US politics

Juneteenth celebrates just one of the United States’ 20 emancipation days – and the history of how emancipated people were kept unfree needs to be remembered, too

By Kris Manjapra, Tufts University | – The actual day was June 19, 1865, and it was the Black dockworkers in Galveston, Texas, who first heard the word that freedom for the enslaved had come. There were speeches, sermons and shared meals, mostly held at Black churches, the safest places to have such celebrations. The […]

Christianity

Patriarchy and Purity Culture Silence Evangelical, Southern Baptist Women amid Sexual Abuse Scandals

The Conversation

By Julie Ingersoll, University of North Florida | – A devastating yearlong investigation into the executive committee of the largest conservative evangelical denomination in the U.S., the Southern Baptist Convention, has documented widespread claims of sex abuse including accusations of rape, cover-ups and gross mistreatment of women seeking justice. In 2019 the Houston Chronicle and […]

Epidemics

My Pandemic in Three Acts: Dealing with the Disease that Never Seems to Leave Town

Tomdispatch

By Nina Burleigh | – ( Tomdispatch.com) – On New Years’ Eve 2019, Americans celebrated the advent of the roaring ‘20s with fireworks and champagne, amid ominous news alerts from China. Surely that virus would stay on the other side of the planet. I cringe at how entitled we felt then. Covid-19 has now wiped […]

Donald Trump

Why the Oath Keepers looks an Awful lot like al-Qaeda and Trump is its Usama Bin Laden

Juan Cole

Revised. Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Although the Congressional inquiry into the Jan. 6 insurrection is releasing new information about the ties between the White House and the insurrectionists, that the attack on the Capitol that day was a well-planned paramilitary operation was clear from Department of Justice indictments already released. Below, I revisit one […]

Guns

A Country Armed to the Teeth: And Strutting Toward the Apocalypse

Tomdispatch

By Robert Lipsyte | – ( Tomdispatch.com ) – The gun I carried on the streets of New York City in the late 1960s was a Beretta, similar to the pistol James Bond packed in the early Ian Fleming novels. It was a small, dark beauty that filled me with bravado. I was never afraid […]

Conspiracy Theories

What did the President Know and When did He Know it? Trump’s 7-Part Plan and the Insurrection

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – When the news of the burglary at the Democratic campaign headquarters in the Watergate building broke, it wasn’t initially clear that President Tricky Dick Nixon had ordered it. (He did, twice. Yes.) So for those too young to remember that dreary scandal, the question of “What did the president know […]

Central America

‘Open-air Prison’ in southern Mexico traps thousands of Migrants

Cronkite News Arizona PBS

By Taylor Stevens | Cronkite Borderlands Project – ( Cronkite News ) – TAPACHULA, MEXICO – The desperation here is palpable. It fills the stifling air as migrants line up in the hot sun outside the National Migration Institute in hopes of receiving an interview, their children close at hand and their visa applications tucked […]

Climate Crisis

Biden just declared Heat Pumps and Solar Panels essential to National Defense – here’s why and the Challenges Ahead

The Conversation

By Daniel Cohan, Rice University | – Solar panels, heat pumps and hydrogen are all building blocks of a clean energy economy. But are they truly “essential to the national defense”? President Joe Biden proclaimed that they are in early June when he authorized using the Defense Production Act to ramp up their production in […]

Asian-Americans

Ms. Marvel: Can a 16-year-old Marvel Superhero Change the Image of Islam in America?

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Marvel Cinematic Universe streaming superhero television show, Ms. Marvel dropped on Disney+ this week, and it is a revolution in the representation of Muslim Americans on television. The story revolves around a Pakistani-American 16-year-old girl from Jersey City who resents her strict and protective parents and wants to attend […]