2021

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Bassem Youssef was Egypt’s most famous comedian in the 2000s and until 2014. His weekly half-hour satire, “The Program,” skewered the government of president-for-life Hosni Mubarak in the run-up to the 2011 youth revolt. Mubarak was thin-skinned but did allow some comedians and pundits to blow off steam. He did, […]

Israel/ Palestine

‘Putting lipstick on a pig’: New Israeli PM Bennett is More Extreme than Netanyahu, so why is Washington Fawning over New Gov’t?

Ramzy Baroud

( Middle East Monitor ) – When former US President Barack Obama used an old cliché to denigrate his political opponent, the late US Senator John McCain, he triggered a political controversy lasting several days. “You can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig,” said Obama at a campaign event in 2008. […]

Iraq

This tiny minority of Iraqis follows an ancient Gnostic religion – and there’s a chance they could be your neighbors too

The Conversation

By James F. McGrath | – ( The Conversation ) – In March 2021 Pope Francis became the first leader of the Roman Catholic Church to visit Iraq. The number of Christians in Iraq has fallen sharply in the past two decades amid mass violence at the hands of the Islamic State group. Iraq stands […]

African-Americans

When You Lift from the Bottom, Everyone Rises: Have We Entered America’s Third Era of Reconstruction?

Liz Theoharis

( Tomdispatch.com) – West Virginia, a state first established in defiance of slavery, has recently become ground zero in the fight for voting rights. In an early June op-ed in the Charleston Gazette-Mail, Democratic Senator Joe Manchin vowed to maintain the Senate filibuster, while opposing the For the People Act, a bill to expand voting […]

Featured

Iran’s Raisi: Supports renewed Nuclear Deal, Seeks Lifting of US Sanctions, and Restored Saudi Diplomatic Relations

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – In his first press conference on Monday, newly elected President Ebrahim Raisi expressed support for the negotiations in Vienna toward restoring the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and the United Nations, as long as, he said, they achieve benefits for the Iranian nation and do not drag on forever. He […]

African-Americans

Jim Crow was Never Dead, but the Black Church can Lead the Way in Banishing Voter Suppression

OtherWords

By Rev. Susan K. Smith and Rev. Levon C. Manzie | ( Otherwords.org) – We suspected it for years, and now we know it: Jim Crow was never dead. You might even say he was too mean to die. We know this because in too many places, the forces of racism are raging as laws […]

Iran

Iran election: what Ebrahim Raisi’s victory will mean for his country – and the rest of the world

The Conversation

By Arshin Adib-Moghaddam | – When Iranians elect a new leader, the world watches. So the election of Ebrahim Raisi, a hardline right-winger, to replace the more centrist Hassan Rouhani, is global news of some significance. Raisi is the choice of Iran’s socially arch-conservative and politically anti-reformist “deep state”. This ideological core of the state […]

Climate Crisis

The Navajo and Hopi are Abandoning Coal, but need help with Clean-Up and Transition to Renewables

Cronkite News Arizona PBS

By Alyssa Marksz | – ( Cronkite News) – WASHINGTON – Navajo and Hopi witnesses agreed the region needs to move away from its economic dependence on coal, but specific proposals on how to get there remained elusive after a House hearing Tuesday. The tribal representatives joined witnesses from across coal country at a House […]

Featured

Far Right Israeli PM Bennett slams Iran Nuclear Talks for Tehran’s Poor Rights Record (Israel has 200 Nukes and has Killed Thousands of Occupied Palestinians)

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – New extreme-right Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett came out on Sunday to argue that the election of an extreme-right Iranian cleric (Ebrahim Raisi) as president of that country should cause the Biden administration to back off reviving the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. Bennett called Raisi the “hangman of Tehran” and […]

Archives for 2021