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Archives for 2022

Authoritarianism
Iran Accused Of Using armed Minors To Suppress Anti-Government Protests

Iran Accused Of Using armed Minors To Suppress Anti-Government Protests

Golnaz Esfandiari

( RFE/RL) — As Iranian authorities crack down on nationwide anti-government protests, photos have appeared on social media that purportedly show children and adolescent boys wearing unforms and holding batons. They appear to be wearing the uniforms of the Basij paramilitary forces, a branch of Iran’s powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC). The photos have […]

Climate Crisis
The Second Great Dying: The Earth has lost 4/5s of Fresh Water and 7/10s of Wildlife Species’ Populations in 50 Years

The Second Great Dying: The Earth has lost 4/5s of Fresh Water and 7/10s of Wildlife Species’ Populations in 50 Years

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The 2022 Living Planet report is out and it does not bring good news. Since 1970, the scientists find that the population of fresh water species has plunged by 83%, and the population of wildlife species over all has fallen 69%. The researchers found a virtual extinction-level loss in Latin […]

Feminism
Women-led Protests in Iran gather Momentum - but will They be enough to bring about Change?

Women-led Protests in Iran gather Momentum – but will They be enough to bring about Change?

The Conversation

By Tony Walker, La Trobe University | – As protests in Iran drag on into their fourth week over the violent death in custody of Mahsa Amini, a young Kurdish woman, there are two central questions. The first is whether these protests involving women and girls across Iran are different from upheavals in the past, […]

Eritrea
Why does the Ukraine War overshadow the Middle Eastern Wars?

Why does the Ukraine War overshadow the Middle Eastern Wars?

John Feffer

( Foreign Policy in Focus ) – The war in Ukraine has dominated the headlines in U.S. and European newspapers, not to mention outlets in other parts of the world. The explosion this weekend that destroyed part of the bridge connecting Crimea to the Russian mainland, along with Russia’s retaliatory missile attacks on Ukrainian cities […]

Featured
To Deal with Saudi Arabia, Biden should Fast-Track both Iran Deal and the Greening of Transportation

To Deal with Saudi Arabia, Biden should Fast-Track both Iran Deal and the Greening of Transportation

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Reuters reports that the Biden White House is upset with Saudi Arabia over the recent OPEC+ decision to cut the output of the 21 nations grouped in the bloc by 2 million barrels a day. President Biden told CNN’s Jake Tapper in an interview Tuesday, “there will be consequences” for […]

Israel/ Palestine
Catastrophe: Historians reveal Israel's use of Poisoning, Typhoid against Palestinians in 1948

Catastrophe: Historians reveal Israel’s use of Poisoning, Typhoid against Palestinians in 1948

Middle East Monitor

By Nasim Ahmed | – ( Middle East Monitor ) – The details of Israel’s secret use of biological weapons and poison against Palestinians during the 1947/48 ethnic cleansing campaign has been revealed in a recent article by historians Benny Morris and Benjamin Kedar. The 84-year-old Kedar is professor emeritus at the Hebrew University of […]

Authoritarianism
Headcovers have always been Political in Iran – for Women on all Sides

Headcovers have always been Political in Iran – for Women on all Sides

The Conversation

By Eliz Sanasarian, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences | – A friend and I were strolling through Tehran’s streets one afternoon when she was approached by a member of the “morality police,” an agency tasked with enforcing modesty laws in public. First, the policewoman warned her to cover her hair by pulling […]

China
The World’s Other Nuclear Flashpoint: Mounting Tensions Over Taiwan

The World’s Other Nuclear Flashpoint: Mounting Tensions Over Taiwan

Michael T. Klare

( Tomdispatch.com ) – Thanks to Vladimir Putin’s recent implicit threat to employ nuclear weapons if the U.S. and its NATO allies continue to arm Ukraine — “This is not a bluff,” he insisted on September 21st — the perils in the Russo-Ukrainian conflict once again hit the headlines. And it’s entirely possible, as ever […]

Authoritarianism
Iran: In Widening of Social Base of Protests, Oil Workers go on Strike in Support of Youth Demonstrators

Iran: In Widening of Social Base of Protests, Oil Workers go on Strike in Support of Youth Demonstrators

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The student protests continued in Iran on Monday, as youth rallied at the University of Shiraz and at several campuses in the capital of Shiraz. They pledged to multiply their movement every time another youth was killed. Nearly 200 people have died because of the repression of the protests according […]

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