racism

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Qur’an (sometimes spelled Koran), is one of great books in world history. Only a handful of works have been nearly so influential and widely read. The Bible, Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, the Analects of Confucius, and the Buddha’s Sutras are among the few books that rival it in that […]

African-Americans

We are George Floyd: How his Killing and COVID 19 made for an American Spring

Ellen Amster

Hamilton, Ont. (Special to Informed Comment) – George Floyd has ignited an “Arab Spring” in the United States. Like the now-fallen dictators of Egypt and Tunisia, the current American regime demonstrates that it does not serve the people. It consumes them. Trump’s America is a failed state. That’s why other countries rally in support; they […]

African-Americans

Trump wants to send Federal Troops to the States to Stop Dissent, but SCOTUS lets the South Suppress the Black Vote

John Buell

Southwest Harbor, Me. (Special to Informed Comment) – The pandemic has exposed more than just the inequities and vulnerabilities of our political economy. It has also exposed the deceit and hypocrisy in conservatives‘ periodic invocation of one of our nation’s most sacred constitutional principle, states’ rights. As we all learned in civics class, the US […]

African-Americans

Are White Supremacists Coming out for the Protests in Hopes of Provoking a Race War?

The Conversation

By Matthew Valasik and Shannon Reid | – As protests about police violence among black people continue and become more widespread across the U.S., certain individuals and groups have begun to stand out – including anarchists, agitators and members of a variety of far-right groups. With the country’s long history of racist killings, it may […]

Democracy

George Floyd and Mohamed Bouazizi: What Americans can Learn from Tunisia’s Arab Spring

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – In mid-December, 2010 in the small Tunisian town of Sidi Bouzid, a small drama unfolded that would change the world, and certainly would change Tunisia. Tareq Mohammed Bouazizi, a street peddler who had just bought $200 worth of produce to sell off a cart, was harassed by police for not […]

African-Americans

Remembering Big Floyd the Artist and Dreams of Transcendence, Dreams of Breathing Free

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – George “Perry” Floyd had the misfortune to become a symbol when he was killed by a Minnesota policeman after having been arrested for allegedly trying to pass a counterfeit twenty dollar bill (not usually a capital crime, and it is not clear that Mr. Floyd was aware). No one can […]

African-Americans

No, Racism isn’t in the Past, and isn’t Rare or Aberrant: Stop Romanticizing

Michael Slager

This painting by by Winslow Homer (1836 – 1910) is entitled “The Veteran in a New Field.” He painted it in 1865, not long after Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Union General Ulysses S. Grant. Lee’s capitulation marked the end of the American Civil War (1861 – 1865) and the death of the […]

Donald Trump

OK, Boomer: The Trump Administration’s Generational Lies Deepen America’s Fissures

Rebecca Gordon

( Tomdispatch.com ) – These days, teaching graduating college seniors has me, as the Brits would say in the London Underground, “minding the gap.” In my case, however, it’s not the gap between the platform and the train I’m thinking of, but a couple of others: those between U.S. citizens and our government, as well […]

Arab Spring

The Authoritarian Logic of Killing Protesters

David Faris

Chicago (Special to Informed Comment) – On October 9th, 2011, Egyptian army vehicles plowed into a Coptic Christian protest outside of the Maspero state television building in the capital city of Cairo, killing more than two dozen peaceful demonstrators. Less than a year after the Arab Spring came to Cairo and dislodged the country’s longtime […]