US politics

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Donald Trump, Ted Cruz and other bigots on the far right are nothing new in American history. Rather, they remind us of the worst and most shameful detours of the American Republic in the past. From the mid-nineteenth century racial theory became prominent in European and […]

Anti-War Movement

America’s biggest enemy is our own American Exceptionalism

contributors

Bjarne Rostaing | (Informed Comment) | – – American Exceptionalism has an appealing patriotic buzz, though we owe the phrase to Josef Stalin, who was exasperated by American communists and their assumption of special rights and privileges. Manifest Destiny was the 19th century equivalent, and was created by a journalist to support war with Mexico. […]

Featured

Trump vs. the Founding Fathers on Muslims Coming to US

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – In his never-ending trolling of the American public, Donald Trump has now come out and urged banning Muslim immigration into or even entrance into the United States. Some of the below is revised from an earlier text Forbidding people from entering the United States on the […]

Barack Obama

Obama vs. Daesh/ISIL: Freedom is more powerful than Fear & We Refuse to take the Bait

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – President Obama addressed the nation on Sunday night, in an attempt to calm the public mood after the San Bernardino killers were tied to Daesh (ISIS, ISIL) — though the connection seems to spring merely from common radicalism and murderousness rather than any organizational tie. Obama […]

Christians

Roof, Dear and Tashfeen Malik: ‘Self-Radicalized,’ ‘Terrorism,’ ‘Lone Wolf’ and Double Standards

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Federal officials are now investigating the San Bernardino massacre as an “act of terrorism” rather than just workplace violence. But when Dylann Roof allegedly shot nine persons dead at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church on June 17, 2015, there was strong resistance on the part […]

Iraq

Beyond ISIS: Suicide by World War IV

contributors

By Andrew Bacevich | (Tomdispatch.com) |- – Introduction by Tom Engelhardt Let’s consider the two parties in Washington. I’m not referring to the Republican and Democratic ones, but our capital’s war parties (there being no peace party, of course). They might be labeled the More War Party and the Much (or Much, Much) More War […]

Featured

How the NRA is harming American Security: Mass Shootings as Serial Terrorism

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – As I write, the full story behind the heinous San Bernardino shootings, which left 14 dead and 17 wounded, is still not known. The names of the two shooters have been released, which may or may not be very pertinent to the incident. It may have […]

Featured

8,124 Murders by Firearm in US in 2014 vs. 29 (Equiv. 144) in UK

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Revised The United States continues to be peculiar in handing out powerful magazine-fed firearms to almost anyone who wants one and not requiring background checks on private purchases even if these are made at gun shows. 80% of civilian-owned firearms world-wide are in the US, and […]

Banking

After 2008 Wall Street Crash, did US White Working Class Drink itself to Death?

contributors

Barbara Ehrenreich | ( Tomdispatch.com) | – – The white working class, which usually inspires liberal concern only for its paradoxical, Republican-leaning voting habits, has recently become newsworthy for something else: according to economist Anne Case and Angus Deaton, the winner of the latest Nobel Prize in economics, its members in the 45- to 54-year-old age group […]