Health

What Causes Famines? In Gaza and Elsewhere, Outside Pressure and Vulnerability can lead to Hunger and Death

By Paul Howe, Tufts University | – The United Nations’ latest report on hunger makes for grim reading. On April 24, 2024, the international body released its annual Global Report on Food Crises, showing that 281.6 million people faced acute hunger in 2023. And indications for 2024 suggest worse may be to come. In March, […]

Food Insecurity

Will the Freedom Flotilla Sail to Gaza?

Medea Benjamin and Nicholas J.S. Davies

( Code Pink ) – The non-violence training to join the Freedom Flotilla Coalition’s ships to Gaza has been intense. As hundreds of us from 32 countries gathered in Istanbul, we were briefed about what we might encounter on this voyage. “We have to be ready for every possibility,” our trainers insisted. The best scenario, […]

Islam

Learning about Patience and Impatience: Top Three Principles from the Great Sufi Scholar al-Ghazali

The Conversation

By Liz Bucar, Northeastern University | – From childhood, we are told that patience is a virtue and that good things will come to those who wait. And, so, many of us work on cultivating patience. This often starts by learning to wait for a turn with a coveted toy. As adults, it becomes trying […]

Colonialism

Colonialists have long used Starvation as a Tool of Oppression

The Conversation

By Ateqah Khaki, The Conversation and Vinita Srivastava, The Conversation | – In this episode of Don’t Call Me Resilient, we continue our conversation about forced famine and its use as a powerful tool to control people, land and resources. Starvation has, for centuries, been a part of the colonizer’s “playbook.” We speak with two […]

Algeria

The Middle East Ranks at the Bottom of Gallup’s Happiness Index, except for Rich Oil States; is the US to Blame?

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The annual Gallup report on happiness by country came out this week. It is based on a three-year average of polling. What struck me in their report is how unhappy the Middle East is. The only Middle Eastern country in the top twenty is Kuwait (for the first time in […]

Displaced and Refugees

UN and EU slam Israel: Imposing on Palestinians ‘Levels of Food Insecurity never Recorded anywhere in the World’

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The European Union’s Vice-President of the European Commission, Josep Borell and the European Commissioner for Crisis management Janez Lenarčič, issued a statement on Monday on the findings of a UN-backed report that found that Israel’s total war on Gaza has put the remaining Palestinian population in imminent risk of starving […]

Featured

Biden owes an Apology to the Volunteers of the Mavi Marmara, the First Aid Flotilla to Gaza

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – President Biden owes an apology to fellow American Furkan Doğan, whom Israeli commandos murdered on May 31, 2010, as he videoed their illegal attack in international waters on the aid ship Mavi Marmara. At the time, Biden justified the massacre. Doğan and other volunteers were trying to bring food and […]

Health Care

The Failing Battle for Healthcare in the Dis-United States

Liz Theoharis

( Tomdispatch.com ) – The slang definition of “unwinding” means “to chill.” Other definitions include: to relax, disentangle, undo — all words that, on the surface, appear both passive and peaceful. And yet in Google searches involving such seemingly harmless definitions of decompressing and resting, news articles abound about the end of pandemic-era Medicaid expansion […]