2025

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – On Thursday, the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France, passed a resolution asking European Union member states to recognize a Palestinian state. It isn’t the first time that the European Parliament has given support to Palestine recognition, but this resolution is the first directly to call on member states to undertake […]

Israel/ Palestine

How America helped create the Palestinian Authority – only to undermine it ever since

The Conversation

By Anne Irfan, UCL (The Conversation) – At the end of August, the Trump administration blocked Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, and 80 other Palestinian officials from attending the UN general assembly meeting in New York, which runs between September 9 and 23. The US president’s decision to revoke the Palestinian officials’ US visas comes as […]

Authoritarianism

Unhoused and Policed in the Age of Trump

Tomdispatch

By Mattea Kramer and Sean Fogler ( Tomdispatch.com ) – The federal takeover of Washington, D.C., rightfully attracted extensive media coverage, but an executive order called “Ending Crime and Disorder on America’s Streets,” quietly issued on July 24th, received remarkably little attention. Perhaps it didn’t make a splash because it wasn’t specifically about policing (or, […]

Asia

While Trump Fiddles, China declares Eurasia Open for Business at At Shanghai Cooperation Org. Summit

Neil Thompson

Beijing raised its profile at the annual Shanghai Cooperation Council summit of non-Western countries just by providing a forum. London (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – China hosted the annual summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Council (SCO) last week at its port of Tianjin, drawing a crowd of world leaders from 20 non-Western countries. The […]

Iran

“Take the Cash in Hand:” Edward FitzGerald’s Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám 1:12

Juan Cole

Quatrain no. 12 in the first edition of Edward FitzGerald’s Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám concerns the imperative to live in the moment and take our pleasures where we can, disregarding visions of future power or the afterlife, which we may never achieve. XII. “How sweet is mortal Sovranty!”-think some: Others” How blest the Paradise to […]

Donald Trump

Israeli Strike in Doha crosses a new Line from which Relations with Gulf may not Recover

Kristian Coates Ulrichsen

By Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, Rice University (The Conversation) – The Israeli airstrike targeting senior Hamas political leaders in Qatar on Sept. 9, 2025, represents the crossing of a number of lines. Resulting in the deaths of six people but seemingly failing to kill any members of Hamas’ leadership, the strike was the first serious attack […]

Climate Crisis

Remembering William Blake on our Relationship with Nature in an Age of Environmental Degradation

Mark Vernon

Excerpt from Mark Vernon, Awake! William Blake and the Power of the Imagination (London: Hurst, 2025): We are inclined to forget that this world is a home, not only physically, in the sense that we depend upon planet Earth and its intricate chains of living interaction, but psychologically. We are a part of a totality […]

Featured

Top 4 Reasons Netanyahu Bombed Negotiators’ Offices in Qatar

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu bombed the building being used by civilian Hamas negotiators in Doha, Qatar, on Tuesday, in the midst of ongoing indirect negotiations with them. Five low-level Hamas members were killed, along with a Qatari security guard, but the top negotiators survived. Earlier this […]