Culture

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The great actor and great humanitarian Mark Ruffalo apologized on Twitter last week for asserting that Israel was committing “genocide” toward the Palestinians, saying that the accusation was inaccurate, inflammatory and disrespectful and he had thought better of it. He also implied that such language was related to anti-Semitic hate […]

Entertainment

As Boteach comes for Dua Lipa, has Tactic of Smearing People as anti-Semites for Backing Palestinian Human Rights jumped the Shark?

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Orthodox Rabbi Shmuely Boteach has come after the brilliant, Grammy-award-winning Kosovar-British pop star Dua Lipa with an ad in the New York Times accusing her of anti-Semitism for supporting Palestinian rights. She vigorously denied the charge and denounced the ad. She should also sue for libel. Boteach is a huge […]

Books

Mrs. Hemingway, Israel, and the Palestinians

Shalom Goldman

Middlebury, Vt. (Special to Informed Comment) – In the current PBS series on Ernest Hemingway’s life and work, Martha Gellhorn, the journalist and novelist who was the third of Hemingway’ four wives, is sympathetically and vividly featured. But one important, perhaps defining, aspect of her life is glossed over. Similarly, in the 2012 HBO movie […]

Books

Winning the War for Earth: Kim Stanley Robinson’s subversive new Novel Rejects Doomism and Imagines a Hopeful Solution to the Climate Emergency

Dan Dinello

Chicago (Special to Informed Comment) – In the wake of a killer heat wave that slaughters millions, eco-terrorism spreads across the globe and capitalism ruptures in Kim Stanley Robinson’s science fiction novel that envisions a climate crisis scenario of the next thirty years. Despite violence, ecological calamity and a super-depression, The Ministry for the Future […]

Books

An Egyptian woman writer who dared: the Nawal El Saadawi I knew

The Conversation

By Omnia Amin | – Throughout the Middle East and beyond, the name Nawal El Saadawi is not one that can be received with indifference. During her lifetime and even after her passing on 21 March 2021, the Egyptian author, physician and activist evokes intense feelings that range from love and respect to hatred and […]

Featured

Celebrating our Declaration of Independence from Covid with Poetry of Omar Khayyam

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – President Biden on Thursday expressed the expectation that the vaccination of the US population will have proceeded to the extent by July 4 that we can look forward to small gatherings of friends and family then. The calculation is that when 70% of the population is inoculated, the virus will […]

Culture

How Spanish Can Help Us Survive Viral Times: A Journey into the Heart of a Language We Need Now More Than Ever

Ariel Dorfman

“Una nación bajo Diós, indivisible, con libertad y justicia para todos.” ( Tomdispatch.com) – When Jennifer López shouted out that last line of the Pledge of Allegiance in Spanish during Joe Biden’s inauguration ceremony, like so many Spanish-speaking Latinos in the United States I felt a sense of pride, a sense of arrival. It was […]

Donald Trump

Can the Super Bowl end the Toxic season of Trumpism in Sports?

Juan Cole

By Robert Lipsyte | – ( Tomdispatch.com ) – Overwhelmed by the intertwined plagues of Covid-19 and Trumpism, sports didn’t stand a chance in 2020. No wonder I’m weirded out by the strange, metaphorical moments of that last disastrous year and the first days of this one. To mention just three among so many: Dr. […]

Democratic Party

Poet Amanda Gorman’s take on love as legacy points to youth’s power to shape future generations

The Conversation

By Heather Lawford, Heather L. Ramey and Jessica Riddell | – National youth poet laureate Amanda Gorman’s recitation of “The Hill We Climb,” at Joe Biden’s presidential inauguration in the United States captured the attention of a nation and people globally. Gorman highlighted the power of poets in our current sociopolitical context to speak unique […]