By Tom Chudley, Durham University Observing Greenland from a helicopter, the main problem is one of comprehending scale. I have thought we were skimming low over the waves of a fjord, before noticing the tiny shadow of a seabird far below and realising what I suspected were floating shards of ice were in fact icebergs […]
Archives for February 2025
The Mass Deportation Handoff, Biden to Trump: And the Booming Border-Industrial Complex
By Todd Miller It didn’t take long for the border and immigration enforcement industry to react to Donald Trump’s reelection. On November 6th, as Bloomberg News reported, stock prices shot up for two private prison companies, GEO Group and CoreCivic. “We expect the incoming Trump administration to take a much more aggressive approach regarding border […]
Israel’s Increasingly Extremist Turn to Misogyny is Pinkwashed, while the Press Stereotypes Muslims
Belfast (Special to Informed Comment) – Pinkwashing of discrimination against women in Israeli politics and society has led western politicians and media to ignore the issue. Israeli news sites, in contrast, are frank about this worsening problem, which is spearheaded by the far right. In this article I will look at misogyny within the political […]
The Great March of Hope: Gaza’s Defiance against Erasure
( Middle East Monitor ) – The return of one million Palestinians from southern Gaza to the north on 27 January felt as if history was choreographing one of its most earth-shattering events in recent memory. Hundreds of thousands of people marched along a single street, the coastal Rashid Street, at the furthest western stretch […]
Syrian Regime Change: How rebel Victories often lead to unstable, non-inclusive Governments
By Sally Sharif, University of British Columbia (The Conversation) – Syria’s rebel leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa, has defended his decision to fill his cabinet with wartime loyalists and delay constitutional and electoral processes, describing these moves as pragmatic necessities for the country’s fragile transition. At the same time, he has called for the disarmament of all […]
Are we All Hungarians now, or Palestinians? Trump’s Onslaught on the Rule of Law and Civil Liberties
Oakland, Ca. (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – Most of (convicted felon) Donald Trump’s Executive Orders are brazenly unconstitutional, and stand to be reversed in Court rulings by thoughtful, law-abiding judges. But the red elephants in the room are the sycophantic, compliant judges he appointed during his last term such as Aileen Cannon of Florida. […]
Cognitive Strength and Community: Psychological coping Mechanisms of displaced Palestinians
In the face of relentless war and displacement, Palestinians find strength in solidarity, transforming loss into resilience By Omar Shahin ( Globalvoices.org ) – In the face of the relentless war and destruction unleashed by Israel in Gaza, displaced Palestinians have developed a remarkable array of coping and adaptation mechanisms. These strategies, deeply embedded in […]
“The Lion has Fallen:” The End of Syria’s Brutal Regime and the Fate of the Refugees
By Helen Benedict ( Tomdispatch.com ) – Six years ago, at the time of the first Trump administration’s Muslim ban and its initial round of vicious anti-immigrant policies, I visited a refugee camp on the Greek island of Samos to see how Europe was handling its own immigrants and refugees. Within a day, I met […]
On the 46th Anniversary of Iranian Revolution: An Interview with Amb. John Limbert
“No one should be surprised that the Iranian Revolution took a religious form. The fact that God appears on almost every page does not reflect religious convictions of my own, nor for that matter any conscious design at all, but simply arises from the circumstance that in any description of the fabric of Iranian life […]