By Asa Winstanley | @AsaWinstanley | – (Middle East Monitor) – Last week US President Donald Trump’s administration made a notable move. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that the US is reversing previous policy which basically accepted that Israel’s colonial settlements in the occupied West Bank are a violation of international law. This is […]
Archives for November 2019
On Thanksgiving, Let’s Be Thankful we Can Still Address our Climate Emergency: And then Do It
Revised for 2019 By Juan Cole | — The popular story about Thanksgiving is an environmental parable that we would do well to remember today. It was a harvest festival in 1621, participated in by the 50 (out of 100) survivors at Plymouth Plantation and 90 Native Americans. Some of these latter, such as Squanto, […]
Israel v. Palestine in Age of Trump: Annexation is the Highest Stage of Settler Colonialism
( The Middle East Monitor ) – It is hardly a major surprise that the US government has finally decreed that illegal Jewish settlements built in defiance of international law are somehow “consistent” with the said law. US foreign policy has been edging closer towards this conclusion for some time. Since moving into the White […]
Kurdish Yazidi Survivors of ISIL Massacre, Female Enslavement, Demand Justice
By Tutku Ayhan and Güneş Murat Tezcür | – It’s been five years since the Islamic State killed 3,100 Yazidi people in Iraq – mostly men and the elderly – forced 6,800 women and children into sexual slavery, marriage or religious conversion and sent hundreds of thousands fleeing. The Islamic State saw the Yazidis as […]
We’re not Serious about the Climate Emergency: There’s Still no ‘Green New Deal’ Bill in Congress
By Arn Menconi | – (Special to Consortium News) – Today there’s no climate bill to vote on, there’s no bill in the pipeline and it is unlikely that there will be one soon, warns Arn Menconi. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (center) speaking on the Green New Deal with Sen. Ed Markey (right) in February 2019. […]
Iran and the US Come Closer: Ayatollah Rick Perry’s Evangelical Theology of Trump as God’s Chosen is just like Khamenei
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Jay Willis at GQ reports that Secretary of Energy Rick Perry said on Fox and Friends that Trump is God’s Chosen One. He said he told Trump, “If you’re a believing Christian, you understand God’s plan for the people who rule and judge over us on this planet and our […]
How American anti-Semitism reflects the centuries-long struggle over the meaning of religious liberty
By Tisa Wenger | – Americans recently observed the first anniversary of the shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, in which 11 were killed and six wounded. A year earlier, white supremacist marchers in Charlottesville, Virginia, chanted the slogan, “Jews shall not replace us.” Synagogues around the country have also been defaced […]
Stateless, Occupied Palestinians can’t vote in Next Israeli Election, but Have the Greatest Stakes
By Adnan Abu Amer | @adnanabuamer1 | – With the declaration of the leaders of Israel’s two major parties, Likud led by Benjamin Netanyahu and Blue-White led by Benny Gantz, about their failure to form the next government, despite the expiry of the deadline allocated to them, Israel seems to soon head towards holding a […]
Expelling Human Rights Watch: Israel Joins Burundi, Uzbekistan and other Authoritarian States
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Israel on Sunday expelled the in-country director of Human Rights Watch from the country. Israel thereby joins dictatorships such as Uzbekistan, Burundi, Azerbaijan, and Egypt, which have also expelled HRW human rights workers. Breathless headlines in the US are saying that Israel became the first democracy to do so, but […]