I cannot thank enough the hundreds of supporters who donated or proffered a voluntary subscription to Informed Comment this year! We had an ambitious goal, and we more or less met it (certainly it will be met this quarter). I and the Informed Comment support team of tech professionals who keep the site humming like […]
Archives for January 2013
Afghanistan: The End of America’s Longest War?
Afghan President Hamid Karzai is in Washington for talks with the Obama administration on the gradual draw down of foreign troops from his country over the next two years. There are currently about 104,000 NATO and other outside troops in Afghanistan, including 68,000 Americans. In a recent piece for CNN, I wrote: “By summer of […]
Wikileaker Bradley Manning “Illegally Punished,” 4 months off Life Sentence
A military judge has found that Bradley Manning, who released large numbers of low-classified State Department cables to Wikileaks, was illegally punished while in the brig at Quantico, when he was denied exercise and kept on ‘suicide watch’ (chained and naked) against the counsel of his psychiatrist. Although Manning did nothing more than Daniel Ellsberg […]
Frankenyear 2012: Hottest on Record, as US emits 5 bn tons of CO2 Annually
Can we sue the Koch brothers and all the other dirty-energy, climate change-denying moguls yet for the billions they are costing us in climate disasters every year because of their poisonous carbon emissions? The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reports that: “2012 marked the warmest year on record for the contiguous United States with the […]
Controversial, Not Controversial (Brennan v. Hagel, Big Oil v. Solar & other Media Hypocrisies)
Not controversial: John Brennan: Served in CIA during the torture program, designed the current US drone program that has extra-judicially killed hundreds, including children and including at least 2 American citizens. Controversial: Chuck Hagel: Thinks war should be a last resort, doesn’t think an air strike on Iran would be effective, wants to do diplomacy […]
Climate Change is turning Australia Purple with Blazing Heat
The heat wave or “dome of heat” afflicting Australia may produce a record temperature of over 122 degrees F. (over 50 degrees C.). For temperatures above 122 F., Australian weathermen have developed a new color scheme, purple, which they hadn’t had to use before (the last record temperature in that range was just about 122 […]
The Syrian Opposition Attacks Bashar al-Assad’s Defiant Speech (Aljazeera & Alarabiya via OSC)
The USG Open Source Center translates broadcasts from Arabic satellite television concerning the speech on Sunday of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, in which he again dismissed his opposition as terrorists and blamed outside hands at the same time as he called for a vague political process. The revolutionaries were scathing in their responses. Pan-Arab TVs […]
Top Ten Reasons Chuck Hagel Should be Secretary of Defense
I doubt Chuck Hagel, the former Republican senator from Nebraska, and I would agree about almost anything with regard to domestic US politics. Unless his views have changed, we certainly would not agree on gay rights. ( He says, at least, that his views have in fact changed and has apologized for remarks in the […]
Climate Change is Snowballing on Obama: Time for Drama, not Gradualism! (McKibben)
Bill McKibben writes at Tomdispatch Change usually happens very slowly, even once all the serious people have decided there’s a problem. That’s because, in a country as big as the United States, public opinion moves in slow currents. Since change by definition requires going up against powerful established interests, it can take decades for those […]
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