Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Haaretz reports that Rage, Bob Woodward’s new book due out tomorrow, reports that Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu manipulated Donald Trump with fake video of Palestine President Mahmoud Abbas. The episode points to the dangers of deep fake videos in our contemporary era, but points even more alarmingly to the […]
Even Lindsey Graham is Terrified Trump will drag us into War with Iran
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Hawkish Republican senator Lindsey Graham tried to talk Trump out of his assassination of Iranian Gen. Qasem Soleimani last winter, according to Bob Woodward’s new book, Rage, to be published Tuesday. Sonam Sheth and John Haltiwanger at Business Insider have an advance copy and yesterday quoted some excerpts about Graham […]
Climate Emergency Overdrive: Our Age of Compound Disasters as 10% of Oregon is Evacuated, California Burns and Louisiana Sinks
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – It is astonishing to me that we still have 287 million gasoline vehicles on our roads and that 20 percent of our electricity comes from burning dirty coal. We just go on blithely pumping over 5 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide, a powerful and dangerous heat-trapping gas, into the […]
Top 4 reasons Trump’s Saving “ass” of Bin Salman over Khashoggi Murder is Shameful and just Wrong
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Sonam Sheth and John Haltiwanger at Business Insider have seen Bob Woodward’s Rage, which will be published next Tuesday. They quoted some passages from the interview with Trump in which he boasted about having saved the “ass” of Saudi crown prince Mohammed Bin Salman in Washington D.C. by discouraging the […]
Aztec Politics: Trump sacrificed 200K by Downplaying Covid-19 to save the Stock Market from Panic
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Bob Woodward’s new book of interviews with Trump and figures in his administration records how Trump told the reporter in mid-March that he plays down the coronavirus to avoid a panic. According to CNN, which obtained Woodward’s tapes, Trump said: “I wanted to always play it down. I still like […]
Did the US War on Terror Displace 37 Million?
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Brown University Watson Institute Costs of War Project has put out a report concluding that the US-led “War on Terror” has displaced 37 million people. While there are parts of the report I agree with, some of the argument seems to me flawed. Let me explain why that is, […]
Russia defies US Sanctions, presses Syria on Long Term Trade, Investment deal for Energy
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Russia and Syria are preparing to enter into a wide-ranging trade and investment deal, according to RT Arabic. Sunday night, Deputy Prime Minister Yury Borisov arrived in Damascus to meet with high Syrian officials. On Monday, Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov arrived, meeting with Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad and his […]
On Labor Day, Trump’s mismanagement of Pandemic has left 27 mn Unemployed and Turning to Food Banks
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – It is a sad Labor Day, in the shadow of the Trump Pandemic. Over a fourth of workers are afraid of losing their jobs because of the pandemic, up from 15% last year this time, according to Gallup. That is, the anxiety over joblessness has almost doubled. Many are much […]
Revolutionary, Muslim-Majority Sudan Declares Separation of Religion and State
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) The transitional government of officers and civilian revolutionaries in Sudan has separated religion and state. In an agreement signed Thursday in Addis Ababa with the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement–North (SPLM–N), Sudan’s prime minister Abdullah Hamdok agreed that Sudan would not establish any particular religion. The agreement included the language, “The state […]