US politics

Maybe that Imperial Presidency Idea wasn’t so Great: The Coronavirus Reveals that America Long Since Fell Apart

Chicago (Special to Informed Comment) – If you were asked three months ago, when news of the novel Coronavirus we now call Covid-19 was just emerging from China, which rich country in the world was the most defenseless against a global viral pandemic, would you have said anything but the United States? The Coronavirus crisis […]

Epidemics

Italy Coronavirus Deaths Pass 10,000: How Austerity and Anti-Immigrant Politics Created Europe’s Worst Crisis

Conn M. Hallinan

( Foreign Policy in Focus) As the viral blitzkrieg rolls across one European border after another, it seems to have a particular enmity for Italy. The country’s death toll has passed China’s, and scenes from its hospitals look like something out of Dante’s imagination. Why? Italy has the fourth largest economy in the European Union, […]

Campaign Finance

A Civil Rights Issue: Less than 1% of Americans Provide most Money for Political Campaigns

OtherWords

By By Chiraag Bains | – ( Otherwords.org) – Less than 1 percent of the population provides most of America’s campaign funds. It looks nothing like the rest of us. By Chiraag Bains | March 17, 2020 Ten years after Citizens United, our elections are awash with money from mega-donors and corporations. They drown out […]

Donald Trump

Why have America and Saudi Arabia Bonded for Decades? Can you Say ‘Oil,’ Children?

Middle East Monitor

By Essam Abdul Shafi | – ( Middle East Monitor) – With its inherent connection to the religion of Islam as the Custodians of the Holy Mosques in Makkah and Madinah, Saudi Arabia’s origins and characteristics were reflected by US policy towards the Kingdom from its foundation. American missionaries based their efforts on providing social, […]

Climate Crisis

US Nat’l Security State Tilted at War on Terror Windmills when Real Threats — Climate and Pandemic — were at Home

Andrew J. Bacevich

( Tomdispatch.com) – Americans are facing “A Spring Unlike Any Before.” So warned a front-page headline in the March 13th New York Times. That headline, however hyperbolic, was all too apt. The coming of spring has always promised relief from the discomforts of winter. Yet, far too often, it also brings its own calamities and […]

Donald Trump

In a Plague Year, Trump Ratchets up Tensions with Iran and Iraq

Reese Erlich

San Francisco (Foreign Correspondent) – While the world focuses on the coronavirus pandemic, tensions between the US and Iran are heating up. The two countries are engaging in tit-for-tat military attacks that threaten a wider war. In mid-March, Washington officials accused an Iran-allied militia of launching rockets at a US military base in Iraq, killing […]

Afghanistan

Trump boasted he “Obliterated” ISIS in Afghanistan; Then ISIS Massacred a Shiite Wedding Party

Brian Glyn Williams

By Brian Glyn Williams and Javed Rezayee | – Williams, Boston/Bamiyan. On November 13th yet another suicide bombing shredded the lives of people across the globe in a land whose seemingly endless conflict has once again been forgotten by many, if not most Americans. But, as devastating as that blast that took the lives of […]

Corruption

The Contango Tango: SecState Pompeo Pressures Saudis to Raise Gasoline Prices, Harming US Consumers

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had a phone call with Saudi crown prince Mohammed Bin Salman on Tuesday. So reports Sam Meredith at CNBC. Then the State Department issued a statement on Wednesday that said, “Secretary Pompeo and the Crown Prince focused on the need to maintain stability in global […]

Donald Trump

Trump trying to Bolster his Far Right Agenda with the Pandemic, but will it Expose his Utter Incompetence?

John Feffer

The Politics of the Coronavirus