By Bill Van Esveld Associate Director, MENA, Children’s Rights Division ( Human Rights Watch ) – The United Nations’ core human rights agency is mandated to produce a database, updated annually, of businesses involved in Israel’s unlawful policy of establishing Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem. So far, this has been […]
Archives for September 2024
Springfield Native: Vance’s Nazi Lie about Haitians Summoned Nazis to March in our Streets
By David DeWitt | – (Ohio Capital Journal ) – Sometimes the disgusting sewer of presidential year politics hits a little too close to home, and you end up watching a national conversation play out largely divorced from reality or the actual experiences of communities intimately connected to your own life. That’s what happened to […]
Eugene Rogan’s The Damascus Events: The 1860 Massacre and the Making of the Modern Middle East
Review of Eugene Rogan, “The Damascus Events: The 1860 Massacre and the Making of the Modern Middle East” (New York: Basic Books, 2024). Munich, Germany (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) –– How did Ottoman Damascus descend into violence and looting in July 1860? Why did the Damascene masses fall upon the Christians, leaving around 5,000 […]
Protesting Israel’s targeted destruction of all Schools and Universities in Gaza
Middle East Studies Association Board | Committee on Academic Freedom | – Dear President Biden, Vice-President Harris, Secretary of State Blinken, and Secretary of Defense Austin, We write to you on behalf of the Committee on Academic Freedom (CAF) and the Board of Directors of the Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA) to […]
Why the Far Right Lies about Immigrants
( Otherwords.org ) – When my dad moved to southwest Ohio in the early 1970s, the Dayton-Springfield area’s second city was home to over 80,000 people. When I was growing up nearby in the 1990s, it was 70,000. Today, it’s less than 60,000. Springfield’s decline looks like an awful lot of Rust Belt cities and […]
Woman, Life, Freedom: Rachel, Shireen, Mahsa and Ayşenur
Newark, Del. (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – A few days before the invasion of Iraq by American forces under G.W. Bush, on March 16, 2003, a young woman from Seattle, Washington, who had gone to Rafah, in Gaza to help Palestinians halt the demolition of homes died under the bulldozer of the Israeli army. […]
Sudan is Burning and Foreign Powers are Benefiting – what’s in it for the United Arab Emirates?
By May Darwich, University of Birmingham | – (The Conversation) – The United Nations has accused foreign players of prolonging the war in Sudan, making it harder for the country to find peace. The fighting between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces started in April 2023. It was sparked by two generals […]
The Armageddon Agenda: Kamala Harris, Donald Trump, and the Nuclear Threat
( Tomdispatch.com ) – The next president of the United States, whether Kamala Harris or Donald Trump, will face many contentious domestic issues that have long divided this country, including abortion rights, immigration, racial discord, and economic inequality. In the foreign policy realm, she or he will face vexing decisions over Ukraine, Israel/Gaza, and China/Taiwan. […]
Harris-Trump was the Worst Smack Down of a Republican Presidential Candidate since Kennedy-Nixon
Oakland, Ca. (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – Vice-President Kamala Harris held Donald Trump accountable for his record as president, and his promises (actually threats) about what another Trump presidency would bring. It was probably the most devastating debate defeat for a Republican presidential candidate since Richard Nixon, dogged by a five o’clock shadow and […]