Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The 2022 Living Planet report is out and it does not bring good news. Since 1970, the scientists find that the population of fresh water species has plunged by 83%, and the population of wildlife species over all has fallen 69%. The researchers found a virtual extinction-level loss in Latin […]
Archives for October 2022
Women-led Protests in Iran gather Momentum – but will They be enough to bring about Change?
By Tony Walker, La Trobe University | – As protests in Iran drag on into their fourth week over the violent death in custody of Mahsa Amini, a young Kurdish woman, there are two central questions. The first is whether these protests involving women and girls across Iran are different from upheavals in the past, […]
Why does the Ukraine War overshadow the Middle Eastern Wars?
( Foreign Policy in Focus ) – The war in Ukraine has dominated the headlines in U.S. and European newspapers, not to mention outlets in other parts of the world. The explosion this weekend that destroyed part of the bridge connecting Crimea to the Russian mainland, along with Russia’s retaliatory missile attacks on Ukrainian cities […]
To Deal with Saudi Arabia, Biden should Fast-Track both Iran Deal and the Greening of Transportation
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Reuters reports that the Biden White House is upset with Saudi Arabia over the recent OPEC+ decision to cut the output of the 21 nations grouped in the bloc by 2 million barrels a day. President Biden told CNN’s Jake Tapper in an interview Tuesday, “there will be consequences” for […]
Catastrophe: Historians reveal Israel’s use of Poisoning, Typhoid against Palestinians in 1948
By Nasim Ahmed | – ( Middle East Monitor ) – The details of Israel’s secret use of biological weapons and poison against Palestinians during the 1947/48 ethnic cleansing campaign has been revealed in a recent article by historians Benny Morris and Benjamin Kedar. The 84-year-old Kedar is professor emeritus at the Hebrew University of […]
Headcovers have always been Political in Iran – for Women on all Sides
By Eliz Sanasarian, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences | – A friend and I were strolling through Tehran’s streets one afternoon when she was approached by a member of the “morality police,” an agency tasked with enforcing modesty laws in public. First, the policewoman warned her to cover her hair by pulling […]
The World’s Other Nuclear Flashpoint: Mounting Tensions Over Taiwan
( Tomdispatch.com ) – Thanks to Vladimir Putin’s recent implicit threat to employ nuclear weapons if the U.S. and its NATO allies continue to arm Ukraine — “This is not a bluff,” he insisted on September 21st — the perils in the Russo-Ukrainian conflict once again hit the headlines. And it’s entirely possible, as ever […]
Iran: In Widening of Social Base of Protests, Oil Workers go on Strike in Support of Youth Demonstrators
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The student protests continued in Iran on Monday, as youth rallied at the University of Shiraz and at several campuses in the capital of Shiraz. They pledged to multiply their movement every time another youth was killed. Nearly 200 people have died because of the repression of the protests according […]
Iran: the hijab protests are now Massive, but a Revolution will need the Military to change Sides
By Arshin Adib-Moghaddam, SOAS, University of London | – More than three weeks after the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Ahmini for disobeying Iran’s strict laws, which make it compulsory for women to wear the hijab – or Islamic headscarf – protests continue to rage on the streets of all major cities. On Saturday, protesters even […]