Greenfield, Mass. (Special to Informed Comment) – We are living with two life-threatening crises: Covid-19 and the climate crisis. They pose a common stark fate for us – the risk of illness in the case of Covid, and injury and destruction of our environment in the case of climate; both are harbingers of death for […]
Archives for May 2020
How Middle East Governments are using Covid-19 as a Pretext to Crush Human Rights
By Saoussen Ben Cheikh | – (Globalvoices.org) – In response to COVID-19, governments around the world have declared states of emergency, allowing them to take exceptional measures to contain the pandemic. Liberal democracies from the United States, Canada to European countries, Malaysia and South Africa imposed emergency measures that restricted mobility under lockdowns. Likewise, in […]
The Great Depression, Coronavirus Style: Crashes, Then and Now
(Tomdispatch.com) – Many economists believe that a recession is already underway. So do millions of Americans struggling with bills and job losses. While the ghosts of the 2008 financial crisis that sent inequality soaring to new heights in this country are still with us, it’s become abundantly clear that the economic disaster brought on by […]
Top 6 Reasons Authorities are Cracking down Hard on Black Protesters while Treating White Supremacist Reopeners with Kid Gloves
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – My social media feeds have been full of comparisons between the treatment by police of Reopener mobs, some of whom invaded the Michigan state house while fully armed with assault weapons, and the treatment of protesters in Minneapolis regarding the killing of George Floyd by a policemen who kept his […]
Amid Yemen Coronavirus Outbreak, Aden Buries its dead while Houthis Bury their Heads
( Al-Bab.com) – There used to be about ten burials a day in the cemeteries of Yemen’s second city, Aden, but since Covid-19 arrived the number has risen to around 80 a day. Although many of these deaths have not been properly investigated, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) which runs the city’s only dedicated Covid-19 treatment […]
Even the Israeli Right is nervous about Netanyahu’s Plans to Annex 1/3 of Palestinian West Bank–but for all the Wrong Reasons
By Antoine Shalhat | – ( Middle East Monitor ) – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stressed during the Likud meeting in the Knesset on 25 May that he does not intend to change the date set for annexing the Jordan Valley and settlements in the occupied West Bank in Israel. The date was set […]
From Jones’s Kool-Aid to Trump’s Clorox– Can we Finally leave the Death Cults Behind Us?
By Michael Nagler | – ( Waging Nonviolence) – When I compared the president and his followers to Jim Jones and the “Peoples Temple” cult two years ago I didn’t expect many would go that far. In fact, I hoped events would prove me wrong. Unfortunately, the comparison has become inescapable, and other writers have […]
Twitter finally Fact-Checks Trump, but Still Lets him Get Away with Murder (Literally)
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has apparently finally had a crisis of conscience over the sewer of falsehoods spewed by Trump in his Twitter feed. The company flagged his tweet alleging that mail-in voting is a recipe for fraud, putting in a link to reputable news sites carrying articles showing that […]
The Turko-Russian War for Oil and Gas in Libya Intensifies
Belgrade (Special to Informed Comment) – Frenemies Russia and Turkey have put their conflict in Syria on hold, but they have intensified their rivalry in another proxy conflict. In Libya, clashes between Moscow-backed Libyan National Army (LNA) and Ankara-backed Government of National Accord (GNA) escalated, as the US Africa Command accused Kremlin of deploying military […]