By Michael T. Klare | ( Tomdispatch.com) | – – Sunday, April 17th was the designated moment. The world’s leading oil producers were expected to bring fresh discipline to the chaotic petroleum market and spark a return to high prices. Meeting in Doha, the glittering capital of petroleum-rich Qatar, the oil ministers of the Organization […]
Archives for April 2016
Trump’s Foreign Policy is just GOP Boilerplate, only more Confused
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Donald Trump tried his hand at foreign policy on Wednesday, and the results weren’t any prettier than his incessant forays into domestic policy. He does not know anything serious about either one, but of course his fund of ignorance is far deeper when it comes to […]
Egypt arrests Hundreds to Stop Protest, including Journalists, Lawyers
Human Rights Watch | – – (Beirut) – Egyptian security forces arrested at least 382 people in the days leading up to and during the dispersal of mostly peaceful protests on April 25, 2016. The protests followed a rare mass demonstration against President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in Cairo on April 15. Police arrested lawyers and […]
Big Money in Politics Doesn’t Just Drive Inequality. It Drives War.
By Rebecca Green | ( Otherwords.org) | – – Military contractors have shelled out over $1 million to the 2016 presidential candidates — including over $200,000 to Hillary Clinton alone. The 2016 presidential elections are proving historic, and not just because of the surprising success of self-proclaimed socialist Bernie Sanders, the lively debate among feminists […]
Globally, deaths from explosive weapons rise 54%, & 3/4s are Civilians
TeleSur | – – Civilian casualties from explosive weapons rose by 54 percent in 2015 compared to 2011. More than three-quarters of those harmed by explosive weapons in 2015— bombs, missiles and mortars— were civilians, with 30 of them killed on average every day, according to a new study from Action on Armed Violence or […]
Trump culture: threat, fear and the tightening of the American mind
By Michele Gelfand and Joshua Conrad Jackson | (The Conversation) | – – For the past 10 months, Donald Trump has been a political enigma. Against the predictions of journalists, policy wonks and odds makers, a tabloid darling with no political experience and few coherent policies is now poised to be the Republican nominee for […]
Winning in Losing: How Sanders pushed Clinton to the Left
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Bernie Sanders’ path to the nomination as the Democratic Party standard bearer in 2016 was all but closed off by Clinton’s four big wins on Tuesday. His only hope had been to get close enough to her in pledged delegates to have a substantial number of […]
Not just Trump: Anti-Muslim Hatred becomes GOP Orthodoxy
Bridge | (Infographic) – – Via Bridge
Syrian Kurds: True Revolution must Liberate Women
By Rahila Gupta | ( OpenDemocracy ) In less than four years, the women’s umbrella organisation, Kongira Star, has set up an autonomous, grassroots, democratic structure which has resulted in shifting patriarchal mindsets and reversing gender discriminatory laws . . . On day three of my trip to Rojava, Nuvin and Essam from the media […]