US politics

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 […]

Anti-intellectualism

College Administrators are falling into a tried and true Trap laid by the Right

The Conversation

By Lauren Lassabe Shepherd, University of New Orleans | – Interrogations of university leaders spearheaded by conservative congressional representatives. Calls from right-wing senators for troops to intervene in campus demonstrations. Hundreds of student and faculty arrests, with nonviolent dissenters thrown to the ground, tear-gassed and tased. We’ve been here before. In my book “Resistance from […]

Donald Trump

Trump blew up the Iran Nuclear Deal, unleashing Tehran — Can Biden Fix it?

Bob Dreyfuss

By Bob Dreyfuss ( Tomdispatch.com ) – One, erratic and often unhinged, blew up the U.S.-Iran accord that was the landmark foreign policy achievement of President Obama’s second term. He then ordered the assassination of a top Iranian general visiting Iraq, dramatically raising tensions in the region. The other is a traditional advocate of American […]

Donald Trump

The Decline and Fall of the American Empire

Tom Engelhardt

( Tomdispatch.com) – Let one old man deal with two others. I turn 80 in July, which makes me just over a year-and-a-half younger than Joe Biden and almost two years older than Donald Trump. And, honestly, I know my limits. Yes, I still walk — no small thing — six miles a day. And […]

Apartheid

US House awards Israel $26 Billion so it can go on Killing or Wounding a Palestinian Child every 10 Minutes

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The US House of Representatives voted $26 billion for Israel on Saturday to reward it for its ongoing war crimes against Palestinians. Some 58 members voted against the measure, including 37 Democrats. It was the House of Representatives’ most decisive vote of confidence in genocide since the Indian Removal Act […]