Rights

By Tariq Kenney-Shawa | – ( Al-Shabakah) – The Israeli regime’s defenders across the US are ramping up efforts to criminalize the constitutionally protected right to boycott. Beyond violating the rights of Palestine solidarity activists, this threatens to undermine the tenets of a healthy democracy. Al-Shabaka’s US Policy Fellow, Tariq Kenney-Shawa, examines this development and […]

BDS

Students Society at McGill University must have the Right to Boycott Israel over Human Rights Violations (MESA)

Committee on Academic Freedom

Committee on Academic Freedom, Middle East Studies Association | – Letter to the provost of McGill University Provost Christopher Manfredi Office of the Provost and Vice Principal (Academic) McGill University 845 Sherbrooke Street West, Suite 504 Montreal, Quebec H3A OG4 via fax: 514-398-4768 Dear Provost Manfredi: We write on behalf of the Middle East Studies […]

astronomy and outer space

Did a Cosmic Airburst inspire the Myth of Sodom and inadvertently Spark millennia of Homophobia?

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – In a new paper in Nature archeologists Ted E. Bunch and Malcolm A. LeCompte et al. present their findings that a cosmic airburst destroyed an ancient city in 1650 BC (about 3600 years ago) at the site of today’s Tell el-Hammam in western Jordan near the mouth of the Jordan […]

Bill of Rights

How did Conservatives successfully smear “Liberal” (Respect for Liberty and Rights of Others) as Mule Word?

Bahman Fozouni

Sacramento (Special to Informed Comment) – The 2020 elections are over, but once again it proved that Liberal-bashing remains a favorite pastime of the Republican party and conservative politicians. Verbal assault on “liberal” politicians and the media, “liberalism,” and the root-word “liberal” by the political right (and occasionally by the hard left) has remained a […]

Torturers

No one, not Psychologists or Supreme Court Justices, should be Helping with Gov’t Torture

Rebecca Gordon

San Francisco ( Tomdispatch.com) – Sometimes the good guys do win. That’s what happened on August 8th in San Francisco when the Council of Representatives of the American Psychological Association (APA) decided to extend a policy keeping its members out of the U.S. detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The APA’s decision is important — […]

BDS Occupied Territories

ACLU: US Congress ban on Boycotting Israel is Unconstitutional

contributors

TeleSur | – – The bipartisan bill was rewritten after criticism by civil rights advocates but it remains challenged by the ACLU. The legal advocacy group American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) announced Tuesday their opposition to a revised draft of a legislation targeting the growing pro-Palestinian Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement. The ACLU criticized […]

Bill of Rights

Trump’s attack on UCLA Athletes’ right to Dissent an Attack on America

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – So Trump intervened with Chinese authorities to release three UCLA basketball players guilty of shoplifting from a mall in Hangzhou while playing in China. They thanked him, he told them to change their ways. Then Levar Ball, the father of LiAngelo Ball–one of the three freed […]

African-Americans

Which Lives Matter?: Fresh St. Louis Protests over Acquittal of Accused Killer

contributors

By TeleSur | – – Saturday’s demonstrations were markedly calmer after nearly three dozen people were arrested the day before. Protests have continued for a second day in St. Louis, Missouri following the acquittal of former cop Jason Stockley, who had been charged with first-degree murder for the killing of Anthony Lamar Smith in 2011. […]

Featured

Torture works . . . to produce Fake News (and that’s how we Got into Iraq)

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – I told this story back in 2005 but it is a good story, has held up, and bears repeating now that President Trump is again promoting torture as “effective.” Torture is a good way to get people to tell you what they think you want to […]