Donald Trump

Eyeing Iran as Weapons Market, Russia shoots down as “Ridiculous” Trump’s demand for Arms Embargo on Tehran

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Neoconservative wing of the Trump administration, which is dying to drag the United States into a war with Iran, suffered an embarrassing setback on Monday when its latest flimsy scheme crashed and burned. Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov called Washington’s scheme “ridiculous and irresponsible,” according to AP While the […]

Democracy

The 2020 uprisings, unprecedented in scope, join a long river of struggle in America

The Conversation

By Matthew Countryman | – The river was the metaphor that best captured “the long, continuous movement” of the black freedom struggle for theologian, historian and civil rights activist Vincent Harding. Harding, who had served as a speechwriter for Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., wrote in his groundbreaking 1981 study of African-American history, “There is […]

African-Americans

Trump wants to send Federal Troops to the States to Stop Dissent, but SCOTUS lets the South Suppress the Black Vote

John Buell

Southwest Harbor, Me. (Special to Informed Comment) – The pandemic has exposed more than just the inequities and vulnerabilities of our political economy. It has also exposed the deceit and hypocrisy in conservatives‘ periodic invocation of one of our nation’s most sacred constitutional principle, states’ rights. As we all learned in civics class, the US […]

Donald Trump

Get Your Very Own Donnie Bunker Doll: “Melania, is it Safe Yet?”

Paul Jamiol

(Jamiol’s World:

African-Americans

Are White Supremacists Coming out for the Protests in Hopes of Provoking a Race War?

The Conversation

By Matthew Valasik and Shannon Reid | – As protests about police violence among black people continue and become more widespread across the U.S., certain individuals and groups have begun to stand out – including anarchists, agitators and members of a variety of far-right groups. With the country’s long history of racist killings, it may […]

Christianity

I’m Outraged By Trump’s Church Photo-Op: A Nun Speaks Out

OtherWords

By Sister Karen M. Donahue | – (Otherwords.org) – As a Catholic sister, I think Trump should read his Bible, not pose with it. By Sister Karen M. Donahue | June 3, 2020 In the book of Jeremiah, the Hebrew prophet shares instructions from God about entering a place of worship. “Stand at the gate […]

Democracy

George Floyd and Mohamed Bouazizi: What Americans can Learn from Tunisia’s Arab Spring

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – In mid-December, 2010 in the small Tunisian town of Sidi Bouzid, a small drama unfolded that would change the world, and certainly would change Tunisia. Tareq Mohammed Bouazizi, a street peddler who had just bought $200 worth of produce to sell off a cart, was harassed by police for not […]

Authoritarianism

The rest of the world sees uprisings, not riots, in Trump’s US

Reese Erlich

(48hills.org) – One of Germany’s largest dailies ran the headline “This killer cop set America ablaze,” with a photo of the Minneapolis police officer who killed George Floyd. Protests in the United States, the article reported, looked like “scenes out of a civil war.” Bettina Gaus, political correspondent for the Berlin daily Die Tagezeitung, tells […]

Authoritarianism

Trump’s use of religion follows playbook of authoritarian-leaning leaders the world over

The Conversation

By Laura R. Olson | – It was a striking moment: Donald Trump, Bible in hand, posing for photos in an apparent moment of political theater made possible by the dispersal of protesters through the use of tear gas. The president’s visit to St. John’s Episcopal Church, known as “the Church of the Presidents,” came […]