Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – A Pew Research Center opinion poll conducted among 1,284 veterans who had served since 2001 (which also polled 1,087 American civilians as a control), found that a majority of veterans holds that the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars and the intervention against ISIl in Syria were not worth it. The results […]
Juan Cole on the Prophet Muhammad in War and Peace (Emir-Stein Center Video)
Emir-Stein Center | Juan Cole on Muhammad | – Click below to go to YouTube and watch a 7-minute video–with maps, historical graphics and animation– where I summarize my new book, Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires: Here’s the link for the video: Emir-Stein Center presents Juan Cole on the Prophet Muhammad […]
Why Tucker Carlson is Wrong to attack Ilhan Omar for her Dissent
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Tucker Carlson has veered further and further toward unadorned white nationalism as Rupert Murdoch’s declining “Fox News” has failed to find viewers in the younger generation and risks losing cultural influence. Having positioned itself on the right of the Republican Party, once it lost the Young Republicans it had no […]
Dunked On’em: Nicki Minaj Pulls out of Saudi Concert over Women’s, LGBTQ, Free Speech Rights
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Trinidadian-American rap superstar Onika Tanya Maraj, known as “Nicki Minaj” has pulled out of Jidda World Fest scheduled in Saudi Arabia for July 15. She issued a statement: “While I want nothing more than to bring my show to fans in Saudi Arabia, after better educating myself on the issues, […]
China Backs Iran: Trump ‘Started the Fire,’ ‘unilateral bullying’ ‘a tumor’
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – China is openly blaming the Trump administration for the breakdown of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), according to the official Xinhua News Agency Foreign Ministry spokesperson Geng Shuang said at a daily press briefing, “The ‘maximum pressure’ against Iran imposed by […]
Trump’s Economic War on Iran: 88% reduction in Oil Exports, 6% Shrinkage of Economy
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The United States is already at war with Iran, squeezing its economy down to nothingness. If another country tried to do this to the US just on a whim and with no UN or international-law basis, the US would certainly launch a war over it. Iran’s choices are much more […]
UK Ambassador: Trump ‘radiating insecurity,’ inventing ‘false statistics’ and Dreads Unpopularity of any War with Iran
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Isabel Oakeshott at the Mail on Sunday has gotten hold of troves of UK diplomatic cables back to Whitehall from Washington, D.C., sent by veteran diplomat Sir Kim Darroch, which are scathing on Donald Trump. What is in the cables is interesting, but it should be signalled that the Mail […]
Humans set new Record putting Heat-Trapping CO2 into Atmosphere and What that Means
By Adam Voiland | – (NASA Earth Observatory) – In May 2019, when atmospheric carbon dioxide reached its yearly peak, it set a record. The May average concentration of the greenhouse gas was 414.7 parts per million (ppm), as observed at NOAA’s Mauna Loa Atmospheric Baseline Observatory in Hawaii. That was the highest seasonal peak […]
If Trump’s Steampunk History of Revolutionary War Airbases isn’t Grounds for Impeachment, What is?
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Suhauna Hussain at the LA Times reviews Trump’s fragile grasp of history, from his Revolutionary War airports to his Revolutionary War bombardment of Ft.McHenry (which occurred during 1812). In the 1980s, K. W. Jeter and others, building on work of Michael Moorcock, developed a new genre of science fiction set […]