD, Multiple Chemical Sensitivity, and Asthma, Chemically Scented Products can be a major Disability Barrier. Just a quick surf on the internet shows how many people are unable to…Continue
Started by Melva Smith in Sample Title Aug 9, 2011.
Dear Fellow Activists. What do you all think about a scent-free Olympics? If you or someone you know finds scented products to be a disability barrier, you might be interested in knowing that there…Continue
Tags: COPD, Sensitivity, Allergy, Sports, barriers
Started by Melva Smith in Sample Title Jun 21, 2011.
I've been active now in a concerted way for many years, and I've worked on a number of causes and with many different people. Most of these relationships have been very positive. Activists are…Continue
Tags: organizing, activism, Ethics
Started by Cromag in Uncategorized. Last reply by Ice Goldberg Oct 21, 2009.
Posted by Cromag on December 22, 2016 at 9:08pm 0 Comments 0 Likes
A new movement is working to protect our environment through the recognition of its fundamental rights. It’s an idea whose time has come.
By Mari Margil from December 20, 2016, 4:39 pm – 8 MIN READ… ContinuePosted by Cromag on December 4, 2016 at 1:00pm 0 Comments 0 Likes
The plastic and paper bag law is ostensibly environmental legislation in hopes that a small fee will diminish the environmental impact of single-use merchant bags. It was possible to have the fee go into an environmental fund to help with diminishing the impact, but that was voted down by CA Prop 65. The resulting declining of Prop 65 is essentially saying that we cannot force the…
Posted by Cromag on May 22, 2016 at 9:55am 0 Comments 0 Likes
via Independent Science News | by Jonathan Latham, PhD
Piecemeal, and at long last, chemical manufacturers have begun removing the endocrine-disrupting plastic…
Posted by Cromag on March 15, 2015 at 12:30pm 0 Comments 0 Likes
Just because food is labeled organic doesn't mean it's what you're expecting, journalist Peter Laufer tells Salon
Published Saturday, Jul 19, 2014 11:00 AM PST…
ContinuePosted by Cromag on October 23, 2014 at 2:51pm 0 Comments 0 Likes
... "So what would a radically different law-driven consciousness look like?” The question was posed over three decades ago by a University of Southern California law professor as his lecture drew to a close. “One in which Nature had rights,” he continued. “Yes, rivers, lakes, trees. . . . How could such a posture in law affect a community’s view of…
Posted by Cromag on October 15, 2014 at 12:30pm 0 Comments 0 Likes
(TEDGlobal 2014 transcript)
Why privacy matters
Glenn Greenwald was one of the first reporters to see — and write about — the Edward Snowden files, with their revelations about the United States' extensive surveillance of private citizens. In…
Posted by Cromag on March 4, 2014 at 1:00pm 0 Comments 0 Likes
By Chris Hedges March 2nd, 2014
OXFORD, England—The morning after my Feb. 20 debate at the Oxford Union, I walked from my hotel along Oxford’s narrow cobblestone streets, past its storied colleges with resplendent lawns and…
ContinuePosted by Cromag on February 28, 2014 at 3:24pm 0 Comments 0 Likes
We live in an interdependent world, where nations are increasingly…
Posted by Cromag on February 22, 2014 at 6:00pm 0 Comments 0 Likes
Reactions to Anatomy of a Deep State from the Bill Moyers Show
February 2014 - Credit: Dale Robbins
The notion of the “Deep State” as outlined by…
ContinuePosted by Cromag on January 27, 2014 at 8:00am 0 Comments 0 Likes
A specter is haunting the French humanist mind these days--a radical ecology movement that threatens to replace the idealization of humanity with an idealization of nature. Already we see "the passing of the humanist era," writes Luc Ferry, a philosopher at the Sorbonne and the University of Caen, in this prize-winning critique of that movement, a book all environmentalists ought to read. It…
1 member
1 member
2 members
|
© 2025 Created by Cromag.
Powered by