Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Dispatches from the Great Trump Clown Parade, which would be gut-busting hilarious if it did not involve real-world dark horrors, including the displacement of some 130,000 Kurds along with deaths and woundings, and the escape of over a hundred ISIL detainees. An unprecedented bipartisan congressional resolution was passed Wednesday against […]
Archives for October 2019
Trump’s Endless Wars
(Foreign Policy in Focus ) – Trump’s not bringing the troops home. He’s been haphazardly deploying more troops, drones, and dollars abroad, while waging a shadow foreign policy for his own benefit. Donald Trump loves to talk about ending the endless U.S. wars that he inherited as president. He tweets about it. He endlessly criticizes […]
Does Facebook impose curfews on Palestinians in the ‘blue world’?
By Hossam Shaker | – When the Arab youth revolted in 2011 to demand freedom and democracy in their countries, Facebook was the social media platform of choice for crowd mobilisation, a proven experience in other contexts around the world. When Palestinian youth tried to take a chance and speak out against the Israeli occupation […]
Syria: why the Kurds had little option but to do a deal with Bashar al-Assad
By Cengiz Gunes | – When the Syrian military withdrew from the Kurdish populated regions of Syria in July 2012, they left the Kurds in charge of their homeland, what they call Rojava. Without a backer and surrounded by many hostile states and militia, few people gave the Kurds any chance of survival. Despite the […]
Russians, Syrian Army take over Manbij and its US Bases, Blocking Turkey
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Syrian Arab Army (SAA) took control of the city of Manbij on Tuesday, with Russian gendarmes taking up patrols of the city as US special operations forces abandoned two military bases in the region, which were also taken over by Russians. The SAA and the Russians appear to have […]
Extorting Ukraine is Bad Enough: But Trump Has Done Much Worse
By Rebecca Gordon | – ( Tomdispatch.com) – Recently a friend who follows the news a bit less obsessively than I do said, “I thought George W. Bush was bad, but it seems like Donald Trump is even worse. What do you think?” “Well,” I replied, “in terms of causing death and destruction, I suspect […]
Jazz Great Yusef Lateef’s Journey to Islam
“I want my music to awaken something that’s already in your heart.” (Informed Comment) – Among the hundred-plus African-American jazz musicians who embraced Islam in the mid-Twentieth Century, Yusuf Lateef, whose given name was William Huddleston, emerged as the elder statesman and spokesman of the group. One of the reasons was his remarkable longevity. Another […]
Does the Demi Lovato Affair prove that Brand Israel is now toxic?
By Asa Winstanley | @AsaWinstanley | – “Brand Israel” was launched. As I’ve written before, this public relations strategy was an utter failure. War crimes, apartheid and denial of basic human rights are a hard sell, it seems. By now, Israel is a completely toxic brand, even for some of its own supporters. Israel no […]
Kurdish Women Fighters helped Defeat ISIL, & now are a Target of Turkish Invasion
By Haidar Khezri | – Kurdish fighters under attack by Turkey have described President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw U.S. troops from northern Syria as a “stab in the back.” Since bombing began on Oct. 9, Turkish military operations against the Syrian Democratic Forces in northern Syria, Washington’s staunchest and most effective allies in the […]