Evangelicals using religion for political gain is nothing new. It is an American tradition

Evangelicals using religion for political gain is nothing new. It is an American tradition

Reverend William Barber writes: Last Friday the Trump 2020 campaign held its first rally at a megachurch. King Jesus international ministries, located outside of Miami, Florida, hosted the Evangelicals for Trump Coalition kick-off. Before boasting about his commitment to fight for the religious right’s agenda, the president bowed his head to receive prayers from prosperity preacher Paula White and other religious nationalists who offer spiritual cover for a corrupt and immoral administration. As a bishop of the church, I am…

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Shoshana Zuboff on surveillance capitalism

Shoshana Zuboff on surveillance capitalism

Harvard professor Shoshana Zuboff wrote a monumental book about the new economic order that is alarming. “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism,” reveals how the biggest tech companies deal with our data. How do we regain control of our data? What is surveillance capitalism?  

Pelosi and McConnell are playing high-stakes poker

Pelosi and McConnell are playing high-stakes poker

Benjamin Wittes and Quinta Jurecic write: We are now entering the third week of the staring contest between House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell over when the House of Representatives will deliver its articles of impeachment to the Senate, and under what circumstances. It’s time for some game theory. The standoff stems from McConnell’s proposal for how to proceed with the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump: Pelosi has accused McConnell of violating his oath of…

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Americans face political interrogation by U.S. border patrol before being allowed to return home

Americans face political interrogation by U.S. border patrol before being allowed to return home

The New York Times reports: Arriving at the United States border in Washington State early Sunday morning after a skiing trip to Canada, Negah Hekmati and her family were pulled out of line for further questioning by Customs and Border Protection agents. The family found itself in a room filled with fellow Iranian-Americans, many of whom had already been held for hours. The agents wanted to know the identities of Ms. Hekmati’s parents, siblings, uncles and cousins. Her husband, a…

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Qassem Soleimani’s pivotal role in propping up the Assad dictatorship

Qassem Soleimani’s pivotal role in propping up the Assad dictatorship

Al-Jumhuriya reports: In 2011, Soleimani was promoted to the rank of Major General. It was no accident that this came at the height of the Arab Spring, which the Iranian regime saw as an existential battle to preserve its regional power. The strategy conceived by Tehran to confront the threat of democratic revolution had Syria at its very center. Following the outbreak of Syria’s uprising in the spring of 2011, Iran swiftly determined to stand by Bashar al-Assad and secure…

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Why is Mitch McConnell so afraid of John Bolton?

Why is Mitch McConnell so afraid of John Bolton?

Neal K. Katyal and George T. Conway III write: The importance of John Bolton’s offer to testify if subpoenaed in the impeachment proceedings against President Trump cannot be overstated. In a single stroke, Mr. Bolton, the former national security adviser, elevated truth and transparency over political gamesmanship. The Senate must take him up on his offer, as well as demand the testimony of President Trump and the administration officials he has barred from testifying. The Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell,…

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Those financing climate disaster need to learn from indigenous wisdom

Those financing climate disaster need to learn from indigenous wisdom

Tara Houska writes: “This way of life is not primitive, it is not uncivilised,” I gestured to the image on the screen just above my head. It showed my longtime teacher, Dennis Jones, knocking manoomin (wild rice), the grain sacred to Anishinaabe people, into a canoe. I snapped that photo of us harvesting wild rice years back, before a new pipeline called Line 3 threatened to carry a million barrels of tar sands per day from Alberta through some of…

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Statistic of the decade: The massive deforestation of the Amazon

Statistic of the decade: The massive deforestation of the Amazon

Aerial view of deforested area of the Amazon rainforest. PARALAXIS/Shutterstock.com By Liberty Vittert, Washington University in St Louis This year, I was on the judging panel for the Royal Statistical Society’s International Statistic of the Decade. Much like Oxford English Dictionary’s “Word of the Year” competition, the international statistic is meant to capture the zeitgeist of this decade. The judging panel accepted nominations from the statistical community and the public at large for a statistic that shines a light on…

