By Mohammed Girma | – Abiy Ahmed, the Ethiopian Prime Minister, has won the Nobel Peace Prize. He becomes the 100th Nobel Peace Prize winner, and the first Ethiopian to receive the accolade. Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed. Alexandros Michailidis/Shutterstock Abiy is the 12th winner from Africa to be awarded the prize. Last year it […]
Archives for October 2019
Turkey Shells position of US Special Forces in Syria, almost Provokes Firefight
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Tom O’Connor , James LaPorta AND Naveed Jamali at Newsweek report that the Turkish military subjected a position occupied by between 20 and 100 US special forces personnel embedded with the Kurdish Peoples Protection Units (YPG) to heavy artillery fire. Turkey has invaded northeast Syria for the purpose of ethnically […]
Turkish Military Operation in Syria puts Large Numbers of Civilians at Risk
Key Concerns Include Unlawful Attacks, Treatment of Displaced People, Arbitrary Arrests
South Africans advise Palestinians on how Apartheid can be Overcome
Ramzy Baroud | @RamzyBaroud | – The way to truly defeat Apartheid: A conversation with Na’eem Jeenah and Salim Vally “Perhaps the time has come for Palestinians and justice-loving Israelis to imagine a new future,” wrote South African intellectuals and academics, Na’eem Jeenah and Salim Vally, in their essay, “Beyond Ethnic Nationalism: Lessons from South […]
Turkish attack on Syria endangers a remarkable democratic experiment by the Kurds
By James L. Gelvin | – Turkey’s attack on Kurdish-run territory in northern Syria will likely snuff out a radical experiment in self-government that is unlike anything I have seen in more than 30 years studying the Middle East. In a surprise Oct. 6 statement, President Donald Trump announced the U.S. would withdraw its troops […]
How the Roberts Court’s ‘Citizens United’ allowed Parnas and Fruman to Buy influence in America
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – As I pointed out last week, the most powerful intervention in US politics allowing foreign influence in US elections, which contributed to Trump’s victory in 2016, was the Supreme Court’s Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, (2010) decision. Like Michaelangelo’s God creating Adam with a pointing finger, SCOTUS created out […]
An Expansionist State? Did Israel ever have any intention of honoring either the 1947 Partition Plan or 1967 borders?
By Thomas Suárez | – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised to annex parts of the occupied West Bank if re-elected in last month’s General Election, eliciting outrage from world leaders. However, that “promise” to usurp not just the West Bank, but all of Palestine, is century-old news, an ongoing promise being kept, and no […]
Did Bush put Iraq on Road to Democracy? Not to Judge by the Violent Crackdown on Protesters
By Balsam Mustafa | – When Muhanad Habib, a 22-year-old Iraqi from the Sadr City district of Baghdad, posted on Facebook in late September, he probably didn’t imagine that his demands for a better life and basic rights would be met with bullets. It will be a huge and angry public revolution in Baghdad … […]
Not Just Ethnicity: Turkey v. Kurds and the Great Divide over Political Islam v. the Secular Left
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Turkey’s incursion into Syria has roiled the Middle East and NATO countries, demonstrating one key polarizing divide on both sides of the Mediterranean. That divide is between supporters of political Islam and its opponents. By political Islam I mean movements like the Muslim Brotherhood that make Islam more than a […]
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