History

Why Putin’s Denial of Ukrainian Statehood and Israel’s Denial of Palestinian Statehood are Crimes against History

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – In his incendiary speech on Ukraine on Monday, Vladimir Putin alleged that Ukraine does not really exist, that it is an artificial construct of the Communist period, crafted by Vladimir Lenin. He declared, “Ukraine never had a tradition of genuine statehood.” When I heard that, it reminded me of the […]

Cold War

America’s Disastrous 60-Year War: Three Generations of Conspicuous Destruction by the Military-Industrial Complex

William J. Astore

( Tomdispatch.com ) – In my lifetime of nearly 60 years, America has waged five major wars, winning one decisively, then throwing that victory away, while losing the other four disastrously. Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq, as well as the Global War on Terror, were the losses, of course; the Cold War being the solitary win […]

censorship

Banning ‘Maus’ only exposes the significance of this searing graphic novel about the Holocaust

The Conversation

By Biz Nijdam | – A school board in Tennessee voted unanimously in favour of removing the graphic novel Maus by Art Spiegelman from its Grade 8 language arts curriculum in January. Maus is based on interviews with Spiegelman’s father, Vladek Spiegelman, a Polish Jew and Auschwitz survivor, and won a Pulitzer Prize in 1992 […]

censorship

The Real Obscenity is that anti-Nazi Books like “Maus” are banned by McMinn County, TN

H. Scott Prosterman

Oakland, Ca. (Special to Informed Comment) – Objection to teaching Critical Race Theory (which is anyway not taught at the K-12 level) and school boards banning books are evil Siamese Twins. Both arise from fear of knowledge, truth and candid assessment. Both are motivated by a desperation to preserve an old order and suppress the […]

Archaeology

Israeli Archeologists find Christian Ring with Image of Christ as Shepherd in Shipwreck from era of Constantine

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – A marine unit of the Israel Antiquities Authority diving off the ruins of the ancient city of Caesarea Maritima has announced two spectacular finds in the form of two shipwrecks. One was from the Muslim Mamluk era, around 1400. The other was an early fourth-century Roman ship from Italy. The […]

Central Intelligence Agency

Yes, America overthrew the Democratically Elected gov’t of Iran in 1953 and Ray Takeyh is wrong on the History

Fariba Amini

Newark, Del. (Special to Informed Comment) – It is likely that, if the elected government of Iran’s Dr. Mohammad Mossadegh had stayed in power, the Middle East or at least Iran would look very different now. But, in history, we cannot reach satisfactory conclusions based on ‘ifs‘. We have to consider only the facts and […]

African-Americans

Lincoln’s Invention of Thanksgiving was all About how Black Lives Matter

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Thanksgiving Day, as is well known, was an invented tradition arising from the Civil War, promoted by Abraham Lincoln and his successors as a myth to unite the divided country. It doesn’t actually go back to the Pilgrims. There had been many Thanksgiving Days in the nineteenth century, at a […]

Archaeology

Pandemic History: The Great Plague of Justinian in the 500s AD was a Black Death that Shaped the Century before Islam

contributors

Research News of the University of Cambridge | – ‘Plague sceptics’ are wrong to underestimate the devastating impact that bubonic plague had in the 6th– 8th centuries CE, argues a new study based on ancient texts and recent genetic discoveries. The same study suggests that bubonic plague may have reached England before its first recorded […]

Africa

Dune – a prophetic tale about the environmental destruction wrought by the colonisation of Africa

The Conversation

By Oli Mould | – Director Denis Villeneuve’s most recent sci-fi epic is the latest attempt to tell the story of Frank Herbert’s acclaimed 1965 novel, Dune. The film is set millennia in the future when the galaxy is ruled by a class of family Houses. Each house battles for control over the most valuable […]