US politics

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – When we think about Florida, we may think about flamingos. But in the Ron DeSantis regime, the state bird ought to be the ostrich. The Tampa Bay Times reports that the governor this week signed legislation that would make the term “climate change” disappear from state web sites and would […]

Donald Trump

The Forever Wars, MAGA and the Loneliness of Anger

Andrea Mazzarino

( Tomdispatch.com) – An acquaintance who hails from the same New Jersey town as I do spends his free weekends crawling through the woods on his stomach as part of a firearms training course, green camouflage paint on his face and a revolver in his hand. He considers this both a way to have fun […]

Authoritarianism

Trump’s Dangerous ‘State of Exception’: SCOTUS must not Allow Presidential Immunity

Andrew Kolin

Hamburg, NY (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – Carl Schmitt wrote in Political Theology (1922) “sovereign is he who decides on the state of the exception.” What Schmitt meant in using the word “exception” is that in a specific historical timeframe a sovereign can suspend law in the context of a declared state of emergency. […]

Displaced and Refugees

Lindsey “Dr. Strangelove” Graham, Critic of Putin’s Atrocities, Urges Nuking of Gaza’s Civilians

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina let his inner genocidal maniac loose on Sunday, defending Israel’s total war on Palestinian civilians in Gaza, and he appeared to urge the nuking of Gaza. He said on NBC, “When we were faced with destruction as a nation after Pearl Harbor, fighting the […]

Courts

Donald Trump and O.J. Simpson: Testing the Limits of Justice

Tomdispatch

By Robert Lipsyte ( Tomdispatch.com ) – It was the jokes about Trump’s rumored flatulence in the courtroom that pushed me toward despair. And don’t think it was disgust with the subject matter either. After all, I’ve lived with teenagers and I wasn’t all that surprised by yet another Trump-inspired trivialization of a critical civic […]

Donald Trump

Top Ways MAGA and Right Wing Zionism Converge, and Why Smotrich is Embracing Trump

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Going back to the late nineteenth century, Zionism has had a complex and storied history, and there have been many strains of the ideology. Some early Zionists did not insist on colonizing Palestine, while others did (and colonizing it was the word they used). All agreed that the Jewish religion […]

Education

The Right is weaponizing Antisemitism to Distract from Israel’s Atrocities and Smear Campus Protests

Tomdispatch

By Helen Benedict ( Tomdispatch.com ) – Helicopters have been throbbing overhead for days now. Nights, too. Police are swarming the streets of Broadway, many in riot gear. Police vans, some as big as a city bus, are lined up along side streets and Broadway. Outside the gates of the Columbia University campus, a penned-in […]

Anti-intellectualism

“Intifada” in Arabic just means Uprising or Mass Protest; it is used for the Jewish Warsaw Uprising

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – A key feature of American bigotry toward people from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), and toward Muslims more generally, has been the demonization by journalists, politicians and interest groups of ordinary, everyday Arabic words. Arabic words have a proud and positive history in the English language. Consider a […]

Democratic Party

Hubert Humphrey Redux? Biden is Risking Election and Country with his Embrace of Netanyahu’s War

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – CNN reports ominously this week that “Biden is actually 11 percentage points behind Trump among young voters 18-34 in a head-to-head match in a CNN poll conducted by SSRS and released over the weekend.” CNN continues that 71% of Americans disapprove of his handling of the Gaza campaign! That rises […]