During the 2006 World Cup in Germany, Uwe-Karsten Heye, spokesman of former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, cautioned visitors “of another skin color” to stay away from eastern Germany. “It is possible,” he said, that you “wouldn’t get out alive.” His statement sparked outrage, but certain eastern parts of the country are indeed widely known in […]

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Despite its great wealth, the United States today faces enormous difficulties. Amidst the economic pain and insecurity and the looming climate catastrophe, there are no easily discernible political answers that even begin to offer strategic handholds on a truly democratic future. We face systemic problems, not simply political or economic problems. The wages of most […]

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It is not a secret that Republicans chastened by Hispanic support for Barack Obama only reluctantly support immigration reform. The party is, in fact, deeply anti-immigrant. “If amnesty goes through, America becomes California and no Republican will ever win another election,” right-wing columnist Ann Coulter warned in a column in March. Coulter speaks for the […]

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The Southern Poverty Law Center’s spring 2013 Intelligence Report tracks the growth of conspiracy-minded “Patriot” groups, which has reached an all time high of 1,360–fueled by the election of the country’s first black president, and what the extreme right sees as a statist threat to its freedom, in particular freedom to own a gun. The […]

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This summer in a federal courtroom in Texas, attorneys for a Tennessee corporation with $9 billion in market capitalization will try to convince a federal judge to suppress the findings of a small, private lab in Austin. The lab, founded by a professor from the University of Texas, determined that resins produced by Eastman Chemical […]

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