Today's Liberal News

“Powerlands”: Young Diné Filmmaker on Indigenous Resistance to Resource Colonization Worldwide

We continue our Earth Day special by looking at how Indigenous peoples are protecting the Earth. We follow the journey of Ivey Camille Manybeads Tso, an award-winning queer Navajo filmmaker whose new film “Powerlands” shows how corporations like Peabody, the world’s largest private coal company, have devastated her homeland. She also connects with Indigenous communities in Colombia, the Philippines, Mexico and Standing Rock facing the same struggle.

As Ukraine War Disrupts Steel Imports, Will U.S. Pivot to Green Future & Break Free from Dirty Steel?

On Earth Day, we look at how the war in Ukraine gives the United States a new chance to break free of emissions-heavy steel production. Russia and Ukraine supplied over 60% of the pig iron the U.S. imported last year to make steel, some of it produced at the Azovstal Iron and Steel Works plant in Mariupol where thousands of civilians and soldiers are now blockaded.

As Russia Intensifies Attack on Ukraine’s Donbas, Volunteers Try to Help Civilians in Leveled Cities

We get an update on the Donbas region of Ukraine, where Russian forces are now focused. Russia has backed a separatist movement in the Donbas since 2014 and used protecting the Russian-speaking population there as a justification for its invasion in February. We speak with Brian Milakovsky, who lived in the Donbas town of Severodonetsk before he evacuated to Croatia in January and is now fundraising for people trying to flee Russian attacks.

Matrix of War: Russian Elites Unlikely to Split from Putin Despite War Losses & Western Sanctions

Russians are weathering the fallout of President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine with no sign of a negotiated peace deal soon. Economic sanctions have driven up food prices, and there has been repression of political dissent within the country. We speak with author Tony Wood, a member of the New Left Review editorial board, who says the crushing Western sanctions are unlikely to end Putin’s rule and are only hardening attitudes.

Impossible Choices in the Battle for the Donbas

Soon after Russia invaded Ukraine, Pavlo Kyrylenko and Serhiy Gaidai received phone calls from men they believed to be Russians, based on their accents. Kyrylenko and Gaidai, the governors of the Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, respectively, were being enticed to defect.

‘I Am a Governor of People, Not of Tombstones’

Soon after Russia invaded Ukraine, Pavlo Kyrylenko and Serhiy Gaidai received phone calls from men they believed to be Russians, based on their accents. Kyrylenko and Gaidai, the governors of the Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, respectively, were being enticed to defect.

Starbucks executives rail against union effort in leaked call, this week in the war on workers

Top Starbucks executives are really butt-hurt about the so-far overwhelmingly successful union organizing drive in their stores. In a leaked video call with managers, CEO and founder Howard Schultz included the company’s own employees in a list of “obstacles and challenges” the company has “managed to overcome,” describing them as “a new outside force that’s trying desperately to disrupt our company.

Connect! Unite! Act! Cheers and jeers to 20 years!

The moment you walk into a liquor store anywhere near us and they see your birthdate begins with a “1” instead of a “2” they instantly know you’re eligible to drink. The lifespan of Daily Kos isn’t quite there yet, but knowing that the top song in 2002 was Nickelback’s “You Remind Me” is definitely an interesting way to see where we are in a good way, in a bad way, and in a cringeworthy way all at the exact same time.

Everything Everywhere All at Once Is Multiverse Storytelling at Its Best

What’s better than a Marvel Cinematic Universe? A Marvel Cinematic Multiverse. Once limited to theoretical physics and comic-book plot conveniences, the notion of a multiverse has been an essential tool for Hollywood. Whether it’s a role that’s been cast and recast, a franchise character that gets a spin-off when the larger story ends, or simply a reboot telling a new story without upending its origins, the answer to any big movie problem is often: multiverse.

The Cruel Twist of Russian Doll

This article contains spoilers through the second season of Russian Doll.In a much-discussed essay for The New Yorker late last year, the critic Parul Sehgal analyzed the recent ubiquity of the trauma plot; the reliance, in books and on television, on stories that define characters by their pain, their guilt, the weight of their suffering.

Why the Russian People Go Along With Putin’s War

In the early days of the war on Ukraine, tens of thousands of Russians protested an invasion launched in their name. This was encouraging. Americans could content themselves with the possibility that Russian citizens might take matters into their own hands, challenging and weakening their president, Vladimir Putin. In recent weeks, however, such protests have become rare.

‘If Macron Loses, Putin Wins.’

In a rematch of the 2017 election, France will decide tomorrow between the erstwhile centrist disrupter Emmanuel Macron and the far-right fixture Marine Le Pen. Although this contest once seemed inevitable, the emergence last fall of the wild-card extreme-right media personage Éric Zemmour—whose campaign outflanked Le Pen’s and threatened to cannibalize it—meant that Le Pen had to struggle just to remain this cycle’s challenger.