US politics

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – When he was in the House of Representatives, Mike Pompeo bothered Hillary Clinton half to death over the deaths of the US ambassador to Libya and three colleagues in 2012. Since Clinton was not in charge of military operations, nothing that happened there was attributable to her and almost everything […]

Artificial Intelligence

Do Robot Generals dream of Deceased Humans?

Michael T. Klare

( Tomdispatch.com ) – With Covid-19 incapacitating startling numbers of U.S. service members and modern weapons proving increasingly lethal, the American military is relying ever more frequently on intelligent robots to conduct hazardous combat operations. Such devices, known in the military as “autonomous weapons systems,” include robotic sentries, battlefield-surveillance drones, and autonomous submarines. So far, […]

Climate Crisis

As Party of Climate Denial Meets, Wildfires Rage and Hurricanes Target Gulf Coast

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – One of the speakers at the Republican National Convention on Monday evening was Nikki Haley, formerly Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations, who helped usher the U.S. out of the Paris climate accords and who slammed Bernie Sanders’ Green New Deal. Haley when pressed will admit that the climate is […]

Far Right

Fed Prosecutors Target Steve Bannon’s Murky Non-Profit: Was his White Nationalism just a way to Get Rich off the Rubes?

ProPublica

by Yeganeh Torbati | – ( ProPublica ) – Near the end of a lengthy indictment detailing fraud allegations against Stephen Bannon, former Donald Trump campaign CEO and chief strategist and his associates, federal prosecutors reveal that they intend to seize the assets of a murky nonprofit organization Bannon launched in 2017 to promote “economic […]

Far Right

Explaining Nikki Haley’s Racism toward Palestinians

Juan Cole

Reprinted from 05/16/2018 when Haley was US ambassador to the UN and was regularly bashing Palestinians US Ambassador to the United Nations Nimrata “Nikki” Singh Randhawa Haley on Tuesday walked out of the chamber when the Palestinian ambassador began to speak. Palestine, like the Vatican, has non-member observer state status at the UN. You’re not […]

Christianity

Why does Donald Trump appeal to so many Evangelical Christians?

The Conversation

By Emma Long | – “He’s following the radical left agenda, take away your guns, destroy your second amendment, no religion, no anything, hurt the Bible, hurt God … He’s against God,” President Donald Trump told supporters during a recent trip to Ohio. Trump was speaking about Joe Biden, the Democrat challenger for the White […]

Democratic Party

Biden’s long foreign-policy record signals how he’ll reverse Trump, rebuild old alliances and lead the pandemic response

The Conversation

By Klaus W. Larres | – Even without a flashy virtual Democratic National Convention to formally introduce his presidential campaign, Joe Biden would be well known worldwide. He was U.S. president Barack Obama’s second-in-command for eight years and sat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for decades, chairing it for several years. Yet for all […]

Pentagon

Cluster bombs once against Vietnamese people and still in use today

Anne-Ruth Wertheim

( Joop) – On 4 March 1971 our train pulled in to Paris’s Gare du Nord station. My then husband Ab van Kammen and I were going to spend a few days in the city. We had left our three daughters with various friends, packed our suitcases and caught the train. It would not just […]

Democratic Party

How in the World did Americans make even a Pandemic Partisan? The Virus doesn’t Care

The Conversation

By Andrea Robbett and Peter Hans Matthews | – Politics can divide even friends and families. When this happens, we like to tell ourselves that the explanation lies in honest differences in values and preferences. From this standpoint, friends from different political parties won’t really disagree, for example, about the number of workers displaced in […]