Chicago (Special to Informed Comment) – Big Lie propaganda, that the 2020 election was stolen, rewrites history and fuels the current Republican war on democracy. Similarly, Confederate Lost Cause propaganda incited a wave of anti-democratic laws and rewrote the history of the Civil War by asserting that slavery did not cause the War and that […]
Archives for June 2021
A People’s Vaccine Against a Mutating Virus and Neoliberal Rule
( Nicolas J. S. Davies) – A recent Yahoo News/YouGov poll found that worries about the COVID pandemic in the United States are at their lowest level since it began. Only half of Americans are either “very worried” (15%) or “somewhat worried” (35%) about the virus, while the other half are “not very worried” (30%) […]
What the Ottoman Empire can teach us about the consequences of climate change – and how drought can uproot peoples and fuel warfare
By Andrea Duffy | – In the late 16th century, hundreds of bandits on horseback stormed through the countryside of Ottoman Anatolia raiding villages, inciting violence and destabilizing the sultan’s grip on power Four hundred years later and a few hundred miles away in the former Ottoman territory of Syria, widespread protests escalated into a […]
Capitol Insurrection in Jerusalem? Netanyahu Calls New Government a “Fraud,” calls for Massive Squatter Protests
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Bilal Daher reports at the Israeli newspaper Arab 48 that outgoing prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu addressed the Likud Party bloc in the parliament or Knesset on Sunday, alleging that the multiparty coalition that was formed to unseat him is the “greatest election fraud” . . . “in the history of […]
Why was there such Resistance to the (correct) theory of Aerosol Transmission of Covid-19?
Southwest Harbor, Maine (Special to Informed Comment) – Droplets or aerosols? This was the issue that gripped pandemic politics for months. The scope of the disease and the appalling number of lives at stake constituted one reason for the intensity of the conflict. Equally important was the fact that this was and remains at least […]
“Lethal Disregard:” UN report on Deaths of Migrants in Mediterranean goes too Light on Libyan, Italian Navies
Mt. Berry, Ga. (Special to Informed Comment) – The diplomatic language used in official human rights reports often fails to express the horrors that they reference. So it is with the May 2021 report issued by United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet: “Lethal Disregard: Search and Rescue and the Protection of Migrants […]
Our National Security Elite has China on the Brain: Does that really make us Safer?
( Tomdispatch.com ) – Let me start with my friend and the boat. Admittedly, they might not seem to have anything to do with each other. The boat, a guided-missile destroyer named the USS Curtis Wilbur, reportedly passed through the Straits of Taiwan and into the South China Sea, skirting the Paracel Islands that China […]
Israel, ‘Only Mideast Democracy,’ Criminalizes Journalism, arrests Al Jazeera Reporter for Covering E. Jerusalem; What is being Covered Up?
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Israeli police took another step toward criminalizing journalism on Saturday when they arrested al-Jazeera Arabic correspondent Givara al-Budeiri while she was covering a demonstration in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem marking the anniversary of the Naksa, the Setback. That term is how Palestinians refer to the 1967 […]
The human and material cost of Israel’s Heavy Bombardment of Civilian Cities in Gaza
By Ahmad Hwedi and Hani Aldrsani | – ( Middle East Monitor ) – Israel’s brutal military offensive against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip was launched on 10 May and lasted eleven days and nights. It ended with a simultaneous ceasefire mediated with the resistance factions. The steadfastness of the resistance surprised the Israeli […]