Donald Trump

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Even before the nation-wide demonstrations that have racked the nation and led to arrests in 17 cities, over the wrongful death at the hands of a Minneapolis policeman of George Floyd, the situation of African-Americans in this country was cratering because of the pandemic and its associated economic Depression. Some […]

African-Americans

Trump’s ‘When the looting starts, the shooting starts’ is Classic Fascism, Classic Racism

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – “Between 18 and 20 December 1922 Turin Fascism unleashed a 3 day terror campaign on a recalcitrant anti-Fascist labour movement.” So informs us Antonio Sonnessa.* Turin (Torino) was a site of resistance to Fascism. It had a powerful labor union, dissident newspapers, a Communist Party (Antonio Gramsci was there and […]

Donald Trump

Sadistic or Crazy? Trump is cutting Food Stamps in the Midst of Pandemic Depression

Jill Richardson

( Otherwords.org ) – Tens of millions of us are out of work. Why on earth is Trump trying to cut food aid? In some ways, this horrible pandemic has brought out the best in humanity. Where I live, neighbors are helping neighbors. A friend who cleans houses for a living says about half of […]

African-Americans

Top 6 Reasons Authorities are Cracking down Hard on Black Protesters while Treating White Supremacist Reopeners with Kid Gloves

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – My social media feeds have been full of comparisons between the treatment by police of Reopener mobs, some of whom invaded the Michigan state house while fully armed with assault weapons, and the treatment of protesters in Minneapolis regarding the killing of George Floyd by a policemen who kept his […]

Afghanistan

Will our Post-Pandemic Forever Wars be Fought at a Social Distance?

Danny Sjursen

( Tomdispatch.com) – Covid-19, an ongoing global human tragedy, may have at least one silver lining. It has led millions of people to question America’s most malignant policies at home and abroad. Regarding Washington’s war policies abroad, there’s been speculation that the coronavirus might, in the end, put a dent in such conflicts, if not […]

China

Trump’s ‘Uncreative Destruction’ of the U.S.-China Relationship

John Feffer

( Foreign Policy in Focus ) – Economists like to think of the wreckage caused by stock market downturns, widespread bankruptcies, and corporate downsizing as “creative destruction.” As it destroys the old and the dysfunctional, the capitalist system continually spurs innovation, much as a forest fire prepares the ground for new growth. Or so the […]

Afghanistan

On Memorial Day: How the US Lost its “Battle of Aqaba” to the Coronavirus

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – On July 6, 1917, Auda Abu Tayy led his Howeitat tribesmen in a successful attack on the Ottoman port of Aqaba in what is now Jordan but was then the Ottoman Empire. The Arabs of the Hejaz or Western Arabia and the Transjordan had allied with the British to revolt […]

Donald Trump

Trump’s Little Big Horn: In the War on the Coronavirus, we Needed an Eisenhower; We got Custer

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – If Trump were actually a commander-in-chief in the war on Covid-19 instead of playing one on TV, he’d be less like General Dwight D. Eisenhower than like General George Armstrong Custer. Eisenhower defeated the military forces of the Third Reich on May 8, 1945, having already dispatched those of the […]