Middle East

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Israeli military forces made a raid into Syria on Friday that from what I can gather turned into a disaster for them. Israeli troops mounted an assault on the hamlet of Beit Jinn southeast of Damascus, where they maintained that three members of the Lebanon-based Islamic Group (al-Jama`ah al-Islamiyyah) constituted […]

Arms Sales

A 40-year Fight against Cluster Bombs offers Lessons to stop the US-Israel Weapons Pipeline

Waging Nonviolence

The Honeywell Project in Minneapolis showed how to beat a weapons maker: obstruct operations, recruit workers as allies, build camaraderie and persist no matter what. Joseph Mogul ( Waging Nonviolence ) – After more than two years of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, popular outrage has mounted against the weapons manufacturers enabling the slaughter. The antiwar […]

Arab World

Vanishing Future? The Arab World Faces 2x Global Heating, Corruption and High Tech Divide

Middle East Monitor

By Jasim Al-Azzawi ( Middle East Monitor ) – The Arab world is standing at a precipice. Climate change is accelerating at twice the global average across the region. Water scarcity threatens to erase up to 14 per cent of GDP by 2050. Illiteracy and failing education systems leave millions unprepared for the AI revolution […]

Displaced and Refugees

Amnesty: So-Called Gaza ‘Ceasefire’ becoming Smokescreen for continued Israeli Genocide

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Amnesty International concludes that, over a month after a ceasefire was agreed upon in Gaza and all living Israeli hostages were returned, the Israeli authorities continue to pursue the textbook definition of genocide “by continuing to deliberately inflict conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction.” Moreover, Israeli […]

Turkey

How Turkiye Plans to use the Spotlight of hosting the next UN Climate Summit

The Conversation

By Ezgi Unsal, SOAS, University of London (The Conversation) – In a break from tradition, the next major UN climate summit will be hosted by Turkey but chaired by a different country, Australia. This is the first split arrangement in three decades of these summits, known as “Cops”. The unusual deal, devised to avoid diplomatic […]

Egypt

How Global Power Shifts are Playing out in the Red Sea Region of the Mideast

The Conversation

By Federico Donelli, University of Trieste (The Conversation) – The competition for global influence and control is shifting. One of the places where this dynamic is playing out is the Red Sea region, which encompasses Egypt, Eritrea, Djibouti, Sudan, Saudi Arabia and Yemen. Here, international rivalries, regional ambitions and local politics collide. Federico Donelli, who […]

Featured

The Ecocide of Gaza

Dan Steinbock

In the past two years, Israeli obliteration has turned Gaza into an uninhabitable death zone. What is less known, however, is that this is the effect of decades of deliberate ecocide – and of the West’s purposeful efforts to undermine both genocide and ecocide legislation. New York (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – The final […]

Iran

“All the Saints and Sages:” FitzGerald’s The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám 1:25

Juan Cole

Quatrain no. 25 in the first edition of Edward FitzGerald’s translation of The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám is about the futility of metaphysical teachings in the face of certain death. XXV. Why, all the Saints and Sages who discuss’d Of the Two Worlds so learnedly, are thrust Like foolish Prophets forth; their Words to Scorn […]

Academic Freedom

In the Spirit of H. Chandler Davis: Activism and the Struggle for Academic Freedom

Juan Cole

Juan says: I’m honored to have an essay in this volume on threats to academic freedom and to free speech in the United States since 2023. I look at the crisis as it unfolded in is first months. All of the essays are urgent reading during America’s current Third Red Scare. I have been in […]