By Özlem Altan Olcay and Evren Balta | – Istanbul (Special to Informed Comment) – The perceived failure of the West in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, along with the current protests against racist police brutality in the United States, screened on TV channels across the world, have reignited one of the most widely […]
Michelle Obama: Donald Trump is Wrong President for the Job; it is What it Is
C-SPAN | “Former First Lady Michelle Obama addresses the 2020 Democratic National Convention: “Donald Trump is the wrong president for our country. He has had more than enough time to prove that he can do the job, but he is clearly in over his head. He cannot meet this moment. He simply cannot be who […]
Defund the Bloated U.S. Military
By Eric Stoner | – ( The Progressive) – The bold call by Black Lives Matter activists to defund police has profoundly reshaped the national conversation, but it is only the start of the movement’s sweeping vision for public safety. To reduce our reliance on policing and prisons, racial justice leaders are urging that resources […]
Federal Court Allows American Studies Association Boycott of Israel to Stand: Victory for BDS
( American Studies Association) – In a unanimous ruling, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit has affirmed the district court’s dismissal of the lawsuit filed against the American Studies Association (ASA), its executive director, and eight former ASA officers or committee members: Lisa Duggan, J. Kēhaulani Kauanui, Sunaina […]
On How those Army Bases were Named for Confederate Generals to Shore up Jim Crow Segregation
By Troy E. Mosley | – (Citizens against Intolerance) – Some 160 years ago, a swath of Americans intent on defending a lifestyle of profiting off of a race of people they believed should be subjugated into slavery, chose to take up arms against its fellow citizens. Today, members of the most diverse American military […]
Washington Irving, “Legend of the Arabian Astrologer”
Washington Irving, Tales from the Alhambra (New York: Lea and Carey, 1832). Legend of the Arabian Astrologer. IN OLD times, many hundred years ago, there was a Moorish king named Aben Habuz, who reigned over the kingdom of Granada. He was a retired conqueror, that is to say, one who having in his more youthful […]
The Curse of Casteism in a Plague Year: Rightwing Indian Gov’t AWOL as Lockdown devastates Poor, Dalits
By Sanjana Krishnan and Rahul Jambhulkar | – As we rose to another day of peaceful quarantine in the West, we received a message from India. It was an urgent plea to help 80 families of Dalit (ex-untouchable) daily wage earners in an urban slum in Nagpur city in Central India. The families had run […]
Exponential Growth: Bad in a Pandemic, Bad Economics if we Care about Climate and Mass Extinctions
By Chirag Dhara (The Hindu) – “Because of all we’ve done, the risk to the American people remains very low,” said Mr. Donald Trump on Feb. 26, 2020. About 50 Americans had contracted the virus by then. Today, merely seven weeks later, cases in the US have neared 500,000 and left 18,000 dead. As the […]
People are Dying: Why are We Waiting for Medicare for All?
By F. Douglas Stephenson (The Gainesville Sun)- An old social justice chant, “Why are We Waiting,” is sung to the tune of the beautiful and inspiring Christmas carol, “O Come All Ye Faithful.” The lyrics apply to the situation today: Even with the dangerous coronavirus pandemic, big insurance and big pharma continue opposing legislation for […]