US politics

The MAGA Golden Calf: The Christian Right’s dangerous Flirtation with Political Violence and Far-Right Extremism

By Matthijs Kronemeijer | – Toronto (Special to Informed Comment) – The November edition of First Things, a magazine of the Christian Right, features a lengthy statement from a group of theologians called Evangelicals and Catholics Together. The church friend who spontaneously sent me a link indicated that the statement is about Christian citizenship and […]

Conspiracy Theories

The Courts have been the Last Bastion of Sanity in Polarized America, but what if they Go MAGA too?

Tomdispatch

By Andy Kroll | – ( Tomdispatch.cm ) – For about a week in the summer of 2018, I caught an early-morning train from Washington, D.C., to the Albert V. Bryan federal courthouse in the suburb of Alexandria. Located a short drive from George Washington’s estate at Mount Vernon, that courthouse serves the Eastern District […]

Christianity

Churches Are Breaking the Law by Endorsing in Elections, Experts Say. The IRS Looks the Other Way

ProPublica

By Jeremy Schwartz and Jessica Priest | – Co-published with The Texas Tribune ( ProPublica) – Six days before a local runoff election last year in Frisco, a prosperous and growing suburb of Dallas, Brandon Burden paced the stage of KingdomLife Church. The pastor told congregants that demonic spirits were operating through members of the […]

China

Death Knell for Big Carbon? Globally, All New Electricity Demand was Met by Renewables in first 1/2 of ’22, with Fossil Fuels Flat

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – In the first half of 2022, there was no increase in the world’s use of fossil fuels, and all new electricity demand was met by renewables. The world is nearing a tipping point, estimated by the International Energy Agency to come in 2025, after which all new electricity demand will […]

Afghanistan

A Different World is Possible: From Yemen War to Afghan Starvation, Our Tragedies are Exacerbated by Letting the US Military-Industrial Complex Run Wild

Peter G. Prontzos

Vancouver (Special to Informed Comment) – Right now, we have more than enough knowledge, wealth, and the capacity to create a just and prosperous world, but we are nowhere near realizing this dream. One reason is that we are constantly told about so-called “scarcities”, and how expensive it would be actually to help people and […]

Authoritarianism

Invasion of the Mind Snatchers: How to Combat the GOP Election Denialists’ Plot to Subvert Democracy

Dan Dinello

Chicago (Special to Informed Comment) – In the 1978 movie Invasion of the Body Snatchers, an alien fungal spore infection takes over the minds of susceptible people, growing into pods that duplicate their bodies and transforming them into pod people — mindless authoritarian monsters that want to control America. A remake of the 1956 movie […]

Donald Trump

The Stochastic Ex-President: How Trump set up the Pelosis for Attack

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – President Joe Biden noted Friday evening — concerning the assailant who fractured Paul Pelosi’s skull with a hammer in the Pelosi home in San Francisco — “that the same chant was used by this guy that they have in custody that was used on January 6, the attack on the […]

African-Americans

With his Dangerous Antisemitism and Racist Stereotypes, Ye has made himself a MAGA Patsy

H. Scott Prosterman

Oakland, Ca. (Special to Informed Comment) – Kanye West, who now goes by just “Ye,” has transformed himself from a global rap and fashion icon, into a useful idiot for Donald Trump and the MAGA movement. What he did not realize is that rich, powerful white men like Trump are routinely forgiven their racism by […]

Neoliberalism

Still the Other America: The Scandal of Poverty in the Richest Nation on Earth

Liz Theoharis

( Tomdispatch.com ) – Ours is an ever more unequal world, even if that subject is ever less attended to in this country. In his final book, Where Do We Go From Here?, Reverend Martin Luther King wrote tellingly, “The prescription for the cure rests with the accurate diagnosis of the disease. A people who […]