US politics

No, Racial Justice Protesters aren’t ‘Maoists’; Conservatives just aren’t Comfortable with Black Lives Matter

( Foreign Policy in Focus ) – In their effort to transform their discomfort with the current #BlackLivesMatter protests into a superficially sophisticated critique, right-wing “intellectuals” in the United States and Europe have latched onto a dubious historical analogy. When former congressman Newt Gingrich, the National Review’s David Harsanyi, Breitbart’s Joel Pollak, and other right-wingers […]

prison reform

Being convicted of a crime has thousands of consequences besides incarceration – and some last a lifetime

The Conversation

By Cynthia A. Golembeski | – At least 77 million U.S. adults have criminal records, including nearly 7 million currently in prison or jail or on probation or parole. Typically, more than 10,000 of the incarcerated leave prison and nearly 200,000 churn through jails every week. But because more than 64,000 inmates and workers have […]

Donald Trump

“Trump Heights”: Illegal New Israeli Squatter Settlement on Occupied Syrian Golan Approved

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Israel’s government has formally greenlighted a new squatter settlement on the Syrian Golan Heights, to be named for US president Donald J. Trump. Israel has has militarily occupied much of the Golan Heights since 1967 and which it has illegally stolen from Syria. The United Nations Charter, to which Israel […]

Inequality

Bailouts for Weapons Firms, Tent Cities for Vets: Covid Reveals U.S. Military Priorities

H. Patricia Hynes

Greenfield, Mass. (Special to Informed Comment) – On May 18, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) launched a Salvation Army-like charity drive asking the public for donations of money, food, and mobile phones to help an estimated 40,000 homeless veterans during the pandemic. More than one-half of all homeless veterans are African American and Hispanic, […]

Donald Trump

Trump’s Misinformed America is the Highest Stage of Post-Truth

Bahman Fozouni

Sacramento, Ca. (Special to Informed Comment) – No American president in memory has pursued his personal and public ambitions largely by willfully misinforming the American public on a daily, sometimes hourly, basis with his tweets and speeches. Indeed, Trump’s singular achievement has been his relentless effort to usurp and fill the void of political ignorance […]

Donald Trump

The Ostrich Policy: Trump ready to Kill Hundreds of Thousands to avoid bad Coronavirus Optics for Election

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Trump and Pence on Monday were busy trying to spread the Big Lie that the only reason the US coronavirus numbers are spiking is increased testing. Trump is embarrassed because our situation is so dire, and it is in some large part his fault. More and more of it will […]

African-Americans

Seattle’s BLM Autonomous Protest Zone and the Paris Commune of 1871: Anti-Capitalist Spirit still Lives

The Conversation

Oli Mould | – A new autonomous zone set up in Seattle by the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement bears some striking similarities with the Paris Commune of 1871. Despite its brutal ending, the seminal event in the French capital 150 years ago set the agenda for progressive urban politics and broader social justice movements […]

African-Americans

Tucker Carlson Rises to Defense of Confederates who Killed 360,222 Federal Troops, 100x more than Al-Qaeda

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Tucker Carlson is shedding advertisers the way a rattlesnake sheds his skin. He went full white supremacist some time ago, and has been carried at Fox News only because the channel’s owner, Rupert Murdoch, appears to be a throwback to the policies of white Australia, which restricted immigration to that […]

Pentagon

The Outpouring of Grief over George Floyd’s Death gave America a chance at Rebirth: Will we take it?

Nick Turse

( Tomdispatch.com) – They were relegated to the protest equivalent of a ghetto. Their assigned route shunted them to the far fringes of the city. Their demonstration was destined for an ignominious demise far from any main thoroughfare, out of sight of most apartment buildings, out of earshot of most homes, best viewed from a […]