US politics

By Karen J. Greenberg | – ( Tomdispatch.com) – These past few months, it’s grown ever harder to recognize life in America. Thanks to Covid-19, basic day-to-day existence has changed in complicated, often confusing ways. Just putting food on the table has become a challenge for many. Getting doctors’ appointments and medical care can take […]

Donald Trump

Trump Touts “Ending the Pandemic” as 1 American Dies every 107 Seconds and Stock Market Nosedives

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Bruce Y. Lee of Forbes reports that a couple of days ago, the Trump White House put out a press release listing the administration’s scientific achievements. Number one on the list was “Ending the Pandemic.” The Nazi genocidal maniac Adolf Hitler said, “Die Breite masse eines volkes fällt einer grosse […]

Christianity

Are Evangelical Christians finally disappointed in Trump?

The Conversation

By Stewart Clem | – It has long been taken for granted that the majority of evangelical Christians in the United States will vote for Donald Trump. That may well be the case. But there are recent signs that fewer evangelicals will support Trump this time around than in 2016. In an August 2020 poll […]

Central Intelligence Agency

Ending Regime Change – in Bolivia and the World

Medea Benjamin and Nicholas J.S. Davies

( Code Pink) – Less than a year after the United States and the U.S.-backed Organization of American States (OAS) supported a violent military coup to overthrow the government of Bolivia, the Bolivian people have reelected the Movement for Socialism (MAS) and restored it to power. In the long history of U.S.-backed “regime changes” in […]

Acidification of Oceans

The Black Hole of Depressions: Doing nothing about Climate Emergency could cost more than all the Wealth in the World

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – A study in Nature Communications has found that if you add in variability to calculations of the impact of climate change, the upper range of the damage it could do to property is $563 trillion.* That is in the worst case scenario where the world does virtually nothing to stop […]

Christianity

No, Donald Trump didn’t save Christianity: He is about White Evangelical Nationalism

The Conversation

By Tony Keddie | – It’s yet unknown how U.S. President Donald Trump’s attempts to position himself as the Christian candidate of choice will influence Christian voters in the United States — and how Democrats’ attempts to speak to Christians may sway previous Trump voters or those not publicly declaring their intentions. ‘Republican Jesus: How […]

Bush

The Republican Party’s 2-Decade-Long March toward Hungarian and Turkish-Style Illiberalism

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – A study by Swedish political scientists at the University of Gothenburg’s V-Dem Institute has found that the US Republican Party has moved far to the right since 2000, and no longer looks very much like the Christian Democrats in Germany or the Tories in Britain, or the Liberal Democratic Party […]

Displaced and Refugees

American War Crime: Trump’s Child Separation at the Border violates the Rome Statute, Majorly

Everett Wohlers

Boise, Idaho (Special to Informed Comment) – As a retired military lawyer, I have more than a passing familiarity with international humanitarian law. When I saw the reports beginning in 2017, first of the forced separation of children from parents on our southern border, with no prospect of near-term reunification, and more recently of the […]

Development

When it Comes to the Pandemic, those he called “Shithole” Countries have run Rings around Trump

John Buell

Southwest Harbor, Maine (Special to Informed Comment) – Asked recently what he might do differently in managing the Covid19 pandemic the president responded, “Not much.” Little does he recognize or acknowledge the successes of and lessons to be learned from countries he has contemptuously labeled “shitholes.” What is lost to public health from this scorn […]