Crime

TeleSur | – – The latest executive order is seen by critics as a reckless attempt to boost energy industry profits at the cost of the environment and public health. U.S. President Donald Trump made good on campaign promises Tuesday, signing an executive order reversing measures put in place by the Obama administration to address […]

Crime

What if that London attack wasn’t Even Terrorism?

contributors

By Steve Hewitt | (The Conversation) | – – A middle-aged man with a history of criminal activity and violence, a variety of aliases, multiple jobs and addresses, and several broken relationships launches an attack on parliament and is killed in the process. This individual wasn’t Khalid Masood, but a man named Paul Chartier. Chartier […]

Corruption

White House, Inc.: Kellyanne Con Artist Pitches Ivanka Line

contributors

TeleSur | – – Ivanka Trump has said she would step away from her company when her father took office in the White House. A top aide to U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday promoted the clothing and jewelry line named after his daughter Ivanka, one day after the president’s tweet criticizing a retailer for […]

Authoritarianism

Trump’s Larcenies to Come: The Looting of America

contributors

By Tom Engelhardt | ( Tomdispatch.com ) | – – It started in June 2015 with that Trump Tower escalator ride into the presidential race to the tune of Neil Young’s “Rockin’ in the Free World.” (“But there’s a warnin’ sign on the road ahead, there’s a lot of people sayin’ we’d be better off […]

Central Asia

For Russian hold on Trump, follow the Money, not the Sex tapes

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Buzzfeed has published the unverified allegations by a former MI6 analyst with good Russian contacts, contained in a two-page hitherto secret annex to the US intelligence community’s report on Russian hacking and interference in the 2016 election. These two pages have circulated in Washington for months. […]

Corruption

Would Trump in White House defraud us into Crash worse than 2008?

contributors

By Nomi Prins | ( Tomdispatch.com ) | – – Imagine for a moment that it’s January 2009. Bernie Madoff, America’s poster-child fraudster, has yet to be caught. The 2007-2008 financial crisis never happened. The markets didn’t tank to reveal the emptiness beneath his schemes. We still don’t know what’s lurking in his tax returns […]

Authoritarianism

The Panama Papers and Middle East Leaders’ Secret Bank Accounts

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – An anonymous source has handed over to a German newspaper massive amounts of data from the Panama-based, German-run law firm Mossack Fonseca. The firm specialized in providing clients with offshore accounts, which are typically used to avoid taxes or hide ill-gotten gains. Given the enormous problem […]

al Qaeda in the Arabian Penisula

Do Drug Profits actually drive Terrorism in the Muslim World?

contributors

Robert Rotberg | (The Conversation) | – – Terrorists are in it as much for the loot as for the ideology. . . . ISIS, could hardly exist, whatever its Islamist fervor, without hard cash from sales of pilfered petroleum, taxes on its subject population and kidnappings for ransom. Likewise ISIS- and al-Qaida-linked groups in […]

Crime

German lawmakers rush to respond to Cologne attacks as Vigilante Attacks Break Out

Juan Cole

by Dario Sarmadi (trans. by Samuel Morgan) | ( EurActiv.de) | – – After the attacks carried out on women in Cologne on New Year’s Eve, the German government wants to act quickly and tighten the asylum law. Meanwhile, verbal and physical violence against migrants has escalated. EurActiv Germany reports. The events that unfolded in […]