2021

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – ( Matthew Daly at the Associated Press reports that President Biden will announce at Thursday’s virtual international Climate Summit that the US will commit to reducing its annual carbon dioxide emissions by half of the 2005 peak by 2030. Joe Biden famously used an expletive to describe the passage of […]

Afghanistan

Afghanistan’s Green Future? Earth Minerals and Renewables

John Feffer

( Foreign Policy in Focus ) – Can Afghanistan’s mineral wealth finance a transition to a carbon-neutral future? By John Feffer | April 21, 2021 Everyone has a different Doomsday scenario for Afghanistan once U.S. and NATO troops withdraw by September 11. The Taliban will take over and reimpose their repressive social agenda. Al-Qaeda will […]

Climate Crisis

On Top of Causing Deadly Global Heating, Fossil fuels cause 1 in 5 Adult deaths each year

Sustainability Times

( Sustainability Times) – Researchers at Harvard University in the United States, working with colleagues at the University of Birmingham, the University of Leicester and University College London in the United States, estimate in a new study that exposure to airborne fine particulate matter (PM2.5) from fossil fuel emissions resulted in nearly one in five […]

Afghanistan

Afghanistan pullout: Nato betrays its own values if interpreters and other local staff are left at risk

The Conversation

By Sara de Jong | – The announcement of the US and Nato military withdrawal from Afghanistan later this year has elicited many responses, not least expressions of concern about the plight of interpreters and other local staff employed by western military forces. These concerns are not new but now have renewed urgency. The release […]

African-Americans

Systemic Racism won’t End with One Trial, But Biden-Harris can enlist Government in addressing Economic Inequality at its Root

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – African-Americans face aggressive policing in part because, on average, they lack resources. Household wealth allows a family to donate to political campaigns, to ensure a good education for their children, and to join influential civic clubs and organizations. The Center for American Progress reports that in 2019, before the distortions […]

African-Americans

George Floyd’s legacy: Could Derek Chauvin guilty verdicts spell the end of police immunity?

The Conversation

By Kent Roach | – The police killing of George Floyd begs for effective remedies that respond both to past harms while also preventing future harm. Former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was found guilty of three counts in the killing of Floyd after he kneeled on the Black man’s neck for more than nine […]

Iran

Israeli Intelligence Chiefs Assess that Biden, Iran will Rejoin Nuclear Deal; Netanyahu wants to Stop it

Middle East Monitor

By Motasem A Dalloul | – After two weeks of deliberations in Vienna about reactivating the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear deal with Iran, EU Foreign Policy Chief Josep Borrell told reporters on Monday that, “There is a real goodwill on both parts to reach an agreement.” He pointed out that the […]

China

Washington is Spoiling for a new Cold War with China, but this Ambition needs a Reality Check

Dilip Hiro

( Tomdispatch.com ) – Like his immediate predecessor, Joe Biden is committed to a distinctly anti-China global strategy and has sworn that China will not “become the leading country in the world, the wealthiest country in the world, and the most powerful country in the world… on my watch.” In the topsy-turvy universe created by […]

Featured

Why the Founding Fathers would have approved of Biden banning phrase “Illegal Alien”