Roy Eidelson Note: This essay is adapted from the author’s August address at the American Psychological Association annual convention and from a webinar he presented in early September. The webinar includes many visual depictions of the topics discussed here. ( Counterpunch ) – Welcome everyone. I’m Roy Eidelson, president of the Society for the Study of Peace, […]
Archives for October 2025
Wind and Solar Provide 40% of Brazil’s Electricity for first time
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – This month Brazil’s National Electric System Operator estimated that wind and solar are now producing nearly 40 percent of the country’s electricity. It was just in August of this year that the country’s wind and solar installations hit the milestone of generating over a third of the country’s electricity (some […]
Israel/Palestine: Microsoft Should Avoid Contributing to Rights Abuses
Further Due Diligence Needed After Suspension of Some Cloud and AI Services Human Rights Watch — (New York, October 10, 2025) – Microsoft should suspend business activities that are contributing to grave human rights abuses and international crimes by the Israeli military and other Israeli government bodies, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Access Now, and […]
How Extreme Temperatures Strain Minds and Bodies: A Karachi Case Study
By Gulnaz Anjum, University of Limerick and Mudassar Aziz, University of Oslo (The Conversation) – When the daytime air feels like an oven and night brings no relief, people in Karachi, Pakistan, say the heat “goes straight to the head”. They mean more than dizziness or sweat. It’s the creeping panic of a body that […]
Israeli Government Votes to Implement Trump Peace Plan for Gaza as Hamas Pledges to Uphold it
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – According to the Israeli newspaper Arab 48 , the Israeli government on Friday approved the ceasefire in Gaza and the hostage exchange, and agreed to begin withdrawing troops from the west of the Strip. The approval came after the arrival of President Donald Trump’s Middle East envoys Steve Witkoff and […]
“From what once lovely Lip it springs unseen:” FitzGerald’s The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám 1:19
With no. 19 in in the first edition of Edward FitzGerald’s The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, the theme turns away from the glory of kings as a flash-in-the-pan to the impermanence of life for everyone. One of the tropes common in the subsequent poems, already used in no. 18, is that we are clay and […]
Never in a Million Years: 10 Reasons why Trump should never be Awarded the Nobel Peace Prize
( Tomdispatch.com ) – Who doesn’t know that President Donald Trump desperately wants a Nobel Peace Prize and said bitterly, “They will never give me a Nobel Peace Prize. It’s too bad. I deserve it, but they will never give it to me”? And for once, he’s right. He won’t get one, but wrong, of […]
A short History of the Gaza Strip takes a long View of today’s Conflict
By Martin Kear, University of Sydney (The Conversation) – A Short History of the Gaza Strip, by historian Anne Irfan, is a timely addition to an important corpus of literature taking a historical and contextual view of the Palestinian/Israeli conflict. Review: A Short History of the Gaza Strip – Anne Irfan (W.W. Norton) By telling […]
As Ceasefire Looms, Gaza’s Children are Still Starving
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Trump peace plan has resulted in an agreement between Hamas and Israel to pause fighting and exchange prisoners. Other points in the plan, including an Israeli troop withdrawal and the laying down of arms by Hamas, appear still to be being negotiated, which is to say that we are […]
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