Republican Party

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Roughly 1,264,000 US soldiers have died in all the wars this country has ever fought. A new simulation by the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School predicts that if all the states completely reopened today and all Americans ceased all social distancing measures, a million people would die in this country […]

Donald Trump

Unionize! Trump has coerced Workers at Covid-19 Hot Spot Meat Packing Plants into Front Lines

John Buell

Southwest Harbor, Me. (Special to Informed Comment) – Should we be surprised that Smithfield[s pork processing plant in Sioux Falls, South Dakota was a hotspot for the Covid19 virus? No, and here is another no brainer. There are many such hotspots among meat processing plants around the US. How we handle such facts will affect […]

Donald Trump

How Trump’s ICE sentenced an Acquitted Iranian Academic to Months-long Detention without Trial, and to Covid-19

ProPublica

By Yeganeh Torbati | – (ProPublica) – As the coronavirus spread this spring, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials shuttled Sirous Asgari between detention sites and eventually housed him in a central Louisiana prison, where he recently tested positive for the virus. Now, a federal magistrate judge has recommended that he be kept behind bars because […]

Donald Trump

Like Twenty-One 9/11s: Our 2020 Pandemic is “The Trump Virus”, just as 1918’s was “Spanish Flu”

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The “Spanish Flu” did not originate in Spain, but Spain had been neutral in WW I and so the Spanish press was uncensored, since the government was not worried about public morale during hostilities. The most lurid accounts of the disease, which was unusually lethal and went on to kill […]

China

The Coronavirus and Geo-Politics: Trump’s Xenophobia and Weapons of the Weak

Abdullah al-Ahsan

Istanbul (Special to Informed Comment) – The coronavirus pandemic is not over yet and anyone hardly knows when and how it will end, but many observers of international affairs are already expressing their views on the subject. The current situation is very worrisome and everyone wants to get out of it as soon as possible. […]

Donald Trump

Trump threatened to pull US Security Umbrella from Saudi if it didn’t raise Oil Prices to Help US Frackers

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – On April 2, the Republican Party more or less joined the Organization of Petroleum Exporting States Plus (OPEC+). That is the upshot of reporting by Timothy Gardner, Steve Holland, Dmitry Zhdannikov, and Rania El Gamal for Reuters that Trump threatened de facto Saudi ruler crown prince Mohammed Bin Salman with […]

Donald Trump

Why are white supremacists protesting to ‘reopen’ the US economy?

The Conversation

By Shannon Reid and Matthew Valasik | – A series of protests, primarily in state capitals, are demanding the end of COVID-19 lockdown restrictions. Among the protesters are people who express concern about their jobs or the economy as a whole. But there are also far-right conspiracy theorists, white supremacists like Proud Boys and citizens’ […]

Donald Trump

The Assassin-in-Chief Comes Home

Tom Engelhardt

( Tomdispatch.com) – “Be assured of one thing: whichever candidate you choose at the polls in November, you aren’t just electing a president of the United States; you are also electing an assassin-in-chief.” So I wrote back in June 2012, with a presidential election approaching. I was referring then to the war on terror’s CIA […]

Donald Trump

Stop Saying more have died from Coronavirus than in Vietnam: US War Killed a Million There

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The rash of headlines blaring that the coronavirus has now killed more than died in the Vietnam War betrays an incredible amnesia and national tunnel vision that takes the breath away. Implicitly, these comparisons are with the 58,220 US military personnel who died fighting in Vietnam. But somehow the over […]