By Daud Abdullah | – ( Middle East Monitor ) – This is one of the uncomfortable questions raised by the newly declassified Clinton files. A diplomatic dispatch to the former Secretary of State dated 12 October 2011 revealed that the Saudis actually considered Turkey to be a possible security guarantor after the discovery of […]
Archives for October 2020
Stunning Doubling of Severe Natural disasters in past 20 Years, many driven by Climate Emergency
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction issued a report today concluding that natural disasters caused by the human impact on earth’s climate have doubled in the past twenty years. Human beings have put increasing amounts of heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide into the atmosphere in the past 40 […]
Plot to kidnap Michigan’s governor grew from the militia movement’s toxic mix of constitutional falsehoods and half-truths
By John E. Finn | – The U.S. militia movement has long been steeped in a peculiar – and unquestionably mistaken – interpretation of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and civil liberties. This is true of an armed militia group that calls itself the Wolverine Watchmen, who were involved in the recently revealed plot […]
Can Trump’s Plan to Steal your Social Security, Medicare be Stopped?
Gainesville, Florida (Special to Informed Comment) – President Donald Trump, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and other Republicans promoting the backlash against the federal government seek to return to an earlier, supposedly golden era in American history. By privatizing Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid while further lowering taxes on the top 1 percent income bracket, […]
Republican Food: French President Macron nails his colours to the Mast of Islamophobia
By Chris Myant ( OpenDemocracy.net) – In the small Provençal town of Aups, where the local Catholic church declares République française: Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité [The French Republic: Liberty, Equality, Fraternity], above its main entrance, there is a plain and nondescript monument put up in 1881. Its plaque announces that it is there: A la memoire […]
Call for Fox Media News Monopoly to be Broken up: Rupert Murdoch an “arrogant cancer on … democracy” – Rudd
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Former Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd has called for the break up of his country’s media monopolies (almost all major media are owned by just two corporations). One of the two media monopolies he was slamming is Rupert Murdoch’s Newscorp. In its incarnation as Fox News, the same company has […]
Ask Amy Coney Barrett If Bosses Should Be Free to Fire Workers at Will
Southwest Harbor, Maine (Special to Informed Comment) – What is at stake in the battle over the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett? For most commentators the immediate answer is women’s control over their reproductive health and maintenance of the affordable care act. That is surely true, but excessive focus on those issues can obscure consideration […]
Patriotism, American Style: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Sacramento, Ca. (Special to Informed Comment) – What is Patriotism? Let’s begin with the difficult part: defining and understanding patriotism. Patriotism refers to the feelings and behaviors of individuals and groups who see themselves belonging to a large community called a nation, and who identify intensely with it. When the chips are down, those who […]
Talking Tough and Carrying a Radioactive Stick: The Nuclearization of American Diplomacy
( Tomdispatch.com ) – On August 21st, six nuclear-capable B-52H Stratofortress bombers, representing approximately one-seventh of the war-ready U.S. B-52H bomber fleet, flew from their home base in North Dakota to Fairford Air Base in England for several weeks of intensive operations over Europe. Although the actual weapons load of those giant bombers was kept […]