By Lin Xin and Luzie Mayer | Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung: The Green Political Foundation | – Interview: Omaid Sharifi is a pioneer Afghan activist and one of the co-founders of ArtLords, an artist association which has been attracting widespread international attention in recent years. How did you start your career as a painter and artist? I am […]
Has the Climate Crisis in Afghanistan Displaced more People than the War?
By Fariba Housaini | – ( TheThirdPole.net ) – It has been two years since severe drought forced twenty nine-year old Amena and her four children to leave their village Petaw Qol in Waras. Now, they reside in Bamyan city. “My husband is blind and I was responsible for the farming. Wells gradually dried up […]
Breathing Room: Trump v. Dingell
By Bonnie Honig | – ( Politics/Letters ) – Watching Trump in Michigan this week talking about Debbie and John Dingell, I was struck by how he spoke the words as well as by what he said. Commentators noted the offenses against Dingell, the universally liked, longest serving Congressman from Michigan, who is recently deceased […]
An Afghan Perspective on 18 Years of Washington’s Lies about the War and our Suffering
(Special to Informed Comment) – On December 9, The Washington Post revealed interviews with American officials in Afghanistan who intentionally falsified facts regarding the 18-year conflict. In one of the interviews, Bob Crowley, a counterinsurgency adviser to U.S. military commanders in 2003, remarked that data “was altered to present the best picture possible.” While the […]
Trump as Jim Jones? How America drank the Kool-Aid
By James A. Haught Cults usually are one-man religions. A magnetic, dictatorial, dogmatic, demagogue draws throngs of followers and leads them into lala-land, sometimes dangerously. Jim Jones took 900 gullible adherents to cyanide suicide. David Koresh brought seventy Branch Davidians to fiery death. Shoko Asahara sent his Supreme Truth believers to plant nerve gas in […]
Australia Climate Crisis: Out-of-Control Mega-Fire raging across 740K Acres Smothers Sydney in Smoke
By Julie Celestial | – ( The Watchers ) – More than eight bushfires have merged to form a “mega-fire” which is now raging out of control across a swath of land just north of Sydney. Firefighters said it will take weeks to control, but will not be contained without heavy rains. The fire is […]
Trump’s Anti-Climate Agenda Bolsters his Ambitions for “Freedom Gas”
By John Foster | – (Monitor) – When Washington dubbed American gas exports “Freedom Gas” this year, it signalled a new salvo in U.S. competition with Russia. The target behind the branding is Europe, the largest gas market outside North America. With a bonanza of gas from fracking, the U.S. aims to become the world’s […]
No Premature Burial for Academic Freedom: Speaking up in Ann Arbor
By Chandler Davis | – (Informed Comment) – Let me make a case for urgency of defense of academic freedom. I’m not addressing the whole University community. Surely there are some who don’t have any concern for academic freedom as the AAUP understands it. Some who think for example that it was honorable and right […]
Duke U. Faculty reply to Trump Dept of Ed. demand for Negative Teaching on Islam and Palestinians
Letter: 62 Duke faculty respond to Department of Education directive letter to the editor By Concerned Faculty October 3, 2019 | ( The Duke Chronicle) – We appreciate the recent statement on academic freedom from President Price and Provost Kornbluth following the US Department of Education’s investigation of the Duke-UNC Consortium for Middle East studies. […]








