Istanbul (Special to Informed Comment; Featured) – Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan recently said “there is no reason” not to pursue normalization of diplomatic ties with Syria, and he said that he does not rule out a possible meeting with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Erdoğan added that Turkey had no intention of interfering in Syria’s […]
Archives for July 2024
The New Desaparecidos: Israel and the Enforced Disappearance of Palestinians from Gaza
By Inaam Adib Barkouk Israel has used all means to target Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip, in addition to internationally prohibited weapons that wiped out people, trees and stones, Israeli forces have randomly arrested thousands of civilians including women and children, doctors, journalists from different areas of the Strip during the ground military operations […]
Global Heating: Alaska’s Top-Heavy Glaciers are Melting, approaching an Irreversible Tipping Point
By Bethan Davies, Newcastle University | – (The Conversation) – The melting of one of North America’s largest icefields has accelerated and could soon reach an irreversible tipping point. That’s the conclusion of new research colleagues and I have published on the Juneau Icefield, which straddles the Alaska-Canada border near the Alaskan capital of Juneau. […]
Britain’s Labour beat the Right, but Must hasten to Win Public Trust and heal Rift with own Left
Oxford (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – Britain’s latest General Election held on 4th July was nothing short of a major political earthquake that put an end to 14 years of often tumultuous and chaotic Conservative rule. The Labor Party, led by Sir Keir Starmer, overturned a big Conservative majority of 80 seats in the […]
Netanyahu and his bet on Trump
By Antoine Shalhat ( Middle East Monitor ) – It seems that the repercussions of the debate recently held between current US President Joe Biden and his rival, former US President Donald Trump, which caused a crisis for the former, fuelled a campaign led by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu against the current US administration, […]
Ancient Arabian “Standing Stone Circles” show a Complex and Thriving Society
By Jane McMahon, University of Sydney | – (The Conversation) – To date, little has been known about people living in north-western Saudi Arabia during the Neolithic – the period traditionally defined by the shift to humans controlling food production and settling into communities with agriculture and domesticated animals. The piecemeal evidence available hinted traditional […]
Centuries of Co-Existence: Jewish Cultural Heritage in Egypt and Morocco
Beersheba (Special to Informed Comment; feature) – Amid the prevailing focus on the war and the geopolitical turmoil in the Middle East, it is easy to forget that it has not always been this way. Until the 1950s, Jewish communities had thrived in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. For centuries, Muslims, Jews, […]
Why it’s a Mistake that Cultural Heritage is often Overlooked when Assessing Refugee Claims
By Sherine Al Shallah, UNSW Sydney | – (The Conversation) – Cultural heritage has long been targeted during conflict. This includes the destruction of the famous Bamiyan Buddhas by the Taliban in Afghanistan and Russia’s attempts to erase the Ukrainian language in areas of the country it has occupied since 2014. Cultural heritage loss has […]
Blinded to all but the Anglo-Saxon “Five Eyes:” The Bias of US Policy toward Asia
( Tomdispatch.com ) – Wherever he travels globally, President Biden has sought to project the United States as the rejuvenated leader of a broad coalition of democratic nations seeking to defend the “rules-based international order” against encroachments by hostile autocratic powers, especially China, Russia, and North Korea. “We established NATO, the greatest military alliance in […]