By Paul F. Clark | – The COVID-19 crisis has demonstrated the degree to which we depend on the work of others. This is particularly true of essential workers like truck drivers, grocery store employees and hospital nurses who are ensuring the rest of us stay safe and are able to get the supplies, food […]
Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam: “Who brought you, tipsy, here to me?”
Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam: Quatrain of the Day Tonight, who brought you, tipsy, here to me? Who brought you to my hand without a veil? –to one on fire because you had been gone– one like an arid wind; who brought you here? trans. Juan Cole, (Whinfield 2) امشب بر ما مست که آورد ترا […]
Anti-Immigrant Trump promotes Burning Fossil Fuels that will displace Millions toward US
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – A new article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences presents findings that shocked the authors themselves. If the world (by which I mean you and me, dear reader) does not swing into prompt action to deal with the climate emergency, some 3.5 billion people are going to […]
Americans are Dying to Die: Guard shot for asking Customers to wear Mask as Trump’s CDC predicts 3k death / day by June
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Security guard Calvin Munerlyn, father of six with three step-children, was shot to death Monday in an altercation over Munerlyn’s demand that a 20-year-old woman wear a mask to shop in a Dollar Store in Flint, Michigan. She was there with her mother, who was masked, and with two men. […]
Neo-Nazi “Reopeners” would Kill nearly as many Americans as died in All US Wars
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Roughly 1,264,000 US soldiers have died in all the wars this country has ever fought. A new simulation by the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School predicts that if all the states completely reopened today and all Americans ceased all social distancing measures, a million people would die in this country […]
Israel Teeters on Brink, as Protests erupt against Indicted Netanyahu forming Gov’t, and Supreme Court prepares to Rule on his Eligibility
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Thousands of Israelis gathered again at Rabin Square in Tel Aviv to protest the formation of a new national unity government by indicted prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu and his rival, Benny Gantz. The disciplined protesters maintained social distance from one another to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus. Smaller […]
Like Twenty-One 9/11s: Our 2020 Pandemic is “The Trump Virus”, just as 1918’s was “Spanish Flu”
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The “Spanish Flu” did not originate in Spain, but Spain had been neutral in WW I and so the Spanish press was uncensored, since the government was not worried about public morale during hostilities. The most lurid accounts of the disease, which was unusually lethal and went on to kill […]
Trump threatened to pull US Security Umbrella from Saudi if it didn’t raise Oil Prices to Help US Frackers
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – On April 2, the Republican Party more or less joined the Organization of Petroleum Exporting States Plus (OPEC+). That is the upshot of reporting by Timothy Gardner, Steve Holland, Dmitry Zhdannikov, and Rania El Gamal for Reuters that Trump threatened de facto Saudi ruler crown prince Mohammed Bin Salman with […]
Poetry of Uplift for our Plague Year: The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (Juan Cole’s New Translation)
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Today my new translation of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam is out from I.B. Tauris/ Bloomsbury. I hope you all enjoy it! I make an argument in the historical epilogue to my translation that this volume is an anthology by many poets and that a custom had grown up of […]
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