2015 in Review: Truthdig’s Best Columns of the Year

At the start of 2016, Truthdig takes a look at some of the columns we published last year that were our favorites.

Robert Scheer: Bernie Blew It: He Sold Out Instead of Confronting Clinton

Many supporters of the socialist presidential candidate were upset by what Scheer, Truthdig’s editor-in-chief, described as Sanders’ “eagerness to forgive Clinton for any malfeasance in her email scandal.” Scheer also wrote, “Ignoring [in a Democratic presidential debate in October] her outrageous hypocrisy in endorsing the government’s right to read the personal emails of everyone in the world, including the leaders of Germany and Brazil, but not her own, Sanders absolved the former secretary of state of the kinds of security breaches that have put lower-level government workers in prison.”

Robert Scheer: Fools, Fascists and Cold Warriors: Take Your Pick

During the second GOP debate, “a vituperative jingoism reminiscent of the xenophobia that periodically scars Western capitalist societies in moments of disarray” was in evidence, Scheer wrote.

Bill Blum: My Weekend With Bernie: Three Issues Candidate Sanders Didn’t Address at His L.A. Fundraiser

At a campaign fundraiser in Truthdig’s corner of the country, Blum observed that “the independent socialist said a lot of the right things, but he avoided the topics of foreign policy and Edward Snowden.” Blum also asked “what’s his real motivation for running?”

Zubeida Mustafa: Mind-Boggling Conundrums in the Middle East

Truthdig Global Voices contributor Mustafa examined “the historic role of American geostrategic shenanigans” in the region of Afghanistan and Pakistan, with an eye to “a shifting global economic balance and the fortunes of American arms manufacturers.”

Chris Hedges: States of Terror

“We waded into conflicts in the Middle East we did not understand, propelled forward by fantasy,” the Truthdig contributor wrote of the military ambitions of U.S. leaders. “And our folly spawned a death spiral of political, social and economic collapse, widespread poverty, massive displacement, misery and radical jihadism.”

Chris Hedges: The Most Brazen Corporate Power Grab in History

Hedges wrote that the 5,544-page Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement “would be another step in the global capitalists’ march to enslave us. Open, sustained revolt is our only option.”

Sonali Kolhatkar: Thank Climate Justice Activists for Doing All They Can to Curb Warming

Reporting for Truthdig from Paris at the United Nations’ climate change conference, Kolhatkar heard from activists who were not satisfied with the framework for addressing climate change that global leaders agreed upon.

Bill Boyarsky: Why Ending Homelessness Is Political Poison

In the first column of a three-part series, Boyarsky said many people are made homeless not by drug addiction or mental illness but by economic misfortune. And “officials say there is no political upside to solving the problem.”

Douglas Lain: What Marx Was Really Saying

“Today, if we wish the resurgence of Marx to include his ideas rather than just his image,” Lain wrote, “we will have to do more than intuit what is right in his work. We will have to read his work critically, which is to say we will have to struggle against the habit of thinking by feeling.”

Juan Cole: The Rise of a New Left in Turkey?

“The rise of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) made waves in socially conservative Turkey by championing gay rights, women’s rights and leftist causes like labor and a ‘normalization’ of the Turkish majority’s relationship with the Kurdish population,” wrote Cole.