Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – On Tuesday, Trump the Mad pardoned 4 Blackwater mercenaries who killed 14 Iraqi civilians, including a nine-year-old boy, with indiscriminate fire at Nisour Square in downtown Baghdad on September 14, 2007. The four were convicted at then VP Joe Biden’s insistence, and were serving jail terms. WaPo says, “Investigators for […]
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Donald Trump
Trump sent Feds to Portland, but will coddle White Supremacist militias who invaded Oregon State House
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Far right brown shirts, some armed with firearms or bear mace, invaded the Oregon state house in Salem on Monday. Most of them maskless and posing a pandemic danger to the state senators, they sought by threats of force to make the legislature lift covid-related restrictions. Journalists were assaulted, with […]
Trump aping Mideast Tinpot Dictators and raving about declaring Martial Law, which even Iran Prohibits
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – With Trump raving in White House meetings, prompted by the equally certifiable Michael Flynn, about declaring martial law, it sets an old Middle East hand like me thinking. In my part of the world, leaders declare martial law or a “state of emergency” at the drop of a helmet. And […]
2020 Began and Ended with Trump baiting Iran into War: Can we get through another Month without One?
By Ahmed Omar | – The single main story of the year has without a doubt been the coronavirus pandemic which has thus far claimed over 1.5 million lives around the world amid encouraging news about vaccine development. However it is now easy to forget that before this story became a near permanent fixture of […]
White House Partying like it is 2021, with a Covid 9/11 Death Toll Every Day
( Tomdispatch.com) – ‘Tis the season to be folly Fa-la-la-la-la, la-la-la-la Don(ald) we now our gay apparel, Fa-la-la-la-la, la-la-la-la!… It’s party time in the nation’s capital and the Christmas spirit reigns supreme, even if the Texas Republican Party does want to secede from the Union. I mean, who doesn’t? And hey, don’t you want to […]
Time to Value our New Americans: Trump Spent 4 Years Telling Monstrous Lies about Immigrants
( Otherwords.org ) – New data confirms what’s been true all along: Trump built his brand selling fear-mongering lies about immigrants and crime. By Jill Richardson | December 16, 2020 As Donald Trump leaves office, it’s worth remembering how he first launched his campaign: by calling immigrants “murderers” and “rapists.” This was outrageous then. And […]
How will Biden’s Middle East — and Iran — be different from Trump’s?
By Tony Walker | – Canberra policymakers will be conducting a root-and-branch reassessment of Australia’s foreign policy following Donald Trump’s defeat in the US presidential election and ahead of an incoming Democrat administration. Top of the list of items for review will be a leaden-footed China policy. Chinese trade reprisals for perceived Australian slights are […]
How Trump’s Authoritarian Playbook will Turn America into a Banana Republic
By Lena Surzhko Harned and Luis Jimenez | – Six weeks after the U.S. election, President Donald Trump had still not accepted defeat. This behavior is not typical in mature democracies. And it’s reminiscent of countries with what political scientists call “hybrid regimes” – nations that have elements of democracy but in practice are not […]
Hunger in America: Covid-19 and the Nightmare of Food Insecurity
( Tomdispatch.com ) – As autumn fades and winter looms, the dire predictions public-health experts made about Covid-19 have, unfortunately, proven all-too-accurate. On October 27th, 74,379 people were infected in the United States; less than a month and a half later, on December 9th, that number had soared to 218,677, while the 2020 total has […]