US politics

By Danny Sjursen | – (Tomdispatch.com) – In March 1906, on the heels of the U.S. Army’s massacre of some 1,000 men, women, and children in the crater of a volcano in the American-occupied Philippines, humorist Mark Twain took his criticism public. A long-time anti-imperialist, he flippantly suggested that Old Glory should be redesigned “with […]

Donald Trump

Back to 1924: Trump mulls adding Pure anti-African Racism to Visa ban, in Addition to anti-Muslim Hate

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Nicole Narea at Vox reports that Trump is considering adding some of Africa’s most important countries to his visa ban, in a transparent attempt to reduce African immigration to the United States. What is it about Africans, you might wonder that bothers Trump? Yomi Kazeem at Quartz adds that Trump […]

Donald Trump

Corporate Media Blackout: Americans need to Hear from Iranians about Life Under Sanctions and Trump’s Attack

Foreign Policy in Focus

Here are a few illuminating and emotionally resonant pieces by real Iranians on life under sanctions, the brutality of war, and the recent crisis.

Corporate Surveillance

Did Saudi prince Bin Salman personally Hack Jeff Bezos’s Phone, Vacuuming up Secrets? What about Jared Kushner?

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – We’ve long known that Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’s phone was hacked. Large amounts of data were taken off of it, including intimate photographs and evidence of a romantic affair, which then showed up in The National Enquirer. The tabloid’s publication of this private material led to Bezos’s divorce and the […]

Pentagon

Why the Pentagon never Wins Wars any More but Needs Bigger and Bigger nearly trillion-dollar Budgets

Tomdispatch

By Mandy Smithberger | – (Tomdispatch.com) – Call it a colossal victory for a Pentagon that hasn’t won a war in this century, but not for the rest of us. Congress only recently passed and the president approved one of the largest Pentagon budgets ever. It will surpass spending at the peaks of both the […]

Congress

US Public on Trump: Throw the Bum Out, He’s a Failure on Iran, Health Care

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – A new CNN poll done in mid-January (and reported by Jennifer Agiesta) finds that 51 percent of Americans favor the conviction and removal of Donald J. Trump as president. Only 45 percent disagree. 53 percent of Americans think he does a rotten job as a president. As George Conway pointed […]

African-Americans

A Dream Denied: Black Americans mostly left behind by progress since Dr. King’s death

The Conversation

By Sharon Austin | – On Apr. 4, 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, while assisting striking sanitation workers. Back then, over a half century ago, the wholesale racial integration required by the 1964 Civil Rights Act was just beginning to chip away at discrimination in education, jobs and public […]

prison reform

Indelible Legacy: Or How This Became a Gitmo World

Tomdispatch

Karen J. Greenberg and Joshua Dratel | – ( Tomdispatch.com ) – In January 2002, the Guantánamo Bay Detention Facility in Cuba opened its gates for the first 20 detainees of the war on terror. Within 100 days, 300 of them would arrive, often hooded and in those infamous orange jumpsuits, and that would just […]

Donald Trump

The U.S. and Iran are Having a Huge Food Fight in Iraq after Trump assassinated Soleimani

The Conversation

By Bamo Nouri | – When thousands of anti-government protesters returned to Iraq’s streets on January 10, they were expressing anger at the explosion of foreign interference in their country’s affairs in early 2020. “Keep your war away,” one banner read, referring to the escalation of US-Iranian tensions in early January following the US assassination […]