Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Sen. Ted Cruz abandoning Texas to its fate, with millions suffering without power, to go off on a vacation in Cancun, Mexico, is the perfect metaphor for America in the age of monopoly capital. After all, many American corporations have taken a prolonged tax holiday in the Caribbean. Some 18 […]
Biden’s Saudi Game of Thrones: Is he trying to Sideline crown prince Bin Salman?
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – BBC Arabic reports that Saudi Twitter has gone wild with responses to the apparent sidelining by President Biden of Saudi crown prince Mohammed Bin Salman, with many Saudis considering it a humiliation. White House spokesperson Jen Psaki said this week that Biden wishes to “recalibrate” the U.S. relationship with Saudi […]
From Covid to Power outages in Ice Storms, the Texas Republican Party has created a Failed State
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Republican Party has had a lock on Texas politics for over two decades, and has reduced it to a failed state. Even Texans like Beto O’Rourke are making this observation. Millions are without electricity in the midst of one of the state’s worse winter storms ever. This massive failure […]
Israel stops Palestinians of Gaza from getting 2K doses of Russian Coronavirus Vaccine
Update. On Wednesday Feb. 17, Israel finally permitted 1,000 doses into Gaza, despite an earlier temptation to play politics with the pandemic. Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – According to AFP Arabic, Palestinian Minister of Health Dr. Mai Al-Kilah announced Monday that Israeli authorities halted a shipment of the Russian Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine sent to […]
Michael E. Mann on The New Climate War and Biden’s Greening of America: Interview with Juan Cole
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – I am so pleased to present to our readers an interview with one of the world’s foremost climate scientists, Michael E. Mann of Penn State. I have followed him for a decade and a half and have learned tons from his informed, clear and absolutely crucial writing. In his journal […]
Who were the Republican Senators afraid of when they Acquitted their own attempted murderer?
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The odious Trump once smugly observed that “I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.” When it comes to the Republican base, he was clearly correct. The opinion polling shows that registered Republicans still overwhelmingly support Trump even after he unleashed […]
Federal Court strikes down Arkansas’ attempt to Punish proponents of Boycotting Israel over its treatment of Palestinians
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Andrew DeMillo at the Associated Press reports that a 3-judge panel of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis has struck down an Arkansas law requiring contractors with the state to sign a pledge not to boycott Israel. The alternative print monthly the Arkansas Times carried advertising […]
America’s Transition Away from Democracy and the World’s Wave of De-Democratization
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The twentieth century was in the eyes of some observers an uneven but steady march to democracy. Those who study transitions from authoritarian governments to democracy have defined a successful transition as characterized by two elections in a row, where all parties agree on the rules of the game, and […]
Top 5 Reasons for Biden to snub Israel’s Netanyahu, whom he still hasn’t Called
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Danny Danon, Israel’s former ambassador to the United Nations, impatiently tweeted a list of all the foreign leaders that President Joe Biden has already called in his one month in office, and suggesting it was time he called Binyamin Netanyahu. Biden is close to the Israel lobbies and had been […]