US politics

By Luis De la Calle | – After President Joe Biden took office on Jan. 20, 2021 without any violent incidents, many in the United States and worldwide breathed a sigh of relief. The respite may be brief. The ingredients that led an incensed pro-Trump mob to break into the Capitol and plant pipe bombs […]

Climate Crisis

The first thing we do, let’s kill all the Coal Plants: How Joe Biden can save the Planet

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – My title is from William Shakespeare’s Henry the VI. In the original, Dick “the Butcher” is speaking of ways to overthrow the king and improve the country, and he suggests killing all the lawyers first. Nowadays, carbon dioxide is the thing preventing us from improving the country. President Biden has […]

Joe Biden

Do Biden’s Foreign Policy Appointees signal new Cold Wars with Russia, China?

Danny Sjursen

( Tomdispatch.com) – Hard as it is to believe in this time of record pandemic deaths, insurrection, and an unprecedented encore impeachment, Joe Biden is now officially at the helm of the U.S. war machine. He is, in other words, the fourth president to oversee America’s unending and unsuccessful post-9/11 military campaigns. In terms of […]

Donald Trump

Trump targeted innocent Muslims with Visa Ban on phony pretext of ‘Terrorism,’ then unleashed real White Terrorism on Capitol

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Muslim visa ban that Trump got through on his third try, and in which the Supreme Court to its everlasting shame acquiesced, is no more. President Biden abolished it with a stroke of his pen on his first day in office. That isn’t enough. Congress needs to legislate explicitly […]

Books

The Hill we Climb: Amanda Gorman’s Inauguration Poem

contributors

Amanda Gorman | – ( Buy her forthcoming poetry collection via Penguin Random House.) The Hill We Climb When day comes we ask ourselves, where can we find light in this never-ending shade? The loss we carry, a sea we must wade We’ve braved the belly of the beast We’ve learned that quiet isn’t always […]

Donald Trump

The Hatred and Insurrection fomented by our first Internet-Troll President finally Drove him from Office

David Faris

Chicago (Special to Informed Comment) – In his perfunctory farewell speech, released on Tuesday many months after he had churlishly quit on the American people in their greatest hour of need, Donald Trump claimed that he and his band of inept rapscallions had come to Washington to “restore the allegiance of this government to its […]

Featured

Time for Biden to end the Forever Wars and bring Iran in from the Cold

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Although former president Trump claims to have avoided starting any new wars, he in fact put the US on a war footing in the greater Middle East, and significantly increased the number of US troops in the region. He tried to strangle Iran economically and assassinated one of its foremost […]

Democratic Party

How will Biden react to Putin arresting Navalny in Russia?

Nikola Mikovic

Belgrade (Special to Informed Comment) – While the US remains preoccupied with the upcoming Joe Biden inauguration, Russian opposition figure Alexey Navalny was detained at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport upon his return to Russia from Germany, where he had spent five months after he was allegedly poisoned with the nerve agent Novichok. A Moscow judge has […]

Joe Biden

The Rubble of Empire: Doctrines of Disaster and Dreams of Security as the Biden Years Begin

Rebecca Gordon

( Tomdispatch.com ) – How can you tell when your empire is crumbling? Some signs are actually visible from my own front window here in San Francisco. Directly across the street, I can see a collection of tarps and poles (along with one of my own garbage cans) that were used to construct a makeshift […]