Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Rep. Deb Haaland (D-NM) will be president-elect Joe Biden’s nominee to head the Department of the Interior. She is the first Native American to head the department, and her appointment is full of ironies. The Department, formed in 1849, includes the Bureau of Indian Affairs and has a long history […]
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History
Prehistoric Arabia Felix: As Humans exited Africa 120K years ago, they headed into Green Nefud
By Richard Clark-Wilson | – Humanity originated on the African continent at least 300,000 years ago. We know from fossil evidence in southern Greece and the Levant (modern-day Israel) that some early members of our species expanded beyond Africa around 200,000 years ago, and again between 120,000 to 90,000 years ago. They likely travelled through […]
Trump doesn’t Understand History any more than he Understands Epidemics
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Trump has a long history of proclaiming that he understands things better than the people who are experts in those things. When Dr. Robert Redfield, the head of the Centers for Disease Control, testified to Congress that mask-wearing is even more effective against Covid-19 than a vaccine is likely to […]
What was the Battle of Belleau Woods, the Slain Marines at which Trump called “Losers” and “Suckers”?
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Jeffrey Goldberg at the Atlantic reported yesterday on what he was told by four members of Trump’s entourage about the president’s 2018 visit to France. He had been scheduled to visit the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery near Paris, but it was raining and he made excuses. Goldberg’s sources told him that […]
The Hate Lobby: Teachers slammed for Teaching objectively about Islam and the Arab World
Susan H. Smith | – ( Waging Nonviolence ) – As Muslim and Arab students join their classmates in heading back to school this fall, the 19th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terror attacks weighs on their minds. It’s a time of perennial blame and shame, a time when classmates and teachers hold them unjustly […]
Presidents have a long history of condescension, indifference and outright racism towards Black Americans
By Stephen A. Jones qnd Eric Freedman | – The fury over racial injustice that erupted in the wake of George Floyd’s killing has forced Americans to confront their history. That’s unfamiliar territory for most Americans, whose historical knowledge amounts to a vague blend of fact and myth that was only half-learned in high school […]
How the Failures of Great Powers at the Versailles Peace Conference Set the Stage for Today’s anti-racist Uprisings
( The Conversation) – The racism that is now the target of protest across the globe is rooted in the tragic choices of leaders seeking to roll back change a century ago. Nearly all historians now agree that at the end of World War I, the choice to return to an imperialist world order by […]
Elon Musk may have been Joking, but the Flaky Theory that Aliens built the Pyramids is Faintly Racist
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Egyptian scientists and archeologists replied in a level-headed but firm way to billionaire Elon Musk’s tweet that aliens built the pyramids. It isn’t clear whether Musk was just joking around, though he sometimes talks about the possibility that advanced aliens are watching us, and thinks it statistically possible that alien […]
Columbus didn’t represent Italy, and he Killed and Enslaved Americans, and we Don’t need his Statues
Chicago (Special to Informed Comment) – Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot ordered the removal of two statues of Christopher Columbus after police and protesters clashed last week. The confrontation at the navigator’s monument in Grant Park resulted in injuries to both officers and demonstrators. According to NBC News, Chicago Police Department officials confirmed that the gathering […]