2021

The Taliban’s conquest of Kabul threatens the lives and safety of girls, women and sexual minorities

By Deeplina Banerjee< | - The world watched in shock as Ashraf Ghani, the president of Afghanistan, fled the country on Aug. 15. The Taliban occupied Kabul, the country’s capital, and international news channels and social media began to be flooded with devastating pictures of Afghans desperately attempting to escape the impending Taliban regime. Afghanistan’s […]

Japan

The Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant Near-Meltdown is a Lasting Tragedy

H. Patricia Hynes

Greenfield, Mass. (Special to Informed Comment) – In 2011 the Great East Japan Earthquake and ensuing tsunami devastated northeast Japan, taking the lives of more than 18,000 people and triggering one of the worst industrial accidents in history: the crippling breakdown of the Fukushima Dai’ichi nuclear power plant. Three of the plant’s six reactors suffered […]

National Security State

Despite Departure from Afghanistan, America still Has an Archipelago of 750 Military Bases around the World

Tomdispatch

By Patterson Deppen | – ( Tomdispatch.com ) – It was the spring of 2003 during the American-led invasion of Iraq. I was in second grade, living on a U.S. military base in Germany, attending one of the Pentagon’s many schools for families of servicemen stationed abroad. One Friday morning, my class was on the […]

Afghanistan

Public Opinion largely Supportive of Biden’s Afghanistan withdrawal, despite Angst over Chaotic Process

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The abrupt collapse of the government of President Ashraf Ghani and his supposed 300,000 security forces in the past two weeks clearly caught the Biden administration by surprise. It is the most serious crisis yet for the new administration, and has shaken public confidence in the president, giving him the […]

Immigration

From farm to table, immigrants feed America

Cronkite News Arizona PBS

By Lauren Irwin, Natalie Saenz and Priya Bhat/News21 ( Cronkite News ) – As the sun beats down on a family farm in McFarland, California, immigrant workers duck under a leafy canopy of cotton-candy grapes for a moment of relief. It’s 5:56 a.m., and temperatures are quickly rising. Draped in cotton from fingers to toes, […]

Afghanistan

Why did a military superpower fail in Afghanistan?

The Conversation

By Arie Perliger | – The speed and efficiency with which Taliban forces were able to complete the occupation of most of Afghanistan, as well as the quick collapse of the Afghan government, has led to criticism of President Joe Biden’s decision to end U.S. military presence in Afghanistan and of the withdrawal’s logistics. But […]

Afghanistan

Afghanistan is not the only place at risk of takeover by extremists: US has Dangerous Homegrown Radicals trying to Overthrow our Government

John Feffer

( Foreign Policy in Focus) – It’s as if a sudden natural disaster has just struck Afghanistan. The scenes from the capital Kabul reflect the kind of panic that comes when a Category 5 hurricane makes landfall, when the waters rise and the levees are breached, when a forest fire jumps over a fuel break […]

Afghanistan

Taliban “Islam” versus the Islam of the Prophet Muhammad and the Qur’an

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – British academic Abdul-Azim Ahmed of Cardiff University, an expert on mosques in the UK, complained on Twitter that he was invited onto television to debate whether the Taliban represent Islam: Just had a call from a journo asking if I could go on live to debate whether the Taliban represent […]

Afghanistan

Don’t use girls as justification for bombing Afghanistan, again

Open Democracy

Dear British feminists, Western military intervention is never a good thing

Archives for 2021