Donald Trump

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Bassem Youssef was Egypt’s most famous comedian in the 2000s and until 2014. His weekly half-hour satire, “The Program,” skewered the government of president-for-life Hosni Mubarak in the run-up to the 2011 youth revolt. Mubarak was thin-skinned but did allow some comedians and pundits to blow off steam. He did, […]

Donald Trump

Twilight of the Pandemic? Bracing for a Surge of Trumpism or . . .

John Feffer

(Tomdispatch.com ) – I went to a birthday party recently. The celebrants greeted each other with hugs on the patio. After an outdoor barbeque dinner, we stood shoulder to shoulder around the island in the kitchen, eating cake from small paper plates. We sang “Happy Birthday.” Ordinarily, an event like that wouldn’t be worth noting, […]

Authoritarianism

Jim Crow and “Lost Cause” 2.0: Trump’s Big Lie and GOP Plot to Suppress the Vote

Dan Dinello

Chicago (Special to Informed Comment) – Big Lie propaganda, that the 2020 election was stolen, rewrites history and fuels the current Republican war on democracy. Similarly, Confederate Lost Cause propaganda incited a wave of anti-democratic laws and rewrote the history of the Civil War by asserting that slavery did not cause the War and that […]

Barack Obama

Top Ways Israel’s Netanyahu Torpedoed Mideast Peace and Harmed Israel and America

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – A step was taken by his rivals toward unseating long-serving Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on Wednesday when opposition parties all along the political spectrum from left to right formed a coalition of national unity. Ironically, that coalition only reached a majority in parliament by accepting for the first time […]

Authoritarianism

Flynn calls for Myanmar-Style Military Junta in U.S. – If he were Black, Brown or Muslim he’d be in Guantánamo

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Donie O’Sullivan at CNN reports that disgraced former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn called for a military coup, like the one in Myanmar, in the United States. He was speaking at a conference in Dallas on Saturday attended by QAnon and Big Lie election conspiracy theorists. O’Sullivan reports that a […]

Congress

Mitch McConnell, Shepherd of Shame: Taking Names for a New, Deeper Circle of Hades

H. Scott Prosterman

Mitch McConnell will go down in history as one of the most destructive men in American History. If obstructing all the positive legislation and court nominations of President Barack Obama wasn’t enough; if enabling all the horrors and cruelties of President Donald Trump wasn’t enough; if brazenly changing Senate rules to undermine . . . […]

Arab World

Why Jared Kushner’s ‘Abraham Accords’ did not produce Israel-Palestine Peace and are increasingly Irrelevant

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Jared Kushner/ Trump plan for Israel-Palestine had some basic premises. The first was that the U.S. could act punitively toward the Palestinians with no consequences. The second was that the Arab states were so afraid of Iran that they would throw the Palestinians under the bus and make an […]

Donald Trump

They’re Not Conservatives, They’re Extremists

John Feffer

( Foreign Policy in Focus ) – By mislabelling the radical members of the Republican Party “conservative,” the mainstream media gives them a veneer of respectability. By John Feffer | May 26, 2021 The House Freedom Caucus is routinely described as conservative, by its members, by the mainstream media, by Wikipedia. The caucus, which draws […]

Donald Trump

The Republican Party is the new American Communist Party: Pogo’s Revenge

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Republican Party has positioned itself to run against the Communist Party ever since the Russian Revolution in October, 1917. Never mind that there were never any American Communists to speak of– party membership peaked at 75,000 in the late 1940s. Republicans managed to find “Reds” everywhere, maybe even hiding […]