Featured

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Protesters in Iran, including political prisoners had called for three days of national strikes beginning Sunday, and if reports and videos posted to social media can be believed, there was substantial buy-in to the strike, as shopkeepers closed their establishments and workers in key industries stayed home. So report Patrick […]

Featured

Spike in Extrajudicial Executions by Israeli Police of Palestinian Youth

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The European Union has expressed its profound concern about the rash of extra-judicial killings by Israel of Palestinian young men, with ten having been killed recently. This year alone, some 207 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces. The new extremist government of Binyamin Netanyahu and his fascist partners in […]

Climate Crisis

52% of S. Dakota’s Electricity comes from Wind Power and other Green Energy Triumphs even in Red States

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – About 10% of the electricity generated in the US comes from wind installations. It isn’t nearly enough, either to fight the climate crisis or just to improve people’s health. It has now become clear that the people who get lung cancer but do not smoke are living near coal-fired power […]

Featured

Israel: Defying Biden, Netanyahu allows extremist Religious Zionists to rule over West Bank Palestinians

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Israeli newspaper Arab 48 reports that that Binyamin Netanyahu’s far right Likud Party concluded a coalition agreement with the extremist right-wing Religious Zionism bloc on Thursday, defying the warnings by the Biden administration that unilateral Israeli steps in the Palestinian West Bank would harm security between Washington and Tel […]

Children

Yemen: Ukraine War, boosting Wheat Prices, has increased Food Insecurity and Acute Malnutrition for Children

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Russia’s War on Ukraine has added to global inflation along many dimensions, including higher gasoline and fossil gas prices. It has also affected the price of wheat, since Ukraine and Russia used to be responsible for 9% and 19% of global wheat exports. Although wheat shortages of the magnitude that […]

Climate Crisis

The Pakistani Mega-Flood and our Climate Emergency

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Here is a talk I recently gave about the mega-flood this fall in Pakistan, which affected 33 million people, inundated a third of the country at one point, and caused between $15 billion and $30 billion in damages, including to crops and food supplies at a time when the Ukraine […]

Constitution

It isn’t Enough that Oath Keepers were Convicted of Seditious Conspiracy: Trump must be, Too

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Ryan Lucas and Carrie Johnson at NPR report that on Tuesday, a jury convicted five leaders of the fascist Oath Keepers militia of “obstructing an official proceeding” by being involved in the invasion of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in an attempt to keep Congress from certifying the election […]

Featured

Israel: Netanyahu puts Homophobic Fundamentalist who doesn’t think most American Jews are Jewish in Charge of Office of Jewish Identity

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – So Noam is a far right Jewish fundamentalist party in Israel that has a connection to the Har Hamor seminary in Jerusalem. One of its leaders is Rabbi Zvi Tau, who seems to have a conspiracy theory that LGBTQ groups have prevented Israelis from implementing Jewish law, the Halakha. He […]

Featured

Could Iran’s Kurdish Protests and the Ayatollahs’ Determination to Crush Them Destabilize Neighboring Iraq?

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The protests roiling Iran this fall have had an epicenter in Iranian Kurdistan in the west of the country. The death in the custody of the Shiite morality police of Tehran of a Kurdish young woman, Mahsa “Zhina” Amini, rallied Kurdish-Iranian subnationalism. Cities like Mahabad, Saqqez, and Sanandaj have seen […]