Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Deutsche Welle reports that the tripling of the price of gasoline by the Iranian government very early Friday morning provoked protests throughout Iran, in at least 20 cities. In Sirjan, a protester was killed. The government drastically slowed down or even cut off the internet. The biggest rallies were in […]
Archives for November 2019
Is it Time for a Billionaire Ban?
By Negin Owliaei | – The wealthiest Americans dominate our airwaves. Let’s hear from someone else for a change. Bill Gates wants you to know he pays taxes. “I’ve paid more than $10 billion in taxes. I’ve paid more than anyone in taxes,” Gates told journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin. “But when you say I should […]
Trump’s Anti-Climate Agenda Bolsters his Ambitions for “Freedom Gas”
By John Foster | – (Monitor) – When Washington dubbed American gas exports “Freedom Gas” this year, it signalled a new salvo in U.S. competition with Russia. The target behind the branding is Europe, the largest gas market outside North America. With a bonanza of gas from fracking, the U.S. aims to become the world’s […]
How Western media dehumanization of Palestinians allows Israel to get away with murder in Gaza
(Middle East Monitor ) – An Israeli attack on Gaza was imminent, and not because of any provocations by Palestinian groups in the besieged, impoverished Gaza Strip. The Israeli military escalation was foreseeable because it factors neatly in Israel’s contentious political scene. The war was not a question of “if”, but “when”. The answer came […]
Top 4 Things Rep. Ilhan Omar was Right about, from Stephen Miller Racism to Trump Impeachment
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – This week The Southern Poverty Law Center reported from Hatewatch that Trump administration official Stephen Miller spent the period before 2016 sending white supremacist messages to the Breitbart Nazi-lite site. He was upset about the turn against Confederate symbols after the massacre in a church by Dylann Roof, and he […]
Climate Crisis will Beggar Us: Big Oil needs to Pay for the Damage it Caused
By Tamara Toles O’Laughlin and Bill McKibben | – (Yes! Magazine) – Climate change disproportionately affects poor people and people of color. They should be compensated for their suffering. This month in a Manhattan courthouse, New York State’s attorney general Letitia James argued that ExxonMobil should be held accountable for layers of lies about climate […]
A New Arab Spring in Lebanon and Iraq
Once again, people in the Middle East want democratic reforms and an end to corruption and foreign domination. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and Lebanese have been demonstrating in the streets against corruption and for democratic rights. The protestors come from all economic classes and religious/ethnic groups. Like the Arab Spring uprisings that began in […]
Is our Civilization Causing the Sixth Great Mass Extinction in Earth’s History?
By Frédérik Saltré and Corey J. A. Bradshaw | – For more than 3.5 billion years, living organisms have thrived, multiplied and diversified to occupy every ecosystem on Earth. The flip side to this explosion of new species is that species extinctions have also always been part of the evolutionary life cycle. Humans are probably […]
Iran’s Rouhani: Trump too Erratic to Deal with, but is Open about Ambitions to Steal ME Oil
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Iranian president Hassan Rouhani said this week that the United States used to justify its military presence in Syria on the grounds that it was fighting terrorism. He said that Donald Trump has let the cat out of the bag and admitted that the real reason is to steal Syrian […]