Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – UN World Food Program surveys in August and September, Al Jazeera reports, found that 93 percent of Afghans already are not getting sufficient food, for the most part because they lack the cash to purchase it. Things are about to get worse, as Afghanistan under the Taliban is cut off […]
No, Saudi Arabia wasn’t behind the 9/11 Attacks; That is a conspiracy Theory
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The FBI released documents from its investigation of ties of personnel at the Saudi embassy in Washington, D.C., to al-Qaeda. The Saudi government was not behind the September 11 attacks, and these documents don’t indicate that it was. The Saudis are heavily invested in the U.S. stock market, and it […]
Top 7 Ways al-Qaeda’s Terrorism Violated the Precepts of the Holy Qur’an
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – One of the great tragedies of the early twenty-first century is that the great civilization of Islam, over 1400 years old and with tremendous achievements should have had its escutcheon besmirched with the terrorism of a small fringe of extremists such as Usama Bin Laden and al-Qaeda. It is the […]
The Palestinian scramble to earn a living in Israeli-Occupied Gaza starts at school age
By Motasem A Dalloul | – ( Middle East Monitor ) – The start of the new school year in the besieged Gaza Strip saw just under 300,000 students aged between six and 17 turn up for classes; more than 20,000 are attending school for the first time, often in overcrowded classrooms. Despite the difficult […]
The Accumulated Evil of the Whole: That time Bush and Co. made the September 11 Attacks a Pretext for War on Iraq
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Kyle Swenson at the Washington Post reported in 2018 that Floridian Ishnar Lopez-Ramos was in love, but her intended only had eyes for another woman. So Ms. Lopez-Ramos enlisted two 22-year-old accomplices to target the other woman, who worked at the Ross Dress for Less at a shopping Center near […]
Think Again: 9/11
“Think Again: 9/11,” by Juan Cole. Published in Foreign Policy No. 156 (Sep. – Oct., 2006), pp. 26-28, 30, 32. Copyright Foreign Policy, all rights reserved. Not for further reprint. These responses were my assessment of 9/11 and the Bush Forever Wars five years after the attacks. It is perhaps worth revisiting them now, 20 […]
No, WSJ, Taliban are not important to the Muslim battle of ideas — as Moroccan elections bring crushing defeat of religious party
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The return to power of the Taliban in Afghanistan has provoked a tidal wave of punditry about what it says about Islam. Since Islam is a 1400-year-old religion with 1.8 billion adherents, the answer to that glib query is surely obvious. Nothing. It says nothing about Islam in general. It […]
After Ida, Joe Biden calls Code Red on Climate Emergency, Ridicules ‘Free Enterprise’ argument for Living under Flood Waters
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – President Joe Biden is a late and incomplete convert to the immediate and extreme dangers of the climate emergency. Originally a fan of Big Oil who rejected a federal ban on high-carbon hydraulic fracturing, Biden more recently backed the demand by the Democratic Party’s left wing for really big federal […]
Southern White Male GOP Voter Suppression, anti-Abortion Laws are ways of reviving Jim Crow and expanding it to White Women
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – African-Americans have complained about the tendency of commentators to compare political suppression and regressive policies of white Republicans to slavery. Nothing, they rightly maintain, is like slavery. But some GOP laws passed by elite white males are very much like Jim Crow-style discrimination. Voter i.d. laws, for instance, are completely […]
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