By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – The People’s Climate March on Saturday will protest the Trump administration’s pro-Climate Change policies of increasing US carbon dioxide and methane emissions. Just how bad will it be? The US committed at Paris to reducing its emissions by 1/4 of 2005 levels by 2025. So far […]
Planet Ravagers: How Trump & GOP are like Aliens in “Independence Day”
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – “They’re like locusts. They’re moving from planet to planet, their entire civilization. Once they consume every natural resource, they move on.” — President Thomas Whitmore, “Independence Day” You expect the Republican Party, when it wins a national election, to pass some laws benefiting the business classes. […]
Trump Sanctuary Threat Quashed by Court – Is anything he does Constitutional?
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – US district judge William Orrick responded to a lawsuit by the county of San Francisco and by Santa Clara county against a Trump Executive Order conveyed to them by the Department of Justice, threatening to deny Federal funding to self-proclaimed sanctuary cities by striking down the […]
The Last time there was this much CO2 in the air, Florida was under Water
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – The Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii has reported that in April, for the first time in human history the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has exceeded 410 parts per million (ppm). Carbon dioxide (CO2) is a powerful greenhouse gas that prevents the sun’s heat […]
For First Time, a US President backs a Fascist France
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – While she is highly unlikely to win the run-off presidential election on May 7 against the Bill Clinton of France, Emmanuel Macron, Marine Le Pen managed to come in second in the first round on Sunday. She came ahead of the leaders of both major French […]
Trump’s Warmongering on Steroids: But who Supplied the Steroids
By Tom Engelhardt | ( Tomdispatch.com) | – – MOAB sounds more like an incestuous, war-torn biblical kingdom than the GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast, aka “the mother of all bombs.” Still, give Donald Trump credit. Only the really, really big bombs, whether North Korean nukes or those 21,600 pounds of MOAB, truly get his […]
As Scientists March, Will Trump give away US Science Lead to China?
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – The marches for science in the United States and around the world are an expression of alarm about the Trump administration’s budget proposals, which slash public funding for science, medical and technology research and seek to increase the Pentagon budget by $54 bn. Federal funding for […]
ISIL Terror-Trolls French Election, Supporting far Right; Will French Fall for It?
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Thursday’s shooting at the Champs Elysee, left one policeman dead, another gravely injured, a third lightly wounded along with a German tourist shot in the heel. It was carried out by Karim Cheurfi, a French national aged 39, born at Livry-Gargan in Seine-Saint-Denis. He had opened […]
Top 5 Ways Bill O’Reilly gave us Trump and cheapened America
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Bill O’Reilly is off the airwaves, but it doesn’t really matter. The despicable strategy of presslord Rupert Murdoch of orienting his Fox Cable “news” toward the nativist far right in the United States will continue. They’ll just find another O’Reilly. Worse, there is more or less […]