Far Right

Chicago (Special to Informed Comment) – Using behemoth-sized vehicles as weapons, truckers shut down Canada’s capitol city Ottawa and blocked several bridges to the United States, including the Ambassador Bridge responsible for a quarter of the trade — 360 million dollars per day — between the United States and Canada. Car manufacturers including Toyota and […]

Authoritarianism

Beer Hall Putsch 2.0: Republican Nat’l Committee Channels their inner Hitler in defending Capitol Insurrectionists

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Republican National Committee’s censure of Representatives Liz Cheney (R-WY) and Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) slammed the two for “participating in a Democrat-led persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse” and of “utilizing their past professed political affiliation to mask Democrat abuse of prosecutorial power for partisan purposes.” The […]

censorship

Banned Books Should Be Required Reading

Olivia Alperstein

( Otherwords.org ) The people who want to ban Maus or The 1619 Project are the ones who need to read them. By Olivia Alperstein | February 2, 2022 In January, a Tennessee county school board voted unanimously to ban Maus, a graphic novel by Art Spiegelamn about his parents’ experience in Auschwitz, from school […]

Arab Americans

Islamophobia and the Capitol Insurrection: How the FBI Ignored White Radicals While Spying 24/7 on Muslim Americans

Juan Cole

This is my new column at Tomdispatch.com . After you give it a read, do visit the link for the original to see Tom Engelhardt’s incisive introduction. ( Tomdispatch.com ) – Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson excused one of the leaders of the extremist Oath Keepers organization implicated in the January 6th insurrection by describing […]

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 […]

Far Right

White Terrorism: Behind the 11 Oath Keepers charged with sedition are many more who have been trained by the US military

The Conversation

By Mia Bloom and Sophia Moskalenko | – The leader of the Oath Keepers militia, Stewart Rhodes, must stay behind bars pending trial for his alleged role in the storming of the Capitol, a judge ruled on Jan. 26, 2022. While this means authorities can keep tabs on the whereabouts of Rhodes – and presumably […]

Counter-Terrorism

The Pentagon We Don’t Think About: A New Perspective on the Department of Homeland Security

Tomdispatch

By Andrea Mazzarino | – ( Tomdispatch.com ) – A relative of mine, who works for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) compiling data on foreigners entering the United States, recently posted a curious logo on his Facebook profile: a white Roman numeral three on a black background surrounded by 13 white stars. For those […]

Authoritarianism

Facebook Hosted Surge of Misinformation and Insurrection Threats in Months Leading Up to Jan. 6 Attack, Records Show

ProPublica

By Craig Silverman, ProPublica, Craig Timberg, The Washington Post, Jeff Kao, ProPublica, and Jeremy B. Merrill, The Washington Post | – Co-published with The Washington Post The Insurrection The Effort to Overturn the Election ( ProPublica ) – Facebook groups swelled with at least 650,000 posts attacking the legitimacy of Joe Biden’s victory between Election […]

al-Qaeda

Bin Laden and Trump: Two Bookends to America’s Imperial Decline

Foreign Policy in Focus

By Walden Bello | – The end of 2021 and the beginning of a new year is a convenient time to take stock of the causes of America’s decline. This past year saw both Washington’s inglorious exit from Afghanistan after 20 years in the country that had served as the launching pad for its direct […]