Greenfield, Mass. (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – Contradictions pervaded the latest UN climate conference (COP30) held in Belem, Brazil. Progressive President Lula da Silva of Brazil proclaimed it would a positive turning point in progress, while he authorized his state-owned oil producer to do exploratory drilling for oil near the Great Amazon Reef System. […]
Archives for November 2025
From T. S. Eliot to the Grateful Dead: echoes of FitzGerald’s The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám 1:26
Stanza no. 26 in the first edition of Edward FitzGerald’s translation of The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám calls the notion of an afterlife a “lie” and compares the death of an individual to the demise of a flower such as an individual tulip. Actually I think it is saying that human beings are not like […]
Tariffs trickle into Cost of Thanksgiving Dinner, jilting Consumers and Farmers
by Anna Kaminski, Michigan Advance TOPEKA — Collin Tuthill, president of one of the country’s largest canned and frozen food importers and distributors, said the current state of the U.S. food industry is “like we live in some kind of alternate universe.” The most efficient industry is being hit the hardest by tariff policies and […]
How Global Power Shifts are Playing out in the Red Sea Region of the Mideast
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 […]
Mamdani was Right to Handle Trump, but the Left must Remember that the President is Still a Toxic Nationalist
San Francisco (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) | – Across the political spectrum – with alarm on the right and delight on the left – the display of warmth from President Trump toward Zohran Mamdani last Friday set off shock waves. Trump’s lavish praise of New York’s mayor-elect in the Oval Office was a 180-degree […]
MESA Board Statement concerning the detention of Dr. Vahid Abedini
Middle East Studies Association | – Update: Dr. Abedini has been released from detention. The Middle East Studies Association (MESA) was disturbed to learn of the detention of Dr. Vahid Abedini, the Farzaneh Family Assistant Professor of Iranian Studies at the University of Oklahoma (OU). Dr. Abedini was detained on November 22 by U.S. Immigration and […]
Ozymandias on the Potomac: Energy Policy and the Politics of American Decline
( Tomdispatch.com ) – At the dawning of the British Empire in 1818, the romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley penned a memorable sonnet freighted with foreboding about the inevitable decline of all empires, whether in ancient Egypt or then-modern Britain. In Shelly’s stanzas, a traveler in Egypt comes across the ruins of a once-monumental statue, […]
The Ecocide of Gaza
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 […]
“All the Saints and Sages:” FitzGerald’s The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám 1:25
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 […]
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