Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Polling suggests that Ebrahim Raisi will likely win Iran’s presidential election. So who is he? An official Iranian point of view on Raisi goes this way: He was born in 1960 into a family of clerics claiming descent from the Prophet Muhammad in the Nowghan district of Mashhad, the largest […]
Archives for June 2021
As new Israeli Gov’t Bombs Gaza, Relations with Palestine are on a Knife Edge– and will Stay There
By Tony Walker | – ( The Conversation) – The Israel-Palestine conflict has experienced its first violent spasm in the term of a new Israeli government. However, hostilities have since been contained, for the time being. Provocative demonstrations this week in Arab East Jerusalem involving Israeli proto-nationalists chanting “death to Arabs” were met with a […]
Right Wing Americans Tell me to Go Back Home; as a Palestinian, I wish I Could
By Layla Darwish | – ( Middle East Monitor ) – I was taking part in a recent protest in California, proudly waving my Palestinian flag, when a couple drove past in a white pick-up truck and shouted, “Go back to your country!” A light breeze grazed my arms, so I decided to retrieve my […]
The Real Danger of Israel’s New Government
By Phyllis Bennis | – ( Foreign Policy in Focus) – The new Israeli government takes office already largely paralyzed. With eight diverse parties, they agree only on two things. One, they want to get rid of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Check — that’s done. Two, given the unlikeliness of reaching agreement on any major […]
If Hard Liner Raisi wins Iran’s Presidential Election, he has Trump to Thank
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – June 18 is election day in Iran. There are two main candidates for president, the arch-conservative Ebrahim Raisi, Iran’s chief justice, and the centrist Abdolnaser Hemmati, an academic who served as chief of the national bank for the past three years. So it is sort of as though Chief Justice […]
Conservative hard-liner poised to be Iran’s next president – what that means for the West and the nuclear deal
By Nader Habibi | – ( The Conversation ) | – Iran’s conservative rulers’ effort to orchestrate the outcome of the June 18 presidential election triggered a voter boycott – but the result may still bode well for ongoing negotiations over the lapsed 2015 nuclear deal. The leading candidate is Ebrahim Raisi, chief of Iran’s […]
5 ways to push antisemites and the Alt-Right out of the Palestinian solidarity movement
By Shane Burley | – With support for Palestinian freedom hitting a new level, intentional strategies are needed to stop white nationalists looking to hijack the movement. ( Waging Nonviolence ) – As Israel resumes its bombing of Gaza, and settlers attack Palestinians on both sides of the Green Line — the boundary between what […]
The other Big Lie undermining Democracy: Why our Recent Wars Began, and how Badly they were Bungled
( Tomdispatch.com) – Americans may already be lying themselves out of what little remains of their democracy. The big lie uniting and motivating today’s Republicans is, of course, that Donald Trump, not Joe Biden, won the 2020 presidential election. Other big lies in our recent past include the notion that climate change is nothing but […]
Not only Should Congress repeal 2002 Authorization for use of Force in Iraq, it should Apologize for that Pack of Lies
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Jacob Pramuk at CNBC reports that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and the Biden White House are backing an attempt to repeal the 2002 Authorization for the Use of Military Force that allowed the Bush administration to launch the Iraq War. The repeal is driven in part by the Trump […]
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