Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Last weekend, OPEC Plus, an expanded cartel of petroleum exporters, considered a plan for members to cut back on their oil production so as to support prices in the face of a slowing world economy owing to the novel coronavirus. The Russian Federation rejected the plan put forward by OPEC, […]
“A Toothpick in a Tsunami”: US Big Oil Faces Bankruptcy as Prices Plunge 30% on Saudi Expansion
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Oil prices plummeted by 30% on Monday morning in Asia on news that Saudi Arabia intended actually to cut its prices and increase its production on April 1 to more than 10 million barrels a day. As a result, Asian markets also took a huge hit. Riyadh’s move came after […]
With Bernie Sanders in Dearborn, Arab-Americans and Muslim-Americans take the Political Stage
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Bernie Sanders’ rally at Dearborn, Michigan with a crowd that included Arab-Americans, on stage and off, was a frontal attack on one of the last permissible prejudices in America. Media personalities have been fired (and rightly so) for bigoted public statements about African-Americans and other minorities. But Arab-Americans and Muslim-Americans […]
Seeking Absolute Power in Saudi Arabia, Bin Salman engineers Arrest of Rivals, including former Crown Prince
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Glen Carey and Vivian Nereim at Bloomberg report that the Saudi government has arrested former crown prince Mohammed Bin Nayef, his brother Nawwaf, and the brother of King Salman, Prince Ahmed bin Abdulaziz Al Saud. They say their Saudi sources intimated that the three are accused of plotting to overthrow […]
How many Iranians will die of Coronavirus because of Trump’s Economic Blockade on that Country?
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Babak Dehghanpisheh at Reuters reports that Iranian President Hassan Rouhani announced on Thursday that the coronavirus Covid-19 has spread to nearly all of the 31 provinces of the huge country (Iran is as big geographically as Spain, France and Germany combined, and its population rivals that of Germany at 81 […]
Netanyahu, failing to get a majority for the third time, Lashes out at Foes as “Arab Terrorists” and Jewish Terrorist-Lovers
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Arab48, a Palestinian-Israeli news site, reports that caretaker Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu accused the “Joint List” made up of 15 Palestinian-Israelis elected to parliament of being “terrorists” and put them out of consideration in the formation of a government. A minimum of 61 seats is needed to form a […]
The Real Losers on Super Tuesday: Urgent Climate Action, Medicare for All, Anti-Plutocracy
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Primaries can be long drawn-out affairs. The Obama-Clinton struggle of spring-summer 2008 went down to the wire, still being contested in June. As I write Tuesday evening, the delegate count for Super Tuesday is still not known, and the actual count for California could take a long time to nail […]
“The Triumph of Apartheid:” Did the Trump/Kushner Plan help Israel’s Netanyahu return to Power?
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Three Israeli television news channels’ exit polls suggest that indicted prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s far-right racist Likud Party fell just short of a majority in Israel’s third parliamentary election in a year. The Likud, founded in the age of supremacist racialist parties of the 1930s and 1940s, was projected to […]
Russia backs Damascus as it closes Syrian Airspace, Threatens to down Turkish Jets
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Turkey shot down two Syrian fighter jets over Idlib province this weekend and Turkish drones and artillery took out armor on the ground, allegedly killing over a hundred Syrian troops, along with Lebanese Hizbullah fighters and Iran-supplied Shiite forces. Syria on Sunday announced that it was closing its air space […]