Left Politics

By Ariel Dorfman | – ( Tomdispatch.com ) – This year marks the anniversaries of two drastically different events that loomed all too large in my life. The first occurred a century ago in Hollywood: on October 16, 1923, Walt Disney signed into being the corporation that bears his name. The second took place in […]

Authoritarianism

American Inquisition: Field Notes from the Frontlines of the Government’s War on the Left

Tomdispatch

By Michael Gould-Wartofsky ( Tomdispatch.com) – “There must be some kind of way out of here…” As night fell over the South River Forest, the music festival was in full swing. Young and old swayed to the sounds of Suede Cassidy. Families gathered around the grill. Little ones frolicked in an inflatable bouncy house bedecked […]

Far Right

You’re all Palestinians Now: How Harsh Apartheid Policing is being Turned on Israeli Protesters

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Israel’s Apartheid state, having honed its instruments of repression against its occupied Palestinians, whom it keeps stateless and without rights, is now turning those tools on the Israeli public itself. Yesterday, Friday, buses full of Israeli protesters attempted to head to Huwwara near Nablus in the Palestinian West Bank to […]

censorship

Keeping Resistance Alive during McCarthyism: Chandler Davis and Academic Freedom at the University of Michigan

Alan M. Wald

Alan Wald, Steve Batterson and Peggie Hollingsworth | University of Michigan | – Making Michigan lecture series – Keeping Resistance Alive “In 1954, Chandler Davis was called to testify before the House Committee on Un-American Activities. His fellows on the stand were his colleagues Mark Nickerson and Clement L. Markert, and his student friends Edward […]

African-Americans

Was Charles Austin Beard a Racist Historian?

Richard Drake

( Counterpunch ) – Controversy about Charles Austin Beard began in 1913 when he published An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States. He turned thirty-nine that year. Until then, his books had appeared to widespread praise within the profession and to the benign neglect of the general reading public. A highly successful […]

Congress

Tlaib calls out “Progressive except on Israel,” and Wasserman Schultz inadvertently makes Her Point for Her

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Ursula Perano at the Daily Beast reports on the controversy among the Progressive Democratic Caucus in Congress over remarks on Wednesday by Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI). She attacked the syndrome of “progressive except on Israel” within her caucus and observed at an online seminar, “that among progressives, it has become […]

Afghanistan

That Time Gorbachev Announced Soviet Withdrawal from Afghanistan and US went on Building up Muslim Fundamentalists there Anyway, leading to 9/11

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Mikhail Gorbachev’s passing yesterday at age 91 is a good occasion to review some of the profound mistakes of the Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush presidencies regarding Afghanistan. Reagan-era officials refused to believe that Premier Gorbachev actually intended to pull Soviet troops out of Afghanistan, though Gorbachev came into […]

Climate Crisis

Greens return to French Parliament in Left Coalition, as Neoliberal Macron loses Majority

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – France’s parliamentary elections witnessed an upset, with centrist President Emmanuel Macron’s party, La République En Marche and its Ensemble coalition losing its absolute parliamentary majority. A majority requires 289 seats, and Macron’s party gained 245 seats. Among the beneficiaries are the Left and the Greens, who joined together in the […]

Inequality

One-Off Demonstrations are not Enough: Progressives need Standing Mass Organizations

Tomdispatch

By Beverly Gologorsky | – ( Tomdispatch.com ) – To begin, an anecdote. This past summer, a pigeon walked through my open balcony door while my attention was elsewhere. I shooed it out, but when I turned around two more pigeons walked out of my bedroom. In the 20 years I’ve lived in my apartment, […]