Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – A Special Committee of the United Nations Office of the High Commission on Human Rights has issued a new report […]
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Prelude to Ethnic Cleansing? Israel Plans 3200 more Squatter homes on Palestinian Land
Israel huge new settlement push raises Palestinian ire (via AFP) Israel unveiled plans for 3,200 settler homes Thursday in retaliation for the formation of a […]
Egypt, Syria, Libya . . . . What is the Appeal of Phoney Elections in the Middle East?
By Juan Cole The world has been treated to a whole series of “elections” in the Middle East recently. Iraq had parliamentary elections, Libya’s parliament […]
How Reagan subverted the meaning of D-Day & the New Deal of the Greatest Generation
The following is an excerpt from Harvey J. Kaye’s The Fight for the Four Freedoms: What Made FDR and the Greatest Generation Truly Great (Simon & Schuster, 2014). On June 6, 1984, President Ronald Reagan went to Normandy, France, to speak at events…
Harvard confirms antique book is bound in human skin
Harvard University scientists have confirmed that a 19th century French treatise in its libraries is bound in human skin, Harvard University said this week, after a bevvy of scientific testing. Arsene Houssaye’s “Des destinees de l’ame” (On the destiny…
“In your Wild Dreams, what are you Looking for?” Rubaiyat of Jalalu’d-Din Rumi
Courtesy Anthony A. Lee, here are four poems from his and the late Amin Banani’s translation of the quatrains of the great Sufi mystic Mevlana […]
Georgia Courthouse is shot up by Sovereign Citizen after GOP backs Bundy, Open Carry
By Juan Cole That didn’t take long. The Georgia GOP rushed into law an ‘open carry’ provision in April allowing people to tote around guns […]
Can Obama Make good on his Pledge to overturn Citizens United with a Constitutional Amendment?
In his new book, Ken Vogel claims that President Barack Obama told Democratic donors he believes he is in a good position to pass a constitutional amendment to repeal Citizens United. The book, entitled “Big Money: 2.5 Billion Dollars, One Suspicious…
Iran’s Rouhani pulls a Pope Francis: ‘Let People choose own path to Heaven’
By Golnaz Esfandiari Twenty-five years after Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's death, the clerical establishment ushered in by the Islamic republic's founding father is at odds over […]
Does our and Obama’s Paralysis on Global Warming come from American Exceptionalism?
By William Espinosa President Obama’s proposal to modestly curb carbon emissions from power plants is – if carried out—a serious one. But opposition was immediate, […]