Elephant in the echo chamber
Since Donald Trump won a second term as US president last year and, with the help of Elon Musk, set about slashing the American federal government and sacking officials on the basis of personal...
Category: USA
There’s a genocide going on
Last Saturday in the British media I saw two articles, one on the BBC News site by a writer whose name I didn’t notice (on a second look, it’s their North America correspondent, Anthony...
The need for a representative academia
Last week the BBC’s File on 4 ran a feature on affirmative action, the American academic policy of taking aspects of an applicant’s background, including their race, into account when awarding university places. This...
Well, you did mention the guns
The other day I was reading a discussion on a forum I belong to, and someone mentioned that her husband had bought her a handgun the day they married. The discussion quickly moved on...
Who will be criminalised in the post-Roe USA?
Last week a draft of a ruling by the conservative majority on the US Supreme Court was leaked to the American news site Politico (PDF of the document itself here) which indicated that the...
Carrier indemnity must stay
In the most recent episode of the BBC tech series Click, it was revealed that the new US president Joe Biden is seeking to repeal the law that indemnifies “big tech” from what people who use their services say.
Who is, and who isn’t, a terrorist?
Earlier this week a mob of Donald Trump’s supporters, whipped up by Trump’s baseless claims of ‘fraud’ in last November’s presidential election, invaded the houses of Congress in Washington, DC, with the apparent help...
Riots don’t start; people start them
There is a video going round on Twitter of the American representative (from Hawaii) Tulsi Gabbard responding to a question about the Indian prime minister’s role in the 2002 Gujarat pogrom, in which hundreds...
What kind of violence is this again?
Every time there is a prominent mass shooting in the US (or elsewhere, but it’s usually the USA), you can bet that there will soon appear a white feminist with access to the mainstream...
Public interest?
So, last week the British ambassador to the USA resigned after Donald Trump wrote tweets denouncing him after his emails were leaked, thought to have been done by a Brexiteer mole who is out...
Why birthright citizenship should be defended
Last week it was announced that Donald Trump favoured ending the automatic American citizenship of anyone born in the USA, which a number of conservative politicians claimed was constitutional although it clearly violates the...
Who gets believed?
Recently a lot of people have been retweeting a tweet by one Amanda Brown Lierman, “political & Organizing Director for @theDemocrats” (not sure if she means the whole party or a local branch of...
Teenage boys do know rape is wrong
In the debate over whether the conservative American judge Bret Kavanaugh is fit to serve as a Supreme Court judge, an accusation has emerged that when in high school, he held down and groped...
A lesson they’ll never forget
Every time there’s a mass shooting in the United States, the anti-gun-control lobby insist that the right way to stop such incidents is for there to be more guns rather than less; that the...
Look after your health, and fight for your healthcare
Earlier today Erica Garner, the daughter of Eric Garner who was choked to death by New York police for illegally selling cigarettes in 2014 (one of a series of unarmed Black Americans, mostly men,...
If in doubt, blame Putin
Last Sunday there was a Nick Cohen article in the Observer about Russian influence and how, for example, Russian “dark money” is suspected of funding the Leave campaign now that it appears Arron Banks...
No, the Vegas shooter wasn’t a terrorist. Get over it.
Last week a white man shot dead 59 people who were attending a country music show in Las Vegas from the window of his hotel room at the Mandalay Bay hotel/casino. Already people have...
Trump, Clinton and a fair voting system
There’s a claim that has been repeated a lot on social media by former Hilary Clinton supporters (the graphic on the right posted to Twitter by Victoria Brownworth being an example) that Trump won...
The electronics ban: malice or stupidity? Protectionism or security?
Yesterday, the Trump administration announced that ‘large’ electronic items such as tablets and laptops were to be banned from US-bound flights on some airlines, all based in the Arab world or Turkey, from airports...
Short memories
One of the signs that you’re getting older is that you start to become aware that there are adults who weren’t even born when you became an adult, or at least don’t remember the...