US politics

US spent $2.261 Trillion on Afghanistan War, in which ~240,000 Have Died; We could have Greened Half the Grid Instead

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Costs of War Project at Brown University has just brought out a new report on Afghanistan. The September 11, 2001 attacks were launched from Khost and Qandahar in Afghanistan by al-Qaeda, though it is not clear that this organization of Arab expatriates informed their Taliban hosts of what they […]

Immigration

The Real Trauma at the Border: Hundreds of Trump’s Separated Children Still can’t Find their Families

Michael Slager

Chicago (Special to Informed Comment) – Media outlets consistently describe flight from Central America and Mexico as a “crisis,” suggesting that migrants’ proximity to our national space is a problem for us, not for them. Fleeing from violence back home and enduring possible assault on their journey here are often construed as threats to the […]

Displaced and Refugees

Biden to reverse Trump’s White Supremacist, Sadistic near-ban on Refugees, but US still Lags, Sweden, Germany other OECD Countries

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – About one quarter of one percent (0.25 percent) of the US population consists of refugees — some 838,000. This minuscule number was too much for the white supremacist Trump administration, which drastically cut back refugee admissions from an average of 70,000 to 80,000 per year earlier in this century to […]

Displaced and Refugees

People escaping Violence have a Right to Seek Asylum: Stop Calling it a “Border Crisis”

OtherWords

By Rachel Pak | – ( Otherwords.org ) – Over the last several weeks, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has reported a rise in the number of migrant children seeking refuge in the United States. With the increase, the federal government’s capacity to process and shelter migrant children has been stretched, leading to children being […]

Guns

Are mass shootings an American epidemic?

The Conversation

By Lacey Wallace | – The U.S. has suffered yet another mass shooting, with a deadly attack in a FedEx facility in Indianapolis. This was the fifth mass shooting in five weeks, including a shooting at a supermarket in Boulder, Colorado that took the lives of 10 people on March 22 and just days earlier, […]

Authoritarianism

Social Media and the Spread of Global Hate

John Feffer

( Foreign Policy in Focus ) – Social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter helped right-wing populists take power. Can they now help rein them in? By John Feffer | April 14, 2021 One insidious way to torture the detainees at Guantanamo was to blast music at them at all hours. The mixtape, which included […]

Epidemics

Science also Wants Jim Jordan to Shut his Mouth– it isn’t Just Rep. Maxine Waters

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Ohio Republican congressman Jim Jordan chomped on to Dr. Anthony Fauci on Thursday like a rabid dog and spewed foam and spittle while prattling on about people being deprived of “liberty” during the pandemic. He also managed to show complete disrespect to the chairman of the session, Rep. Jim Clyburn, […]

Afghanistan

As the US plans its Afghan troop withdrawal, what was it all for?

The Conversation

By Jared Mondschein | – Unlike most US presidents, Joe Biden did not come to the White House with many fixed ideological positions. He did, however, come with fixed values. Chief among them is understanding how US policies impact working American families. In his nearly half century of experience in and around Washington, Biden was […]

Epidemics

Making Sense of a Viral Military: The Pentagon’s Flawed Response to the Pandemic

Tomdispatch

By Andrea Mazzarino | – ( Tomdispatch.com) – Herd immunity? Don’t count on it. Not if that “herd” is the U.S. military. According to news reports, at least a third of active-duty military personnel or those in the National Guard have opted out of getting the coronavirus vaccine. That figure, by the way, doesn’t even […]