With another fall election season picking up steam, The New Yorker’s Sam Wang wonders whether the 2014 election will “be a wave or a ripple.” A wave, Wang says, occurs when “one party makes massive gains and overturns the existing power dynamic.” But notwithstanding Wang’s intended point, the “existing power dynamic” in the United States…

National Public Radio (NPR) led its “Week in Politics” program of September 12 off with analysis of US president Barack Obama’s address to the nation on the Islamic State. Various journalists and talking heads discussed the fundamentals of Obama’s speech — was it strong enough, will it get the job done, just who is ISIS anyway? Afterward, I realized the United…

Burger King’s announced purchase of Canadian fast food chain Tim Hortons, and its plans to relocate its headquarters to Canada to take advantage of the lower corporate income tax rate, were followed by predictable liberal cries of outrage over BK’s lack of “patriotism.” It’s “unpatriotic,” critics say, for the company to take advantage of taxpayer-funded…

Though many Americans know that prisoners often work while behind bars, the conditions under which they toil may be less than clear. Fortune magazine made waves this summer when it reported that “[p]rison labor has gone artisanal,” revealing a multimillion dollar business that puts convicts to work making everything from specialty motorcycles to goat cheese sold at…

Jandira Magdalena dos Santos vanished after having an illegal abortion on August 26. She could feel the danger as it approached. Her last text message to her husband Leandro Brito Reis read: “Honey, they asked me to turn off my phone, I’m panicking, pray for me!” Two hours after getting the message, Leandro sent one…

When I tuned in to US president Barack Obama’s televised speech on his plans for war against the so-called “Islamic State,” I expected exactly what we got — a bland sundae of pseudo-patriotic drivel topped off with some whipped cream of big bucks for the military-industrial complex and the cherry of regime change in Syria. What I didn’t expect was…

In early September, Reuters reported on a new Federal Reserve survey showing widening wealth and income gaps in the United States. “All of the income growth,” Reuters reports, “was concentrated among the top earners …  with the top 3 percent accounting for 30.5 percent of all income.” The Fed survey will no doubt disconcert those…

On the liberal wing of American politics, US Senator Elizabeth Warren’s (D-MA) success in capturing the love of millions is astounding. Her image as savior of indebted workers and unheard voices in America strikes a note with those concerned about reduced class mobility, and rightly so. Consider Warren’s speech introducing emergency legislation to allow refinancing of student loans….

The vast Sonoran Desert of the American Southwest lies in the political territories of California and Arizona and reaches south into Mexico. Its arid landscape is home to human industry and a complex ecosystem full of unique flora and fauna, mesas, canyons, arched rocks and other processes of deep time. It is thus governed by two competing forces: Political…

People who vote for politicians such as Brazilian presidential candidate Aecio Neves, as well as many of his party’s supporters (the Social Democracy Brazilian Party, PSDB), are often dumbfounded when they find out how unappealing ideas of “efficiency” in the public sector, “management shock,” and “professionalization” in government are to a large sector of the population. It’s…

Televised presidential debates are once again the center of commentary in Brazil. And once again we are left with “no clear winner” and very little idea of what kind of discussion we watched between would-be rulers. Why is that? Modern journalism — Walter Lippman’s ideal of the intermediation of facts between the public and the elites — is specially adapted…

On July 28, Aragon Alexandre of Folha de S. Paulo reported that eleven of Brazil’s federal government computers were used to modify Wikipedia pages between 2008 and 2014. The IPs indicate that Serpro (the Federal Data Processing Service) and the Presidency edited articles on both allies and opposition to the current government, adding compliments, suppressing criticism and so on. More…

On July 11, the Brazilian federal government decided against selling monopolies on interstate mass transportation to selected companies. The government was trying to pick companies to operate along several routes, but the procedure, started in August 2013 and supposed to finish in January 2014, was suspended by several judicial injunctions and predictably marred by bureaucracy. It might not…

“Man the terror alert for London has just been upped I don’t wanna go out now :(”, the text from my friend read. The recent news that Britain’s government has raised its terrorism alert level to “severe” unsurprisingly prompted a renewed climate of fear, reflected on social media and in major news outlets. Yet even…

Amnesty International declared that the sentence passed by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, on a case in which the Guatemalan government did not investigate the tragic murder of a teenager, tells the whole world that violence against women will not be tolerated. Maria Isabel Veliz Franco was 15 when she was sexually abused, tortured and…

The Obama administration recently announced a policy of limited intervention in Iraq, using drone strikes to stave off conquest of Kurdish autonomous areas by ISIS. The main US ally on the ground is Massoud Barzani’s Kurdistan Regional Government, and US support against ISIS is limited to Kurdish areas inside Iraq. Barzani’s main competitor for the…

In Ferguson, Missouri, USA Michael Brown was gunned down by a local police officer and a wave of protests rightfully took over the town, demanding justice and an end to police abuse and militarization But what about the Brazilian Fergusons? In Brazil, police are routinely abusive, especially against poor young people from cities’s peripheries. Their use of…

It’s been interesting to watch information go back and forth on the shooting of Michael Brown, and to watch people’s reactions to that information. After initial reports that Brown had been shot in the back, early autopsies showed that the bullets actually entered through the front (one shot which grazed the hand may have come…

The killing of an unarmed young black man in Ferguson, Missouri and the brutal response of police forces there to protesters brought down much needed media examination of the practices of police forces in the US. Several interviews reveal stories of constant police harassment, showing the singling out of minorities by law enforcement to be a…

The police rampage in Ferguson, Missouri has increased public awareness of police militarization and drawn well-deserved attention to writers like Radley Balko who’ve documented the proliferation of military equipment and culture in local police forces over the past decade. It’s certainly true that the post-9/11 security state and the Global War on Terror have flooded…