Review by Fariba Amini. Neda Toloui-Semnani, They Said They Wanted Revolution: A Memoir of my Parents, New York: Little A, 2022. Newark, Delaware (Special to Informed Comment) – Beautiful, inspiring, heartbreaking and truth telling are terms that come to mind describing the new memoir by Iranian- American journalist Neda Toloui-Semnani. Among the many memoirs written […]
Archives for March 2022
While world focuses on plight of Ukraine’s children, endless trauma of Gaza’s children should not be ignored
( Jordan Times ) – More than two million refugees have fled Ukraine since Russia invaded that country. The majority have been women and children since men between 18-60 are not allowed to leave and are conscripted into the armed forces. Most refugees have fled to Poland, Moldova, Slovakia, Romania and Hungary where Ukrainians, but […]
The New Eurasian Wars on our Endangered Planet
( Tomdispatch.com ) – Just as the relentless grinding of the earth’s tectonic plates produces earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, so the endless superpower struggle for dominance over Eurasia is fraught with tensions and armed conflict. Beneath the visible outbreak of war in Ukraine and the U.S.-Chinese naval standoff in the South China Sea, there is […]
Oil Sheikhs have us Behind the 8-Ball: The UAE’s mixed Signals on Oil underline need for US to move Rapidly to Green Transportation
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – America is paying the price for lagging behind in its adoption of electric vehicles and in putting in more electric mass transit. Because we are still mostly a society that moves on gasoline, we are dependent on the worst people in the world for our energy. Even where we produce […]
Ukraine, Libya, and the Enduring Global Disorder
Washington, D.C. (Special to Informed Comment) – According to some analyses, the ongoing war in Ukraine appears to have finally put to rest the illusion of global governance. Instead, it illustrates the emergence of what Libya expert Jason Pack calls the Enduring Global Disorder. In Pack’s view, irrespective of Russian victory, the international response to […]
Russia in Ukraine: Is Turkey’s neutrality Option Viable?
By Omar Kosh | – ( Middle East Monitor ) – Turkish politicians waited for several days before describing the events in Ukraine as a “state of war”, after first referring to it as the Russian invasion. Russia itself, meanwhile, refers to it as a “military operation”, in order to avoid the consequences, especially those […]
Why Apple, Disney, IKEA and hundreds of other Western companies are abandoning Russia with barely a shrug
By Douglas Schuler and Laura Marie Edinger-Schons | – Many companies in the U.S. and elsewhere have been quick to sever ties to Russia – going well beyond applying the sanctions ordered by their governments. IKEA, Nike and H&M are temporarily closing their Russian stores. Disney, Sony and Warner Bros. paused the release of new […]
Ukraine: What the Libya War tells us about Why we Really don’t want a NATO No-Fly Zone
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Tracy Wilkinson at the Los Angeles Times writes about the no-fly zone proposed by President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine and the flat refusal of the Pentagon to go in that direction. The clamor for a no-fly zone among some in Congress and in US civil society, however, displays a remarkable […]
US Media (Rightly) focuses on Ukrainian Rights, but it Racializes Muslims deprived of those Same Rights
(Special to Informed Comment) – Speaking about the significance of knowledge and its role in democracy, President John F. Kennedy once stated that only an “informed people will be a free people, that the ignorance of one voter in a democracy impairs the security of all.” One of the most important institutions that informs public […]