Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Sulayman Hajj Ibrahim writes in the London pan-Arab daily al-Quds al-`Arabi [Arab Jerusalem] that Saudi Arabia’s bid to join the 47-member Human Rights Council of the United Nations was rejected resoundingly by the General Assembly. Human Rights Watch waged a campaign against allowing China and Saudi Arabia onto the council. […]
Stunning Doubling of Severe Natural disasters in past 20 Years, many driven by Climate Emergency
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction issued a report today concluding that natural disasters caused by the human impact on earth’s climate have doubled in the past twenty years. Human beings have put increasing amounts of heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide into the atmosphere in the past 40 […]
Call for Fox Media News Monopoly to be Broken up: Rupert Murdoch an “arrogant cancer on … democracy” – Rudd
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Former Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd has called for the break up of his country’s media monopolies (almost all major media are owned by just two corporations). One of the two media monopolies he was slamming is Rupert Murdoch’s Newscorp. In its incarnation as Fox News, the same company has […]
Graham to Blacks, Immigrants: ‘You can go anywhere in this state, you just have to be a Conservative’
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Lindsey Graham couldn’t have another debate with his rival for one of South Carolina’s senate seats, Jamie Harrison, because he wouldn’t take a COVID-19 test and Harrison quite rightly declined to be on the same stage with someone who had been hanging around with Donald “Typhoid Mary” Trump. The two […]
Trump and Kim Jong Un both Defy Coronavirus with Monumentally Stupid Monumental Gatherings
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – On Saturday, Kim Jong Un insists on having a huge parade in honor of the 75th anniversary of the ruling Workers’ Party, and Trump insists on having a crowd on the grounds of the White House. Then on Monday, Trump will hold a rally north of Orlando, Florida. Trump’s rallies […]
With Crushing sanctions on 18 Iranian Banks, is Trump trying to leave a War behind for Biden?
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – As the dying Trump administration, literally on a sickbed, contemplates losing power, its hawks are lashing out at Iran in an attempt to ensure that the 2015 international nuclear deal is dead and buried, and that the US and Iran remain on a war footing. Trump’s two main allies in […]
Syria’s security services flourish while people starve; what sort of ‘president’ is Assad?
Ghazi Dahman | – ( Middle East Monitor ) – It is no surprise that the Syria Justice and Accountability Centre has released documents revealing that Syrian Embassies around the world spy on their own citizens on behalf of the Assad regime. Every Syrian who has travelled abroad for any reason knows that the regime’s […]
Peace and pro-Christian themes in Muhammad and the Qur’an
Juan Cole is interviewed below by Professor Adnan Husain, Queens University (co-editor of A Faithful Sea: The Religious Cultures of the Mediterranean, 1200-1700) on themes of peace and warmth toward Christians in the Qur’an. The event was sponsored by the Muslim Societies Global Perspectives initiative at Queens University. My remarks are drawn in large part […]
For Insights into Michigan’s Toxic culture of Masculinity and Guns see Groundbreaking Director Arman Cole’s Short, “Small Arms” (4 mn Views)
Arman Cole is a director and graduate of the University of Southern California film school. His dramatic short film, Small Arms stars Tyler Young and Dominic DeVere. Young later “starred as Philip Shea in the acclaimed USA Network limited series Eyewitness (2016), directed by Catherine Hardwicke and co-starring Julianne Nicholson. He also starred in the […]
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