International Politics and Economy

By Layla Kattermann and Diala Shamas | – ( Al-Shabaka ) – Israel’s 2023 genocide of Palestinians in Gaza has horrified many around the world and drawn widespread public outcry, with unprecedented levels of solidarity organizing taking place across the globe. Millions have gathered in the streets, issued public statements, and mobilized to block corporate […]

Dissent

From BLM to Gaza: Inside the Youth-led fight for a Demilitarized Future

Waging Nonviolence

By Alessandra Bergamin | – ( Waging Nonviolence ) – In January 2020, Dissenters — a grassroots, youth-led antiwar movement — began with the mission to connect violence against Black and brown communities in the U.S. to the systems of oppression that fund, arm and enable global militarism. While born from the legacy of the […]

European Union

The Empire of Whiteness: Race in the European Perspective

Marc Martorell Junyent

Review of Hans Kundnani, Eurowhiteness: Culture, Empire and Race in the European Project. London: Hurst & Co., 2023. Munich (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – What does it mean to be European? This is a complex but legitimate question. Still, one is unlikely to find an answer to the conundrum in the numerous billboards paid […]

Featured

What the World needs Now is another Winter Truce

Arnold Oliver

Tiffin, Oh. (Special to Informed Comment) – An iconic song back in the 1960’s addressed the causes of war, and what leads young people to fight in them. Buffy Saint Marie’s Universal Soldier advised that we could end war if soldiers refused to fight. So what if we gave her idea a test this Winter? […]

Djibouti

Gaza’s Second Front: Houthi Drones Drive Major Shipping Cos. out of Red Sea in Blow to World Trade

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – On Saturday, Muhammad al-Bakhiti, a member of the Politburo of the Helpers of God (Houthi ) government of northern Yemen, announced that it had completely closed off shipping to Israel via the Arabian Sea and the Red Sea. Actually, the Helpers of God have more or less closed Red Sea […]

Anti-intellectualism

The Other Israel-Gaza Conflict: On Campus (Juan at Dawn)

Juan Cole

Excerpted from Dawn (Democracy for the Arab World Now) Israel’s total war on Gaza, following Hamas’s horrific terrorist attack on Oct. 7, has roiled higher education in the United States. The atrocities committed by Hamas in southern Israel two months ago have reverberated on many U.S. campuses, deeply traumatizing many Jewish students. But so too […]

Drones

Gaza: Why all Civilian lives matter Equally, according to a Military Ethicist

The Conversation

By Jessica Wolfendale, Case Western Reserve University | – Some commentators have criticized Israel for causing what is claimed to be disproportionate harm to civilians in its military response to Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack. Others have defended Israel’s actions, claiming that such force – and the risk to civilians involved – is necessary to […]

Authoritarianism

Kissinger and Walt Disney v. Salvador Allende: Who will win our Souls?

Tomdispatch

By Ariel Dorfman | – ( Tomdispatch.com ) – This year marks the anniversaries of two drastically different events that loomed all too large in my life. The first occurred a century ago in Hollywood: on October 16, 1923, Walt Disney signed into being the corporation that bears his name. The second took place in […]

Israel/ Palestine

Is it Time (Once Again) for Nonviolent Rebellion? On Ending Dreams of Revenge in Israel, Palestine, and Elsewhere

Rebecca Gordon

( Tomdispatch.com) – When I was in my early twenties, I seriously considered murdering someone. He had given my best friend genital herpes, which many health practitioners then believed was the agent responsible for causing cervical cancer in women. (It wasn’t.) Back in the 1970s, though, I believed that, by infecting my friend, he might […]