Belgrade (Special to Informed Comment) – Tensions rise between the Taliban – the de facto rulers of Afghanistan – and neighboring Russia-backed Tajikistan. The radical group accuses the former Soviet republic of interfering in Afghanistan’s internal affairs, and is deploying fighters on the Afghan – Tajik border, while Moscow keeps providing military equipment to its […]
Archives for September 2021
Gaza’s children choose between working and starving
By Aseel Kabariti | – Gaza ( We Are Not Numbers) – Child labor takes many forms. Many people picture a child in a factory, but sometimes it’s an adorable kid pulling on your sleeve in a market. “Could you please buy some mint from me?” asked a young boy with a warm smile and […]
More guns, pandemic stress and a police legitimacy crisis created perfect conditions for homicide spike in 2020
By Justin Nix | – Homicides in the U.S. spiked by almost 30% in 2020. That was the main takeaway from figures released on Sept. 27, 2021, by the FBI that showed almost uniform increases across America in the murder rate. The fact that big cities, small cities, suburbs and rural areas – in both […]
Israeli Youth Protest Israel-UAE Oil Pipeline that Endangers Climate, Key Coral Reefs: The Dark Side of “Abraham Accords”
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The so-called Abraham Accords, which take the patriarch’s name in vain, were about many things, but genuine peace was not one of them. The were a series of bilateral horse trades with no implication for Israeli-Palestinian peace. Now it turns out that they were in part a plot against the […]
If even the Democratic Party can’t raise Taxes on the Super-Rich, is the US even a Democracy Any More?
Southwest Harbor, Maine (Special to Informed Comment) – The struggle over efforts to revise and reform the tax code offers left and labor activists as well as the “democratic wing” of the Democratic Party an opportunity to test its strength and to clear up some widely circulated but misleading facts about the distribution of wealth […]
Haitian migrants at the border: An asylum law scholar explains how US skirts its legal and moral duties
By Karen Musalo | – The U.S.’s top envoy to Haiti resigned abruptly on Sept. 22, 2021, over the Biden administration’s “inhumane” treatment of Haitian migrants crossing the border via Mexico into Texas. The resignation came amid debate over the U.S. decision to deport thousands of Haitians entering the U.S. in search of asylum or […]
The Names You’ll Never Know: A Blue Kia and a Wall of Carnage on the Washington Mall
( Tomdispatch.com) – As a parting shot, on its way out of Afghanistan, the United States military launched a drone attack that the Pentagon called a “righteous strike.” The final missile fired during 20 years of occupation, that August 29th airstrike averted an Islamic State car-bomb attack on the last American troops at Kabul’s airport. […]
Palestinian Parties, Organizations Greet Abbas’s Pledge to take Israel to Int’l Court as “Historic” and Roadmap
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – al-Quds [Jerusalem] reports that Palestinians in the West Bank greeted President Mahmoud Abbas’s UN speech, in which he pledged to take Israel to the International Court of Justice at the Hague* if its squatter-settlements weren’t withdrawn within a year, with widespread acclaim.* The ICJ “is the principal judicial organ of […]
The End of Coal? In Huge News for Climate, China to Stop Building new Coal Power Projects Overseas
By Shi Yi | – ( China Dialogue ) – The mounting calls for China to stop supporting coal power projects overseas have received an answer. Chinese President Xi Jinping announced through a pre-recorded video address to the United Nations General Assembly on 21 September that China “will not build new coal-fired power plants abroad” […]