We need a major shift in the U.S. approach toward Russia...The lives -- and even existence -- of future generations are at stake in the relationship … - Norman Solomon

December 14, 2002: Near the center of Baghdad, along the Tigris River, an Iraqi woman showed a few foreigners around a water treatment plant that was seriously damaged during the Gulf War in early 1991. Our guide spoke in steady tones, describing various technical matters. But when someone asked about the possibility of war in 2003, her voice began to quaver. A young American woman tried to offer comfort. She said, “You’re strong.” “No,” our guide responded emphatically. “Not strong.” Tears welled in her eyes. Moments later she added, “We are tired.” She was speaking for herself, but also, it seemed, for most Iraqi people. After so much mourning, hardship and stress, they were exhausted—and frightened by what the future was likely to bring. For an American in Baghdad, perhaps the most startling aspect of any visit was to encounter, up close and personal, Iraqis so routinely rendered invisible or fleeting by U.S. media coverage. It’s all too easy to accept the bombing of people who have never quite seemed like people, whose suffering is abstract and distant. Looking them in the eyes can change that. In the words of my traveling companion on this trip, the actor and director Sean Penn: “I needed to come here and see a smile, see a street, smell the smells, talk to the people and take that home with me.”

Biden’s fealty to corporate power has been only one aspect of his many-faceted record that progressives will widely find repugnant to the extent they learn about it...

With very few exceptions, the loudest voices to be heard from mass media are coming from individuals with wealth far above the financial vicinity of average Americans. Virtually none of the most widely read, seen and heard journalists are on the low end of the nation’s extreme income inequality. Viewed in that light — and keeping in mind that corporate ownership and advertising dominate mainstream media — it shouldn’t be surprising that few prominent journalists have much good to say about a presidential campaign fiercely aligned with the working class.