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 […]
Top 4 Reasons Trump is playing to Evangelicals by Demanding Church Reopening at cost of Mass Infection
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Trump on Friday attempted to declare church services “essential” and called for their reopening, threatening to overrule governors who begged to differ. Although he paid lip service to synagogues and mosques, he was obviously mainly interested in supporting his evangelical base. Trump has never been exactly what you would call […]
Double Whammy of Climate-Driven Monster Cyclone and Coronavirus hits Thousands in India, Bangladesh
Don’t get complacent: North America is also Vulnerable
The End of the Oslo Accords: Palestinians pull out of Agreements in face of Netanyahu’s Sudetenland Moment
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammed Shtayyeh announced after a cabinet meeting that his government will move to implement the end of Palestinian cooperation with Israel and the United States and its withdrawal from all agreements it had signed with them. The steps were announced Tuesday by President Mahmoud Abbas. Abbas had […]
Fundamentalist Pandemics: What Evangelicals and Khomeinists Could Learn From The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam
This essay by Juan Cole was originally published in Tomdispatch.com. See the original for a perceptive introductory essay by Tom Engelhardt. This spring, the novel coronavirus pandemic has raised the issue of the relationship between the blindest kind of religious faith and rational skepticism — this time in two countries that think of themselves as […]
Did Trump fire State Dept. Inspector to Protect Shady Arms Deal with Saudi Arabia?
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The mystery deepens. Late last Friday, Trump summarily fired the State Department Inspector General, Steve Linick. While in US law as it now stands, the president has the power to fire pretty much anyone in the executive, if he fired Linick as an act of retaliation for one of Linick’s […]
Iran et États-Unis: l’ironie d’une curieuse affinité
Introduction par Tom Engelhardt 19 mai 2020. Traaduit de l’américain par Jean Granoux Nous sommes dans un moment religieux étrangement viral. Récemment encore, une Maison Blanche dans laquelle peu de choses, y compris la mort d’Américains, comptent plus que le soutien des évangélicaux, a rejeté les directives initiales préparées par les Centers for Disease Control […]
Top 3 Ways Netanyahu’s New Gov’t in Israel is a Catastrophe Waiting to Happen
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Israel’s leaders have finally formed a government, after three elections that left the country in a political quagmire. The new government is a catastrophe in the following ways: 1. It will encourage Likud leader Binyamin Netanyahu to continue to dismantle Israeli democracy. He will seek to have the corruption charges […]
Omar Khayyam Day (5/18) in Lockdown: “My Diamond is your Ecstasy”
The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam: Quatrain of the Day For the earliest collection of verse attributed to Omar Khayyam see my just-published The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam: A New Translation from the Persian (NB: the poem above isn’t in this collection– there are lots of such anthologies, and Whinfield favored the late Indian manuscripts.) Here […]
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