(Special to Informed Comment) – On December 9, The Washington Post revealed interviews with American officials in Afghanistan who intentionally falsified facts regarding the 18-year conflict. In one of the interviews, Bob Crowley, a counterinsurgency adviser to U.S. military commanders in 2003, remarked that data “was altered to present the best picture possible.” While the […]
Trump as Jim Jones? How America drank the Kool-Aid
By James A. Haught Cults usually are one-man religions. A magnetic, dictatorial, dogmatic, demagogue draws throngs of followers and leads them into lala-land, sometimes dangerously. Jim Jones took 900 gullible adherents to cyanide suicide. David Koresh brought seventy Branch Davidians to fiery death. Shoko Asahara sent his Supreme Truth believers to plant nerve gas in […]
Australia Climate Crisis: Out-of-Control Mega-Fire raging across 740K Acres Smothers Sydney in Smoke
“We cannot stop these fires; they will just keep burning.”
Trump’s Anti-Climate Agenda Bolsters his Ambitions for “Freedom Gas”
By John Foster | – (Monitor) – When Washington dubbed American gas exports “Freedom Gas” this year, it signalled a new salvo in U.S. competition with Russia. The target behind the branding is Europe, the largest gas market outside North America. With a bonanza of gas from fracking, the U.S. aims to become the world’s […]
No Premature Burial for Academic Freedom: Speaking up in Ann Arbor
By Chandler Davis | – (Informed Comment) – Let me make a case for urgency of defense of academic freedom. I’m not addressing the whole University community. Surely there are some who don’t have any concern for academic freedom as the AAUP understands it. Some who think for example that it was honorable and right […]
Duke U. Faculty reply to Trump Dept of Ed. demand for Negative Teaching on Islam and Palestinians
Letter: 62 Duke faculty respond to Department of Education directive letter to the editor By Concerned Faculty October 3, 2019 | ( The Duke Chronicle) – We appreciate the recent statement on academic freedom from President Price and Provost Kornbluth following the US Department of Education’s investigation of the Duke-UNC Consortium for Middle East studies. […]
Greta Thunberg’s Generational J’accuse: It’s a Crime to Cause the Climate Crisis
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Greta Thunberg, in her speech to the United Nations General Assembly, let them have it.(See below.) Over a century ago, when authoritarian elements in the French officer corps trumped up a treason case against a Jewish officer, Alfred Dreyfus, novelist Émile Zola wrote an open letter to the president of […]
Pakistani Students, Activists are marching to combat Climate Crisis: “Can’t be Ignored”
By Atika Rehman | (The Third Pole) | – As students and climate activists get ready to march for the climate in Pakistan, Atika Rehman finds out why Pakistanis find it impossible to ignore climate change impacts any longer University students in Karachi [image courtesy: FridaysForFuture Pakistan] Does the Pakistani public care about the climate […]
Why did Trump’s Negotiations with the Taliban Fail?
By Hizbullah Khan | – (Informed Comment) – US President Donald Trump has decided to cancel a secret meeting at Camp David with the Taliban and called the peace talks “dead” immediately after the consensus had made on a draft deal. The Taliban has mounted violence as Trump announced the withdrawal of US troops from […]
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