Orono, Maine (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – Yesterday, I interviewed a refugee Ukrainian family in transition from their homeland looking for a permanent place to settle. They were being visited by evangelical church friends. Since I was teaching a course on current world conflicts, the conversation turned to Palestine/Israel where a number of references […]
War, Trauma, and Forgetting
Orono, Maine (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – Our memories are often suppressed by trauma, a word derived from “Traumatiko”, a wound or mental shock. Examples of traumatic events are people being compelled to leave their homes due to war, disease, drought, famine or similar events. Recent sociological studies on the after-effects of war reveal […]
Israel’s Netanyahu: An Oliver Cromwell for our Times
“When plunder [and dispossession] becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.” — Frédéric Bastiat Ilan Pappe, the Israeli historian, wrote in “The Forgotten Palestinians” that “Zionism was born […]
The Moral Consequences of the War on Gaza
Orono, Maine (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – The moral high ground, has been lost by Israel in the Gaza onslaught while it attempts to avenge the Hamas attacks on Oct 7. The leaders of the Knesset seem convinced that the slaughter of 15,000 civilians is justified and that there will be no moral consequences. […]
Irish History Resonates in Gaza
“I and the public know/ What all schoolchildren learn/ Those to whom evil is done/ do evil in return.” — W. H. Auden | Orono, Maine (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – There were elements in Ireland whose anger against Britain overwhelmed any other sentiment. Three hundred years of settler colonialism, dispossession and denigration of […]
In Celtic Culture, August 1 is a Harvest Feast for the Sun-God, Lugh, and its Traces are All Around Us
Orono, Maine (Special to Informed Comment) – We are approaching August 1 which, in Scottish and Irish tradition, is the Feast of Lughnasadh (La Lunasa), also known as Lammas Day. It is one of the four most important festival days in Celtic countries and was originally meant to celebrate Lugh’s birth. Lugh (pronounced Lu or […]
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 […]
The Ukraine Invasion and the Weight of the Crimean War: “We hate most those we harm the most”
Orono, Maine (Special to Informed Comment) – There are some fascinating similarities between the Crimean War of the 1850s and the Ukraine War of 2022. According to Norman Rich, author of “The Crimean War” its main purpose was the containment of an expanding Russia as European powers had become fearful of Russia’s extension of power […]
The Welshman who Founded Donetsk, Ukraine, and Why a War is a Disaster for Russia
Orono, Maine (Special to Informed Comment) – In the 18th century a migration took to the Donbas region of Ukraine which Tsarist Russia named “New Russia” after rich coal resources were discovered. The man who was chosen to facilitate mining and to develop steel mills was John Hughes who was born in Wales. He had […]
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