Left Politics

Oxford (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – Britain’s latest General Election held on 4th July was nothing short of a major political earthquake that put an end to 14 years of often tumultuous and chaotic Conservative rule. The Labor Party, led by Sir Keir Starmer, overturned a big Conservative majority of 80 seats in the […]

Featured

Recognizing Palestine: “In Darkest Episode of 21st Century … Spaniards were on the Right Side of History.”

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The announcement Wednesday that Spain, Ireland and Norway will recognize the State of Palestine diplomatically on May 28 is not unprecedented in Europe or in the world. In Europe, Sweden, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland and Iceland have all done so. Indeed, most countries recognize Palestine. The outliers were the […]

Authoritarianism

Kissinger and Walt Disney v. Salvador Allende: Who will win our Souls?

Tomdispatch

By Ariel Dorfman | – ( Tomdispatch.com ) – This year marks the anniversaries of two drastically different events that loomed all too large in my life. The first occurred a century ago in Hollywood: on October 16, 1923, Walt Disney signed into being the corporation that bears his name. The second took place in […]

Authoritarianism

American Inquisition: Field Notes from the Frontlines of the Government’s War on the Left

Tomdispatch

By Michael Gould-Wartofsky ( Tomdispatch.com) – “There must be some kind of way out of here…” As night fell over the South River Forest, the music festival was in full swing. Young and old swayed to the sounds of Suede Cassidy. Families gathered around the grill. Little ones frolicked in an inflatable bouncy house bedecked […]

Far Right

You’re all Palestinians Now: How Harsh Apartheid Policing is being Turned on Israeli Protesters

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Israel’s Apartheid state, having honed its instruments of repression against its occupied Palestinians, whom it keeps stateless and without rights, is now turning those tools on the Israeli public itself. Yesterday, Friday, buses full of Israeli protesters attempted to head to Huwwara near Nablus in the Palestinian West Bank to […]

censorship

Keeping Resistance Alive during McCarthyism: Chandler Davis and Academic Freedom at the University of Michigan

Alan M. Wald

Alan Wald, Steve Batterson and Peggie Hollingsworth | University of Michigan | – Making Michigan lecture series – Keeping Resistance Alive “In 1954, Chandler Davis was called to testify before the House Committee on Un-American Activities. His fellows on the stand were his colleagues Mark Nickerson and Clement L. Markert, and his student friends Edward […]

African-Americans

Was Charles Austin Beard a Racist Historian?

Richard Drake

( Counterpunch ) – Controversy about Charles Austin Beard began in 1913 when he published An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States. He turned thirty-nine that year. Until then, his books had appeared to widespread praise within the profession and to the benign neglect of the general reading public. A highly successful […]

Congress

Tlaib calls out “Progressive except on Israel,” and Wasserman Schultz inadvertently makes Her Point for Her

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Ursula Perano at the Daily Beast reports on the controversy among the Progressive Democratic Caucus in Congress over remarks on Wednesday by Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI). She attacked the syndrome of “progressive except on Israel” within her caucus and observed at an online seminar, “that among progressives, it has become […]

Afghanistan

That Time Gorbachev Announced Soviet Withdrawal from Afghanistan and US went on Building up Muslim Fundamentalists there Anyway, leading to 9/11

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Mikhail Gorbachev’s passing yesterday at age 91 is a good occasion to review some of the profound mistakes of the Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush presidencies regarding Afghanistan. Reagan-era officials refused to believe that Premier Gorbachev actually intended to pull Soviet troops out of Afghanistan, though Gorbachev came into […]