By Matthew Valasik, University of Alabama; and Shannon Reid, University of North Carolina – Charlotte | – As the House Select Committee prepares to begin public hearings on the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, far-right groups including the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers are were a prominent topic of discussion. At the same time, both […]
Archives for June 2022
What Does It Mean that Women Now Dominate Higher Education?
( Tomdispatch.com ) – In the last week of her life, my mother extracted a promise from me. “Make sure,” she said, “that Orion goes to college.” I swore that I would, although I wasn’t at all sure how I’d make it happen. Even in the year 2000, average tuitions were almost 10 times what […]
European Parliament bans New Gasoline Cars in 13 Years for 449 Million People, to fight Climate Emergency and Russia
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Margaux Otter at L’Obs reports that on Wednesday, the European Parliament voted to ban the sale of new internal combustion engine (ICE) automobiles by 2035, only thirteen years from now. It is an epochal vote that aims at completely re-configuring the automobile industry in the 27-member European Union, with its […]
Iran: 1988 Mass Executions Evident Crimes Against Humanity: Senior Officials Implicated Should Be Investigated, Fairly Prosecuted (HRW)
Human Rights Watch — (Beirut) – Overwhelming evidence shows that the Iranian authorities’ mass execution of thousands of political prisoners in 1988 amounts to crimes against humanity, Human Rights Watch said in an in-depth question-and-answer document released today. In 1988, Iranian authorities, acting on the orders of then-Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, summarily and extrajudicially […]
‘Open Your Hearts’: The Movements Taking Climate Action Where Leaders and Media Won’t
By Donna Katzin and William Minter | – ( Foreign Policy in Focus) – Media, politicians, and policymakers tend to focus on the most visible issues. The attention the war in Ukraine has received in the first half of 2022, for example, is unrivaled in the United States at least since the shock of 9/11 […]
Ice world: Antarctica’s riskiest glacier is under assault from below and losing its grip
By Ted Scambos, University of Colorado Boulder | – Flying over Antarctica, it’s hard to see what all the fuss is about. Like a gigantic wedding cake, the frosting of snow on top of the world’s largest ice sheet looks smooth and unblemished, beautiful and perfectly white. Little swirls of snow dunes cover the surface. […]
Israel’s Crisis in Parliament is a Crisis for its Apartheid in the Palestinian West Bank
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – On Monday evening, the government of Naftali Bennett in Israel failed to pass a crucial law in parliament, according to the Israeli newspaper Arab 48. The failure, which strikes at the foundations of Bennett’s far right vision of an expanding Greater Israel that forever forestalls any Palestinian state, exposed the […]
What Can Be Said After So Much Grief, so Many Guns?
Orono, Maine (Special to Informed Comment) – What more can be said with so much grief, after the spate of recent gun violence around the country? Can anything be added that has not already been said. The same questions have been haunting the country over the past two decades. Why do mass shootings appear to […]
‘New Phase Of Assassinations’: Mysterious Death Of Iranian Aerospace Engineer Fuels Speculation
( RFE/RL ) – When Iranian aerospace engineer Ayoob Entezari died on May 31, authorities handed his family a letter of appreciation in which they referred to him as a “martyr,” suggesting that he had been killed. Soon after, authorities in the central city of Yazd backtracked, saying the wording in the letter was a […]