Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Trump’s campaign manager April-August of 2016, Paul Manafort has agreed to plead guilty to conspiring against the United States. In return for a reduction of his sentence he must answer fully and candidly all the questions asked him by special counsel Robert Mueller and his team about criminal wrongdoing. Since […]
How the Corporate Media Treated Julia Salazar differently from Trump and Netanyahu
Julia Salazar, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, has won the Democratic primary for state senator from Brooklyn and neighboring areas in New York, defeating a long-serving incumbent she claimed was in the back pocket of the realtors. Coverage of her campaign, however, read like a salacious tabloid, and had a weird set […]
Dear Carolinas: You can’t Outlaw Storm Surges & Climate Crisis; Physics isn’t Interested in Your Laws
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – There has been a flurry of irony-heavy articles about how the North Carolina, Republican-dominated state legislature, in 2012 forbade state-employed scientists from talking about sea level rise and climate crisis. This ostrich policy of just denying reality was intended to prevent real estate values along the coast from falling, and […]
Top 3 Charges on which John Bolton should be Tried at Int’l Criminal Court
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – National Security Adviser John Bolton appears to be spiraling down into the same miasma of madness that possesses other members of the Trump administration– perhaps caused by a microbe carried in Trump’s sniffle. This week he threatened justices of the International Criminal Court in the Hague with physical abduction were […]
Did Trump almost start WW III with Russia with Proposed Massive Bombing of Syrian AF?
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – According to Bob Woodward’s just-released book, “Fear,” Donald Trump had been pressed to use 200 cruise missiles to destroy the Syrian Air Force in 2017. Knowing that the Russian Aerospace Forces personnel were all over Syrian air bases, Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis became alarmed, and shaped a limited response […]
Islam: Compassion and Positive Peace in the Qur’an
One of the early chapters of the Qur’an is “The City,” chapter 90 in the standard version. It gives us a good idea of the verses being recited by the Prophet Muhammad around 613, three years into his ministry, once he started preaching publicly. I discuss this period in Chapter 3 of my new book: […]
#Plaidshirtguy shows Why Trump likes Mideast Dictators
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The most striking characteristic of the tyrant is pettiness. Trump as president is dangerous. He is volatile. He shouts that he wants people killed, and apparently in large numbers sometimes (“kill them all,” he appears to have said about the Syrian government, and Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis just ignored […]
Masses around Globe Rally against Climate Crisis & Gov’t Inaction, Defying Trump
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Environmental activists protested Saturday in 90 countries and 800 cities across the globe and the United States against inaction on the Climate Crisis in the run-up to a major climate conference in San Francisco organized by Gov. Jerry Brown for Wednesday in the wake of Trump’s violation of the Paris […]
Obama shifts Left, Embraces Medicare for All, in Hopes of Galvanizing Democrats
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Barack Obama came out of retirement Friday to give a stump speech at the University of Illinois, in hopes of whipping up the enthusiasm of Democrats to vote in November. As I pointed out yesterday, Dems have an uphill battle to take either House of Congress, because of Republican gerrymandering, […]