US politics

In the beginning of the internet back in the late 1980s and early 1990s when you for the first time had large and contentious discussions online at bulletin boards like Usenet, attorney Mike Godwin noticed that the longer a discussion went on, the more likely it was that someone would make a Hitler comparison. Some […]

Poverty

Seattle Approves Tax on Amazon, Starbucks and Big Firms to Tackle Homelessness

TeleSur

(TeleSur) Seattle is the third U.S. region with highest number of homeless people, but Amazon and Starbucks think the move is hostile toward them. The Seattle city council approved a new “head tax” to its largest businesses, such as Amazon and Starbucks, to help fund homeless emergency services and affordable housing, and companies are not […]

Pentagon

Blowback Machine: How our forever Wars are opening the Gates of Hell

Tom Engelhardt

( Tomdispatch.com) As I was putting the finishing touches on my new book, the Costs of War Project at Brown University’s Watson Institute published an estimate of the taxpayer dollars that will have gone into America’s war on terror from September 12, 2001, through fiscal year 2018. That figure: a cool $5.6 trillion (including the […]

Donald Trump

Gearing Up for the Third Gulf War: a Future Cataclysm between US, Israel, Saudi and Iran?

Michael T. Klare

( Tomdispatch) With Donald Trump’s decision to shred the Iran nuclear agreement, announced last Tuesday, it’s time for the rest of us to start thinking about what a Third Gulf War would mean. The answer, based on the last 16 years of American experience in the Greater Middle East, is that it won’t be pretty. […]

Donald Trump

What Trump’s torching of Iran deal says about US commitment to nuclear security

Scott L. Montgomery

(The Conversation) President Donald Trump pulling the U.S. out of the Iran nuclear deal flies in the face of hundreds of inspections that showed Iran was meeting its end of the bargain. It’s a move that many leaders in the international community opposed, including all other parties to the deal – France, Germany, the U.K., […]

Donald Trump

Kelly’s “Family Separation” recalls Slave Era practice of Selling Parents down the River

Juan Cole

John Kelly, White House chief of staff, is an immigrant-hating bigot, as demonstrated by a long series of Draconian statements and measures that would have embarrassed most normal people into a lifetime vow of silence in their wake. Kelly bizarrely defended Confederate slave drivers of the 1860s as having lived at a time before the […]

Corruption

Russian Firm That Paid Michael Cohen also hired Trump Lawyer Kasowitz

Justin Elliott

(ProPublica) The news on Tuesday that the same shell company that Michael Cohen, a longtime personal lawyer for Donald Trump, had used to pay $130,000 to porn star Stormy Daniels had also received about $500,000 in 2017 from a firm linked to a Russian oligarch set off a frenzy of commentary on Twitter and cable […]

Iran

Why does the American Right hate, despise and abhor Iran so Much?

Steven Hurst

Via The Conversation | – – Now Donald Trump has finally backed out of the Iranian nuclear deal, the rest of the world is trying to understand the thinking that went into his decision. High up the list of factors is a longstanding American unease about Iran in general. But while most Americans don’t like […]

Donald Trump

Even though we keep Bombing Weddings, Americans can’t See the extremist in the Mirror

Tom Engelhardt

They are the extremists. If you need proof, look no further than the Afghan capital, Kabul, where the latest wave of suicide bombings has proven devastating. Recently, for instance, a fanatic set off his explosives among a group of citizens lining up outside a government office to register to vote in upcoming elections. At least […]