US politics

In a disturbing development, the Associated Press has revealed emails in which former Indiana governor Mitch Daniels advocated banning the use of Howard Zinn’s text, “A People’s History of the United States” in the state’s educational systems. What’s troublesome is not dislike of a book but that Daniels seems to have been willing to misuse […]

Small protests were held in about 100 cities throughout the US on behalf of Trayvon Martin, the 17-year-old unarmed victim in a shooting incident in Florida whose armed killer was found not guilty this week. Some were demanding that the acquitted killer, George Zimmerman, be charged with depriving Martin of his civil rights. Martin’s parents […]

President Obama has spoken out on the Trayvon Martin case, saying that “Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago.” He spoke of how African-Americans are marked in US society as objects of special scrutiny, followed for no reason by security in department stores or reacted to with the body language of fear. He […]

The big question is whether Detroit’s bankruptcy and likely further decline is a fluke or whether it tells us something about the dystopia that the United States is becoming. It seems to me that the city’s problems are the difficulties of the country as a whole, especially the issues of deindustrialization, robotification, structural unemployment, the […]

From the 1995 stoner movie “Friday”: The father [John Witherspoon] of Craig Jones [Ice Cube] warns him against carrying a gun in the local neighborhood if he wants to be a real man: The video is here:

88% of African-Americans in a recent Pew poll said that there was “a lot” (46%) or “some” (42% ) discrimination against them. Only 57% of whites agreed, and only 16% of whites said there is “a lot” of discrimination against African-Americans: Average household net worth of whites: $110,000. Average household net worth of African-Americans: $5000 […]