History

The Wealthy also Cushioned themselves at Expense of Poor in Era of Black Death, as Boccaccio’s Decameron Shows

By Kathryn McKinley | – The coronavirus can infect anyone, but recent reporting has shown your socioeconomic status can play a big role, with a combination of job security, access to health care and mobility widening the gap in infection and mortality rates between rich and poor. The wealthy work remotely and flee to resorts […]

Culture

How the Plague Influenced Shakespeare

The Conversation

By Paul Yachnin | – Shakespeare lived his life in plague-time. He was born in April 1564, a few months before an outbreak of bubonic plague swept across England and killed a quarter of the people in his hometown. Death by plague was excruciating to suffer and ghastly to see. Ignorance about how disease spread […]

Epidemics

Thucydides’ Other War: His Chilling Account of the plague of Athens and What it can Teach us Now

The Conversation

By Chris Mackie | – The coronavirus is concentrating our minds on the fragility of human existence in the face of a deadly disease. Words like “epidemic” and “pandemic” (and “panic”!) have become part of our daily discourse. These words are Greek in origin, and they point to the fact that the Greeks of antiquity […]

censorship

That time America used to have Draconian Censorship of Just the sort Trump Dreams of

Tomdispatch

By Adam Hochschild | – ( Tomdispatch.com ) – Every month, it seems, brings a new act in the Trump administration’s war on the media. In January, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo exploded at National Public Radio reporter Mary Louise Kelly when he didn’t like questions she asked — and then banned a colleague of […]

Archaeology

In Ancient Greek Thought, Plagues Follow on Bad Leadership

Juan Cole

By Joel Christensen | – In the fifth century B.C., the playwright Sophocles begins “Oedipus Tyrannos” with the title character struggling to identify the cause of a plague striking his city, Thebes. (Spoiler alert: It’s his own bad leadership.) As someone who writes about early Greek poetry, I spend a lot of time thinking about […]

Colonialism

Juan Cole, “International Liberation and Nonviolent Noncooperation: Martin Luther King and Afro-Asia” (Video)

Juan Cole

The nonviolent activism of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. is associated in the minds of many primarily with the Civil Rights Movement against institutionalized racism in Jim Crow America. King was, however, a keen observer of decolonization and the awakening of colonized peoples in Afro-Asia to aspirations for self-determination. This anti-colonial perspective led to […]

Antisemitism

On the 75th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz: Remembering the Muslims who Rescued Jews

Mohammed Samaana

Belfast (Special to Informed Comment) – As the world marks the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, it is important to remember those who put their own and their families safety in jeopardy in order to save Jewish lives including Arabs and Muslims. The heroic acts made by Muslims in order to save Jewish […]

Antisemitism

Auschwitz 75 years on: preserving survivors’ voices and listening to those of their children

The Conversation

By Sara Jones | – In December 2019, four people were shot dead at a kosher market in New Jersey, a horrific knife attack was perpetrated at a rabbi’s home in a New York suburb, and antisemitic graffiti was daubed on a synagogue and several shops in north London. Despite what many might think, antisemitism […]

Donald Trump

Trump’s Killing of Gen. Soleimani evokes Dark Themes of Martyrdom in Shiite Islam

The Conversation

By Deina Abdelkader | – Gen. Qassem Soleimani, who promoted the religious and political influence of the Iranian regime across the Middle East with covert military operations, was an important figure in the Iranian government. But that’s not the only reason his targeted killing by the United States has elicited explosive grief and outrage in […]