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What makes us unexceptional

What makes us unexceptional

Corey S. Powell writes: One of the greatest debates in the long history of astronomy has been that of exceptionalism versus mediocrity—and one of the great satisfactions of modern times has been watching the arguments for mediocrity emerge triumphant. Far more than just a high-minded clash of abstract ideas, this debate has shaped the way we humans evaluate our place in the universe. It has defined, in important ways, how we measure the very value of our existence. In the…

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Attacking Iran’s cultural sites would violate the Hague Cultural Property Convention

Attacking Iran’s cultural sites would violate the Hague Cultural Property Convention

John Bellinger writes: On Sunday, President Trump — as he is wont to do when criticized — doubled down on his threat to bomb Iranian cultural sites if Iran attacks the United States in response to the killing of Qassim Suleimani. Although the United States is not a party to the Rome Statue, which makes intentional attacks on historic monuments a war crime, the United States is a party to the 1954 Hague Convention on Protection of Cultural Property in…

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Secret Iranian spy cables show how Qassim Suleimani wielded enormous power in Iraq

Secret Iranian spy cables show how Qassim Suleimani wielded enormous power in Iraq

Murtaza Hussain writes: In the four decaes since the 1979 Iranian Revolution, few Iranian leaders have achieved the global profile attained by Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, the military commander killed in an American airstrike on Thursday. After the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Suleimani emerged as the United States’s most capable adversary in that country. His American counterpart at a key point during the occupation, Gen. David Petraeus, described Suleimani as “a truly evil figure” in a letter to Robert Gates,…

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Iran’s cyber attack on casino boss Sheldon Adelson provides lesson on strategy

Iran’s cyber attack on casino boss Sheldon Adelson provides lesson on strategy

Bloomberg reports: As the U.S. awaits possible retribution over a recent airstrike that killed a top general, there’s at least one American businessman who can attest, in detail, to what happened after he provoked Iran. In October 2013, Sheldon Adelson, the casino magnate and prominent supporter of conservative politicians and Israel, appeared on a panel in New York in which he suggested that the U.S. could send a message to Iran, regarding its nuclear ambitions, by detonating an American warhead…

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Suleimani appears almost as potent in death as he was in life

Suleimani appears almost as potent in death as he was in life

Robin Wright writes: The flag-draped coffin of General Qassem Suleimani was thronged by wailing mobs in Tehran on Monday, as the fallout from his death, in a U.S. air strike, accelerated with breathtaking speed. Iran has not seen such an outpouring of emotion on the streets since the death of the revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, in 1989. His successor, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, wept openly—as did other political leaders and military officers—as he prayed over the casket. Esmail Gha’ani, Suleimani’s…

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The outpouring of grief for Qassim Suleimani is Iran’s first act of retaliation

The outpouring of grief for Qassim Suleimani is Iran’s first act of retaliation

Azadeh Moaveni writes: The last time I wrote seriously about a war with Iran was in 2012. It had been an especially fraught year, with Iran’s Revolutionary Guards running naval exercises in the Persian Gulf, Israel and the United States conducting joint drills, and the safety of oil shipping lanes looking entirely unassured. Oil prices rattled skittishly, everyone suddenly monitored ships, and headlines speculated that Israel might attack Iran’s nuclear sites. My assignment was to consider “the day after” —…

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If the world ran on sunshine, it wouldn’t fight over oil

If the world ran on sunshine, it wouldn’t fight over oil

Last September, Bill McKibben wrote: We are sadly accustomed by now to the idea that our reliance on oil and gas causes random but predictable outbreaks of flood, firestorm and drought. The weekend’s news from the Gulf is a grim reminder that depending on oil leads inevitably to war too. Depending on how far back you want to stand, the possibility of war with Iran stems from a calculated decision by Tehran or its Houthi allies to use drones and…

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