Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Today is ten years since Egyptian youth gathered in Tahrir Square in downtown Cairo demanding the resignation of Egypt’s brutal and corrupt Interior Minister, Habib Adly. Even those who called for the rally were surprised by the thousands of youth and workers that showed up, on Egypt’s Police Day, and […]
Why is False News about Iran All Right? No, Khamenei didn’t Threaten Trump on Golf Course, and no, his Twitter account wasn’t Banned
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – No, Ayatollah Ali Khameni’s twitter account did not carry an image of Donald Trump being droned on a golf course, and no, his twitter account was not canceled. A small twitter account run by unknown persons with only 8,000 followers posted the image of someone (it wasn’t a picture of […]
Biden’s own Moderates and Hardliners Battle it Out on reviving Iran Nuclear Deal
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Two and a half days into the Biden administration, it is already clear that the Problem of Iran is going to loom large over its foreign policy. There are already hard liners and moderates in the Biden team, just as there are in Iran. The first few Biden appointments, Antony […]
The first thing we do, let’s kill all the Coal Plants: How Joe Biden can save the Planet
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – My title is from William Shakespeare’s Henry the VI. In the original, Dick “the Butcher” is speaking of ways to overthrow the king and improve the country, and he suggests killing all the lawyers first. Nowadays, carbon dioxide is the thing preventing us from improving the country. President Biden has […]
Trump targeted innocent Muslims with Visa Ban on phony pretext of ‘Terrorism,’ then unleashed real White Terrorism on Capitol
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Muslim visa ban that Trump got through on his third try, and in which the Supreme Court to its everlasting shame acquiesced, is no more. President Biden abolished it with a stroke of his pen on his first day in office. That isn’t enough. Congress needs to legislate explicitly […]
Time for Biden to end the Forever Wars and bring Iran in from the Cold
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Although former president Trump claims to have avoided starting any new wars, he in fact put the US on a war footing in the greater Middle East, and significantly increased the number of US troops in the region. He tried to strangle Iran economically and assassinated one of its foremost […]
An Admiring Review of Cole, ‘Muhammad: Prophet of Peace,’ in Algeria’s Echorouq
The Algerian newspaper Echorouq [al-Shuruq] has published a positive review of the Arabic translation of my book, Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires Available at Nicola’s Books in Ann Arbor And Hachette And Barnes and Noble And Amazon Juan says: In turbulent era, I am most gratified that Muslim readers on the […]
“The Horror, the Horror.” An epitaph for Trump’s Nazi Presidency
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – In Joseph Conrad’s The Heart of Darkness, the imperial commercial agent Kurtz, who has committed horrible atrocities against Black Congolese for the monetary gain of white Europeans, whispers his dying words to riverboat captain Charles Marlow, “The horror, the horror.” When Marlow arrived at Kurtz’s camp in the jungle, he […]
Israel is increasingly an Apartheid State: What Martin Luther King Jr. Would have thought of that
Revised Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., whose activism we honor today, took stands far beyond Selma and Montgomery, and called on other capitals than Washington, D.C., to ensure a dignified life for human beings. Dr. King was an early and vigorous opponent of the white South African Apartheid (segregationist) […]