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Archives for December 2020

China
The new geopolitics of China’s climate leadership

The new geopolitics of China’s climate leadership

Kevin Rudd

(China Dialogue) – The Paris Agreement’s five-year anniversary provides the perfect opportunity for China to demonstrate its confident, international policy activism on the environment, writes former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. Since 2014, China has embarked on a new era of confident, independent international policy activism under President Xi Jinping – the origins of which […]

Donald Trump
Time to Value our New Americans:  Trump Spent 4 Years Telling Monstrous Lies about Immigrants

Time to Value our New Americans: Trump Spent 4 Years Telling Monstrous Lies about Immigrants

Jill Richardson

( 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 […]

Democratic Party
How will Biden's Middle East -- and Iran -- be different from Trump's?

How will Biden’s Middle East — and Iran — be different from Trump’s?

Juan Cole

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 […]

Denialism
Pence, who backed Muslim visa Ban, gets Vaccine invented by Muslim Immigrants

Pence, who backed Muslim visa Ban, gets Vaccine invented by Muslim Immigrants

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Defeated vice president Mike Pence got the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine on Friday. Here is why he is a hypocrite. Pence served for four years in the Trump administration, which initiated a visa ban against Muslims. Although he had in 2015 called any such ban “unconstitutional,” he folded when Trump insisted on […]

Climate Crisis
How America’s Denialism– Elections, COVID, Climate — is Leading to its Downfall

How America’s Denialism– Elections, COVID, Climate — is Leading to its Downfall

John Feffer

( Foreign Policy in Focus ) – The refusal of tens of millions of Americans to recognize the election results is part of a much larger denialism — of COVID-19, of climate change, and U.S. decline. The presidential election wasn’t close. Joe Biden won the popular vote by more than 7 million votes, which translates […]

Germany
Germany backs major international green hydrogen project in Saudi Arabia

Germany backs major international green hydrogen project in Saudi Arabia

Clean Energy Wire

By Benjamin Wehrmann | – German steelmaker Thyssenkrupp will supply an electrolyser for a massive international green hydrogen project in Saudi Arabia with the capacity to produce up to 650 tonnes of the climate-neutral gas per day with wind and solar power installations. The German economy ministry (BMWi) announced that it will support the “Element […]

Desertification
Demand for meat is driving deforestation in Brazil – changing the soy industry could stop it

Demand for meat is driving deforestation in Brazil – changing the soy industry could stop it

The Conversation

By Angela Guerrero and Malika Virah-Sawmy | – Soy may have a pretty innocuous reputation thanks to its association with vegan food and meat alternatives. But don’t be fooled – crops of this pale legume are behind much of Brazil’s epidemic of deforestation. Since 2000, Brazil has doubled its total area of soy plantation to […]

Colonialism
Biden Pick, Native American Deb Haaland to head Dept. that once Vowed to "Civilize or Exterminate" her People

Biden Pick, Native American Deb Haaland to head Dept. that once Vowed to “Civilize or Exterminate” her People

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Rep. Deb Haaland (D-NM) will be president-elect Joe Biden’s nominee to head the Department of the Interior. She is the first Native American to head the department, and her appointment is full of ironies. The Department, formed in 1849, includes the Bureau of Indian Affairs and has a long history […]

Authoritarianism
How Trump's Authoritarian Playbook will Turn America into a Banana Republic

How Trump’s Authoritarian Playbook will Turn America into a Banana Republic

The Conversation

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 […]

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