Corruption

Merger Mania in the Military-Industrial Complex: Tackling Pentagon Waste Means Battling the Big Weapons Makers and Asking More of Congress

By Julia Gledhill and William D. Hartung | – ( Tomdispatch.com ) – It’s early in the new Congress, but lawmakers are already hotly debating spending and debt levels. As they do so, they risk losing track of an important issue hiding in plain sight: massive Pentagon waste. At least in theory, combating such excess […]

Corruption

Corruption: Supreme Court Justices party at $25,000-a-head Soirees with Corporations that have cases before the Court

OtherWords

By Jim Hightower | – ( Otherwords.org) – As many of its own members privately admit, Congress has become a pay-to-play lawmaking casino — closed to commoners, but offering full-service access to corporate powers. But there’s another government entity that’s even more aloof from workaday people: the Supreme Court. And it has become a handmaiden […]

Authoritarianism

Yemen: Authorities Failing to Protect People’s Basic Rights: Dire Conditions, Bureaucratic Barriers to Aid

Human Rights Watch

( Human Rights Watch – (Beirut) – Yemeni authorities are failing to meet their international legal obligations to protect socio-economic rights for millions of Yemenis, Human Rights Watch said today in releasing a submission to the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights. After more than seven years of protracted conflict, the Yemeni […]

Corruption

In Unusual Search for Accountability, Lebanese PM charged with Homicide over 2020 Beirut Port Explosion

The Conversation

By John Nagle, Queen’s University Belfast | – The investigation into the Beirut port explosion has taken a new turn, with the judge overseeing the probe charging a former prime minister and two other former ministers with homicide with probable intent. The explosion in August 2020, which happened in a massive silo in the port […]

Corruption

Will Birtherism come back to bite Republicans in the Behind? On top of all his other Lies, is George Santos even a US Citizen?

Michael G. Roskin

Nashville (Special to Informed Comment) – Suspicions grow that not only did new Congressman George Santos (R-NY) fabricate his educational and employment record but that he fabricated a marriage in order to get a permanent residency permit (“green card”). Let us, as the intel people say, “walk the cat backwards” — ask a series of […]

Authoritarianism

A New Crop of Disruptor-Politicians is failing the Earth

John Feffer

( Foreign Policy in Focus) – House Republicans, Euroskeptics, Vladimir Putin, and Jair Bolsonaro are the agents of a new kind of political disorder that parallels the chaos of failing states, economic catastrophe, and climate disasters. By John Feffer | January 11, 2023 Some politicians just hate politics. They get into the game in […]

Corruption

The Republican Sleight-of-Hand: McCarthy Failed on his first Try because He is George Santos

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Republican Party failed to elect a Speaker of the House on Tuesday. The ostensible reason is that 20 of the fascist so-called “Freedom Caucus” representatives voted against him. Six voted for Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), the biggest liar in politics since Oscar Zoroaster Phadrig Isaac Norman Henkle Emmannuel Ambroise […]

Arab World

Climate Action in Middle East is Doomed to fail without Reform and Peace

Sustainability Times

By Sustainabiity Times | – ( Sustainability Times) – The United Nations COP27 conference has now drawn to a close, with talks culminating in a historic agreement to establish a climate “loss and damage” fund. Egyptian foreign minister and president of COP27, Sameh Shoukry, celebrated after all-night negotiations, declaring that “we rose to the occasion” […]